Helping Grieving Communities
Creating better support services for Indigenous people who’ve lost loved ones drives Jade Zanutto’s research.
That’s because the Lakehead Master of Social Work student has witnessed a growing need for culturally appropriate grief and bereavement care in Indigenous communities.
Jade, a member of the Nisga’a Nation in northern British Columbia who belongs to the Orca Clan, became interested in this area of social work when she was a student at Wilfrid Laurier University. As part of her undergraduate studies there, she worked as a peer counsellor with Bereaved Families of Ontario—an organization where people who’ve already experienced a family death help the newly bereaved through the earlier stages of mourning.
Her 2021 placement with Bereaved Families took on a heightened resonance when, shortly after starting there, the unmarked graves of 215 children were found on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Jade excelled academically at Lakehead and was an integral member of the Orillia campus where she was a teaching assistant and a graduate assistant with the Indigenous Initiatives office. Her contributions included grant writing, organizing beading and sweetgrass basket-making workshops, and leading the Turtle Island Student Circle.
“There was a resurgence of grief in a way that hadn’t been felt before,” Jade says. “My placement helped me contextualize this grief.”
“Grief and bereavement care in Indigenous communities has to be understood in relation to challenges caused by colonization and the necessity of reclaiming traditional practices during the bereavement process,” Jade adds.
Living through this painful experience crystallized Jade’s decision to do her master’s degree at Lakehead Orillia because its individualized social work program allows students to build on their previous studies and lay the foundation for their career path. “For me that’s Indigenous studies,” she says.
For her Lakehead research project, Jade investigated the grief and bereavement care services available in Indigenous urban, rural, and reserve communities across Canada. She wanted to know if there were adequate levels of services, whether traditional practices had been incorporated into these services, and if these services addressed the traumatic and compound grief that is widespread in Indigenous communities.
Compound grief refers to suffering multiple losses, which is common among Indigenous peoples, and encompasses individual deaths, historical losses (such as the unmarked graves), environmental grief, and the loss of culture.
To assess the strengths of these programs, Jade adopted the First Nations Health Authority’s definition of what constitutes health and wellness because of its success in removing systemic barriers to care faced by Indigenous people.
“They have social workers who help people with addictions, or who are unhoused, get access to grief and bereavement programs that use traditional cultural practices—such as cedar brushing and sweat lodges—that have been very beneficial.”
Jade found that many communities don’t have proper bereavement care services. In the Inuit region of Kivalliq, for example, people are often forced to travel to faraway urban centres for medical treatment. If they pass away while there, they die alone or with only one or two family members at their side. This separation from their community means that important cultural practices to ensure that the deceased can take the next steps on their spiritual journey can’t be performed.
Bereavement care for traumatic deaths, including suicide, violence, and substance-use disorders, is also lacking.
Jade, however, points out that while formal programs are important, they are only one aspect of grief and bereavement care. “Coming to terms with death is built into traditional Indigenous ways—it’s part of living,” she says.
Jade completed her Lakehead Master of Social Work degree in September 2024 and is now teaching the “Social Work Practice and Indigenous Peoples” course at the Orillia campus. One of her goals is to develop a support group focused on Indigenous perspectives on grief and bereavement.
