Episode 05: Decolonizing the Way We Heal

Dr. Renee Linklater

Illustration by Alexander Bustamante

In episode five, Maytal sits down to chat with Dr. Renee Linklater. Renee, a member of the Rainy River First Nations in Northwestern Ontario, is the director of Shkaabe Makwa which provides mental health services to First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities. She’s also the author of the amazing book, Decolonizing Trauma Work. In today’s conversation, Renee offers insight into what it looks like to apply indigenous healing practices within the context of mental health. She discusses the rich history of indigenous healing, and the collective loss we have faced, given the erasure of these practices from Western psychology.

Transcript:

Maytal: Hi, I’m Maytal, and welcome to Heal With It - a podcast about healing in its many, and sometimes unexpected forms.

[Music Interlude]

Maytal: Something I think about often is the history of healing and what we lost along the way. My formal training to become a psychologist took nearly 10 years. And when I think back to what my curriculum was focused on in school, it was centered around people like Freud, or Ivan Pavlov and his dogs, or Aaron Beck, the guy who created cognitive behavioral therapy. Barely any time was spent exploring the healing practices that preceded these guys. Barely any time was spent learning about the rich history of healing that’s been present for millennia, that’s been central to cultures around the world. 

For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples and communities have had some of the most profound and rich healing practices for mending the heart, the mind, the soul, and the spirit. Because of colonization, many of these practices became devalued, marginalized, and in some cases, totally erased. So it leaves me questioning: where would be today, as a society if these practices had been celebrated, if these practices had risen to the status quo? What if indigenous healing practices were as widely utilized and studied, as the practices of Freud? 

These are some of the questions I got the chance today to ask Dr. Renee Linklater. Renee is a member of the Rainy River First Nations in Northwestern Ontario. She’s currently the director of Shkaabe Makwa which provides mental health services to First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities. 

I discovered Renee through reading her book, Decolonizing Trauma Work. The book is profound, to say the least, as it questions modern mental health models, and paints a rich picture of indigenous wellness paradigms. In our conversation today, we get to talking about the book eventually, but first, we start with some other things, like Renee’s life purpose, blood memories, and what it means to come home. So, without further adieu, I’m excited to introduce y’all to Dr. Renne Linklater.

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Maytal: All right. Hello. Welcome. It's so good to see you digitally, um, and be here today. I'm so excited to talk to you. Great. Well, it's great to be here with you today. I'll start with the first question. And it's a broad question. Um, it's the broadest question I will ask you today, but I kinda like broad questions, cause it almost becomes like a roar shock, like whatever is painted onto it, I think comes from somewhere significant. So can you tell us in your own words who you are and maybe even what you consider your story? 

Renee Linklater: When I reflect on who I am, what first comes to me are the spiritual names that I've received in ceremony. And there's even a story in that I didn't receive my first anishinaabe name until I was 27. Part of that was because in Canada, part of the colonial strategy was to remove First Nations children from their homes and from their families. And so I was apprehended by Children's Aid Society and became part of what now is known as the Sixties Scoop, where thousands and thousands of children were removed in placed with non-indigenous families. And so I didn't get to go home to my community until I was a teenager. So there was a lot of years where I felt very lost and disconnected and didn't understand, you know, many of the cultural teachings that, you know, were available more in a community setting, you know, more recently when I received my second name, it really brought me to this place of reflection and about the growth that I'm on in this, uh, journey through life. 

And in that first name that I received, it was [anishinaabe], which means Blue Thunderbird. I received that name and ceremony because, uh, it was during a time in my life where I was very unbalanced and I felt I didn't have enough strength and, and I really needed some protection around me. And so she came in and she put her wings around me and offered to protect me on my journey forward. And so I carry that name with me. And then a couple of years ago, I received a second anishinaabe name from agreement from the person that made me the first time as well. And this name that came forward was [anishinaabe], which means Spirit Bear Cub. And when that name came forward, I just had this incredible image of this little Spirit Bear Cub, walking with  Shkaabe Makwa, which is the spirit bear helper that has come to help guide our program at the hospital where we work. And so when I think about who I am, I think about what it is that I'm here to do in this world, what my purpose is, what my gifts are and what it is that the creator wants me to do. 

Maytal: And what do you think your purpose is? What does the creator want you here to do? 

Renee: I think in many ways I'm here to be a connector and a convener, and to be able to reach out and to look and scan and see medicines and see strategies and see models that, you know, may be helpful in terms of people's recovery and their healing from various types of trauma, um, and incidents that happen throughout one's lifetime. And I think that, you know, this ability to be able to understand how those systems come together, but that they have a real purpose within the broader healthcare system when we're thinking through some of our cultural strategies. Because I really believe that in order for us to heal, we do have to be connected spiritually. In order for us to be in those spaces, sometimes we need, you know, certain ceremonies or certain tools to be able to help us to get to those places. And so when I think about the role that hospitals and healthcare centers can play now, in terms of culturally relevant healing practices located within that system, I think that there's a real important need to start thinking through access to care and how do we help people really become better balanced within their life. 

Maytal: I think that's such a good point and what I find so interesting about your work in the hospital setting is that it's integrating these indigenous healing practices. My question is, how would you say that indigenous healing practices differ from some of the more status quo Western psychology practices? Like what are some of the largest differences that you see? 

Renee: I think some of the largest are that for our healing processes, when we're thinking about the assessment, it really draws on what we've come to understand as a trauma-informed care kind of approach. And that, you know, when we're thinking through like these questions of, you know, when people are having mental health issues or mental illness or struggles with substance use issues, I've really come to appreciate, um, much of the work that Gabor Mate has done in terms of really kind of putting forward, you know, what has happened to this person, you know, rather than what's, what's wrong with this person. When I look at the medical model, it's very diagnostic, much of it's about criteria, you know, in helpful ways there's medication, there's been incredible advances in medication I think that many people can appreciate. And so we can see people have access to more stability and more balance.

And I think that it is very helpful because it keeps people safer and it keeps people feeling more stable within their circumstances. But, you know, when we look at the way that indigenous approaches would work with a person, they would be very holistic, right? So we would think about ways that we would work with the spirit, you know, that we would work with the heart, that  would work with the mind, and that we would work with the body. And we would really kind of think through an assessment about where that person's at and what they might need to, to rebalance their life. And when I think of some of the concerns that I have within the medical model around the diagnostic pieces, I think that I become, um, worried that we might lose some real opportunity to help people heal if we're strictly looking at how they fit some criteria. 

And for example, when I look at the numbers of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people - and in America, Native Americans and Alaskan Natives - that, you know, are diagnosed with personality disorders, I really have to wonder if that is more in line of misdiagnosed trauma response? You know, what concerns me about that is that I know that the care pathway into the personality disorder clinic does not go through cultural care, right? So they’d be getting specific treatments and I'm sure that they could be helpful as well. But when I think through the needs of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis persons presenting in a way that they're meeting criteria around what is considered one of the personality disorders, I would wonder what could be the efficacy if we offered this person cultural treatment. What if we brought them out to the ceremony grounds and connected them to some of the ongoing groups? And sure, they could continue with DBT therapy and some of the other helpful strategies that were identified by the original clinic within the hospital. But what if we have more of a blended model to really be able to better understand this person's history, better understand if there's some trauma in their childhood? We know so much more about adverse childhood experiences and the impact that that has within the middle and later years in life, particularly if they're not addressed. So I think those are the things that I think through. And it's very interesting because of the place where I work, cause I work in a mental health hospital, but we also, um, work within a system that is really developing and designing specific cultural services within the broader healthcare system. 

Maytal: Mm, why is it so important to develop culturally specific interventions? How does that differ and why does it differ from like sending someone to like a DBT program for anyone who's just been diagnosed with a personality disorder? 

Renee: One of the, you know, the strong beliefs I have about that is I really feel that if we can connect people to their spirits and to themselves first -if they can be in their bodies, if they feel safe enough that they don't have to dissociate and they don't have to be out here or separate, you know, as in anishinaabe psychology, you know, we have this understanding that when we're very afraid, we shoot outside our body. So our spirit hovers around us. In psychology, that would be translated to dissociation. So when I think about the opportunity to work with someone spiritually and culturally, it's about helping them feel safe within their bodies and feel safe within themselves. And I think that once people are in that place, then they can begin to do the work that they need to do, you know, in terms of, uh, moving forward with some of their healing.

But if people feel unsafe it’s going to be very hard to get any intervention to work. And so I, I often think about, you know, those very practical pieces about what helps someone heal. Like, you know, if someone's very hungry, if they haven't been eating well, you know, in quite a long time, they're going to need some food. That’s when we start thinking about the holistic approaches of involving cultural practices. And you know, the other really important piece here is that because colonial strategies in both the United States and Canada were aimed at kind of oppression and dismantling indigenous life and families, and really removing us from our lands and resources so that saddlers could, you know, utilize these spaces and places because of that, there were, you know, a significant amount of assaults and injuries and oppressions that happened around our ceremonies. There was legislation that was created by our government that outlawed them, that made it illegal to hold a potlatch or hold a sweat lodge. People were arrested if we were having ceremonies. And because that has happened, there has to be an acknowledgement. I really believe that taking those ceremonies away from us now puts us in this place where we have to pick up these ceremonies and it's part of our healing to be able to utilize them. We need to bring those forward and we really need to put those in those places and honor those medicines so they can continue to heal us. 

Maytal: Cause it makes me think collectively it allows people to come home. It allows people to come into their body. It allows people to come into the culture that they were taken away from. Yeah. 

Renee: Yeah. And it's so true. And you know, when we think about even our connection to land and even our connection to space and those places to where our ancestors are born and no matter, you know, where anyone finds themselves on the earth today, you know, we can always think about where our ancestors are and we would always have a very special place to those places as well. 

Maytal: So beautifully said, it's so interesting because we're talking here about bringing these practices, like these ceremonies back to indigenous communities. And it just makes me think of the history of healing and what we lost along the way. What I think about often is how for so many years, so many rich, powerful healing practices existed, especially among indigenous communities, but these practices were devalued and erased through colonization. And so what I can help but think about is what would the landscape of healing today look like if indigenous healing practices had been valued and had even become the status quo? Like what if the healing we saw as popular today was rooted in indigenous practices rather than White Western psychology? It's just a question I've been wondering, honestly, since reading your book. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts. 

Renee: I, I mean, I think that's such an interesting question. You know, it wasn't until my grandmother died, almost about 15 years ago that, uh, the elder that it was officiating at her burial - I mean, we bury people traditionally in mountains, so like in a mound of dirt. And so there's these, um, areas in my community where, um, you know, we have our burial grounds and the elder had taken us grandchildren out there and knowing that we were all very, very close to her - I was about 90 when she died - and it was interesting because when I was listening to him talk, he was asking us to come back every day for four days and asking us to do a certain offering and reminding us about her journey and about where she was going and telling us, you know, this will help you. This will help you with your grief. I know you miss her. I had never actually, um, had an elder mentioned those words of grief and just naming those things. And I know that our elders are -you know maybe we would have said that in anishinaabe and I wouldn't have recognized that if it was set in the language. But I really thought about that after I thought, you know, he, it was so beautiful how he brought us to the mound and he spent that time with us to give us that teaching. And I thought, you know, the problem with colonization is they took those practices and processes away where we weren't allowed to do that when someone died. And so we didn't even have our proper methods of grieving, of doing ceremony, of moving a person into the spirit world. And so I think there has been a significant, you know, upheaval, I would say, um, within the spiritual practices, you know, I just know that when I experienced that, it really just opened my mind of how much have we lost in terms of our healing practices. 

And thank goodness we're in this time where people are remembering. And I also, I, you know, I'm a very big believer in blood memory in that we pass down, you know, the memories that we have when we give birth to our children. And so in that sense that we inherit the memories of our ancestors. And I know that can sound very stressful at times because when we think about our, you know, our parents' experiences and our grandparents' experiences, especially in these days where we're coming out of child welfare organizations, residential schools, a lot of incarcerations and system abuses, and lots of fear. I mean, I think about what was happening in the earlier-1900s in our communities when Indian agents were showing up with guns and like we're chasing people and just trying to capture children so they could take them to the residential schools and all of this kind of sits within our bodies as stress. 

Maytal: I'm really interested in this notion of blood memories of trauma, sitting in the body about trauma, moving from one generation to the next, it's actually something I've given a lot of thought to. My family was very negatively impacted by the Holocaust. And before that my ancestors by pogroms. So I think trauma has reverberated in my family over time, and as a result for me has become this thing that's so entrenched into my body. And a lot of work I've had to do in my own therapy has been the bodywork. So I'm curious about that - the blood memories and the body work associated with it, could you speak more to that?

Renee: Yeah. Well, and that's exactly what the blood memory is because we can inherit, obviously those incidences, those memories. They come through in many different ways. I mean, I've had dreams that I've told my aunts, and they're just like, how could you even dream about that? That was something that happened to your mom when she was four. Like, it's really interesting things come through. And I mean, I've also heard some, you know, interesting stories from Holocaust survivors as well. I've done some research just around the blood memory and the transfer in the DNA, you know, but the other, you know, incredible strength that I think that we could do better to acknowledge more is what we are inheriting from our ancestors. And not only is it that ability to survive, which all of our ancestors did to the point where we all get to become created after very, very, very many, many long lines of people, but we're also inheriting, you know, the culture, our songs, our languages. 

So when we feel stresses about those pieces, that we feel like we might be losing touch of, they’re in our bodies as well. And so they also need to be awakened in tapped into, and this is one of the reasons why I believe that using traditional medicines that people are used to using within their cultures for thousands of years becomes really important because it can awaken that medicine and those memories inside of us. 

And I remember the first time I had smudged with Sage, it was at an event and I was so kind of taken aback by this, but as I was smelling the medicine and smudging with this particular Sage and I couldn't stop crying, I had all these tears were coming out of my, my face and I was trying not to overthink it. And then all of a sudden, I just got this feeling like, oh, I, I miss this medicine. It was like this voice inside me. And I was like, oh, is that what it is? I was missing the medicine. 

And, you know, at that time in my life, in my early twenties, I didn't even really understand what was happening now. I do, yeah. Being older and just, you know, a little bit more life experience, but, you know, so I think about that with our medicines. And, and I also think about that with, you know, a lot of non-indigenous people become very interested in, you know, First Nations, Inuit, Métis, American Native, Alaskan Native culture, because they see something within our spiritual presence. But I believe all of our cultures have those teachings. You know, other cultures maybe have just become more distanced from them, you know, where some of our, like our contact was so much, um, or colonization was I guess, so much more recent that we've held onto so much of these. And we're trying, I think, too, in terms of, um, not losing our cultural practices. So yeah. So those blood memories, I mean, were, were these amazing repertoires vessels of collections of, uh, you know, amazingness, I would say.

Maytal: I don't know if you could see this in a digital zoom sphere, but I started, uh, tearing up when you were talking about how it felt like you came home when you smelled the Sage, when you returned to the medicine. 

Renee: Yeah. 

Maytal: Thank you for sharing that story. I think, uh, now feels like a good stopping point. So let's take a quick break here. And then when we come back, we can talk about your incredible book, Decolonizing Trauma Work.

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Maytal: I want to talk about your book for people listening, who have not read your book, Decolonizing Trauma Work. Could you explain what it is, what its premise is, what it's about? 

Renee: Sure. So when I started my doctoral studies at the university of Toronto -you know, whenever anyone starts, you think, you know what you're going to do - but the most important thing I think for PhD journey is to really just have that path be open and be open to finding different pebbles on a different pathway and some trees on that path that you might not have anticipated. And so initially my thesis work was going to be about trauma and Aboriginal workplaces. And I was really interested in that time to better learn about, you know, what do we do with this lateral violence that, um, many of us are talking about, you know, where it's this oppression when an oppressed people end up oppressing their own people, just as a response? And a really, you know, I think we've explored this really unhealthy workplace dynamics, but then from there, um, I did some exploration. I talked to, you know, some of my elder friends and one of my friends had made a comment of, you know, you don't want to create a space where it's only going to be people's dumping grounds for what has happened to them. 

And he said, you know, I know you and you're going to want it. You know, you're going to want it to be meaningful. And I kind of struggled with that for a bit. I was like “Meaningful? But wouldn't that be meaningful?” Um, and so a couple of things were happening and, um, one thing was happening is I needed to do some personal work for sure. I think what I was realizing is that I had had some experiences that I needed to unpack. And what I needed to really do is figure out in my academic work was, where does that overlap and where doesn't that overlap and where is that a responsibility of myself and as a practitioner and someone who is going to be, you know, very immersed within a healing movement, what are my responsibilities to myself? So I had, of course in my life gone to many counselors and I had been home for about a decade. 

So I had had lots of cultural ceremonies and sweats and things like that. And then something I had experienced that really kind of shifted how I understood myself actually. And it was just through an experience of becoming very unwell. So when I thought about what some of the opportunities then could be, and maybe should be, is I came to this place of knowing that our healers and our social workers and our nurses that were working within our healthcare centers and in different hospitals were really doing such incredible work with being able to provide some cultural supports in a place where they were also trained in social work practices or nursing practices, or, you know, as psychologists yet, they had this knowledge to be able to really articulate why, you know, um, wellness and holistic health and indigenous strategies would be most effective working with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peopl. 

And so that's what I wanted to do. I just got this idea of, you know, what I should really just reach out and find 10 people that would like to engage in this dialogue where we can start to talk through how is it that you developed your worldview as an Indigenous healthcare professional? Like, how is it that you have cultural teachings? And when do you draw on your academic knowledge to be able to bring these things together? We talked about holistic health and how would they work with someone like an individual holistically? How would you work with a community holistically? What does wellness mean? You know, what does wellness mean in terms of being well or not being well? And I know that we're really coming to this place of trying to use strengths-based language and not pointing out illness and deficit. Um, and I think that that becomes really important as well. 

You know, the whole piece around critiquing psychiatry for me became really essential. And I know in the United States, there's a very different funding model, um, for Native American psychologists and social workers, and because of that, you actually have, um, hundreds more, or then we have in Canada, which not only, I would say impacts the level and extent of practitioners that we have across the country, but it has impacted on our ability to do research in specific areas as well. And so when I looked at some of the earlier research that Native Americans were doing around post-traumatic stress disorder, I was actually not comfortable with what I was finding. Why I was not comfortable was I was finding literature in journal articles that would state that the vast majority of native Americans had post-traumatic stress disorder and they're attributing it to boarding schools and issues of sexual abuse. 

And at the same time, I was in classrooms that were about critiquing psychiatry and about critiquing diagnosis. And so when I started looking at diagnosis - and, and also, you know, accepting the fact that in the DSM, the diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder is the only diagnosis that implies that something has actually happened to the person that is causing some type of imbalance or, or a problem where the other diagnoses don't necessarily. But you know, so when I started thinking through and, and reading, you know, what was being published, I thought, you know, there has to be a better way to frame our colonial experience rather than just saying that it's resulting in us being mentally ill. If we're translating that the vast majority of native Americans have post-traumatic stress disorder. So I really wanted to shift that language, and I really wanted to change that. 

Maytal: I just had a thought that it's, it's almost like by diagnosing someone, it almost puts it on them. Like it has no acknowledgement of the cultural context, the historical context, the context of oppression, it's just, you have this mental illness. And then by doing that and medicating and trying to make it go away, it makes it so once again, no cultural context, historical context needs to be acknowledged. People don't just develop mental disorders within a vacuum. People have health issues, mental health wise, because of the system they are inside of that is affecting them. 

Renee: Yeah. That's, you know, what's so interesting. You say that because, um, Lewis Mehl Madrona just spoke at our workforce development conference. One of the things that he said in the healing process is that it's the outside world that changes the brain, not the inside world. And I've been thinking about that when people isolate, right. They isolate to stay safe. Right? And, you know, we're trying to pull out community members or family members to family events and like, oh, you'll just feel better. And it's like the last thing the person wants to do. Right? 

Maytal: Absolutely. There are a couple quotes I wrote down from your book that are reminding me of this conversation. The first one is, “The Native American worldview is one in which the individual is a part of creation, living life as one system and not in separate units that are objectively related with each other.” And then you go on to say a little bit later, “Generally speaking, a lot of clinical psychology doesn't encourage people to go beyond the self. It tends to be self-focused, central, focused on the ‘I’.”. So I was hoping you could speak more to this. And I think it's really relevant to what we've already been kind of talking about. 

Renee: I think for me, I mean, that's one of the challenges that I have with the field of psychology and I'm even a student in the field of psychology, still. It’s that it's very narrowly focused. And it's interesting because I mean, I also work in, you know, in an area where we, we talk so much about collaborative care, we talk so much about interdisciplinary care. Yet we have these very streamed, siloed professions that have certain scopes and competencies that, you know, that we all kind of work within. And that's what creates our healthcare system. And so where I really think that some creative and thoughtful work could be done would be to develop more of interdisciplinary approaches that are more about shifting to healing models rather than more acute treatment models. 

Maytal: That is such a good point about treatment not being so siloed and maybe being more integrated with community. It actually reminds me of something else in the book where you talked about the Hollow Water in Manitoba in the 80’s, and you described like a circle healing ceremony that was based around restorative justice and how it was being conducted due to the occurrence of sexual abuse. And so you described how the offender was at the ceremony and the victim was at the ceremony and community healing was able to occur. And when I read that, I was so just taken aback because it's so different to the approach we'd see in our typical psychology landscape. And it just made me think, what if these sorts of practices were regularly utilized? Like what kind of collective world would we be living inside? 

Renee: I, I mean, I think we need to do so much work around restorative justice, for sure. Especially, I mean, I don't know if you've heard, but up in our Northern provinces, I mean, not just Ontario, but we have a remote community, so fly-in communities, and some of them have really serious opiate crisis and children dying by suicide. Like, I mean, 8, 9, 10 year olds - like really sad. The missionary activity in those communities was really intense, that it's now the First Nations people themselves that are now the priests now blessing everybody in the name of Jesus Christ now telling people that don't build that sweat lodge, you'll go to hell. Don't do that. Yeah. So that's, what's happening here, but there's a movie that you might want to look up. It's something about Ralph Rowe. And he was a boy scout leader in the 70s and 80s, I think. And I think they figured that he's had about 300 victims, sexual abuse victims. He would take these boys, you know, have full authority over them. Right. So now what we're seeing in those communities is the grandchildren die by suicide. Has nobody has ever gone in with an appropriate sexual abuse intervention at all over these decades to help these communities that have just recycled the sexual abuse, right. It's just spreading.

Maytal: Wow. And this just brings up how important is the intergenerational trauma piece and the holistic view of like, history and culture and the events that occurred. Like mental health cannot be understood through a diagnostic vacuum. 

Renee: I know. So I guess I just think of like those, you know, realities that are happening within our systems. It's yeah. It's, it's a, it's a challenge. I think, you know, when we know that there needs to be specifically designed and dedicated services and when those investments aren't being made or they're being made too general. But I mean, I have to say on a very fortunate level, I think system leaders, Indigenous system leaders are starting to come together to talk about these areas. We're doing it through research or collaborating. And hopefully I think that that's, what's really going to change things is, you know, as Indigenous leadership continues to stand step up and step forward, leading research projects, leading interventions, developing new tools, ensuring the design of culturally relevant treatment models to be able to utilize whether those are adaptations or new programs. I think that that's what it's going to take in terms of really understanding what the components are going to need to shift to more wellness. 

Maytal: Yeah. Hearing you say that gives me just a lot of hope for the healing of Indigenous communities, but also for just like the healing of the entire collective that can learn from these Indigenous practices. Something you mentioned that also can’t be underestimated is that this work is such a challenge. It's not easy. So I'm wondering when things are tough for you or you feel exhausted or burnt out or frustrated, whatever it may be, what do you do to heal? Like how do you keep yourself going? 

Renee: I would say I returned to spirit for sure. I mean, I have feathers, I do ceremonies. We just had a ceremony, really beautiful ceremony, um, a couple of days ago with my kids and my partner. And, uh, we did our, our offerings for our helping spirits and ancestors so that they can continue to walk with us. And we set our prayers for those that have had less fortunate times and we have a lot to be grateful for. And, uh, and I would just say, I continue to reach out to those around me that can provide support, whether it's spiritual support, family support. And, and a lot of times that's really easy. It's, I mean, it's not easy to reach out to people and, uh, you know, it's this whole thing about being isolated, but I'm being more mindful of it now because we're in pandemic. 

And so I also think that we need to be gentle with ourselves and a bit forgiving of ourselves as well. I was having these feelings with some colleagues that a few weeks ago, I heard myself saying, you know, I'm used to going 190 miles an hour and these days I can only go about 80, and that's okay, but it is okay. And I'm coming back to this, we're in the quiet times. And when I was younger, the elders used to talk about the quiet times that were coming and how the Earth was going to change. And the people were going to change and a lot of people were going to pass on to the spirit world. There was going to be sickness. And I remember when when we first went into the pandemic, I, I was remembering hearing that when I was in my early twenties, thinking about the quiet times and thinking, okay, we're, uh, we're coming into these quiet times. 

Maytal: That's going to stay with me for a long time, this quiet times, like this awakening. Yeah. So beautiful to hear you talk about it. If people want to learn more about you read your work, where, where would you send them to, to do that? 

Renee: I would say visit our website on www.camh.ca. And we have a lot of resources there as well, lots of webinars that our team has put together. And there's a really unique little book that we put out about a year ago called Connected In Creation. That is a collection of 15 stories from  First Nations, Inuit, and Métis staff who work at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health and various different positions. We had worked with a company that worked with individuals that had lived experience in mental health and addictions, um, to be able to articulate them. We find ourselves as professionals in a very interesting situation because we ourselves have our own experiences with mental health, sometimes substance use, or that within our family, yet when we're working within the system, we do not take up those spaces. We know that those voices are for our people. So with that, we decided to put out this publication as a bit of an offering and a bit of an invitation for community members to continue to work with us and bring their voices of lived experience forward to the different systems initiatives that we're involved in. So that's available on our website as well. 

Maytal: Amazing. I'm going to check that out too. Thank you so much for doing this today. It was such a pleasure to talk to you. 

Renee: Great. Well, thank you so much.