When someone is ready to get clean, every moment counts.
But in the Northwest Territories, access to inpatient addiction treatment can take weeks, even months. For many families, that delay can mean the difference between life and death.
Two women in Fort Smith, N.W.T., both with personal experience in recovery, are speaking out about what they see as a life-threatening gap in the territory’s mental health system. They’re calling for a permanent, culturally-grounded, trauma-informed treatment centre in the North.
The territory hasn’t had a permanent inpatient addiction facility since 2013, when Hay River’s Nats’ejee K’eh Treatment Centre closed. Residents are now sent to out-of-territory programs, often facing long waitlists and unfamiliar cultural environments. Advocates say that the model isn’t working, and never really did.
“The timeline is yesterday,” said Kristielyn Jones, a recovering addict and counsellor who marked seven years of sobriety last month. “Because we do not have time to be waiting any longer.”
Jones said after multiple relapses, near-death experiences, and three separate treatment attempts, she now uses her story to advocate for others.
“I do what I need to do to stay clean for today, or I’m gonna die,” she said. “There’s no grey, there’s no wishy-washy.”
She began using substances in her teens to cope with trauma, PTSD, and grief. It wasn’t until her third time in treatment that she experienced a turning point. Jones was overwhelmed by emotion in a group session and desperate to leave, but she forced herself to stay.
“It was the first time in my life where I realized that my emotions weren’t going to kill me,” she said. “I then started to open up to more of what I was hearing and learning in treatment.”
She said the addiction crisis in the North is “cutthroat” and that the territorial government has ignored community calls for an inpatient facility since Nats’ejee K’eh closed over a decade ago.
“It’s creating a ripple effect and an aftermath that many of us have to face on a day-to-day basis,” she said.
Jones recently traveled to several South Slave communities to launch her practice, Sweetgrass Healing Centre, where she offers virtual counselling, emotional support services, and trauma workshops. The sessions also served as a platform for a bigger conversation, about an inpatient treatment centre in the North.
“Our leadership is now starting to recognize,” she said. “But our people have been saying it right from their mouths that we’ve been in a crisis for a long time.”
Jones says her vision is to build a system rooted in Indigenous values. That includes access to ceremony, traditional healing, and elders, alongside clinical supports and counselling.
The need for a treatment facility is critical, she said, because addiction is a life-or-death situation where people have no time to wait. Every moment matters in supporting those struggling with mental health and addiction challenges.
‘Who knows what can happen?’
For Colinda Laviolette, a wellness coordinator and trauma facilitator, the need for immediate, local addiction treatment is deeply personal and urgent.
She said her adult son became addicted to drugs during a difficult period. Laviolette said the crisis escalated quickly, and efforts to find help through local services led nowhere.
At one point, she said, her son went to the local health centre in Fort Smith, N.W.T., and asked to be admitted, even if it meant going to the psychiatric ward. The doctor refused, telling him he was “presenting as fine and normal.” They sent him home.
“He was practically begging the doctor for help,” she said. “If you let me leave from here today, things are probably not going to go well. Who knows what can happen?”
Fearing for his life, Laviolette reached out to her First Nation in Alberta. Within 24 hours, they secured her son a spot in detox, arranged a treatment bed, and offered gas money so she could drive him to Edmonton herself.
“I said, ‘If my son doesn’t get help and he doesn’t get it quickly, he’s going to die,'” she recalled. “Within a couple of weeks, I’m going to be calling you saying, ‘I have to bury my son now.'”
Her son completed treatment and came back home. Laviolette said that because he received the proper care at the right moment, he had tools to lean on during a recent relapse. Today, she said he’s using those tools to recover despite the setback.
“When a person says they’re ready and they want the help right now, that needs to be taken seriously,” Laviolette said.
She says those moments of clarity are brief and often lost if there’s no clear path to care. Instead, people in her community are placed on waitlists, sometimes for weeks or even months, after asking for help through the hospital system.
“It’s important to have that immediate help,” she said. “When a person says they’re ready and they want the help right now, that needs to be taken seriously.”
‘Trauma is pre-verbal’: Building a culturally-grounded solution
Laviolette said addiction is rooted in unresolved trauma, often going back to childhood or earlier. And for years, she couldn’t articulate her own pain.
Now ten years sober, she said, when people asked why she drank, she had no words to explain what was happening inside.
“I didn’t have the words. I didn’t even know the words at all. And that’s part of why they say trauma is pre-verbal.”
She believes a land-based, spiritually-grounded treatment centre in the N.W.T. could help break the cycle, particularly a centre that integrates Indigenous ceremony, language, elders, and traditional healing alongside clinical care.
“We’ve had shootings. We’ve had suicides. We’ve had violent situations,” she said. “Every one of those has been drug-related in some way. Why are we not stepping up and doing more?”
