Edmonton Native Healing Centre Celebrates 25 Years

Once home to medical offices, the two-story Edmonton Native Healing Centre looks fairly nondescript from the outside.

It has a flat roof, dark exterior, and large windows that reflect the cars parked along the front of the building on 123rd Street in Edmonton, Alta.

But when you step inside, you find a room painted in soft colors and decorated with a mural showing eagle feathers, a peace pipe, various animals, and a white dove radiating golden streams of light.

Often standing in this room to greet people who drop in for coffee, conversation, or prayer is Beverly Cardinal, whose job it is to get to know the people who visit this Christian Reformed Church ministry that is celebrating its 25th anniversary later this month.

“We want this center to be welcoming, especially for Aboriginal people. We want people to feel safe and like they are home when they come here,” said Cardinal, who knows firsthand how the center helps persons in need.

Eight years ago, Cardinal, a member of the Cree Nation, came to Edmonton from the federal reserve in St. Paul, Alta. As a single parent, she was in need of food, health care services, and other types of assistance.

Once her immediate needs were met, she took classes on parenting, started exercising in the small gym, got bus tickets to commute to her cleaning job, and became good friends with Michelle Nieviadomy, assistant director of the center.

“Michelle knew that I was reliable and asked me to apply for the job I now have,” said Cardinal, who serves as community navigator at the center, connecting visitors to resources in the city.

Cardinal helps visitors with such things as finding schooling for children, treatment for persons with alcohol or drug dependency, and jobs for people in need of work.

“I also meet with people in my office, and we talk. Many people who come here have a lot of pain. Often they just want to vent about things they are facing,” she said.

The center in Edmonton is one of three Aboriginal ministries offered by the CRC in Canada. The other two are the Indian Metis Christian Fellowship in Regina, Sask., and the Indigenous Family Centre in Winnipeg, Man.

Responding to the needs of Aboriginal people in Edmonton, the Native Healing Centre was begun in 1991 by John Stellingwerff, a church leader who started the work out of his home before moving the ministry into its current facility.

Located near downtown, the center is on the bus lines and is in an area that is home to many Aboriginal people and has schools and other services that they use, said Harold Roscher, director of the center since 2005.

Roscher, who grew up in a Dutch CRC family, is a member of the Cree Nation. As a CRC commissioned pastor and chaplain, he tends to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of people who drop in at the center.

About 30 Aboriginal people living in the community or simply passing through visit the center when it is open on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

Upstairs is a medical clinic and a gym, and downstairs, beyond the greeting area, is a large room featuring a computer lab. Here the center also holds a food bank and offers a weekly lunch and other programs.

Off to the side of this area is a ceremonial room in which people come to pray and to smudge—a ceremonial ritual in which a person lights sweetgrass, sage, or tobacco as an offering that rises in aromatic smoke to the Creator, said Roscher.

Roscher said smudging is somewhat controversial in some church circles, but “it is an important gift that we can offer. It helps bring people back to their original faith roots.”

Roscher recalls how he worked for several months with a single-parent father who came to the center three times a week to pray in the ceremonial room.

“After spending one week in jail followed by one week in the hospital, he found an apartment near the center.”

The man told Roscher: “I wanted a place near the center so that I can come to pray and visit; this place is important to me. I need to come here. It helps me stay out of trouble.”

The center finds that helping Aboriginal people live in a white-dominated world and a culture that doesn’t always understand their ways is an important part of its mission.

“We are always asking, What is the mindset and worldview of people we are serving? How does the Word of God penetrate this system of life and thought?” said Roscher.

With this in mind, the center seeks to reach out to people by offering a faith that is attractive. Instead of promoting Christianity up front, they want to meet a person’s needs before talking about God.

“Many people have been hurt by the church, and for them the cross of Jesus can be a reminder of something that is negative,” said Roscher.

Although they don’t hold Sunday worship services, they do have times in which they hold services to mark different occasions, said Roscher. Recently they held a candlelight prayer vigil to honor a person who had died.

An important goal of the center has been to support those who stop by and help them, in whatever ways possible, to be contributing members of the community, said Roscher.

As he looks back over its history, Roscher said that the Native Healing Center has done this and at the same time has become a strong advocate for Aboriginal people across Edmonton.

“Not too long ago, we were asked to bless the ground of a nearby park,” said Roscher. “We’ve also done the Blanket Exercise with many groups, including the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. We offer cultural training and are increasingly being seen as more than just a drop-in center.”

For information on the 25th anniversary celebration, click here.