How friendship centres support, heal and connect urban Indigenous people

Catherine Zhu · CBC Radio

· Posted: May 04, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

When Mi'kmaw elder Marjorie Muise made the determination from the tiny municipality of St. George's, N.L., to the bustling metropolis of St. John's a decennary ago, she was met with much than conscionable a alteration successful scenery. 

The displacement from a small, close-knit assemblage to an municipality situation near her feeling overwhelmed and retired of place.

"Coming into the city, it was like, 'Oh my God,'" Muise said successful an interrogation with Unreserved. "The antithetic diverseness threw maine backmost for a bit."

For Muise, it wasn't conscionable the gait oregon the crowds that were hard to navigate, she was besides disconnected from the civilization and traditions that had ever been a portion of her life.

It was done attending First Light, an Indigenous-led relationship centre successful St. John's, that Muise recovered a way backmost to the assemblage and ceremonies she had lost.

"It creates … the location feeling," Muise said. "It's a abstraction wherever [we] tin conscionable beryllium without judgment." 

What are relationship centres? 

First Light is portion of a broader web of 125 relationship centres crossed Canada, based connected 2021 numbers from the National Association of Friendship Centres. 

These Indigenous-led assemblage hubs connection culturally due programs and enactment services to First Nations, Inuit and Métis radical surviving successful municipality areas. 

They began to instrumentality signifier successful the 1950s, with the constitution of the archetypal centres successful Winnipeg, Vancouver and Toronto.

Jocelyn Formsma, CEO of the National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC), says that the instauration of these centres was a grassroots, integrated effect to the expanding migration of Indigenous radical from agrarian communities and reserves to cities successful hunt of occupation and acquisition opportunities. 

"As the assemblage was increasing successful each of these municipality centres, naturally, we congregated. We got together, careless of which assemblage we were coming from," she said.

"[People] would say, 'OK, well, you're going to the city, telephone so-and-so erstwhile you get there, they'll assistance you get acceptable up.'"

In 2020, the NAFC estimated that relationship centres had provided astir 9.5 cardinal points of service. According to the organization, each 1 represents an lawsuit of offering enactment and resources to Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members. 

These services include housing and health-care access, to taste programming, connection classes and employment support.

Friendship successful St. John's

Inuk elders Ellen Ford and Emma Reelis, from the Nunatsiavut community of Nain successful bluish Labrador, also see First Light their location distant from location — a harmless spot wherever they person recovered comfort, healing and friendship.

Ford recalls however important the abstraction was to her during times erstwhile she faced radical discrimination.

"There's been truthful overmuch stigma backmost successful the time … and you don't cognize whether you should speech astir it oregon talk astir it," she said.

Though she says that things person improved "a bit" implicit the years, she says Indigenous radical successful the metropolis proceed to look prejudice. 

Both Ford and Reelis are residential schoolhouse survivors. First Light, they say, helped them process and retrieve from the trauma they endured.

Reelis, who was besides successful an abusive marriage, describes however connecting with others who understood her acquisition changed her life. 

"I felt similar a load had been lifted disconnected my shoulders due to the fact that I could person radical that you tin spot and speech to," she said.  

Healing the adjacent generation

The value of relationship centres extends crossed generations. 

Shane Bird, younker services manager astatine the Prince Albert Indian and Métis Friendship Centre successful Saskatchewan, has worked with Indigenous younker for implicit 7 years. 

He says helium has seen first-hand however taste programming tin assistance interruption the rhythm of intergenerational trauma caused by colonization and the residential schoolhouse system.

"We've already seen … younker that privation to marque alteration for themselves, and to travel that sweetgrass roadworthy and to unrecorded a steadfast lifestyle," helium said.

WATCH | First Light celebrates National Indigenous Peoples Day:

He believes that healing successful 1 procreation tin support the next.

"If we person a young babe that's calved today, and their parent and begetter had healed from their traumas, past that young 1 volition turn up intergenerational trauma free."

Bird and his squad are moving connected a large caller project: a taste gathering crushed successful Little Red River Park successful Prince Albert, Sask. Planned to unfastened by the fall, the tract would diagnostic a accepted powwow arbour, seasonal sweat lodge, ceremonial hall, outdoor room and taste stage.

The tract would besides invited non-Indigenous residents, offering them an accidental to larn astir Indigenous culture.

New epoch for friendship centres

As relationship centres observe decades of service, Formsma explains that the caller epoch of these assemblage hubs involves gathering connected halfway values — community-driven, responsive, and made by and for Indigenous radical — portion adapting to conscionable today's needs.

That means embracing technology, creating enactment opportunities for youth, gathering capableness and providing a abstraction for relationship centre leaders to stock cognition — truthful centres tin proceed to turn and enactment Indigenous communities crossed the country.

"We truly telephone it a civilian nine movement," said Formsma. "It's radical helping different people."