This summer four Xyólheméylh staff went beyond traditional service delivery supporting community wellness by participating in the Pilalt Warrior Canoe Family Journey. Matthew Schell (Community Therapist); Chaundine Fisher (Community Engagement Worker); Clayton Ritchie (Stó:lō Youth Mentor) and Justin Williams (Child and Youth Mentor) participated in the journey.
The group started off on July 17 with many Canoe Families joining along the journey until there were more than 100 canoes gathered for the final landing on July 31. Along the way they shared protocols (songs, dances, gift exchanges) and coastal jams.
Xyólheméylh staff were embedded in the work of the Canoe Families for the duration of the cultural journey, arranging transportation, ensuring safety, providing mentorship, cultural supports, community engagement, youth supports, and clinical work in real time. The journey required staff to walk alongside and support the work of the community as they carried out their own cultural practices, relationships, and responsibilities.
Justin contributed his experience canoeing and took on a leadership role as a skipper. Clayton was an attending Youth Mentor, providing cultural supports and was a primary member of the land-support crew. Chaundine also provided extensive land support in addition to community engagement and youth mentorship. Matthew provided an embedded clinical presence through informal counselling, supportive conversations, psychoeducation and evening fireside discussions.
Staff came away from the journey with many learnings about relationship-based, culturally responsive practice that they will apply to their work. They learned that the Canoe Journey creates a naturally occurring environment for prevention, relationship-building, identity development and healing without requiring young people to enter a professional space to receive support.
“For my contributions as an embedded clinician, conventional counselling did not happen. Instead, the work happened through relationship and active participation – for example young people would open up while riding in a support vehicle, around camp, while walking between protocol and the camps, sitting near the water, or late in the evening after something difficult happened that day,” says Matthew.
The staff witnessed young people become increasingly engaged over the course of the Journey. The combination of shared responsibility, cultural participation, mentorship and belonging created the opportunity for relationships to develop organically, including with youth who may not readily engage through conventional service settings. Following the Journey, participating youth mentors can help maintain continuity through ongoing engagement with the youth.
Matthew says that from a clinical perspective, canoe journeys represent far more than a cultural event. “From a clinical perspective, Canoe Journey creates or strengthens many of the conditions we know support wellness and resilience: cultural identity, belonging, emotional regulation, confidence, peer connection, intergenerational relationships, responsibility, and community connectedness.”
Rather than supporting communities solely within office settings, the canoe journeys allowed staff to walk alongside youth and families where culture and wellness naturally intersect.
For Matthew, one of the strongest lessons was that Xyólheméylh doesn’t necessarily need to bring conventional services into cultural spaces; there is real value in putting appropriate staff and organizational resources alongside the work communities and Canoe Families are already leading.
Xyólheméylh hopes to continue attending future Canoe Journeys and exploring community-directed partnerships with Canoe Families.