ºìÐÓÊÓƵ

Topic

Reclaiming Body and Spirt: A Bear’s Journey Home

School of Social Work

Date & location

• Monday, April 28, 2025
• 10:30 A.M.
• First Peoples House, Ceremonial Hall

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Billie Allan, School of Social Work, University of Victoria (Supervisor)
• Dr. Rhonda Hackett, School of Social Work, UVic (Co-Supervisor)
• Dr. Sandrina Carere, School of Child and Youth Care, UVic (Outside Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Monique Auger, School of Public Health and Social Policy, UVic

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Leanne Kelly, School of Nursing, UVic

Abstract

This thesis considers how ceremony and cultural reclamation support self-determination and wellness for urban Indigenous people who, like me, have experienced disconnection through interactions with colonial systems in Canada, including the child welfare and health care systems. Through a mixed-ancestry urban Indigenous lens, I engaged in arts-based practices and (re)connection to land and teachings from kêhtê-aya (Elders) and analyzed my experiences of healing stuck trauma due to colonial policies in the Canadian child welfare system. My research was conducted as part of Kinship Rising, an Indigenous arts- and land-based research project on Indigenous youth resurgence and wellbeing at the University of Victoria. Following the Kinship Rising ethical research framework, the Indigenous and arts-based methods I used to process my experiences included ceremony, storytelling, beading, dreamwork and creating. Through these methods, I was able to process the impacts of colonization on my mind, body, emotions, and spirit through cultural practices of visiting with kêhtê-aya and community members and creating art to illustrate my story of healing and transformation. My art creations include a moose hide jacket that represents my connection and reconnection to the Néhiyaw Bear family from Opâwikoscikanihk (Narrows of Fear) and a cedar round that illustrates the Transformation (often known as transition out of care) ceremony I had to honour my resilience as a ward of the state and the passing of my late French, Scottish, and Kwakwaka'wakw Mother, Q^wikilag (meaning high standing in the big house), also known as Therise Leroux, Johnson, Blomberg. Alongside another Indigenous youth in care artist, Dorothy Stirling, I also co-created a mural entitled “Spiritual Garden” which is dedicated to Indigenous children and youth in care. As relationships are the ways we identify ourselves, my research speaks to how family and community hold an integral role in my sense of belonging, mikâsowin (finding one’s belonging), reconnection to culture, and healing for self-determination and wellness (Wilson, 2008). My thesis is written in the form of arts-informed reflections, while also integrating an analysis of key themes from both published and grey literature from Indigenous scholars. My bundle/gathered gifts (i.e., my data) is composed of arts-based creations, reflections, poems and stories, and my meaning-making methods included an Indigenous approach to thematic analysis. The themes identified through this analysis suggest that the process of cultural reconnection through ceremony is like an ancestral tree with many branches of interconnected processes of kinship, relationships, dreaming, gathering, creating, healing, and knowledge transmission and translation. Making sense of my bundle/gathered gifts through reflection and ceremony is essential to my self-determination and wellness as an urban Indigenous womxn with a tree-like mixed ancestral pathway.