Decolonizing Our Minds and Roles as Helpers

This is the Counseling Insights Podcast, a podcast to help you develop your own insights and practices as you listen to Vicki Ends connect with counselors and helping professionals about their work, their passions, and their strategies. Welcome to another episode of the Counseling Insights Podcast. My name is Vicki Ends and I am your host. Joining me today is Jolene Haida. Jolene is of Métis, Ukrainian, and European ancestry. She is a Ph.D. candidate at York University where she specializes in indigenous social work and decolonial approaches to teaching and learning. Jolene is a registered social worker and trauma therapist with over 25 years of leadership experience in community, government, and healthcare settings. Currently, Jolene is a trainer with Crisis and Trauma Resource Institute and she owns a private practice focusing on combining indigenous knowledge, land-based practices, and trauma-focused therapy. In today's conversation, we explore how to understand colonization and decolonization as both big ideas and also day-to-day tangible parts of every person's experience. Jolene shares stories and examples of how we can start with our own experience, whether indigenous or non-indigenous, to be engaging in decolonizing our minds and our roles as helpers. And we start to explore how we can blend indigenous ways of healing with more Western, European, and academic traditions to engage in more reciprocal and connected conversations. Welcome, Jolene. Hi, Intzo, good to be here. It's always funny when I hear my bio-read to me and go, "Who's that?" Exactly. I know. "Who's that? I'm just me." It's a missing 97% of you, too, but highlighting some key things. Really glad to have this chance to just talk to you and so please. And I did want to acknowledge it because it just adds to the significance of things. I know our listeners are going to be listening to this in all kinds of different days, but you and I are having this conversation on September 30th, which in Canada is our National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and so it just adds to me the significance of chatting with you on this topic today. Yeah, I think it is, I think it's a topic that I'm hoping is on people's mind. So I just want to say, "New all the Monteque, Tante Aenebruzou, hello to all my relations over there. Any indigenous folks who might be tuning in?" So she made wichits good to be here. Yeah, wonderful. And you and I were just before we hit record. We were chatting and commiserating about the beautiful autumn weather, and I was just thinking that I spent a little time outside this morning, and it's a beautiful September day. And it always, you know, this time of year, it always does make me think about it's kind of like the beginning of the year, it's the end, start of the end of the year. And it certainly makes me think about kids returning to school and that time of year. And so there's just that real significance to Truth and Reconciliation. And for remembering the children, right? Yeah. And the adults, the children who are now the adults. And then those who are inheritors of that colonial trauma that came with that. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And that is a large part of what we're here to talk about today. But before we get into that, just to check in with you, we were, you were saying a little bit about where you are this morning, but so our listeners get to know you just a little bit more, do you want to say a bit? Either where you are today or where you're living and working and you're scrapped. Yeah. Absolutely. So right now, I am in Haudenosaunee, here on Wendat, Mississaugas of the Credit Territory. And I am just coming back. I had the pleasure of being hosted in Treaty 3, actually with CTVRI. We did some work with the folks in Sulucao, such an honor to be up there, a beautiful space. I think Sulucao probably has some of the most beautiful subsets that I've seen in Canada. It's absolutely stunning and really working with the folks up there who are doing incredible work. So it was an honor to be there and then spend some time in Thunder Bay. That's where I was born and raised. I was born and raised in a little community outside of Thunder Bay called Cacabaca Falls. And so some of your listeners might be familiar with it, but a lot probably weren't. So it was really good to be back home on the land that raised me. I still very much, even though I'm in southern Ontario, I still very much connect to that land. Yeah. It was great to be on the land and be up there, yeah, that's lovely. And maybe just to ask you a little bit about, you know, in your bio, even though, like we said, it's a snippet of who you are. However, a significant representing significant amount of your energy and time and attention right now, I think it sounds like you have and maybe still currently wear many different hats and you're completing a PhD. And so how are you finding blending those hats? Do you feel like they're starting to knit together into something so you just have one hand? Well, you know what? I think that's funny. I think that's a really good question. And I think about when, you know, and perhaps, you know, our listeners who are social workers and counselors and therapists will think about how we're often working within systems that position us as fragmented as separate. So that we do wear separate hats, right? We have different rules and we have different parts of ourself that are maybe sort of more welcomed to show up in certain areas. And so I think I really struggled with that when I came back to do my PhD and I was doing comprehensive exams, which really is like waiting through a whole bunch of literature about your topic, and I was really struggling with feeling so fragmented and so separated. And so one of the things I purposely did was I started to revisit traditional languages that my ancestors would have spoken. And one of them is Moose Cree and the other one is Meachiff. And I came across a saying in Meachiff, Nykishkasin, and it means I remember. That became really significant for me because I wanted to make sure that I remembered not only the challenges and the struggles that I went through because I firmly believe that lived experiences one of our best teachers, but I also wanted to make sure that I remembered where and from my relatives and relations, my ancestral knowledge, the land that raised me and allow those to continue to show up no matter what space I'm in. So I became really important. And I also purposely took breaks from reading literature and trying to write about these really big topics and I purposely took breaks and went back home and went out on the land. And I think that that is like a homecoming for me and that really helps remember who I am and that it's not someone who happens to be pursuing academia or happens to be a formal helper in a lot of ways, but someone who is just really deeply connected to land and spirit. And so it's an interesting question when we think about all these different places that we belong to and really allowing ourselves to integrate and show up fully as we are in all those places. I really appreciate you, use that question to kind of just unpack that idea a little bit. I really appreciate that perspective and I love that and it does sound as you talk about it, it's like, okay, I can hear it sounds like you kind of found that way to anchor yourself so that you don't feel so pregnant. I think that's really important and when we talk about decolonizing, we'll talk about that more, like how it's really about a fragmentation of ourselves. And Niki Shkysin for me was about memory, like very visceral memory, like blood memory and then implicit and explicit memory, but also about remembering, like weaving back together parts of myself. Yeah. Yeah. So it's busy and I think like many of the listeners, lots of different relationships, there's always I feel so much that I want to do, yeah, and just trying to balance out, okay, how am I going to do all of the things that I want to do? It's funny. I was just thinking that like yesterday, sitting on my deck, I mean, I'm feeling like, is this the way it's supposed to be? It always feels like there's no way I'm ever going to be able to do everything I want to do it. I always try to recognize the gift in that in terms of, you know, it's a good problem to have. I think we are. Lots of things to be excited about, lots of relationships to tap into it's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, let's dig into this topic. We've been noting a little bit that, so just to frame this a little bit, what I reached out to you about this topic recently, particularly because you are involved in organizing your thoughts on this and creating a workshop on this. And so we'll come back to maybe talking about that later too, specifically the workshop. But it's called decolonizing helping relationships, essential skills for change and it's all about these topics you've been mentioning, colonization, decolonization. And so we want to unpack some of the ideas of this workshop or just these of these concepts together. And you were noting before we started, you just made the comment that there are so many different ways to approach this, these ideas, yeah, so many, so many. Maybe I'll hand it to you in terms of where would you like to start? Where does it make sense to start? Wow. That's a really good question. Okay. Offered. Okay. Where to restart? Yeah. Well, and I think that our starting point, and I'll just speak like very personally. So my starting point is always with re grounding, reconnecting to land and spirit and who I am. And I think that when we think about what is colonization and what is settler colonialism, is they're similar but different. I think that sometimes those words are either not used enough or maybe used so much that they just use their meaning, right? Like when you use a word over and over and over again, you forget about how much violence is really inherent in that word. Yeah. So when I think about, when I think about that and I think about coming back to myself, I think about how important it is that we start with ourselves and when we were sort of thinking about and talking about at CTRL, I like, what might this workshop look like? What might, you know, this kind of work look like? It really comes back to starting to unpack your own ways that you've been colonized because whether we're indigenous, non-indigenous, I'm from mixed ancestry. So I always feel like I'm kind of a little bit of both where, yeah, part of my lineage is a settler lineage, right, where we were settled here and then part of my lineage would have been original inhabitants of the land. So, and I think a lot of people find themselves in that. And whether we're indigenous or non-indigenous, we have all been colonized in different ways. And so it's really taking a look and starting to unpack what that has looked like in our own lives and in our training as helpers, right? So we start first and then we start to work ourselves out. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that gets right at, you know, one question I did think of some possible questions to start us off, but I'm glad I handed it off to you. So one of them was, like, was kind of, who do you imagine this workshop for? But I think you just dance it like it's, it's all, all of us, yeah, yeah, all of us. And I think about it as, so there's a meach of word, Pymitasa, and it means like a good life or a balanced life. And when I think about that, I think about how colonization has really interrupted that in different ways. And so we have to look at our own self. And then we also have to look collectively, right, at how this says, how has it infected? Actually, I was going to say impacted, but infected is actually a really good word. Yeah. How does kind of infected each other as well? And our ideas about our relationships with each other. And how that has been really impacted by colonization. And so we all have the responsibility to carry that work, yeah, all of us do. Yeah. And I think especially when we're thinking about it being today and it being a day for reflection, part of that reflection is turning inward, but then it's also turning outward and knowing that we have to continue the work. Well, let's let's jump up into our heads for a moment, perhaps, let's tackle one of the big ones. So can you, okay, how would you define colonialism or colonization, maybe those are two, those are two terms, yeah, so I mean, essentially it started with land, right? So colonialism essentially is about one territory being invaded by another group of people who then appropriate the land, the people in the resources for their own benefit. And so when we think about that, we often think about that as something that happened, you know, historically years ago. And then when we think about settler colonialism, the idea is that people stayed. So the colonizers stayed or settled and took over the land. But colonization and settler colonialism isn't a historical fact, it's an ongoing appropriation of people of resources. It's often accompanied with violent policies and processes. And it's also about not just overtaking of resources or land or property, but it's, it's really centering a different ideology, a different way of thinking. And so settlers would have brought that their own understanding about what is truth, what is knowledge, what is, what is important, what does it mean to be a person, right? And so colonization gets a little bit tricky because it's ongoing. So it's not something that happened before and that we can kind of look at from an arms length. We have to look at, well, how is it actually continuing to act out like in the ways that I think in, you know, my belief systems? So it's actually like an ongoing, deeper process, yeah. So I think it's work, it's good work, it's work that can be very painful and uncomfortable. But it's also work that can be exciting because I really believe that as we're doing the work, we're building the type of future that we want to have. Yeah. Well, and maybe just to, just to connect with that a little bit, I mean, as you, as you start to define that a bit and fill in the picture, I think about, I can connect in a little bit with my own personal story, you know, and I, yeah, yes, that, especially when you, I think my own opportunity to learn a little bit about, about colonization and settler colonization, my own family comes from the, they were immigrants in my grandparents generation, came to the prairies as farmers from kind of Eastern Europe and, and as I learned as an adult, this wasn't the story that was told when I was younger, because you probably got the colonial version. I did, which is that the land was empty. There was nobody here, yeah, and, you know, comms and, you know, and, and my own family, they were, they were fleeing things in their own history and, but it was a, it was a time of opportunity, right, and, and coming as farmers. And so, coming to understand, it's like, oh, there's a whole lot that was left out in that story. And that moment of understanding, and sometimes I'll talk to people about that, and that can bring up a lot of emotion too, yeah, yeah, about what was I inadvertently part of, yeah, as part of my ancestral lineage is, we came as Ukrainian settlers, my, my grandfather was born in the Ukraine and brought over as a baby, because they were, they were encouraged to come over and settle or farm the land, and the Canadian government did that by design, because then it really justified this kind of nationalism of this new country, and that it was empty before, but we know that that's not, not true. But that whole ideology of, um, tyrannalysts, land not being inhabited by humans, and then everything was just sort of continuing to be built on by that, but when we come to this understanding of how we might be implicated in that, right, there's some uncomfortable feelings, and I think that's like an important awareness, yeah, yeah. And it's out, and just, just to add one more thing, like, I mean, that's an ongoing journey for me personally, but, but. Even a little, if I expand that circle a little, I think one of the, in the last, in 2020, 2021, when we started kind of COVID and my own family, I come from a big family, and we started, we live across Canada, and so we started doing zooms in a regular way as so many people did, but it turned into this really wonderful connection for us. But during that time there was we went through, we had some conversations that we normally don't get around to because we don't see each other all that often. And, and we started to have some conversation about this topic within our own family. And, and all I'm, I'm just wanting to highlight how that really brought it to a lot of life in me a little bit more of just my own inner emotions and thoughts and feelings, but then within relationship and conversation with my family, people I love and seeing them struggle when different people's questions and feelings, and so just really appreciated the importance and, and how that made it feel added so many layers to it as well, which were really partly difficult and also really important in terms of just trying to unpack this stuff is do it within our relationships. And so I appreciate it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And how you started with yourself and with your circle, and then it can like reverberate outwards. Right? Because now we're aware of it. And, yeah. Arun Nady Roy says, once you're, once you're aware of it, whatever it is, whatever social injustice, it is now you can't be unaware to now you have to do something with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so, so maybe we should What if then we shift to kind of that linked idea then to bring it back to our listeners a little bit, perhaps is, is there, how does this relate in your mind to our helping roles. Yeah. How might, how might Like as you say, it's an ongoing colonization is an ongoing reality. Can you can you give some examples of maybe how you think about that showing up in helping context. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I even think about, you know, one of my roles at the university is, you know, is teaching and training the next generation of social workers. And so I think one of the important things that we look at is look at the history. And the historical presence of social work. Yeah. Right. So, and many fields, not just social work. Social work, medicine. There's so many different kinds of ways in which those, those fields have been impacted by colonial ideologies and so, you know, racist view points. And then how we haven't turned sometimes really inadvertently harmed. And so one of the one of the reasons for decolonizing ourselves and our practice is that we're trying. We can't undo the harm that's been done, but we're trying to prevent further harm and we're trying to change the ways in which we do things. Yeah. Right. I think at most people that come to this field, they don't come to this field to cause harm. We come because we generally want to help. We have a vision of a better world. We want to help, you know, walk with people while they heal. We want to create a better future, even as, you know, a parent, a grandparent, an anti a future ancestor. So we have these desires. And then sometimes the systems that we work in. Can kind of get away and can put us in positions where we're inadvertently harming. And so social work has, you know, a bit of a dark history. And I think it's important that we have to sit with that. When we think about truth and reconciliation, I think we often want to rush to reconciliation, right? Like what do we do to make it better? How do we, how do we make a better move on from this moment in time? And I think one of the things that we have to really do is sit with truth listening, right, especially as non indigenous people or as a profession, you know, we're representing a profession that has caused harm in the past, we have to sit with listening to the truth of that. And so oftentimes when I'm teaching social workers, new social workers, they're really surprised about the history of our field. Yeah. And I was as well. I mean, I certainly didn't come to this field with any knowledge of that. Not any lived knowledge or experience, but, but it's one of the ways that we have to account for what has happened. Right. We have to sit with that. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe just to get like, like my mind, like, just to get a little more specific to help people relate to that, like, my mind goes to like specifically when social, like connecting to the 60 scoop, for example, and just participating in those kinds of policies that we're coming down. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Even residential schools, I mean, social workers worked with them with the church and with the RCMP to take children into the schools. And I really think about the residential school system as think about it as operationalizing this really racist ideology about what it meant to be indigenous, what it meant to be white. Yeah. And so social workers were active parts in that. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, the 60 scoop happened. And then the millennial scoop, there's actually more children in care now than there ever was at the height of the residential school. Yeah. So it's ongoing. So it's historical, but it's also a historical hasn't. And then it's really happening right now. Yeah. And as First Nations start to take control over a child welfare and education, we're hopefully starting to see some changes. But I think we got a lot of work to do. Yeah. Well, let's, let's continue with that with unpacking what, what does it mean to de-colonize? Because I see how these weave into each other. I mean, first of all, just understanding and being willing to think about what colonization is and how, like you say, it's an ongoing present reality, how we are swimming in it ourselves and participating in it and benefiting it from it, possibly. And so starting, so that I imagine is one of the first layers of creating the conditions to de-colonize it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think starting with that, when we think about our critical consciousness and our critical awareness, right? And so one of the things that you talked about in having these like meaningful discussions when you, you know, are all these new calls with your family, you're raising that critical consciousness. That wait a minute, the story that we were told, the story that we believed, the story that was sort of operationalized and we were educated about it literally within this public school system. That came from somewhere, right? And maybe that's not the only truth. So that sort of like light bulb moment, that's critical consciousness. That awareness. And then you take it further into critical thinking, well, then where did that story come from? Because there isn't only one truth and how come I heard that story and not the other story and then who benefits from the story that we heard, right? So then you start to do that critical thinking. So when people talk about like unpacking an idea, really they're like looking, they're asking those questions that they're looking through the layers. So when I think about like, say, for example, my formal training as a social worker and a trauma therapist, well, where did that come from? And it's important knowledge, but there's other knowledge as well. That's equally important, right? And we'll talk about that later when we start to talk about like weaving knowledge is. But when we think about if one knowledge or one truth is the only one that we ever hear and we never question it. Well, what is, it's always at the expense of something else, right? So that critical thinking and awareness is about really asking those tough questions and then listening to the truth to another person's truth. Yeah, yeah. So as you say that, what that sparks in my mind is, is because the question that popped up while you said it's like, but how do we find out what those questions are? And you know, I mean, yeah. And one of the ways with what you just said is through listening, but but not just in an echo, like not just listening, we have to listen to other people. We have to listen to people from different walks of life and indigenous non-indigenous view points. Yeah, yeah. Lee Maracle in her book Ravensong, which I would rereading over the summer. I love that book. But one of the things she says is, where do you begin to tell someone that their world is not one? Yeah, right? So when people start to tell their truths, you know, like I'm sure today folks are listening to the truth of survivors. And so the world that people might have thought existed when you listen to the truth of someone who's been violence by that, you realize that there is a whole other world. Um, that, that we're tapping into and that we need to listen to and be responsive to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. You look, you look like you had it that's okay, go ahead, um, no, I could go on and on and on. Um, but okay. Let's just pick it. Um, so you talked about, like, critical consciousness and critical thinking and just because you're naming those, I was looking through some of your writing because you, I had the privilege of being able to review a little bit and I know there's a third C, um, yeah, critical reflectivity. Yeah. And so folks, let's see, we'll go, well, those are, um, you know, those are concepts that I learned at school. How is this decolonizing, right? Yeah, it's because those aren't necessarily those words to come from, say, an indigenous language or a traditional sort of, um, form of healing, but this is one of the ways that we can use both. I know we're going to talk about that in a bit, but we can also use both. And so then critical reflectivity is like, think about it as a verb. So I have the awareness. Then I'm, I'm asking the questions I'm doing critical thinking and now I'm applying it to myself, so then how do I take up space as, um, as a social worker, even though my intention when I work with a person, a family, a community is not to harm, but by virtue of their truth of what social workers are, my presence already, um, might evoke some really strong feelings from them, right? So it, it's really looking at what, how is my presence impacting other people? Um, I'm often white-coated, I'm very light-skinned, so I also have to have to have those conversations with myself and others about white supremacy and how that may have benefited me, but always at the expense of somebody else. So, um, I'm not immediately violenceed by being visually racialized. Can you say that again? So then my seat felt like there was a lot in those words you just said. I was sorry. It was good. I just want to, I just want to hear it again and be unpacking a little. I'm not immediately violent, um, because I'm not visibly racialized. So white supremacy offers me a level of protection, where I'm not the target of racialized violence, right? Because I'm not visibly racialized. Um, and so one of the things, um, that happens when we begin to decolonize is we look at the really complex ways that these colonial ideologies and systems have harmed us, but then also we have to look at the ways that we might have benefited from it. And even that, that light skin protection, that's an uncomfortable benefit, right? It's not one that I asked for, um, but it's one that I have to, that I have to be admitting that it came at somebody else's expense. And I think that's where that uncomfortable feeling comes in, right? When we have these big conversations, um, but one of the things I always say to my students and to people that I'm training is that uncomfortability that you feel is often a sign that things are shifting. So when we stay with it, that's when things start to change, right? We're uncomfortable because like our foundation is shifting and, oh, that doesn't feel good. Um, I don't want to benefit from somebody else's oppression, but that's the nature that's the nature of this, right? Yeah. And I, I, I love that we've landed on, on talking about this a little bit. And I want to spend just a few more moments here if that's okay, because I feel like this, this is getting at some of that really nitty-gritty, like that, um, in terms of, uh, for any person wherever they're at in this journey, like, that feeling of whatever is the source, that feeling of uncomfortability, as you said, because I think, I mean, I know this for myself and I think I understand this is true for the people that I think, because that is so uncomfortable, that's part of why we might resist or have some fear or have some anxiety or not want to go there, and there is an urge to get out of that feeling really quickly. So we want, it's like, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Right. Yeah. What's the answer? And then, so that uncomfortability is us sitting and listening to truth. So listening to somebody else's truth talk, right? Even if it's as a concept, not as a direct conversation, but you and I are sitting with that truth, that white supremacy has benefited from some of us, if that's the truth that we're going to talk about, and we have to sit with that and spend time in that, we can't rush to the finish line, right? So there's that urge to leave, like you said, and sometimes people will talk about, you know, as a critique of reconciliation, like we have to get to truth first, right? Before we can get to, how do we reconcile? Yeah. So we have to sit in truth first. And I really want to emphasize that this isn't about guilt, this is about growth. So coming back to, this isn't about guilt, this is guilt, this is about growth for myself, for each other, for indigenous and non-indigenous communities, this is about that. And true decolonization doesn't happen in places of shame or blame, right? I think about Kathy Abslin, I can't remember where she wrote it, but she wrote in the absence of knowledge we blame each other. And that really stuck with me because I thought that's so true. In the absence of knowledge, we blame each other. So it's easy to point fingers, right, at each other, or to rush to that innocence that I didn't mean to do it, I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't know, I can't help that, I look like that, all those kind of ways of deflecting, because as counselors, we know when we sit with an uncomfortable feeling, our first urge is to jump out of it, right? Like we're often teaching our clients, "No, you got to stay with the feeling, you got to stay with it." And so I think that that's an important part of it, absolutely, yeah. And I hope, yeah, I hope that's helpful to some folks to give that some language. I know that was always helpful for me to hear that again and again, because it's that notion of, because we do want to know, we need some kind of handhold, or handhold, what am I talking about? Like, something to anchor our notion of, "Yeah, how do we know we're doing this, right?" And maybe that's, "How do I know I'm doing this?" European thing to say, "How do I know I'm doing it right?" Right? So I will own that, but what does it mean to do it right? Exactly, and also that we're going to get it wrong, and that's okay. And so the other thing that I think about is I go back to maybe some more traditional indigenous knowledge systems and ways of thinking about things, and that I remind myself that the emphasis is on the process, not the outcome. So the colonized part of my brain thinks about outcomes, deliverables, jobs, tasks, goals, endgame, moving on to the next, but then I remind myself that this is about being in good relation with each other, and that is ongoing, and that it's really about the process. So we're engaging in the process, and we're doing it together. Yeah. Because that's the other piece of it. We have different jobs to do, but they're important, and we're really literally all on this together. And I think about how much that critical awareness has risen even with things like the climate crisis. Like we are literally interdependent on each other in the land for survival, right? So come back to that, come back to the focuses on the process. I don't have to rush to the finish line because there isn't a right to wrap our heads around. Yeah, absolutely. So I know there are so many probably different possible ways we might think about steps or what this might look like. But what else would you like to talk about in terms of just what does it mean to decolonize when we're thinking about our health controls? So one of the things I like to think about is, and actually Luis McCay, one of our elder at CTRI, she does this beautiful teaching about the ripples in the pond. And it was actually really funny when I was working, so I was working with a group of people to write the decolonizing manual. It's a collective work. There's so many brilliant minds at CTRI that are helping with this. And when I was envisioning, I was looking for a vision or a metaphor about, well, what does it look like? And I thought about a ripple in the pond about how then nothing is ever different to the ecosystem, not knowing that that is actually one of the teachings that Luis shares. those kind of things. funny moment where I came back to oh okay well it's kind of nice when you see when you see that nod and I think about the ripple in the pond that we're starting with ourselves and then we're slowly moving outwards right so we start with ourselves in terms of you know my own belief systems and my own ways of thinking and where that comes from and who does that who benefits from that and who potentially is harmed by that way of thinking or that belief system or that way of knowing and then when we move into our helping relationships with other people we start to think about it in terms of when we're sitting with people and when they're coming to us for our help I have to think about it as they're on their own path of healing and I have some offerings it might be um a traditional sort of storytelling maybe role that I play or it might be um using traditional medicines or something or it might be my formal trading right whatever it might be those are my offerings that I'm bringing into people's lives and that they're taking that and then they're moving forward with that but then it becomes their own yeah and so then then it's theirs right once we gifted it's theirs and they also have something to offer us so this idea of reciprocity is really embedded in many indigenous knowledge systems this idea that really our work together is is like a circle where it's reciprocal so we're trying to acknowledge and minimize power and balances right that one of us doesn't sort of have power over or expert knowledge and another one is coming for the expert knowledge we're acknowledging that we both have a vast variety of knowledge and experiences and that those are reciprocal we're sharing them together yeah so really yeah so for whatever our role is with folks really thinking about trying to deconstruct a little bit maybe some of our own assumptions of our own power and importance and importance is a good idea I mean and we worked really hard you know studied for hours and wrote paper after paper after paper to get this knowledge right and I know because I'm still in it right I'm still obviously in academia and I see that as very valuable knowledge but I also see my lived experience I see my relationship with the land as valuable knowledge I see my relationships with other people and with knowledge in reverse has very valuable knowledge right and that one sort of doesn't overpower the other one yeah yeah yeah well and so and one of the things we did want to come back to and I think we're starting to talk about already is in your writing also you talk about you use that phrase of weaving knowledge as an important part of this and so I think you're starting to talk about that in a way already do you want to expand on what does that mean yeah weaving knowledge for sure so I mean it's certainly not new concept it's written about by so many different authors and thinkers and so it's certainly not my concept and it's not a new concept when I think about it there's a tradition there's a teaching about sweetgrass for example I actually have I always have sweetgrass on my desk I love the smell of sweetgrass mainly because it reminds me of being back home it grows rampantly all over Thunder Bay and so you step off the plane and you get this big inhale of that beautiful smell and so for me it's immediately grounding and obviously connected to good memory but sweetgrass always we braid it we dry it and we braid it and you know very much like our hair one strand is fragile on its own but together when we when we blend them together it's very strong and so when I think about the strength of being able to weave our knowledge is I think about some of the knowledge that you might come into with from your ancestors your experiences and your teachings and how different that is from mine and that that's kind of the point yeah and that together we're pulling sort of the best of both and I think about even the term weaving it's a verb so think about this as a process that's not ending it's not okay I did a certification and I can check that box and now it's done I'm getting cold right yeah that was hard and I'm done I don't have to do that again right think about it as a process it's a verb yeah and so we're continuing to do it because we're always learning so we're always learning to growing and so we're always kind of blending and weaving these different knowledge is yeah yeah so I like to think about it that way that aha it's a verb that means I keep doing this well and and of course my thoughts go back to earlier in our conversation you know also that makes much sense given the the context you said that this is colonization is an ongoing reality right and so our resistance has to be too yeah yeah yeah I think about too as you know for me I'm always sort of looking at connections between what's happening on the land and what's happening you know in our own relationships for example and in my research that certainly looks at that like the connections between violence on the land and violence in our bodies for example exploitation of the land and exploitation of our bodies and when I think about you know sometimes we think about things within the bubble that we exist so if I'm a therapist or and I am and I'm a trauma therapist if I think about weaving knowledge is just within the context even of healing from trauma then I'm I'm opening up to maybe a certain type of knowledge but when I start to look at all knowledge as equal and valuable I start to sort of open my eyes and open my mind to potentially learning from say knowledge that land offenders hold and the stories and the messages that they hear and how I'm weaving that into my understanding of trauma healing wellness like all these concepts right so we're also sort of pushing out word against our own sort of bubble of knowledge that we that we tend to exist in yeah if that makes sense can you I'm wondering if can you maybe try to share a couple of examples of just like how have you heard other people or how have you maybe witnessed or seen people kind of apply this in their own in their own lives yeah so there's been some really good work done in like indigenous feminism for example about the how violence on the land is directly related to from their perspectives who violence on women's bodies and how those two things are interconnected and one of the one of the things that I pull from that is that when we're honoring our our spaces and places in the land we're from we're really honoring ourselves in each other so sometimes we think about those things as separate okay great we think about like self-determination and choice and voice and body integrity and we don't necessarily think about that as connected to maybe the climate crisis or land defense but what a lot of land defenders and feminist researchers are saying is that they are they are very intimately connected so the same sort of ideology that says that we can exploit the land and extract what we need from it is is similar to the ideology of violence and exploitation of of bodies of our own bodies right for for gain and it links in with of course like capitalism and money and and all those other kinds of things so it's it's really interesting but when I also come back to healing one of the things that I often hear from people that I work with and people that I walk with is that returning to the land returning to um cultural traditions spiritual beliefs really connecting with that helps them heal too yeah yeah yeah and I think we're tapping into maybe some ancient knowledge that we're not as separate from the land as we like to think we are and so when we care for that and we nurture it we're caring and nurturing for ourselves as well. Yeah, and you know Julian is just right now my what sparked in my mind was my very first question to you and I'm connecting with what you said there where I asked you about different hats and you talked about how we live in work and systems that fragment us and I'm hearing that echoed now in what you're talking about right of you know of how we walked in a circle look at that I love that um yeah yeah of just allowing yourselves to you know kind of sit back and as we listen to be open to hearing how yeah noticing all these interconnections between all these parts of our lives or our clients lives yeah yeah yeah absolutely absolutely and you know I firmly believe that that knowledge will come to you in ways that you often don't expect perhaps in ways that you didn't want it to right um but it comes to you for a reason and you know I think about Indigenous storytelling for example and um you know I can remember going to my grand um and and many people will resonate with this whether it's Indigenous or non-indigenous you go and you have a problem and what do I do and she says well let me tell you it's totally right yeah and so you know you gotta put the gun on okay we're gonna be a girl we're gonna empty and it's in there somewhere but I have to find I have to find that little nugget of wisdom right I have to do the work of finding it and making the connection yeah it's not going to be directive and most good storytellers will give you stories that unfold over time so that's the other beauty of like being in relation with people is that you know as as helpers and as the as someone being helped even we're never quite sure when um what something we said or what something someone else said will resonate with us and make a lot of steps right so we have this conversation today and a month from now something might happen to me and I'll go oh I remember when you said that that's what that meant that makes sense now right yeah so they start of they sort of stay with us and then um I think that's that beauty of that value of interconnectivity yeah I mean that's that's very central to a lot of different indigenous knowledge systems um yeah yeah well Julian as I suspected we could easily um I feel like we barely kind of I feel like we just sat down I know that's how these things go so as I say to most of my guests maybe all of them sounds like I'll have well you'll have to come back sometime so we can continue absolutely I feel like we just got started but I just want to give you a chance to to to add a nugget if you'd like I mean I I think you've given our listeners lots of ways to think about this but I always like to highlight I always like to ask if there's maybe it's something you we've already talked about you just want to lift up or maybe there's another idea that you haven't had a chance to say but especially for maybe folks that are listening where maybe this does feel like a newer topic or they've heard about it but they haven't really thought about it as something that they've been able to step into or really applying to themselves and I'm curious if there's something you want to highlight of just encouraging folks to to kind of try try out or be able to step into this yeah absolutely I think um so I think first of all if you're listening thank you for for sitting with us and sort of walking in this circle with us um I think there there are a lot of of indigenous writers um who have so much wisdom that's already been shared so I would encourage people to like continue it maybe the sparked an interest um continue though um reading from indigenous writers reading indigenous literature um what what are the the treaty responsibilities that you have in the area that you're actually living and working on right now so doing that work um there's a great article by one of my mentors Dr. Ruth Green and um she talks about what is a guest and what is a settler yeah and I think for people that identify as settlers it's helping to shift from well what does that actually mean and what would it mean for me to be a good guest because we're guests I'm guests on this land this isn't my traditional territory so how can I be a good guest to the people who are the traditional caretakers and also to the land itself yeah um so doing that expanding your own knowledge um and listening to other indigenous writers and I think for indigenous people that are um that are repowering remembering um reconnecting with their heritage and with their belief systems and with each other like to keep going just to continue to keep going yeah and I'll just note for listeners I mean maybe I'll I can connect with you and and we can include in the show notes maybe a couple of links to some suggests maybe to the article you're mentioning or some authors that if you want to absolutely I have a I'm going to figure out a way to include include um a link for folks to be able to find out more um yeah there's a lot of good work that's been done that's that's there and as soon as you tap into it then it'll lead you to another and another and another yeah yeah and of course we should come back around and just talk briefly uh we'll also have a link to um if people do want to find out more about the workshop that you're developing tell us a bit more where that's that right now or when when is it going to be available oh I feel like it's so close yeah it is so close so I think we're actually um we're we're almost at the at the end of this version of it I have no doubt that um that it'll be updated and and like most knowledge and most stories it will change with time right um but from where we sit right now we're almost finished and I think we're actually ready to launch it at the end of October so that will be very very exciting yeah I'm really looking forward um and it's been such a pleasure to just it's a team effort and I it's been such a pleasure to work with um other people at CTRI lovely really good group wonderful so yes so that's another way for listeners if if you're wanting to find out more explore these ideas um there will be a workshop available through CTRI and and I imagine other resources that that are available on our website so uh we'll include a link to the description for that and where people can find out more too yeah wonderful yeah this has been fun we have to talk to you if we find yeah yeah you probably didn't even get to the page two of your notes or anything I know I'm talking notes and I'm like uh well thank you so much Jolene as as I anticipated this was very delightful and um it's been really meaningful and I'm not surprised you've sparked I've learned and I appreciate that you've sparked different ideas and reflection for me and so um I look forward to thinking about that for the rest of my day um and I know it will be meaningful to our listeners too um thank you so much it truly was a pleasure to visit with you yeah and to you our listeners thank you for joining us I hope you enjoyed our conversation and come back again for the next one in a month's time and so until then be well and stay here with us. Looking for free resources and training in the areas of trauma counseling and mental health be sure to check out our website at www.ctrinstitute.com