Leah Walker, Executive Director at Kilala Lelum
VFR: Tell us about Kilala Lelum (pronounced “Kee-la-la Lay-lum”) and the innovative programs that you run.
Leah Walker: The name Kilala Lelum was gifted to us by our founding Elders. The name in the Coast Salish language means Butterfly House, a lovely
name suggesting transformation, which, as we all know, can be beautiful, difficult, terrifying, exhilarating, and everything in between. We want people who come through these doors to feel welcome and that they belong, as the foundation for safety, wellness, healing, and transformation.
We’re a relatively new clinic (launched in 2019) providing Indigenous and western medical care to our community in the Downtown Eastside at Princess and Powell. We do this by integrating cultural programming and support services—such as ceremony, drop-in groups (ex: drumming), and 1-1 and group sessions with Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and Cultural Wellness Workers—with primary care and allied health providers such as counsellors, social workers, physicians, nurses. We care for at least 1000 members right now, 70% of whom identify as Indigenous. (A comprehensive list of programs is provided at the end of this article.)
VFR: Indigenous Elders and Healers provide up to 50% of the care provided to your clients at Kilala Lelum. Tell us more about this synergistic and holistic approach to care and why it’s so important for your clients.
LW: We know that historical and ongoing governmental policies have impacted the people we serve in this particular community in a deeply profound way. Those policies were designed to remove Indigenous people from the land, their families, and their teaching systems—from their cultural and spiritual knowledges. We can see the harms from these losses and how it has impacted our health in a disproportionate way. It intuitively makes sense then, that part of the healing path forward must be to rebuild those systems and knowledge, to give our members access to these teachings.
Many of our community members haven’t had access to these teachings due to colonialism and the related circumstances of their lives. There has been evidence that those cultural wellness programs and access to them is a key factor in turning lives around. The team here has done some of that research and we have evidence that the connection with Elders increases mental health wellness. So, we attempt to incorporate that into all of our programming and offer it to people accessing primary care and our harm reduction programs, for example.
The work to become trauma-informed and culturally safe is a long process without an end point. We have very experienced caring people here, Indigenous staff, Elder support and education sessions, and we still have a way to go. There is so much learning to do. At a minimum it is listening deeply, making time, acknowledging harm if it has been articulated, learning history, and changing practice, as necessary to create safe spaces.
VFR: Please share with us about Kilala Lelum’s model of care of and the emphasis on culturally safe, trauma-informed services.
LW: We’re still working to realize this. I hope that we can deepen the work in this area. Ultimately, we want health, equity, and wellness for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in our community. We know that inequity is entrenched, and our systems work to keep these things entrenched in some way. I’m not sure we all really understand the way that it stays entrenched. That’s our vision: to realize equitable care and support the TRC Calls to Action in Health (TRC is an acronym for the Truth & Reconciliation Commission).
Much of the strategies and work that we do is guided by our Elders and the cultural practices and teachings they offer. Our Elders continually guide us to attend to staff wellness, so that we can support, love and care for everyone who walks through our door, as we recognize that everyone deserves excellent care, unconditional love, and acceptance.
Trauma-informed work is an ongoing practice. Even when we do this work ourselves, it hits you in different and unexpected ways, so we have a small window into what that’s like for our members as well. An example of that is the recent findings of the 215 children at Kamloops Residential School. A lot of us have known this for a very long time, and still, this reminder of all the missing children who haven’t come home has caused so much pain. We see that. When an incident like this occurs, people are more fragile, may become more dysregulated, and for some who have been on a good path, they might falter. Understanding that, and acknowledging there is still a long way to go to address and heal the historic and ongoing violence of colonialism, is vital.
I think for those of us who are not Indigenous, there remains a lot of knowing and learning to be done. We are an organization committed to learning, and what keeps that at the centre, is our members. We are continuously learning, adapting, and correcting in response to our members, families, the wider community, and our care team. Our model of care is around a collaboration and centering Indigenous knowledge and Elder guidance.
VFR: Food insecurity is a pressing issue for Indigenous Peoples across British Columbia and beyond. In your experience, what are some of the key barriers Indigenous households face accessing healthy food on a regular basis, and how can we begin to address these critical issues?
LW: That is a really big question. It’s such a huge question because, throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to land-keepers and knowledge-keepers in rural and other communities who speak to access to land, access to water and the teachings and practices that support stewardship and reciprocal relations with our more-than-human kin. That means harvesting, traditional food practices, hunting, and the like. Many of our members don’t have access to that. It has been legislated away, and the land has become parceled into smaller and smaller pieces.
That’s where food insecurity really started for our people and communities. And not to say that there haven’t been times, historically, where food was scarce, but much of that occurred or was exacerbated by European contact and the movement and genocide of Indigenous people. To reawaken that knowledge and those practices—there is a lot of learning and work to be done!
If you think about food security, everything comes down to a few food distributors like Loblaws and Amazon. It’s amazing in some ways, because we have access to lots of food that we didn’t ever have, but the trade-off is that it’s in the grips of big entities. I guess what I’m saying is that makes us all food- insecure, and for Indigenous people, we’re the most food-insecure of all because of the way colonialism works. For us to have access to our knowledge, practices, and sources of food might mean sharing; it might also mean some changes or sacrifices in the ways we use land as a broader society. I don’t know if Canada is ready for that. That’s the deeper issue.
The more that we can get people connected to their food, to be in a place where they have access and can choose their food and how to make it, that is healing. These are relationships that must be nurtured further. So, we have developed and collaborate on programming around that, as best we can. For example, we have partnerships with organizations that provide groceries, but in single-room occupancy buildings, there generally aren’t any kitchens, so it takes some creativity. We’re trying to provide more traditional foods, which our members are asking for, and that might remind them of the relationship to the land and to the people who grow our food. We hope to continue deepening those relationships.
VFR: How can people support the transformative work being done by Kilala Lelum?
LW: It’s so beautiful that we have Vancouver Food Runners’ support. Because of this, we’ve been able to expand into some evening food service, whereas our initial funding was only for daytime food service. So far, we’ve been able to do this through some creativity and partnerships, however we really need to secure funding for a Food Security Coordinator to be able to run this expanded service sustainably.
We would welcome any opportunities for such funding, and in the meantime would greatly benefit from financial donations to help us pay for the people stepping into this work in the interim, which includes preparing and serving food, seeking food donations, and mentoring our Peer Workers in the kitchen. There are people in their roles that have stabilized, but to maintain this we need to be able to provide them with job and financial security as soon as possible.
People can donate through our website. Hopefully, with what you’re doing with us and with what we’re trying to do, we can move the dial forward to meet the basic human need of access to stable nourishing food, and the added benefit of our programming that develops job skills and provides a vital source of income. Collectively, as a society, we have to ask, how much do we want this to stay the same? That’s the social change we’re trying to make. Not just for Indigenous people, but for a lot of people who have been colonized from all over, too. We carry that in our genes.
PROGRAMS RUN BY KILALA LELUM
Cultural Programming: We have an Elder five days each week at the door when you enter, opportunities for elder one-on-one interactions, and wrap- around care supporting people in finding housing or accessing other aspects of the healthcare system. We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for people to come through the doors, as people face a lot of barriers and have a lot of distress in the healthcare system. We work hard to support them.
Relational Care Program: We provide case management and care for people with chronic illnesses, particularly those with HIV, but others as well. The Relational Care Program provides amazing primary care support, medication management, and food. Hot meals in the morning and for lunch, but now into the evenings as well. Morning and lunch have been supported by peers and community members as well as outreach members providing medication and food support in the community.
Dudes Club and Inner-City Women’s Initiative: These two clubs use our space in the evenings and provide programming for members of our community as well. For the Dudes, in particular, the community feeds their community members. On Monday and Tuesday nights, the Dudes and the women come together, which is quite lovely.
Reclaiming Our Spirit: This program focuses on women who have faced violence, not only physical violence to themselves, but also the violence of colonization.
Mobile Outreach Van (in partnership with Telus): This program is for those who don’t access our services, who are more disengaged or have mobility issues. We were at Strathcona Park, and we go to other sites in the DTES providing support and wellness by some of our knowledge-keepers. We do outreach as well as provide primary care support.
Garden (upstairs) and a new Canoe Program: Working with IRSS (Indigenous Residential School Survivors) and Saa-ust which is slowly coming together. Hopefully this year, we will have a couple of canoe trips with members from our community.
Maternity Program: We just started our Maternity program, working with Doulas and Midwives from the Huckleberry Midwifery team, to provide support for young families and moms that don’t necessarily have the support they need to have a healthy baby.
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