The Resiliency Lodge: Growing a National Program

NWAC’s Resiliency Lodges are breaking new ground in so many ways.

Our Chelsea Resiliency Lodge in Quebec has been open for over a year, providing in-person services when COVID-19 restrictions have allowed. All of the Resiliency Lodge’s services—online workshops, virtual Elder support or in-person services—are geared to violence prevention and empowered healing intervention. Providing support and empowerment through Elder-led, trauma-informed programs is one of NWAC’s responses to the Calls for Justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).

In response to the positive feedback, NWAC continues to expand on this ground-breaking program.

We are delighted to announce that the Wabanaki Resiliency Lodge will be opening in New Brunswick in the spring of 2022.

The Wabanaki Resiliency Lodge will offer healing services, ceremonies, educational opportunities, economic development opportunities, and agriculture, food security, and traditional medicine programs to help Indigenous women and gender-diverse people heal and to support violence prevention efforts. This Elder-led program gives Indigenous women and gender-diverse people access to stay at the Resiliency Lodge and its services for up to a month.

NWAC is also expanding our online services. Between September 2020 and March 2021, the Resiliency Lodge hosted 52 workshops. Buoyed by the positive feedback and the tremendous demand, we continue to develop and deliver new workshops—over 50 alone in the past three months.

This is only the beginning. NWAC will continue to work tirelessly to provide support to Indigenous women and gender-diverse people across the country.