Teaching lessons through the spirits and healing of the Sheshatshiu Innu sweat ceremony

Behind David Penashue's Sheshatshiu home is a wooden cabin frame. The roof is covered with canvas and inside lies the result of 25 years of work. 

It's his healing lodge.

"The lodge will help you. If you look at the rocks, the grandfathers, they're really red hot. That's helping you stay in the moment," Penashue, said. "You are connecting to the rock, the heat and you just relax."

Penashue is working to continue the tradition of the Innu healing lodge in Labrador and pass it to the next generation.

Learning to preserve traditional knowledge

Over 20 years ago, Penashue was working in mental health and was invited to go to the land for two weeks and partake in a sweat ceremony.

"It was very emotional and also very relaxing," he said. "When I came back from the two weeks … I asked [my grandfather], 'How do you build it and how do you do it?'" 

Worried about the knowledge being lost, Penashue kept asking his grandparents questions and, in time, received permission to build his own.

It has helped him stay sober and strengthened his mental health, he said. He hopes it may help those who are feeling lost. 

"Right now, there are people here that are searching for something. They're there to search for who they are," Penashue said. "The lodge can help them." 

One Innu young adult said it's helping him on his journey to creating the life he wants after battling with addictions. 

Growing up as a child in Sheshatshiu in the early 2000s, Shipu Penashue — David Penashue's cousin — says he would see the lodge that was near the community's church. 

"I asked my father if I could go in there and he told me 'No way.' He said 'No, don't go there.' He said 'I don't want you to ever go in one.' So I asked him why, and then he just didn't really respond back," he said.

As he grew up, Shipu Penashue said he realized priests had told Innu traditional practices weren't good and that brainwashing stayed with his father as an adult. Shipu Penashue fell into alcohol and drugs and worked toward sobriety in 2022. He took part in his first lodge when he was three weeks sober. 

"It's, like, still helping me on my journey with sobriety," he said. "The feeling that I felt was amazing. It was a really good feeling. Like the weight on my shoulders from the past, past trauma — like, all of it was gone." 

Shipu Penashue hopes to see more ceremonies being brought back to the community — such as the spirit-naming ceremony carried on by Innu in Quebec today — and to see more young people participating. 

"It's a part of being you. It's a part of being Innu," he said. "It's embedded in your DNA. Our ancestors are always within us."

Welcoming in the spirits: wolf, birds, bear, grandfathers 

When people prepare to enter the lodge, they are never alone, David Penashue said.

While some call them "guardian angels," David Penashue said Innu believe people always have their spirit with them. The spirit takes care of them and stays with them, but sometimes that spirit needs healing too, he said. 

"When you come to the lodge, the lodge heals that spirit," he said. 

An old man with a strong voice visited him in a dream after performing his first ceremonies, he said.

The man told him the spirits he should invite through four rounds of heat, he said, beginning with the wolf.

After the wolf comes the spirits of the eagle and all other birds, David Penashue said. They hang on the branches above.

At the back of the lodge, he said, he was told to invite the "very powerful spirit" of the black bear, which can be asked to heal the sick and help cleanse minds. 

The final round includes the grandfathers.

"You ask the grandfathers to the north to take all of the negative energy and move it away somewhere else," David Penashue said. 

The stones in the centre of the lodge represent the grandfathers because the first thing the Creator made was the rock, he said. The water, trees, and two-legged people followed, he said, but in the end all will return to the earth.

David Penashue hopes to continue getting the younger generations to partake in the Innu sweat ceremony. He said anyone is welcome to come.

"If you're Black or white, don't matter," he said. "Hopefully it heals your body or your mind."

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