Poundmaker's Lodge, named after the nineteenth century Cree leader, is a treatment centre in St. Albert, Alberta, where Native people troubled by addiction to drugs and alcohol can come together for mutual support, to partake of healing rituals like the sweatlodge and to rediscover their traditions. Filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin is careful to set Native alcoholism within its historical and socio-cultural context, emphasizing the despair of a people dispossessed of land, culture, language and dignity. As people at the Lodge recount their own personal histories of families disrupted and despairing, it is easy to see why alcohol becomes a way of blurring the pain. The film is especially useful in helping young people to understand that social problems like alcohol and drug abuse exist for a variety of reasons, many of them cultural, social and political, and that they cannot be explained in purely personal terms.