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Chief Michael Starr believes the new medical services building can be a place of healing and lead to a bright future for the Star Blanket Cree Nation.
The Kihew Kawaskasit Star Blanket Health Services held its grand opening on Friday.
“We’re always looking at ways to improve and this new building provides that. That vision of hope and the healing aspect that our people have gone through in the past,” Starr said. “Our leaders often talk about the impacts of the residential school systems that took a toll on us. We feel that this building will help remove some of those hurts, some of those pains and we would have a holistic, healthy community.”
(FHQ Tribal Council/Twitter)
The new building will provide community based services, parenting and youth programming, nutritional programming, mental wellness, counselling, cultural programming, culture based programming, language based programming, land based programming as well as mental health workshops and counselling.
The work was being done from the band office but the new building, which the community received $800,000 in funding from Health Canada to build, will give them more space to provide the extra programming.
“As our community grew and evolved and our organization evolved, there was a need to expand our facilities so that we can continue delivering these community based services in Star Blanket. We built the new health services building to meet those needs of the community,” said Sharidy Desnomie, the health director with Star Blanket.
Starr said the community has been dealing with a lot of issues, including mental health, addictions and illnesses like diabetes and cancer.
“We’ve had our programs and services prior to this building, we believe this building will only enhance that and we can build upon better programming, better educational knowledge and pass it on to our people, to our youth, to our young people so that they can experience a better lifestyle,” Starr said.
Starr said the name of the centre in Cree means eagle flying in circle.
“It’s praying for our people, it’s praying for guidance and our prayers can connect to our ancestors and all those good things that we require and that we need in our community to build,” Starr said.