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‘Healing Lodge,’ pilot project to back Blackfeet students
School board member Edith Wagner visits a new modular home, part of the Feather Woman Healing Lodge on Heart Butte School District’s K-12 campus.
HEART BUTTE, Mont. — The Blackfeet tribal school district here is breaking ground — both literally and figuratively — on a novel shelter facility for K-12 students. Its Feather Woman Healing Lodge, a group-living and counseling complex, is opening in August.
Feather Woman Healing Lodge will be a “nurturing center” to bolster prospects of educational success for challenged Blackfeet Nation youth, Heart Butte Schools Superintendent Mike Tatsey told Buffalo’s Fire. He and other tribal members say they hope it ultimately will result in higher scholastic achievement, as well as community cohesiveness for the entire small-town population.
The pilot project consists of two new modular homes and a separate counseling center, already located on the Heart Butte School K-12 campus. The homes can accommodate six girls and six boys each, as well as their respective designated faculty supervisors.
Unlike conventional church and state boarding schools, this tribal pilot project is only a short-term shelter, designed to provide students housing for no more than four weeks. “It’s by no means a place where someone will permanently live or stay for months at a time,” Tatsey said.
“Too many kids go under the radar; they need somewhere safe to stay, a stable environment, which some have never had the luxury of experiencing their whole lives.”
Claudia Hansen, Staff member of Healing lodge
The Feather Woman Healing Lodge aims to protect and aid Indigenous youngsters, rather than displace them or disrupt family life, he explained. “The minute they come into our shelter we would start working to get their home living situation back to being better,” Tatsey said. “We’re totally different from anything like residential boarding schools.”
What’s more, the Feather Woman Healing Lodge counseling and treatment component offers “a resource for various generations to address trauma head-on, and it provides that healing aspect as well, so that they can talk about it and hopefully connect with people who are like minded or have experienced similar situations,” counselor Durand Bear Medicine told Buffalo’s Fire.
Bear Medicine is an American Indian Student Achievement and Development Specialist for the Montana Office of Public Instruction. He has experience in managing addiction and behavioral health. His team provides resources, professional support, and guidance to this project with Heart Butte School District.
The youth shelter is not the district’s first endeavor to improve students’ overall health and well-being. Heart Butte currently partners with the Southern Piegan School Health Program in a school-based clinic.
According to the superintendent, the school-based clinic handled 70 referrals during the short February-April period that the school was back in session post-pandemic. Approximately a quarter of those referrals were for new or follow-up mental health issues.
“I think (the project) is great and something that has been needed out here,” said Claudia Hansen, a staff and community member in Heart Butte. “Too many kids go under the radar; they need somewhere safe to stay, a stable environment, which some have never had the luxury of experiencing their whole lives.”
The Blackfeet Tribe expressed its confidence in the shelter with an $800,000 grant. Likewise, the Montana Health Care Foundation contributed $25,000. “I see an opportunity for Heart Butte to make resources like this available to the kids to feel secure in speaking up about traumatic events in their life,” said Bear Medicine.
Heart Butte, located on the southern edge of the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana, is home to approximately 700 people, including 200 students who attend the school. The enclave is about a hal-hour drive from Browning, which is the closest town for any emergency services.
Teenagers who live in rural areas like Heart Butte experience high rates of suicide for different reasons, “including social isolation, prevalence of firearms, economic hardship, and limited access to mental health and emergency health care services,” according to the Population Reference Bureau.
“Kids can’t learn if they don’t have a clear mind,” said Tatsey. “It ties in with student achievement.
JoVonne Wagner is a Blackfeet tribal citizen majoring in Journalism at the University of Montana, Missoula. Contact her at jovonnewagner@gmail.com.