Editor's Note: This article contains descriptions of abuse endured or witnessed by residential school survivors that may be triggering. It mentions violence against children, including physical, mental and emotional abuse.

A deep thrum fills the air.

A beat begins, and the rhythm is steady, absorbing, guiding.

A voice rings out, then two. An Elder and a youth sit next to each other like two sides of a looking glass.

Their voices, which when spoken were soft and gentle, sing clear, thunderous and balance the thread of great force and great control.

The music and its emotions travel down into your chest, through the bones and into the ground. It fills the air. The singers say it's carried across the water, and up into the hills so all their relatives can hear.

"The drum is medicine," says Patrick Leon. "It's the first sound we know, our mother's heartbeat in the womb. It's culture, and that's everything."

Leon is from the Katzie First Nation. He grew up on the Katzie Reserve in Pitt Meadows. For him, cultural practices had always been a part of his life, thanks to his parents and grandparents.

"Everyone is born in culture, but not everyone lives in it," he says.

It was his grandmother who taught him about respect. It was his father who taught him about kindness and humility, even in a community riddled with racism. It was his mother who taught him about resilience. And it was his uncle who taught him about his drum: How to carry it, how to respect it, how to sing.

"You sing with pride, you sing with power, you sing with strength and you sing with prayer."

His parents and grandparents were sent to residential day schools as children and shared some of their stories at an important space in their home.

"Our kitchen table was our Bible," he says.

His father, for example, often explained that his oversized knuckles were a result of lashings from the nuns at his school. It was the round circle of sharing and togetherness that formed Leon's personal foundation, even when things got hard.

The Katzie community, while large, is divided. The reserve is spread out across the Pitt Meadows and Langley areas of Metro Vancouver, keeping pockets of people in parallel worlds. Not everyone, Leon noted, had stability in their family. Violence, abuse and addiction were normal parts of life. Leon says addiction was in his path, until he encountered a powerful teacher: death.

It was one night when he was out with his close cousin, whom he called brother, that things took a tragic turn. They'd been out together, drinking and partying with friends. Leon decided to go home and recalls seeing his brother around a fire with others. Family woke him later, saying that his brother had been in a car accident and burnt to death.

Leon never drank again.

Eventually, he made his way down to the Tsawout First Nation, part of the Saanichton community on South Vancouver Island. He had relatives there, including a distant relative, Peyton Siah.

Siah is 16 years old and has lived a different life than Leon. His grandmother was sent to day school in Sechelt, and his great grandmother spent 12 years at St. Mary's Residential School in Mission.

"I grew up without culture," he says. "It was never something we were taught."

He didn't grow up with his biological parents. While both are alive, they are not greatly involved in his life. Instead, he's been raised by his grandmother and aunt and uncle, Tabby and John, whom he called mom and dad.

In his home, Siah's grandmother refused to ever sit at the table to eat. She'd been too traumatized by the putrid food and anger she'd faced in day school. She didn't often talk about what she'd experienced.

When his grandfather died, the only common solution for grief in his community was drugs and alcohol. Siah wasn't alone in this; many other youth in his community faced similar situations of addiction, generational trauma and loneliness.

"I see depression everywhere, and it's really normal for youth in my community to talk of suicide," he says. "I've faced it myself."

It wasn't until Leon's and Siah's worlds came together that everything changed.

Divine intervention

Three years ago, Leon had been at home with his wife when an immense pain clawed at his gut. At his wife's insistence, he went to the hospital and required emergency surgery for an infection in his intestines. On the table, he died.

"I was in Hell," he says. "I could see the burnt trees, and hear the devil whisper. But I also felt the grip of my grandmother on my shoulder, and my mother held my hand. They were protecting me."

His mother and grandmother relayed him an important message: Save our people, save our kids.

When Leon awoke, he began to pray and ask for a way to help youth in his community. Within a few weeks, one of the Tsawout Band Office members approached him, and asked if he'd be interested in running a men's group, as well as a youth drumming circle.

At first, the youth jam sessions were small; kids pattered in with a skeptical half-interest.

Siah, who knew Leon as Uncle Santa - for his role as Santa Claus at Christmas events -- would sometimes pick up his drum and about a minute later put it down and run off.

"I'd go be a teenager again," he says, referring to drinking and partying. "I thought that was all I had."

But Siah would also face the same powerful teacher Leon met, when his uncle died of an aggressive form of cancer. Within the year, his aunt would die as well.

"They said it was an aneurysm, but I know it was a broken heart," he says. "But for me... I was just scared. I tightened up like a little ball and I didn't want to let anyone in."

Siah, along with other drummers, performed at his aunt's funeral. Leon remembered the day vividly.

"I remember saying to him, 'Kid, prepare your mind right now because this is way different than what we usually do. This is where we really, really pray'," he says. "We don't just sing, because this is the moment where we connect with our spirit, we connect with our ancestors, we connect with our drum."

And Leon was right.

During that ceremony, Siah's grief was released, and a spiritual connection to his ancestors was visceral.

"It was a huge turning point. I felt like I had to start taking things seriously, because my grandpa never got to see me sing, and dad Johnny and mom Tabby never got to see me sing while they were here."

Siah hasn't touched drugs or alcohol in the two years since the funeral, and doesn't plan to again.

He's not the only one who's been affected; the momentum for the jam sessions has taken an astronomical uptick, seeing an average of 260 youth every Tuesday and Thursday night.

"There's people who go to jam sessions and you'll watch them change," Siah says. "Whether it's that night, in a week, in a month, in a year. There's a light flicked on when someone walks in that door."

Some of the adults in the Tsawout community have been hesitant about the jam sessions, saying it was too similar to activities in the Big House. This refers the sanctimonious Long Houses of Indigenous West Coast communities - a holy place which has ceremonies and meanings forbidden to outsiders.

Leon says that ceremonies of the Big House serve your greater spirit, while jam sessions at the gymnasium address the spirit of the human experience and all its challenges.

Despite some pushback, the popularity is growing as more and more adults come into the jam session every week as well.

Leon says it's his own method of reverse psychology, where the only way to heal a community's past is to focus on its future.

Spreading love and kindness

Closeness isn't always possible in communities that face trauma. In residential schools, children were stripped of their families and faced abuse and neglect which, as survivors, they might inadvertently passed along when they had their own children.

"I never understood why my mother was so cold," Siah says. "It wasn't until I understood about residential schools that I realized she was doing the best she could."

But communities are retaliating against this in a gentle way. In Indigenous culture, the terms 'brother,' 'sister,' 'mom,' and 'dad,' are used loosely among close friends and family to convey closeness and importance. It's an act of loving rebellion in a society which faced the institutionalized demolition of family bonds. To love more widely is the key to cultural healing, Leon says.

"I tell people I love them all the time, and I do."

He adds that at first they are confused by the sentiment, but later say it back. "You've got to spread love like grass seeds, and water it with good words."

Siah now calls Leon dad, and Leon warmly calls him sonny boy.

Leon says that he'll never give up on the kids who come in, and that each night he'll work to let them know they are loved just as they are.

"I'm going to go earn their love, earn their respect and I'm going to earn the words that they want to share with me. I'm going to earn that 'uncle' and earn that 'dad.'"

To learn more about the Jam Sessions, or for inquires into cultural performances, contact Patrick Leon at [email protected].

Support for survivors and their families is available. Call the Indian Residential School Survivors Society at 1-800-721-0066, or 1-866-925-4419 for the 24-7 crisis line. The KUU-US Crisis Line Society also offers 24-7 support at 250-723-4050 for adults, 250-723-2040 for youth, or toll free at 1-800-588-8717.