Abstract
This essay traces the development of a Healing Lodge (capacity 30) for Aboriginal women serving federal prison sentences in Canada. Representatives of Aboriginal bands across Canada shared in the planning of the Lodge, and they will operate it. Situated on Nekaneet land near Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, with no fences, locks, or bars, the Lodge has been designed to facilitate traditional First Nations healing practices. The author explores the contradiction of envisioning a spiritual sanctuary within a penal enterprise: as practiced, state correctionalism is the antithesis of the guiding philosophy of the Healing Lodge. This conundrum is articulated through the examination of a series of contextualizing events in the 1990s related to Canada's Prison for Women (P4W). These include a significant 1990 government report recommending closure of P4W, and a 1995 CBC-TV expose of brutality against eight women at P4W, four of them Aboriginal. The brutality was committed ‘in the line’ of duty by the Emergency Response Team from the Kingston men's penitentiary. It is concluded that the Healing Lodge cannot de facto resolve the fundamental healing vs. punishment contradiction, but with vigilance it could prove to be a internal challenge to extant penal ideologies.
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