Four days of ceremony; healing; visiting; education; healthy care; visiting; renewing old friendships; making new ones all wrapped up in the 31st annual Stanley Mission Traditional Cultural healing Camp, held Sept. 5-8.
”The camp provided a restorative healing experience,” Karen Balls-Charles wrote in Facebook.
Visiting and traditional food are always part of the Camp. People come from near and far.
While there was much for people to experience and learn over the four days, the camp, “this camp was a little sombre because of the fact that we lost my brother-in-law, Fred Charles. He was the heart of the Cultural Camp,” Robert Ballantyne, one of the three original organizers of the camp, said, in an interview with the Northern Advocate.
It was a hard time for many people, especially family members, throughout the camp.
“But, we try to maintain our cultural camps, no matter what the struggles that we go through. We try to keep them alive every year,” Ballantyne said.
“This camp, it was a really good gathering. It was good to see the family again,” he said.
The Late Fred Charles was honoured at the closing ceremonies of the four-day camp.
He was “the community healer, the medicine man. The community really had a very big loss when Fred passed away, because that was their healer. The people turned to him because of his medicines,” Ballantyne said.
The Late Fred Charles, the heart of the Stanley Mission Traditional Healing Culture Camp.
Charles was also an educator for the people when it came to traditional medicines and the “ceremonial culture,” Ballantyne said.
“Many people still carry the indoctrination, the fear, that what we are doing is not right, but my brother-in-law was always there to educate the people that came to him, that this has always been part of our culture and it was taken away from us.”
Since the beginning camp in 1993, Ballantyne said, he’s observed much change, to where, “the 31st annual cultural camp, I observed that so many of our people have come around to come and sit with us, whereas before, they wouldn’t even look at us, at the beginning, cause they were scared of what we were doing.”
Because of Charles’s education over many years, there is now “a lot of openness to ceremony. And more than ever we need it now, because of the fact that the community’s struggling with drugs, hard core drugs, that they’ve never experienced before, fentanol. It’s all arrived in the community,” Ballantyne said.
“My brother-in-law was always there to support people, especially when they were struggling with their addictions. He has helped so many people throughout the years, and he’s always been the heart of the cultural camp.”
Charles was not involved in the ceremonies at the beginning. He struggled because his father was an Anglican clergy in in the community.
At one-point Charles had a back problem and came for doctoring. He was told he would have to go into the sweat, which he did.
“And that was the beginning of his healing journey.”
Initially, it caused a rift between his father and himself, and “he had to endure that. Eventually his father came around.”
Charles got his teachings from an Elder, the Late Bill Ermine.
Charles was housing manager in Stanley Mission and oversaw the construction of many buildings, including the Youth Centre.
A Cultural camp is being planned for next spring, Ballantyne said.
“We’re going to rename the cultural camp to Fred Charles Memorial Ceremonial Grounds,” he explained.
Charles was honoured at the closing ceremonies of the Camp.
