Maggie Hodgson was born 80 years ago in “the bush” to a Carrier mother and white father in Nadleh Whut’en First Nation in the central British Columbia Interior. Although she was raised in the ways of her mother’s people, Maggie says, “I was never white enough for the white people and not Indian enough for the Indians.” She grew up in poverty, was raised in a home with an alcoholic father and was subject to hostile and harmful behaviour within her own community — what’s known as lateral violence. As a very young woman, she married and started her own family, something she describes as her escape route. But the reality of her past trauma weighed heavy, and shortly after she started down a path of her own healing and a lifelong journey to support other Indigenous peoples seeking the same.

I first met Maggie in 2001 on the planning committee for the fourth gathering of Healing Our Spirit Worldwide to be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the following year. I was there as the representative for the Assembly of First Nations’ health technicians committee. I had heard about Maggie, this legendary fireball, through my work in advancing Indigenous education, but this was my first time meeting her in person. She lived up to her reputation, every bit as passionate, committed and fearless as she had been described. It was a gift to learn from her and work alongside her as this movement grew and spread around the world.

In fall 2002, I took all four of my children to Albuquerque for the gathering. It became abundantly clear that for my First Nations children being raised in their culture and community, it was incredibly important for them to grow up in this movement. My youngest daughter, Seneca, was just seven years old at the time; although too young to participate, she helped me host the older children. She loved it. I can still see her being taught how to weave by a Pueblo weaver and then teaching it herself to the subsequent groups of youth. She was so proud, empowered and honoured to be trusted with such an important role. That is what Maggie lives for, creating spaces where the youngest community members to the oldest of Elders can find joy, healing, purpose and community within a safe environment. Over the years, Maggie has become an older sister to me and my husband, Wilson Bearhead, a Nakota Elder and Wabamun Lake First Nation member in Treaty 6 Territory, a beloved auntie to Seneca and now a kokum to Seneca’s son, Bud.

Seneca is now 30 and a mother. Born Saulteaux-Assiniboine from Treaty 4 territory, raised Nakota in Treaty 6, she works as an Indigenous education specialist in schools in central Alberta, carrying on the teachings of her people, her ancestors and the Elders in her life, including Maggie. From that small but empowering beginning at her first gathering, Seneca now supports Indigenous students and parents, guides non-Indigenous educators in their efforts to respectfully incorporate Indigenous history and knowledge into the curriculum and develops Indigenous-grounded education resources.

The collaboration and information-sharing at the gathering has yielded excellent results. Like Seneca, countless other delegates who attended their first gathering as children are now participating and presenting their work in the fields of health, healing and self-determination. I know families from around the world that are on the third generation of their families attending the gathering and working in addictions treatment, family wellness, healing and education.

It all started in the early 1990s, when Maggie was working at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (now the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction) — the only Indigenous person employed there at the time. The centre hosted an international meeting of mainstream addictions experts, and Maggie remembers listening to the musings of non-Indigenous “experts,” offering up “scientific” responses to addictions issues that plagued Indigenous communities around the world. As a member of the Canadian delegation, she had a seat at the table. But she was the only Indigenous person there. Why, she wondered: why did these so-called experts from other countries not see the value of having their own Indigenous representation as they discussed Indigenous communities?

“They had no value for our ceremonies, our practices or our knowledge,” she says, “and they had no interest in committing some of their government funding to bring Indigenous peoples with them. It’s a matter of choice. That’s all it would [have taken] … just for the non-Indigenous organizations to include that cost in their budgets.”

Fired up, Maggie immediately started working on an Indigenous-led gathering to heal individuals and communities. And she looked to her community for help.

“I was only one person, but I had relationships with the Sámi, the Māori, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and of the United States,” she recounts. “I wanted to reach out to them to come together to share our experiences and our solutions, but I knew they had no money — and I had no money.”

She enlisted the help of Richard Jock, a member of the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne and head of the National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program for Health Canada at that time, to help her find funding. She also asked her employer, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, which saw the value in supporting Indigenous leaders working in alcohol and drug prevention programs in their respective countries. And Maggie tapped Rod Jeffries, who was running the National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program’s treatment centres and became a founding member of the gathering, to help her organize the first gathering. When Maggie and Rod saw the logo — an eagle with its wings wrapped around the Earth — they decided on the name for the gathering: Healing Our Spirit Worldwide.

“We came together as the very first gathering of Healing Our Spirit Worldwide in Edmonton in the summer of 1992,” she remembers fondly. The first gathering “was so different from other conferences about addictions. There was so much singing from the Maori, singing and drumming from our people here in Canada and so much hope. In mainstream conferences it had always been about intervention and academic research, but we came together to celebrate our cultures and to find joy in who we are: community development, community joy, community strength alongside research.”