The Land is What Will Heal Us: Finding Healing from Carceral and Institutional Trauma

The incarceration of Indigenous Peoples was used as a colonial tool designed to assimilate Indigenous people, while separating them from their Land and community. Indigenous mass incarceration continues to have detrimental effects on Indigenous Peoples and their communities. Indigenous Land-based healing is a generational and pre-colonial means of sustaining wellness, healing, and community care. The authors, all Indigenous individuals who have worked within the Criminal Justice System, or have been impacted by incarceration or criminalization, collaborated alongside Indigenous community members to build an Indigenous Land-based Healing Program (LBHP), with the aspiration to facilitate healing for Indigenous community members who have been criminalized or institutionalized. This paper briefly reviews the colonial history of incarceration and the current implications of incarceration for Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island, and articulates the holistic healing power of the Land, as demonstrated through the process of developing an Indigenous LBHP, where community members shared Stories and experiences of healing on and with the Land and Water. In this paper, we describe how Land-based healing confronts colonial trauma and builds collective healing, and share how our research formed and produced an Indigenous LBHP.