•••Please note this event has been postponed until Winter 2025. We look forward to seeing you then!***
with Catherine Kineweskwêw Richardson and Mélissa-Anne Ménard
English
This gathering consists of an invitation to COHDS’ community members to come together and create a statement of commitment and appreciation for the land we live on and the traditional caretakers of the land. For some time now, COHDS has wanted to develop its own unique expression of appreciation and acknowledgement, gratitude for the Kanien’kehá:ka nation, people and lands upon which we live and work. This gathering will be facilitated by Cathy Kineweskwêw Richardson together with Mélissa-Anne Ménard. They will lead a process through which we can explore expressions of gratitude and form them into a statement that can be shared on our website and at our gatherings.
Catherine Richardson/Kinewesquao is a Métis scholar with Cree, Gwichin and English and Viking ancestry (Swedish/Orkney). She is the Director of First Peoples Studies and is the co-founder of the Centre for Response-Based Practice, an organization dedicated to helping people recover from violence in a spirit of dignity and social justice. Cathy has a background in practice and research in counselling and social work. Her degrees are in child and youth psychology, counselling psychology, French and Political Science. She has supported Indigenous survivors of genocide and racism to tell their stories in various contexts including in the counselling room, in community settings and in national inquiries, such as the TRC. Currently, Cathy is on the Yukon Task Force to develop protocols on the issue of MMIWG2S+. She was the Quebec-lead in the Canadian Domestic Homicide Prevention Initiative. Her work centres around gathering accounts of resistance and explorations of how people respond to mistreatment and humiliation, in attempts to preserve dignity and maximize safety. Cathy has travelled extensively and is enlivened by story-sharing, cultural exchange and stories of resistance to oppression. https://www.responsebasedpractice.com Indigenous Healing Knowledges In this project, Catherine Richardson, along with her team, interview Indigenous healers from across the globe, including from Greenland, Aotearoa, Venezuela and from Turtle Island. In these interviews she asks the healers to share important information about their worldview, cosmology, creation stories and how within that they work to help people achieve well-being, balance and a sense of belonging. The healers will talk about their community, including the various rituals and ceremonies as well as some of the current issues they face, such as aspects of ongoing colonialism and mistreatment. Catherine is working with Zeina Allouche and others to create a special edition journal as well as organizing an on-the-land retreat for students with the international healers.
Mélissa-Anne Ménard is an oral historian whose main research interests center on the history of childhood and emotions, stories of migration, and the production of archives. She first encountered oral history during an undergraduate seminar in childhood history. Mélissa-Anne holds a master’s degree in history from Concordia university, partially funded by a Concordia University Merit Scholarship. Her thesis explored the ethical and methodological ramifications of reusing archived oral history interviews conducted by other researchers to develop frameworks and protocols to allow us to engage with countless oral history collections that often lie dormant in archives. She additionally holds a music degree in jazz interpretation for violin from the Collège Lionel-Groulx and most enjoys playing the fiddle.
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
