TORONTO—Healing is not a destination. It is a river that bends and churns through the landscapes of our lives, carving canyons in memory, flooding and receding with trauma and clarity alike. Rarely linear, healing requires courage, presence, and the willingness to confront the fire within.
For Lindsay Trudeau and Roland Pheasant of Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, that river was wild and treacherous. Addiction had claimed years of their lives, wrapping its claws around them and refusing to release them. Yet, through love, commitment and community, they found their way back—not alone, but together.
At the First Nations Community Wellness Conference, hosted by the Chiefs of Ontario and held in the grand halls of the Fairmont Royal York, Ms. Trudeau and Mr. Pheasant stepped onto the stage to share their story. Their workshop, Healing Through Community and Culture – Lived Experience as Medicine, was more than a lecture. It was a ritual, a ceremony in words, a space where survival became instruction, where pain transformed into guidance.
“I’ve been addicted to opiates the majority of my adult life,” Mr. Pheasant told attendees, voice steady and threaded with memory. “It took me a long time to turn my life around. When I did, everything changed for the better. I couldn’t believe that life could be so good.”
The turning point for the couple came not from a clinic or program, but in a quiet, ordinary moment of radical clarity. Ms. Trudeau awoke one morning to a house full of friends, laughter spilling over old habits. Something inside her snapped. She asked everyone to leave. She declared, with unwavering resolve, that she was done—that she would choose sobriety.
Mr. Pheasant, following her lead, asked her to throw away the liquor that was in the house.
“She did that,” he said. “And from there, we never looked back.”
Ms. Trudeau entered a treatment program, and the couple stopped selling drugs to feed their habits. She understood how close they had come to disaster, overdosing more times than she could count
While rehabilitation programs have been a part of their long-term success, the deeper medicine was the land itself. Weeks spent in the forests of Northern Ontario, breathing cedar and pine, letting wind and rain wash over the shadows of the past, became a crucible of healing. Ms. Trudeau recounted vividly: “We were out there for a couple of months. It was the best place to be, the best place to heal.”
“My life now is amazing,” she added. “There was a point in time where I didn’t even want to be here at all. And I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened. You know, all of the work that I’ve been doing on myself from seeing a therapist. I’ve taken somatic therapy and I’ve done acupuncture.”
Now, years later, their lives have been reoriented around purpose and service. Ms. Trudeau is launching her own company, while both have dedicated themselves to helping others navigate the wilderness of addiction. “There’s a lot of people who need help,” she said. “And they’re afraid. So, we try to be that voice for them.”
Yet the panel was larger than any one story. It was a gathering of voices, each carrying scars and sparks, weaving a narrative both intimate and collective.
Among those voices was Grandmother Alison Recollet, a daughter of Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory. Ms. Recollet, who works for Nookimisnang Family Violence Shelter in her community, is proud to tell those newly on their healing journey the meaning of her spirit name —the Balance of Fire Woman—she embodies the intersection of trauma, survival and cultural reclamation.
“I come from sexual abuse,” Ms. Recollet said, her voice calm, heavy with gravity. “A lot of shame goes with sexual abuse. You carry it with you, but every step, every ceremony, every act of speaking truth moves it just a little bit.”
Ms. Recollet’s story is inseparable from the history of her family and her nation. Her father, John Recollet, survived residential school, his childhood was marked by trauma, yet he found redemption in the land.
Ms. Recollet inherited this legacy, an echo of ancestral endurance, tempered through ceremony, community.
At 30, she experienced what she calls a rebirth after having physically died on a hospital bed, reclaiming her identity from the shadows of violence and cultural erasure.
She tells us her spirit name is befitting to her because “when the fire is burning just right, not too high or too low,” she explains, “that’s when balance is found. That’s how we heal.”
The panels lived expertise extended beyond Wiikwemkoong, encompassing a wider fabric of First Nations experience.
Quentin Bird, of Dakota Plains Wahpeton Nation, spoke next. Growing up in care and spending many years in jail, Mr. Bird described a childhood fractured by displacement, a youth stolen by cycles of neglect, and the painstaking work of reclaiming a sense of self. “I had to learn who I was in the ashes,” he said. “And in that learning, I found a path forward. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. You can’t rebuild without first knowing what was broken.”
Regan Gamble, a member of Beardy’s and Okemasis Cree Nation, followed. Her story was heavy with history: surviving residential school, struggling with addiction, enduring domestic abuse. Yet, through it all, she found grounding in ceremony, in community, and in the unbroken lineage of her ancestors. “Our stories are heavy,” Ms. Gamble said. “But they are also medicine. We can use them to heal ourselves and each other.” Her voice shook at moments yet held unwavering conviction.
The panel painted a tapestry of perseverance and dignity. Trauma, they demonstrated, is not solely individual—it flows through families, communities, and the land itself. Healing is a communal act, found not only in sweat lodges but at kitchen tables where Elders share stories, in songs sung by firelight, in laughter that shakes the shadows, and in the quiet hours of introspection when the wind reminds us that we are part of something larger.
The conference hall itself became part of the story. The scent of sage and cedar hung in the air, anchoring attendees in shared history. The rhythm of drumbeats echoed softly in the hearts of the audience, bridging the gap between story and memory, between past and present. The voices of the panelists were layered like the rings of a tree, each mark of growth and scar of injury visible, each ring representing a year of endurance.
Audience members leaned forward, rapt, absorbing the cadence of these lives, feeling both the weight of trauma and the lift of reclamation.
Healing, the panel made clear, is a mosaic of sweat, tears, song, and silence. It is in the act of sharing, in the witness of listening, in the spaces where culture, story and community converge. It is the work of reclaiming language, song, ceremony and presence; of walking in the footprints of ancestors while leaving new trails for those who follow.
