Preliminary design of a healing centre Tk'emlups intends to build to support residential school survivors/via TNRD
Tk’emlups is one step closer to the creation of a healing centre for residential school survivors.
The Thompson Nicola Regional District board has approved a request by the Band to reclassify and rezone the land the new healing centre is going to be built on.
The 10.5 hectare property is located east of Sun Rivers along Shuswap Road at Miner Road.
The planned healing centre would be overlooking the South Thompson River, and is on land which was purchased by Tk’emlups in 1999, but has yet to be absorbed back into its Reservation boundaries.
“These parcels were expropriated by different levels of government in 1915, without the consent of Tk’emlups te Secwepemc,” Jeanette Jules, Manager with the Tk’emlups Le Estcwicwey, or The Missing, program told the TNRD board.
While Tk’emlups has applied with Indigenous Services Canada to have the land reclassified as part of its Reservation, that process isn’t finished, meaning the Band is required to gain land use approvals through the TNRD and the Agricultural Land Commission.
Location of land where Tk’emlups intends to create a healing centre for residential school survivors/via TNRD
The healing centre is part of a broader project Tk’emlups leadership has for the site.
“The intended primary use of the Property is the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Healing Centre, a facility designed to assist TteS members in their healing from personal trauma emanating from the Kamloops Indian Residential School program and the 215 missing children,” noted TNRD staff in its report to the board. “In addition to the healing centre, TteS will develop multiple four-plex housing units and an Elders’ Lodge. New agricultural uses will be developed on the remaining lands including community gardens, traditional medicine crops and other agricultural uses.”
Tk’emlups hopes to break ground and start construction of the healing center by mid-2025.
“The initial phases of the program will focus on elders and residential school survivors — warriors as which they like to be called,” Jules told the TNRD board on Thursday. ” The vision of the project is to provide a safe space for holistic healing through reconnection to family.”
She says the project is meant to provide a safe space for elders and residential school survivors to gather.
“This is a community healing center. It is not an extended care or rehabilitation facility, which some people are thinking that it is,” said Jules.
The healing centre is being financed through a $12.5 million pledge made to Tk’emlups in March, 2023.
