Episode 6: Know Who You Are. Know Where you Come From. with Dr. Ed Connors and John Rice

I remember in penitent the biggest thing that was given to me was being able to smudge, and smudging is such a small thing, and our healing. One of the arguments I had when I was when we were talking about the Sended Team meeting. I said, "Well, the chief of Psychiatry to keep to my reserve, and our community told him he could only administer aspirants." Then he would understand what I'm dealing with here, and being told I can only smudge. The things that we do in the circles that John and I have been part of with the Feather Careers Leadership for Light Promotion, they have been focused on actually helping people to know where they come from, know who they are, understand why they're here, and then see and understand where they're going. What happens with colonization is it's made it extremely difficult for people to answer those questions. Those are the voices of Dr. Ed Connors and John Rice. Dr. Connors is a psychologist of Mohawk and Irish descent who has worked with First Nation communities across Canada since 1982. John Rice, Zagaske, Makwadodem is an Ojibwe Anishinaabe Nini from wasoxing First Nation near Perry Sound, Ontario, and a member of the Three Fires Medaewins Society. They are our guests on this episode of Bittaguel, visits with First Nation Psychologists. Bittaguel means come on in and cry. We are using this word to welcome you to our podcast. Ani, hi, I'm Brenda Restoul. Hi, I'm Holly Graham. Together we are working on Bittaguel, visits with First Nation Psychologist as part of the Ontario Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research. The Ontario near is a collective dedicated to improving the treatment of mental health issues among Indigenous people using research and Indigenous knowledge. The central theme in our work is healing from trauma and reducing addictions. The purpose of our podcast series is to mobilize and share knowledge related to trauma repair, recovery from addictions, community survivance, and care across First Nations, Mati and Inuit communities in Canada. This project aims to elevate the voices of our people's experts and leaders working in the mental wellness field to promote collective learning and mobilize knowledge to support our well-being. We plan to visit with Indigenous Psychologists and health leaders in the mental wellness field to share their stories, knowledge, and lived experiences. We will discuss how that relates to challenges and successes in navigating and working within systems of care and strengths-based and cultural approaches to healing. And today we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Ed Connors and John Rice De Bittaguel. Dr. Ed Connors' most recent work has involved development of Indigenous Life Promotion projects. This includes feather carriers, leadership for life promotion. Through his career, Dr. Connors has worked with elders and apprenticed in a traditional First Nations approach to healing. John Rice is a lifelong student of Mekon's teaching, a teaching that speaks to the spirit's journey to life through life and its return to the spirit world. John is also a co-founder of the feathers carriers leadership for the life program, a program that speaks to suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. So welcome to Pitaguay, Ed and John. John, let's start with you. Can you tell us how you got started in mental health care and wellness? Oh, let's start years ago. When I was 15, I was big for my age and I also had a little bit of a quick-temper, where we lived on the reserve. Sometimes my helicals would become violent, my mother would send me into their homes to settle things down. I came in through interventions that you could say that, like, suddenly found me disputes. And after all, it came to be that people would call me up to talk to smooth things out. And then in my early 20s, I became involved in a suicide intervention. People would call me up, and they didn't drink living or families would call me up when they had a member who wanted to die. I did that, and in a natural way, I guess I didn't have any training or any kind of such. It was through experience. My understandings came from my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, who took me side as a little boy, and taught me about a lot of things, how the mind works, and how people can become. Leaning tours becoming what she would call the Windigle, and there were interventions that she described to me that we can do when a person is heading in that direction. As she talked about that as being gentle nudges, and basically when you see someone going away, you remind them how to be themselves. The way she talked about it was it didn't sound like a crisis, because by the time something became a crisis, it was like, almost too late. So I guess what she was teaching was we have to look after each other all the time from the beginning. When you see someone acting a little bit out of source, that's when you talk to them. You don't wait till they're doing something. A destructive, self-destructive, or harmful. That was a really strong element to what she taught me. We look after people as you know, and they're used to them. You're aware of who they are and all their behaviors, so that when they act a little bit about a source you can already intervene. So I guess you could say that's what happened. And the teachings that I've learned from her and other hails is all along, sure it's holistic body, mind, and spirit. But from what she taught me, and the path that I followed and helping people having a strong mind, I guess you could say in its modern time it wouldn't be done to dealing with mental wellness. That's amazing to know that things can start early with us getting into wellness and mental wellness, spending time with our grandparents who held so much knowledge and that that can pave the way for the continued work that you do now. I was lucky that way. And did what brought you into the practice of psychology? It goes back like John, you know, to my childhood, and I grew up off reserve way from my grandparents. So I didn't have the advantages of that same type of role modeling, although I did actually have contact with my grandparents on all the days when we'd go back to our community to visit. But it was really my mother who actually was the role model for me. And my mother who I think I probably about agreed eight or nine education at the most in terms of formal education was actually a natural psychologist. I recall having experiences with her going out shopping and coming into a food line and at the cash woman behind would start talking to my mother. And in no time at all, she'd be talking about the problems and struggles she had in life. And my mother was just that natural kind of person who people just found easy and safe to speak with, I guess. And so I saw that. And so in my, I guess my teens peers were doing the same with me. They often consulted with me around struggles and issues that they had. So by the time I got into the end of my high school, I had already determined that I would potentially either become a study psychology or psychiatry. And so I chose to go to McMaster University where I had the potential to do both. And within the time I was there, determined that psychology was the direction for me. So when I applied to OISI, I applied for the doctoral program in psychology. And when I went to OISI and was studying there, doing my doctorate, studying psychology, I was quite surprised because of the teachings that I had about how we as Indigenous people think that were fundamental around health and wellness which spoke to what often we refer to now as the medicine wheel and what John kind of referred to in terms of my body and spirit. And I also, they also, of course, in the medicine wheel include the heart. I was quite surprised because in psychology, as I was studying it, it seemed to be void of almost, well, almost everything other than mind it to degree heart. They were short in their understanding of what really is health and wellness from an Indigenous perspective. So I was really inclined then to want to study and learn more about Indigenous psychology, which took me into then taking a position in Northern Ontario in Treaty 3 when I graduated from there on. I immersed myself in studying and learning from our Indigenous elders, healers, and medicine people about what is Indigenous psychology. And in the process of doing that, we formed a number of my colleagues from across Canada then formed what we previously had called the Native Mental Health Association of Canada. And I began working with that organization from its inception right to the present. And so that's been my journey of really understanding psychology from an essence to perspective, both from an Indigenous worldview as well as from an Indigenous worldview. And I see the value of both. You know, what's interesting is both John and Ed, their initial introduction was through the role modeling of their mothers. Yes. Yeah, it's a women. And in our communities, it's certainly in the Haudenosaunee communities, we're actually a matrilineal society. So we actually carry our clan membership through our mothers side. In our communities, in our form of governance even, the women are actually the ones who have the final say in matters. So the clan mothers are the ones who actually make the final decisions even after the chiefs have decided. If they don't agree, they send those decisions back for further discussion. And we are very much influenced by our women starting with our mothers. After all, how did we get here anyway? That's right. They've played a critical role in bringing all of us here. I'm wondering if I could ask you, Ed, this podcast is looking at trauma and I'm curious based on your journey from having to build on the training you received as a psychologist. What have been some of those key successes and challenges that you've experienced? Well, certainly in that journey, as I told you, as I entered into our communities, I began learning from our elders, healers, and medicine people. But the majority of what we were actually dealing with, that they were dealing with, was the impacts of trauma, the impacts of colonization specifically. And those impacts are the keys to the healing, at least in more current times. Since colonization began, that became of greater interest to me. I've studied that from the perspectives of how we think of trauma, and how we deal with trauma, as well as from the non-indigenous worldview of how they think of trauma. And as I say, both have value. I always think of it because from an Indigenous worldview, we think of everything as being equal to nothing greater, nothing less than. When we think with that kind of mind, we can see the value of everything. The gifts that come from, for example, the different forms of knowledge that are available to us in the world. Thanks, I appreciate your description of how our worldview really can inform how we respond to trauma and how we could actually understand it and therefore make a response. What about you, John? What have you seen as some key successes and challenges in working in trauma-informed ways in our communities? We've always had our own way of looking after each other. And the biggest leap I guess came from when it jumped into clinical care. And 20 years ago, I got a job at the mental health center in Pettite as a healer. The big shift I guess came from just the fact that it was the beginning of the recognition of how our people little after themselves in terms of our mental wellness. When I got to the mental health center, one of the things I was missing was the spirit, the attending to the spirit of the people who came to that hospital. In our culture, it tends to that first because we talk about ourselves as being spirit beings in physical form, the foundation to who we are spiritual. And we're in a physical form and the mental aspect of that is how our mind reflects the reacts in them at just a life. Actually, you start kicking your well-winner in the womb and you do that your whole life. Not there yet because I haven't loved that law. That's what happens when you leave. The other aspect of it that's kind of in our culture is very private. There's a fourth to it. I guess one of the things that translate into English is that the shadow. It's basically your body, your body, your body, your spirit, how they communicate to each other during lifetime. And it does talk about things like a trauma, and it does talk about things like what they would call doing to watch a addicted behavior, those kind of things denial. Those are things or elements of what we call the shadow. That's a very private thing and isn't spoken about openly. You would only trust to speak to someone. For me, even personally, that leap from coming from our communities and going into an institution, we always have the sense that you go into a hospital to die. And that's why our word "Oxhulgamek" means a place of sickness. Not only do sick people go there, but people who work there become sick after a while, and they stop their word. It's reflective of that whole experience. And I don't really understand what creates that or what causes that. It may be due to the lack of spirituality in that place. What I would say over the years, the greatest recognition is that you find institutions with healers working in them now. The other side to that is how we practice as healers. I remember in penitent, the biggest thing that was given to me was being able to smudge. And smudging is such a small thing in our healing way of being things. We used to have to establish policies, have to do all these things. When I got there, if someone needed a smudge, I had to apply to plant services to use a gymnasium which could take up to a week. And as much as I argued, the person needs to smudge right now, so we need a faster process. To eventually run into it, I would just take clients outside. There was a big tree that we wouldn't smudge by, and that was easier to work that way. And I think one of the arguments I had one time was when we were talking about this in the team meeting. I said, "Well, if the chief of psychiatry came to my reserve, and our community told him he could only administer aspirants, then he would understand what I'm dealing with here, and being told I can only smudge." So over time, what are people doing in different places? Waypoint now, far away the mental health center in penitent, to have the sweat lies there though, which is a great evolution for care of our people. And by and large, my work in CMHA and other places where there have been more of our methodologies integrated in how our people can attend to our well-being, where people who go into there. I really appreciate how you've highlighted that the challenges are really in the understanding that comes from mainstream systems like psychiatric centers and health facilities. And their policies make it challenging to do the work that we know needs to be done. I think that speaks a lot to the difficulties we have in getting our practices and our world views as validated and being credible practices, credible knowledge and credible evidence that works. And that's how you started out your comments. We have within our teachings an understanding of trauma. We understand what it is. We understand that our spirit interacts with other parts of our being. And then we can support people to address trauma and that we're not given those abilities. And I loved that comment about if we had psychiatrists only able to administer aspirin, would they understand how they are limiting our ability to care for our people. I really appreciate that. I think that's a good analogy. I like that analogy as well when you're talking about working within, you know, constrictions and barriers. John, you've shared a bit about the importance of using practices that are grounded in First Nations models and concepts of mental health. And I was just wondering if you just share a few more stories or examples of what that is look like in your experience with the work you've done. Yeah, going back to the stories my mother told me was a little boy. You would then bush the trickster. You know, we hear those lots. The other element that he was able to share was the window on the one who was the cannibal. And she talked about how someone progressed on that road to becoming a window. But also how the trickster moves along with that. That's like a paradigm. I guess it could be like you could look at it like a Yin Yang symbol kind of thing within the trickster is the window within the window was a trickster. But to understand both of those are people we try to maintain in between that in between those two elements to walk in ballots. I guess you could say on one mind you could go off to the cannibal on the other mind you could be too much of the trickster. So somewhere in there by listening to both sides of you to both of those stories we walk in and a good balanced way curiosity is what made me apply to work in the mental health center and penitentiary. I saw that as an opportunity to see how my grandmother's teachings fit into that. So I had the opportunity when I worked there working the whole bridge the maximum secure facility for the most dangerous people in Canada that I think at that time they call them the top five top five psychopaths. So it's interesting to for me to relate that to what my grandmother talked about in the window. I would say culturally and honest is this people they can't become the wind to go they have a different kind of a belief system and we did discuss that at times when I work in penitentiary. Poverty is fee systems can create extremes in what can happen to some of the psychologically our window was different than what I suck up at this is the way we talk about it. I first saw what psychopathy was and I got to relate that to my grandmother's teaching that I work there is similar but different and I would say the line that separates the main is the cultural is the cultural evolution. How they can become the extreme and in both of those cultures. So it was a really interesting experience for me. I guess you could say I was doing my own research see what my grandmother talked about all that fit into that place. But the biggest thing what in the middle hall center when I work there was to set that whole again laco the spirit and how it relates to wellness. People kept thinking about religiosity when we talk of spirituality or the spirit. The spirit is as real as your mind and your body as the way it is for our people and the need the tension needs to be attended to. It was interesting because once where you can share with you one young man from up north he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. And when they first started talking he would see a maji monitor in the corner of the room an evil spirit and he would just shimmer. He would say he shared and now it's a who share. He would say maji monitor. So we know in our teachings there is no such thing as an evil spirit. In fact we say that one of my teachers used to say in what the devil came here with Columbus. Columbus brought the devil here we didn't have that here concept of bad spirit. But this young man through conversations when we talk about him and what he does with his mind. And he came to realize through conversation that at the monitor monitor that he was seeing in the corner he was only imagining it. It was always imagination it wasn't real. So the interesting thing not too long after that he was re-diagnosed and he was diagnosed as not having schizophrenia. And he was said to a medium secure facility after that. So just that conversation of actually what the spirit is and how we view it here. And then our people it is an element that's important to well-being. And we want one of the things we say about the spirit could Shimano do the great mystery is all kind the same and goodness. Even our people when they leave this world their spirits become good. That's why we only speak well of our ancestors or people from the spirit world. Because that's who they are when they become spirits. So that was one of the things that when we look at what spirituality is in that setting anyway. That's a fascinating story when you think about a young man with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and with your ability to bring in the concept and discussion of spirituality. How that basically evolved and changed you know what he was presenting with in symptoms he was exhibiting in terms of how he was affecting his daily life. Such a simple remedy you know just having the conversation and the teachings that's remarkable. Yeah that was one of the things that I didn't realize what I was bringing to the mental health center. That was why I was what our people do and how we look after each other. I mean that was just an out natural element of how he related to people. So what happened when I came into the mental health center to fact that someone would talk to a client. Someone that would go for a walk with them and spend time with them you know helping them sort about how they feel live. All what the world view is how they see things that that would be therapeutic for them. So later on in when I was in the early psychosis team at same age. That was one of the things the psychiatrist there used to say in make sure you don't see John you need to talk to him. You need to talk about your who you are in this how we look after you. So in our storytelling tradition as people by conversation narrative has very important to lending to well being. And what would you add if you could comment on the importance of using practices that are grounded in first nations models and concepts of mental health. As I listen to John I you know I think of again my journey across the country over the last 40 years with their communities and with the healers medicine people you know those people who have actually have been doing and continue to do the healing work in our communities. And despite the fact that they're often were not recognized and it went for a longest period of time. He had a way from the view of the non-indigenous service providers and including the police because for a long period of time our practices were outlawed. You know they had to hide to do it but they continue to do it and I use as the example the stories my mother told about our community where we had healers within the community and it was a Catholic mission before it was a reserve. So the impact of colonization on our people was extreme for hundreds of years. Yet we maintained the teachers and the people who were healers but they hit away and my mother told me about the different ones that they would go to depending on what they needed for healing. I also think of it in terms of what I've learned over that period of time that many of the things that we continue to do in our practices are things that have actually only become to light amongst the non-indigenous medicine people. Specifically practices such as trauma and informed care and trauma treatment. We've been dealing with that since contact and our healers have many practices to be able to address that and address it quite effectively. It's interesting because at one point in time I was invited to participate with a group of psychologists who were all studying trauma and they were so excited about what they were learning because they were basically they said we can't really understand people's psychological struggles unless we know what has happened to them. Their big discovery was you need to ask people what has happened to you. So that was their great discovery. Well it's pretty basic and we've known that way before that ever was discovered by those who began framing it as trauma informed care and trauma recovery. So I actually look at it from those two perspectives and I say well you know an actual fact not only do we know that but in many ways we've informed that and we've informed that but it's as often has happened you know we don't our people don't get the recognition for that knowledge and the effectiveness and power of that knowledge. I guess in the reality we don't really have to worry about it because as I said we just keep keep doing what we need to do and this whole work that John and I have worked on and evolved to you know with many other people now across the country which we call life promotion. You know that concept is becoming a huge concept now for all people not just for indigenous communities there's a lot of things that are now evolving and impacting the development of mental health and wellness virtually around the globe. The whole work of the cultural safety concepts that came out of the Maori women the nurses from bus from New Zealand that now is virtually a you know word word and a concept now being practiced globally. I think there's a time now where perhaps we need to make that more obvious to those from non-indigenous society and because like you know we often there's been people over written books about the different things we've shared with non-indigenous society. We've shared with non-indigenous society like corn and the corn's beans and squash and stuff like that that that's great but you know we've we've shared a heck of a lot more than than than just the foods and many other things right and I think our knowledge that comes to healing and medicines I think are extremely important. The naturopathic care is an indigenous practice those practices are are endemic to indigenous societies worldwide yet the the dominant medicines you know basically suppress that and oppress that that knowledge and often treated as if it's lesser than you know if they could form the minds that our ancestors carried which actually saw the benefits of all all would benefit. There's a lot that we can do yet and maybe the time has come now to open the door to speaking to these things especially now that they've taken raise the restrictions and the oppression in the forms of actual threats of being jailed you know so many of our ancestors were jailed for their practices their knowledge. And you know including our leaders yes and I do think there's still a little bit hesitancy I can speak for myself to explore these concepts with my own teachings as a child with my free culture and to talk about spirituality there's still that hesitancy our current epistemology has not made room for indigenous pedagogies and our methodologies and and our approaches to health and wellness and so even though I couldn't agree more that we have led the path in so many ways for how health and well. Wellness is currently being dressed today and not being acknowledged there's a bit of fear and I know that I have hesitancy to talk about certain aspects that you've talked about spirituality because I also very much believe that if you don't address the spirit that that is the most fundamental core part of wellness and particularly look at mental wellness. It's almost like if you talk about that it's just not considered credible you know it's just not given that same space in academia because we don't have the measurement tools that are required for validation to measure these concepts in a way that would be acceptable in a western metrics. And so you know I struggle with that even though that there's much literature that's been published with quantum physics and in other arenas that are drawing more attention to energy and spirit. I look at my role as an academic is we're supposed to be stretching epistemology I mean that's why we have these academic positions but even yet when we talk about these and and trying to bring some of this content more to mainstream versus being on the borders in the periphery there is resistance well absolutely and it's not just resistance it's oppression because it's actually it's a clear form of oppression and how they control knowledge because they they actually determine how you're going to produce knowledge. And what is that what is that credible knowledge it and so they're holding controls of that form of knowledge which is again I would say just a form of another form of oppression. It's basically saying our ways of knowing and developing knowledge is the right way any other way is wrong you know what that's pretty narrow in thinking because anyone who knows the history of the world knows that we didn't get here. Actually through that form of knowledge only in fact it's that form of knowledge is a more recent form of knowledge and actually for the longer period of time of human history we evolved knowledge in the more what we would refer to as indigenous forms of knowledge. If you want to follow the history you know you can see how ultimately that was suppressed and oppressed in the forms of colonization and continues to be so. That's in the institutions it's also in our communities because I think as you were referring to you know it especially as I've traveled in the far north of the communities where they're now you know the whole period of colonization is a much shorter period of time and the impacts are much greater. And as I look to the our communities to the south we've had a longer period of that having to deal with that and we're kind of I think recovering from it and as we reclaim who we are and what our knowledge is but in the north you know it was actually so called spirituality which really was religion or as John spoke to it as religiosity. That is actually controlled the knowledge of the north because it's actually used to be used to actually suppress that the forms of our original knowledge and holistic knowledge especially you know by demonizing it. And so yes as I travel and I work in the north as we reintroduce our forms of healing there's a lot of difficulty for many people because of that fear that's been imposed upon them. And primarily starting as course out of residential school and then carried into our communities you know to the present. That's been much of what you know I've discovered in my work in my direct personal work of working with people in healing processes. It's been so much process of reclaiming our identities as to who we are. The things that we do in the circles that John and I have been part of with you know if a feather carriers leadership for life promotion have been in many ways focused on that. On actually helping people to know where they come from, know who they are, understand why they're here and then see and understand where they're going. And those are four basic concepts that are they're not just you know in indigenous world, almost all human societies and humans have actually faced those four questions in their lives. But what happens with colonization is it's made it extremely difficult for people to answer those questions. And we have many forms of how that works and it doesn't work and works against us because you know it's easy to see I've worked with a lot of young people who have actually been the product of the residential schools of the child welfare system. All the different places where in fact those four questions became extremely difficult for them to answer because people imposed their own answers to those questions upon them. They made them think his brainwashing that anything that was their ways of knowing actually were wrong and were actually and as I say in many cases considered sinful. I hear in your stories today both of you talking about the necessity of reclaiming our identity and reclaiming the practices that support people to well being. I really appreciate a John's story about that young man and the diagnosis of schizophrenia and how that changed. And I remember having a conversation with an elder grandmother, Lillian Pidequaniquitba, and she talked about you know bipolar disorder is not a real disorder in our ways that there are things that we can do in terms of our teaching. In terms of our teachings and our practices and our ceremonies that could rid many of those symptoms of bipolar disorder. And you and I have had conversations about reclaiming practices and you know yes it's about bringing back ceremony but reclaiming what non-indigenous models have taken from us or systems have taken from us. I think about the conversation we've had about different therapeutic forms like cognitive behavioral therapy. If we were to decolonize cognitive behavioral therapy what's missing in CBT is spirituality and I love John's comment about the spirit is as real as the body and as the mind. That's what I was often missing in CBT and yet we're asked when we talk about these forms of therapy is how can we adapt them so that we can have the indigenous spin on it. When really what they have done is they've taken our what I would say CBT does come from indigenous ways of knowing. We have indigenous mindfulness you know which is a piece of CBT is teaching about mindfulness and about thought and about how they connect to heart, how they connect to spirit. You know we have many of those practices that we use to manage our thinking to manage our behaviors and to manage our feelings in ways that support well-being but what has always been left out in sort of traditional or mainstream CBT is the spirit. So I'm curious you know maybe we'll ask John first what do you think about reclaiming our practices because they've been seen as like right now I think there's a gap in that gap is about the connection of spirit and the reclamation of spirit and practices. What do you think about that? Well I think from our perspective and sharing of knowledge the way that our culture all knowledge is shared. When I first heard about trauma-borne care as a term you know I had a chuckle because we've always had that walk a mile in someone's moccasins. These catchphrases we have in our culture just what anything you can find that's been you know has has a clinical term to it or like an evolutionary term as we evolve mental healthcare coming into a greater and to our minds more. Our people had almost always too simple a walk a mile in someone's moccasins that's not so simple and we talk about the power of knowledge. The knowledge that our people will share so equally there was no none of that whereas when we come into the mainstream there is that a higher knowledge kind of concept that you carry this knowledge in then a person who is struggling with that whatever it is it has lesser in terms of the knowledge. And through our storyteller our teachings they like we talk about that with feather curries for sure they talk to what best practices a measured outcomes and I remember when we were challenged but a measured outcome for the feather curries it will come back in 60 years. If all of us in the circle are sitting in the swim cell talking then that's a measurable outcome because a lot of this modern way of thinking you apply for funding you granted to maybe five years. There's no way to measure an outcome of both someone's life within two to five years so the thinking because more at spats of a longer term. The things that happen with knowledge is that wellness is achieved both by all when we share people used to be living in the hundreds. At the time Columbus came your abilities were followed people in the hundreds so they say well how can you prove that we see well there isn't a family that doesn't have maybe two or three generations ago someone who lived to be a hundred. By great great grandparents they were both a hundred and sixteen it's as recently as that and they were active they gardened and they were physically active people. And so the storytelling it is the element of sort of like what we call common knowledge there's no secret to well being in the way we were as people as stories. Whereas in the mainstream they try to separate that they try to make it you know someone holds that knowledge it's not just within healthcare it's within education it's within the institutions of religion you have someone who like beats out knowledge to people as needed. Whereas our people from birth you were giving a teaching so you're giving the big picture right at birth so the dialogue around our wellness isn't so complex. In fact sometimes sometimes it sounds oversimplified hey it sounds too simple almost too simple to be true. So the mainstream I think what happened here when we talked about the tyrannolus the empty lands they could come in and take it over. They did the same things to our minds too when they called us ignorant savages we fell into this you know as our elders we lost them to a disease and other ways we lost our knowledge as it was taken away from us. We fell into that paradigm of believe we were ignorant savages. Meatball is our culture is coming back our knowledge our languages all those elements from who we are we see the complex natures of our beings like we talked about that you know body mind and spirit this not just one element to us. So it's a it's a resurgent recovery and as indigenous people were the one who are driving that boat what the mainstream took away there's no way he can give it back was because he didn't know what it was to begin with. So we know what it was there our elders and I always say that go home to your families and your family stories and you will hear our culture it never really went away it's it's in our family histories in our family stories that's a little bit. We appreciate that you know it's sort of the acknowledgement that the path to wellness doesn't have to be complicated that there are simple pathways that can support well being and it starts early on and I think that links back to the first question we asked you both said well it started as a young person right this isn't something that. When we grow up and we're an adult all of a sudden we decide wellness is what pulls us in that it's often been a part of our life and our life experience moving forward and I know you and I've talked a lot about reclamation of practices and I guess I was really excited about that conversation and that you were sharing with Holly about about all that because one of the challenges is if we start to reclaim these different. Therapeutic modalities narrative therapy is our sharing circles right and our healing circles and CBT is our indigenous mindfulness if we start to reclaim those what does that mean for you know mainstream in terms of acknowledging how they have. Take in our knowledge and reformulated it to be their own so I guess I'm curious about your thoughts around so these gaps and these challenges that we appear to have and what what do we do about those like how do we support the delivery of those when we know it's not a real gap but it's been. An emission or an oppression of our evidence when we talk about reconciliation you know that's in fact what I think is the main part of it is we need to do our reclaiming we don't need to do so you know for the other portions of society of non indigenous society we need to do it for ourselves we already have it we will continue to do so. You know what we talk about for example the the teachings of the seven fires prophecy you know and that says that you know in the seventh fire that if the seventh fire can light the eighth then and it would be and this is what they are saying is in that teaching is that it would require that the non indigenous society acknowledge our indigenous knowledge and not only acknowledge it then but recognize it as equal to. And if they can do that then we have the potential to light the eighth fire and then we have for example as they say in the prophecy a long period of peace and prosperity. So I think that prophecy actually points to you know what can happen but it it'll happen as it is happening because we are now in the stage of reclamation of our own knowledge and who we are. That's happening despite the various forms of oppression it's coming to the point where people are coming to realize how much we really do know and have known and and then also to a degree what we have lost in the process of colonization and that it's important not just for us to reclaim that but in fact for the for the whole world for all of creation because in actual fact I do believe firmly and I'm sure there's a lot of. A lot of people in the world that actually understand this today that it is our knowledge that actually will provide us with the ability to actually sustain life on earth at least of humans and that I think is paramount given the circumstances we're facing today. And when I say that what is that that we are we're talking about because John some spoke about spirit I spoke about spirit right at the beginning and what you know what I spoke to it was that I saw missing in my original studies of psychology was that they they had completely excluded it and why did they exclude it well because it was not something that they could prove right they couldn't use their method of research to be able to prove that that spirit exists. That's what prevents them to from being able to actually then understand the value and the importance of spirit from our indigenous world view a spirit is fundamental it's the beginning of all you know everything is based on the foundation of spirit so we come from spirit and everything that exists is is spirit and that's when our minds start to be able to recognize that you know everything is equal to interdependent upon each other and therefore. You know that's what is the essence of the mind that can actually create the environment of sustainability. So hopefully you know in time not in indigenous world begins to recognize that before it's too late and I thought about also what you were saying Brenda that you know we do these different practices again have existed. We recognize them within our ways of promoting health and wellness and I think of for example the concept when you talk about mindfulness you know in our Haudenosaunee teachings we have what we call the good mind and the good mind is is central to health and well being. It's also tied in centrally to again spirit and spirituality and I'm hoping that you know that people are awoken you know to the fact that you know that that process of the mind that that actually then does so much to destroy and oppress those that other mind comes to the point where they recognize that that's going to be to their own detriment. I just contributed to a paper that was done as a really interesting research paper that a group of natural paths and a couple of physicians did a piece of research looking at what are the factors that actually can in communities counter the impacts of global warming and so they they looked at research papers quite a number they had I forget it's hundreds that they went through and then narrowed it down and in the process of actually identifying they didn't realize this when they began. But what they came up with was at the end well people were identifying were actually that it the knowledge was coming from indigenous knowledge and from indigenous communities maybe that kind of research from their perspective will have an influence on that form of thinking. Thanks I want to say that there is more and more conversations about environmental trauma and the impacts it has on our people you know not only is it about removal from our traditional territories that impacts our our wellness you know our spiritual and emotional physical and mental wellness. But when we are when our our mother the earth is harmed whether that be through a natural disaster or a man made disaster fires and floods and all of those sorts of things there has been a lot of research that has suggested it harms our people in collective ways we see greater likelihood of depression and anxiety of our people when our mother the earth is harmed we see the greater likelihood of decreased involvement and participation in activities that are about sustenance so hunting gathering sharing those things go down. It harms our ability to take care of one another so there's definitely information out there that suggests environmental traumas is an area that has been harmful to us but we also know that we are we have reciprocal relationships with our mother the earth. And when we take care of her she takes care of us and I wonder I know this is a little bit off book calling but I wonder if either of you would like to talk a little bit about addressing environmental traumas through our ways of knowing and those reciprocal relationships with our mother the earth and with creation I open it to either of you John or Ed or even Holly if you have something to share. Yeah, there's a couple of examples that I remember when Sudbury they built that super stack that sent the pollution and the greater radius people in McComb were wiki at other places for the lawyer were saying that pollution affected the medicines that they were harvesting so that's an example of environmental trauma and even in Georgian Bay where I cope from because I set net where I set my net for years and the one of the things that happened with this. The sport fishermen complained about them that that yield that came in eight eight the fish eight to throw that lamprey so they stock Georgian Bay would splake because it was more resistant to that yield what happened to us it forced out the pickerel so the pickle became harder it's recovered in years in years since but whatever happens there's an immediate reaction to it and even like a net I have a friend out west when he talks about the sun that's it's important to know when the Saskatoon Berry or there's a berry that when it ripens it determines when they do the sun dances so the environment has changed so much that the berry doesn't ripen at the same time as it used to so it affects even their ceremony and I know for us here in the Wisconsin one time there was a problem with with right fields because the water levels were what they did so the people out there they did ceremonies they did water ceremonies did that ceremonies with the little boy water drop and it brought water back into those rice fields and returned them into a good way of being so we can I guess when something happens we can return things through the spirit through ceremony through ritual I guess one of my favorite stories is that all the French's dins more only when I live with the people of Wisconsin for a while he was with them when they harvest the wild rice what he did in the end when he finished his study there he had a comment they would have harvest a lot more if they hadn't in that paraphrasing if they hadn't partied every night what he was missing was the thanksgiving we give at the end of every day we give thanks to that that plan to the spirit of that plan and that's what kept the the plentiful harvest from year to year that's an element that we we use as people the element of gratitude and if we harvest something we in a heroine where I come from we don't harvest the biggest thing we let that one go because that means pain everything that comes after it will be of a good size so these things that we do with ritualistically you know to keep the environment healthy keep on these things yeah sure for the amazing that might sound far fenced but you think of the thousands of years we lived in a golden time that they say when those explorers gosh year off the coast they did like the coast their boots were slowed down by the cod and how sick they were so elements here in turtle island that horror people looked after things those are in our histories and those are in their stories looking after our mother the ears with gratitude and there was nothing we didn't we didn't want so in this modern time where you know there's so much extraction damaging of the earth say Montique quib on my Olco Fred we used to always say if it's in the earth it should stand ears when you dig things up then you're releasing into the atmosphere things we don't understand or cat cup or hen so you see all of what's going on with what's changing in their environment and in harmonies and I guess before I finish this all apart one of my teachers they Tom Alcozy when I was studying at a wrench and he always said that he says humans don't have the capacity to do in the world he said wipe it out but what we could do is he could just shrunk our shoulders and we'll go floating away and this was in the late 1980s and he predicted he says we'll see it we'll have children who have more reactions don't have intolerances they would be able to put up with the environment as much and that's what's happening now then there's so much asthma and things like that with our yellow people the reaction to how the earth has already changing and maybe she's already shrugged we don't know but we have to return to our way of being return to our practices to get that bring that well and back wellness back not only to us but to our son mother so it's really then and I'll bring this back to what you know I think John said earlier which is it is really very simple it's not complex the fact is the indigenous minds of our ancestors thought in such a way that they could see everything again as being interconnected interdependent and equal to and you know that's it's really simple but yet very difficult to again to restore and to be able to maintain and live by but that's what I consider to what is now the process of decolonization for many indigenous people and many non-indigenous people too. Alex Skied used to say he shared with me when I was up in Treaty 3 many years ago this story John's heard it many times and that's I call it the end teaching and he said this we're sitting in a circle with a big drum in the middle waiting for a number of youth and elders to come join us and this is up in Lake of the Woods and he was looking out the windows and he was talking about all of the beauty of a creation that's out there and how everything that we need to sustain our lives and live a long good life everything we need creator has given us and it's all out there we just need to learn to think again in a such a way as to not only appreciate it but then to use it in a good way and as he sang that all of a sudden he stopped almost in mid-sentence and as I looked over at him because I was listening to him and I was following his eyes looking around at the outside of the building he's silent now and I see he's looking down under my chair and I follow his eyes under my chair and there's an ant a little ant that's crawling into the circle under my chair heading for the drum and so he said looks at that ant and he says see that ant and I said yes he says he's my brother and he paused like that and he said he's no greater than I and I'm no greater than him he's my brother and he paused again and then he said when we can reshape our minds to think once again like our ancestors did we will then know how to live in peace on earth with all of creation yeah it's simple but yet you know not an easy thing to attain in a world that thinks so differently and in fact don't only think so differently but acts to enforce the way they think upon everyone and everything else it is such a profound story and one that connects to much of what you like to talk about around peacekeeping and collective intelligence and I know that yeah there's a really cool piece of work that I've been doing actually with Dr. Stephanie Nixon from Queens University that I refer to as peacemaking she refers to it as antiopressive behavior antiopressive thought and it's really very simple it's a built around a model that she developed called the coin model an approach to helping people to develop their thought and understand and recognize how they do think that is essentially a result of being part of colonization and then how that affects their behavior and how that influences how they act towards others and in an essence to all of creation and then invites them to begin to think about other ways of thinking that exist which is our indigenous worldviews and starts to introduce them then into another frame of mind she calls it new acts of mindfulness basically reshaping their thinking and they can do so and we help them to guide them to be able to do that and I think that that's for me is probably an important part of what we talk about as reconciliation it's to help those who haven't had the opportunity to learn about indigenous thought and the value of it to come to know and understand it and appreciate it and recognize the harmfulness of nonindigious thought not all nonindigious thought but much of nonindigious thought that actually leads to destruction and lack of sustainability thank you for that as you were talking about that I was just thinking like your colleague is calling it onto your press of thoughts and you're thinking about peacemaking it reminds me much of the pre-language where much of everything is framed from a strength-based perspective versus deficit ways of thinking so thank you for sharing that and I was just wondering John, you know, what is one action that we can take to bring wellness to our communities look after each other, look where grandmother's teachings of the Jettel nudged when you see someone asking all the sorts you just nudged them into being themselves being themselves again I know Ed was instrumental in bringing those up healing circles back, justice circles back in this area I remember one of the first justice circles we did in my community an elder came in and that's what he said he said we wouldn't be sitting here with people who just talk to each other day-to-day that's what I would say one of the things we can do is people they are, it's just two, you know, look after each other and that grows and it spreads out exponentially it's so simple but it is called "plastic" and that's the way of our people our teacher always said that our way is very simple but it's very complex just take care of each other and your family, your village and the people you work with and be on the watch for when they're behavior but they don't go down on road that sets I'm healthy for them and us yeah I like that it's about noticing what's going on around us and not only noticing but actually doing something about it and extending that concern and those ways of teaching that we've been taught to intervene do something what about you Ed? if you were to think about one action that we can take to bring wellness to our communities what would you suggest? it's one big action it's to share our knowledge with those who have not necessarily had the advantage of knowing these things with those who really want to learn about what people like John have had an advantage in terms of for example being exposed to his language at a young age in the teachings and then be able to then ultimately think through the language in what I've referred to as Indigenous thought so those that I've learned from who have been our healers and our medicine people in our communities have been primarily those kinds of people they were raised with the teachings they had exposure to the language and they lived the culture and so those people who have that you know it's really important that they share it with those who really want to know I know a lot of young people and John and I have come to see there's a lot of young people who are really hungry to learn and they need exposure to the people who have that knowledge and they know enough to know what they don't know and they really want to they're seeking out people to learn from the work that we do with life promotion it came about in both cases the way I came to know it and understand because it's that side of suicide prevention which is about life promotion and it's again flipping the ways that we think from a non-Indigenous perception to an Indigenous worldview and the ways that I came to know that was actually through Alex Skied he had that knowledge and despite the fact that he had been in residential school from age 4 to 16 he had retained that sufficiently to know that that was the road to his health and wellness and when he then finally returned to his community and began learning and sharing the teachings and living them that he was able to do such things as when we were asked to he and I to actually address there were 16 of our communities in the upper half of 3D3 who were at that time experiencing considerable loss of life of young people and the chiefs didn't know what to do and they asked Alec and I to address that so we brought a group of people together and so when we came together Alex basically told us when we sat together we were asking him to give us guidance what should we do? how should we address this? and he told us to go out into the communities and sit with the youth and ask them why is it that your friends and your family and even yourself are thinking about ending your life as we call today prematurely? why do they want to end their lives prematurely? then listen to what they say and then I do the same with the elders and ask them the same kind of questions and so when we did that and we came back and sat together we realized we had all heard virtually the same thing from everybody we are struggling to know who we are because we're losing our cultures we're losing our language we're losing our knowledge is what they were really saying and as a result of that we have struggled to know where we're going we can't vision to see any really positive or good future ahead and so when we did that and we realized so that's the focus we need to be focusing on to promote life and when we asked Alec so what is this that we're going to do? and he said this is going to be called the sacred circle providing a way of life and he did that in the language so he thought in the language and then he expressed it in the language in Anishinaabe-Mohan and then he translated it for us and when John and I started to work together on the life promotion years later the same process occurred I asked John to as we were talking about suicide prevention to actually tell us to speak to from an Anishinaabe perspective for Anishinaabe-Mohan to actually speak to it in the language and then translate it into English and that's again an example of how we come to the understanding in English because that's the problem too so many of our young people don't have the language and they haven't been exposed to the language so it takes a translation for them to be able to develop those that form a thought again and they want that like those who I've been with are just eager to have that opportunity well hopefully as a result of this podcast many more people will be aware of the many concepts that you both have so graciously shared and that's part of the reason we wanted to do this podcast is to bring attention to the Canadian public indigenous and non-indigenous as to how our world view is different and really to be able to start to discuss the concept of spirituality which has been beautifully illustrated in your stories and narratives that you've shared with us so thank you for that so we're looking to have one last question to kind of close up our conversation today what advice would you give to others who are interested in working in the area of mental wellness, John? Well I think back in my life when I graduated high school back in 1974 being from the reserve being indigenous and you know just the way that education system was at that time there was no invitation for me to go into something like psychology or some kind of mental health fail because even back then I was kind of like you might want to say like a growing field people kind of like shyed away from it it was people with emotional disturbances that was kind of like you know scary for people I think back you know if I had been coached or guided a great 13 to go to school you know I probably would have chosen psychology or chosen psychiatry but as things turned out I didn't and I came into mental wellness through my grandmother's teachings through the traditions and the stories of our people so that's what happened for me but I would encourage people to get in, you know, young people to get into the mental health field get into the helper field because as we start to reclaim our culture, start to reclaim our world you and that's a really effective place to be and I'll say this way it's a real solid place to move the world as an indigenous person when we can help each other acknowledge our way of thinking it is a good natural way that the creator gave us and the way that we think our way of thinking our narratives those are all the effective ways of maintaining not only our own well-being but the well-being of the world and there was some people like Chomsky Suzuki, they say that indigenous people are the source those are the ways that are going to save this planet which is possible for young people to get into the mental health field and it's at some level so some way what about you Ed? what's your advice for people to get into the mental wellness field? well my first advice would be to be cautious in terms of not going to a school of psychology that does not acknowledge and recognize indigenous world view and doesn't offer any of that form of teaching within their fortunately at this stage I know there's more and more places that do have that available and there are programs that are both within some of the university and college settings including within our indigenous organizations like the FNTI FNTI has been very active in developing studies for those who want to study mental health and wellness from an indigenous world view it's primarily kind of a social work a pre-social work to agree and a lot of the people I know actually have gone through that and then gone to university at Wilford, Laurier where Kathy Absalon has developed a program there which has been really a powerful master's program for people who want to learn more about providing what we would call indigenous psychology I must say I'm going to share this little story too because it was again a part of why I say there is benefit to that other form of education that's a non-indigenous world view the part of the path I didn't tell you that led me to where I am today was when I went to undergrad at a university of McMaster University in Hamilton my first year I took a course in anthropology and when I took that course I had the opportunity to actually write a paper that was informed by my uncle who was actually working with the creep people in northern Quebec because at that point in time the Quebec government was damning the rivers and flooding out their territories they were being moved into the reserves for the first time and these modern communities that were really completely different than their way of life and virtually again destroying much of their way of life my uncle he was actually working with our chief Andy Delil at the time and because the creep people had recognized that we had like well at that point for 400 years of experience with colonization and with the colonizer and so they came to us and asked for our help and so my uncle was involved in supporting them during that period of time and so he provided me with papers from the work they were doing and I wrote this paper about what was happening and submitted it and when I submitted it I got called into the tutors office and I thought I'm in trouble now something I've done wrong so I walked into his office and he's holding my paper and he says how do you know all of these things and so I told him and then the next thing he said to me is what are you going to do with the gifts that you have can say you know that his words he was a non-indigenous person but he his words you know resonated with me well virtually throughout my life journey because he really in fact when when COVID was on Mac asked for graduates of Mac to write a little note to the students that were coming in and I asked for them to specifically provide mine to a person of Indigenous ancestry and so what I wrote was exactly that story and I told them there are many things that you can gain from this education and in fact as many of those things are things you may not at all anticipate and some of those things will be some of the most important things that might guide your life and it has nothing to offer it has lots to offer but you have to be fully aware of what it is that you're looking for and how to find it thank you both so much for joining us on Pitiquet yes thank you so very much I really enjoyed learning and listening to both of you you're welcome now you're welcome that's it for this episode of Pitiquet where you listen it helps others to find these interviews and we'd love to get your feedback and please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes until next time I'm Brenda Restwell and I'm Paulie Graham hi hi migwitch thanks so much for listening