ERFN Returning Home Project

07/26/2026

❤ Today is Elders and Grandparents Recognition Day ❤ We wanted to acknowledge the Elders and Grandparents in our communities. Your stories, your contributions, and your teachings are invaluable. We admire the work you all put in to pass down traditions and wisdom. Thank you for all your hard work, your bravery, and your courage.

NCCIE created a catalogue dedicated to Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and Indigenous Scholars who have shared their knowledge and stories online and compiled a collection of over 200 videos. This is a space for you to search through various topics, listen to stories, gain insights, and expand your knowledge!

Listen to the Knowledge of the Elders Back to Main Page The internet is filled with videos of Elders, Knowledge Holders, and Indigenous scholars sharing some of their knowledge and wisdom. NCCIE has created this catalogue, which is a sampling of what is on the world wide web. Over 200 videos pertain...

07/25/2026

Crisis Survival Dialectic Behavioural Therapy is a useful tool when navigating through stressful situations and when learning to identify your triggers. This specific workbook for DBT is helpful when negative habits are triggered by heightened emotion, when you are working to strengthen your anger management skills, navigating self-harm recovery, and when managing high stress situations. The workbook attached teaches four different skills in stress tolerance!

07/23/2026

💫 Our Cultural Gathering is coming up quick!! 💫

Join us August 4-7 for four days of embracing culture, wellness, traditional teachings and good company!

📍Where?: Beauval Indian Residential School Site, La Plonge

We look forward to seeing you all there ✨

07/21/2026

It is National Drowning Prevention Week! 🏊‍♂️
We would like to share some helpful information around water safety!

Children ages 1-4 are at the greatest risk of drowning. In the event your child needs rescuing from the water choosing the right bathing suit color can help keep your child visible underwater! The colors that preform the best visibly are neon green, neon orange, and neon yellow!

Some things to remember:

1. Ensure all buckets and pails around your house are emptied of water when not in use
2. Keep small children within arms reach when playing in the water
3. Make sure children are closely supervised when playing near any body of water
4. Never underestimate the power of a current, swimmers and those playing in shallow water with a current can be swept away in an instant!

Below we have shared a water safety information page created by Red Cross!

07/19/2026

What is Emotional Resiliency?
Emotional resiliency is our ability to process and recover from setbacks, stressful situations, and negative experiences and plays a large role in our mental health and wellness.
How can we strengthen our emotional resiliency?

🌼 Cognitive reframing: This means to shape our experiences to view the positives and the opportunities for growth.
🌼 Practicing gratitude and gratitude journalling
🌼 Self-awareness: Identifying your emotions, and your triggers and finding ways to communicate them in a healthy way. ‘I am feeling angry, I need to take a step back and revisit this when I am able to calm down’. Through identifying and communicating our emotions we can avoid heated discussions, avoid hurtful statements being said, and we can properly communicate our needs when we are in a clearer state of mind resulting in positive and productive outcomes and conversations
🌼 Creating attainable goals helps us establish the feelings of purpose. When individuals are working towards goals, they are often more motivated and feel as though they are grounded in their own lives.

To learn more about emotional resiliency follow the link below

Discover effective emotional resilience exercises to enhance your emotional well-being and boost your resilience levels.

07/17/2026

The idea of Narrative Therapy is to reconstruct your negative experiences in ways that empower you and focuses on the strength and resilience needed to make it through those experiences. A strength-based approach to healing shifts the way we look at trauma and the effects it had on our spirit. Narrative Therapy helps rebuild self-esteem through reconstructing self-views and challenges the ‘I’m not enough’ voice many of us struggle with. The practice of Narrative Therapy can be applied to identity challenges, processing trauma, dealing with grief and loss, depression and anxiety and major life changes!

This form of therapy can be used both personally and in a formal counselling setting.

When applying narrative therapy to your life you can start with:
💫Writing out your story from a perspective of your strength as opposed to specifically the trauma itself
💫Celebrate all your personal wins
💫Separate the person from the problem: If you are struggling with anxiety, reframe your thinking from the perspective of ‘ I am anxious’ to ‘anxiety is trying to take over my experiences’ – this gives our unconscious mind the drive to combat the anxiety versus submit to it.

We have attached a link that that provides free Narrative Therapy worksheets!

Explore transformative narrative therapy worksheets designed to empower your journey towards healing and self-discovery. Discover insightful prompts and exercises that guide you through the art of storytelling for personal growth and positive change.

07/14/2026

What is self-compassion? 🤔

Self-compassion is showing up for yourself through times of struggle and with the same warmth and uplifting attitude you would for a loved one.

Practicing self-compassion allows us to rebuild value in ourselves, redirect negative self-talk and strengthen our emotional resilience.

How can we practice self-compassion?

🌿 Acknowledging pain without judgment ‘I am feeling---(frustrated, hurt, angry, depressed) and that’s okay. I am going to be okay”
🌿 Practicing mindfulness. Taking a moment when you are feeling overwhelmed by emotion, taking a deep breath, getting a glass of water, or going for a walk and revisiting the issue with clarity and a calmer mind.
🌿 Practicing self-care: cooking yourself your favourite meal, spending time outdoors, coloring, visiting with a friend, praying, 🌿 giving yourself time to rest.

When you find yourself in a cycle of negative self-talk, speak to yourself as you would a child and connect with the younger version of yourself. You can do this by writing a letter, speaking out loud with positive messages to yourself and identifying your strengths

Love yourself fiercely, you deserve it.

We would like to share a website dedicated to teaching the practice of self-compassion. This website provides guided practices, self compassion exercises, and information on the benefits of self-compassion!

Explore the benefits of self-compassion practices. Foster self-love, resilience, and positivity with these guided exercises.

07/12/2026

Helping Grandfamilies Thrive: Support for Kinship Caregivers is a podcast series hosted by Laura Brazan. The goal of this series is to ‘move kinship caregivers from survival mode to intentional leading’. These podcasts touch on topics like caring for trauma-impacted children, emotional burn-out in caregivers, navigating court hurdles, and generational healing.

Helping Grandfamilies Thrive: Support for Kinship Caregivers is a great resource for kinship caregivers who may be struggling with burn-out, navigating parenting in another generation, or just needing a voice to relate and understand your situation. To all our kinship caregivers, we see you and value you. 🩷

Empowering kinship caregivers through trauma recovery and emotional advocacy. Resources for grandparents raising grandchildren to find healing and support.

07/03/2026

❣️“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” – Nelson Mandela❣️

07/01/2026

🌱One Young World filmed a short documentary focused on Indigenizing approaches to mental health and what this would help strengthen in our mental health services.🌱

A few common themes can be identified throughout this documentary on shifting from a western lens to an indigenized lens in mental health assessment and treatment planning:

1: Connecting to tradition and culture
2: Focusing on community rather than a specific Individualistic issue
3: Connecting to self

🌱How can these three themes impact our personal and community wellness and sense of self? 🌱

Connection to culture: this helps us identify the life path we want for ourselves and family, our connection to culture helps us see the value in ourselves and gives us space to learn healthy decision-making skills.

Focusing on community healing: helps address intergenerational trauma that creates cycles of addictions, mental health struggles, and negative self-views.

Connecting to self: Having a strong sense of self allows us to have healthier interpersonal relationships and communicate our boundaries. Connecting with ourselves helps us better care for our physical, mental, spiritual and emotional wellbeing enhancing our quality of life.

Westernized practices follow a model that is often a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Indigenizing mental health services acknowledges the unique stories and experiences of each individual and community allowing treatment plans to be created off the strengths and needs of the person and community reaching out for support.

This documentary highlights the importance of a culturally aware ap...