A healing lodge is a Canadian correctional institution designed to meet the needs of Aboriginal (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) inmates.
[1][2] Healing lodges were created to address the concern that traditional prisons do not work on aboriginal offenders.
[14] One of the major criticisms of healing lodges is that they only service a small percentage of the approximately 3,500 Indigenous people incarcerated in Canada.
It is possible that one of the reasons healing lodges do not operate at full capacity is the policy of only accepting minimum or low risk medium-security inmates[17] despite the original intention for healing lodges to accept prisoners of all security levels and for prisoners to have access to these facilities from the time they were sentenced.
Accepting only low-security inmates has the effect of barring the majority of the incarcerated male Aboriginal population from accessing healing lodges.
(O-chi-chak-ko-sipi re-opened in 2003, but was founded in 2000; Buffalo Sage Wellness House opened in 2011, but "is an expansion of an existing agreement").
[20] CSC has responded to these criticisms by stating that healing lodges are only one of several strategies in Aboriginal corrections.
This discrepancy in funding means that Section 81 lodges must pay their employees 50% less and may be unable to provide adequate training.
[22] According to the Office of the Correctional Investigator, the original intent was for CSC lodges to eventually be transferred to the control of Aboriginal communities.
[26] In the article "When Two Worlds Collide", authors explore the contradictory way Aboriginal Communities are viewed by CSC in regards to risk assessment.