A COLLECTION OF ABORIGINAL
STORIES AND WISDOMS FOR COUNSELLOR DEVELOPMENT
by
Judy Letendre
B.Sc., Simon Fraser University, 2001

PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF EDUCATION
IN
COUNSELLING

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
AUGUST 2017
© Judy Letendre, 2017

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Abstract
Current mainstream counselling education is Euro-American based; a practice presenting
other worldviews, including Indigenous, as sidelines categorized under umbrella terms such
as multiculturalism, diversity or cultural competency. This relatively singular lens misses the
depth in counselling practices and often sees other cultures incorrectly and leads to
misunderstandings or unhelpful, even harmful practices like racism. Aboriginal stories and
wisdoms have been gathered to develop Indigenous curriculum that will share equal
educational space. For this project, I combined Indigenous principles and protocols and
standard qualitative methods to gather and analyze the information. I interviewed Aboriginal
people I had known previously from various BC Nations as unique individuals holding
wisdom and knowledge passed to them through their Indigenous ancestry, and with various
connections to counselling as a client, counsellor, educator and/or course developer. Their
collective voice suggests Indigenous knowledge be delivered in an Indigenous way using
heart learning and spiritual purpose, teachings seen as absent in in western based counsellor
education.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract
Table of Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
Glossary
Terms
Language
Acknowledgements: Hai, hai [thank you]
Prologue
Chapter One
Significance of the Research
Notes on Terminology
Statement of Purpose and the Research Question
Background of the Study
The Personal Meaning of This Study
Theoretical Framework
Summary of Chapter One
Chapter Two: Literature Review
History, Colonization and Decolonizing
Counsellor education and colonization.
Current education, cultural context
Affective learning, experiential learning.
Indigenous Story, Medicine Wheel
Story and Indigenous ways.
Medicine Wheel.
Works similar to mine
What is Indigenous Knowledge
Summary of Chapter 2
Chapter Three: Indigenous Research Design
Indigenous Methodology
Ethical Concerns and Research Ethics
Applying Respect, Relationship, Responsibility, and Reciprocity
Research Ethics
Recruitment and Demographics of Participants
Interviews and Consent
Analysis, Reporting and Presentation
Evaluation of the Study- Credibility and Transferability
Reflexivity
Voice
Chapter 4: Buffalo and Sage meet Sisuytl and Totem Poles

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vi
vii
vii
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xi
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1
2
4
4
5
8
10
16
18
18
19
22
24
27
27
31
31
32
35
36
39
44
45
49
49
50
51
52
53
53
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Condensed Conversational Stories
Buffalo Hunt- A Conceptual Container
My growth
Summary of Chapter 4
Chapter 5 Mino-pimatisiwin, Hutlilalas
Concept One: Knowing who we are
Concept Two: Connection:
Concept Three: Spirit is important
Summary
Appendices
Appendix A: More stories
Appendix B: Interview Questions
Appendix C: Participant Information Letter
Appendix D: Participant Consent Form and Consent Checklist
Appendix E: Invitation Letter to Potential Participants
Appendix F: Directory of Resources for Participants
Appendix G: Confidentiality and Disclosure Agreement
Appendix H: Cree Language and History
Appendix I: Additional Resources

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66
106
106
108
112
117
119
123
136
137
141
143
148
154
157
163
166
167

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List of Tables
Table 1. Buffalo Hunt Metaphor for Themes and Subthemes
Table 2. Important concepts given in the language of the speaker

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List of Figures
Figure 1. Indigenous Curriculum Development model using Dream catcher design

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Glossary
Terms
Aboriginal, Indigenous, Native, Indian, First Nations, Métis and Inuit. These terms are
used interchangeably to reflect the many terms in current usage. They include all groups of
Native or Indigenous peoples regardless of how they are defined elsewhere: treaty, nontreaty, status, non-status, living on reserves or living off reserves, defined by self or by the
Canadian government. I do not delineate terms the same as the Canadian government who
defines Aboriginal as people who are First Nations/status, Métis or Inuit. I do recognize that
many nations are nested in these terms, each with its own culture, protocols and practice and
I name different nations as applicable to either the community or the individual.
Colonization. An event where an ‘alien’ people invade a territory inhabited by people of
different race and culture and establish political, social, spiritual, intellectual and economic
domination. It includes territorial and resource appropriation by the colonizer, loss of
sovereignty by the colonized and; policies used to legitimize the ‘new’ systems in the belief
the colonizer ways are superior.(Sue &Sue, 1990; Tauli-Corpuz, 2006)
Colonial amnesia. The inability or unwillingness of the colonizer to recall the past
oppression that they have perpetuated on the colonized; generally, due to a long history of
covering up or minimizing such affects (Adams, 1995).
Counsellor, therapist and helper. These terms recognize any person in a therapeutic
profession or role.
Eurocentric, EuroAmericancentric and Western. These terms describe current
mainstream ways of knowing. And differentiate that the Aboriginal way of doing things are
different (Kovach, 2009).
Gatekeepers. People in the societies who hold decision-making positions, controlling and
selecting the information one receives and the access one has to different resources. In a
colonial society gatekeepers are essential to keeping power in the hands of the colonizers
(Adams, 1995).
Western /Eurocentric. A worldview that is different than Indigenous or other worldviews
which is often described as; linear, competitive, individualistic, using only observable
content, rooted in rational thought; using binary based thinking, being based on dominance
and exploitation for individual gain, considering itself superior to other worldviews and
cultures; imposing its worldview through colonizing practices; and accepting only content

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oriented learning. Eurocentric is a view that many Europeans and their descendants see
themselves as being culturally and politically superior to all peoples in the world (Adams,
1995).
Worldview. There are many definitions of worldviews (Hart, 2007). This project defines
worldview as the overall principles to guide all aspects of living and influence ancestry and
culture. Indigenous worldviews are diverse and complex but there are similarities and it is
under this broad definition that I use the terms.
Language
Haida words
Ad Kyaanang (to ask first) – all acts must be done with consent
Gina’waddlwucan gud kwigid – everything depends on everything else
Howa – thank you, hello
Tllyahda (make it right) – if an act is not done with respect or consent, or it is witnessed, you
must make it right
Yahguudang (respect) – all acts must be done with respect
Kwakwala Words
Retrieved from http://www.firstvoices.com/en/Kwakwala/word/
Kwak̓ wala Alphabet: dł k̓ k̕ w ł p̓ t̕ t̕s tł t̕ł '
Dabałt̕sana̱ nd – to give honorarium (literally means: “to shake hands”)
Dala xa ik noke’ – carry a good heart
Długwe’ [dłu] (gwe') - Gift or Treasure
Dzunukwa - wild woman of the woods
Gawalap̓ a – working together
Gilakas’la – Thank You
Ha̱ lakas'la [ha̱ ] (la) (kas) ('la) - Good Bye (My breath will be with you)
Hutłila [hu] (tłi) (la) – Listen
Hutłilalas – to listen
Kwakwa̱ ka̱ ʼwakw – those who speak Kwak̓ wala
Kwak̓ wala – the language of the Kwakwa̱ ka̱ ʼwakw
Maya’a̱ nł [ma] (ya) ('a̱ nł) – Respected one
Maya’xa̱ la [ma] (ya') (xa̱ ) (la) – respect
Mitsa - mink
Naya'a̱ nł [ma] (ya) ('a̱ nł) – Respected one
Nugwa’a̱ m – I am
Saltidas – calm your spirit
Sa̱ nala – to be whole
Sisiyutł – two headed sea serpent
Tłisalaqilakw – son of the sun (is little mink when s/he is not supernatural)

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Nlakapmux Words
Cited from Anderson, B. M., 2011
ChaaChawoowh – celebrating people and land joyously
Choowaachoots – utilizing Nlakapmux vision-seeking methods
Choownensh – succeeding in endeavours
Huckpestes – developing lifelong learning and wisdom
Huztowaahh – giving lovingly to your family and community
Nmeenlth coynchoots – incorporating Nlakapmux knowledge
Peteenushem – reflecting on learning and relearning lifelong lessons
Takemshooknooqua – knowing we are connected: land, animals, plants and people
	
  
Secwepmec Words or Sayings
Spoken during interview with Oliver Arnouse,
Hegen – maybe
Help yourself
High bush cranberries
Knúncwentsme (k)[nún](cwen)(tsme) – help me
Learning your own language
Me7e – yes
My favoured woman
Nek’u7 – one
One coat
Ses’ele – two
Skelep – coyote
See yourself
Sweti7 ri7 – who are you
Ta7a – no
Two coats
Weyt-k – hello
Shíshálh Words
Yetaxwelwet, woman who gives of herself
Cree Words
Retrieved from: http//www.muskeglake.com; native-languages.org and
http://www.firstvoices.com/en/Cree-Saulteau/words
Achimoh [Tell a story!]
Ayamihawin [a believing prayer]
Ahcahkowisyasowewina [Cree Spiritual laws]

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Ayiwahkemowin [Thinks oneself is greater than the next person – elevating oneself as
righteous thus becoming challenging]
Hai, hai or ay, ay [indicates thankfulness, thank you]
Kisteanemétowin [Respect between people]
Kwayaskatisiwin [Spiritual Law – Honesty]
Iyiniw Pahminsowin [How I regulate my activity; to work and direct oneself]
Mahtahitowin [Spiritual Law – Sharing]
Mamatowisin [the capacity to tap the creative life forces of the inner space by the use of all
the faculties that constitute our being- it is to exercise inwardness] (Ermine, 1995, p. 104)]
Mantisiwin [respect]
Mikesew [eagle]
Miyo Pimâtisiwin [living the “Good Life”]
Nêhiyaw [Cree person]
Nêhiyawak [Cree People]
Nêhiyaw Iskewew [Cree Woman]
Nêhiyaw Iskwewak [Cree Women, Cree Woman Kind]
Nêhiyaw Pimâtisiwin [Cree Worldview/Cree Way of Life]
Nêhiyaw wiyasowewina [Cree law]
Nikâwiy [my mother]
Nôhtâwiy [my father]
Nimosôm [my grandfather]
Nôhkom [my grandmother]
Paskwâwimostos [buffalo]
Ohcinêwin [breaking laws against anything other than human]
Paskwâwimostos [buffalo]
Pâstâhowin [breaking laws against humans]
Sakihtowin [Spiritual Law – Love]
Sohkeyitamowin [Spiritual Law- Strength/Determination]
Tâpowakêyihtamowin [faith, spirituality]
Tân’si [hello, welcome]
Tawâw [Welcome, there is room!]

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Acknowledgements: Hai, hai [thank you]

Thank you to my children and all children as leaders into new ways. I say, “Whether
you read this or not, it has been said and enters into your world of knowing.”
My greatest thank you is to the spirit that guides me. I cannot imagine what life
would be like without your presence. To my family, children, grandchildren, husband,
siblings, parents and ancestors. Thank you for the love, space and support for the incredible
amount of time I have taken. May these words and stories acknowledge your greatness and
travel seven generations forward with the strength, resilience and deep knowledge of the last
seven generations. I give a special hug to my parents for loving me unconditionally and
showing me how to be a good person in the midst of your own troubles.
I raise my hands to the pivotal teachings with Nicola Valley Institute in the Chemical
Addictions Worker Program. The teachings and the educational content changed me and
finally broke through that layer of resistance so now I strive to be miyo-pimatisiwin, living a
good life, by living in good ways.
I could not complete this project without the guidance of my supervisors, Dr. Tina
Fraser and Dr. John Sherry. Thank you for sticking with me and helping this come to
fruition.
CF, Vera, Andrea, Gerry, Anna, Juanita, Oliver, Babs, Marie and Janie. I am
humbled to have shared heartfelt words, laughter, and your presence. You have fed my soul.
To Tiana, my granddaughter and research assistant, there are no words to express how
much your help warmed my heart and helped give this meaning.

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Prologue
A fundamental principle of Aboriginal research methodology is that the researcher
locates themselves at the start of their research (Martin, 2003; Absolon & Willet, 2005;
Steinhauer, 2007; Kovach, 2009). Indigenous scholars, Kathy Absolon and Cam Willett
(2005) consider locating self in research to be good protocol for research methodology as it
provides the context of the researcher and further ensures that our “individual realities are
not misrepresented as generalizable collectives” (p. 123). They further say we [I] resist
colonial models of writing by talking about ourselves [myself] first and then relating pieces
of our [my] stories and ideas to the research topic” (p. 98). As Kim Anderson (2001), a
Métis woman, articulates, “many Native cultures teach that we carry the memories of our
ancestors in our physical being. As such, we are immediately connected to those who have
gone before us” (p. 24). Based on this principal, I first acknowledge and share the lineal and
historical context from which I begin this research.
The Cree name given to me is ‘Kappa pa sit mikesew eskes’, Wandering Eagle
Woman. I am the middle child of five, born to a first generation, Canadian born, Swedish
mother and a Cree/Lakota/Sioux/Métis/ father. I was not raised in my mother's birthplace or
in my father's traditional territories of northwest Alberta but, rather, developed into an adult
in rural, remote and ‘urban’ northern BC.
According to my Indigenous protocol, I show respect for where I have been and
place myself in the reader’s mind by presenting my generational influences and start with
my matrilineal heritage. My mother, Otelia Adelia Janet Anderson, born 1929 in Lister,
Alberta, was the youngest of eight children. She was full of humour and mischief, had a

xiii
loving mother but a harsh and abusive farm life and a severe childhood illness hurt her
deeply and hampered her coping skills. She married my father one year after she left home.
Nôhtâwiy [my father] is nehiyaw [a Cree person] and the third youngest of thirteen
children. He was born in 1922 at Lac St. Anne, Alberta — a settlement close to my mother's
farm. My father remembers poverty, fights, discrimination and drinking while he was
growing up somewhat connected to traditional ways that had adjusted for colonialism. He
experienced the front lines of World War II for six years and married my mother four years
after he returned. This ‘mixed’ marriage, often resulted in us children being labeled by the
slur ‘half-breeds’ and continued family trends of poverty, fights, discrimination, drinking
and marginalization.
My maternal grandmother, Anna Elvira Klofversted, and grandfather, Johan Hjalmar
Augustsson, were both born in central Sweden in the late 1800’s and both changed their
names when they immigrated to the United States — presumably to ease acceptance into the
new country. My Swedish grandmother’s genealogy encompasses both legitimate and
illegitimate marriage ties with other cultures such as Russian, French and, possibly, African.
According to family lore, our lineage includes relations with Swedish royalty as well as one
of Napoleon’s famous generals. My grandfather’s family line is still farming the same
Swedish homestead they have had for over 300 years.
On my father’s side, nôhkom [my grandmother], Caroline Lee, and nimosôm [my
grandfather], Adolphus Letendre, were both born in the 1880’s. They are recorded as being
Métis, a term which defines nothing since it means only mixed — but most often refers to the
descendants of Aboriginal and European unions on the east of the Rocky Mountains. My
great grandparents — the parents of my paternal grandfather — Jean Baptiste Letendre and

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Christine Belcourt, originally Treaty 6 members of the Michel Band (Cree), had ties to
Lesser Slave Lake Cree communities in northern Alberta. However, they were recorded as
Métis after they took scrip — a corrupt government policy meant to take more food
sustaining land base from the Cree for their own purposes.
I grew up without a community. In Alberta, scrip was the government’s way of
'getting rid of’ their 'Indian problem’, or responsibility. The government representatives
made questionable deals with many of my descendants. The Indigenous people of Northern
Alberta could choose to accept Métis scrip in the form of land (240 acres) or money ($240)
or, alternately, they could choose to take Treaty that meant they would be defined as 'Indian'
under the Indian Act. Either way, the government’s interest was the extinguishment of
Aboriginal entitlement to land (Sinclair, 2013). Faced with this 'choice' (hunting grounds no
longer abundant, poverty looming and the ever present possibility that they would be jailed if
they left the reserve without a ‘permit’), my great grandparents took scrip. They hoped to
regain freedom, self-sufficiency, and an escape from starvation by being able to look for
food and make money through trapping and saw scrip as more relative freedom than being a
ward under the Indian Act. My father never suffered the abuses of residential school but he
went to a mission day school with similar policies. Poverty forced him to quit in grade two
and help his father earn a living through trapping.
Joyce Green (2011), a Métis writer, explains that “the colonial and racialized history
of Canada has led to many Aboriginal identities, and thus, of histories and communities.
Not all of us fit a formula, and not many of us fit only one formula” (p. 169). Similarly, in
her thesis, In the footprints of our ancestors, Jeannette Sinclair (2013), a Salteaux Cree
scholar, further describes this fragmentation of individual souls, histories and communities.

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She describes how many families have been "disconnected from their traditional land, their
languages and their traditional cultures. Many of them will have experienced state imposed
labels/identities which impact the sociocultural, political and in many cases, economic
aspects of their lives” (p. 8) and that this is likely even more the case for the Métis and nonStatus populations of Canada. My family is one of these examples. The scrip policy
separated my family from each other because some took scrip and others did not. This means
that, in present times, some of my relatives are considered treaty while others are not, and
some are status while others are non-status. Regardless of these unethical past decisions, my
family's request to have my father recognized as a Status Indian was still denied
(Department of Indian Affairs, Dec. 10, 2002).
My father, now 95 years old, is a World War II veteran. He served six years (age 1926 years) on the front lines as a stretcher-bearer and returned home, in 1945, forever scarred
by his war experiences. He came home an invisible unrecognized hero, while returning to a
life of poverty and racial discrimination. After marrying, my parents moved over 30 times in
22 years, mostly to small communities and remote settings of north central BC. This kept us
further separated from our large extended family while they searched to provide a gentler
life with less poverty and less discrimination. Kim Anderson (2001) captures my childhood
saying, “We live with the trauma that has plagued the previous generations. We know their
laughter, but also their sorrow” (p. 25). I felt their love, anger, sorrow and frustrations.
In part, this prologue locates me in a place containing displacement,
disenfranchisement, racism, generational wounds, abuse, addiction and growth. It is from
this place of resilience, also passed to me from my ancestors, that I offer these Aboriginal

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wisdoms and stories to help others mitigate the damage of the past, forge new, healthy
relationships and expand our dimensions to encompass new ways of thinking.
More information regarding Cree can be found in Appendix H.

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Chapter One
To know where I am headed
and how I can help
means I must know where I have been
so that I can honor another’s journey
and the wisdom they offer
“Everything about Indigenous research tell us we have to locate ourselves in our
research” (Linklater, 2014). I have located myself with my ancestors in the prologue but
now I recognize the traditional territory of Okanagan nations because I have lived on their
lands during most of the preparation, analysis and report writing. Their land keeps me real.
Ayamihawin, a believing prayer, starts each chapter and are the words given to me when I
asked for spiritual guidance before starting to write each chapter.
Indigenous knowledge, languages, worldviews, teachings, and experiences have been
systemically excluded from history, from contemporary educational institutions, and from
Eurocentric knowledge systems (Battiste & Henderson, 2009). A brief look at websites of
BC universities and college websites notes this dominance of western Eurocentric
approaches in many disciplines including counselling (Stewart, 2008). When I started the
Masters of Education, Counselling program with the University of Northern BC (UNBC) in
2010, I expected to learn more than western paradigms but found references to other
worldviews were presented in a sideline context captured under headings such as
'multiculturalism', 'diversity' or 'being a culturally competent counsellor'.
Single-minded therapeutic approaches can disregard cultural backgrounds proving to
be ineffective or harmful (Sue & Sue, 1990; McCormick, 1994; Ridley, 1995; Stewart,
2008). Charles Ridley (1995), an African American professor, consulting psychologist and
author, states harm through racist behaviour is supported by Western oriented counsellor

2
education. He says, whether racism is intentional or unintentional, racial behaviour creates
opportunities to harm clients through misdiagnosis, provision of lesser services or early
termination of counselling service. Thus, it is crucial that the counselling education field is
expanded to include other worldviews. Moreover, I see education as “key to reconciliation”
(Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015) between the colonizing, now
dominant presence and the original peoples of the land; the Indigenous nations.
The most beneficial education would include worldviews of that original peoples and
settler nations as a base to be inclusive of the diverse Canadian culture. Einstein (n.d.) said,
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created
them” so perhaps it is time to create new mainstream practices by including long proven
Indigenous knowledge and ways of being, ways of helping that existed long before the birth
of social work (Weaver, 2008) and counselling.
Collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples could create effective
learning spaces, from which new wisdom and understanding can be disseminated. I believe
this is what Tatanka Yotanka (Sitting Bull), a chief of the Hunkapapa Sioux, born in 1836,
meant when he said “Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our
children” (Sitting Bull, n.d).
The rest of chapter one contains the following segments: significance of this
research, notes on terminology, statement of purpose with the research question, background
of the study, personal meaning and the theoretical framework of the study.
Significance of the Research
Inclusion and collaboration of Indigenous with western worldviews is being called
for in many fields besides counselling and counselling education. A collaborative two-

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worlds approach would benefit our collective environmental challenges (Kapyrka &
Docstator, 2012), our legal systems (Monture-Angus, 1995), our education systems
(Battiste,2014; Linklater, 2014; Bishop, Higgins, Casella & Contos, 2002; Battiste &
Henderson, 2000) and science or environmental studies (Cajete, 2000). Gregory Cajete,
Tewa from New Mexico, is an author and professor who focuses on teaching "culturally
based science, with its emphasis on health and wellness says that Indigenous science
connects the physical and spiritual realm and must be sanctioned through ceremony and
ritual” (as cited in Hart, 2007, 124).
Contributions to mental health understandings and treatment are significant because
of the differences. Western psychology separates mind and body but Indigenous concepts
consider wellness and holistic philosophies (Linklater, 2014; Letendre, 2002). Brant states,
“Culturally influenced behaviour is often misinterpreted by Western oriented clinicians as
evidence of psychopathology” (as cited in Linklater, 2014, p. 20). An Indigenous health
focus sees a spiritual, mental, emotional or physical imbalance with self, others or with the
environment” (Stewart, 2008). Indigenous practices incorporate the whole person but
unfortunately some western trained professions do not see these differences as helpful and
Indigenous helpers can be discredited through labeling such as “witch doctors” (Young,
Rogers & Willier, 2015, p. xii). Despite these claims, Indigenous programs have been noted
to provide more powerful healing because of the spirituality and ritual (Lester-Smith, 2013).
This research is also significant in that it presents Indigenous knowledge components
as sharing equal space in mainstream counsellor education. Besides the benefits to clients,
their families and counsellors, egalitarian inclusion is part of resolving tensions caused by

4
exclusion which maintains the colonizing history between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
settler nations. More than ‘best’ practices; we want wise practices (Lester-Smith, 2013).
Notes on Terminology
I use the terms Aboriginal, Indigenous, Native, Indian, First Nations, Métis and Inuit
interchangeably to reflect the many terms in current usage and do not delineate terms the
same as the Canadian government. I do recognize that many nations are nested in these
terms, each with its own culture, protocols and practice and I name different nations as
applicable to either the community or the individual. I also use the terms counsellor,
therapist and helper and Eurocentric, EuroAmericancentric and Western interchangeably.
Further definitions and explanation of terms and language are given in the glossary.
Statement of Purpose and the Research Question
The purpose of this research is to explore, describe, document and contribute to
knowledge about Indigenous ways to improve the scope of current therapeutics, counsellor
development and self-care through curricula and educational delivery methods. A second,
less visible, intention is to contribute to other voices advocating Aboriginal inclusion into
education that in turn, is part of a larger Indigenous effort to decolonize our current systems.
The need to be included in the dominant western system is part of an ancient struggle and
message from the ancestors to carry Indigenous ways forward regardless of my fears or
history of being the colonized one. Margaret Kovach (2009) in Indigenous Methodologies,
Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts reminds me it is my responsibility to create
portals for Indigenous knowledge stating “curricula make space like nothing else” (p. 6).
My principal research question asked for Indigenous stories, wisdoms and ways of
learning that could shape counsellor development. This question included therapist self-

5
care; where the participants learned their wisdom; what their experience has been; and how
their experience may have shaped their views.
In this study, I purposely include the word story because I wanted to re-search
storytelling as pedagogy. I am Cree and from a Nêhiýaw [Cree] point of view, knowledge
and story are inseparable (Kovach, 2009) so as described by Archibald (2008), I intended to
listen with three ears; the two on my head and the one in my heart. As a researcher, my
contribution was to use those three ears to be responsive on all levels, regardless of how the
research unfolded. The research question purposely asked for stories because storytelling
has been an integral part of Indigenous oral tradition and expressive therapies [stories] have
been a part of Aboriginal culture long before modern psychology existed (Graham, 2013).
JoAnn Archibald (2008) tells us the detrimental effect of schooling and academic literacy is
that we lose the ability to make meaning from story and like Coyote, the proverbial trickster;
we get in trouble when we get disconnected from our traditional teachings. Many authors,
Indigenous and non-Indigenous, say storytelling is a pervasive and innate part of being
human and has long been associated with healing and education in many cultures (Graham,
2013; Koch, 1998; Perrow, 2003; Riedl, 2010; Widrich, 2012). I suggest that story is also
relevant due to counsellor-client interaction where each person’s personal and collective
history enters the therapeutic relationship.
Background of the Study
The western created, largely urban, ‘helping’ profession has been imported
throughout the world and, thus, provides a prime platform for potential harm to occur. The
book, Indigenous Social Worker Around the World: Toward Culturally Relevant Education
and Practice, is a product of an international social workers’ workshop that sought specially

6
to examine the 'Indigenization' of social work because the western approach, once thought to
be a universal epistemology for all cultures, has not proven its effectiveness. In this book
Gray, Coates and Yellowbird (2008) add to the growing awareness that alternative
epistemologies of human processes and psyches have historically been neglected conspiring
with economic forces that subjugate Indigenous societies (Gray et. al, 2008).
Counsellors, like social workers, have basic ethical obligations towards being helpful
and doing no harm. However, to be helpful and to fit perspectives of Indigenous and other
non-Eurocentric peoples, Rod McCormick (1994), a Mohawk professor, counsellor and
scholar states this requires “understanding the belief system and worldview of a culture” (p.
138) and cultural competency (McCormick, 1998). A way to achieve cultural competency,
recommended by many authors, educational institutions and health providers, is to
incorporate traditional knowledge into mainstream practices (Fernando, 2003) but whose
‘culture” is needed for the diverse Indigenous peoples or immigrants to this land.
Indigenous based programs are available. In the Indigenous education experience,
teaching is “a way of healing and a way of life” (Cajete, 2000). Gordon Bruyere (2008),
Anishnabe, and a previous coordinator of programs at NVIT, writes on Aboriginal education
in Picking up what was left by the trail: The emerging spirit of Aboriginal education in
Canada, a chapter in book Indigenous social work around the world (Gray, Coates, &
Yellowbird, 2008). He says that Aboriginal ways of knowing have been “usually regarded as
marginal prevailing discourse” (p. 239) in the education system (as cited in Gray et al.,
2008). Nicola Valley Institute of Technology (NVIT) was founded both due to the failure to
entice and keep Aboriginal students in the mainstream system (Bruyere, 2008) and the belief
that, despite colonization, Aboriginal knowledge can provide a holistic foundation of

7
education based on heart, balance and emotional competency (Brown, L., 2004).

NVIT is

based on Indigenous teachings and practices, is community-based, ceremony and Elders in
every capacity and level (i.e., teaching, counselling students, policy decisions etc.).
Education is seen as a step in a healing journey. NVIT as a whole and the social work
program are not specific to Aboriginal people so both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people
are encouraged to enter. Mr. Bruyere states that through this embodiment of Indigenous
values, social work education becomes a way to heal and develop innate personal skills,
abilities and attributes. The result is students who are “energized for the betterment of
something greater than oneself” (p.235). I took the chemical addictions worker advanced
diploma program through NVIT finding my education considerably different than all my
previous schooling. The substance abuse worker, multileveled, ‘education’ I received,
opened my heart to myself; and through the process of healing through learning of my
history, colonization, Indigenous teachings and seeing the world through an Indigenous lens
I learned to accept my responsibility to others. My success and witnessing my classmates
progress reinforced the idea that Indigenous worldviews and praxis are a logical and
practical inclusion into mainstream counselling programs. As a class, we often agreed there
is much in current counselling practice or education that does not apply, conflicts with
worldviews of Indigenous or other cultures, and may not help the counsellor expand
personal and counsellor capacities.
While it is easy for therapists to acknowledge the benefits of helping like money,
social status, and altruistic aims they are often resistance to acknowledging gratifications
such as satisfying sublimated sexual curiosity, mastery of childhood fears, being able to deny
one’s own problems by focusing on others, or supporting power and superiority beliefs, etc.

8
(Sussman, 2007). A counsellor can use the client to fulfill their needs, bring
countertransference into the therapeutic session, suffer from burnout, personal unresolved
intimacy issues, failed relationships or any multitude of other problems, harming the client
and the therapist, even to the point of aggressive behaviour, sexual harm, suicidal tendencies
(Sussman, 2007), or overt, covert or unintentional racist behaviour (Ridley, 1995). In his
book Overcoming Unintentional Racism in Counseling and Therapy; A Practitioner’s Guide
to Intentional Intervention, Charles Ridley (1995) examines the effects of counsellors’ racist
behaviour stating that even well-meaning counsellors, despite their best intentions, are often
unintentional racists. His says even if a person becomes aware of their attitudes and changes
on the inside, it does not mean this will change their racist behaviour. Consequently, there
needs to be continual exploration of internally held beliefs while externally practiced
behaviours are explicitly practiced and reviewed. No client deserves to: be misrepresented;
receive less preferred treatment; be medicated when they should receive psychotherapy;
have treatment prematurely terminated or denied; be pathologized or seen as inferior; or be
violated in any way by a counsellor (Ridley, 1995; Sussman, 2007).
Indigenous education offers a clear and promising path to self-understanding because
both the process and content of the teachings contain learning (Kovach, 2010). Thus,
inclusion of Indigenous knowledge could help counsellors connect their doing with their
knowing.
The Personal Meaning of This Study
My reasons for doing this research, with this population and with this methodology,
are rooted in my heritage, my personal growth, my professional development, and my

9
observation that Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals alike benefit from both Indigenous and
western ways of counselling.
Personally, I grew up in a 'typical' home of my era and family type- in poverty, with
alcoholism and various abuses. I am 'mixed blood' of Cree and Swedish heritage. We
continually moved homes often due to the racism my dad experienced and not just the desire
to find ‘a better life’ (C. Letendre, November 1, 2015). My parents were generous of heart
showing me how to mix loving care, wise words, liberal doses of humour, deep senses of
spirituality, fun, and kindness with helping others regardless of race, creed, economics or
societal prejudices.
I was not smart enough to name racism as a child but I knew it. I knew by Grade 2
that to keep the teachers’ approval I needed good grades and I let them think the good grades
I achieved were the result of how they taught me instead of my intuitive, read their mind
way. I always had a sense of shame, continually feeling I was on the edge of disapproval
because of whom I was. I was confused in Grade 5 when the nuns would strap me - the
only Aboriginal student in the class and the only girl that was ever strapped- because my
reputation, according to others was as a ‘goody two shoes’.
Until I became older I always tried to morph into western styles of learning I
received, even though I felt like a contortionist. Later, as I learned Traditional Teachings, I
understood my shape shifting was an inherent Cree cultural value, known as
kisteanemétowin [respect between people]. From a Cree perspective, there would be no
reason to dismiss European thinking because Cree accept multiple perspectives. A Cree
worldview would not consider anything but equitable or respectful relational interaction (as
cited in Reder, 2006). Once I realized my conflicts were understandable I was able to ride in

10
both worlds with less discomfort. I am like many people with worldviews other than the
Western worldview and who have also described feeling discordance and oppression through
Western colonization and Eurocentric domination (Chinn, 2007; David & Okazaki, 2006;
Freire, 1993; Hooks, 2000; Martín-Baro, 1994, Kim et al., 2006).
In 2010, at a seminar on counselling with counsellors, therapists, and helpers from
around the world an incident arose in a way that I suggested the Canadian Aboriginal group
could share much wisdom for some of the problems the group was having. Instead, the
Aboriginal group was not allowed to speak, and the entire group fractured, ending in chaos.
I interpreted the experience as racism and that led me to explore my Indigeneity entering the
NVIT life changing program. I also entered a Master's program, assuming there would be
more than western, euro-American theories with only one elective for Aboriginal
counselling.
My experiences confirmed through reading and listening to others that Indigenous
knowledge can be incorporated in ways that can be helpful for non-Aboriginals as well as
Aboriginals. The final motivation for this project came after a wildfire destroyed my home
and contents. I saw this as a cleansing because the sound of the fire was like a dragon, and
when ‘She roared, she cleared the land and my soul.’ With no possessions and no house, I
had to decide what keeps my soul singing. For some reason, hearing Indigenous voices talk
about ways of learning to be better helpers is part of my renewal song and one that I want to
present to the world (UNBC, at least).
Theoretical Framework
I use an Indigenous framework out of respect for the topic, the research participants,
the intended outcome and my personal heritage. My prologue follows the respect protocol

11
of introducing myself. Margaret Kovach (2009), (Sakewew p'sim iskwew) of Plains Cree
and Saulteaux ancestry, says we follow the Cree protocol of introducing our worldview and
ourselves to
honour our kôkoms [grandfathers] and [grandmothers] by remembering them …
knowing why we are carrying out our research … (research) has the potential to take
us to places that involve both the head and heart. We need to know our own research
story to be accountable to self and community (p. 120).
My writing is a mix of first-person narrative and is story like in that it situates in a
“time place and context [but] often shape-shifts to other forms. Like sweet grass, my writing
it has three braids, comprising three writing styles: expository, analytical, and narrative”
(Kovach, 2009, p. 21). Sweet grass, a sacred plant used for smudging, prayer and ceremony,
supports my tendency to see these different writing paths as connected and sacred.
“Acquiring knowledge always comes with personal responsibilities, but the dominant society
does not often teach or emphasize this" (Nelson, 2006, p. 48). Am I ready to receive this
knowledge? I feel the moral responsibility for this information to be “changeful” conflicting
with an unemotional objectivity that is often included as a path to pursue in ‘good’ research.
Like M’ikmaw writer, Sylvia Moore (2012) I feel “trapped in a Eurocentric way of
understanding the world and realize that before I can work for changes elsewhere I have to
make changes in my own thinking” (p. 328). Aboriginal research must have relation, be
personal and affect my heart. Otherwise, “I am seeking this knowledge as if it is something
to be gained, a feature of a dominant paradigm of the world view” (Shawn Wilson, 2001,
p.176).

I can be “confused with my Eurocentric trained way of thinking” and often feel the

tension from “the incongruities between western institutional structures and practices and
Indigenous cultural forms now seem too difficult to reconcile” (Moore, 2012, p.328). Yet,
what I know in my heart, and have been told in my visions, is that there is 'trickster space'

12
when you juxtapose two or more incompatible frames of reference. It is in this space, that
“universal learning takes place” (Garrett & Garrett, 1996, p.215), a space that includes
everyone.
This Indigenous framework is formed by Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and
doing integrated with Indigenous ethics. Indigenous methodology has gained its own unique
position, possibly an ancestor to qualitative methodology. However, as an Indigenous
person, I also know that it is time to “move beyond an Indigenous perspective in research to
researching from an Indigenous paradigm” in order to truly reflect Indigenous contexts and
worldviews (Wilson, 2001, p.175). I used the guiding points of Indigenous Research
Methodology (IRM) suggested by Cora Weber-Pillwax and outlined in chapter three,
Indigenous methodology, to make this transition. Two important components guide this
research. The first, according to Cora Weber-Pillwax, a Métis professor, is that research
must do something beneficial for the world (as cited in Wilson, 2001). The second central
component is that knowledge is relational and shared with all aspects of the natural, physical
and metaphysical world, including all sentient and non-sentient beings, the cosmos, the earth
(Cajete, 2000; Bastien, 2005), and connections between the spirit and the outer-world
(Ermine, 1995). Relationships are more central to Indigenous epistemology than reality
(Wilson, 2001) and are fundamental to research because it is through relationships that we
have knowledge (Moore, 2012). All phases of this research embrace these two components.
Western, Eurocentric philosophy is the standard form of clinical training with the
premise that those existing theories and techniques are universal and appropriate for every
race, ethnicity or culture and subsequently assuming counsellors end up prepared to counsel
clients with any background (Ridley, 1995). This is circular reasoning because using the

13
same philosophy or theories to typically explain racism or other forms of oppression and
causes of behaviour (Ridley, 1995) results in maintaining the problems caused.
Our reality is a combination of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples living and
learning together. For the learning spirit to grow we/I must respectfully recognize the
unique contributions of the colonial and Western domination experience and find good
relations in order to make positive change (Battiste, 2014). Bishop et al. support this view
stating, “understanding worldviews of both the targeted community and ourselves
[Indigenous] is imperative if we are going to do more good than harm” (cited in Hart, 2010,
p.611). Thus this theoretical framework needs to be inclusive.
Methods and concepts of this Indigenous framework such as storytelling,
conversational method, ceremony, gifting, the medicine wheel and protocols are further
discussed in chapter 2 or chapter 3. Autoethnography, double voicing, and double
consciousness, also part of this framework, are discussed below since they include my
personal experience of straddling Western and Indigenous ways.
Autoethnography is storytelling about oneself for purposes of including one’s own
knowledge in research. I included my own experiences and family knowledge to further
explain the stories and wisdoms collected through the research participants, the literature
review, and other knowledge sources.
Shelley Stigter (2005) in her thesis, Double-voice and Double-consciousness in
Native American Literature, writes that double-voicing was a common feature recognized in
many anthropologist-preserved works on various Native American oral traditions during the
days of early colonization. Double-voicing is defined by Bahktin and Zolbrod as a varying
use of linguistic register or forms of language (as cited in Stigter, 2008). These writers

14
explain that it was a lyrical style of speaking the Native language for ceremony, formal or
sacred aspects and conversational or colloquial voice for informal storytelling and teaching.
However, with colonialism this feature largely disappeared from Native American literary
works because the authors were not allowed to speak their languages or practice their oral
traditions. A background hope is that this research will help stimulate its revival.
Double-voicing was replaced by double-consciousness. Double-consciousness
occurred when Aboriginal authors situated their Native themes and political accounts within
the dominant Western literary tradition. It is “the sense of always looking at one’s self
through the eyes of others”, writing from a minority position, participating in a dominant
Western literary tradition, but doing so from a position of being within one's own culture.
They know their Native cultures, as well as the dominant culture, and so they can use the
literary and artistic techniques from each. I have been looking at myself through the eyes of
others for most of my life. Examining myself through my own eyes will use this bicultural
awareness and double-consciousness to understand and present the research. Marie
Anderson (2011), who grew up riding horses as her transportation, illustrates my thoughts on
page 50 of her thesis when she quotes herself in a previous interview.
To live in this world you have like two horses that are galloping. One is the
mainstream horse and one is your own horse, your traditional horse. You have a leg
on each and your are going and you are going fast. You can do it but the thing you
need is balance. You need balance in all four areas. You can ride that horse and you
can gallop wherever you want because you have the reins to steer to. It is like riding
a double horse. (Interview, January 30, 2003, pp. 17-18) (p. 50
As an Indigenous person, doing Indigenous research, within a mainstream university,
I come with generational ‘baggage’ from colonizing strategies aimed at getting rid of methe Indian. An Indigenous framework means to rewrite and reright the Indigenous position
in history and in society (Smith, 1999). The framework demands accepting colonization and

15
the inherent decolonizing process necessary to see the difference between what is
Indigenous and what is colonized thinking; a demarcation which can be murky or dubious
(Duran, 2006; Martin-Baro 1994; Watkins & Shulmnan, 2008). Accepting that
decolonization is necessary and embedded within this research, means to acknowledge the
intent of colonization summarized by a United States whiskey trader in 1874:
if we had only been allowed to carry on the business in our own way for another two
years, you Canadians would have no trouble feeding the natives, there would be none
left to feed. Whiskey, pistols, strychnine and other like processes would have
effectively cleared away those wretched natives (as cited in Garneau, n.d.).
As a "wretched native", I use my worldview without comparison to other worldviews
accepting my privileged position as an Aboriginal and as a colonized person. I am rewriting
and re-righting Indigenous presence doing research that values Indigenous ways and placing
it within the dominant, colonizer’s educational domain, at least metaphorically.
Conceptual frameworks provide visual representation of the variables and the
phenomena (Anderson, 2012; Archibald, 2008; Battiste, 2014; Hart, 2002; Kovach, 2009),
and this study presents symbolic representation that emerged from the findings. A buffalo
metaphor contained the themes and the dream catcher used a sacred circle, shape shifting sea
serpent, and a buffalo to present the concepts and steps of a suggested curriculum.
The research journey can be likened to the perspective of moccasins. Sometimes I
tread lightly. These are for the fears I share with others regarding the inclusion of
Indigenous ways of knowing and doing into counselling programs. “The issue of
participation generates histological problems of reconciling Indigenous forms of knowledge
with the western European philosophy … the anxiety generated by moving between cultures
is real” (Turner, 2006, p.5). However, I also agree with Gerald Vizenor when he explains,
“we are more than a curious medicine bundle on the museum rack. We are tricksters in the

16
blood, natural mix blood tricksters, word warriors in that silence between bodies, and we
share our best medicine in our voices, in our stories” (as cited in Turner, 2006, p.71). Blaut
states naturalizing Indigenous knowledge in Canadian education requires kisteanemétowin
[respect between people], meaning we must use considerate and appropriate strategies to
bring about a blended educational context that respects and builds on both Indigenous and
European knowledge (as cited in Battiste & Henderson, 2009). Finally, I am not claiming a
pan-Aboriginal generic approach and lean towards Plains Cree ways of knowing and
application because I feel it is mine to claim given my Cree ancestry. Moccasins suit both
worlds and these are mine to wear on this research journey because they come from my
Cree/Lakota grandmother. I know I receive teachings, like Ahcahkowisyasowewina, Cree
spiritual laws, from my lineage through how she made the moccasins: Sohkeyitamowin,
strength and determination; sakihtowin, love; mahtahitowin, sharing; and kwayaskatisiwin,
honesty. My moccasins come from the earth and connect spirit to practicality. I feel the
spirit of my grandmother in my moccasins and know that she has shared her wisdom with
me and my responsibility is to share with others what I learn. I know my moccasins will
help guide this research.
To summarize, an Indigenous research framework is a dynamic, never static
approach that evolves with the research. It is wholistic; balanced; relational; and unique to
the community it is serving (Battiste, 2009; Kovach, 2009; Archibald, 2008). When I
needed a principle or guidance within this the Indigenous framework I looked to Plains Cree
teachings because that is the heritage I gained from my father.
Summary of Chapter One

17
Chapter One suggested western paradigms dominate the education of counsellors and
can negatively impact the therapist-client interaction because of misunderstanding based on
lack of worldviews. The research purpose is to gather components from the Indigenous
participants that could outline an Indigenous worldview useful within counsellor education
to increase counsellors’ capacity. This is significant in that Indigenous and western
worldviews do not generally share equal partnership in mainstream counsellor education.
An Indigenous theoretical framework is being used because it fits the topic, the research
participants and my Cree; however, because I am Indigenous, doing Indigenous research I
accept the challenge to detect colonizing views that I carry.

The next four chapters present

the literature, research design, findings, recommendations and future considerations.

18
Chapter Two: Literature Review
There is a place within
where I struggle, wanting to be true, the essence that I am
and from this place I want to hear
this is a sacred journey, always knowing Coyote is present
I need to be cleansed and decolonized
Concientización.
This space I claim from my heritage
The main intention of gathering of Indigenous stories and wisdoms from various
Aboriginals in British Columbia has been to add collective Indigenous knowledge to current
mainstream counsellor education. This chapter presents those variables.
History, Colonization and Decolonizing
Personally, professionally and educationally I have been colonized, a relatively
negative and impactful experience common to Indigenous peoples throughout the world.
Settlers uninterested in Indigenous ways colonized this land by imposing their worldviews.
Colonization in this form created losses for myself and many Indigenous peoples such as:
self, emotion, connection to land and place, language, education, ways of healing and being,
our economy, and legal systems are a few of the losses interconnected to health and wellbeing so they need to be acknowledged, healed and revitalized in order to be relearned. I
acknowledge these authors for significantly increasing my awareness and understanding of
Indigenous losses: Robin Wall Kimmerer, member of the Potwatomi nation, (2013) who
spoke to me about connection to land, plants, language, heart, and being; Patricia MontureAngus (1995) a Mohawk who vastly increased my knowledge about being Indigenous in a
legal environment; Bev Sellars (2013), member of Xat'sull, the most northern Shuswap
bands, (2013) and Shirley Sterling (1992), Nlakapmux who made survival in and recovery
from Indian residential school more personal to me.

19
Dr. Beatrice Marie Anderson (2011), author, Elder, Nlakapmux language teacher,
scholar, course developer, counsellor, and more calls on the magic of trickster and
transformer Shinkyap, coyote in her thesis, Nlakapmux grandmothers’ traditional teachings
and learnings because she worries that,
Being a Nlakapmux woman living in this society today, I feel outrage, hurt and pain
about our colonial history and its impacts… I feel I am capable and worthy to be a to
be considered a human being with human rights, however, I think that is not true or
possible for future generations unless drastic transformation occurs … (p. 8).
In Healing Our Soul Wounds, Duran (2006) states our generational history affects us.
Indigenous peoples have found that acknowledging and accepting sociohistorical influences
along with using strategies to liberate and heal negative effects contributes to healthy present
day living (Duran, 2006; Battiste, 2014; Kovach, 2009). Sociohistorical effects due to
colonized-colonizer relations involve decolonizing strategies to free oneself from past soul
and spiritual wounds (Duran, 2006; Duran & Duran, 1995; Martin-Baro, 1994). Victoria
Tauli-Corpuz (2006), whose ancestral home is in the Philippines, explains what happened
and why we need to be resilient. She says,
Colonial institutions of churches, schools, and media tried to teach us to despise
ourselves and our cosmologies, traditions, customary laws and life-ways. They
trained indigenous peoples, including my parents and myself, to look at the world
through the eyes of the colonizers (p. 14)… Indigenous peoples’ resistance to
colonization and globalization has been instrumental in retaining our indigenous
knowledge, sciences and technology. (p. 17) … Our ancestors told us that land is
sacred, that animals and plants are our relatives, and that it is our duty to ensure that
they are defended for the next generations (p. 19).
Counsellor education and colonization.
Regardless of whether one has been colonized or is doing the colonizing, we are all
affected by our past — before and after birth (Kahane-Niessenbaum, 2011). Leslie Gray
(2001), an Oneida counsellor explains, “Ethnicity is your culture, and it’s your culture as it

20
relates to a place on earth, a particular bioregion, and a particular land… start thinking of
yourself as having come from someplace in this land” (p. 29). Jeannette Armstrong,
Okanagan author and scholar adds that “unless place can be relearned, all other life forms
face displacement and ruin” (p. 37).
Intergenerational effects carried in counsellors’ worldviews, regardless of which side
of the colonizer-colonized relationship they are on, could be: their acceptance of other
worldviews, awareness of the worldviews colliding, client-counsellor relations, counselling
practices, their personal and worksite health, or the type of education they receive. A
counsellor who is unaware of how before or after birth experiences is a potential counselling
concern. This lack of awareness, on the counsellor’s part, could hinder their client’s therapy
(Kottler, 2010) exhibiting as negative bias, superiority, self-absorption, power over another,
inattentive listener, denial of client issues, or other unhelpful actions (Egan, 2006).
Training for counsellors is currently dominated by the monotheism of Western
worldviews (Ridley, 1995; Kim & Berry, 1993), erroneously assuming theories based on
Western problems can be universally applied. Berry, Kim, Power, Young, & Bujaki (1989)
state that in many countries attempts to develop Indigenous psychologies become an
adaptation to the imposed etic (using an outsider observers’ categorization). Further,
economic, societal and cultural issues differences are not recognized in a one worldview
definition of health, well-being and behaviour so become assimilated to the dominant
versions of psychology which is often incongruent with other worldviews (Berry et al., 1989,
Berry, J.W., Kim, U., Yang, K.-S., Hwang, K.-K., 2006; Sue & Sue, 1990)
In the field of psychology and counselling the dominance of western worldviews on
other cultures, and the resistance to it, is not just a local, but also a global, concern.

21
According to the editors of Indigenous psychologies research and Experience in Cultural
Context, Uichol Kim and John W. Berry (1993), Indigenous psychologies are not studies of
“exotic people in faraway places” and does not presume a superiority of one psychology
over another ( p. 3). The authors within this book and in Indigenous and cultural
psychology, (Kim,Yang & Hwang, ed., 2006) speak of Indigenous psychologies, from places
such as Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, etc. as emerging from the dominance
and inappropriate application of western concepts on their cultures. A few examples of the
misfit of western concepts are: Heidi Fung found that theories of shame in Taiwan do not fit
Western theories; Lutz H. Eckensberger suggests non-Western morality is duty based not
rights based as in Western culture; Sang Chin Choi says the Korean emotional concept of
‘jiang’, affection, is more important that the Western emphasis on rationality; Rogelia PePua, in researching the concept of maleness in the Philippines, found that even Western
research designs did not work. In the fairly extensive literature review entitled: Integrating
Mainstream Mental Health Approaches and Traditional Aboriginal Healing Practises,
Marcela Rojas and Tammy Stubley (2014) cite many non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal authors
who suggest current Eurocentric approaches to counselling are not culturally safe and may
even be harmful. Aretha Fay Marbley, advises professionals to be active in their
professional development to improve the chances of effective interventions and culturally
relevant practices (Rojas & Stubley, 2014).
Battiste and Henderson (2000) suggest this time could be finally making space for
Indigenous peoples to emerge and receive a welcoming for their positive contributions to
diversity. In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation, call to action #62, calls for more postsecondary funding so teachers can better integrate Indigenous knowledge and ways of

22
learning. “Best practices for Aboriginal wellness involve a range of services from
mainstream health care to traditional practices and medicines, all under community
leadership and control. Such an integrated approach has the power to improve the lives of
all community members” (2015, p. 163).
Counsellors, regardless of heritage, could benefit by experiencing Indigenous ways
of learning, if only to open their mindset to another culture’s intelligence. For example,
“oral traditions do not have to be written down or 'saved' for “Indigenous peoples own good”
(p. 52) since the concept of ‘saving’ is a colonial, non-Aboriginal idea, that does not
recognize the ever changing world (Battiste, 2014). This an Indigenous recognition of fluid
knowledge, not embraced in western book, written word system.
Respecting differences is part of the Truth and Reconciliation (2-15) call to action
#63 that further instructs we begin “building student capacity for intercultural understanding,
empathy and mutual respect” (p.239). Intercultural understanding, empathy and mutual
respect are known to be key components of a positive therapeutic relationship (Corey, 2009)
but, before they can be applied to counselling programs, we need a collection of Indigenous
knowledge directed to developing curriculum. This study focuses on Indigenous knowledge
that could partner with current mainstream counsellor education, specifically at UNBC. In
order to decolonize, Indigenous people need to share their worldviews and concerns
(Ormiston, 2010) for the better health of all nations.
Current education, cultural context
Sue and Sue (1990) point out the counselling process must suit the client’s values
and experience, and be communicated in a culturally appropriate manner. Therefore,
counsellors need to be aware of and accept influencing sociopolitical factors, barriers due to

23
culture and language, the client’s worldviews, how the client-therapist differences may affect
open communication, and how their own culture and biases affect the relationship.
Values integrate with education. An educational system that excludes full
participation and acceptance of Aboriginal cognition, knowledge, and ways of knowing from
its curriculum maintains colonizing views of superiority. This singular, but silent,
curriculum does not accommodate other ways of knowing and learning. Indigenous
knowledge is fundamentally diverse, inclusive, dynamic and pluralistic. Indigenous
knowledge is built on equality; recognizing that no single Indigenous experience dominates
another’s perspectives, no one heritage informs it, and no two heritages produce the same
result (Battiste, 2014). This is valuable pedagogy for the counselling profession.
Most mainstream counselling in Canada and in British Columbia has a Eurocentric
focus although some institutions do offer programs adjusted for different cultural
populations (Chinn, 2006; Hogan & Barlow 2000; Morrissette, 2003). Western
psychologies are more oriented towards individually and self-autonomy, which is in direct
contrast to the importance many women, minority groups, non-Western societies, and
Indigenous peoples place on interpersonal relatedness (Egan, 2006). This Eurocentric
dominance creates conflicts in service delivery and the effectiveness of therapy for many
(Duran, 2006; Egan, 2006; McCormick, 1994). Besides the Truth and Reconciliation (2015)
calls to action for improved cultural competency many scholars and counselling authorities,
advocate for culturally safe practices and the building of culturally competent health care
providers (Egan, 2006; Fan, 2007; Graveline, 1998). Graveline expresses the need for all
professionals, regardless of ethnicity, to consider alternative therapies. According to

24
Graveline (1998), it is important for counsellors to go beyond dominant paradigms, and
examine the origins of their practice, possibly helping to discover sources of racism.
Sue and Sue (1990) point out the counselling process must suit the client’s values
and experience, and be communicated in a culturally appropriate manner. Therefore,
counsellors need to be aware of influencing sociopolitical factors, barriers due to culture and
language, the client’s worldviews, how the client-therapist differences may affect open
communication, and how their own culture and biases affect the relationship. This also
means an acceptance of other worldviews.
The space for Indigenous curriculum is hampered by the dominance of mainstream,
Eurocentric, education that maintains white privilege to the detriment of all culturesincluding the Aboriginal culture (Battiste, 2014; Smith, 1999). For higher education to
continue acting as gatekeepers, restricting equal placement of Aboriginal knowledge in all
subject matter maintains colonial amnesia. Colonization and Eurocentric assimilation
through education has left many Aboriginals and other cultures, in Canada and around the
world, with a loss of traditional culture and values, self-doubt, and difficulty in empowering
themselves (Battiste, 2014; Hart, 2002; Mihesuah, 2004; Smith, 1999).
Today, Aboriginals in Canada are no longer willing to be educated by a system that
marginalizes and fragments their culture, while still mirroring Eurocentric perspectives.
Aboriginals want an equal voice and power in forming curriculum so the education received
will better fit Indigenous perspectives (Battiste, 2014).
Affective learning, experiential learning.
An important facet of counsellor education needs to develop a sense of responsibility
towards personal and professional self-awareness, while establishing confidence and comfort

25
with self-exploration at deep emotional and spiritual levels. Helping another is not neutral,
but two-way collaboration influenced by counsellor values (Egan, 2006). Gerald Egan
(2006) a professor of psychology and author of several books about counsellor development
asserts much evidence shows inept counselling exists and can make things worse, regardless
of which helping models the counsellor uses.
Carl Jung (1946) states that within Greek mythology personal awareness awakened
through one’s own suffering and healing process, enables helpers/counsellors to be more
effective healers because they can understand that their clients hold their own personal
meaning as well. As the saying goes — You cannot take someone to a place you have not
gone yourself. A study by Smith and Davis-Gage (2008) in two Midwestern university
counselling programs found that, in a group context, students receive an opportunity to learn
emotionally what they have learned intellectually they reported gaining self-awareness,
expanding their worldview, and increasing their awareness of other worldviews.
Western knowledge is considered to be content oriented, following rules of logic that
could be true, false, or meaningless. Transmission of content is necessary, but not enough,
for learning to take place according to Indigenous paradigms. Clients, especially trauma
clients are helped more effectively when knowledge is in their body and spirit because it is
unused if just carried in the brain (Battiste, 2014; Linklater, 2014). This applies to
counsellors as well keeping in mind that affective learning and experiential counsellor
development becomes extremely important to clients especially when client wounds are deep
in either the client or counsellor’s psyche (Duran, 2006; Herman, 1997).
According to this paradigm, learning requires not just knowing content but also must
be in practice. Western education often evaluates learning by asking for a regurgitation of

26
content but in process-driven, Indigenous education, it is the actions that indicate learning
has taken place (Atherton, 2013). Writers such as Kahn (1997), Kottler (2010), Piper
(2003), and Yalom (2002), suggest that a self-aware therapist is present for their clients, has
an awareness of countertransference, and recognizes that they are an influencing, dynamic,
and interacting part of the therapeutic relationship. As Sussman (2007) describes, therapists
“affect the emotional matrix of therapy”. Behaviours that stem from a lack of selfawareness, on any level, can create opportunities for misunderstandings with detrimental
effects for the client and the therapist (Duran, 2006).
Lee Brown (2004) tells us “A mind is a terrible thing to waste but a mind educated
without a heart is just a terrible thing” (p.3). Lee Brown, an educator amongst other
capacities, adds that, in “the medicine wheel, emotions are the root of the sacred tree of life.
Emotions provide the energy for learning. In Native symbology emotions are represented, at
times, as water. Can you imagine the earth without water?” (p. 4). His doctoral thesis on
affective classroom learning looked at the influence of emotional development within a
holistic curriculum. His study interviewed the developers and students of the Native Human
Services program that was developed to meet the needs of some BC interior Aboriginal
communities, suffering from the effects of colonization. The developers, one of whom I
interviewed, believed that despite colonization and residential schools, Aboriginal
communities contained the knowledge and the teachings to develop into emotionally mature
and competent adults, despite the colonization of emotions (M. Anderson, Feb. 27, 2017).
From a medicine wheel perspective, the mind and heart are connected so “educating the
mind alone is absurd (p. 10). However, the colonizers came from philosophies built from
the age reason, objectivity and rational management of emotions (Brown, 2004).

27
Indigenous Story, Medicine Wheel
Story and Indigenous ways.
Achimoh [Tell a Story!] I find it hard to think about asking an Aboriginal to give me
information, advice, or wisdom without story being told. Stories can teach us, heal us, keep
us engaged, and keep us connected to our ancestors. Indigenous oral histories are not
categorized or learned the same as in Western education systems (Archibald, 2008; Kovach,
2009). Western translations of Aboriginal stories have often weakened the story and these
‘mis-stories’ tells us that western theorists have changed the story (Kovach, 2009). This
study suggests authentic story and storytellers be revived at all educational levels.
Storytellers. Traditional teachings handed down from the ancestors was often gifted
from knowledge holders of ancient times to Elders, young warriors, performers, carvers,
storytellers, and others. They worked hard to earn the respect to deliver this higher
knowledge. A good storyteller was someone who would look, listen and learn. Today
Elders are often the only ones still grounded in generations of knowledge and consequently
tend to be the holders of this ancient knowledge.
Storytellers were highly respected in Indigenous tradition (Graham, 2013) and story
can never be decontextualized from the storyteller (Kovach, 2009). In her article Lynne
Davis (2004) in her article Risky stories: Speaking and writing in colonial spaces, says
“Stories cement together generations of collective memory, embodying the historical
spiritual, social and special” (p.3).
Stories are considered to have more than one form (Kovach, 2009; Wilson, 2008).
There sacred stories that include mythical elements and are usually about creation or
teachings. Traditionally, trained and tested tellers of these stories were the only ones that

28
could tell them. These were precise stories that had to be told at the level of the listener. On
the other hand, an Indigenous legend could be shaped by the experience of the storyteller
and the listener and contained morals, lessons or events. Another type of story is a personal
narrative based on experience and used to teach or counsel.
Story and healing. Talk therapy is less helpful as a treatment for the growing issue
of trauma in the counselling profession (Graham, 2013). Trauma assaults all the senses and
trauma experts, like Judith Herman (1997), say that healing from trauma involves expressing
and recalling the trauma. However, trauma can only effectively be recalled using implicit,
sensory memory. Story uses implicit sensory memory and can be in forms like words,
music, dance, and more (Graham, 2013). Storytelling acknowledges imagination as a more
holistic form of intelligence and as a valuable way of knowing and learning (Perrow, 2003).
Non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal scholars, teachers, and helpers say stories can connect our
brains with others and heal us on many levels (Poonwassie &Charter, 2001; Perrow, 2003;
Widrich, 2012). Stories can touch our souls, engage our hearts, and work on the internal
parts of our minds in silence; invisibly, consciously, or unconsciously changing us while
becoming a part of us (Perrow, 2003).
Anne Poonwassie and Ann Charter (2001) report that story can influence
incorporating cultural values, connect our past to the future, connect one generation to
another, and help the listener understand and accept responsibility for their actions. In their
article they also talk about the value of a storyteller as a healer- where healing occurs on an
energetic level. They tell us the storyteller is a healer, producing sound words so constricted
energy can be released and using picture words to awaken the listener’s inherent healing
awareness. Further, they tell us storytelling is the medium to communicate and plant ‘seed

29
thoughts’ that surprise our consciousness into a new way of seeing. This can free our minds,
energize our imagination, and transform our energy.
Michael Hart (2002) in Seeking Mino-Pimatisiwin mentions that stories are often
used as the vehicle for true understanding; describing ways of healing, health and wholeness;
and establishing and confirming traditional beliefs, values and practices which then act as
guides for present behaviour. But, they require the listener to pay close attention and
understand the truths embodied in the story and myth. According to Asikinack, the truth
must then become part of us and, if we stop to listen to that inner truth, it can lead to selfactualization (as cited in Hart, 2002). Hart also cites Gaywish, a Cree who states Cree prefer
narratives over explanations of events and storytelling follows the value of respect through
this non-interfering approach. A significant aspect of Aboriginal stories is the use of humour
for healing. This is because humour shows the universal fallibility of existence and supports
the release of tension and energy. Humour supports knowledge development since much
can be learned from laughter.
Story and education. JoAnn Archibald (2008) acknowledges Kimberly Blaeser
who says we must first know the stories of our own people before we can make our own.
JoAnn further says that if we are connected, then when principles are used, stories can take
on their own lives and become the teacher. This is different than a question and answer
pedagogical approach because stories can take on meaning over time and not necessarily at
the time of the story- when we need it, or have the experience to understand it, a spirit will
give it to you. A story does not need to be dissected, it needs us to have relationship with it.
Indigenous knowledge is pedagogical. Ceremonies, dialogue, ritual, daily direct
observation or experience, and storytelling are spirit connecting processes that allow what

30
can be observed, thought and transmitted to contain teaching suited to each person’s unique
learning experience. The student, like knowledge, is an expert and novice so as the student
learns they share their unique ‘expert’ gifts and visions and knowledge continually grows as
it adapts to changing conditions (Battiste, 2002). Further, the process of learning Indigenous
knowledge shows the student principles of teaching including a responsibility to the
knowledge they receive. Learning, like stories will wait until we are ready (Kovach, 2009).
Therefore, it is important for Indigenous people in Canada to share their own life and
experience. The listener will hear the story and its teachings when they are ready. Shawn
Wilson (2008) says you cannot know the context and definition of an idea at the same time
and if you try to explain the ideas you will lose the context. However, to reach a deep level
of understanding you must have a relationship that knows content and context. For some,
absorbing the knowledge contained in the story becomes easier when they know the
background of the storyteller and how the story fits into their life (Wilson, 2008).
Whether for healing or education, the storyteller and the listener connect on many
levels, including physiologically. Widrich (2012) describes neural coupling where the
listener’s brain region activates at the same time and in the same areas as the storyteller’s
brain. In other words, if the emotional part of the brain activates for the storyteller, so will
the listener’s brain, and if the storyteller’s activation area changes to another area the
listeners will also switch. Story can plant ideas, thoughts, emotions, and make practice
visible in other people’s minds, turning the story into the listeners’ own idea and experience.
In her article Susan Perrow (2003) states storytelling is a community responsibility to revive
and writes:

31
[on the] premise that human beings start their lives as juicy plums …..[but] as a result
of predominantly intellectual schooling in earlier years most children grow into
adults whose imaginations are like dried up plums. (p. 4)
Medicine Wheel.
The Sacred Circle and the Medicine Wheel are interchangeable concepts because
they are both sacred containers for ancestral and current belief systems (Sanderson, 2010)
helping us to understand the concept of wholeness (Hart, 2002), being both a symbol and a
tool to understand phenomena (Lavallee, 2009). The medicine wheel shows the cyclical,
infinite, related and interconnected nature of life that guides us towards equality, balance,
harmony and relationship and has sacred circle power that can be tapped into.

The

medicine wheel, according to Cree teachings, is based on four parts plus a cosmos, and an
earthly plane. All parts are equal in importance, are in relation with each other, and are
necessary for unity and oneness to exist (Sanderson, 2010). They contain 4 of each: spiritual
laws, directions, colors, races, seasons, humanness, lifecycles, roles, time patterns, etc. Gifts
can be received from all symbolic directions. The medicine wheel guided and informed me
throughout this research process; I used it for personal introspection, reflexivity, a way of
looking at what was received from the research participants and during all phases of the
research.
Works similar to mine
Programs, articles and research abound regarding the value of using Indigenous
methodologies in the helping professions. While there is some readiness to integrate
Indigenous with western worldviews and practices, the insertion and equalization of
Indigenous knowledge and practices with the dominant Western worldview has often been
met with oppressive policies restricting the integration (Battiste, 2014, Kovach, Mishesuah

32
& Wilson, 2004; Smith, 1999). Marie Battiste and James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson
(2010) say that “contemporary Canadian education systems will have to reconcile IK
(Indigenous Knowledge) with EK (Eurocentric Knowledge)” (p. 16) as a constitutional
requirement.
Most of the research I conducted where Indigenous knowledge was incorporated it
was in programs intended for Aboriginal learners or as a way to encourage and develop
cultural competency within western based systems. In my experience there is limited
research looking at Indigenous knowledge and practices and their contribution to
counsellors’ holistic self-awareness using an equal partnership of Indigenous and western
knowledges (Rojas & Stubley, 2014).
What is Indigenous Knowledge
As an Aboriginal person, I accept my ancestral connections, visions and a spiritual
knowing as practical educational tools. I feel connected to nôhkom [my "granny"] knowing
that her spirit shows in me in who I am- my passion for plants as medicines, non-verbal
ways of knowing and healing, and my connection to land. Knowing my granny only spoke
Cree, was very traditional and involved with plants and medicines (T. Letendre, July, 2011)
reinforces my connection to not only being of Cree ancestry, but also feeling like I am of
Cree ancestry. One vision that forms the backbone of this project I experienced a few years
ago was experienced while I was sharing a healing situation with a Kwakwa̱ ka̱ ʼwakw Elder.
The vision clearly demonstrated that I must accept colonization into my heart. I must be a
gracious host regardless of the settler’s past or present behaviour.
Indigenous knowledge is recognized as being globally diverse, while still accepting
commonalties that exist (Smith, 1999). Darrel Posey (2006) in Indigenous Ecological

33
Knowledge informs us that, “… traditional knowledge emanates from a spiritual base.
…Many indigenous peoples believe they once spoke the language of the animals.”(p.29)
Battiste and Henderson (2000) comment that trying to define Indigenous knowledge is
inappropriate because there are no comparable methodologies. What this section presents
are the views of many Indigenous authors, including myself. However, it contains only a
small portion of the writings available from Indigenous authors around the world.
Indigenous knowledge is experiential, contextual, personal, oral, holistic,
empowering, ethical and beneficial to the community. It includes cultural protocol and
cultural/traditional teachings steeped in narrative or metaphorical language (Battiste, 2009;
Brant-Castellano, 2000; Kovach, 2009; Smith, 1999).
Relationship and Interconnection. Relationship and interconnectedness to land,
place, and all beings, is a key principle for many nations. Relationship to Self includes
acknowledging one’s own history and, from this position, viewing the world from one’s
own, more empathic, center — with Sacred Eyes, grounded to Earth and connected with
Spirit (Duran, 2006). Interconnectedness builds relationships such as the relationship
between Self and Self, Self and all sentient beings, and Self and the environment. A Spiritual
Law in Cree is called mahtahitowin [sharing] that I also understand as being interconnected.
Spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge comes from the spirit or world of energy;
a place of universal knowledge available to all but usually accessed in ceremony, visions,
dreams, intuition and meditation. All sources of knowledge whether they are spoken,
written, emotional, practical, traditional teachings, or spiritual knowledge are of equal value.
Therefore, all sources should be used interchangeably.

34
Ceremony and protocol. Robin Kimmerer (2013) writes, “Ceremonies marry the
mundane to the sacred” (p. 37), “focuses attention so that attention becomes intention …
These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic” (p. 249). Ceremonies include movement,
prayer, song, talk or emotional expression (crying, yelling, swearing, laughing, etc.); they
can heal and centre individuals or groups and are significant in an Aboriginal approach to
learning, research and healing (McCormick, 1994). Ceremony developed out of “initial and
unexpected contact with the great mysterious power” (p. 1) as a path to “establish
relationships with spirits, and other creatures” (p. 9) that shared their knowledge (Deloria,
2006). During this research ceremony has helped anything from healing or understanding
my emotions to deciding what is the next research step. Equal or more significance was
given to spiritual guidance compared to only cognitive knowledge gained through other
research sources such as books, articles, or ‘experts’. Protocols can also be considered part
of ceremony the ritual involved guides us to the right action, creating sacred space or acting
with good principles. This research used gifting and gratitude protocols.
Gifting and gratitude. Gifting is reciprocity in action. Reciprocity, one of the
traditional teachings recognizes the 'give and take' cycle of life as an essential ethical
consideration in Indigenous paradigms. In this study, gifting recognized the exchange and
the value and sacredness of knowledge received, the communities the research is for, and the
larger populations that may benefit. A gratitude protocol of honoring the land I was on was
a part of every interview.
Finally, prayers of gratitude were given every time an ally showed in the literature, a
thought, or persons to help this journey. I raise my hands to these helpers. You, whoever
you are, tell me there is readiness for change. Thank you.

35
Summary of Chapter 2
Chapter 2 was a long walk in my moccasins. This chapter was a literature review
covering several topics including the following: history and colonization, affective learning,
Indigenous story and ways, works similar to mine, and Indigenous knowledge.
My moccasins need to embrace sohkeyitamowin, strength/determination to walk
through the pain of colonization and decolonizing methods because this is an Indigenous
research covering Indigenous knowledge with Indigenous participants wanting to share
space equally with the relatively closed house of western dominated education. The
moccasin leather needed to be strong to present Indigenous knowledge; ways of learning and
ways of researching that would be beneficial to counsellor development within an
Indigenous paradigm. Repeatedly scholars and authors have stated that Western dominant
education for counsellors needed to change and reflect the mosaic of a multicultural
population (Hart, 2001; Kim et al.,1993; Ridley, 1995; Rojas & Stubley, 2014; Sue & Sue,
1990). A major difference between Western and Indigenous knowledge is the use of
cognitive content versus heart and experiential, process learning. The research shows that
when the heart is involved affective learning occurs holistically. Indigenous knowledge has
the potential to improve the helpfulness of counselling because the counsellor can
understand himself or herself better and be explicitly and implicitly more empathic of other
cultures. Soft, well-worked moccasins are strong yet supple, a great metaphor for
counselling education and counsellors.
This chapter also embraces the concept of mahtahitowin, sharing by acknowledging
authentic allies and other Aboriginal helpers readiness for real change.

36
Chapter Three: Indigenous Research Design
Where I go
will be in my heart
I promise to listen to the wisdom from within
and from wisdom keepers
Be they mythical, ancient, ancestral or walking on this earth
I promise to hold these voices sacred
and to honour the strength and intent of Indigenous wisdom
Naadli Todd Ormiston (2010), mentions that oral traditions, decolonizing the
research, Indigenizing the research process and using Indigenous principles of conducting
research helps us conceptualize and make the research process ours.
This chapter outlines my rationale for this methodology, and the approach taken
including ethics; participant considerations, research methods; and the analysis, reporting
and evaluation considerations.
Steinhauer (2001), a Cree researcher suggests a researcher has to examine
themselves. Couture says “traditional learning modalities eventually bring one to think
intuitively, to think with the heart, to think Circles, to understand and utilize dream,
metaphor and symbol” (as cited in Linklater, 2014, p. 13). This is who I am, my values, my
blood, heart and spirit memory and because of this I join with the research community,
offering space for counter-story telling, oral histories and Indigenous voices of change. This
research story belongs to me. I cannot speak for others because they may see it differently.
This is my opportunity to challenge the construction of knowledge by shifting the
focus away from mainstream perspectives and reclaiming Indigenous people as producers of
expert knowledge (Young, 2006). This is my opportunity to acknowledge the survival of
Indigenous knowledge – a result of the ancestral resilience gained through challenges caused
by 500 years of colonization, racism, oppression, denigration of Indigenous culture; lack of

37
equality within mainstream systems such as education; and all that still endures today. The
benefits of being resilient gives a chance to develop Indigenous trauma practice, gained from
working on the forefront with the generational legacy of historical trauma to the benefit of
Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples (Linklater, 2014).
Research, like counselling, has been dominated by Eurocentric constructs while
acknowledging the vast differences between Indigenous and Western worldviews (Little
Bear, 2000). Even if Indigenous worldviews are acknowledged, they have been “analyzed
through a Eurocentric point of view” (Hart, 2010, p. 4) by shape shifting western research
categories (ontology, epistemology, methodology) to fit their worldview (Kovach, 2010).
For instance, Suzanne Stewart (2008), Yellowknife Dene, a registered psychologist, scholar
and researcher on Indigenous mental health and healing, notes that Indigenous
methodologies embrace relation as core to research acknowledging this potential to bias.
Indigenous research has progressed over the years. Patsy Steinhauer, (2001)
describes phases. She says the beginning shape shift phase was Indigenous voices trying to
be heard combined with effort to escape further marginalization followed by a decolonizing
phase and this is now the current phase of articulating Indigenous research paradigms,
approaches and gathering research information.
I briefly looked for Indigenous research around the globe and noted an increasing
number of researchers stating ‘western’ research methods were not appropriate to their
culture. One example, Rogelia Pe-Pua (2006), a Filipino researcher and a strong force in the
Indigenization movement in the Philippines, contributes to areas such as Indigenous research
methodology, Indigenous psychology and acculturation. In her article, From decolonizing
psychology to the development of a cross indigenous perspective in methodology, The

38
Philippine experience, Rogelia Pe-Pua (2006) describes her research using a cultural
suppositionless approach called ‘pakapa-kapa’ and storytelling in the third person.
Specifically, she used the interview style of ‘pagtatamong-tanong’, a common cultural form
of communication where hours are spent 'chatting', exchanging questions and ideas within an
understanding of equality. I gathered three main points from her article. First, it
demonstrates that the need for Indigenous methods is more than just a Canadian concern.
Second, her article illustrates the importance of cultural constructs, including using
language, in the success of the research. Thirdly, the article shows that Indigenous research
methods, while unique, can cross cultures. This final point suggests that there is a possibility
for crossover between our (Canadian) Indigenous cultures and some Eurocentric methods
(i.e., Indigenous community research is similar to participatory research). Rogelia’s
Indigenous research offers more than just success in a few research projects. She adds voice
to others like a Narungga man, Lester Rigney (1997) who works as a professor in Aboriginal
Education in Australia and states, “In research we can begin to shift the construction of
knowledge to one that does not compromise Indigenous identity and Indigenous principles
of independence, unity, and freedom from racism (p. 119).
Decolonizing perspectives are not “the epistemological centre of an Indigenous
methodological approach to research.” (Kovach, 2009 p. 42). Using Indigenous
methodology means that Indigenous people’s interests, experiences, and knowledge must be
at the centre of the research methodologies (Young, 2006). Reciprocity, a key principle
regarding relationship and exchange, meant that any benefit must extend beyond myself like
ripples on the water when a rock of knowledge is tossed into it because community must
benefit: the community of counsellors must benefit, the educational community must benefit,

39
the people I interviewed must benefit, knowing what they contributed will be used to help
their community members, and most importantly each community receiving counselling
from the ‘new’ counsellor educated with two worldviews must benefit. I believe this will
happen when a two worldview counselling is part of the educational curriculum. My
personal and educational benefits are with the wise words and heart full stories they shared
and completion of my project. I demonstrated with a gifting protocol at the start of the
interview and a gratitude gift at the end of the interview.
Indigenous Methodology
Indigenous methodology grows from the ground up, changing and modifying to meet
the needs of the study. I questioned myself continually and accessed many Indigenous
authors, scholars, knowledge keepers, and spirit guides to assist this process. Some authors I
drew on heavily created a foundation for the growth of this methodology. They include, but
are not be limited to: Marie Battiste, M’ikmaw; Beatrice Marie Anderson, Nlakapmux;
Michael Hart, Cree; Margaret Kovach, Nêhiyaw [Cree] and Salteaux; Joanne Archibald,
Sto:lo; Linda T. Smith, Maori; Eduardo Duran, Apache/Lakota/Italian; Shawn Wilson,
Opaskwayak Cree; or Frye Jean Graveline, Métis Cree. A summary of the collective
wisdom I absorbed from their words included the following: colonization is alive and well, it
is permissible to think the way I do and, my way of thinking is ‘in sync’ with my nation,
many other Canadian nations and Aboriginals around the world. These authors always
acknowledged the experience and training from others that preceded them and who also
supported their views. Further, these authors confirmed, for me, that the ways in which I
function in this world are valid. Their writings reinforced my intentions by illustrating that
some people, organizations and educational institutions are successfully using Aboriginal

40
approaches or offering pragmatic solutions towards equal insertion of Indigenous
presence/knowledge into mainstream post-secondary schools, Aboriginal education
programs, counselling programs and health care systems. I am also supported by the words
of John Creswell (2007), a non-Aboriginal scholar, who points out that research procedures
evolve from the researcher’s philosophical stance, informing the study and practices with
their worldviews, paradigms and beliefs. He further states that researchers need to
understand the phenomenon being explored. I understand the phenomenon being explored
in this study is Indigeneity.
Indigenous methodology stands alone although there is overlap with some western
methodologies. Indigenous inquiry is an ancient scientific and learning method. Thus, it
makes sense that mainstream ‘qualitative research methods’ may have, in part, emerged
from these methods — though they are now described in Westernized terms. Kovach (2009)
differentiates Indigenous methodologies from Western methodologies by highlighting that
Indigenous methodologies flow from tribal knowledge and, while several Western
qualitative approaches may align with Indigenous inquiry, there are key distinctions.
Indigenous nations are diverse in culture and practices but the similarity is in the
inclusive, dynamic, diverse, and interconnected nature of the research methodologies.
Indigenous knowledge or methodologies are not contained in a one size, one-way, rigid set
of rules; there is no systematic approach that is homogenous or that has a static structure
(Battiste, 2014; Kovach, 2009) because it is always growing and evolving into different
levels depending on past, present, interior, and exterior forces. Indigenous methodology is
dynamic because it allows Indigenous individuals and communities to tell their stories and
pass on their knowledge. Marie Anderson (2007), offers a caveat that one must be aware of

41
decolonizing factors in order to make space for Indigenous thought so these stories include
past, present, or future events that have been suppressed and oppressed for more than five
centuries by colonization (Smith, L., 1999). Marlene Castellano (2004), a Mohawk of the
Bay of Qunite Band in Ontario, a professor at Trent University and author says decolonizing
perspectives are needed aspects and adds “fundamental to the exercise of self-determination
is the right of peoples to construct knowledge in accordance with self-determined definitions
of what is real and what is valuable” (p. 102).
Conversational Method. The oral tradition of sharing knowledge through
storytelling is known throughout the world. Margaret Kovach (2009), a Cree scholar who
has focused her research on storytelling, informs us that the conversational method of
gathering knowledge is an Indigenous methodology of significance. This method is
congruent with an Indigenous research paradigm and also has a profound ability to help
people. The conversational method of talking and sharing stories provides an opportunity to
strengthen relational skills such as having humility, having a sense of humor, and being
attuned to others. Also, sharing stories through research places them in collective memory
because it attaches us to place and not time (Kovach, 2009).
I embraced the conversational method of storytelling to make meaning and animate
the knowledge because it is holistic (Thomas, 2005); harmonious with the relational dynamic
of an Indigenous paradigm; it involves listening and sharing (Wilson, 2001); and helps
maintain the collective tradition of storytelling (Kovach, 2010). I incorporated the
collaborative storytelling view described by Maori researcher Russell Bishop (1999) where
the researcher is also positioned as a participant who would share some story. The
Indigenous conversational framework I used was based on the characteristics described by

42
Margaret Kovach (2010) in her article Conversational Method in Indigenous Research. The
following describes how I met each of these seven characteristics. First, I linked the
research to particular epistemologies by acknowledging each person’s Indigenous
framework. I did not try to make the interior concepts of the medicine wheel or sweetgrass
thinking fit coastal (Gitxsan, Haida, ‘Namgis, Shíshálh) epistemologies or paradigms
represented by totem poles, the Big House or potlatches. An example would be that healing
on the coast would not traditionally use a medicine wheel or smudging as health tools but
ceremonies in the big house or the big box/log drum may elicit similar healing effects.
Second this was relational research in so many ways. We had all shared healing and
healing/learning experiences prior to the interview. We shared physical space together,
food, knowing looks, laughter, hugs and gifting. Third, the research was purposeful with a
goal to be beneficial to counsellors because I asked for and received practical content and
praxis that could be used in their education. All interviews almost naturally included
decolonizing content and process without a specific request. Fourth, the protocol of gifting
or sharing food was determined by the nation they were from or in. Fifth, we were informal,
eating together, visiting and being flexible for every person’s schedule. Sixth, we were
collaborative because we both offered solutions during our dialogue. We both knew we
wanted the information to be useful with a similar aim for using the knowledge. Seventh, I
have been reflexive.
I chose to be guided by Indigenous Research Methodoloy (IRM) principles as
outlined by Cora Weber-Pillwax (1999). These principles recognize the following:
the interconnectness of all living things; the impact of motives and intentions on
persona and community; the foundation of research as lived Indigenous experience;
the groundedness of theories in Indigenous epistemology; the transformative nature
of research; the sacredness and responsibility of maintaining personal and

43
community integrity and; the recognition of languages and cultures as living
processes (p. 31-32).
I did influence the research and I changed personally during this process. My intent
was to do so in ways that respected the process, the participants, the knowledge collected
and the intended purpose for the knowledge shared.
My Indigenous research perspective includes the wisdom of several Indigenous
researchers. Naadli Todd Ormiston (2010), a northern Tutchone and Tlingit, outlines points
in his article Re-Conceptualizing Research: An Indigenous Perspective that I incorporated.
According to this article, Indigenous research should consider the following: how the
research will transform or help the community (ies) being researched; that Indigenous
worldviews are distinct for each nation; that Indigenous people should conduct their own
research when possible; that the results of the research should always explore strategies for
healing and community development; that an understanding of colonialism should be
developed prior to the research along with the effects of the research; that acknowledging the
Elders’ experience is vital; that we must remember our values and; that we must remember
our responsibility to future generations. Marie Battiste (2000) suggests that in order to
respect Indigenous knowledge we must centre it. Holmes outlined three ways Hawaiian
elders centred their knowledge: by using heart knowledge because it connects to identity,
values and relationship; by acknowledging ‘blood memory’ because it recognizes genealogy
and experience as essential to knowledge and; by listening to the voices of the land because
teachings flow from mother earth (as cited in Ormiston, 2010). Renee Linklater (2014), an
Anishnaabe author, cites many sources acknowledging the multigenerational passage of
trauma into our physical and psychological beings. The interviewees personalized and made

44
real these three ways. I know they spoke with their hearts of ancient and present knowledge
with their souls and beings grounded in land and home territory.
Indigenous research recognizes and includes spiritual knowledge. Spiritual
knowledge in this sense is non-denominational, non-dogmatic and non-religious. Cajete,
Meyer, and Rice all agree that Indigenous people recognize the spiritual realm and its
interconnection with the physical (as cited in Hart, 2010). This research completely accepts
seeing the world through a spiritual lens, as "seeing with one’s Sacred Eyes, hearing with
one’s Sacred Ears and speaking or asking with one’s Sacred Voice" (Bopp & Bopp, 1985,
p.14). Spirit naturally assumes that we need more than our five senses of human needs
(taste, see, touch, feel and smell) and requires heart. Some examples of connection to the
spiritual realm include visions, a synchronous event like dogs barking during a key
communication or event, accessing intuition, dreams, inspiration and expression in all art
forms, feeling ‘lucky, hearing a tree talk to you, etc. This research acknowledged and used
the spiritual as an avenue to the practical in all aspects of the research. Teachings based on
my Cree heritage - the Medicine Wheel and the traditional teachings of respect, relationship,
responsibility and reciprocity must go beyond simply applying these concepts to research
ethics because I must fully live these teachings and demonstrate in my relations with the
participants that I embrace these teachings.
Ethical Concerns and Research Ethics
From an Aboriginal perspective, ethics are lived within the whole person. Marlene
Brant Castellano (2004), a Mohawk scholar, describes that ethics are right behaviour and are
“intimately connected with who you are, the deep values you subscribe to, and your
understanding of your place in the spiritual order of reality" (p. 103).

45
Some mainstream counselling education programs require more use of the head than
the heart and spirit. From a medicine wheel perspective an over emphasis on the cognitive
equates to rolling down a hill on a lopsided wheel. Aboriginal ethics embed counsellor
driven ethics of beneficence, non-maleficence, and respect within Indigenous principles of
respect, relationship, responsibility, and reciprocity. Reverence, inherent in every principle,
reminding me to be ever mindful that the opportunity to listen to the experiences, stories and
wisdom of others was sacred. Iyiniw pahminsowin, how I regulate my activity; to work and
direct oneself, from an Aboriginal perspective is explained in the four principles of respect,
relationship, responsibility and reciprocity that guided this research. I continually asked and
ayamiha [prayed] for “mamatowisin [the capacity to tap the creative life forces of the inner
space by the use of all the faculties that constitute our being- it is to exercise inwardness]"
(Ermine, 1995, p. 104)] for practical application to this research process.
Applying Respect, Relationship, Responsibility, and Reciprocity
These are four values seen as important in Indigenous and higher education
(Kirkness & Barnhardt, 2001)
Mantisiwin [respect]. Respect continually values the equality and
interconnectedness of all animate and inanimate beings; land and place; intent and thoughts;
acts of knowledge sharing such as writing or reviewing, songs, languages, sacred
knowledge, stories; protocols, prayers, dances, ceremony, and most importantly respecting
ourselves for healing ourselves.
This research respected academic protocols such as meeting the requirements of the
Research Ethics for the University of Northern British Columbia, while also honouring
Indigenous ethics. During the informed consent process respect was shown by offering the

46
right of privacy through anonymity; a choice to waive confidentiality; or a right of claim to
their knowledge. If they chose anonymity, a pseudonym was given. Everybody but one
chose the right to claim their knowledge. If they wanted a non-identifying pseudonym they
were given one and any identifying aspects within the interviews were changed during
transcription as required by the Research Ethics Board. A transcriptionist and I transcribed
the recordings. The transcriptionist was required to sign a confidentiality and disclosure
agreement and be familiar with UNBC procedures to protect confidentiality.
As a visitor to the territories I conducted research in, I offered a gratitude prayer to
honor the nation whose territory I was. My intention and preparation prior to each interview
was to display respect and reverence for what I was going to receive and from whom I was
receiving it.
According to traditional teachings, important knowledge and wisdom contain power
so one must be ready to share and teach what is shared if the knowledge and power is to
continue (Archibald, 2008). Respect also meant I needed to communicate with participants,
advisors, teaching visions, dreams or insights for guidance and to equally respect all input as
sacred knowledge. I asked every participant if they felt this research (thesis at the time)
could be collectively useful and if they were willing to have their story shared before I used
any of their time for the interview process. All participants were asked to review their
transcripts before their knowledge was used in this project. Finally, I respected the
connectedness of each person’s wisdoms to shape this research to the best outcome.
Relationship. Every aspect of this research is a relationship with something or
someone. Aboriginal people hold collective, generational knowledge. The intellectual
ownership of this knowledge must be recognized because it affects others in those nations

47
(Castellano, 2004). The Aboriginals in this study, while they were not specifically
designated representatives of their nations, are still recognized as guardians, and sharing
knowledge that is under collective ownership Each participant chose to be acknowledged for
their contribution, often mentioning that they could only speak from their experience and
knowing.
Wilson (2008) describes a common form of relationship recognized by most
Indigenous people as sharing, something that occurred many ways over the many years I
knew each person and helping build a deeper levels of trust. Interviewing was done face to
face and in the moment. I read them my basic research questions all at once then asked them
to speak from their Indigenous heart. Since I gathered information using a conversational
method based on oral storytelling tradition, I understood that participating in the interview
dialogue was relational and there was a deep purpose to sharing story as a way to help others
(Kovach, 2010).
Responsibility. This research comes with responsibility to all the individuals
involved, to the communities that will be affected, and to the larger population. My
responsibility has been to accurately record the content graciously shared by the research
participants and to accept and implement the feedback from my committee. .
For this study, it was my responsibility to ensure that the communities and
interviewees are culturally respected since the knowledge comes not only from the research
participants as subject matter experts but also from the land that hosts them. Even though
the individuals were not formally representing their community, the information they
provided may be indirectly related because of their relationship to the community or
location. Before or during the informed consent I informally asked if there was a particular

48
protocol I could use. I always said a gratitude prayer to the land and area as I arrived or after
the interview. Each person’s nation is acknowledged and as mentioned, the choice to be
anonymous or not has been respected.
Reciprocity. “We have a living, dialogical relationship with the world" (Battiste &
Henderson, 2000, p. 94). For instance, when we pick berries or harvest fish we are engaging
in a reciprocal relationship. The berries and fish give us sustenance so we need to show
respect by protocol that demonstrates right relationship by honoring these exchanges. I
wanted to recognize reciprocity by offering a small token at the start of the interview. This
token was like the offering of tobacco protocol. Offering the token was a physical
representation of my request to listen and my commitment to use the knowledge
purposefully and ethically. This offering also allowed each knowledge holder time to
consider if I was a honourable recipient of their knowledge and to accept my request by
keeping the token. This exchange confirms an ethical relationship that goes beyond the time
and place of this study. (Their) knowledge is not a ‘product’ that can be bought and
exploited (Castellano, 2004) at my will but, rather, is to be handled with reverence.
As a Cree woman, it is very important to gift back the knowledge, shared
experiences, songs and prayers to the communities. In this study, this meant each
knowledge holder must be validated not only through a correct recording of his or her
knowledge, but also through gifting. Each research participant was gifted as a very small
representation of recognizing the value of what was shared and received. My intention was
to demonstrate that I valued the knowledge holders’ ways of knowing and being. Also, each
participant will be sent an executive summary with an opportunity to acquire the entire
project through the UNBC library or requesting an email copy from me.

49
Research Ethics
UNBC research ethics respects information management, and the populations being
researched and any risks or benefits. I kept all written participant transcripts, forms and the
audio recorder in a lockable box at my home along with any written or graphic journals I
generated during reflexive moments. A password-protected computer contained the
electronic information.

I maintained reflexivity in the form of computer, audio or graphic

(drawings) journals. I did not see the population I interviewed as immediately vulnerable. I
saw the information I gathered as a way to better help vulnerable populations. What I saw is
that I interviewed resilient people; people who have been wounded historically through
colonization, intergenerational trauma; people with purpose and conviction. What makes
wounded people vulnerable is when their words are not heard or acted upon (Mate, 2008;
Watkins & Schulman, 2008). Beyond confidentiality there is a risk that the wisdoms heard
in the participants’ stories are disregarded. While this disregard may not cause physical
harm, I potentially inflict harmful emotional and spiritual wounds.
A potential benefit to the participants is a sense of legacy because they lent their
Aboriginal voice and wisdom to developing future generations of holistic, more useful
counsellors. I am not sure if the participants felt more empowered by this opportunity to be
heard and recognized for the value of their Indigenous knowledge. They might have gained
more insight into their own views and stories.
Recruitment and Demographics of Participants
Seven participants were recruited purposefully based on their involvement in healing
and counselling as a client, counsellor, cultural facilitator, aboriginal education, or private
practice healer (e.g. cultural support, defined as a medicine person, etc.). Besides purposeful,

50
criteria sampling, three participants joined through snowball sampling as the research
progressed due to a recommendation and/or the sense they had something important to be
added. All participants fit the general criteria. I asked participants from a variety of nations
to hear any differences in perspective. The nations were: Gitxsan, Secwepemc,
Nlaka’pamux, ‘Namgis, Sechelth, Haida, and Cree. Nine women and one man were
interviewed, 7 were grandparents and they ranged from mothers in their 30’s to Elders in
their 70’s. No person was a past or present client of mine and all were people I met during
my personal healing journey or my professional development as a counsellor.
I used all aspects of the medicine wheel to search for and recruit participants. For
example, I asked spirit to provide the names or places I should interview from. My heart let
me know if I was on track or not. Physically, I considered how I would travel, coordinate
my session with their timetable, where and how they wanted to engage. Mental effort was
engaged through the several iterations of the participant information and informed consent
forms based on input from my supervisors and from field-testing.
If the participants needed counselling services during the research they could access
local resources and that I would also check in on them when the transcriptions were finished
and until the end of the study.
As the participants were recruited, attention focused on collaboration and following
cultural protocols attuned to the individuals involved. The offering of a token, the
introduction I made of my life and heritage, and gifting were main protocols followed.
Without any pre-arranging sharing food was involved in every interview, something I
recognized as a common interaction among Indigenous people.
Interviews and Consent

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All participants reviewed the informed consent, usually by going through the
checklist and information verbally at the beginning of the interview although a couple of
people just read and signed the form before we started the face-to-face interview. All
interviews started with audiotaping. One participant declined audiotaping because it made
her feel too nervous and ‘not natural enough’. The participants were given opportunity to
review, revise, omit or add knowledge. Each interview was transcribed and each
transcription was sent to them by post or by email to review. This was followed by a phone
call or email to confirm any changes. The transcriptions package also contained condensed
conversation stories from their interview along with my reflective comments to ensure the
words I chose accurately reflected their intended words.
The interview locations were varied and chosen by them within their living area.
There was a comfortable relationship with all the participants, like a deep unspoken sharing
even with the two people who had been my instructors in courses I had taken. In each
interview, I felt assured they would feel free to share at their discretion, take a break as they
wanted and stop when they felt ‘done’. My intent throughout the interview was to remain
mindful of their comfort level. The nine audiotaped interviews had a natural ending that I
confirmed by asking if they were “done”. The tenth interview was not audiotaped and I was
requested to use what I learned in our time together and from her written work that I
recorded.
Analysis, Reporting and Presentation
Analysis of the information was not predetermined. Prayer, ceremony, cognitive
consideration of western forms of analysis and cultural models were considered. ‘Grounded
stories’ included the personal theory that I brought to the relationship (Kovach, 2010) are

52
part of condensed conversational stories as ways to maintain brevity and give a sense of the
whole interview relationship. I feel the same as Margaret Kovach (2010) when she
“struggles in decontextualizing and fragmenting the data” (p. 47) and that even the concept
of analyzing, or separating the parts of a whole, is a colonizer's point of view (Smith, 1999).
Consequently, theming was a difficult choice but all people hearing stories find shared
meaning so I looked for repeated meanings and accepted theming as a way to “pinpoint key
messages that could formulate suggestions for a way forward” (Kovach et. al, 2015, p. 6).
The interviews were listened to in their whole form at least twice after transcribing and the
written transcription was re-read a minimum of 3 more times. A novice reviewer themed the
interviews with high correlation to the ones I found. We then reviewed the themes together
aiming to present themes with the most representative quotes. Once the themes appeared, a
metaphor kept showing up in my mind so I used the metaphor and will explain more in
chapter 4. Finally, the concepts that emerged from the themes became more explicit
forming a recommended possible Indigenous curriculum that was the purpose of the
research.
Evaluation of the Study- Credibility and Transferability
The participants define credibility. If they feel accurately represented the
information is not only valid but it is also credible. Whether it agrees with status quo,
dominant cultures, or pre-existing literature is irrelevant to credibility. A novice measured
the credibility of theming. They independently developed themes from the transcripts
finding they were very similar to my themes.
No claim is made about the transferability, or even the value of transferability, to
other groups beyond the ones mentioned in this study: counselling educators, counsellors,

53
healers, therapists, and the counselling field in general. This is subjective information and
may reflect Indigenous rural, remote, and urban issues since this is where the research
participants live.
Reflexivity
Research is not independent of the researcher (Mayan, 2009). Reflexivity can be
used to maintain or gain awareness of how the research affects the researcher. I used
handwritten notes, drawings, photos, ceremonies, or audio journals. Reflexivity helped me
to understand my personal states as they interrelated with the participants. I questioned my
lack of cultural upbringing, any possible harm, and whether or not I was being transparent
enough. I also critically reflected on the co-creative interviews and how much my input
may have changed what was said.
Voice
Past and current colonization practices have attempted to eradicate the Indigenous
voice globally and within our province of British Columbia (Battiste, 2013; Smith, 1999).
The resilience of the Aboriginal Peoples, while marginalized, has shown that though the
voice became quiet, we were not silenced. Every person has their own unique message, and,
as each voice is heard, their children change, and a new legacy will be built (Ruiz & Ruiz,
2010). This research hoped to capture part of each person’s unique message, and build a
decolonized voice for the betterment of the counselling community and the clients served.
Chapter Three outlined Indigenous research methodology, ethics, the process of
research and analyzing the findings. Research terms were explained from an Indigenous
view and ethics from an Indigenous view and university ethics were explained as needed.

54
Chapter 4: Buffalo and Sage meet Sisuytl and Totem Poles
Maya’xala [Kwakwa’ala –respect]
Paskwâwimostos [Cree-respect]
Kisteanémetowin [Cree- respect between people]
Pâstâhowin [Cree- buffalo] keeps coming
Grandfather sits and reminds me
Respect all teachings,
Respect all people
Shawn Wilson (2001) says, in the article What is Indigenous Research Methodology
the relationship between method and paradigm must be congruent with an Indigenous
worldview. I am in relation with all the participants. I have healed, cried, laughed, learned,
eaten, and in either work or play we have shared living or learning space. I trust these
friends with my heart and my spirit and it is because of my bias that I value their words
beyond what words can express.
I transcribed five of the six long interviews and a research assistant transcribed four.
The tenth person only wanted me to summarize or speak for her through the words conveyed
in her thesis or the time we shared together. In addition to transcribing the interviews,
condensed conversational stories were formed from listening at least twice to the interview
with no interruptions. I reviewed the written transcripts to verify each written story. Each
participant had the opportunity to review their transcript and their condensed story.
The participants varied in language fluency but for three the primary language was
their own, not English. Five participants lived full time on their traditional lands and the rest
were living in urban or rural settings. Six were from coastal nations where long houses (the
Big House), totem poles, and reliance of salmon and the ocean were embedded in the
culture. The rest were from inland nations where pit houses, tipis, pow-wows, sage and dry
country were common, although there is some inland reliance on salmon. Nine were from

55
nations in BC and one person came from Treaty 6 area in Alberta, around Edmonton. The
ages ranged from mid 30’s to late 70’s although most were in their senior years and all but
three were grandparents. One man was interviewed and the rest were woman. Almost all
had post-secondary education at diploma, bachelors, masters or doctorate levels.
All interviews were face to face conducted in a variety of places, from Skidegate and
Hazelton in northwest BC to Bainbridge Island, Washington state in the south.
Condensed Conversational Stories
These condensed conversational stories have been to maintain a whole experience
and use an Indigenous way that lets the speaker’s words be absorbed by the reader at the
level they are at and held ‘storied’ within them for future learning (Hart, 2007). I included
the protocol of introducing yourself with their excerpts based on the question “Where did
your knowing come from?”
CF. Gitxsan.
my experiences are from watching my family go through experiences, watching how
they’ve um gone through challenges and how they’ve gone through good things and
also looking back in our traditional system that are within the Gitxsan and how we
conduct ourselves and that’s a core part of everything that we say and do, when
you’ve been raised in it and you don’t wanna, you don’t want to disrespect people,
you can’t.
As we sat outside on a warm summer evening CF’s interview provided an overview
of what was to come- in her willingness, friendship and interview content. These are her
words. Know each culture, we are diverse nations, communities and families. We need to
be involved and the history the counsellor learns must be accurate, be particular to us, be
recognized as intergenerational and know not everyone reacts the same to the same traumatic
incidents, like residential school. Be visible in the community and find a community person
to keep you informed of family relationships and alliances. Counsellor education needs to

56
have a First Nations component (customs, legends, traditional) but also know that the actual
history may not be as important as the why it matters to the client. For instance, if someone
says a mountain is important to him or her, don’t debate the validity of it but be curious as to
why it is important. Counsellors need to take care of themselves, get help to stay clean and
remember they are a helper, to stay clean and not take on another’s experience. We have
become a hybrid, a mix of family, traditions but also Christianity. We give our children
teachings about how to relate to others, teachings counsellors also need because no matter
how bad it looks everyone is a son, daughter, or cousin. It is about really listening; respecteveryone needs to be wanted/valued. The big mountain’s presence during the interview
gave me a sense of deep, millennia old knowing.
Vera, ‘Namgis.
we spent all our time with our granny, every night all around the table… and dada
(grandfather) and ada (grandmother) would talk about … don’t ever respond to
someone attacking you cause if you answer back you are just as bad as the
I drove in torrential downpours, like a cleansing of earth rain to Alert Bay where
Vera took me to her home for supper of salmon and grease, a traditional treat of honour and
good taste. Then we went to her children’s cultural store to interview and she guided me in
how to start the interview. I feel taken care of and ready to listen to her grandmother words.
The Kwak̓ wala song my grandfather sang when I sat on his knee let me know I was a
treasured one and for a while in my life I forgot that I was worth something. When I went to
school in Alert Bay, I wasn’t allowed to speak Kwak’wala my primary language and
everything I experienced there made me feel less than. So I became ashamed. In my healing
journey I found out how much I belonged, how rich my culture is. I changed my life and
now the work I do today is because want my grandchildren proud of who they are. I teach

57
̓
them to say in Kwakwala that I have a place on this earth. She says that she doesn’t have an
education but I tell her she has at least a Ph.D. worth of knowledge in language, culture and
song. I speak the truth and I speak from my heart. I notice when people go to university they
lose some heart. I think learning who you are can give you a sense of belonging. In my life
I have learned to listen and something I found out was a lot of people in the world have had
it worse that I have. I hold the sound of Vera laughing and singing in Kwak̓ wala close to
me.
Andrea. ‘Namgis.
not to mention that my family still potlatched and my grandfather, Dayu Dick whose
is my mom’s Dad and on my Dad’s side, my Dad potlatched so we would have a
connection of names, and dances and rights and our history ….. My grandparents are
so smart, wise, the people before them had so much wisdom
Andrea has a smile that lights up the room. There is power in her voice. She is
animated. I find myself, moving in my chair, talking way more than I think I should. She
just gets me going. Always has. She shares her words. I was taught by my family
principles to live by, not pan Indian principles but my culture and I notice when I speak the
language like Maya’xala [respect] even babies get it. Culture, is more than dancing, it is
knowing how to cut a fish, it is being with your family as they make grease, it is in the
principles that we live by. Real practical. Counsellors have to be in the community and
work with what we have now, they have to heal themselves and be okay with crying. If they
talk about culture they need to live it, not run away. You can’t run away from the tough
stuff, when all they may need is someone to support them, work with them in healing ways
and hug them. That's what our grannies did. My granny very clearly told me to listen and if
I did I would understand more. We have to face residential school and the damage of
colonization. If we heal/take care of ourselves we can work together for the land. The gift I

58
was given in this world is my big voice and I must use it, to help our people and community
be a better place. After a morning interview I feel motivated, full of hope and ready. We
went out to lunch with Vera, Andrea’s mom and I received bad news over the phone.
Immediately Andrea and Vera kick into taking care of me, giving me time to recover and a
tour of the island. Real practical. Heartfelt. Thanks.
Gerry. ‘Namgis
in relation to Indigenous counselling, um my own personal experience I would have
to say that my um training or education around self care and a good path to follow
would’ve started as a child because the story telling began when I was a child with
my Granny.
I was so worried because I was late for the interview and Gerry had things to do after
we were done. No problem, she rearranged so I fit her schedule. We sit down in the
kitchen and she shares. My training or education around counselling began with my
grandmother, because that’s when the stories began. She never said, “the moral of the story
is”. There were stories about Tłisalaqilakw – son of the sun, the raven helping my uncle, the
fisherman, or how dzunukwa, wild woman of the woods was in the world and community.
Before the teachings can be helpful to a western world and a western mind the values of the
stories have to be there. Storytelling in the teaching sense, are ones that leave it up to you to
unravel the many layers of learning as you grow – embedding in all realms of being. If you
are going to offer Indigenous ways of knowing you have to train in Indigenous ways so use
trained storytellers, who carry the knowledge, know how people need to hear the story and
can use things like prayer, circles or humor to get you to learn deeply. Learning from a
western model is very cerebral whereas we’re experiential so it’s not just stories that allow
us to access spirit to and to be who we really are but it could be breath work, songs or
dances. When the colonizers, travelling from areas of trauma, addictions, abuse, and

59
unhealthy societies came we had more or less lived in balance for thousands of years. We
have survived and so we know how to live under pressure without falling apart. We
interviewed, ate a great lunch and I drove Gerry to her meeting. I leave with a sense that I
like myself.
Anna. Shíshálh
our old teachings that when you are helping someone you are, you, you, you have to
see them ….. just doing what my grannies and aunties did and they were always very
welcoming to me even when I was a little stinker, my goodness. Happy that I am
showing up, I mean, uh, feed me, tell me little stories, make me lunch, tease me,
make me really comfortable
As I walk to Anna’s house a big cedar branch extends down as if to welcome me, the
same warmth that Anna greets me with and takes me into her warm and comfortable
counselling room where we sit down to tea and snacks. Crunching intersperses with Anna’s
words. Indigenous ways are precious and different. See already, at the beginning we meet
in a welcoming way- sharing food, home space, gifting- and this is the way we need to meet
our clients. Be amazed at their courage to ask for help, from you- a stranger, offer teachings
of connection to land, relevance to their lives and honor them for their journeying. My
family gave me teachings, and I thought I knew so much. They gave to me in such
welcoming ways, ways of empathy, that if you connect to spirit you can be who you are
regardless what anyone may think, many teachings by how they treated me, the way they
were, or ceremonies.

School/university can be a hurtful place for us people who think

differently and we need allies to support us because it may seem safer not to share, to stay
invisible, and our teachings say sharing what you know is the other part of being a student.
Allies help in big ways, making corrections in the moments of racism, with empathy and
learning for us all, just like our grannies. If we don’t create learning space in a different
way, counselling will continue as we are now. Picture this: generations of hurt people

60
falling through the holes of the safety net of community they inherently feel is there to catch
them; safety nets Indigenous communities used to be before contact. Holes made of racism,
colonizing ways. They fall to the ground, landing hard on their troubles and a counsellor
educated in only the Western way, picks them up in savior fashion, saving them for the
moment and when they land hard again the Western approach just replays this over and over
and over again. White fragility needs to be brought out, acknowledged and healed. Cultural
humility needs to be embraced as a process and not an end point. Anna imprints on me. As
my teacher she moved me beyond being the ‘good’ student following the checklist for
cognitive learning into ‘heart full’ learning I could embody. Hiy, Hiy [thank you]
Juanita.
I think it (my spiritual knowing) comes from my faith and my relationship that I
have, I can, I would say the initial relationship came from my grandmother.
Juanita and I were going to interview in a coffee shop but it was too noisy so we sat
in my car, which somehow made our conversation more real. She shares her knowledge. Its
all about spirituality: inner knowing, spiritual knowing. Self-worth is key. Everything is
interconnected. As I gain that awareness of the historical trauma, shame and fragmented
histories of our people and address the pain in myself; asking my spirit what I am supposed
to learn from this, then I am able to then have the courage to give it back to the people. I
feel counselling is two spirits helping one another and this helps tread in some deep waters
of trauma without being overwhelmed or re-traumatizing myself. Integrity is trusting your
inner self and spiritual knowing is being accountable to spirit. I started learning this trust
from my grandmother’s spiritual presence after her passing. Accessing the Creator and
ancestors to help you, and adjusting what needs to be adjusted is something I choose if I
have hurt someone with my ‘behaviour’. I can learn where it comes, possibly from my

61
mother, past generations, or a collective historical behaviour. I can also gain more
awareness by watching it in others. Once I am accountable to myself, I can do the healing
work, set boundaries and make corrections in the world around me, starting with my family
and then into the world.

I questioned why I had to learn traditions, ceremonies, sweats, etc.

but never heard why so these days I want the kids to know why in the old ways we may not
have needed words but today young people need words to help them understand. I feel a
deep loss, grief, and hopelessness and wish I spoke my language because I think it would
give me the more correct words to say what I need to. Not all learning and healing and
counselling is words; sometimes the only way is to take out my drum. The sense of
sacredness and ancestors was almost palpable as we sat in my car full of spirit talk while
listening to the trucks and cars whizz by, beeping their horns, and her phone ringing.
Oliver. Secwepemc.
my grandparents were people who lived off the land….and I am trying to go by that
in the community here with the development here …I don’t develop any more than
what is here already.
I met Oliver in Quaaout lodge for a supper interview. Many logs form the round roof
and inside there are pictures, cultural pieces and music playing giving a sense of walking
into a rich, special place. Delicious food, creatively prepared and warm service is welcomes
me to a friend, an old soul, a brother of another lifetime. Oliver shares. Everything is
connected and has a big picture. When you are a counsellor it is not something you can stop
at 4:30, you impact many people who support that client and you need to appreciate all the
things they may be juggling. Be in the community; be prepared to do what is necessary.
That is following the ethics of our people. In our language the sayings see yourself, help
yourself means that if you can see yourself and help yourself then you can help others. Use

62
only what you need. We need to take responsibility for what happens when we accept or do
something. Do we need another pipeline? How will that affect the salmon, the ocean, the
whales, or the water? We can’t survive by a hunting lifestyle anymore and because it’s a
different economy we need like this lodge, golf course, and a gas station but we do so in an
environmentally and culturally friendly way, providing cultural learning to others. The
Elders’ vision and ceremony is this lodge in this place. I have spoken my language as a
child and in our language they ask, who are you? You are an extension of your previous
grandparents and speaking your language helps you know that. There is an old story about
the Creator hiding spirituality in the hearts of the red people so the Europeans could not take
it. We need to take charge of our own learning, educate in the right way and sometimes you
may have to stand alone for what you believe in. From my toes to ears, I felt like I had to
really listen, something that seems to occur often when I am in his company. I feel like I am
learning in ‘the old way’. This learning includes the joker, the smile, the pulling my leg
twinkle in the eye kind of humour. This reminds me of my family, the Elders that I have
come to know in my travels and I feel at home in this style of relating, even when I am not
sure if there is a joke. I love it.
Babs. Haida.
We’re spiritual beings, we’re human beings… in order to get knowledge, we need to
have knowledge keepers share their knowledge with us, like our mothers and our
fathers and our nonnis, grandmothers and our chinnis, grandfathers and our aunties
and our uncles
Babs meets me as I get off the airport shuttle and immediately takes me to the Unity
totem pole, the newest one raised since I was last on Haida Gwaii. I breathe in the freshness
of the salt air and release my hair to fly in the ocean wind. We visit, and then do a healing
ceremony before I tuck into bed. The next day we do group healing work and by that

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evening I am finally clear and clean enough to hear the words Babs’ shares. - An important
Haida law to me is Gina’waddluuxan gud kwigid- everything depends on everything else.
First they must know history- disease- small pox, contact, the Indian Act, Bill C-31. We
Haida were complete before contact, knowing our connection to our ancestors and our land
that has been uncontested for thousands of years. Before contact we were many, living all
over Haida Gwaii, but after small pox, our numbers were so small were forced to gather on
two little pieces of land, Massett and Skidegate, while the settlers were given large tracts of
our land. My chinni, Amos Russ told the settlers our totem poles all over the islands were
our markers but they surveyed their settler way anyhow. We need true history, authenticated
by First Nations and a knowledge keeper of the nation/community because they know the
truth. I believe the micro is the macro so whatever I see I can use as projections of myself to
heal. Counsellors must access their higher power, intuition and go with an open heart, heal
themselves first and always and be in programs that require this.
Marie. Nlakapmux
what really set my framework in who I am, what I am, and my father and mother
made it really clear that I was to go to school …and it wasn’t residential school …
and it wasn’t because I wasn’t Indian it was because I was...so somehow they got that
teaching to me and it was mostly my parents… mother was about love and I am like
that
I had not seen Marie since I was in her class years ago but when I picked her up there
was ease, like greeting a family friend. I knew from the first time I saw Marie as an
instructor in my CHAD program that she was important to me. When a course with her was
over I felt full, and like I really knew it without any struggling. We went to NVIT, Nicola
Valley Institute in Burnaby, for the interview. NVIT is a place Marie helped develop and
design two of their human service programs, one of which was the precursor to the program

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I studied. It was familiar, friendly and open for quiet interviewing. Marie begins her story.
Something from my mother, father and family let me know it was okay to be an Indian even
if we didn’t grow up practicing our customs but daddy still had it, he had done a vision
quest- he had his song that he away because his grandmother said he would be taken away
from here if he practiced it. Mommy and daddy knew they wanted us in school but not
residential school so in the early years they kept us away. We had a clean life with no
drinking or even smoking. My husband ended up with this terrible thing called alcoholism
so I had to leave, with our three children. The process of getting ready to leave started my
own healing and revival of our traditions within my life. I remember my first exposure to
sage left me crying for weeks for the loss and regaining of our ways. Along with other
women that were aware of the devastation within our communities we developed and ran a
healing and education program called Native Human Services in the 1980’s. This was a new
approach based on old ways- our traditions, and healing and formed the beginning of our
CHAD program today. We kept the program and the funding for seven or eight years until
the funding stopped when they learned we did not have any post-secondary training. Then I
started my degree path and family circumstance spurred me into getting my Ph.D., which
was a wonderful journey. Teaching counsellors start with the safety of the circle, is holistic,
teaches accurate history, is personal, shows love; is based on community, culture and
healing; and awakens us. Something ties all Indigenous peoples together because it seems
we have a sense of belonging and always have. My mother, who embodied love, said we all
love each other. I am shy acknowledging how important spirit is to me, to all of us, even
though it is where we/I live. I wonder if just teaching my language is enough? My response

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to Marie is that it is more than enough because language is about who we are and I wish I
was one of those lucky children she teaches.

I raise my hands to all language teachers.

Janie. Cree/MetisJanie’s actual words are only offered from her thesis,
Dismembered, a memoir by Janie Bjelland, May, 2011. She is my cousin, the child of my
aunt, the youngest of a family of 13. She grew up near my grandmother until granny died
when we were both around 9 years old. She has granny memories. The words she spoke in
her thesis wake up the longing I have for my grandmother and the old ways I was never
taught. Janie’s thesis shares grandmother calls I wished I had heard.
the call of grandmothers for their granddaughters. No’shishhim! No’shishim!
Grandchild! Grandchild!” (p.105 )
When I am with Janie I feel caught in a vortex of chaos, because Janie’s health
functions in chaos. What keeps bringing me back is the obvious love and caring of her
children and grandchildren. I know she has shared something with me from beyond this
world and I stumbled to grasp it. I was overwhelmed by her generosity of heart and the
strength of spirit. I am thankful and guilty I did not share in the pain of my aunty, Janie’s
mom, and have only a wisp of memory. Janie’s resilience, the person she is after all her
childhood traumas, the accidents, trials of adult hood and now the death of her husband
leaves me humbled. Megwetch, my dear cousin. I left Janie’s aware I needed help to
understand this interview and how it would connect to the thesis. The spiritual strength,
resilience and love are the contributions to this thesis along with her memoirs.
These condensed stories are meant to contextualize each participant’s input. They
are meant to retain a sense of an unseparated whole and thus incorporate an Indigenous
principle into the research. However, to fit with current ways of presenting qualitative

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interview knowledge and to strengthen major or repeating points the interviews were also
themed.
Buffalo Hunt- A Conceptual Container
When the themes were forming an old vision of a buffalo and my grandfather kept
repeating. In the vision, my grandfather was on the back of a buffalo appearing during the
angriest moment I was having over being colonized. He told me in a very matter of fact,
blunt Cree way, “Yes, so the white man and guns killed all the buffalo.” With crossed arms
and raised eyebrows, he continued, “So what? Maybe you better get on with it.”
What I heard and felt in that buffalo vision was that I should stop being a colonial
victim and be part of the solution to a better way. I searched for buffalo understanding. In
many plains tribes the buffalo represents respect, one of the sacred teachings known as
grandfather teachings. In some legends buffalo also represents generosity for giving
themselves to the Plains tribes so they could have abundance. Could it be that reason buffalo
has withdrawn his generosity is so we can re-learn respect, generosity and sharing to include
the settlers in a new way? Kroeber (2004) says that because Indigenous people are an oral
culture (storytellers) they use visual metaphor. The metaphor of the buffalo and my
grandfather recognizes the relationship and interconnectness of me with the research intent
and the research findings in a progressive way that includes all the possible variables.
I also use the metaphor of a buffalo hunt because it is dynamic and, as a hunter, I find
divisions between the steps are blurry, often overlap and do not follow the linear progression
much like the themes that emerged. This is the first time I have outlined the steps and find
there are seven steps like the seven grandfather teachings of wisdom, love, respect, bravery,
honesty, humility and truth.

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The first of the seven steps starts with remembering who we are and the traditional
teachings to guide us. Next we heal our hurts so we can be more attentive the way of the
buffalo spirit. Third, we perform ceremonies using the physical to embed spiritual
relatedness and create openings to our inner knowing so we can be aware on all levels. The
fourth preparation step ensures we know the lay of the land and are ready. The actual hunt
reminds us to have appropriate action and doing what is needed. After the hunt, there is
sharing, a showing of generosity and gratitude, recognizing relationships, that everything
depends on everything else and the deep connection to land. The seventh and final part is a
reflection on the hunt, making adjustments incorporating successes and challenges, being
open to any changes needed for the next way to abundance.
The seven steps of the buffalo hunt and sub themes are shown in the following table.
Table 1. Buffalo Hunt Metaphor for Themes and Subthemes

Overview

Buffalo Hunt Steps

Sub Themes

1. Knowing ourselves

Who we are

Ancestry, Ancestors, Culture
Language
Story and Teachings

2. Removing distractions

What is in the way
Healing

Racism and Colonialism
Healing and Healing ways

3. Making spirit tangible

Spirit and Ceremony

Spirit, Inner knowing
Ceremony

4. Ensuring success

Preparation

Community
Know the history
Personal readiness

5. The Hunt

Responsible Action

Buffalos in buffalo country
Doing what is needed

6. Showing gratitude

Thankfulness for what we
have been given

Sharing, Generosity
Relationship
Connection to land and place

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7. Next steps

Reflection

Mountains or molehills
Keys to educate
Courage to start a circle

Gerry, ‘Namgis Elder, friend, healer, and research participant introduces the themes,
people don't realize is …learning from western model is very cerebral- the mind, and
as Indigenous people we’re very experiential like we, we experience the world and
so, um, when we have the circles, where we experience everything, the story telling,
the dance, the, you know, the songs, the spirit, it’s yeah, it’s a different, it’s a
different way to learn
First – Knowing who we are: Ancestors, Language, Story, and Teachings
A successful hunt starts with an understanding of self and what you need to know to
have a foundation for success. This same principle applies to beginning counsellors.
Themes seen as forming this foundation were learning from ancestors, language, story and
teachings. Increased emphasis has been given to teachings given by the participants in their
language.
Ancestry, ancestors, culture.
All participants said their lineage shaped or guided who they are, gave them strength,
their sense of identity or culture and teachings. Oliver says, “They say if you know who you
are, you know where you are going, because you know where you came from” and when
you know your language, “you know you are an extension of your previous generations.”
Babs acknowledges the ancestors for always guiding. She says,
We’re strong people, we’re people with big hearts, we’re people of vision, we’ve
always been a people of vision. When we want something, we go for it and not every
often are we unsuccessful- its our ancestors, our ancestors are always with us, they’re
always guiding us. And when I say our ancestors, I mean our ancestors way back to
the beginning and our ancestors who have just left us, they’re still with us, all of
them and they guide us and they talk to us, those people who are willing to listen,
they’re there, they’re right there, they haven’t gone anywhere.

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Andrea attributes her sense of identity and culture to her great grandmother. She
recalls,
I come from families that practice culture still, ceremonies still, follow the potlatch
still and when I was little …my granny, my great granny … made me a blanket. So
when I was 4 I had this little, little traditional blanket made for me with the sun
because that is one of the family crests that I come from ….. I think that is where my
path started because culture has always been the biggest, biggest highlight …
because that is who I really am and I can’t take my nativeness out of me and hang it
in the closet.
Vera, Andrea’s mother says culture has played an important role in her healing and
sense of identity. She says, “it took all these mistakes to come to that and what was
strengthening for me, was when we were allowed to (acts like she is drumming and taps on
the table) practice our customs again because our people were always potlatching, that was
our custom…”
I only interviewed one man; grandfather, Elder, Secwepemc, Oliver. So I found
coyote present when he talked about the importance of women. He said,
… my grandmothers mothers, daughters you know… as direction, as backbones of
our household, as the backbone of our communities, the backbones of our
society….the other cultures are not as strong in that as we are, matter of fact, there is
very little about it, ….when you watch them dance women dance men dance but
Aboriginals all dance together and always the grandmothers are first you know I
have done a lot of grand entries at powwows and it’s always the grandmothers and
chiefs that led.
The determination to keep each person’s Indigenous culture alive was evident in the
willingness to be interviewed. As a grandmother Vera wants her grandchildren to be proud
of who they are as Kwakwa̱ ka̱ ʼwakw so currently she belongs to Sanala, a cultural group that
means “to determined. We are determined to tell our own story, we are determined to sing
our own songs, to keep our culture alive” so this is the work she does today. Oliver suggests

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learning one’s own lineage needs to “to try and make connection with and to whatever that
culture was from, in a real personal way.”
Janie’s memory is more of a lament for the loss of culture that ended with our
grandparents. She writes in her thesis.
… in winter, granny makes feather beds flannel when we stay, stokes the pot belly
stove with alder. Thanks Dad and my brothers for killing the moose, grandpa is
crippled, and will spend the winter, back bent in his willow chair, and his woolen
pants held up by suspenders, sitting by the stove and warming his bent hands while
granny pounds the dried moose meat pemmican, pours maple syrup over it, pours
bacon grease over it. We dip bannock in it, lay by the stove when we were full, watch
Granny sew moccasins and new flannel pajamas.
Juanita’s says her sense of knowing started with her grandmother who taught her
many cultural practices (e.g. making boards, tanning hides) but after she had died Juanita
was feeling the weight and responsibility of what she was going to “bring forward”, because
she felt she hadn’t listened. However, her grandmother had one more teaching about
spiritual relationships. She explains,
many times I where I felt her come to me … I had felt her presence because I knew
the feeling… I put my faith or trust into it and I would follow it, like she was no
longer physically her with me but she was still here with me and it had just changed
into a different relationship and so my faith started to build and I started to listen to
that.
Language.
Everybody knew words and phrases in their languages but only three had their own
language as their primary language. Marie spoke Nlakapmux, Vera spoke Kwak̓ wala and
Oliver spoke Secwepemcstin. Marie and Vera teach language now and Oliver shares stories
with the school children in his language. All participants varied in how fluent they were in
both the spoken and written languages and almost everyone used their own language
throughout the interviews when speaking about a meaningful concept like a sense of

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identity.

“One of the things that was a benefit to me was my language, even as a child

“says Oliver. He says, “I guess that is the true meaning of knowing where you are from,”
and adds, “you can’t really identify yourself as Secwepemc unless you know how to speak
the language…Secwepemc is a Shuswap word and we are the people of the Shuswap.” Vera
shares Oliver’s view and adds that due to colonization, “a lot (of Indigenous) were ashamed
of knowing their language.” Now, Vera acknowledges her primary language, Kwak̓ wala,
saying, “I am in my 70’s … I don’t want my language to disappear so everything I do now
language has to be part of it.”
I share Juanita’s grief, loss and frustration of not knowing her language. She said,
the grief and loss of, even for me, not being able to speak the language and not
understanding, not understanding the, the depth or the concepts of behind of what I
already know because I can’t speak in my language but I do, also starting to become
more aware of when I do speak, I can feel at times what’s lost. It’s almost like a
sense of “ugh I’m saying this to try to convey something else, but I know there’s a
loss” I feel like there’s more but I don't know how to express it, I can’t give that
forward because I don't know the language and so it’s frustrating and it’s a grief, like
a grieving. Because there’s that deep sorrow or that, that um hopelessness, yeah of
not being able to get, to, to be able to give it what it needs
When teachings were given or explained in the language of the speaker I knew there
was much more contained than the English equivalent and there is richness and meaning,
spoken and unspoken, embedded in teachings because they were shared in the language of
the speaker. This table presents these rich words.
Table 2. Important concepts given in the language of the speaker

Kwak̓ wala

Maya’xala, treat yourself well, treat others well; treat the environment
well
Dal xa ik noke’, carry a good heart
Salt’idas, calm your spirit
Hut`ilalas, to listen
Nugwa’am ____, Guyutlan lax ‘Namgis, My name is ___, I am ‘Namgis

Shíshálh

Yetaxwelwet, woman who gives of herself

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Secwepmectsin , See yourself
, Help yourself
, Who are you
Haida laws

Yahguudang (Respect)- all acts must be done with respect.
Ad Kyaanang (to ask first)- all acts must be done with consent.
Tllyahada (make it right)- if an act is not done with respect or consent, or
is witnessed, you must make it right.
Gina’waddluuxan gud kwigid- everything depends on everything else.

Nlakapmux

Huckpestes - developing lifelong learning and wisdom
Huztowaahh, giving lovingly to family and community
Takemshooknooqua – knowing we are connected: land, animals, plants
and people
Choowaachooots, Utilizing Nlakapmux vision-seeking methods

Story and Teachings
Participants spoke of families’ using teaching stories, modeling of behavior, speaking
directly of traditional principles, being taught cultural practices or using challenging family
experiences as teachings. The most overlap with other themes came within stories and
teachings. Stories can be passed from generation to generation, spontaneous or based on
experience to embrace teachings. However, some participants said stories must first be
valued, otherwise, as CF says “a story implies that it’s, it’s made up” so the listener(s) will
not hear the teaching just like they may not validate a client’s ‘story’.
Gerry’s grandmother’s story is typical of ones passed through the generations.
Granny who used to tell this series of little mink stories who was actually the son of
the sun, Tłisalaqilakw and he got into all kinds of um interesting predicaments and so
he was a lot like children and so the stories were always about the kinds of
predicaments he got and the teaching was never told. She didn't say “the moral of
the story is.” She left it up to our own intelligence to figure out what the meaning of
the story was so I think there was um a lot of uh uh, it lead us to think and taught us
how to think about these situations and also about the kinds of things that got him
into hot water and even uh as far as uh teaching about relationships.

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And there’s this story about um Tłisalaqilakw who decides that he’s old
enough now and he wants to go and get a wife, so he tells his mother “Well I’m
gonna go off and look for a wife” and off he goes and he comes upon a pond and in
the pond is a frog and the frog is croaking, croaking. “oh what beautiful singer she is,
I think I’ll marry frog.” So he marries frog, but she just doesn't stop singing and he’s
like “could you stop singing frog?” frog couldn’t stop singing and he got fed up with
frog and said “I’ve had enough of this racket, I’m out of here” and so he left and he
carried on in his journey and then he came upon stone and he went “Oh stone, you
are so peaceful and quiet, I just, I, I, I want to marry you, stone” so he falls in love
with stone and he stays with stone and soon he’s talking but she never answers and
he gets really impatient after a while. “Say something, why don’t, why do you just
keep your mouth shut, like say something” and he got so frustrated that he started
hitting her with his fist and then blood started to pour onto the, onto stone and he said
“There that will show you, now you’ve got blood on your face” not realizing it was
the blood of his own hand and he leaves her and he goes uh down to the water and he
sees kelp and kelp’s long flowing hair on the water [Gerry expressively speaks, and
says in gasps] “How beautiful is kelp’s hair” he says, and he swims out to kelp “Oh
kelp you have such beautiful hair, would you be my wife?” and he’s so in love with
kelp and he wraps his arms around her and he doesn't realize that the tide is coming
up and it’s getting deeper and deeper and he won’t let go of kelp and pretty soon he’s
covered in water and he drowns holding kelp. And so his mother is wondering
where her son has disappeared to and she's in her canoe paddling and she sees this
little brown form in the water “[gasps] my son!” and she grabs him out and throws
him in the canoe, well because Tłisalaqilakw, little mink is immortal cause his father
is the son of the sun, he revives and he tells his mom this tale of all of his adventures
looking for his wife and, and then that’s the end of the story and you’re left with that
story to think about.
Sometime participants didn’t make a connection to generational teachings until much
later in their lives. Juanita had to be reminded by her mentor that she had, “the right to be
able to take your culture or take your spirituality in your trainings and use it, that’s what you
are supposed to do”.
Vera experience story is a grandfather teaching of belonging and being treasured.
when I was a little girl, I used to sit on my grandfather’s lap with my sister Eva, and
he used to sing for us … he would go like this when he was singing to us (shows
swaying and put hands with palms up) … and it translates to Gilakas’la, I am so
grateful, Gilakas’la is you know- welcome. Długwe’ you treasured one, you special
one and you’ve been given to me, even though I’m a stink old man and he would
smile … and then he said we are so lucky, we have many relatives … where did it go
wrong for me to not know how treasured I was when I was that little girl about 4, 5
cause that old man made us feel so treasured, he never called us anything but

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Długwe’. …You hear it in our songs and any song that says Długwe’ you go like this
with your hands (holds palms up to) because you are receiving a gift
Besides cultural teachings Andrea’s family modeled a teaching about strength. She
says, “I have a lot of aunties and a lot of grannies that have been really strong and, um, they,
without saying it, they reassured us to say it’s okay to be a woman.”
Anna shares a teaching from aunties as she was preparing to receive her
grandmothers name “the other side of giving is receiving, I am thinking that you are being
given this name and perhaps this is the time to learn how to receive.” Vera’s says, “what
has helped me is listening-to learn how to listen”, a teaching shared by many participants.
Hutłilalas, to listen (in Kwak̓ wala) was seen as important, whether it was listening to learn
one’s language, to count, how to relate to others, grandparents’ wisdom, a story, someone’s
experience, or your heart listening was key, because, as Oliver reminds us, Indigenous is an
oral culture and the way of learning includes oral, visual and experiential.
Respect was another highly used ‘teaching’ word expressed by the participants.
Respect is the Haida law yahguudang, all acts must be done with respect, and the Kwak̓ wala
teaching maya’xa̱ la, to treat yourself well, to treat others well and to treat the environment
well.
Second step removes distractions through healing.
Issues can distract us from being fully present and aware, something that may be
crucial to hunting success or survival. As a counsellor, awareness of our issues and healing
work helps us keep our focus on helping others. Similarly, we need awareness to our
learning blocks in order to be fully present and ready to learn ways outside our personal
worldviews. Racism and colonialism, especially in educational systems were the main
issues spoken about needing restitution and healing.

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Racism and Colonialism
Racism, like colonization is insidious and generational. Colonization, the dominion
of one over another, the disallowance of another way of knowing and what was done in
order to keep Indigenous knowledge silent was a dominant theme across all participants.
Most of my father’s family wanted to deny their heritage. Janie, my cousin asks
“How much ridicule did it take before my mother denied her heritage, her father, her
mother?” Janie’s mother, my aunty, spoke to Janie in dream placed at Spirit Lake, a sacred
lake near our traditional lands. Aunty said,
No, I’ve come too far,” she says. "I won't go back. I am White. I am White. I am
White! What do you want from me?" She yells. “You're just like the rest. You never
wanted to know who I was, so I buried that half breed girl, buried her and never
looked back.”
Vera, says “It wasn’t until the 50’s when we were allowed to go to school with white
people” and she describes the effects of discrimination when she was taken away from her
home at age six to go to school in Alert Bay and not allowed to speak her primary language,
I was terrified …everything around me was to make me feel I was ashamed of being
an Indian and everything we learned in school that we were less than, we never
learned anything about who we are as people. And I got very confused- went back
home to Village Island at Christmas time, you know, it didn’t take long for me to
have that attitude, being embarrassed about my granny, probably never ever having
French fries in her whole life, you know, broken English, my aunties….
Anna suggests racism hides in white fragility. She explains,
everyone will say I am very receptive, I am very open to different cultures and there
is truth in it but it is from a place of no awareness, how limited that is… some of my
best friends are native or black or Muslim or… “Are you kidding, my best friend is
black.” That does not mean anything …that is denial to talk about that
receptivity…because there is so much shame around it, there is also an inability to
say I don’t know. There’s guilt - already there are three emotions that are very hard
to hold- but so what? That’s the fragility in the institutions and in the White world such fragility, a fragileness to look at some of the truth, some of these hard, hard
histories. Please, don’t be so fragile, look at me, I survived it so let us please call it

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what it is, please don’t be fragile in the telling the truth. And that is what I want to
say and I don’t because you have to keep building this relationship
Babs says that when “the settlers discovered Haida Gwaii, the Haidas were already
here for hundreds (probably thousands) of years and they already had their own ways of
healing and their own laws”. Gerry explains further,
in the Americas, uh I think you just have to look at the state of the people when uh
the colonizers came. Relatively disease free, …everyone was …a part of the
community, it’s not that people were perfect, they had wars but when you look at the,
at the, the state of the terrain everything was healthy …so you know that they
developed a way to create emotional balance, environmental balance, spiritual
balance…The colonizers came and messed up … you think about the, the, the history
of what had happened in Europe. There’s lots of trauma, there was a lot of
addictions, there was child abuse, child slavery, women were unequal. Like that’s
not a healthy society… that’s what came
Colonial markers in Haida history repeatedly show up in the healing work Babs does,
…smallpox which decimated our people; contact with alien things like alcohol, guns;
… being put onto tiny little areas of reserves… whereas the settlers that came could
get massive amounts of land; Indian act; residential school- so Elders were afraid to
speak the language… brothers and sisters not allowed to speak to each other…
children fed poorly… abused… killed … we don’t know how many; C-31 where
when our women married non-Haida, they were totally stripped of their rights
She describes an obvious effect of residential school,
…I know one man who was in residential school for 18 years … treated badly … fed
poorly … not allowed contact with their families. How could anyone expect those
people, our people to be good parents, because they have never, ever seen parenting
… (never had a chance) to live off the land and to, to gather food… by the time they
came out… they were numbed and when they got thrust back into their communities
a lot of them just felt like they were aliens I imagine
Oliver talks about the more global effects in a very personal way. He describes a
power point presentation he did as a counsellor, also giving words of advice to counsellors
... I took pictures of people over the years, some frozen to death, some died in car
accidents, you know, some died naturally, and I took pictures of the kids and, and I
took pictures of the grandchildren … and it started in the graveyard and all the
crosses come up…it had a big impact on the community you could hear a dime drop
on the rug. Everyone. …it hit hard, it is an indication that intergenerational stuff
happened…I don’t know my grandpa because my grandpa …it is not only the loss of

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that, it is the loss of the language, it’s a loss of the ceremonies, it is the loss of the
wisdom, it is the loss of a lot of things … so that part is another part that has to be
filled in people, that loss part. Already people in the community as well have to
learn how to be foster uncles and foster dads without any benefit or anything just
talking to a young boy and saying “Listen, Randy,” and taking him aside like a father
and uncle would. You have to care, care about those people. …it’s not hard
Juanita, one generation removed, says that her need to remind herself that her
Indigenous knowledge is useful is “fear based because we’ve had to protect our knowledge
or we’ve had to go into secrecy in regards to practice in certain times or decades, there were
certain things that we could not do, so we had to go underground.”
Anna explains a key difference between the settlers and the Indigenous people of the
US and Canada is that “there isn’t a connection to homeland so reference points are very
different” and this is a deep concept not taught in classwork today. Anna explains,
… there is a history that comes with the land and that is never addressed in an
institutional setting - that history between Indigenous and settlers… there is such a
reactive place from non-Indigenous people about why- why do you keep bringing
that up, that happened a long time ago, and from that to apathy…it’s not important, it
just has no value, uh, and it has more to do all the psychological stuff that comes
with being colonized….. (these are the) ones who promoted the action of genocide
and benefited. I mean they are on the land and changed the percentage from 100%
Indigenous to 1% and that is really hard for non-Native people to even approach… I
am part of the 1% and there is still teachings that I carry that have to do with the
100%... they (teachings, stories) are still living but only 1% in the flesh…. they have
to deal with that horror of genocide. They have to, and have an understanding that
they have benefited greatly to the death of 99% of the people
Harmful colonial environmental policies that disregard the needs or views of
Aboriginal peoples were in every conversation. Those same colonial views are also
embedded in the people who create programs of counselling and helping people. Babs asks,
I don’t think they even look at that part of humanity (colonial history) … So all the
books that are out now on psychologists and psychology, it’s all based in some
foreign country way, way far away from where we are…How can you teach things to
people when you don’t even know them? How can you have success with them
when you don’t even know where they are coming from?

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Racism in education can be harsh, because it can block your progress. Anna
experienced racism in her graduate studies when trying to share Indigenous knowledge about
the meaning of being connected to land and place. She says she was
perceived as quaint, but not relevant…I felt brushed off … deeper than that
…invisible, because the viewing of an Indigenous woman as having any knowledge
or ways of understanding these complex umm ways of understanding mental health
that I was clearly missing so my story was clearly quaint
Babs says, “We are such a resilient people that we’ve come back pretty good” and
Gerry adds
that’s why I think it is so important to learn these teachings and stories and ways of
health… we need to have a strong mind… we don’t fall apart when things go off the
rails, that we keep the presence of our, our mind … that’s how our people survived
Healing and Healing Ways.
Juanita’s grandmother very clearly sets a framework for healing that was consistently
mentioned. Juanita describes what her grandmother said,
“Who are you to questions creator’s path for you? … and being nervous or having
fear is a good thing because that means that you’re going to pay close attention and
you're going to do your best work and that, you know, that’s that, that gift in the end
is to be able to know that you’re able to do that right even in the discomfort”
The deep motivation to help themselves and their communities gave Marie, friends
and family the strength to envision and develop the Native Human Services program, a
precursor to the Chemical Addictions Worker Program, at Nicola Valley Institute of
Technology. She says that in the 1970’s she began to think,
how are we going to save our lives, basically? How could we save our lives as
Indians because I could see we were, I was already converted to, to, to being, to
living in the white world you could say…alcoholism was so bad…we really need to
learn how to look after our people, our reservation, our children
Juanita says is personal healing by asking herself “Am I worth following through…
to be able to get through this conflict without sabotaging, self-sabotaging.” She says the

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young people she works with need a same sense of belonging or worth before any teachings
can be implemented. She says “self-worth is unbelievably entangled in every motive,
decision, relationship, intention that we have.”
Finding self-worth by remembering traditions helped Marie and others when they
started the Native Human Services program. She says,
we found out in our own way that, that there were some things that we need to hang
on to…. a reawakening for our people and realizing we had something to
offer…..and again, I asked my parents about it…..my father, I remember him sayingI guess we can do that again…..it was a resurgence of tradition…..we began to
realize we had ways to help one another and it was through old ways, the old ways of
burning sage and bringing ourselves into a place where we, ah, we could be, we
could be one with another …and we came to a place to heal.
Marie describes her initial healing from a sage ceremony,
in that moment it was like, um, it was like I was, I was immersed in being born or
something….so that is what my healing embraced…. I cried for weeks, days, for
everything, all my losses, all our losses, etc., etc. I would, I just bawled my face off
for a long time.
Traditional ways of healing often mentioned involved ceremony like prayer, sage,
song, story, ritual and practices of connecting to the land. I believe my aunt, Janie’s mother
tried to ease her pain through drinking and heal her soul through her music. The stories
Janie wrote in her thesis healed through the release of pain and recovery of memory. Oral
story is another traditional way of healing. Gerry gives an example and the effect.
I shared this with a survivor (residential school), cause I work with survivors and it
was like uh something that just brightened his whole face because the teaching that I
got from one of my teachers was Whist.stem.men.knee, Johnny Moses…It was a fall
teaching about when the, when the trees all year long gather the stories, gather the
good words from the human beings, from the people and then in the fall their leaves,
when the leaves fall, the leaves capture and keep those good words and when the
children play in those leaves, they pick up all the good words, especially the sad
ones, they will pick up all those good words and that’s why children love to play in
the fallen leaves. That’s a healing, that, that’s a teaching you know and, and so he, he
just, yeah his face just lit up he said, no wonder I like walking through those trees

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…that would definitely be, an important piece is … in the story tellers with the
teachings
Vera’s healing experience of a sacred talking circle helped her regain a sense of who
she was and reinforce that it is “important to know what destroys your body, destroys your
spirit”
first time I ever entered any kind of healing work, sacred circle where you held a
feather and you respected that person that was talking, like a talking stick… you just
listen … I was scared …then I was told to write a letter to them (my grandparents)
and burn so that they can take it … I got to dear dada (name for grandfather) and I
could not stop crying…the biggest thing that hurt me the most was that I was
ashamed of who I was, I was ashamed of all the mistakes I made, all the people I hurt
… I cried and cried but I did write the letter and I did go outside and burn it and I
asked her to forgive me. And I think of that was my first ever taste of even to think
about who am I, you know, and for many years I hid that
Personal healing can occur through dreams, healing ceremonies and connect us to
history, purpose in life and to spirituality. Marie describes a dream she had when she was
first doing her healing work. She was trying to describe a connection to spirituality,
something she finds hard to talk about. She says,
when I first started feeling the totals my being and my culture and what I am about. I
had a dream and it had to do with connecting, connecting … the first dream I think
that I had that put things in context … I cried, I cried mountains. Well a part of my
grief was about the loss of our ways … that came as a result of the black robes…and
that came to me in a dream.
She connected this to a healing rock throwing ceremony she did when she saw the
Cabot ship in Halifax as her way of saying “I don’t want them to come to Canada” and that
night she had a dream that she
was there on Signal Hill with my father and I was a child and a big flock of black
birds came in…and landed all over and made everything black… the whole hill being
black and I was hanging onto my dad and I don’t remember the words …I remember
being really scared
One more dream seems to connect the pieces for her. She continues,

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…another dream at the opposite end was about connecting …being a small little star
and how I had an umbilical cord hooked onto mother earth-just that, but that feeling
of connected, of being connected to mother earth, helped me feel somehow secure.
That dream was more like a cognitive dream…first dream was after my year of
crying … it kind of connected me to … who I was and I was okay as, as a
Nlakapmux person … who I am and what I am trying to do I guess and, uh, felt the
courage to do what I was doing, what I have done all my life
Juanita also explains how her own healing helps with helping others. She says,
when I look at the history of who we are as people … all the different fragmented
pieces that have come from trauma and shame and all of these things that we’ve
experienced whether we know it or not and looking at that and then being able to
have that awareness and address that within myself. Then am I able to then have the
courage to give it back to the people
Vera suggests health care worker also need to “come to terms with their own lives
too first” because “maybe there is something in your past you haven’t been able to connect
to say, hey, I do belong. I do matter” but also they can provide perspective to others by
learning “their stories are way worse than some of ours.” Anna says service providers need
this as part of their training in order to see “there is this whole other wealth of knowledge
that comes in through the door.” She explains,
Whether that person who comes in through the door, whether that person is hurt or so
wounded but they still hold another way of knowing that needs to be accessed to be
help with the wound. And if that helper does not know that, then the helper becomes
a part of the systemic process to give the message of “Here is how to be, which is to
be non-native and have a more successful way of living in the world.” I mean it is
all at this unconscious level that will not bring all the resources to help this person
truly see themselves and (if) that service provider is already, cannot see the person
…. How are they going to help that person see themselves?
Anna says she was exhausted from giving and in the process of receiving her
grandmother’s traditional name, Yetaxwelwet, women who gives of herself, she found that
her life “was out of balance… that I needed to learn how to receive”. She observes that the
mental health field also has “this notion of false giving” so miss the teaching from those who
walk in the door “with so much courage, teach over and over about humility, about giving,

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about receiving or the lack of it … about resilience of having made it through an incredible
life.”
Oliver simply says if you can see yourself, you can help yourself, and if you can see
and help yourself then you can help others. Juanita says a mentor once told her, “You never
know where a person’s at …to be able to assist, assist them in that spiritual way”. Once she
started seeing healing in a spiritual way then she could help others older than herself
because that never changes for any individual as far as I’m concerned at any season
of our life because … even if you’re in your elder hood, that accountability and
responsibility to spiritual, mental, emotional growth is still a factor
Other participants, including myself have shared Anna’s experiences of racism in
educational settings where she had “to decide whether to really share for who I am because I
am always negated … I get invisible. I am not the other, I am not even there!” However,
one experience illustrates there can be healing and learning opportunities if someone sees the
problem and is willing to make to make a ‘correction’. She describes a postgraduate
phenomenology program she took a few years ago, when she was in her 60’s. She describes
feeling safe and respected as an Indigenous person in this class based on discussions with the
professor and other therapists in the year she had been in the program. She often added
Indigenous views because she felt safe. One non-native classmate had previously told Anna
“she had a lot of understanding of First Nations …that introduction that non-native people
who want you to know that they know you but they, they don’t really know you.” One class
circle after Anna shared this woman spoke to the professor saying “many of us know about
First Nations… we spend a lot of time on First Nations stuff and we came here to learn
something from you, Dr. Langle, so can we do something about that?” Although Anna felt

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safe and comfortable in this class, previous experience still kept her wary, “waiting for the
other shoe to drop.” Anna talks about her response to the classmate’s comments. She says,
I was not prepared … because I was quite open. I had just done some really big
sharing in terms of putting some concepts together and understanding trauma
impact…all I could do was look at her and I burst into tears and I just thought as
soon as I feel safe, I am attacked for being an incorrect student again, where my
voice is going to be silenced …I was so open that I was angry at myself for leaving
myself so open and …I couldn’t stop crying … and then his uh, co-facilitator,
teacher, came and knelt in front of me and held my hands and said “I am so sorry,
you have heard these words, don’t stop being you.”
As Anna was thinking of her exit strategy the professor, addresses her in her
Indigenous name, saying
“Yetaxwelwet,”, … what you have shared has taught the class, and me so much, so
much that so many of us don’t even know”, and he says to the student, “Our work
here has been to begin how to have an understanding of how to walk in the world of
the other. Yetaxwelwet has given us the opportunity to walk in the world of the other
so significantly and if you have missed that, you have missed a key point of
knowledge in this program as a helper, a healer. You have to be able to hear and
experience the world of the other if it is completely different from your life or how
you look at things. It is a requirement you push yourself past that to see that person,
whoever they are you cannot see Yetaxwelwet, yet she can see you”
Anna summarizes this experience saying
what Dr. Langle did was intervene in a racist, white statement …he corrected her
frame of reference which was exclusion and silencing my voice and Indigenous
history …truth telling against a narrative of, of silencing and erasing …her stories of
genocide … and if you (the woman) are really to see the other you have to …you
have to know that …he spoke from that place of knowing what it takes to grow a
therapist (and continues with , Anna), she has taught about trauma, of what has
happened to Indigenous people, Indigenous people whose land we are on right at
this moment, in this university is in Indigenous territory…. “How many know that?
Invisibility, genocide, erasure, the voice that has been silenced and the story that has
not been told. I am guessing Anna has not told this story anywhere else.” …That’s
needed, what he did, he stopped the student and validated and saw me, in that
moment, not to the exclusion of anyone else. He made a correction which is what a
good, um, Elder does…very familiar to me …where he didn’t put anybody down, but
still held the space for connection and at the same time held me up and at the same
time held all the students up -very, very powerful, human act of compassion, care,
truth and knowledge

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Finally, a general comment was that wellness, not sickness heals. Some thought that
if treatment centres and counsellor offices were more wellness oriented then perhaps success
rates would be higher and people would be proud to go. Juanita says accountability is a
cultural teaching that gets hidden by anonymity and confidentiality and therefore limits
personal growth in every way because it becomes a failure to honour “what is yours of your
experience.” She defines accountability as “taking what you have learned and having it be a
part of you, something others can see” so instead of acknowledging that you’re “the brave
one … that awesome point …where you're willing to do that work “you are made to feel
“bad… less than… that’s scary” instead of celebrating.
Third, Spirit and Ceremony in many forms
Ceremony and spirit knowing connect our intangible knowledge to the practical.
Through ceremony we ask for the knowing of all that surrounds us to become available as
needed. This is as important to hunting as it is to counselling.
Spirit, Inner knowing
Gerry tells us, “there’s nothing that isn't done with spirit in our culture, in our
traditions, that is the key element in anything. That’s why we always open with prayer, that’s
why we always, you know have the spirit world close to us.” The most unspoken, difficult to
explain and key component was as spirituality, our spiritual beings. Marie connected it to
takenshooknoooqua, knowing we are connected (land, animals, plants, people) but said it
was more. It was also like choowaachotts, using Nlakapmux vision-seeking
methods/learning but more because it also included huztoowaah, giving lovingly to family
and community, “utter joy, appreciation of … everything, which is a type of spirituality”.
Vera explains it is this connection that gives us strength,

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Once I learned that (their hardships) about the other people, about the other nations I
started to realize, as First Nations people …we have spirit, we have spirit. No matter
what we have gone through in our lives they (colonizers, White dominance) have
never broken our spirit and some of us can just get it right back.
However, Juanita mentions that although relationship with the creator and ancestors
we can place more importance on things like the media and forget “the spiritual strength in
our spirituality.” A relationship to spirit can show up in knowing like “… when I was a little
child, you know, I just knew that peace was my path, I don’t know how I knew, I guess it’s
just knowing (Babs) and Marie who says something similar “…. I always felt that, but in
my own heart that, um, we had a certain strength and resilience.” Sometimes, spirit just has
to be woken up says Vera, who describes when she went to sing Kwak̓ wala to babies, “…
soon as I speak my language those little babies rolling around … they would just stop and I
am not even beating on my drum yet … it just has to be woken up, some of us just go
through life, sometimes just before we pass on … yup, to walk it up, to sing some of the
songs.
Juanita says when helping others it is important to recognize honor your spirituality.
She says what guides her is knowing that counselling is “like two um two spirits coming
together in counselling and asking”
Anna’s grandmother’s dress story shows spirit is with us and listening helps us
accept ourselves because we listen; a teaching Anna extends to helping others. When Anna
was young she went to visit her grandmother who was having her other women, the priest
and nuns over for tea. Grandmother Cecile had previously set the food out and went into the
bedroom to change and when she comes out her dress is inside out. Anna continues,
I am really young, so I am thinking -do I say something? The little pad on the
outside and the buttons -the dress is inside out … It is not said directly but there is a
teasing … so she looks down and she says… “By gosh, but my dress is already

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inside out and if I go back to change it they said it could just cause big problems and
it could cause a storm to come too …I just don’t want to cause any problems.” So
there, she was completely just fine and everyone else was too and so I was. So I am
thinking it is such acceptance … she still just remains present to who she is and what
she is doing and how she is doing it and the rest of the world has to just go along
with it because she has an understanding of it and how it is supposed to be… And
that’s how it is for many of the ones we work with they already have some sense of
how it supposed to be and it just gets all covered up…those kinds of little teachings
that shake you up you know, because she didn’t change who she was… when I know
myself well enough to be myself that’s all I can bring to the moment and to only fully
be me.
Ceremony
Ceremony holds high value connecting to our spirits, ancestors, or teachings from all
sources in addition to creating a healing space. Ceremony can be a small or big affair.
Several smaller ceremonies were mentioned like: the tea and food sharing; a connection to
land ceremony by simply standing on the land or touching; saying a prayer before doing
something, lighting a candle before meeting a client or creating a circle to share stories. For
Janie, writing is both ceremony and healing. Customs, like drumming and potlatching, were
ceremonies that connected Vera to her strength. Juanita says through “ceremony or …
dream travelling… there is more than one way to get work done” so before she meets a
client she prepares spiritually to lay out the intent and she lets them know when she meets
them that she has prepared for their connection. Marie explains that circle talks not only
creates a sense of safety because the circle is closed and everything said in the circle stays in
the circle but also you have the circle “being tangible then to … both spiritual and physical.”
Larger ceremonies like receiving a family name, passed through many generations,
hold high value and usually carry many teachings. She explains
There is a remembering of this name within my family system that I did not even
know existed inside of me because I hadn’t been given the name yet, but I had some
knowing about it, because for Indigenous people it is of high value, that’s why much
time is spent in the giving and receiving of a name, lots of ceremony, to be named, to

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give your name…and I carry her name so I look to a lot of my interactions with her
(grandmother) as part of many teaching me how to carry my name
I interviewed Oliver in Quaaout Lodge, a conference and golf centre, on Little
Shuswap Indian Band land. The feeling of being in the lodge is grounded and seems to
share culture very respectfully. Oliver shares how the Elders did a morning stick ceremony
before they built the lodge to decide where it should go. He explains,
Quaaout … it means “where the sun’s rays first hit in the morning.” In the spring
they came out here and waited for the sun to come over the mountain and put a stake
in the ground, and in the summer, the fall, winter and this is where the rays, at that
time hit the ground.
Colonial polices stopped potlatching, cultural dances or ceremonies. Marie describes
what happened to her father. She said,
he did his vision quest when he was a boy and he had his vision and song and his
granny, his mom said, “You know you can’t ever use that because I would go to jail
if you do…She made him hang up his drum and everything.”
Fourth- success by preparation
A hunter that is part of a team must not only prepare himself or herself but also
ensure they are aware of group readiness and know the lay of the land. In terms of
counselling this means they take care of themselves through personal healing, and practices
to be fully available and committed to the client’s well-being, be a part of the community, be
aware of and respect history of the area, the family and the individual given by local
knowledge keepers/community members.
The best equipment for counsellors, according to the speakers, would be the
awareness and acceptance of more than one worldview.
Community.

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Oliver said that “we (Indigenous) helpers are bound by the ethics of our people”
which is different than other viewpoints (like western) so a session may not end in 50
minutes because, like Anna says, you go with when the time is ripe. A counsellor’s needs to
‘live’ in the community, be visible and contribute to the community. Vera suggests, “maybe
not for everything …Christmas dinner … if they play a guitar, start guitar lesson, start a
choir, be involved, people appreciate that.” She says being part of the community is respect
and if they sit isolated in an office, never associating with the people or mistreat people the
word spreads like wildfire through the coast. She reminds teachers when she orients them
that,
…if it wasn’t for our children you wouldn’t have a job…our children are important,
they are the ones keeping the schools happening. If any of you can’t be nice to our
kids you go sit behind a computer somewhere, don’t come work with our people
Know the history-community, family, person.
Babs says current written history is inaccurate so history has to be authentic and in
addition to written material “there should be a knowledge keeper…someone who knows the
ways of why (our) people are the way they are …if their goal is to help us.” The history of
the community is important. Andrea reminds us that, “First Nations history, even in my
little village is complex. Everyone wants to tell our story generically, pan America, [but]
even within households, everyone within the household has a story, has their story.”

CF

reinforces and explains more,
know the culture that you're working with … every group is unique and there is
variations within each tribe and that just because you know some you may not know
how they all operate and each community has a specific way of doing things and, and
until you know … how it operates I wouldn't dive into anything … always gotta be
community driven and action based so people need to know that whatever you're
doing with them is gonna come back and help them in some way, that it’s not just
going to be taken and gone again, because that’s been happening for decades and
now First Nations people are at a point where they're saying “no that’s not

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acceptable”. We need to be involved from the beginning and the middle and the end
… so that they know, they have ownership in there… that a lot of the impacts we
have in our communities is a result of the residential schools …some people may
have said that they didn't have a horrible experience and some did and …talking to
some of the people that experienced that … through documentaries… Kuper Island
video …so that you can get a kind of sense of what the experiences where like and
how horrific
Besides community knowledge and history CF says having someone from the
community provide family history is important “because there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t
shared … like you might not even know that they lost a cousin earlier on in the year…
Personal readiness- Self Care.
Self-care was seen as vitally important so counsellors can go deep, be okay to have
feelings, not become entangled in the clients issues.
CF says learning about self-lays a foundation because,
it’s a start to having something to fall back on when you don’t know what you're
doing …you can’t really tell someone how to deal with grief, you can just listen to
them, hear them and ... you can offer what helped you get through it
Juanita defines says part of her self-care is the spiritual preparation she does before
she sees a client is taking care of herself by connecting to that inner knowingness place and
“having faith that whatever unfolds was already done, you know... the way of looking after
myself but also a way of looking out for the other persons.” She explains her context,
We’re all here to learn something and that we are all spiritual beings and that
everything comes back to spirituality… learning to listen to my own intuition about
in regards to my own healing works ……how things are all interconnected …
anything that you're experiencing you need to be asking yourself “What am I
supposed to be learning from this? What can I, what can I gain spiritually from this?”
Part of self-care is not getting entangled with client issues. CF says, “To keep that in
mind that you’re, you’re only the helper, that you actually didn't experience it and your goal
is to help that person learn how to deal with that experience in a positive way.” This is also

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a part of Anna’s self-care so, like her grannies and aunties holds her stuff in a little place in
her heart so “I have the rest of my heart available for that person”.
Fifth-Responsible Action.
When hunting buffalo responsible action is using appropriate approaches like buffalo
wisdom for buffalos and not fishing wisdom because it is not suitable for catching a buffalo.
Indigenous wisdoms say do only what is needed so there is enough for long term
sustainability. In counsellor education this means to stay provide Indigenous knowledge in
an Indigenous way with Indigenous principles.
Buffalos in buffalo country- appropriate action.
When educating counsellors in an Indigenous worldview Gerry says educate them in
Indigenous ways. She says it is key to use educate in
the story telling tradition …you would teach the teachings, cause the teachings come
through the stories. The teachings are the basic foundation of Indigenous people and
without that you, you can’t, you can’t be who you are …as a child growing up with
that experience it shaped my world, so if you're going to be teaching counsellors an
Indigenous uh way, then they have to learn in an Indigenous way. Which would
mean that you would have to bring in the teachers in our tradition who teach
storytelling and teachings and the history and it’s all included in one, it’s not
fragmented into different subjects right, we learn about the first world, the second
world, the third world, we learn about the fall teachings, we learn about the spring
teachings, we learn, it’s, it’s all”
Many participants said their communities and Aboriginal people uniqueness and
diversity must be respected. So, when help is being asked of an Aboriginal who they are and
the teachings they hold must be respected, with a reminder that Indigenous people are not
generic or “pan America.” Vera, Kwakwa̱ ka̱ ʼwakw Elder, knowledge holder, cultural and
language teacher explains her experience,
They (an outside organization) hired me to do the cultural part of the human services
program but they didn’t really mean it …They wanted me to use the sacred tree
book, the medicine wheel. (the medicine wheel was never traditional

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principle/teaching on the coast). Well, I think it will be wonderful but you know but
it would be wonderful for somebody from that, that area and we put in to our own
Kwak̓ wala words or something that relates to us from here.
Indigenous knowledge is not static so some practices that were effective years ago
will not work today and some concepts need to be adapted to today settings. For instances,
the value of storytelling as a teaching and learning method must be awakened because it
recognizes our metaphoric aspects. Oliver says Indigenous people are visual and
experiential learners according to our history because,
There was no public school system, right, so you listened very carefully when the
Elders spoke … you would learn by seeing, you would learn by watching having it
come back and go into your brain so that is why we are visual learners because that is
the way we were taught
Juanita uses this way of learning to connect with young people saying you have to
“first be a visual and approachable person … in order to connect and ….to be that person
that can, can travel in different groups or different whatever.”
Doing what is needed today.
Heart was the most mentioned word by the participants and in the literature review.
Heart, spirituality, learning, helping and culture were intertwined. Learning or counselling
with heart was seen to be essential. A common comment was that university education
caused people to lose heart, something Marie, who has been through college and university,
confirms saying it is “too separated from me (points to her heart) … impersonalized” and
things to her must have meaning because they are either “meaningful or meaningless”.
Andrea, a long time cultural and wellness facilitator, says one of her first teachings from her
grandmother was carry a good heart – dala xa ik noke’. She says, “our culture is a feeling
culture” and when you drum, or sing and dance with your feet on the earth it starts to vibrate
and you move stuck problems out of your body and let those songs heal you. She says you

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can’t do that every day so you have to start with finding ways to manage your feelings and
the “western model of teaching a whole pile of people all this head stuff doesn’t resonate
with the village and none of it works for our people because it is just a quick fix”. She finds
many western trained counsellors are often not willing to feel their own emotions including
crying and are even unwilling to let the client feel their feelings when what the clients’ needs
is for you, the helper, to “just pour love into them to help them through that pain”. She notes
than in counselling it seems you are not supposed to touch, show affection or hug because
you “have to worry about what can happen to you legally.” She says,
That is not our way. Our grannies hugged us. That’s wisdom. They hugged us and
made us feel reassured. When I taught with my granny, before you could teach
anything about a song or dance or Kwakwala or history, there was a long line up of
children and all they wanted was a hug…before we started the class she would just
hug everyone before she started (smiles as she says this) …in the Western model
they don’t promote that...And you need to connect (smacks hands together) for
people to feel reassured.
Marie’s mother story indicates love is needed because an aspect of healing includes
acknowledging historical losses including language. She says it has become very important
to “have acceptance as well because there was so much disallowance or dis-acceptance”.
She talks about her mother saying she was
a really tremendous role model for love and she often spoke of love and she said,
“We love one another.” She said, “Not just our families, we love one another, we
love each other in our own, we have always loved each other,” and she never just
said it, she was it. She somehow embodied love so I feel I love in that way … she
had no qualms …about sharing that.
Marie then tells a story of her mother feeling so bad for a little girl that was crying
that she cried with her and she was “genuinely crying and … and then that little girl stopped
crying.” Marie says “sometimes that happens in counselling, we cry together, heaven forbid,
I don’t think you are even supposed to” but from an Indigenous point of view “it's a way of

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connecting”. Marie’s story of love was something my cousin Janie, overwhelmingly gave to
me along with everyone she was in contact with during our day and a half interview visit.
Oliver told an old story that the Creator met with the animals of the medicine wheel
to decide what to do with spirituality with the coming of the Europeans. After input from all
the animals he decided to hide spirituality in the hearts of the red people. The full story is in
appendix I.
Oliver suggested that people needed education in the right way in order to change. It
had to be personal and mean something to the person learning. Quaaout Lodge, a vision of
Secwepmec Elders in Little Shuswap Band territory is an example of doing what’s needed
while embracing Indigenous principles. Oliver explains,
You can’t go out and hunt and fish and trap any more so you know the exchange now
is working and that is all here to replace that with this…but get done in a way that it
is culturally friendly and culturally learning to other people, to other races …I don’t
develop any more than what is here already. Like this building. We got a gas
station. We got a wellness centre. It covers up the land so we got we don’t do any
more than we have to and the development that has been done has been done in a
way, you know, an environmentally friendly way
How much do we need and at what cost? Oliver says we need to ask ourselves,
Do we need another pipeline, so we need another blah, blah, blah? Do we need
another and so forth?... It’s like looking in your vision when you ask yourself if you
need it. I can give you my phone, and you can accept it but you know what else
comes with it? ……… I not only give a gift but I give you a responsibility of
Prior to becoming chief for the Little Shuswap Band, Oliver was an alcohol and drug
counsellor for twenty-seven years. He says that sometimes the paperwork brings out fear in
some so he needed to know when it was time to just listen. He explains that a lot of people
just walk up and talk to me. They used to come to my office when I was a
counsellor and we would just sit there and talk. We would be so far into discussion,
our past lives and what’s bothering them that, uh, the paperwork was not necessary
then it was just the exchange of the words and the, uh, compassion you had for the
individual to help them. Like a lot of things people go through don’t necessarily need

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heavy counselling …. just to know that you are there and you can listen, just to listen
and not to offer an opinion, it’s very healing to people and get it off their chest and
they come back around or catch you somewhere else in the community and you talk
it is more and more healing
Doing what is needed as a counsellor may mean there is more needed: more time,
more commitment, more support, a broader understanding, more integrated service, more
community involvement. Oliver gives the scope,
When I was counselling it had to be more than just a counselling…its all part of your
walk and your talk. Are you going to support for this individual and treatment?...
They know that you are there for them and you are not trying to get rid of them out of
the community because they are a problem or they see it as a problem with
themselves. It’s a healing process and you go to those graduation ceremonies as
well, its a recognition not only to self but it’s a recognition to others that they can do
this stuff, right. The process of healing from abuses and addictions is always there,
being taken from addiction to life. A lot of them have to learn how to be parents
again; you know there is residential school. They have to learn not only how to be
parents but grandparents. It is always a continuing thing it is a long way to go for a
lot of workers and they have to learn, be, accept things as they come and it never
really gets overwhelming. It’s just in your mind the difference … the day never ends
when you do a job like that, it never ends, never close a file until the person is gone
or whatever…no, you don’t stay away from them! You are part of the community;
you are part of that group, even if your client joins AA
Counsellors need to be authentic and they need to be able to show their feelings.
Juanita said you have to meet people where they are at, allow them to feel safe and be
authentic because people in addiction “can read people and their behaviour so quickly and
easily and …they’ll be able to see right through you so if you haven't done the work …
either no work done or harm done.”
Marie says another distinction in Indigenous education is how we teach counselling.
As a team developer of the Native Human Studies program in the 1980’s and the current
Chemical Addictions Worker Program they found many things aspects of educating in an
Indigenous way. They found personalizing the education, healing the heart, teaching with

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heart, recognizing spirit, and including cultural practices and ceremonies were helpful. One
principle was holistic teaching, which she explains is,
physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, all those components have to be there to reach
anyone…sometimes when we approach a person …it is easier to talk about the
physical because it is tangible and we can identify something that may need changing
and improving whatever then going to the emotional and talking about feelings …
the other is I think with the mental area we give little homeworks, …the spiritual is
really big because, in my view, that’s where we lived.
After the hunt: sharing, acknowledging relationship to others, to land.
After a successful hunt I show my gratitude for connection to spirit and animal
guides, all beings and to the land through sharing and generosity. As a helper, sharing and
honoring all relationships, including to land and place is a vital Indigenous principle.
Sharing, Generosity
I had a prior relationship with everyone so there was already a relationship of
sharing: healing, sleeping, laughing, crying, travelling, eating, learning, etc.
Vera, ‘Namgis Elder, Kwak̓ wala language and cultural teacher shares cultural
teachings to children in her own language because “I have grandchildren and I want them to
never feel shamed” because she “was so ashamed of being embarrassed about being my own
family”. One teaching she shares is “maya’xa̱ la”, which translates loosely to respect. She
says to the children,
Respect who you are, respect your environment, respect your family …You deserve
respect too…you have given me a purpose and what I have to share with you is I
want you to be proud of who you are. Don’t be arrogant because it really does not
strengthen you here (points to her heart). Don’t be a snob. I am talking about the
tribe you come from. Learn everything you can about it, because it really does
strengthen you here (points to her heart).
Sharing food was a part of almost every interview. Anna saw it as a part of therapy
where food was seen as welcoming, basic act of connection and caring. An Indigenous view

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of learning is sharing. Anna says, “the agreement is that you are coming into learn, that
from an Indigenous perspective you don’t just learn you are also teaching you know -that
relationship being a student and a teacher at the same that exchange that occur.” Oliver says
contributing from who you are is not acknowledged in the current educational system and
Anna says it is because there is an “I know, pouring information into the student’s head”
without any expectation of exchange.
Sharing is part of relationships and Anna says the beauty of Indigenous frameworks
showed in how we were meeting for the interview, a way that was not “included in our field
of mental health.” She noted I brought “medicine to ask what, where are you with some of
these things to help me… bringing a small gift, a little giving in exchange of our time
together … it’s an acknowledgement of relationship building… it is so beautiful to
experience it and embody it.” Significant sharing occurred in all the interviews: their time,
their knowledge, a little visit, often food, and the warmth of relationship and connection.
Relationship.
Many interviews left me with an initial sense of confusion because the points seemed
scattered and I wondered if that was my anxiety. However, as I listened to them repeatedly
during the transcribing, I realized they had made connections to diverse items forming a
more whole relationship, like everything depends on everything else, and all I had to do was
follow the words like breadcrumbs to lead me home. There was also an unspoken
relationship and connection to all the interviewees. Marie thought this may be particular to
Indigenous people whether you know them or not. She says,
I think there is a certain form of acceptance or identification or something with one
another- our Indigenous ability to recognize one another somehow…We know one
another somehow... and we know it somehow and they know it

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Relationship to self comes with a sense of identity. Some participants forgot how
valuable they were as Indian people. Others had to be reconnected to their culture. Others
never forgot such as Marie who says “I was, in my view still proud to be an Indian, even so,
lots of negativity around it. I never really doubted my Indianness.” Her education and
healing path was driven by a sense of importance of being an Indian. She says, “I felt it was
really important that we bring forth this Indianness, this nativeness, this ancestry, this
whatever.” While she was on her education journey she learned that, “it is really important
to hear about other people, other Indigenous people’s successes.” Vera says learning who
you are is important because it can give you a sense of belonging, or “maybe you know how
to do things that I will never be able to do… but you are just as important as I am.”
It seems that valuing ourselves as Indigenous people still involves dealing with the
colonization. For Indigenous nations and the settler nations that came to our land this past
is still unsettled. Juanita talks about what has to be done. She says, “it’s a huge piece of
work cause that piece of work goes back generations.” We need to think in terms of our
youth and the next ones coming. Juanita young enough to miss direct colonial trauma says,
it’s so hard to wrap my head around because it is historical right? That’s, that whole
colonialism and genocide and all this, these issues that we have historically and
currently and when we try to find that space, that’s where I think a lot of the
challenge is you know for our people, is to find that self-worth in order to be able to
even do this type of work, to find that inner knowingness, to have enough in
themselves to get there
Marie reinforces that it is important to deal with because “we were becoming
disconnected … residential school… other school… and in our language losses I think we
encountered many things.”
Juanita says valuing her children means valuing them for learning their lessons in
their way and that to her “is like the money.” Part of helping youth share the lessons they

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have learned is through a youth collective called Red Rising, five young people, who talk
about their sobriety journey and talk about why. She explains
when I look back over my journey, one of the biggest pieces that I’ve ever learned
was … why, why do we do that? Why do we do ceremonies every month? … why
are we supposed to do this? Why do we have to have a sweat lodge … and when it
comes to questioning the spiritual practice or who we are as a people I would always
get my hand slapped, like by my mother, my aunties, everyone. You don’t question,
you just …do it, you just don't ask …I never understood why and so that was, in my,
in my education …I started to say “well how in the hell am I supposed to like bring
this information forward if I don't know who, when, where, why or what or any of
this and how …if I’m gonna just go through and do the motions, how am I gonna
give that forward?” and so, I still don't really have any answers for that really,
besides the fact that I believe how important how it is

Anna says a relationship of welcoming and sharing is important when working with
native families and children “because that’s a natural place of establishing like our humanity,
our connection” and she sets the tone with her warm and comfortable room, the food she
shares and small gifting. Marie says, although she doesn’t find it taught in any books, being
personal is important;
in the beginning of things (in a counselling session) … we talk about our families or
we talk about our relations … we talk about our aunty and also in my generation and
I have used the language to speak, talk about language, talk about where we are from,
talk about geography, talk about all of that, its embracing the personal then as
opposed to not being personal … that is really important as a beginning point
Juanita sees the counselling relationship as “two spirits coming together, not
counselling as in the sense of “I’m going to tell you how to do” but a process that includes
honouring her “own spirituality” and that has helped her learn to trust “that I don’t need to
just keep rambling, that I can pause and hear what it is that I need to say or hear, you know,
hear it out here … you know, combine that inner knowingness as well as providing

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contemporary um or western knowledge “ and I know I have done it because I feel it “from
the bottom of my feet to the top of my head
Oliver talks about the relationship the client has with everyone, including the
counsellor,
as a worker you are the main thing to talk and the thing grows and grows and grows.
You impact your client, you impact their spouse, you impact their children, it’s the
whole thing …It begins the intergenerational stuff with your great, great grandpa
takes a drink of whiskey and it goes big that way and you just gotta make the talk
down kind of approach … You have an impact on everyone that way…They keep
everybody in check you know … you are working with a family … Whether you
know it or not - people watch you, watch how you talk, how you walk and they
watch how you treat one another and rather than pull you down like crabs in a bucket
they will say you are doing really well, then they cry, say nice job all this stuff. It is
just recognition and it has to come together as a group and as a family and a
community where you have that recognition for that an individual who has done
really well.
He says, even if people relapse his community recognizes the person’s achievements
and “we try to get him back on board.”

Oliver suggests a way to build this awareness into a

counsellor is a relationship to self. He says,
So in our language we have a word it is called [kanoookanshoot], it means help
yourself, [we can shoot], it means see yourself so when you put those two together if you can see yourself, you can help yourself, if you can help yourself, you can help
others…. So after that’s done you can help others.
Connection to land and place.
Everyone made comments about connecting to the land. Babs explains the value of
connecting to the land, “Haidas were always taught to live off the land, I mean at one with
everything, all the different seasons. To be on the land um, it’s grounding to be on mother
earth and it’s cleansing to go into the ocean.” Andrea says these are ancient practices that
people are trying to renew their connection to land, something she experienced as a child and

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something she wants for the next generations. Anna offers connection to land exercises to
trauma history and complex trauma clients as ways to heal. She says,
I give explanation that a part of their work is to come back in their body and because
in order to survive we have spent a lot of time out of the body and I give gentle
exercises that have to do with the land… just this short 10-15 minutes… where they
just … experience the land and a later point in the work …have them intentionally
talk about the experience …how was it to feel the grass… stones …to breathe…
touch the water …and I might tell a story, about this land, about what it means from
an Indigenous perspective …that kind of knowledge or knowing about land or place
…that is not really a deep concept classwork that is being done today
The raven and the fish story makes the connection to land, animals, humans and
health. Gerry says,
Health is the stories about raven showing my uncle, for example, where the fish are
because he was a very good fisherman and I said “Uncle, how come you always
catch the most fish?” … “Oh that’s easy” he said, “raven always tells me where the
fish are.” So I grew up with this understanding through the stories about
relationships with animals …my own experience about the value of storytelling in, in
the well-being, the wellness of our, of our beings and how, how our Indigenous view
of the world is shaped
The overhunting occurring in Oliver’s area is also occurring in the area I live.
During hunting season, we, the locals, see slaughter with usable discarded animal parts on
the sides of the road in disturbing numbers along with the beer cans, the onslaught of ATV’s
and partying. I suggest this is the result of disconnection to land but Oliver says it a lesson
about greed that we must learn and he tells a Sitting Bull story to illustrate. He says,
in story of the battle of the Little Big Horn, where, uh, Sitting Bull, he told his men
not to take anything from the warriors, the soldiers when they killed them. “Leave
them and just go back as you do, your generations will suffer for years.” …They
didn’t listen to him, and they took the horns and they took the knives and they took
the guns, they took the hats, coats. So they just actually robbed the dead and it was a
lesson that Sitting Bull was trying to teach them. It was all part of his vision but, uh,
they didn’t listen so now were are left behind to pay for that, the greed that until we
learn - quite the story, eh…that’s uh, that’s what the old people told me a long, long
time ago, and they came from South Dakota. They are the ones who told the story.

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However, the destruction of the environment affecting traditional food supplies and
ways of living were heard with a sense of loss, disconnect and a feeling of anger. Vera
spoke about the loss of “our soul food.” Andrea said the fish farms devastate the
environment around and below them, something no one sees because it “looks pristine.” For
Janie, and myself, disconnect and loss is dominant because we do not live near our
traditional homelands and Janie said over and over how much she wanted to go back to the
traditional land, to interview the Elders and re-connect somehow.
Seventh- Reflection and keys to go forward.
After hunting we reflect on our actions to choose future pathways for new improved,
wise ways. This is the same in hunting as it is for counselling and counselling education.
Mountains or molehills
A common question and comment was whose views made the decisions. Babs
questions who would decide the competence of counsellors in a combined education system.
She questions saying “A Non First nation would have no idea. So how could a non-First
Nation help a First Nation when they have no idea?” and recommends “whether it be a First
Nation or a non-First Nation” they are going to work in that “the first thing they do is find
out about, about that community”, views shared by most of the participants. What are their
protocols? Cause every first nation is different.” Oliver suggests we question all current
practices to see if they are being done appropriately. He asks these questions, “Who is on
First Nations health- a couple of (meaning Indigenous) but who is on First Nations Health,
above them, telling them what to do and how to do it?” In addition to questioning who
makes the decision, Vera suggests, “Sometimes you have to bend the rules.”

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Oliver notes that in the past “less people stood up to say, I am okay because of who I
am” so perhaps it is this sense of self that will help us go forward. Many ways to do it
differently were mentioned: being more visible or more involved in the community,
learning the local history, working with the whole scope of relationships, or using time
differently. An example, is to consider time. This may mean a commitment beyond closing
time or the standard session length. Anna explains why,
a session can go for a couple hours and that includes food. That includes stretching
or movement and that is Indigenous frameworks that when the spirit is moving you
stay with it
There was underlying doubt that things would change. There was doubt the
historical records would be accurate, that racism would stop, that the colonial policies
responsible for destroying the environment would change, that they would ever regain
important Indigenous ways, or that Indigenous ways would be equally accepted.
Conversation still centered on getting heard by ‘them’ or ‘them’ taking action. This makes it
important to hear Oliver when he says,
the trust level between native and non-native people was not there. I don’t think it
ever was since the contact, since residential school … everything, all designed, all,
already made before it comes to you, even the programs that they deliver within the
First nations communities are delegated programs…they might say it is culturally
sensitive but the only thing about it is it belongs, no, is delegated to an Indian
man…like native addictions and then they get paid to tell it
Oliver explains there is a loss of self in the current system of institutionalizing;
school, workers, unions, etc. He says all these create situations telling us we have
really lost touch with yourself, you have lost touch with your responsibility to
determine where you are going, what to say, how to act- you know-take an oath…so
it’s one thing after another …In our language they say sweti7 ri7, who are you? So,
who are you, who are you - you are your great, great, great grandfather, your great,
great grandfather, your great grandfather, your grandfather, and you, … when you
live a life that doesn’t categorize you

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Marie wonders if the same learning and education that was important for her will be
the same for the younger generations because they have different experiences. Oliver thinks
people have “given away their responsibility to be educated” and,
let the media inform them about what is going on, rather than learning it
themselves… they send their children to schools …instead of lets go for a walk and I
will show you something, yah sort of a walk with grandfather or grandmother, you
learn … they don’t take the time to do anything that will be a benefit to them.
However, there was an acceptance of education. Most had post-secondary training,
notably Dr. Marie Anderson, who earned her Ph.D. at age 70 with a thesis on Nlakapmux
grandmother’s wisdom theory. Extensive involvement in culture or band affairs gave other
participants more than equivalent to a masters or Ph.D. university education.
Keys to educate.
I could not find a place for some themes but felt they were significant to creating
change in the educational system. Listening, cultural humility, realizing we can only heal
self, the need to keep the big picture because everything depends on everything else,
spirituality is the big picture, and if we get the value of storytelling we get the value of
teachings at many levels.
The intention of this project is to listen. Hutłila /Listen to stories and wisdoms of
Aboriginal people and have the educational institution listen to their words. Andrea explains
the value of embracing teachings and including Indian knowledge. She starts by explaining
what helps in her village, saying,
in our ways we talk about uplifting, that is the true tradition of our people… those
are the true words of the people… yes, however because of a lack of healing on a
grand level in every, in every profession, in the households and the parenting that is
not where we are at yet ….we just re-connect people back to that belief…that is the
truth… if our grandparents was here they would uplift everyone…they would do
their best to uplift everyone…and I am not saying that … our grandparents didn’t
have a shady history neither, they all have, they all have history

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While Anna used the words cultural humility, the idea of being humble with a client
was shared many times. Anna says there needs to be a “systems change for how they
prepare a culturally humble healer” because “so many of our service providers working with
non-Indigenous people walk in with that same attitude I had as that young girl - “I know, ya
I know about that theory and application, I know, I know, I know “. And the counselling
student comes in with “a large level of not knowing and it isn’t just Western knowledge that
fills that gap. It is a way …larger container that has to hold a place of, of willingness to keep
learning.” Juanita wishes to embrace the spiritual aspect because she “doesn’t want to cause
more harm” and wants to leave her children
A clean, clear path for them the best that I can and that, to me, is making changes
spiritually, mentally emotionally and physically and bringing that awareness forward
to them that they witness the growth in me and the change and the shift in me and
they also have, you know, like a almost like a map, you know, of how to live their
life that way as well
Oliver thinks “the self can change…. it can change for you, doesn’t mean it is going
to change for everybody.” He goes on to say we need to consider if the changes we make to
the world, like pipelines, we need to ask ourselves if “that change will be what you want it to
be …how long is your job going to last, when is that pipeline going to be done, the one you
are going to sacrifice your well-being for? He also says we have to learn about the “big
picture, regardless of what it is we have to learn about, we have to learn about ourselves and
we have to learn about… how we affect the world.”
In counselling, this can mean knowing who is all involved in someone’s life, their
personal history. Juanita says it also means looking at counselling on a spiritual plane
because it helps work with any age client, is a way of connecting in ‘other’ ways, keeps her

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present to what is needed, and honors her spirituality. Her “two spirits coming together”
overview helps her because it is
takes away that um unaccountable for your problem and so I’m going to help you to
fix it where it takes away that accountability because and so when you look at it
spiritually, it’s like okay, I can help you in this way … that’s helped me to tread in
some pretty deep waters with people… being able to go to those places with them
and not be run down or not be overwhelmed or retraumatizing myself
Participants are sharing stories in their own language, especially to the children,
“stories of Skelep, the coyote, the bears tale, all those kinds of stories that is how they learn
we are storytellers” (Oliver). For some, ‘story’ must be valued as a word, a deep way of
expressing oneself and a teaching. Gerry provides some reasons to value story and
storytelling.
as time goes on it, your understanding gets deeper so it’s told over and over again
and your understanding changes with your maturity … a form of counselling… way
of seeing the world, the way of knowing that I’m connected to everything which is
really vital for our emotional health …. story telling has knowledge of the history
from the first world, when the world was first formed all the way through to, to now
and so we learn about the first world and in, within those are also the songs and the
stories, you know and the dances sometimes, so um and there, and there’s knowledge
about everything, star teachings and they only come out in January and you know
there’s like just um within the stories is all the knowledge that we have gathered from
the beginning of time and they're passed on and this is where we would have to say
that the world is not flat you know, because there’s, there’s so many worlds within
those worlds and, but we don’t know that until we learn the teachings and the stories
Courage to start a circle.
These final sets of themes are ideas to go forward but they overlapped or I couldn’t
sort out where to put them.
Marie gives us words to go forward, much like Vera did. She says, “we need
courage, and we need to step outside the box.” She says learning starts with the circle, like
in counselling. Indigenous people value experience as education and many saw the
knowledge as equivalent to university status. Maries realizes that Indigenous education “is

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lifelong, its, is not just compartment like college, like university. I believe in lifelong
learning, it is life long.”
The final quote from Marie sends us on our way, “We are constantly becoming, and
if we trust ourselves enough then or if we feel comfortable enough then I think we just are.”
My growth
I started this research uncertain of myself.

I have had very little ‘cultural training’.

I do not live near my ancestral territory and am far removed from Cree teachings. Yet, I felt
supported by lineage. The moccasins that have carried me through this journey are well
worn, dusty and tired from all the colonizing, decolonizing, racism, imposed etic rhetoric
that has gone on for too many years defying any logic I have about actual change. What I
received spoke volumes. The exchange with each participant completely embraced
mahtahitowin, sharing. I left each person enriched with research material and personal
growth. I felt the ground beneath my moccasins, grounded in Indigenous thought like
coming home. I felt the learning, sometimes like pebbles on the road, sometimes like
wading through mud. From their words I heard immeasurable amounts of heart, spirit and
commitment to being Indigenous and these will be my guiding lights. I am ready to move
on, change my moccasins. My next journeys will be towards more learning of my heritage
and language. I thank each person for teaching me the importance of both. The storytelling
and the meeting of a storyteller, Johnny Moses, was the highlight of the research. Stories
heal, help, humour and live on to be used many times over.
Summary of Chapter 4
Chapter 4 had two main parts. Part one were condensed stories, so the reader could
get a sense of context and make their own meanings. The story approach follows Indigenous

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concepts of story as one’s own learning process and relationship to the whole. The second
part described the themes that made meaning from the strong messages and were contained
within the metaphor of a buffalo hunt. A buffalo hunt metaphor recognized the dynamic
nature of knowledge and the spiritual connections needed to embrace the many teachings in
the Indigenous hearts and minds of those interviewed.

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Chapter 5 Mino-pimatisiwin, Hutlilalas
The good life
Hutłilalas, learn to listen
The interview experience, the stories and themes offer three main concepts for the
three ears of educators and course developers. When I listened the first major concept I
heard included the importance knowing who we are by acknowledging our blood memory,
generational hurts and being authentic. I was told that a full life includes opening our hearts,
showing love and feeling to others and to our land and place. Third, I heard the call for spirit
in all aspects of our lives and which shows in valuing the wisdom of our Elders.
This chapter shapes these main concepts into a suggested development model for
counsellor curriculum, comments on some areas within the curriculum, and offers
considerations for further development.
If you ask many counsellors, mental health practitioners or therapists where they
received their education or training many may tell you where they attended school or what
courses they took. Since this is was research for counsellor development it is notable that
not one person said their Indigenous knowledge came from a book or institution and yet they
all felt, quite strongly, that Indigenous knowledge was needed in current counsellor
education.
Margaret Kovach (2010) reminds me “an Indigenous paradigm centers Indigenous
knowledge “(p. 42). Although decolonizing perspectives were received and seemed
inevitable based on the centuries of past and current colonization, they are, however, are
within the “settler discourse” and within the “critical theory aspect” of the “transformative
paradigm of western tradition” (Merten, 2005). Thus, a curriculum will contain decolonizing

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steps that focus on learning Indigenous knowledge in Indigenous ways for the purpose of
expanding the capacities of counsellors.
Based on this research I suggest three main concepts form the steps to an Indigenous
educational curriculum sharing equitable placement within a current university counsellor
program. These concepts are: Knowing who we are, our connections to our worlds, and
acknowledging spirit. These concepts overlap and crisscross like a web or a dream catcher
to remind us of the Haida law, gina’waddluuxan gud kwigid; everything depends on
everything else. The web of the dream catcher forms the safety net for our dreams and
provides remembering that our worlds are more than physical matter. The graphic design of
a dream catcher is presented to summarize the research findings, recommendations and
thoughts for the future. The dream catcher metaphor came through the participants.
The dream catcher embraces aspects of the medicine wheel and the concept of
balance. Overt aspects included in this wheel/circle are the: cardinal directions (east, south,
west and north), all races of the world (yellow, red, black, white), and all realms of being
(spiritual, emotional, mental, emotional). Unspoken are all other attributes the wheel
embraces such as the seasons of life, animal or plant helpers, stones or more.
Anna talked about holes in the net from colonization and its effects but says
Indigenous community still holds the knowledge to be intact. Marie said, “The start is with
the circle. In the circle, the circle provides safety…it is a comfortable place to be”. The
quadrants are from the Elders says Oliver;
we go to our Elders, we are raised by our Elders and they said there is no right way,
there is no wrong way, but it is Judy’s (the name is an example) way to learn … you
could be an intermediate learner or newbie, even at the age you are, a new learner, a
novice. That is why there are four quadrants … it does not matter where you step
into it, if you are an adult learning a child’s words; you are still learning your own
language.

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Figure 1. Indigenous Curriculum Development model using Dream catcher design.

Permission for use of buffalo given by Arno Lukas, artist. Buffalo originally drawn in pen and ink for his late father, a shamanic practitioner. Feathers retrieved from

http://pixgood.com/native-american-eagle-feather-drawings.html. Image of the Sisiyut� retrieved from The Thunder Bird Tootooch Legends, by W.L. Webber, [1936], at
sacred-texts.com, p. 26, and artist unknown.

The quadrants are also representative of the four overarching principles – that
everything encompasses the ancestors, heart, spirit and an experiential way of learning.
Kwakwa� ka� �wakw teachings include sisiyut�, a two-headed shape shifting sea serpent, a

111
concept similar in other coastal nations. I entered Alert Bay to interview Vera and Andrea
under the sisiyutł, who is like a sentry to the village. Andrea says the sisiyutł always allows
us to choose so is a symbol of balance. I received permission to include the sisiyutł and
acknowledge the Kwakwa̱ ka̱ ʼwakw people for their generosity. The buffalo is part of the
grandfather teachings in plains culture and the feathers are universal to all. This model is not
intended to be a pan-Indian or specific representation of the participants’ heritage or their
cultures, but to loosely represent and respect the diversity of the people interviewed.
During the theming I started looking for sources that seemed to encompass the
knowledge shared by the research participants and was relevant to the intent of this research,
which was to present Indigenous knowledge and ways of learning for inclusion into post
secondary counsellor training. Two main sources seemed appropriate. While a main intent
of both sources was to include Indigenous knowledge into post secondary education the aims
were slightly different.

Indigenous Presence, co- authored by Dr. Margaret Kovach, Dr.

Jeannine Carriere, Dr. Harpell Montgomery, Dr. M.J. Barret and Carmen Gilles (2015), was
an inquiry into how well teachers and social workers were being prepared professionally
(through education) to “consider Indigenous knowledge systems in their practice.” Their
voices call for “creating opportunities for dialogue on how to imagine and envision
Indigenous Presence in post-secondary sites “(p. 7). This research is part of that dialogue.
The second information source was A Proposed Master of Social Work Based in Indigenous
Knowledges Program in Manitoba, an article written by Hart et al. (2014) presented the
background and discussion on a model of an Indigenous based social work program they
developed for the University of Saskatchewan. Their proposed Indigenous based model
was developed by an Indigenous caucus in a “ground up” format “rather than tinker with the

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existing MSW which is built upon Euro-Canadian ideologies that reinforces the
marginalization of Indigenous knowledges and practices” (Hart et. al, 2014. p. 2). I
reviewed this model, acknowledging that the study participants I interviewed shared many of
the same views, and used their proposed social work model as my base. Further, I
acknowledged their stance that it is better to start fresh than modify from a worldview that
has held the oppressive stance for centuries (Hart et. al, 2014).
The course program suggested by this model is meant to share equitable space within
a master’s program for counsellors. Kovach et al. (2015) would call this an ‘inclusionary
academy” (p. 13). Suggestions were to vary the education of Indigenous ways by including
full stand-alone foundational courses; cultural retreats; intensive sessions within western
programs; and continuous small segments within the western courses.
This section will present various points and future considerations for each step within
these three main concepts:
Knowing who we are; Connectedness; and Acknowledging Spirit.
Concept One: Knowing who we are
Using the holistic principles, the concept of knowing who we are forms the hub to
this proposed Indigenous curriculum and includes: exploring our ancestry, teachings,
ceremonies (spirit); opening hearts through White Fragility and healing wounds (feeling);
telling authentic stories in Indigenous history (experiential); and awareness and
understanding of Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous research (mental).
Ancestors, Teachings and Ceremony.
All the participants’ opinions agree with Art Solomon, the late Ojibwe/Anishnabe
who says that in order to know where we are going we need to know where we come from

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(Poslun, 1990). Many said learning who you are can help gain a sense of belonging,
importance, what you can contribute to life and an appreciation of other people. The value
and effect of exploring one’s ancestry to increase an acceptance of other worldviews or
improve counsellor-client relations is a topic for further research.
The many teachings given in this study is only representative of the people
interviewed but any educational program needs to find and incorporate valid local
Indigenous knowledge.
“Ceremony is an obligation for renewal in the life cycle” (Hart, 2002, p. 104) and
according to the participants, could be small, like lighting a candle or large like a naming
ceremony, or acknowledging an accomplishment. There is a difference between an event
and Indigenous principled ceremony. Vine Deloria, (2006) says contact with “the great
mysterious power” needs to precede the development of ceremonies and rituals. He explains
the reason for ritual and ceremony is based on the awareness that knowledge “deeper than
what was originally allotted to humans was only possible if the spirits, though meditation or
other creatures shared some of their knowledge (p. 16)”. This process of acknowledging the
spiritual aspect of ceremony is key to experiencing the value of ceremony so must be
included in the development of any ceremonies within the program. Ceremonies include
prayers. Many spoke of cultural songs as teachings but my aunt sang with her soul and Lee
Brown (2004) helped me understand the importance of her singing. He spoke of Dale
Running Bear, a Dakota, who said “our songs are prayers” (p. 6) and further explained that
“each word spoken is an exercise of power and a use of medicine …singing is the
concentration and magnification of this power” (p. 6).

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Indigenous ways recognize the student-teacher-student flexibility where, in Anna’s
words “the agreement is that you are coming into learn, that from an Indigenous perspective
you don’t just learn you are also teaching you know -that relationship being a student and a
teacher at the same that exchange that occur.”
Open hearts, healing wounds.
Trauma numbs our emotions so therapy that gives emotional language allows clients
to relate to others. As counsellors, we need emotional strength to sit with “another person’s
human rawness” in the can’t stand, too much emotion moments that healing occurs, a place
Tian Dayton (2015) calls “the trauma vortex” (p. 2). It is this place we need to practice
being in as therapists so we can go deep places with our clients. We need to do our own
healing not only for the client but for ourselves before we can help others, like the
Secwepmec sayings to see yourself, help yourself then you can help others.
There are realities that need to be talked about openly. Is trust possible? What were
the settlers looking for? What is missing today? An intellectual discussion will not help.
The heart must be involved in order to examine and change. Vera acknowledges same old,
same old colonial ways. She says
it doesn’t matter if they (non-Aboriginal) understand some of our customs….. for us
to be acknowledged …. the truth, that is what happened to us (colonization, racism,
superiority, etc.), and it is still happening today, it is not any different. It is in a
different time but the whole attitude is still the same way.
If we want to change, we must get through this. Survivors of colonialists must let go
of their colonial amnesia, their unwillingness to remember the past (Adams, 1995). A Cree
person might call this ayiwahkemowin, thinking oneself is greater than the next person –
elevating oneself as righteous thus becoming challenging, as one of the issues of
colonialism. There appeared to be a lack of faith, spoken and unspoken, that the dominant

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western culture of oppression was going to change. Robin J. DiAngelo is an American
academic, lecturer, and author working in the fields of critical discourse analysis and
whiteness studies introduces her concept of white fragility with her personal statement
I grew up poor and white. While my class oppression has been relatively visible to
me, my race privilege has not. In my efforts to uncover how race has shaped my life,
I have gained deeper insight by placing race in the center of my analysis and asking
how each of my other group locations have socialized me to collude with racism. In
so doing, I have been able to address in greater depth my multiple locations and how
they function together to hold racism in place. I now make the distinction that I grew
up poor and white, for my experience of poverty would have been different had I not
been white” (DiAngelo, 2006).
In Robin DiAngelo’s article, White Fragility (2011) she says that there is a racial
protectionism that insulates whites from racial stress by the larger social environment such
as institutions, media, school textbooks, advertising, dominant discourse, etc. She suggests
this protectionism creates a white fragility that when any amount of racial stress occurs it
elicits a range of defensive moves and emotions like anger, fear, guilt, arguing, silence,
“emotional incapacitation, cognitive dissonance… claims of being beyond the need for
engaging.” (p.55) All these tend to maintain a cycle of keeping “the content comfortable
palatable for whites” (p.55). She offers using white fragility as a framework to look at race
issues, “starting at the micro level” (p. 66) because whites need to build stamina so they
don’t become triggered and ultimately distract from meaningful interventions. She
maintains, “… if we can’t listen to or comprehend the perspectives of people of color, we
cannot bridge cross-racial divides” (p. 66). Opening our hearts through Aboriginal ways will
help us learn better because cognitive learning is hampered by a weak heart low in affective
capacity (Brown, 2004).
Anna says to non-Aboriginals, “Don’t be so fragile, look at me, I survived!”. This,
perhaps, is a starting place for opening hearts in order to critically explore issues of white

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privilege, white fragility, racial identity, trust and to prepare non-judgmentally for the
experience of Indigenous knowledge and trust building.
Telling authentic stories in Indigenous History
The aim, of telling authentic stories “is to deconstruct oppressive and colonial
structures and reconstruct, in a contemporary sense, what has been previously destroyed”
(Hart et. al, 2014, p. 1). Participants said any Indigenous history, no matter what media is
used, needs to be authenticated by knowledge holders, especially local area knowledge
holders. However, creating the space for a universal application of more accurate
knowledge requires non-Aboriginal allys to help develop this form of decolonization (Hart
et. al, 2014), something suggested by a professor early in this research. The professor said
that it was essential to have white allys if I were to propose an equitable space for
Indigenous knowledge into any education, let alone university. One of the participants,
Anna told an emotionally charged story about her experience of demeaning racism and
dismissive colonial attitudes in some of her old and newer university experiences. The ally,
a professor, made the difference by correcting, at the time of the incident, in a way that
recognized her as an Indigenous person and provided a learning opportunity for her
classmates.
Nancy E. Peters (2010), author and professor at the University of Saskatchewan
suggests “examining the ethical assumptions that underlie white, settler relationships with
Aboriginal people. (p. 268). As a community based educator she is interested in
participatory community development and transformative learning. Her recent work focused
on reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, catalyzing changes in the beliefs and attitudes of
dominant groups. In her article, Learning for Ethical Space: Capacity building for white

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allies of Aboriginal Peoples (2010), she suggests that white participants seldom have the
capacity to genuinely dialogue differences with people of “disparate cultures, worldviews,
and knowledge” in any sort of “ethical space” (p. 268). She says there has been “no
widespread shift in dominant Canadian narratives” (p. 269) and quotes Blaser, Feit &McRae
Unwilling or unable to participate in discourse, non-aboriginal partners “retain for
themselves the authority to define” what can be talked about, what tradeoffs can be
made, and what outcomes will be acceptable (p.268)
She suggests transformative learning is needed for a paradigm shift. I agree with the
need for transformative learning and confirm the suggestion by David Young, 1989), in the
book Cry of the Eagle: Encounters with a Cree Healer, that, in order to fully absorb any
teachings, one must suspend any notions of disbelief and commit to an honest ‘learning’
process.
Indigenous knowledge- awareness and understanding
The process of discovering one’s ancestry could include teachings from that culture
before gaining an overview of Indigenous knowledge. An overview could range from global
Indigenous cultures to the culture of the local nation. This is one area for further discussion.
Concept Two: Connection:
Every aspect of this research connected Indigenous ways of knowing. Valuing non
tangible ways of learning; learning with heart; living in integrity with land, place and
language; and using Indigenous principles and critical theory to understand, explore and
affect change in colonial/anti-colonial relations.
Ways of learning
Indigenous ways of learning are holistic embracing our oral, auditory, visual, and
experiential and spiritual senses. Our ability to receive information from all sources

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including animals, plants, other creatures, dreams, and sacred visions creates an opportunity
to access a greater amount of information (Deloria, 2006). Because words follow experience
(Dayton, 2015) we need to first experience a sense of connection to ancestors, ceremony and
teachings before we start looking for words to describe our experiences. Tian Dayton
(2015), therapist and author says that the western culture has undervalued experience, which
subsequently leads to therapies not helpful for resolving trauma. This second concentric
circle widens our understanding of learning by starting to discuss and purposely explore nontalking ways of learning.
Learning with heart
Learning with heart in this circle is different than opening the heart in the first circle.
Before we can learn from the heart, we must first experience an open heart. The most
significant collective response was that learning had to involve heart learning, something
that was seen as absent in western education. Western education was seen as losing heart,
encouraging separation, compartmentalizing and non-personal. Indigenous learning and
heart cannot be separated. Lee Brown (2004) developed an affective learning model through
studying the Native Human Services program noting learning blocks were removed when
healing occurred and that an “emotionally competent person uses their emotional energy to
support their potential and the potential of those around them” (p. 7).
Living in integrity with land, place, and language- Indigenous Research.
The first circle of learning embraces learning through the practice of telling our
personal stories to create the understanding and desire for authentic history. Vine Victor
Deloria (2006), a Sioux a Native American author, theologian, historian, and activist, states
whites must adopt the tribal spirit to live in harmony with nature, to help “spiritual ideas

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become incarnate in the flesh” saying that until a possibility is chosen that particular
universe doesn’t appear.
Ohcinêwin, breaking laws against anything other than human, is a Cree saying
probably best learned through direct experience. Sheldrake(1991) tells us “Direct
experience is the only way to build up an understanding that is not only intellectual, but
intuitive and practical, involving the consensus of the heart as well as the rational mind” (p.
213). The experience of connecting to the land by touching or going into water, standing on
the land, putting your ear to earth can be grounding, bring us back into our body or allow us
to hear the earth, rocks or plants inform us (Deloria, 2006). Not only does this connection
return us to our bodies but this way of learning (Indigenous science) enters our now educated
vision for environmental responsibility (Kawagley & Barnhardt, 2007; Little Bear, 2016;
Moore, 2012).
Wisdom and critical theory.
A joining of western and Indigenous teachings includes acknowledging shared
history. Acknowledging white fragility is only the tip of understanding. Fourth world
colonialism and its relationship to racism, privilege, marginalization, oppressive policies and
partnership is a critical theory-change the world-coyote type of shape shift. There are many
Aboriginal and allies willing to explore this and help implement solutions. Summarizing
what is needed for UNBC, or a particular educational institution, would simplify this
essential process.
Concept Three: Spirit is important
Re-learning and remembering spirit sense is more like the umbrella over all learning
but was hard to capture in words despite how important it was to everyone. Developing our

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spirit accountability means connecting those intangible ways of knowing such as inner
knowing, dreams, etc. to everyday living in a good way; opening up to trust can facilitate
paradigm changes to help our clients and trust the validity of the ‘other’; applying spiritual
integrity to our environmental/global responsibilities; and valuing our Elders, knowledge
keepers and language teachers.
Spiritual accountability.
When our oldest mind, our metaphoric mind works with our rational mind we have
creativity, perception, image, physical sensing and intuition available to us (Cajete, 2015)
conference, Vine Deloria (2006) says sacred events occurring through animals,
synchronicity, dreams, images or words occur “because of the initiative of higher powers (p.
17) but vision quests are also attempt to access the wisdom of other realms but they do so
with purposeful “initiative of the human” (p. 17). Either method needs trust and practice.
Education can develop this through direct and indirect ways. Indirectly, teachings come
through story, dance, song, ceremony, dreams or visions. The actual methods should not be
exclusive to one way but definitely include exposure to local ways. Deloria (2006) supports
the advantage of looking at things more than one way when he says that the visions that
came with Christianity seem to suggest “compatible spirits working in different traditions”
(p. 40).
Trust.
Trust, like spiritual sense, requires practice to confirm its presence. One of the many
differences between Indigenous and western views is that an Indigenous view sees creating
holistic balance through wellness practices is a healing and productive helping approach.
Western views are held within a pathological view- there is something wrong that must be

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fixed. In order to change this western paradigm present in our health systems, including
mental health, there has to be a trust that Indigenous holistic methods work and suggest
finding a way to gain equal value and input for Indigenous and western views (Letendre, J.,
2001).
Spiritual integrity – environment, language.
We show our level of integrity in how we relate to the world around us. For
Indigenous people the connection to land, place and language is intertwined. Language,
contains the worldviews of the culture. Anishinaabeg Winona LaDuke (2001) at the
International Forum on Globalization connects Indigenous losses saying, “The teachings of
our people concerning our relationships to the land are embedded in our language” (p. 23).
Indigenous curriculum needs to contain the language of the land and the nations that were
the originals peoples. However, exploring our relationship to our ancestral languages is
another area for future research.
Elders, knowledge keepers and language teachers.
The lack of words I give this section underscores their central position. We cannot
go anywhere if we do not bring the wisdom forward and there are few people these days that
hold those levels of knowledge. They must be local to the areas served with knowledge
gained through lifelong learning and valued at the same level of professors or more because
their knowledge cannot be learned in a book. It comes from listening to all sources and life
experience.
Programming examples
These are only a few programming examples. A crucial aspect is to using validated,
Aboriginals for Aboriginal content. Regardless of the community all programs need a

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holistic approach. The medicine wheel can evaluate whether each component is present and
balanced with the others. All subject areas ask for personal emotional involvement. Some
ideas presented were:
•

Start with an intensive (weekend) retreat type setting. This could include a
foundation of principles based on local knowledge, authenticated by a local
source and conducted by Indigenous local and could be others. Part of this is
an experience of listening and feeling the land.

•

Take some time from western lecture based learning to include circle talks
and a revisiting of laws or principles like respect, learning to listen, carrying a
good heart, carrying a good heart. If you are in Cree country, put these ideas
in Cree terms. If you are in Tsimshian territory you need Tsimshian ways,
Elders and knowledge holders. This would take part of a session.

•

Some homework could be finding ancestors and what their principles were.
Have each student explore what parts of their ancestry they relate to and will
claim for themselves.

•

Each student must be involved in group healing practice, preferably with
some Indigenous content. Once there is connection within the group explore
the emotion in colonial history, abuses that resulted, timelines, today effects,
white fragility including the way these manifest explicitly and implicitly.

•

Explore each concept from the centre to the outer circle from self,
community, world, and then how to help. Do all 4 aspects of learning in the
inner circle before going to the outer circle unless the group appears ready.
Ready means more than cognition.

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Summary
Indigenous presence in the educational system has a place of equal importance. The
question is whether the educational gatekeepers are going to open the doors and learn. This
research shows there is ample learning to be done in ways different than mainstream western
oriented counsellor education. The client and all they influence can only benefit.
Other studies may follow a similar topic. All will have their challenges. Marie
Battiste’s words to follow my Indigenous self were the backbone of this research. So, I also
say to others, “Claim your Indigenous heart and spirit. They will guide you true, regardless
of what others may say.”
“A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and souls of its people.”
Mahatma Ghandi (n.d.)

124
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Appendices
Appendix A: More stories
Appendix B: Interview Questions
Appendix C: Information Letter
Appendix D: Participant Consent Letter
Appendix E: Invitation Letter to Potential Participants
Appendix F: Directory of Mental Health Services
Appendix G: Confidentiality and Disclosure Agreement
Appendix H: Cree history
Appendix I: Additional links

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Appendices

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Appendix A: More stories
Oliver: Story of the Medicine Wheel
So they had this gathering of all the animals and the Creator says the Europeans are
coming .We gotta hide our spirituality or you know, they will take it from us.
All the animals met and bear comes up, bear on the wheel right bear comes up and says I
will take it up on the mountains and hide it there- and the oh no, no, no they Creator says
and they will find it up there, they will develop the machines to make it up there and they will
find it, so , ah, eagle flies along and he is on the Medicine Wheel too and he says I am
going to take it and I am going to fly up as high as I can in the sky and leave it there.
Creator looks at him and says- Aw,uh one day they will develop a machine and they will fly
way up there and they will find out so little mouse sister south comes along and she says
I got it, I am going to take it and take it into the earth and hide it there and they won’t find it
there and the Creator says ah, no,no, no they are going to dig into into the earth so they
left it and wolf comes up and he says what are we going to do- take it up into the forest
and leave it there and they say oh, no,no,no they are going to take those machines and
cut down those trees and find it and they are all in this conundrum about it and the
Creator says I know, I know what we will do. We will take it and sticks it into the hearts of
the red people

Gerry: A Story about Stories
In the story telling tradition, you would, you would teach the teachings, cause the
teachings come through the stories, the teachings are the basic foundation of indigenous
people and without that you, you can’t, you can’t be who you are, you know I mean as
and I’m just why I was relaying that as, as a child growing up with that experience it
shaped my world, so if you're going to be teaching counsellors an indigenous uh way, then
they have to learn in an indigenous way which would mean that you would have to bring
in the teachers in our tradition who teach story telling and teachings and the history and
it’s all included in one, it’s not fragmented into different subjects right, we learn about
the first world, the second world, the third world, we learn about the fall teachings, we
learn about the spring teachings, we learn, it’s, it’s all
Johnny Moses is like an incredible story teller Whis.stem.men.knee but he also in the
story telling has knowledge of the history from the first world, when the world was first
formed all the way through to, to now and so we learn about the first world and in,
within those are also the songs and the stories, you know and the dances sometimes, so
um and there, and there’s knowledge about everything, star teachings and they only
come out in January and you know there’s like just um within the stories is all the
knowledge that we have gathered from the beginning of time and they're passed on and
this is where we would have to say that the world is not flat you know, because there’s,
there’s so many worlds within those worlds and, but we don’t know that until we learn
the teachings and the stories, you know, so

Gerry: Dzunukwa Wild woman of the woods Story

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The teachings around how to be in the world and community. The story of Dzunukwa and
it’s one of the few stories actually that uh aren't about her eating children.
um and it’s a story about her uh, it’s a story about her and a little girl, she's called little
hunchback girl and back in those days when people were born with something other than,
you know, what everyone else is born with, they weren't considered disabled, they were
considered special and so this story is about little hunch back girl who goes into the
woods and she's looking for an answer because her community is starving and she goes
into the woods with this worry and she hears a sound in the woods and she creeps up and
she finds Dzunukwa, a woman and she says “I caught you, I caught you and you know
what that means, you know what the law is, you have to give me a gift” and so Dzunukwa
had to agree as that’s true and she said “well what is it that you want?” she said “I want
you to come live with us, my family” well Dzunukwa was horrified about having to live
with humans but he has, she, he, had to comply and so away she went with uh the little
hunch back girl and they lived, she lived in the big house with them and her parents were
very used to little hunch back girl’s uh ways of being so they just accepted her and, and
soon all the berries started coming back and all the fish started coming back and all the
village became well fed again and everybody was content and this went on, this went on
for a long time and then one day the family, little hunch back girl’s family had to go to uh
to visit some family members in another village and so little hunch back girl said “well
you can’t come with us we want you to stay and look after the house, our big house” and
Dzunukwa really didn’t like that feeling and didn’t want to do it but she said ok, so away
they went and a few days went by and then the village people started saying “oh who do
they think they are having Dzunukwa living with them, that did old smelly thing” and
then the next thing they started calling her names and throwing rocks against the big
house where she was and they were getting very, very hateful towards her and she felt
really, really bad and so she tried to stay as long she could and she was like “no this is too
much abuse, no” and so she left and about a week alter, little hunchback girl and her
family came back to the village and when she went into the big house, Dzunukwa wasn't
there and she went “oh no where did she go” and she went through the village “ where is
Dzunukwa?” nobody would say anything and she knew what had happened and she said
“oh you’ve done a bad thing, you’ve done a very bad thing. You’ve done her wrong” and
so um nobody, nobody uh nobody would admit anything, but as the days when on the
berries dried up on the, on the bushes and the fish went away and the village was back
starting again. So those are another one of the teachings of you know what happens when
we don’t follow our laws or the natural laws of the universe and this, this story would be
told when we were a little older and it, it teaches about the relationship to our
community but also to um mother earth, life and so we really start to build a definite
sense of uh who we are here and what our responsibilities are and I think when we don’t
have those teachings, we don’t have a sense of our purpose here and I think that’s when
we lose, lose a ray, so I think the, you know, the returning to this, this wholeness through
story telling I think is um is really vital

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Appendix B: Interview Questions
These questions form the base of the participant interview

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Interview Questions

What Indigenous stories or wisdoms do you wish to share that would help counsellor
development?

If your views include therapist self-care, please explain how this helps.

Where or how did you learn your wisdoms? What have been your experiences?

What are key components that you feel are important to this field?

Is there anything else you would like others to know?

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Appendix C: Participant Information Letter
Participant Information Letter
Thesis title: A Collection of Stories and Wisdoms for Counselor Development
Judy Letendre, MEd Counselling Student
c/o University of Northern British Columbia, School of Education
3333 University Way, Prince George, BC Canada, V2N 4Z9
Phone: 250-446-2009 (home) 250-449-1849 (cell) Email: Letendre@unbc.ca
Supervisors:
Tina Fraser, Associate Professor of the School of Education, UNBC
John Sherry, Assistant Professor of the School of Education, UNBC
This research project is for a MEd (Counselling) thesis at the University of Northern British
Columbia.
Here are some main points of information I would like you to know prior to commencing
any interviews:
What is the Purpose of this Study?
The purpose of this study is to better understand Indigenous wisdoms on counsellor
development. More specifically, I am interested in hearing your Indigenous stories,
wisdoms, guidance, and experiences that may relate to counselling. It is my desire that the
Indigenous knowledge you present will become integrated into the educational curriculum.
Over what time period will I be required to participate?
The interviews will be starting in the last quarter of 2016. I want your participation for the
initial interview and at least one more session to review (for accuracy) the written version of
your interview.
You are invited to Participate
You are invited to participate because you have some experience with the counselling field,
self-identify as an Aboriginal and are willing, available, and interested.
Participants will between the ages of 30 and 80 and have been a client in counselling, a
practicing counsellor or therapist, a student counsellor, a healer (e.g. cultural support,
identified as a medicine person, etc.), an Elder involved in healing and therapy or involved
in the development of counselling education for mainstream or Aboriginal counsellors. I
recognize that each research participant’s opinions are your own and not an official or
formal representation of your particular community or nation.
What am I Asking You to Do?
I am asking you to share your Indigenous stories and wisdoms on counsellor development in
an interview format. We will conduct the interview by face-to-face, phone or possibly
Skype in a private, confidential and comfortable setting pre-defined between you and me,

144
Judy Letendre. The setting may be public or private and we will discuss privacy, comfort
and confidentiality aspects as they apply to you, including what we will do if there are any
disruptions. If you wish to Skype we will discuss the low security of Skype before you
make you final choice.
The one-hour interview will be audiotaped unless you do not want an audiotape in which
case I will then record your interview in writing. Your audio or written comments will be
transferred to computer written form (transcribed). The transcription will be mailed or
emailed to you so your review can be completed to ensure the transcription accurately
reflects what you want to say. I will be available by Skype, phone or email to review this
transcript with you.
There will be no other use made of the audiotapes or transcriptions and they will be
destroyed upon completion of my Master’s project along with all other raw data.
Participation in this Study is Voluntary
You are under no obligation to participate and may decline my invitation to participate in
this study by simply ignoring this written invitation. If you choose to contribute, you may
withdraw from the study at any time. If you withdraw, you can further choose to include
your contributions to date or have none of the information that you contributed be included
in the study and to be destroyed. At any time you can add, modify or omit information up to
completion of the final thesis. Throughout the course of the study you will be asked if you
still wish to continue.
Reciprocity and respect will be will be shown for your information through protocol and a
gift exchange.
Potential Benefits and Risks
I would like to create the time and space for you to share your wisdoms. One potential
benefit of participating in this research is the information you provide will combine with
others to form a stronger Indigenous voice informing the counselling profession, educational
institutions and programs. The collective voice of you and the other participants can
ultimately benefit persons seeking counselling.
Your participation might bring up issues or uncomfortable feelings that you may need
support for. Together, we will review the current directory of resources and support
systems (included in this information letter) prior to the interview and adjust according to
your potential needs. I will do short 15-30 minute follow up checks informally if needed and
I will also do periodic follow up checks: when sending you your transcript; when I receive
your transcript feedback; before and after sending you the executive summary; one month
after the initial interview; and after the thesis is complete. I emphasize that I am available
for issues that arise until the completion of the study. I believe there are low risks to
participating in the study, but if for any reason you become distressed during any part of the
interview and research process, I encourage you to inform me and to utilize the services that
are available to you.

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Your confidentiality in this research will be protected but cannot be guaranteed; your
interview responses can be kept confidential and any identifying information (name, history,
location) will not be revealed and will be disguised. You will be given a pseudonym.
No one except me, Judy Letendre, will have access to the information from your interview
with your name attached. My university supervisors Dr. Tina Fraser and Dr. John Sherry
may have access to your confidential information to help me with my analysis. I will be
recording your interview myself. A transcriptionist and I will transcribe your interview.
The transcriptionist prior to transcribing will complete a confidentiality-and-disclosure
agreement.
Information Storage
All information from this study will be stored in a fire safe locked filing cabinet at my home
and on my password-protected computer. All data from the computer and devices will be
deleted and hard copies will be shredded on completion of this masters thesis. The only
remaining material after this time will be my completed project, presentations and/or papers
that relate to the study but do not contain identifying information.
Questions, Concerns or Additional Information Requests about this Study
If you have any questions about this study please contact either me or one of my supervisors.
Also, should you require additional information at any time before, during, or after the study,
please feel free to contact me or my supervisors at the email addresses or phone numbers
listed in this information letter.
Judy Letendre
letendre@unbc.ca
Phone 250 449-1849 (cell)
Supervisors:
Dr. Tina Fraser, Tina.Fraser@unbc.ca 250-960-5714
Dr. John Sherry, John.Sherry@unbc.ca 250-960-5961
School of Education, 3333 University Way, Prince George, B.C. V2N 4Z9
Complaints
Any complaints about the research project should be made to:
Office of Research, University of Northern British Columbia
3333 University Way, Prince George, BC, V2N 4Z9
Email: reb@unbc.ca or Phone: 250 960-6735
Dissemination of Research Results
The research results may be disseminated in in the thesis dissertation for completion of my
master’s degree, publication in journal articles, conference presentations or teaching
materials for perhaps many years into the future.
How Do I Get a Copy of the Results?

146
Each participant receives a copy of his or her own interview transcription to check for
accuracy. I will provide each participant with a draft of the executive summary and plus a
final copy of the executive summary. A complete copy of the study can be made available at
this time. The final document will also be available through the UNBC library for those who
can access this source.
What Happens if I Agree to Participate in This Research?
If you agree to participate in this research, a copy of the consent form will be given to you to
sign. Thank you for taking the time to read this information sheet and for your consideration
regarding participation in this research project.
Sincerely,

Judy Letendre, MEd Counselling Student

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Appendix D: Participant Consent Form and Consent Checklist
Along with the participant, I will complete this form and checklist at the beginning of
the initial interview.
Participant Consent Form
A Collection of Aboriginal Stories and Wisdoms for Counselor Development
I understand that Judy Letendre, who is a graduate student in the Masters of Education
Program (Counselling) at the University of Northern British Columbia, is conducting a
research study on counsellor development. This research is expected to begin in 2016.
I understand that the purpose of this research is to better understand Indigenous wisdoms on
counsellor development.
I understand that I was chosen to participate in this study because I wish to share my stories,
wisdoms, guidance, and experiences that might be related to counselling. The researcher,
Judy Letendre, who will base the interview on 5 open-ended questions regarding Indigenous
wisdoms on counsellor development, will interview me.
I understand that the researcher will use purposeful sampling (i.e. pre-identified Indigenous
helpers) and snowball sampling that identifies recommended potential participants meeting
the criteria for inclusion in the study, through the recommendation of those already
interviewed.
I understand the potential benefits from participating in this study include: sharing my story
and thereby providing a stronger Indigenous voice when it comes to the counselling
profession and counsellor development; educating others about the experiences and
knowledge of Indigenous helpers, providing insight to providing Indigenous equality in
educational environment and creating opportunities for increased personal awareness.
I understand respect and reciprocity will be demonstrated for my information through
protocol and gift exchange. I understand the gift is only a token and is not equal to the large
value of my knowledge.
I understand that the potential risk of participating in this study is that it may bring up
uncomfortable feelings or other concerns. If this occurs and I feel the need to speak with
someone about it, I understand that I will access the Support Resources Directory that I
receive prior to the initial interview. My resource directory will have on hand the contact
numbers and addresses of people who can help, such as counsellors and health care workers,

149
and Judy will assist me in getting the help I need. I understand she will also do periodic
checks as outlined in the information letter and I am aware of these times.
I understand that the researcher will protect my confidentiality but cannot guarantee it. I
understand that there are limits to confidentiality, and that the researcher, Judy Letendre has
a professional obligation to report the potential of imminent danger to myself or others, or if
a child is in need of protection.
I understand that Judy Letendre and her co-supervisors, Dr.Tina Fraser and Dr. John Sherry,
will have access to the information provided in the interview and will maintain
confidentiality.
1. This consent is given with the understanding that I will be assigned a pseudonym to
be used for the transcription of the interview recordings and notes.
Pseudonym: ________________________
2. I give consent freely and I understand that I may end the interview at any point and
withdraw from the research process at any time. If I choose to withdraw from the
study I may choose to have my contributions included in the study or have all
information pertaining to me will be removed and destroyed.
3. I understand and agree that the information that I have given to Judy Letendre in our
interview will be treated in the following manner:
a. The interview may be audio/digitally recorded.
b. The interview may also be recorded through and/or hand-written notes
c. The data will be kept confidential, and securely stored by Judy Letendre in a firesafe locked box at her home. All digital data will be stored in a password
protected folder, on a password protected computer with firewalls.
d. I understand also that any identifying information and linking files will be
destroyed and data will be de-identified before use.
e. I understand either Judy or a transcriptionist bound by a confidentiality and
disclosure agreement will be transcribing my interview.
f. I will be given a copy of the executive summary by email or post.
g. I can obtain a copy of the research results (completed thesis) by asking (via email
or phone call) Judy Letendre for a copy of them. I may also request a copy of the
dissertation presentation.
h. The computer will be erased and hard copy data will be shredded on completion of
this thesis and acceptance by UNBC.
i. I understand the research results may be disseminated in in the thesis dissertation
for completion of Judy’s masters degree, publication in journal articles,
conference presentations or teaching materials for perhaps many years into the
future

150
4. I understand that if I have any concerns or complaints, I can contact the UNBC
Office of Research at 250-960-6735, or reb@unbc.ca.
5. I understand that if I have any questions or comments, I can contact Judy,
letendre@unbc.ca, at 250 449-1849 (cell) or her supervisors Dr. Tina Fraser,
Tina.Fraser@unbc.ca, 250 960-5714 or Dr. John Sherry, John.Sherry@unbc.ca, 250
960-5961

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Consent Form Checklist
Do you understand that you have been asked to be in a research study?
Have you read and received a copy of the participant information letter
and consent form?
Do you understand that you are free to refuse to participate or withdraw
from the research study at any time?
Do you understand the benefits and risks of participating in this research
study?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No
No

No

No

Do you understand that our talks/interviews may be audio recorded?

Yes

No

Do you understand that our talks/interviews may be recorded by hand?

Yes

No

Do you understand that some of your actual words may be published in
written form?
Has the issue of confidentiality been explained to you?

Yes
Yes

Do you know what community resources are available for your

Yes

additional support?
Do you understand who will have access to the information you provide?

Have you had an opportunity to ask questions about the study?

Yes
Yes

Has the type, frequency and length of time for follow up checks been
explained to you?

Yes

No

No
No

No

No

No

The researcher, Judy Letendre, has reviewed this consent form with me ________Pls. initial
I agree to participate in this research study: _____ Yes

or

_____No

Research Participant______________________Signed__________________ Date________

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Researcher____________________ Signed_______________________ Date
__________

153

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Appendix E: Invitation Letter to Potential Participants
This letter provides information about this study and invites potential participants to
participate in this research.
Invitation Letter to Potential Participants
My name is Judy Letendre; I am a student in the MEd Counselling Program at University of
Northern British Columbia and am currently working on my Master’s Thesis carrying out
the research under the direction of Dr. Tina Fraser, and Dr. John Sherry at the University of
Northern British Columbia (UNBC). This study is being completed as a partial requirement
for fulfillment of a Masters of Education (Counselling) degree at the University of Northern
BC (UNBC). I would like you to consider participating in a study entitled A Collection of
Aboriginals Stories and Wisdoms for Counsellor Development
The purpose of this study is to better understand Indigenous wisdoms on counsellor
development. This study will be used for the completion of my thesis in the Masters of
Education (Counselling) program at the University of Northern BC. I am interested in
hearing your Indigenous stories, wisdoms, guidance, and experiences that may relate to
counselling. It is my desire that this research will add to or increase counsellors’ awareness
of different worldviews, theories, practices or self care and be integrated into counselor
education. Ultimately, I hope this improves the quality of counselling for Aboriginals and
non-Aboriginals. I hope to interview 6-8 participants.
Your participation in this study will take about 1 hour, in a private or public place that is
comfortable, affords privacy and confidentiality. Your interview will be based on 5
questions during an audiotaped or hand transcribed interview. All participation is voluntary
and individuals are welcome to omit or modify their information at any time during this
study. All participants can withdraw from this study at any time and contributions made up
until withdrawal would be kept or omitted/destroyed depending on what you, the participant
chooses.
All participants must have: some experience with the counselling field as workers, healers
(cultural support, identified as medicine person), educators or clients; self-identify as an
Aboriginal; be willing, available, interested, and; be between the ages of 30 and 80.
All participants will be assigned fictitious names to protect their identities. Confidentiality
will be maintained. If you are interested in sharing your story and participating in this study,
please contact Judy at 250 449-1849 (cell), email: letendre@unbc.ca.
Alternatively you can contact one of my co-supervisors:
Dr. Tina Fraser, Tina.Fraser@unbc.ca, 250 960-5714 or
Dr. John Sherry, John.Sherry@unbc.ca, 250-960-5961
School of Education, 3333 University Way, Prince George, B.C. V2N 4Z9

155
Any complaints about the research project should be made to:
Office of Research, University of Northern British Columbia
3333 University Way, Prince George, BC, V2N 4Z9
Email: reb@unbc.ca or Phone: 250 960-6735
Thank you,
Judy Letendre, MEd Counselling Student

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Appendix F: Directory of Resources for Participants
These are lists of community support systems for the research participants and will
be further customized, as needed, prior to the start of the interviews and the result of
discussion with the particular participant.

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Haida Gwaii Support Systems
1. Nystle Society
Front Street, Skidegate
Phone: 250 559-4114
Contact Person
2. Skidegate Health Centre
Front Street
Phone: 250 559-8828

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Prince Rupert Support Systems
1. Northwest Band Family Counselling
101 1st Avenue East
Prince Rupert, BC
Phone: 250 627-8435
2. Swan Counselling Service
846 6th Avenue West
Prince Rupert, BC
Phone: 250 622-2432
3. Stopping The Violence
222 3rd Avenue
Prince Rupert, BC
Phone 250 627-4793

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North Vancouver Island Support Systems
1. Pacifica Counselling & Consulting Service
909 Island Hwy
Campbell River
Phone: 250 203-1720
2. Trauma & Abuse Counselling Center
Phone: 250.287.3325

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Salmon Arm Support Systems
1. Pathways Counselling
185 Hudson Ave NE
Salmon Arm, BC
Phone: 250 832-2700
2. Ian D Johnson Counselling (Family Counselling)
20 Hudson Ave NE
Salmon Arm, BC
Phone: 250 832.4132
Contact Person: Ian
3. Roxalyn Boldt, Registered Psychologist
Prestige Harbourfront Resort
251 Harbourfront Drive NE
Salmon Arm, BC
250 833-5299

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Sechelt Support Systems
1. Andrena and Clint Smith
Mason Rd
(604) 740-6332
2. Art Therapy & Counselling Services
Marble Rd
3. Schell Maggie J Counselling & Consulting
5700 Cowrie St
(604) 740-6647
4. Sunshine Coast Community Services Society
Inlet Ave
(604) 885-5881

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Appendix G: Confidentiality and Disclosure Agreement
This is an agreement between the transcriptionist and myself, the researcher,
outlining the transcription confidentiality and disclosure terms. This agreement form is from
the UNBC website.

164

Confidentiality	
  and	
  Non-­‐Disclosure	
  Agreement
	
  

This study, A Collection of Aboriginal Stories and Wisdoms for Counsellor Development, is
being undertaken by Judy Letendre at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC).
The study has 4 objectives:
1. To gather stories and wisdoms on counselling from Aboriginals residing in British
Columbia.
2. To present key components related to counselling in a thesis document in a manner
that will be useful and can be integrated in a meaningful way into counselor
curriculum.
3. To expand experiential counsellor development and self-awareness by offering a
different worldview (Indigenous) and praxis.
4. To explore an understanding of how the two worldviews (Aboriginal and western)
relate with respect to counselling.
Data from this study will be used to identify key components related to counselling from an
Aboriginal perspective.
I, Tiana Coates, agree as follows:
1. To keep all the research information shared with me confidential by not discussing or
sharing the research information in any form or format (e.g. disks, tapes, transcripts)
with anyone other than the Principal Investigator(s);
2. To keep all research information in any form or format secure while it is in my
possession;
3. I will not use the research information for any purpose other than to transcribe
accurately for the researcher, Judy Letendre.
4. To return all research information in any form or format to the Principal
Investigator(s) when I have completed the research tasks;
5. After consulting with the Principal Investigator(s), erase or destroy all research
information in any form or format regarding this research project that is not
returnable to the Principal Investigator(s) (e.g. information stored on computer hard
drive).
Recipient

(Print name)

(Signature)

(Date)

165

Principal Investigator:
Judy Letendre
(Print name)

(Signature)

(Date)

If you have any questions or concerns about this study, please contact:
Professors: Dr. Tina Fraser, supervisor, Tina.Fraser@unbc.ca, 250 960-5714, Dr. John
Sherry, supervisor John.Sherry@unbc.ca phone 250 960-5961
This proposed study has been reviewed by the Research Ethics Board at UNBC. For
questions regarding participant rights and ethical conduct of research, contact the Office of
Research by email at reb@unbc.ca or telephone at (250) 960-6735.
The form adapted from the University of Northern BC form available on their website.

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Appendix H: Cree Language and History
(from native-languages.org and omniglot.com)
Cree is verb based Algonquian language spoken by more than 120,000 people across
Canada and into Montana; from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. It is considered
a language sure to survive into the next century. The five major dialects are Western/Plains
Cree, Norther/Woodlands Cree, Central/Swampy Cree, Moose Cree, and Eastern Cree.
People speaking Cree dialects spoken from distant geographical locations often/usually do
not understand each other. Cree also has a written, unique syllabary using shapes for
consonant and that rotate in the Four Directions for vowels. Metis, a word for Cree and
European ancestry developed a Metis creole language called Michif. There is also Oji-Cree
which is a mix of Ojibway and Cree.
The Cree are Canada’s largest native group and people identified as Metis or self
represent as Metis, can be considered mixed blood but with a unique culture of their own and
their own creole language of Michif.
The common culture and language does not mean they share the same history but the
recalls that the Cree meshed well with others and had an affinity for intertribal marriage.
This attitude helped them engulf the French settler. The sheer number of Cree and their
broad range has helped weather the onslaught of colonization better than some small nations.
Oral history says the French accepted and absorbed the Cree ways whereas the English tried
to move the Cree populations away from their own.
Resilient or not, the Cree also face self determination issues, land control and all the
abuses brought by colonization.

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Appendix I: Additional Resources
LINKS:
Slide presentation. Suzanne Stewart, Yellowknife Dene
Intergenerational Trauma: Indigenous Perspectives on Healing and Health Care
RETRIEVED FROM
http://www.traumatalks.ca/2014/Trauma%20Talks%202014%20-%20PM%20Keynote%20%20Suzanne%20Stewart.pdf
Johnny Moses, Storyteller
Johnny Moses is a Tulalip Native American raised in the remote Nuu-chah-nulth village of
Ohiat on the west coast of Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada. He was raised in the traditional
ways by his grandparents, and sent by his elders to share their teachings with all people.
Johnny is a master storyteller, oral historian, traditional healer and respected spiritual leader.
Johnny, whose traditional name is Whis.stem.men.knee (Walking Medicine Robe), carries
the Si.Si.Wiss (sacred breath, sacred life) medicine teachings and healing ceremonies of his
Northwest Coast people.
Fluent in eight Native languages, he is a traveling ambassador for Northwest Coast
cultures. He shares the knowledge and richness of his spiritual and cultural traditions with
people across the United States and Canada through storytelling, lectures and workshops.
Copyright © 2003-2012 by Johnny Moses. All rights reserved.
More information is available on his website
Johnnymoses.com