Indigenous Healing and Wellness Grants

Current status

Open date: Fall 2023, exact date TBA

Close date: Fall 2023, exact date TBA

In 2014, Vancouver City Council designated Vancouver as a “City of Reconciliation”. In 2015, staff developed the City of Reconciliation overarching vision:

As a City of Reconciliation, the City of Vancouver will form a sustained relationship of mutual respect and understanding with local First Nations and the Urban Aboriginal community, including key agencies, to incorporate a First Nations and Urban Aboriginal perspective into the work undertaken and decisions made by the City of Vancouver and, ultimately, to provide services that benefit members of these communities.

The Indigenous Healing and Wellness Grants program supports projects that provide traditional, spiritual, and cultural healing and wellness activities in Vancouver's urban Indigenous community.

What is a traditional Indigenous healing approach?

“Access to traditional and culturally appropriate health care practices is equally, if not more important, than access to mainstream non-Indigenous health care. There is a need for Indigenous -specific programs in the DTES, with all services being able to provide traditional, spiritual and cultural health and healing supports.”  Indigenous Health Healing and Wellness in the DTES Study, City of Vancouver, 2017.

“Ceremony helps people to incorporate healthy values such as respect, love, courage, humility, truth, trust and strength into their daily lives.” Traditional Healing Circle of Elders, First Nations Centre, National Aboriginal Health Organization, 2007.

Questions?

​Contact Sonia Bianchi, Senior Social Planner:

Contact the Social Policy and Projects Division

Mailing address
Social Policy and Projects Division
City of Vancouver
501-111 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 1H4

socialpolicygrants
@vancouver.ca