Residential school survivor uses poetry, psychotherapy to heal

A poet and residential school survivor is releasing her latest collections of poems on Thursday, and she says they have been instrumental as part of her journey of healing from the scars of residential schools.

Louise Bernice Halfe was was born in Two Hills, Alta., and completed programs at the University of Regina and University of Saskatchewan. She attended the Blue Quills Residential School, near St. Paul, Alta., for six years.

While the recently finished Truth and Reconciliation Commission was intended to help survivors heal, Bernice Halfe said the process opened old wounds. This collection of poetry, Burning in this Midnight Dream, helped heal those wounds.

Traditional ceremonies, psychology needed to help others

"It's been extremely challenging and frightening as well," she said of the process of walking backward, and retracing her past through the poetry. "What scared me was the feeling of being exposed and vlunerable."

She said she needed to press ahead as a process of "accepting responsibility of my own actions and behaviours," but the poetry is "also for the people who don't have the vocabulary to articulate the shame and the pain and the anger that goes within their own stories."

Bernice Halfe has training in drug and alcohol counseling, and in social work. She also emphasized the importance of psychotherapy and talking as tools for healing.

How do you recover as quickly as the people in the Canadian public want us to recover? I don't know; I hope it's possible. It's very very hard.- Louise Bernice Halfe

When asked how she wants to contribute to conversations on the legacy around residential schools, she described a photograph that showed her parents' wedding and all of her relatives connected to her parents. 

"There's been a generational impact on whole communities. How do you recover as quickly as the people in the Canadian public want us to recover? I don't know. I hope it's possible. It's very, very hard," she said.

Bernice Halfe said she wants to see more aboriginal therapists and psychologists. "Not the kind that just prescribe pills," she said.

Part of that responsibility is shared by the government, which she said has been insufficient in providing deep healing for aboriginal communities to recover from the legacy of residential schools. 

"I would like to see more people trained in psychotherapy, along with their [traditional] ceremonial practices," she said. "We needing funding for education in our communities. We also need mental health services closer to the communities.

"I'm talking about talk therapy. I'm talking about psychologists," she emphasized.

Louise Bernice Halfe launches her latest collection of poems on Thursday at McNally Robinson in Saskatoon at 7 p.m. CST.