Black Healing Fund is an emerging volunteer-run initiative based in Tio'tia:ke / Montreal, Canada that provides Black people in the city with recurring discretionary funding for therapy and other mental health or healing focused resources. Funds are continuously raised through collective grassroots mutual aid fundraising strategies. This initiative began during the summer of 2021, amidst the righteous collective rage of Black Lives Matter protests. The idea stemmed from no longer being able to accept that Black people be expected to pay for access to healing services within an oppressive colonial system. This system has not only caused most of our trauma, but it is also continuously killing us through state-sanctioned violence.
The collective members behind Black Healing Fund believe that the cost associated with seeking mental health relief and wellness should not further burden Black folks. We believe that therapy and other forms of healing should be free for Black communities. We also believe that the limited amount of Black therapists and healers should not be asked to perform free labour. Their limited capacity and numbers are simply another symptom of white supremacist imperial capitalism. BHF holds both of these values at heart as we work to provide low-income Black people with financial means to access Black-led mental health services and healing services of their choosing.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE APPLICATION PROCESS, AND HOW BLACK HEALING FUND OPERATES
The global social uprising around the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement in tandem with the COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrated for non-Black folks how, within this extremely violent system, Black people are being re-traumatized daily by the colonial systems they must navigate. Given our current political climate where low-income Black people remain extremely socioeconomically marginalized and subject to new and growing forms of reactionary conservatism and white supremacy, the need for resources and initiatives that contribute to the mental well-being of Black communities is urgent.
Black people experience systemic racism in our daily lives through everything from racial profiling and micro aggressions to police brutality and state-sanctioned murder. This is violence that Black bodies have been subject to for generations. On top of holding this contemporary & generational trauma, Black people are expected to navigate a system that directly harms us without accessible resources that contribute to our mental wellbeing.
It is undeniable that projects such as Black Healing Fund are important in our local context (Tio’tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory Montreal, QC), but also that initiatives like this one are needed everywhere. Due to the continued deprioritization of issues that affect Black and Indigenous people at the government level, grassroots and community-led organizations are essential to the survival of our communities. The Black Healing Fund advocates for a world where no Black or Indigenous person should have to pay for healing from colonial systems that harm us. We align ourselves with anti-oppressive and anti-racist endeavours aimed at advocating for effective systemic reparations to Black people for the harms continuously brought onto them by ongoing systemic racism and the historical intergenerational trauma and legacies of slavery.
Although therapy and other healing services are not the solution to ending oppression under western white-supremacist imperial capitalism, providing Black folks with the funds necessary to access these services directly addresses the need to support their survival. Marginalized people of the world must have access to community care and necessary coping resources if we are to effectively work towards decolonization and systemic liberation for all.
“Until we can achieve total transformation, we must exist. In order to exist, we must survive…”
Although, our fundraising efforts are focused on the issue of mental health service accessibility for Black folks, Black Healing Fund stands in solidarity with all marginalized and oppressed folks. We believe that all indigenous peoples of the world and systematically marginalized peoples are entitled to liberation from white supremacist, imperial, capitalist systems. Colonialism in all its forms must be eradicated and the unceded lands held by imperial giants must be decolonized and ceded back to the indigenous peoples of the land. As a majority Black-led collective we acknowledge that Indigenous community members of Tio’tia:ke are dealing with similar struggles. Therefore we strongly urge others to start a Black (and/or Indigenous) healing, therapy and/or advocacy fund in their own local communities. We believe that the most specific community needs are often best addressed from grassroots mutual aid practices designed by and for those communities. We are also open to sharing knowledge and guidance with other marginalized groups on how we have learned and are continuing to learn how to do this work.
Black Healing Fund was inspired by other collectives doing similar work in other Canadian cities, and we would love to join forces, cross promote and amplify our efforts.