In 1934, before her fifth birthday, Gladys Cook was taken from her home, as so many other children were, and sent to the residential school at Elkhorn, Man., where she was to spend 12 years, lose much of her culture, and be raped several times, the first time when she was 9 years old.

Eight years ago, at an Elkhorn school reunion, she came face-to-face with one of the men who had raped her ... and she forgave him.

Between the little girl sobbing on the blood-stained sheets, and the mature woman courageously extending a hand of forgiveness, lies a truly remarkable journey: marriage to an abusive, alcoholic man; a parting from him and work at menial jobs to support her children; confronting and struggling with alcohol; reconciliation, after almost two decades, with her husband (by then sober); and ultimately establishing, without formal training, a ground-breaking agency that would eventually become known as the National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program.

While counselling Native people about alcohol and drug abuse, Gladys Cook became aware that many of them had been sexually abused as children. But she wasn't ready to deal with her own abuse, and so she turned many of them away.

It wasn't until 1988 - 40 years after she was first raped - that Cook sought therapy and began a process of healing. "It was like I'd been living in a deep dark hole," she recalls. "I went to hell and back so many times ... but every time I surfaced, I saw beauty.

"Through therapy, I began to see myself as a person. It made such a difference to me. And especially, it meant so much to my children. Before, I'd seen myself like a sergeant-major, raising them in the same kind of military style that I'd experienced in the school. Very quickly after I started therapy, I realized I didn't want that for them."

Gladys Cook has maintained a paradoxical relationship with the Anglican Church throughout her life. "It's very hard to connect God with anything that happened to me in residential school," she says. "My parents gave me the meaning of the Great Spirit, and I knew the Spirit was a support and comfort to me. The residential school's god was a mean and angry god.

"People say, 'The Anglican Church was so mean to you. Why do you keep coming back?' I tell them, 'I am the church.' But I've had lots of hate and anger inside me, and I don't want those things in my church. I have to help get rid of them."

A deeper exploration of native spiritual traditions has helped Cook reconcile traditional ways with a Christian faith. "Honesty and forgiveness are the two keys to my healing," she says. "Sometimes people say, 'I wish I had your calmness.' They don't know how hard I've worked at it."

Even to the point of taking the hand of a man who had raped her as a defenceless child and offering forgiveness. How is such forgiveness possible? Is it even desireable? Cook does not gloss over the effort it took her to reach out that day - so much so, that afterward, she had to be helped to her car. But she has no doubts that, for her, this was the right course.

"Immediately, I felt a new sense of freedom. I knew then that the Creator and I were walking hand in hand. But not just my Creator: everybody's Creator."