The Charlottetown-based group Aboriginal Survivors for Healing will resume its work this week after a one-month hiatus that it was forced to take when its government funding was cut.

The group, which provides counselling to survivors of the residential school system and their families, had been getting $200,000 a year from the federal government through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation for the past 10 years, but that funding ran out at the end of March.

Programs, which included healing circles as well as individual counselling, had been suspended since then, but now, the group says it has secured new funding from Health Canada.

"Traditional services are not available anywhere else in this province," said project co-ordinator Tarry Hewitt on Monday. "After 100 years of residential schools, they expected those issues to be addressed in 10 to 15 years. It's just not realistic."

Canada's church-run, government-funded residential schools, which operated from the 19th century up until 1996, aimed to assimulate aboriginal children into white society. Children were not allowed to speak their native language and often endured physical and sexual abuse.

Talk helps

Hewitt said the group has not yet signed an agreement with Health Canada but is confident that will happen soon.

"We don't have a contribution agreement at this time, but the proposal is being looked at favourably to fund partial services," she said. "So, we are quite confident enough to go forward with starting up the healing circles again in the hope and expectation that we'll be able to close the [funding] gap.

"We're going forward because we feel that aboriginal survivors and descendants need these services, and we're willing to take the risk that we will be able to find other dollars down the line."

Hewitt said Health Canada will make up some of the $200,000 the group lost, but it is still short $25,000. She has asked the province, which often refers people to the group for help, for the money but has been turned down.

P.E.I. resident Margaret Jadis's mother attended the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia. Jadis said she doesn't know exactly what her mother endured, but she knows that her mother's experience did have an impact on her own life.

"There was no emotions — no loving, no hugging, no nothing," Jadis said.

She regularly attends talking circles in Charlottetown organized by Aboriginal Survivors for Healing to discuss her own emotions and to try to understand her mother's behaviour

"The more I talk about it, the more I understand," Jadis said.