Resolve

Resolve: The Chelsea Story and a First Nation Community’s Will to Heal explores the harrowing, personal journey of the Chelseas. Andy and Phyllis Chelsea met during their years spent at the St. Joseph’s Mission School in Williams Lake, BC. Like the thousands of others forced into the church-run residential school system, the couple brought the trauma of their mission school years into their marriage and developed an unhealthy relationship to alcohol, as a result. When their own seven-year-old daughter refused to come home with the Chelsea's after a night out, Andy and Phyllis chose sobriety to preserve their family. This decision sparked a lifetime of activism for the couple, which included overcoming the challenges caused by Canada’s disregard for their community. Throughout the twenty-seven years Andy was Chief of the Alkali Lake Esk’et First Nation, the Chelseas worked to eradicate alcoholism and took steps to overcome the rampant intergenerational trauma that existed for the people of Alkali Lake. Their efforts, their story and the perseverance of the members of their village have inspired Indigenous groups facing similar struggles throughout the world.

Carolyn Parks Mintz

Carolyn Parks Mintz is an author, freelance journalist and public speaker and was twice nominated as a Woman of Distinction. She was the content specialist of the 1997 video I Will Walk This Road With You, the producer, writer and host of the radio talk show Ontario’s West Coast Today in 2008 and authored The Eye of the Dragon: Women, Cancer and Courage (EbbTide Publishing, 2004), for which she received the Global Calgary Woman of Vision award.

Phyllis Chelsea