Keynote speech at Toronto wellness conference focuses on land-based healing

By Sam Laskaris      

TORONTO – Dr. Nicole Redvers is highly regarded for her work around the world helping to bridge the gap between Indigenous traditional and modern medical and research systems.

Redvers, a member of Deninu K’ue First Nation in the Northwest Territories, is currently an associate professor at Western University in London, Ont.

Redvers was a keynote speaker at the First Nations Community Wellness Conference that was held Aug. 19-21 at Fairmont Royal York in Toronto.

The conference was organized by the Chiefs of Ontario.

Redvers’ speech was titled The Science of the Sacred: Reflections through Land-based Healing.

“This idea of land-based healing is unique and individual to communities to person to place,” Redvers said during her presentation. “But in essence, it’s the place where we return, we connect. Land is very foundational to our identity because it is who we are.

“We’re sitting here as lakes and rivers and wherever you come from. You’re the water bodies of your places, the places that are you visited.”

Redvers also said that many people these days go about their days without looking up at the sky, looking at trees or acknowledging plant relatives.

“My Elders often say that the reason why the planet is getting sick is we don’t sing,” she said. “We don’t talk to the trees anymore. We don’t talk to the plants anymore (or) the waters. They’re getting sad. They’re forgetting that we’re connected to them.”

Redvers said it is certainly not time consuming to take notice of surroundings.

“It does a lot for the spirit just to have that moment of reconnection in the busy life when things are stressful to be able to just re-establish that foundation, even just for a moment,” she added.

When providing terminology for land-based healing, Redvers said she likes to cite details written by her sister during her master’s work.

“When we think about land-based healing, for me anyway, it doesn’t have to be out in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “Land is any place. It’s in a garden. It’s in a backyard. Grass. It’s with a tree. It’s out there. But what’s key, though, is that its intentionally spiritually cultivated to be a place that’s land based.

“There’s a spiritual connection and connectivity and a purposeful relationship making that happens with that land, for it to be land based, for it to invoke land-based feeling.”

Redvers added land has to be regarded as something that is meaningful.

“In our Indigenous ways of knowing, land is not just a thing that’s there,” she said. “But it’s really understood to be an active participant, a host, even, a partner to the person engaged in the healing.”

She added land-based healing can come in various forms.

“In our land-based healing work, we often had Elders who sometimes people would come in and they would have a hard time sharing,” Redvers said. “They would say ‘I’m not ready to talk.’ So, a lot of our Elders with just send people over to a tree, to a bush, and just let them know that the land will listen to you.

“If you’re not ready to talk here, then talk there if you can talk anywhere. Let the land accept your tears. And trying to see that land again as a partner in the healing process is an incredibly important point that for me to be evoked anywhere, even with a plant inside.”