Walking the Path Home: Rematriating Healing for Indigenous Women Overcoming Substance Use
Maria sits in the treatment center's waiting room; her daughter curled against her side. She has tried before—programs where she felt observed but never seen, where trauma was discussed but not honored, and where her ancestors’ names were absent from the healing room. Those programs asked her to stop using substances but never helped her return to her body, her ancestors, her ceremony, her identity as a mother, or to the land that still remembers her.
This time feels different.
Here, healing is not about “fixing” her. It is about returning her to who she has always been.
Here, trauma is not a diagnosis, but a story held across generations—one that becomes medicine when spoken, witnessed, and transformed through community, land, and ceremony. Here, she is not only asked to stop numbing—she is invited to root deeper, listen closer, and find her original belonging again.
From Trauma-Informed to Healing-Centered & Culturally-Driven
Many programs say they are trauma-informed. But Indigenous women need approaches that:
Recognize colonial harm and cultural strength
Prioritize belonging before behavior
Treat substance use as an adaptation to unsafety, not personal or cultural failure
Understand the body as land, story, and memory
Center culture, ceremony, language, and kinship as core treatment—not add-ons
Healing isn't only about reducing symptoms—it is about restoring relationship.
This is Rematriation.
A return to land, body, rhythm, belonging, and ancestral knowledge.
A return to matrilineal power, community responsibility, and sacred identity.
A return to dignity, sovereignty, and life force.
Historical Strengths Are Interventions
Colonial systems pathologize Indigenous women.
Indigenous systems remember them powerful.
Research and Indigenous-developed programs show that healing deepens when we activate:
Cultural identity & language
Intergenerational mentorship & Elders
Land-based practice and foodways
Ceremony, song, and drumming rhythm
Collective nervous system regulation (polyvagal relational safety)
Ancestral narratives of endurance, brilliance, and survival
Roles as mothers, aunties, and knowledge keepers
Story medicine and constellation-based remembrance
Kinship networks and community responsibility
Land, plants, and seasonal cycles as co-regulators
In Indigenous healing frameworks, strength is not a trait—it is a lineage.
A Healing-Centered Model for Indigenous Women
Most substance-use programs focus on stopping the behavior. Some trauma programs focus on understanding the pain.
We need programs that do both — and go further.
We need programs that recognize:
Addiction is often a response to trauma and disconnection.
Indigenous women and families carry historical and generational wounds tied to colonization.
Healing happens through belonging, identity, culture, land, and relationships, not just worksheets and coping skills.
People recover not only by addressing harm, but by remembering who they are and where they come from.
So instead of only asking:
“How do we stop harmful behavior?”
Our curriculum for providers working with Indigenous women asks:
“How do we help you return home to yourself, your culture, your body, your ancestors, and your future?”
Key Ideas
Healing is not only about stopping substance use.
Healing is about returning to land, language, spirit, identity, and relationship.
Culture is treatment.
Story, ceremony, rhythm, and kinship are medicine.
Women aren’t “clients” — they are relatives, knowledge keepers, mothers, aunties, future ancestors.
Recovery is not leaving the past behind — it is honoring it and transforming it.
Why This Matters
Most treatment programs were not designed for Indigenous people.
This curriculum rematriates healing — bringing it back into Indigenous hands, voices, and worldviews.
It blends clinical science, neurobiology, and ancestral science.
It invites participants to rebuild safety not only inside themselves, but in:
their families
their communities
their spirit and identity
their nervous systems
their relationships with land and ancestors
It is not just trauma-informed.
It is healing-centered, culture-rooted, land-honoring, and future-building.
This is not only recovery.
It is returning home.
Four Pillars of Rematriated Recovery
Remembrance
Storywork, ancestral practices, land teaching, Indigenous neuroscience, lineage healing
Regulation
Polyvagal practice, rhythm (drum, dance, song), breath, somatic mapping, seasonal attunement
Relationship
Circles, kinship webs, auntie systems, Elders, community healing, reparative relational field
Rematriation
Cultural identity, language, plant medicine traditions, food sovereignty, mother-role support, ceremony
Healing is not “leaving trauma behind.”
Healing is bringing the wound to circle and restoring its sacredness.
Integrated Mother–Child Healing
Research emphasizes programs where mothers and children heal together: attachment repair, cultural family teachings, mother-child land-based activities, and collective caregiving models
Our model expands this through ideas around:
Parenting in ceremony
Re-indigenizing family systems
Teaching kinship roles (not nuclear parenting alone)
Auntie circles and shared caregiving
Intergenerational ritual healing
When a mother heals, a nation heals.
Culture is not “supportive.” Culture is treatment.
Recommendations for Practice
For Treatment Providers
Implement trauma-informed care approaches that specifically address historical and intergenerational trauma alongside individual trauma experiences.
Integrate cultural elements meaningfully rather than superficially, working closely with Indigenous cultural advisors and traditional healers.
Address the whole family system, recognizing that women's recovery impacts multiple generations and that children's wellbeing is often central to women's motivation for change.
Provide gender-specific programming that addresses the unique needs and experiences of Indigenous women within the context of their cultural identity.
For Program Developers
Partner with Indigenous communities in developing and implementing programs rather than adapting existing models without community input.
Measure culturally relevant outcomes beyond just substance use, including cultural connection, family functioning, and community involvement.
Ensure adequate program duration and intensity to address the complexity of issues Indigenous women face.
Provide comprehensive support services including childcare, transportation, housing assistance, and connection to ongoing community supports.
For Policymakers
Increase funding for Indigenous-led treatment programs that have demonstrated effectiveness in serving Indigenous women.
Address systemic barriers that prevent Indigenous women from accessing and completing treatment.
Support research that specifically examines effective treatment approaches for Indigenous women rather than assuming findings from other populations are generalizable.
Recognize cultural healing practices as legitimate treatment interventions worthy of funding and support.
A Vision Forward
Maria leaves her first circle with tears on her cheeks—not from pain, but from recognition.
She is not broken.
She is returning.
Her ancestors are not stories—they are regulating forces in her nervous system.
Her healing is not solitary—it is ceremony, kinship, land, and memory.
Treatment does not “give” her culture. It reminds her she has always carried it.
This is the work:
To walk with women as they come home to themselves, to their lineage, to land, and to future generations who deserve to inherit strength—not silence.
When Indigenous women heal, we do not simply recover.
We restore, we reweave, we rise, we remember, and we rematriate the world.
References
Brave Heart, M. Y. H., Elkins, J., Tafoya, G., Bird, D., & Salvador, M. (2011). Wicasa Was'aka: Restoring the traditional strength of American Indian boys and men. American Journal of Public Health, 101(S2), S274-S278.
Dell, C. A., & Acoose, S. (2008). Aboriginal women and substance abuse intervention: Program review. Government of Canada.
Fillmore, C. A., Dell, C. A., & Kitty, D. (2014). Indigenous women's journey of healing from substance use and trauma. International Journal of Indigenous Health, 10(2), 3-22.
Greenfield, B. L., & Venner, K. L. (2012). Review of substance use disorder treatment research in Indian country: Future directions to strive toward health equity. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 38(5), 483-492.
Marsh, T. N., Coholic, D., Cote-Meek, S., & Najavits, L. M. (2015). Blending Aboriginal and Western healing methods to treat intergenerational trauma with substance use disorder in Aboriginal peoples who live in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. Harm Reduction Journal, 12(1), 14.
Marsh, T. N., Cote-Meek, S., Toulouse, P., Najavits, L. M., & Young, N. L. (2015). The application of two-eyed seeing decolonizing methodology in qualitative and quantitative research for the treatment of intergenerational trauma and substance use disorders. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 14(5), 1-13.
Najavits, L. M. (2002). Seeking Safety: A treatment manual for PTSD and substance abuse. Guilford Press.
Olson, K.R. (2025). Inviting the sacred wound into circle: re-storying an Indigenous mind-body medicine framework for healing. Breyer State Theology University.
Spillane, N. S., Schick, M. R., Kirk-Provencher, K. T., Nalven, T., Goldstein, S. C., Crawford, M. C., & Weiss, N. H. (2023). Trauma and substance use among Indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada: A scoping review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 24(5), 3297-3312.