Gitigaan Mashkiki at Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig marks first community-based medicine garden funded by the province that provides smudge kits and medicines to Indigenous people in the criminal justice system
Members of the Indigenous community in the Sault came together at Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig today to participate in a planting ceremony for sacred medicines.
The ceremony took place at Gitigaan Mashkiki — Anishinaabemowin for ‘medicine garden’ — where sage, tobacco, cedar and sweetgrass have been growing ever since the garden was launched by the Indigenous post-secondary institution four years ago.
“We gave thanks and acknowledged the work that they continue to do in the face of adversity. We give thanks and we ask them to continue to do their work so that we can in turn be nourished and healthy to be able to do our work,” said SKG board chair Dean Sayers following the ceremony.
“We acknowledge all of these plants that are ready to be planted, and we’ve asked the spirits to come and nourish and water them as they grow, as they prepare to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of our people.”
People who participated in the ceremony were provided lunch before offering up their time to weed and plant in the medicine garden, which also produces food and herbs for its land-based learning curriculum.
“People are drawn here,” said Joanne Jones, cultural and land-based academic lead at SKG. “They feel that sense of welcoming, that warmth, that sense of healing. There’s often tears here in the garden.”
The medicines planted in Gitigaan Mashkiki are part of a pilot project being done in partnership with the Ministry of the Solicitor General, to supply smudge kits and individual packages of medicines that can be picked up at probation offices across Ontario.
It’s actually the first community-based medicine garden funded by Ontario for individuals that are coming out of the province’s correctional facilities but are still involved with the justice system, often on probation or serving a conditional sentence.
The ministry doesn’t pay for the medicines themselves, only because it doesn’t align with traditional Anishinaabe teachings. Instead, it funds staffing at SKG to support all of the behind-the-scenes labour like cultivation, planting, packaging, shipping and harvesting.
Jones said the project is aimed at addressing an over representation of Indigenous people in Ontario’s criminal justice system.
“We want people to have access to getting back to who we are as Indigenous people — connection with elders, opportunities for ceremony like sweats and smudging,” Jones explained.
“Within that ministry they wanted people on probation to have access to smudge kits, to be able to smudge and to learn about why we smudge, how we smudge, the benefits of smudging, what the gifts are that these medicines have for us.
“Through that connection we are able to have this medicine garden. So, we grow these medicines through ceremony, and we package up beautiful smudge kits and those go back to the ministry to be distributed to people in those systems.”
While funding has been confirmed for the short term, the plan is for the ministry to eventually provide long-term funding for Gitigaan Mashkiki, which is located on the SKG campus directly behind the post-secondary institution.
“We’ve seen tremendous success, and we very much owe that to the fact we have spirit and ancestors here with us,” Jones said.