Students at Bishop Gallagher Senior Elementary School gathered for an assembly today to listen to the story of Tania Ross, who was a former member of the Indian Posse gang and spent 20 years in federal prison for first-degree murder.

Since leaving prison, Ross has been on a journey of healing: she now conducts motivational wellness speeches and manages the Blue Turtle Healing Lodge, which helps at-risk youth.

For years, the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS) has done presentations to prevent gang recruitment in school-age children. Matt Vis is the media relations coordinator for the TBPS. He explains that speakers like Ross have a lived experience that allows them to “share that perspective with students and really talk to them in a way that police officers can’t.”

Vis explains that presentations like these are about teaching kids to build trust with adults in their lives to become less vulnerable to recruitment into a gang lifestyle.

As the manager of the Blue Turtle Healing Lodge, Tania Ross works with exactly the sort of vulnerable young people that Vis describes. Ross explains that she helps the youth she works with by giving them “unconditional love and no judgement.”

“I don’t talk to them like an authority, like ‘that’s disrespectful, go to time out.’ That doesn’t work for high-risk kids. I give them me. I give them the realness.”

Teaching youth in this way is part of Ross’s healing process, but it’s also a responsibility: “The elders and the old people always say, when you’re taught something, it’s not yours anymore, and you have to give back. This is my way of giving back to Turtle Island, to Canada, to my communities. I love what I do.”

Ross is currently in Thunder Bay to speak to a number of schools in the district over several days.