Making Connections: Ways of Knowing, Being, and Healing

Learning More about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action

This session is an interactive session to bring us together to think critically about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action. Since 2015, when the 94 Calls to Action were presented by the Commission, Canadians have been learning and exploring what does reconciliation mean. In the session, we will work in smaller groups to look more closely at the Calls to Action and how they influence our counselling practice with our Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients. The conference organizing committee has organized for some laptops to be available for working in the smaller groups and we encourage participants to bring their devices if they would like.

About Lauralee Archibald

Lauralee is a member of the Nipissing First Nation in North Bay, Ontario. She is of Ojibway and Scottish decent. She is the daughter of a residential school survivor and knowledgeable of the intergenerational effects of residential schools. Lauralee obtained her Master of Social Work degree during the pandemic and has been providing counselling primarily to members of Indigenous communities in the Ottawa area prior to coming to Douglas College. Lauralee is an avid hiker and found her path to counselling while walking the El Camino de Santiago, an 800 km pilgrimage starting in the South of France through the North of Spain. Lauralee has returned to the lower mainland from Ontario to continue her counselling career on the unceded traditional and ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie), qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ (Kwantlen), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and qiqéyt (Qayqayt) First Nations.

Therapeutic approach: Lauralee’s counselling approaches focus on Indigenous healing methods together with non-Indigenous practices. She incorporates the Traditional Native Code of Ethics into her practice. She recognizes that there is no one-size fits all approach to supporting clients. She uses motivational interviewing, and narrative and cognitive behavioural therapies with a trauma-focused perspective. She can supports clients through with life transitions, Indigenous identity challenges, self-esteem, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, family challenges and healing from the intergenerational impacts of residential schools.

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The Connective Power of Politicizing Trauma:
Decolonizing Therapeutic Responses in the context of ongoing attempted genocide and systemic oppression of Indigenous Peoples in our Homelands

This session will focus on the affects of colonial violence and attempted ongoing genocide on Indigenous Peoples in our unceded, sovereign, and occupied Homelands of Great Turtle Island (known as Canada & the US in colonial terms). The language of trauma will be critically engaged shifting the discourse in directions that uphold justice and liberation for Indigenous Peoples and Nations. Decolonizing therapeutic responses that address colonial violence will be amplified and Indigenous resistance to colonization will be honoured. The importance of centering Indigenous ways, relatedness and connectivity with “All of our Relations” in our Homelands will be shared and given distinction. Participants will learn concrete analysis, strategies and skills to apply to their counselling and human service practices that disrupt colonialism and are rooted in respect and solidarity with Indigenous Peoples.

About Riel Dupuis-Rossi

Riel Dupuis-Rossi, (MA, MSW, RSW), is an Indigenous therapist of Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk), Algonquin, and Italian descent. Riel grew up in their traditional territories, off reserve, in Hamilton, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec. Since 2011, Riel has been providing decolonizing and culturally-centred trauma therapy to Indigenous individuals, couples, families, and groups in the sovereign, unceded and occupied Homelands of the Squamish, Tsleil Waututh, and Musqueam Nations. Riel has also designed and delivered educational training on Indigenous cultural safety and provided clinical consultation for allied healthcare staff working with Indigenous peoples within the healthcare system. Riel has had the good honour of publishing in academic journals, nationally and internationally, with a focus on decolonizing trauma therapy and on disrupting current colonial practices and structures in the healthcare system and in non-profit organizations. Riel earned a Master of Arts in Educational Studies from McGill University and a Master of Social Work from California State University Los Angeles.

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Native Plants and Healing

In this session, Lori will guide us through stories of native plants and healing. Participants will create a healing salve to bring home.

About Lori Snyder

Lori Snyder is an Indigenous Metis herbalist and educator with a deep knowledge of wild, medicinal and edible plants that grow in everyday spaces. Through Lori’s eyes, our immediate surroundings take on a new life and offer a wealth of untapped nutritional and ecological resources.

Through Indigenous ways of knowing and pedagogies, Lori leads people of diverse backgrounds in reconnecting to the Earth’s wisdom.

Lori has collaborated with the Provincial Health Association of BC (PHABC), helping to incorporate Indigenous teachings into the curriculum. Through the Farm2School pilot project, Lori supported the development of nine Indigenous foodscapes on elementary and secondary school grounds in Vancouver.

Lori has also collaborated with the Vancouver Parks Board, Douglas Community College, VanDusen Botanical Garden, Village Vancouver, and many community gardens and centres in and around Vancouver. She connected with the Vancouver TED Talk participants in 2017, and has also shared her expertise with university initiatives such as UBC Farm, SFU Embark Gardens, and the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Bra, Italy.

Lori stewarded a medicine wheel garden at the Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre and worked with the David Suzuki Foundation as a Butterfly Ranger, consulting with both the foundation and the YWCA at Evelyn Crabtree on native plants and their importance in our ecological relationship with other living beings. She was along with her friend Laura Cisneros, the Artists in Residence at Hastings Community Centre for 2020-2022, offering the teachings of plant wisdom through various art mediums. In 2022 Lori and Laura founded InHarmony InNature Collective to reclaim and share ancient arts, like dreaming, the cosmos, moon cycle gardening, medicine making and more.

Lori created Earth Awareness Realized Through Health and Company in 2013, to share First People’s perspectives on wild, edible and medicinal plants. Her practices include plant identification walks, illustration and plant medicine workshops, homemade products for the skin, consulting on garden design, as well as public speaking and team training.

Lori’s vision is to continually co-create insightful dialogues, to remediate and reconcile with our Indigenous plants as we reintroduce them into our urban landscapes. By sharing and growing these practices, communities can access our true local foods and medicines, which support collective resilience and deep ecological healing for all species.

Lori’s Approach
Lori walks gently and teaches primarily on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, as well as neighbouring Coast Salish nations.

Lori inspires learners of all generations and backgrounds to communicate with the natural world. She guides us to recognize the wisdom of ancestral relations who—for many thousands of years—were nourished by this land and cared deeply for its fate.

Lori asks us to live more consciously on the ancient lands where our cities now stand, and to recognize the beneficial impacts of connecting our human experience of mind and body to nature. By learning from all of our ancestors and caring for the many generations of beings to come, we can now build a future of sovereignty and best practices for healing the Earth and all her living creatures. Lori sees that we are all Indigenous to the Earth, and as caretakers this is the most sane yet radical response to today’s ecological and humanitarian crises.

In a time when our connection to the lands where we live grows ever more tenuous, Lori offers us an opportunity to reconnect.

Lori is Metis a descendant from the Powhatan, Dakota, T’suu tina, Nakota, Cree, Nipissing, Dene and Anishinaabe peoples, mixed with French, Swedish and Celtic ancestry. She was born and raised on the lands of the Squamish people, near Vancouver, Canada, overlooking the Salish Sea on the Pacific Northwest Coast of Turtle Island.

An Introduction to Neurotherapy for Counsellors, Psychologists, and Social Workers

A wide variety of clinical symptoms can now be addressed with biofeedback for the brain. Registered Counsellors, Psychologists, and Social Workers qualify for training and certification as neurotherapists. Neurotherapy includes neurofeedback (operant conditioning — contingent applications of sounds, animations, and body sensations) and brain driving (classical conditioning, application of subthreshold harmonics, flashing lights in specialized eyeglasses, and cranial electric stimulation). There is now a good deal of evidence to support the use of neurotherapy to treat AD/HD, sleep problems, addictions, anxiety, and depression. A live demonstration of a neurotherapy assessment is included in this 3-hour presentation. In this workshop, Dr. Bradshaw and Laurie Detwiler, MA, will review neurotherapy assessment & treatment procedures, and speak about ways that Counsellors, Psychologists, and Social Workers can get trained and certified in neurotherapy.

About Rick Bradshaw, PhD RPsych

Dr. Rick Bradshaw is a Psychologist with 45 years of experience, primarily treating psychological trauma and anxiety. He has made over 60 presentations at national and international conferences, including 8 Keynote Presentations and Invited Addresses, to audiences as large as 2,000. He has also trained and treated people in Indonesia, Korea, and China. He has taught graduate students in three post-secondary institutions, and for ten years was the Senior Psychologist & Director of Training in the Counselling Service of Simon Fraser University. While at SFU he also raised $1.3 million and served as Project Director for the Knowledge for Youth About Careers Interactive Video Project for 2 ½ years. More recently he worked for 2 years as Clinical Manager in a psychophysiology clinic, applying neurofeedback to treat trauma, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, ADHD, and OCD. Rick has also co-developed a new psychotherapy called “Observed & Experiential Integration” (OEI), which has been used to treat the symptoms of all forms of psychological trauma.

About Laurie Detwiler, MA CCC

Laurie Detwiler, MA is a faculty member and counsellor working with students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) since 2004. Previously, she worked for a decade in the Justice System for the Yukon Territorial Government. In her role as a counsellor at KPU, she assists domestic and international students struggling with depression, anxiety and other stress related issues move toward emotional regulation. She is certified in “Observed & Experiential Integration” (OEI). She has presented locally and internationally with Dr. Rick Bradshaw on the topic of “Observed & Experiential Integration” (OEI) at seven conference sites. She completed JIBC’s Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Certificate Program. She recently completed the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance’s (BCIA) certification program in neurofeedback.

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Closing and Ode to PSCA

Every year we add a verse to our beloved (and delightfully corny) “Ode to PSCA” song, and sing this at the conference. Lyrics are found here on the site – if you’d like to take a walk through our history books, this is the place to start.