Psychological Anthropology

Previous articleNext article FreeCurrent ApplicationsPsychological AnthropologyR.F.DarsieR.F.Darsie Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreHelping Canadian Aboriginal PrisonersAn aboriginal elder leads a group of men in the ageold purification ritual of the sweat lodge. Heated rocks scorch the air, enabling the purging of both physical and spiritual poisons, and pungent herbs lend to the aura of sacredness. This ancient ceremony is being held, however, not in a remote Aboriginal community but in a twentyfirstcentury Canadian prison. The Correctional Service of Canada has found value in offering Aboriginal inmates the option to engage in traditional ritual healing practices.The Somba'Ke Healing Lodge in the Northwest Territories.View Large ImageDownload PowerPointThis option was not always available. Before the mid1990s, Aboriginal inmates were treated the same as others, even though such treatment often reinforced the sense of alienation that had played a large role in the mens having been incarcerated in the first place.Jim Waldram, a psychological anthropologist at the University of Saskatchewan with an interest in Aboriginal mental health dating to his graduate student days in the 1970s, has focused his attention on the incompatibility of native culture and institutional procedures. For example, inmates are often taught to be assertive as an angermanagement tool (on the supposition that asserting dislike of anothers action is better than allowing the anger to build up by remaining silent). But in many Aboriginal communities individuals are supposed to repress their anger as part of the cultural ethic of maintaining social harmony.In the 1990s Waldram was approached by Aboriginal healers who wanted to work with prisoners in the context of Aboriginal spirituality. They had faced great difficulties in securing resources and support for such work, and they asked him to help them prove that their healing was effective. In response, he designed and executed a research project in the course of which he consulted with healers and conducted interviews with hundreds of prisoners from many Aboriginal nations in seven provincial and federal prisons in the Canadian Prairie provinces. As a consequence of his research, the elders began to see fewer restrictions on their work with inmatesfewer interruptions of sweatlodge ceremonies by suspicious guards, no more searching of elders sacred materials (which desecrated them). Also, Aboriginal programs got their own resource rooms and staff in the prisons, and inmates were allowed to select their own course of treatment (mainstream or Aboriginal).Waldram and the Aboriginal healers encountered a great deal of institutional resistance. Each institution was largely controlled by the local staff, which exhibited varying degrees of cooperation. Difficulties confronting the Aboriginal elders were even more formidable: they faced such unfamiliar demands as writing memos, attending meetings, and producing concrete, measurable results. Perhaps most distressing from their point of view was the disrespect shown them by prison staff. Additionally, many Aboriginal prisoners were not interested in participating in rituals and ceremonies.The benefits of Waldrams work, however, reverberate through the system to this day. In the past five years healing lodges that reflect Aboriginal spiritual and cultural traditions have been established. There are currently eight such lodges, serving as minimumsecurity prisons, as well as a number of lodges within existing prisons that serve as bridges from mainstream incarceration to one of the eight lodges. Preliminary data indicate that healing lodge participants have a relatively low recidivism rate. As for the elders, they are less concerned with evaluating their work in quantifiable terms, looking instead to other factors such as the attitudes displayed by the men both during incarceration and after release. Rather than viewing the treatment of inmates as a set of outcomes to be tallied statistically, they see it as more of a gradual process of healing individuals and communities.A new initiative by the Aboriginal Issues office of the correctional service is under way to train staff in cultural sensitivity. Additionally, the number of Aboriginal staff members has greatly increased, and the system is working more actively with Aboriginal communities on release plans to help inmates become reintegrated into those communities. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 47, Number 5October 2006 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/507183 PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

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