Indigenizing psychology
By Barb Nahwegahbow
TORONTO – About 120 people gathered on May 28 to hear Indigenous academics experienced and trained in both traditional cultural ways and Western ways. The 5th Annual Indigenizing Psychology Symposium: Traditional Knowledges & Mental Health Services hosted by the Indigenous Education Network (IEN) took place at the Native Canadian Centre.
Conference founder Dr. Suzanne Stewart, member of the Yellowknife Dene First Nation said she is encouraged, “that psychology and its practitioners are beginning to acknowledge and accept that there are other ways of being and doing within health care.” About half of the 120 participants were non-Indigenous practitioners working in the mainstream health care system.
“Historically, psychology has been an inhospitable place for Indigenous people by its deficit lens of health, the western lens that’s been used to diagnose people with mental health issues,” said Stewart. She is a registered psychologist and Associate Professor in the department of Counselling and Clinical Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto.
This symposium was very different from non-Indigenous mental health conferences. The speakers placed themselves within the context of family (often introducing their family through photographs), and their cultural mileau. They shared their own personal experiences of trauma – loss of family and culture – and recovery of identity. By doing so, they illustrated the mental health issues faced by Indigenous people and the ways of recovery.
“It’s all about remembering,” said Dr. Raven Sinclair, member of Gordon’s First Nation in Saskatchewan and Associate Professor of Social Work with the University of Regina. “We’re on a journey of remembering who we are as Indigenous people and the gifts that we bring to this world.”
Sinclair described herself as, “a product of the child welfare system.” At the age of four, she was apprehended and later adopted into a white family. “I lived in the spaces between the two worlds,” she said, “I didn’t belong to either.”
“The traumas we’ve undergone are totally connected to our colonial history,” said Sinclair. The colonial agenda and the underlying reason for the trauma, she said, remains the same. “It’s always about money. They want our land. They want our resources.”
Torture, sexual abuse and murder in residential schools, starvation tactics and enforced sterilization of young girls are some of the traumas our people have suffered, Sinclair said. The one thing that is known now, she said, is that trauma is intergenerational and so the impact of witnessing or experiencing atrocities has been passed down.
Dr. Renee Linklater, member of Rainy River First Nation based her presentation on her recent book, Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies. Like Sinclair, Linklater was taken from her mother by child welfare authorities and adopted by a white family. “We have to be able to understand the impact that colonization’s had on ourselves, on our families and our communities to be able to really work with a person,” she said. Linklater is Director of Aboriginal Engagement and Outreach at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.