What first drew you to social work, and what keeps you going?

When I was younger, I knew I wanted to go to college in North Bay near my First Nations community. I ran my finger down a page with all the course listings, closed my eyes, opened them up and my finger landed on “social service worker." So that's how I got into this field.

What solidified my path in this field was the fact that I was always driven to create positive change. I started working with the Indigenous youth; I was helping them be more resilient. That's when I realized this is the right field for me. I really love this work. I could probably do it for the rest of my life.

What do you believe people forget when it comes to truth and reconciliation?

Look at acts of reconciliation that can make meaningful change.

Sometimes, there are acts of reconciliation that create no harm whatsoever, but also don't really push the needle any further, like land acknowledgements. It's great to acknowledge the land, but that doesn't improve conditions for anyone.

I had a gentleman reach out to Na-Me-Res who was reading up on reconciliation and didn't learn about all the awful things that happened to Indigenous people in Canada. He felt it was a shame that he didn't have this knowledge, and he said he wanted to do his part for reconciliation. He had recently sold his home and moved to a smaller place, and had room to take somebody in as a roommate to pay rent. He wanted to have a First Nations person live with him and learn from him, so we set that up. That's the most tangible piece of reconciliation in my field that I've ever become aware of because No. 1, it improved the condition of a First Nations man who was homeless before.

How does Na-Me-Res support unhoused Indigenous men?

We help our men who are experiencing homelessness relearn the culture. We teach language ceremonies here to help the men heal. We have different elders who come in at different times of the year to help share cultural teachings with the men. These elders also offer one-on-one sessions around healing. It’s very empowering for our guys to relearn the culture. It helps connect them to community; it gives them a sense of community that they may have never experienced before. If you're a person who's homeless, it's often a very isolating experience.

When you can bring someone out of isolation, connect them to a community and help them feel like they belong and that they're important, that can be very profound for people.

Often, when people have common experiences such as intergenerational trauma, there's camaraderie that can be built — they can prop each other up, build each other up and support each other in their healing journeys. And they can do it collectively, so it's not such a lonely experience.