Residential school payments are validating' to some survivors but for most, the healing journey is very personal and introspective, a counsellor said this week.

Kevin Barr is the executive director of the Committee on Abuse in Residential School (CAIRS) Society. The society recently opened a new centre on Second Avenue in the old Dairy Queen building.

'You can't buy ice cream here. Unless you bring your own soap berries, and then you can make soap berry ice cream,' Barr joked in an interview.

Ice cream making is one of many activities the centre offers to people who use its services.

The new facility, which opened Oct. 15, features a lounge, numerous workshops, a private counselling room, a group circle-talking room and a kitchen.

The new amenities help make the society's mandate helping residential school survivors, and their families a little easier.

There is more room for people to wander in, and Barr said he has found the private counselling spaces encourage a deeper level of connection between CAIRS staff and the people they help.

Simultaneous to the centre's opening, residential school survivors have been receiving settlement payments from the federal government.

Of the estimated 930 residential school survivors in the Yukon, 245 are more than 65 years old. Payments start at $10,000 for the first year, plus $3,000 for each additional year. Average payment have been in the $20,000-$30,000 range.

Barr said he is seeing the money being used to help people on their healing journeys, but he has also seen people blow it on drugs and alcohol, to continue suppressing their pain.

'We don't tell people how to spend it and we don't judge; we just encourage them to be safe with it,' he said.

Some recipients have driven by the CAIRS office to show off the new vehilces they have purchased with their settlement money, said Barr. Some have invested it, gone on trips, and started accounts for their children and grandchildren.

'A lot of people are looking at it as an opportunity to go forward with their lives,' he said.

It has vastly improved some people's living conditions, he said.

Some people, instead of eating dinner at the soup kitchen, can now afford to eat at a restaurant, he said.

He also told of a man who had been couch-surfing for more than 20 years, who now has the money to rent an apartment, pay his own bills, and sleep on a new mattress that no one else has slept on before.

Barr said he has seen some people for whom money was the only obstacle in their way toward moving on.

'We hope they can use it in a way that helps money not to be an issue any more,' he said.

The payments have helped some survivors feel validated in their pain, although that validation from the federal government goes little ways in healing the pain of residential schools. Many still want the federal government to issue a formal apology.

Barr said the residential schools' effects are clearly visible and will continue for generations.

'The children, the grandchildren of survivors, they didn't go to residential schools, but they are raised to suffer the same abuses.

'Physical abuse, sexual abuse, their parents don't know any better, they get passed on generation to generation ... it'll take generations to resolve the impacts. It (the school) was meant to destroy the family unit.'

Barr said such an impact will certainly not go away with lump sum payments and, in some cases, he has seen the money exacerbate the problem.

'There's people blowing it, taking advantage of people with lower function, duping them and taking their money,' he said.

Many people in pain have turned to substance abuse to cover the suffering, and Barr said he has seen them keep the party going by spending the money on more drugs, more booze.

On the flip side, however, Barr said the situation is not hopeless for residential school survivors. A successful healing journey can be made.

'I've seen people basically living on the streets get it together; they've got their children back, get full-time jobs, and they are happy within themselves, going forward with their lives,' he said.

There are several cases where the cycles of pain and violence have been ended, he said, but it's a hard road to travel.

The CAIRS Society doesn't always measure success in terms of complete life turnarounds, explained Barr.

'Success can be people who just trust enough to come in the door here. Success can be someone saying that yes, they drink too much and they want to do something about it.

'That doesn't mean it's over, but they're on their way.'

The CAIRS Society is open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday for drop-ins, and there are regularly scheduled talking circles, and art and tool building workshops.

CAIRS is a non-profit organization funded largely by government grants, including the federal Aboriginal Healing Foundation, and through the sale of arts and tools made at the centre.

Anyone wishing to help out or looking for more information is directed to call the society at 667-2247.