Aanii
kwey kwey
She:kon
Boozoo

Updates on the Lodge Project

by Joshua Pawis-Steckley

Ontario’s first Indigenous owned and led healing lodge for Indigenous 2SLGBTQIA+ women is about become a reality. Indigenous over-representation in Canada’s jails was already a crisis, but the Covid-19 pandemic has proven just how urgently our community-based Healing Lodge and transitional housing program for First Nations (Status and Non-Status), Inuit, and Metis 2SLGBTQIA+ women leaving corrections is needed! 

Years of hard work by Indigenous community members is what has brought this project to the place it is at today. We have achieved major steps, including buying the land and securing zoning approval in 2019! Now we are refining the building design to build a cultural landmark with minimal environmental footprint and preparing for a land blessing. 

Support our fundraising campaign today to help us through these next crucial steps! We are targeting construction for late 2020 through 2021 – but every day that Indigenous women are released without adequate supports in place leaves them vulnerable to the very same forces that led to their prior conflict with the law!

Future Lodge Location

Covid-19 Response

In Response to the COVID-19 pandemic Thunder Woman Healing Lodge has launched a program to assist individuals being discharged from Correctional Institutions and jails. Vulnerable Indigenous men and women are being released from custody into precarious circumstances. Many are at risk of immediate homelessness or unable to safely self-isolate – creating an added risk of transmitting the disease to family and community.

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