As Milton’s Country Heritage Park charts a future-facing course with its community programs, one group has not been left behind in its evolutionary journey.
Visitors may have perhaps noticed a tepee near the entrance of the park. What some may have missed is the healing garden just beyond. This patch of green space is a collaboration between three organizations: the Halton Catholic District School Board, Grandmother’s Voice and CHP.
The purpose of the healing garden is -- as the name implies -- to provide spiritual and mental recuperation, contemplation and education for youth and others. It is the coming together of traditional plants, methods, rituals and understanding to create a holistic awarness of the land and people’s place on it.
Indigenous teachings and professional development are disseminated through the garden, whether via talk or ceremony.
“When I was growing up, none of this stuff existed for us. I lived in a totally different era where Indigenous people weren’t given a positive shake,” said garden co-founder Sherry Saevil.
Of Cree background from Saskatchewan, Saevil is a child of the 60s Scoop and her mother is a residential school survivor. “In my life, look how much has changed. How much can we actually do when we have collaboration, when we have community," she said.
The education doesn’t end at the perimeter of the garden. Just a few feet away is the as-yet-to-be-named indoor space for further learning; what Saevil calls cultural cognizance training.
She envisions the collection of rooms bedecked in Indigenous art and the garden as the future site of a centre for excellence, shaping the minds of current students and future generations.
The goal is, Saevil says, to have “mental fitness, mental health training to really understand the positionality that Indigenous people were put in. To understand the oppression of where we are but also to understand the resilience that we have as community members too.”
Elderberries, strawberries, Saskatoon berries, sage, sweetgrass, tobacco and cedars are the component parts of the garden, which is roughly shaped like a longhouse. Wooden palisades – that once composed the Indigenous preserve at Crawford Lake Conservation area – form the outer wall of the bed.
The garden’s four openings are oriented to the cardinal directions, paths which intersect in the middle.
“There would be some teachings along with how we enter the garden, what kinds of things you may be bringing and leaving those kinds of things at the out the door. Because we all start our day in a certain way,” Saevil added.
“Something could have happened on our way to school, someone cut us off on the road and got us agitated.”
Saevil, the Indigenous Education Advisor at the Halton Catholic District School Board, does not limit her collaborations to just Grandmother’s Voice and CHP. Groups like Six Nations and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation are some who have used the site since its creation during the pandemic years.
A second garden just a few metres away used to be a community garden. But now, with the addition of four large stones and collaboration with Sustainable Milton, it has become the Grandfather Garden.
Saevil and her partners are still designing the vision for the future of the soon-to-be centre for excellence. In keeping with the educational spirit of the site, the imminent arrival of Wilfrid Laurier’s Milton Campus has Saevil contemplating ways to include the university.
Country Heritage Park shares in that same spirit of teaching. “From a CHP perspective, the value of the garden is directly connected to education,” Interim CEO of the park Taylor Henderson told MiltonToday.
She continued: “One of our mandates at CHP is to provide educational opportunities and, being an agricultural society, we have a responsibility to acknowledge the traditions and teachings of the Indigenous communities that have long been stewards of the land we reside on.”
Monday (Sept. 30) is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, when Canadians across the country will reflect on the colonial history of the country. “Truth and Reconciliation requires us to be relational. It was important for us at CHP to build relationships with Indigenous communities and organizations in order for us to support the work of Truth and Reconciliation,” Henderson summarized.