CARF Accredited · Confidential · St. Catharines, OntarioIndigenous Programming & Culturally Responsive Care
Twelve Mile Recovery recognizes that healing is experienced differently by every individual, and that culturally meaningful care can be an important component of recovery.
Indigenous Programming
Twelve Mile Recovery recognizes that healing is experienced differently by every individual, and that culturally meaningful care can be an important component of recovery. For many of the people we serve, culture is not an addition to clinical care — it is the ground the rest of the work stands on.
Cultural programming at Twelve Mile is led by Elders, Grandmothers and Knowledge Keepers — the people who carry this knowledge and hold the right to share it. Our role is to make room for it, to remove barriers to access, and to support client choice. It is not our role to define it.
A weekly circle, led by Elders
Each week, clients gather in a circle led by an Elder or Knowledge Keeper. Sessions open and close with smudging, and may include traditional teachings, drumming and song, work with sacred medicines, and time for sharing in the circle. What is offered in a given week is guided by the person leading it, and no two circles are quite the same. Smudging is available on any other day as well — to open the morning, or to steady a difficult moment.
Time with an Elder or Grandmother
Clients are also offered private one-to-one time with an Elder or Grandmother: personal guidance and prayer, teachings suited to where someone is in their life, and support in reconnecting with their identity, their community and the land. For people who have spent years away from their culture, this is often where the most important work of a stay happens.
- Smudging
- Traditional teachings
- Drumming & song
- Sacred medicines
- Talking circle
- Elder one-to-one
- Wellbriety
- Time on the land
Participation is always voluntary. Everyone is welcome in the circle, exactly as they are, and no one is asked to take part in anything they would rather not. Cultural programming is included in every stay, at no additional cost.
Culturally Relevant Supports, Led by You
Indigenous clients are offered opportunities to incorporate culturally relevant supports into their treatment based on their individual goals, preferences, and connection to culture.
Through individualized care planning, clients may access Indigenous-specific services and community resources, such as traditional healing practices, ceremonies, and other culturally grounded supports, where available and desired by the client.
Ways to Bring Culture Into Your Care
Guided by your own goals and connection to culture, care can weave in traditional and cultural practices, on their own, or alongside the clinical program. Supports clients may choose to incorporate include:
Smudging
The burning of sacred medicines, sage, sweetgrass, cedar, to cleanse and ground, offered as a way to open the day or steady a difficult moment.
Drum Circles
The drum carries the heartbeat of the community. Drum circles bring people together for connection, expression, and healing.
12-Step Wellbriety
A culturally grounded path through the Twelve Steps, the Wellbriety Movement’s Medicine Wheel and 12 Steps, walking the Red Road toward being both sober and well.
Traditional Teachings & Ceremony
Talking circles, teachings, and ceremony offered in collaboration with Indigenous knowledge keepers and our community partners, where available and desired.
Healing, Strengthened Through Connection
We recognize that healing can be strengthened through connection, to self, community, culture, and the natural world. Situated alongside the beautiful Twelve Mile Creek, our setting provides opportunities for clients to reconnect with nature as part of their recovery journey through mindful outdoor experiences, movement, reflection, and time spent on the land.
Teachings, Partnership and Place
Much of the circle’s work rests on the Seven Sacred Teachings — honoured in related forms by nations across Turtle Island, and shared here by the Elders who carry them. They are offered as guidance for living a good life, and they give the work of recovery a frame far older than any clinical model.
The Seven Sacred Teachings
- Love
- To begin with compassion — for yourself as much as for others.
- Respect
- To honour what sustains you, and take no more than you need.
- Courage
- To face what is hard, beginning with what is hard within.
- Honesty
- To be who you are, with yourself first of all.
- Wisdom
- To listen, to watch, and to learn from what you are given.
- Humility
- To know yourself as part of something larger.
- Truth
- To live all of the teachings, and to trust the journey.
I have been consistently impressed by the quality of programming, the commitment to individualized care, and the passion demonstrated by everyone involved. From a personal standpoint, I know how valuable it is to have people in your corner who truly understand what you’re going through.
Working Alongside Indigenous Service Providers
The circle is one pathway, not the only one. Through individualized care planning, Indigenous clients are supported in accessing the practices, ceremonies and community resources of their own nations — and where something is not ours to offer, we help clients reach the people it belongs to.
Our role is to remove barriers to access, support client choice, and work collaboratively with Indigenous service providers to ensure care is respectful, culturally responsive, and informed by each person’s strengths, identity, and lived experience.
Programming is delivered in community, with room for cultural practice alongside clinical care.
Reciprocity and Responsibility
Reciprocity is an important part of our organizational values. We believe that benefiting from this place — five acres alongside the Twelve Mile Creek — carries a responsibility to give back, through respectful partnerships, environmental stewardship, and ongoing efforts to learn from and support the communities connected to this land. Our goal is not only to provide high-quality treatment, but also to contribute positively to the people, relationships, and environment that make healing here possible.
We are committed to ongoing learning, building meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities, and creating a treatment environment that is welcoming, respectful, and responsive to the diverse cultural needs of the people we serve.
Referring someone to Twelve Mile
If you are arranging care for a member of your community, this is what matters most before you pick up the phone.
- We are not a detox facility
- Admission follows 72 hours of sobriety, and clients must be medically cleared before arrival. Where withdrawal needs a higher level of medical support first, we coordinate the detox referral and hold the bed until the person is ready to arrive.
- Clients on opioid agonist therapy are accepted
- Being on OAT is not a barrier to admission.
- HST-exempt, with financing available
- Our residential programs are HST-exempt — the quoted price is the full price. Financing is available through a medical lender (Medicard), and we are at times able to partially subsidize a stay, allocated through a financial eligibility process.
- Care continues after they come home
- Every admission includes six weeks of virtual reintegration and lifetime aftercare, delivered remotely through our alumni app — with the same counsellor who supported them in the residence. Distance from St. Catharines does not end the care.
Questions about a specific client are best answered on a call. Our admissions team is reachable at (289) 301-8852 — confidential, and a person rather than a form.
Talk to Someone.
Completely confidential, at every stage of recovery, call or text (289) 301-8852.