After more than a decade of planning, Carrier Sekani Family Services (CSFS) will be hosting a ground-breaking ceremony at the site of a new holistic treatment centre.
The ceremony will be on June 12 at the grounds of the future facility at Tachick Lake, just outside of Saik’uz First Nation near Vanderhoof.
The healing centre will offer services and space to effectively address root causes of the opioid crisis by offering culturally appropriate, Indigenous-led and medically based residential treatment.
The facility, currently planned to have 60 beds, is intended to serve area Indigenous people from a medically-based service delivery model that is grounded in traditional Carrier and Sekani healing and land-based wellness practice.
In 2021, CSFS’s request for an exemption from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) was finally granted, allowing the CSFS to use the Tachick Lake site for non-farm use.
The next steps for this project included additional fundraising and then the design phase of the construction process, which is now ready to begin following the ground breaking ceremony.
CSFS has said this project is crucial to removing barriers to health services and making progress toward fundamental objectives of improved health and wellbeing for Indigenous peoples.
Consisting of a lodge, nine cabins and 33 campsites, the Tachick Lake Resort was initially constructed in 1969.
