A regional partnership initiative from the following partners: FRN (City of Leduc and Leduc County), Town of Devon, City of Leduc, Beaumont, Leduc County, Creating Hope Society, Calmar and Warburg. We are excited to host two speaker/facilitators from the Neufeld Institute with their new project: Gathering Our Medicine.
Gathering our Medicine™ is a training model that balances integration of Indigenous and Western ways of knowing and being. It offers a framework for transforming the way we perceive and respond to human development. It specifically focuses on centering community and kinship within Indigenous cultural ways of knowing and being, while bringing in understandings from developmental psychology, attachment theory and affective neuroscience. It brings together the best of both worlds while lifting up our cultures as opposed to eclipsing them.
Children thrive when they are in ‘right relationship’ within their natural village of connection. We invite parents, extended family, grandparents and other caring adults to participate in this circle designed to give adults the confidence to begin to see themselves as the answer (as opposed to having all of the answers) to their children’s needs.
Developmental Science is now finally acknowledging what Indigenous people have always known- that humans are social, emotional and spiritual beings who thrive in relationship to each other, the land and all of creation. Intersecting with understandings from developmental psychology, attachment theory and affective neuroscience, Gathering Our Medicine offers a framework for transforming the way we perceive and respond to human development with a specific focus on helping to centre the community and kinship within cultural ways of knowing and being. Open to all professionals and community.
Denise Findlay is a bi-cultural person of Indigenous Coast Salish and settler ancestry, proudly belonging to the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), who has dedicated the last 20 years to travelling across Canada working exclusively in Indigenous communities facilitating processes focused on collective healing and de-centring child and youth mental health experts in order to restore dignity to the role of the natural kinship circle.
Denise is responsible for leading the development and implementation of an innovative Provincial program called Gathering Our Medicine, in collaboration with community-based Advisory and Working Groups. Denise has the gift of the oral tradition. She is uniquely able to capture people’s attention, reaching into their hearts, transcending cultural, class, educational, and gender barriers. Denise holds a Master of Education, is on Faculty with The Neufeld Institute and is currently undertaking her PhD at Simon Fraser University with a research focus on intersecting knowledge from attachment theory and Indigenous wisdom traditions and how cultural place-based knowledge naturally supports healing, recovery and development across the life span for Indigenous families and communities.
Marla Klyne Kolomaya is a certified counselor and parent consultant who serves on the faculty of the Neufeld Institute specializing in consulting and professional development for parents and educators. Marla proudly descends from both French and English Metis ancestry and lives in the beautiful northern Interlake of Manitoba.
Registration Links:
www.kinshipcircle.eventbrite.ca
www.GOMConference.eventbrite.ca