Noojimo Health brings culturally specific mental-health care to Indigenous patients – The Globe and Mail

When social worker, nurse and educator Bill Hill received long-awaited funding to establish a sacred Indigenous healing centre at a Catholic psychiatric hospital in Ontario – just 40 days before his retirement after a 42-year career – it marked not only a work milestone, but the beginning of something much bigger.

That pilot program, known as Biigiiskan, offered elder-guided psychiatry, a groundbreaking model where psychiatrists worked in collaboration with Indigenous elders, blending traditional knowledge with clinical care.

Everything was running smoothly until the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered in-person services in 2020 and Hill had to adapt fast.

Through Biigiiskan, he started running healing circles offered on Zoom, a new-to-him platform, with the goal of helping elders in remote communities get online, often for the first time. It was an improvised effort, but it worked. And it planted the seed for what would become Noojimo Health. Noojimo is an Anishinaabemowin word meaning “the mind is in motion toward healing.”

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