New Indigenous healing space offers 'a place where people can talk about their brokenness,' founder says

In a wooded area beside some farmland west of Waterloo, Ont., is Crow Shield Lodge.

It’s an Indigenous land-based education and healing space just outside New Hamburg. There’s a white tent — the teaching lodge — that can seat about 20 people. There’s a walled tent with a fire pit for gatherings. There’s a sweat lodge.

On this particular day, as snow flurries whipped around just on the other side of the trees, Clarence Cachagee led three other people in a smudging. He burned tobacco and sage in a small cast iron pan.

As a child growing up in Chapleau Cree First Nation in northern