Myrna's conversation with Vina Brown of Copper Canoe Woman Creations will uplift and inspire you. Vina Brown is a force, a healer, a helper, an artist and a successful Indigenous business owner. This conversation explores healing trauma for Indigenous people including the long-silenced/secret many carry: childhood sexual abuse (trigger warning) and the need for communities to heal together. CW: This episode also discusses eating disorders, sexual trauma, grief and loss.
Myrna's conversation with Vina Brown of Copper Canoe Woman Creations will uplift and inspire you. Vina Brown is a force, a healer, a helper, an artist and a successful Indigenous business owner. This conversation explores healing trauma for Indigenous people including the long-silenced/secret many carry: childhood sexual abuse (trigger warning) and the need for communities to heal together. CW: This episode also discusses eating disorders, sexual trauma, grief and loss.
You will hear about an upcoming Indigenous-only course called "LoveBack" so if you're interested in attending, contact jennifer@myrnamccallum.co for more information.
Please follow @coppercanoewoman on IG and order some "LoveBack" earrings today!
I'm Myrna McCallum, Metis Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of trauma informed lawyering. Welcome back to the trauma Informed Lawyer podcast. As you know, I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum, trauma informed lawyering. Becoming a trauma informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs, and biases, call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy, guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others, and ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge, you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now.
Welcome back to another episode of the Trauma Informal lawyer podcast. Okay, folks, I know it's been a while. I apologize. It's been wildly busy in my life. There have been so many things that have happened, so much I wanna share with you, but we have a longer episode today. I'll give you some highlights. I've been traveling a lot, and it's been amazing. The energy in the spaces I've been in, like, incredible. Love it, Minnesota. Man, those lawyers. Love them there. I think they're loving me, too. That's fantastic. I hope I'm back in Minneapolis in no time. I received an award from the CBA BC Women Lawyers Forum Award of Excellence. That was super cool. Really beautiful award. It's gorgeous. American Bar Association published the book that I, Marjorie Florestal, J. Kim Wright, and Helgi Maki have been working on for forever. It has finally been published. It's called Trauma Informed Law, A Primer for Healing and Resilience for Lawyers. And you can now order it from the American Bar Association. Go check it out. Trauma informed law. Get this book. It's the first of its kind. It's groundbreaking, and I hope everybody reads it. I also helped contributed, to a criminal law, open source case book that is, I think, available on Canlii. Ben Perrin, Professor at UBC Law, he invited me in to contribute to that, and I did, to the best of my ability. And so that is also published and accessible and available on Canlii. It's a criminal law open source book. What else can I say? The retreat, that Amar Dahl came over from Australia for in Whistler, four days. It was fantastic. The feedback has been resoundingly positive. It's really clear to me what folks need, what they want, where I can improve. It was super cool. I also had, like, an alcohol free, like, social night, and I asked people to give me their really honest feedback.
About what they thought of that, I intentionally decided to have no alcohol because I, you know, I tell lawyers, like, we need to learn how to cope and connect with our booze. So it was a social experiment. The feedback I got was resoundingly amazing. Like, yes, Myrna, please do more of this. People disclosed all kinds of stuff that's related to alcohol, including, having a drinking problem, and how it was nice to just not have the option to drink. And it was nice to not come back the next day hungover, and how it was nice not to be sexually harassed by people who are intoxicated, like, all these cool things. And so every multi day course that I have that includes a formal night is going to be booze free. So that was a really cool experiment. And, gosh, there's so much I want to just share, but I want to talk really quick because I want to get into this conversation with Vina. But the last thing is, I've been listening to a lot of indigenous folks across the land talk about workplace trauma as they experience it as indigenous people. And it really inspired me to create a two day course that I'm going to run June 24 and 25th here in North Vancouver. It's on a Saturday and a Sunday. Registration is $2,000 plus GST, but there's a sliding scale if you have no PD funds. If you want more information, you can go to my website or you can email jennifer@namccallum.co and she will give you some details. Yeah, it's going to be two days of learning and hopefully healing. And I'm going to have a couple mental health therapists on site. We're going to talk about toxic stress. We're going to talk about some of the mental health consequences that surface when we work in colonial institutions and colonial processes. We're going to talk about boundaries, and we're going to talk about intergenerational trauma and intergenerational resilience. We're also going to talk a little bit about how can we metabolize trauma. The list is long. I'm still creating the agenda, but it should be up in the next few days. If you're an indigenous professional who has had workplace trauma on the mind, this course is for you. It's not just for lawyers. So come on out. I've already got one indigenous judge registered and some indigenous lawyers and some non lawyers. If you're an indigenous professional who wants to talk about workplace trauma that you experience as an indigenous person, this course is for you. Also for those who are allies and looking for sponsorship opportunities. We're going to need sponsorship and support. This event is running, over two days. I've got to feed people two lunches to breakfasts and coffee and all that. And there may be other associated costs with people who need to travel or who don't have the funds even to participate in a sliding scale. So if you're an ally, individual organization, and you want to support this indigenous led event, and if you are invested in and interested in indigenous success in indigenous healing, reach out to Jennifer and let her know how you are willing to support. And I want to just shout out my friend Lisa Southern, because with one simple post and no agenda, she's like, I'm going to cover lunch. Thank you, Lisa. You've supported me before. You're supporting me again. I love you for it. Thank you so much.
Okay, folks, so much. I want to share next time, and I promise the next episode isn't going to be like, take me two months. It'll take me a couple weeks. Okay. I hope you love this conversation with Vina Brown. She was inspired by something I was talking about. I was talking about how we need to create as indigenous people this love back movement. And she went and created something incredibly beautiful. She's an artist. She created these beautiful earrings, and she's showcasing them on all of her social media. Copper canoe woman, go and look her up. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Copper canoe woman. You've got to check out these earrings. But for now, I hope you enjoy this conversation.
Myrna McCallum: Hi there. Vina Brown. Welcome to the trauma Informed Lawyer podcast.
Vina Brown: Thank you, Myrna. I'm so excited to be here.
Myrna McCallum: Oh, my God. I'm excited to have you here because, I mean, you inspire me. And I know, like, you put a post on Instagram talking about how something I said or did inspire to you, and we're going to talk about how that inspiration manifested into something really tangible. But I have to say, like, you inspire me, and I'm so happy that you and I are talking today on the podcast. But before we get into it, I want you to just talk a little bit about the really cool work that you're currently doing and the art that you're creating.
Vina Brown: Awesome. Well, thank you. Yes, you do inspire me. Everything that you said in our event we did was amazing. And so I'm really excited to be here and to have this conversation with you. So, really, you know, I'm an I'm a Haíłzaqv and Nuučaan̓uɫ artist, from the central coast of BC, which is now called Canada, and I created modern, contemporary, futuristic, indigenous adornment art. I'm inspired by the divine feminine energy in all people in mother earth, from the land, from the sky, the water, and, within our non human relatives. And, I bring a lot of, you know, bring a lot of older kind of designs into my, into the present, from within my own cultural worldview. But I also am always really inspired by other human beings or, you know, non human relatives. And, you were one of those people with, the earrings that, came out of that, the loveback earrings. And so, you know, I've been on this art journey since I was a little girl. I was nine years old when I started, making, little beadwork earrings and rings and bracelets. And I would sell them at my parents eco cultural tourism business in the summertime that they had in Bella, Bella, BC, where I grew up. And I would put them up there and, or I'd sell them at flea markets and they were pretty, that's why I kind of chuckle. Like, you know, I just think of that little girl, that inner child in me who was so fulfilled with having her own little entrepreneurship business. And you think I would have taken the hint then that this was the path I should have been on. Like they often say that, and I really think that's indigenous values and teachings, is that we see what we should be doing, part of our purpose and our learning and what we, should be doing with our time on this earth in childhood, it's often demonstrated. And so I feel like that was already laid out for me, but I went a different path for a bit and then kind of veered back to that original path, which was art and taking everything I learned in higher education and bringing it back to my art. And so now I have, you know, we just opened up a full on 2200 square foot space where we make all of our jewelry in house. I have a team of about, seven full time people, including me, myself and my partner, my life partner and some other folks that are part time. And it's just been quite the epic journey. 2020 is when we officially started the business. And before that I was beading, I was just doing my beadwork one offs and it actually supported me through university. So when I was doing my, undergraduate and my masters, and that was quite the, you know, thing too, is that I always say that beadwork, like when I talked to other beaters and makers and I was like, you know, this beadwork got me out of socioeconomic poverty because I had just graduated, with my masters, I think, in 2016. And then I was ready to, you know, figure out what I want to do. And I thought I wanted to, I got it in jurisprudence and indigenous law from University of Tulsa. And I took that degree because I thought, well, I don't know if I really want to go to law school. Like, I wasn't sure. And then I moved into it through that, and I realized by getting that master's degree that I didn't want to go to law school. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do so I became a professor teaching in the native studies leadership, which was amazing. And then Covid happened, and all of a sudden we were at home with our two year old son and, you know, through this process, I started a doctorate program in 2018. And I thought, well, I'm going to go into academia and be a professor and, you know, write scholarship and all that. And then it brought me, I partnered with a fellow, a local fellow who had a laser, and he said, you should try put your designs on and laser cut them. And I was like, no, no, you know, I like my beadwork. And then it was through encouragement and little, I like to say little gifts from the ancestors of universe, like, pushing me in that direction. My sister was one of those people, Isla Brown, this fellow, Carl Rubicam, my partner. And then we did, and it came to me, my first collection. I drew it all out, gave it to him, cut me some prototypes, and then we launched and it was really well received. So I said, there's something here with this. Like, it just was such a different, modality. Like it was the something that a lot of people, there was other, I think, there was a few other, like indie city and, acrylic artists, indigenous acrylic artists, but there wasn't like a vast amount. So I was just like kind of playing with it. And then, you know, we kept releasing, came up with new designs and we killed it. And I really had to make a decision because, one, I'm a mom, I'm a doctorate student, you know, we're in a pandemic. I'm working full time from home, and I'm like. Something has to give. And so in 2021, I transitioned fully, to a full time entrepreneur and business owner, CEO, owner, designer, creative director, kind of do all the things, and it's been quite amazing. I still do contract work on the side of, through all the relationships I made. But really, I feel more than ever that this is like the path I'm supposed to be on. And, yeah, I really, love that I get to do this. Something that just gives me so much joy and do it as a way to take care of my family and create meaningful, work for other people to work with me on it, on our team, create beautiful things to put out in the world, especially because the world can be pretty hard on our people. And so what I'm always trying to do through my art is show that beautiful side, that empowerment side, that uplifting our language. We have a word called kahla or kahila, to uplift. And I'm always trying to do that through my art to like, show our people and the world, like, look how beautiful we are. And this is an example is because this is our art. And artists has such a way of doing that, and also healing that balance between, like, the west is so, the system has been so patriarchal, but our traditional systems are matriarchal. A lot of ours, not all, but some. And even the ones that were patriarchal women had there was balance. Women were valued for their gifts. And so I'm always, and not just women. Like, I'm talking about our non binary people too, like our feminine people. And so trying to find that balance between the masculine and feminine all the time and restore that and celebration of that energy. And so I love that because I get to bring the metaphysical in with the supernatural with the designs and. Yeah, and it's just a lot of fun and I just, I really enjoy it.
Myrna McCallum: I love what you're doing. I mean, like, your stuff is so beautiful. What you stand for is so beautiful. And as we were talking earlier, before we started recording about you going into, you know, law and considering whether to become a lawyer and then realizing like, you're an artist and moving towards this passion and this purpose work, really, for me, got me thinking about my best friend, Shain. my best friend Shain Jackson, is, he started off as a lawyer that we met in law school. I really didn't like him, when we met in law school. And then we became the best of friends and we've been best friends for like 20 years. But we started off in law and within a few years after he was called, he left because he knew that he needed to do art. And he's from Sechelt, like, first, like Sechelt First Nation. And he, also started doing laser work. He started a company called Spiritworks, and his company is here on, Squamish lands here in North Vancouver. And he interprets a lot of his people's laws through his art. And it is really, really interesting what he has done. And when I was listening to your, pathway, I was thinking about him, but I was also thinking about the fact that I really think lawyers are more creative and artistic than people give us credit for and that we give ourselves credit for. I think many of us don't see ourselves as creative or as artists. But yet, when you start to look at the way we write and the way we think and the way and the things that we create, we actually really are.
Vina Brown: I 100% agree. I just know it because I know, like, you know, my brother is a lawyer, and yourself and the way you present and the way, you know, he writes, like. And then he extends that, too, right? Like, bringing that thought process to, like, creative writing, poetry, and being creative with how you approach your work cases in front of you, how you engage with people, you know? And I think that that takes a lot of creativity. And people think creativity is like, oh, you have to create art, or what the definition of art is. And it's like, we all have creativity in us. And, when we tap into that, that's how we get things done as human beings. Right? Like, there's usually a problem, and we come up through creativity, come up with a solution. And a lot of times, like, the ones. The best solutions are the ones where people are thinking outside the box. They're using that part of their brain. They're being creative. They're not being restricted to the systems in place here. And I think that that's, like, really key to humanity and solving some of the problems that we had cross culturally as human beings is using that part of our brain. Be creative, for sure.
Myrna McCallum: Absolutely. And we'll just give your brother a shout out, because I'm a fan of his. He doesn't know this, but he'll know it now because he's listening. Saul Brown. He was on my podcast previously as part of the law student group conversation about how legal education, law school can be traumatizing, especially for indigenous students, for really obvious reasons. And you and I, when we meth, I was presenting at a justice forum, and we were talking, like, the group was talking about this, horrible, horrible kind of byproduct of the residential school system, specifically in terms of, like, in respect of our high, high rates of sexual violence, sexual abuse, sexual, you know, I don't know, like, exploitation, practices the harm that is occurring in our indigenous communities. And how do we heal? How do we heal from that? How do we heal everybody who experiences that, whether it's the perpetrator, whether it's the person who is the victim or the target, of this harm, or whether it's the witnesses? And whether it's the whole community. So we were talking about, how. How do you do this work? And I presented talking about all the stuff that I normally talk about, and one of the things that I think I said that got your attention. And I think the attention of a few others is I talked about how I wanted to see indigenous people create, a love back movement. Like, we hear about land back all the time. Yes. That's really important. And we need the same kind of emphasis on calling our love back. And what inspired me to talk about that and think about that in the last, like, several months is I know, I used to adjudicate residential school claims, so I traveled the country listening to survivors, and I was recently, in Mohawk territory doing training for, one of their communities. There was a survivor in the room, and he had talked about how one of the first things the school took from him was his ability to just love. And he couldn't love himself. He couldn't love his sibling, like anybody, right? We know that these schools segregated siblings. They segregated, like, they just really worked hard to disconnect people in every way. Like, some students, some siblings could be in the same institution, the same school for several years, and have never seen each other. That's how deep the segregation was. And, like, the efforts to really keep these students apart from each other and deprive them of connection. And so he said one of the things that has helped him to heal was when he became a father and a grandfather, was to practice saying I love you every day to his children and grandchildren. And that has been probably one of the most, radical ways of self healing that he engaged in. When I heard him say that, I remembered so many other survivors I listened to who said that, just saying the words I love you has been, like, the biggest. Like, created a huge opening in them to begin, help begin to help them find their own pathway to healing. And I was thinking about how many of us, have a hard time with love, either showing it, experiencing it, giving, it, receiving it, and then also showing it to ourselves. Then I saw, you know, so I want to see more of us have these conversations and, and, confront the traumas and the harms that really, you know, are not, are not authentic, like authentically coming from us, but that we were taught, like, these are taught practices that we, you know, that we picked, picked up or that were imposed upon us. And I think the only way we, we get past it is to start loving each other and loving ourselves. And I know by looking at your work, Vina, that you are all about like a love back movement.
Vina Brown: Yeah, I'm like very loving, lovey, lovey dovey. And I've always been, and I credit that to people, generations before me starting that work. Like what you're talking about. I grew up with, my dad. He used to tell us that all the time. I love you. I love you. Like, you know, and we, sometimes I remember being like, annoyed, like, I know. Dad you love me, but what then he. Said to us, me one day, and. I remember this so clearly and it didn't make sense at the time, but it stuck with me. And then once I learned more about. Because I'm kind of right on the cusp, like, like I was growing like a kid when, you know, my granny, Elsie, late Elsie Robinson, she did the work too. She's a res school survivor, my mom's mom. And she didn't do it until she was well into her like elderly years. And my Auntie Louise, her daughter, her oldest daughter, told me some, some stories about how she came to terms and realized, like, because she was in major denial, nothing happened. It was okay, you know. And then when she finally went there, it was like going to the darkness. And she said, she literally found, she said, she called her come over, she's sitting in the dark, literally. And with the curtains closed in the middle of the day was like, to Louise, she walked in, she goes, it wasn't okay what happened. And then the light busted through that process of acknowledging what happened and then moving some of that energy that we felt as her descendants. Because then she went and did trauma treatment for it. She went and specifically to address what happened to her residential schools and then used that healing work to help other folks and did that work until she passed away, was like, would go and be an elder at certain gatherings and just doing the work through us. And then, so that's on my mom's side. On my dad's side, he was raised by both my grandparents, went to residential school. His mom, my granny is my last living, one of my last living grandparents. And she's, pretty amazing. She shared with me some of the horrific things that's happened to her in residential school, specifically around food. And that's what I'm writing about in my dissertation is like, I want to talk about the trauma of food and the impacts that's had on our bodies because, you know, when you've been starved, intentionally starved, because she was actually experimented on at St. Michael's, in Alert Bay, they were starving some kids and studying them, the malnutrition. And so when she did some of her trauma work, it was like that was what she wanted to give her inner child was food. And so having that deprivation, then she went extreme the other way with her kids where it was like, you know, we're never going to not have food, you know, eat, right? And then the, like, diabetes and, the issues around that or eating, being in poverty, you know, she became a single mother and then having to eat, you know, the other foods. And so plus holding on to stuff in our bodies on top of that. So it's just, I want to go deeper into that. And as part of it, I like.To talk about that because I'm, like, I don't blame anyone in my family for that. That wasn't their fault, right? Like that stuff that was put onto them. But, like, it's our job as the descendants to, like, our responsibility to like to unpack some of that if we can. If we can get to that place where we can heal and move some of that so that our kids and our nieces, nephews and the next generation don't have to, to carry as much of that. And I think that that's part of that love back movement. And my dad started that because he broke that cycle. And he told us, he told me that. He said, you know why I say I love you every day? He said, because no one told me they loved me. My parents never said that to me. And that was because they were residential school survivors. And he said that with tears in his eyes. And I remember that, like, very specifically when I was a kid. And now because I'm an adult and I possibly. And I was like, oh, yeah. Like, that's residue, right? That's him reclaiming that and breaking that cycle of like, you know, so that we can say it so easily, so that we can feel it and give it and receive it easier than they could. And that's how cycles are broken. It's just taking one person to acknowledge, you know, on My mom said it was my granny. This happened, and it wasn't. Okay. Now where do we go from here? Right? And. And then the same thing. And I'm really grateful for those, like my Aunts. And, you know, you met Lisa Robinson. I want to just, like, if you guys don't know who she is, like, Lisa is the Executive Director and of a treatment center. And I have to give her credit, you know, because I grew up with those women, my Auntie Ryanna Robinson, and they. And my Granny, and they all learned from her. I, Granny Elsie. And that work was started in our family, and it's not. It's not finished. We still have work to do. But that lineage, that healing the lineage. And I, like, I had people who had done the work that I could go to as a teenager, and they would explain things to me. They would say I'd be all, like, flustering, you know? And I'm like, what? I always see some youth, like, when I see our indigenous youth, like, do they have people that have broken those cycles that can just say, your nervous system is dysregulated, that's trauma. You're having trauma, like, you know, and I had that, and I'm so grateful for that now. I recognize that. That I had people in my family who broke certain cycles, and there's ones now that I'm working on breaking, to further that work, and that's how it's done. And then you break it and. And then you replace it with love. And that's the whole thing. Break it, and then you replace it with love, you know? And, what I love what you said in your talk. What really struck me the love back was the decompartmentalization. And to me, I'm like, you know, that's what happened. We compartmentalized so many parts of ourselves and put it in places, and then it was passed on to our kids in this dysfunctional way. And what happened for me was, like, the holistic part. I'm all about holistic whole. So the love back movement is taking that, you know, the harm from people who harm others, and then become the ones that harm that cycle that's passed on, that dysfunction. And then also the vicarious trauma from the witnessing of what happens. Like, I grew up witnessing, having to listen to testimony of so many other youth and what they were going through, being abused, listening to that and internalizing that and comforting them through that, you know? And I think that's parts that we don't talk about too, that it's that vicarious trauma, the community and the young people. Like, we're seeing it all. Like, you think we're just kids. But, like, I go back to it and I say, you know, like, man, I witnessed a lot as a kid of just witnessing other people's stuff in my home, but also stuff outside the home and just being in there and not understanding it until we're older. So the work is decompartmentalizing and making ourselves whole again, connecting those parts of ourselves that want to stay over there and over there. And if you look at the westernized world, it's all about, you know, breaking it up, compartmentalize, right? And so it's easy to fall into that. But our, ancestors, we were whole beings, right? Like, you know, we weren't perfect or utopian, but we had ceremonies and systems in place that kept us in line with the natural world. And with those laws, we can maybe transition into that, those laws of love, right? I really like the word. I can't say it, but in Nuu-chah-nulth, the word for love is the same word for hate, you know? And that's always really interesting to me because, And that's my mom's language, is because, like, something so beautiful can be, easily cause lots of pain if we're not careful with it. I think that our ancestors understood that, that balance of keeping, you know, how quickly it could go this way if you take something. I also really want to mention, the late race teacher, because this teaching came to me from my aunts who had access to his teachings. And he was an amazing elder. He's moved into the spirit world now. Nuu-chah-nulth elder, Ahousaht. And he, talked about that. He did a lot of this work. He worked with so many residential school survivors and our people, and a lot of the culture work. Worked on the Nuu-chah-nulth mental health team for, like, years, just supporting people in crisis, our people in crisis, and bringing that cultural values and so really on the front lines and doing it before it was even a job, just going, showing up to the hospital for people that needed it. And so, what he said about the sexual harm, I think it's really important that we talk about it because, you know, that shame that comes from that, it's so deep that sometimes, like, people don't even want to go there. It's so compartmentalized that shame can be so blocking for the healing. And if the more we talk about it, the more we can unpack and decompartmentalize, again, using that word, some of that stuff and that pain that comes from that. And what Ray said that was so profound was that our sexuality, the act of that parts of ourselves was so sacred before this dark thing happened in residential school. And the sexual harm that came from that, it was like a spiral, because it was interwoven with creation. And that's why it was seen as something so sacred and important and normal and healthy in our communities. Because it was how, it's how we come into the world, right? It's what he said. It's how we come into the world is that divine interconnection. And that it was like, that's our connection to the universe. And how we manifest as humans, like, come into this form is through this process. So when that was, harmed through residential schools and that was put on us, that, that distorted and not wrecked a room, but like distorted. And, you know, that needs to be healed on a metaphysical level. That connection to creation, to see it in that way again, that shift, paradigm shift needs to happen in our people to say like, no, this isn't something shameful. This isn't something, you know, that needs to be looked at as like, you know, that you have to carry alone because it’s something, that actually our ancestors seen as something really divine. And it was protected and it was, it was like seen as that connection to the universe. And so I really wanted to share that teaching because to me I'm like, well, what's the antidote? What's the, what's the difference? Like what was it before? Right? Like how was it? And that to me was a direct link to that pre, that previous, before all this stuff happened, like of, what that. What that could have been and how it could have been before when all this shame and this darkness was put onto us around this topic. And I, you know, I really want to encourage people, like, if you're listening to this and maybe you're the still going through this and unpacking some of this, like there is help out there, like reach out. Like there are ways, there's so many ways to heal that part to yourself and you're not alone. And find those people, call those people into your life to support you through that healing. Because we do have a divine right as human beings, especially as cuas, like native people, to, heal that part of ourselves to get that, to get that peace. And, Yeah, and it kind of goes back to what we're talking about that not just healing for those that have been harmed, but those who harm, because that harm was done to them. Most of the time it's been done to them. And that's why it's continuing is because we're not addressing the issue of those that have been harmed, becoming those that harm. And we need to address that. We need to say, you know, like, these people who, are passing this on had never got the help that they needed in time. And we need to, if we want it, a bigger, overarching goal is we want it to stop. And that's it. That's the whole goal. That's the grassroots movement that comes from things from within the communities we want the addiction, the suicide, all these, these kind of, aftermath of that, the impact of that to stop. Well, we need to address this issue is that we need to, everybody needs healing the holistically. So I think that that's like, really, that's why I inspired that design, because I'm like, that's love, right? That's bringing it back to wholeness and, healing our communities, loving our communities and us to go there and do that deep hard work, you know, and if we can't do it alone, you know, there's, a lot of people making this move, doing this movement right now. There's some projects coming up and, you know, and I think that, like, that's the part that really needs addressing. That's the next step.
Myrna McCallum: Okay, Vina, like you said, a whole lot. and I want to just sort of, like, pick out a few of those things and focus on it, because I think I needs a little bit of a conversation, especially for those who are listening. Now, you shared the story about kids being starved in schools and in these, they're not even schools, right, these, like, horrible institutions. And I think we have to unpack a little bit of the, the consequence of that. I mean, I've just been feeling really, really upset the last little while. I mean, I've been thinking, like, the more I learn about the science of trauma and the more I learn about how the brain responds to trauma, like how the hippocampus is affected, how your prefrontal cortex is kind of, you know, it's growing as you grow and it doesn't fully come online or, or become like, you know, Gabor Mate and others talk about how, like, your brain doesn't even really fully develop till your baby and your twenties. and you're still, like, developing in so many ways and, like, through your teens, into your early twenties. And, as I learn about epigenetics and how trauma is inherited and how trauma changes our DNA so that in so many ways, like, the cards are stacked against us before we are even born, like, at the point of conception, there is still, we're inheriting. Yes, we inherit the resilience of our people, but we also inherit the trauma and it changes our DNA. And as I listen to experts in trauma and the science behind trauma, I hear, you know, how, because the cards are stacked against us, we've already, we're already in for a fight at the point of birth. Like, we have to, you know, we have higher rates, according to science we have. And all the data that especially Gabor Mate talks about, we've got higher rates of risk of autoimmune conditions, of inflammation, of diabetes, of rheumatoid arthritis, of all of these different things. And I just think, like, Jesus Christ, I mean, we're in for the fight of our lives, essentially, just by simply being born indigenous. And it really pisses me off. And I was talking with, some folks not that long ago about how, you know, because our brain is still developing and it develops into our twenties. I mean, the really fucked up and horrible shit is that so many of our people decide, well, I don't even know that it's a decision exactly, but, take the action of committing suicide as children, as teenagers, as young adults, and they don't even know, they haven't lived long enough to have a fully functioning brain that allows them to understand the connection between their survival responses and their survival strategy and the pathway to healing. Like, you know, we hear people talk about, like, it gets better, it gets better. But I think people can't actually experience how it can become better until you're in your late twenties and maybe in your thirties. And if we don't allow ourselves to live long enough to experience that, we'll never realize it. And, you know, what I've experienced when I listen to folks is understanding, healing, or beginning to embrace the possibility that I don't actually need to live this way. I don't actually have to live in fight mode or flight mode, or freeze mode. And that actually isn't my personality, that healing is possible. And there's another way forward that isn't always drawing from my trauma response. I think that reality doesn't kick in for a lot of us until we're in our thirties and forties. And if we don't live long enough to experience that, I mean, it just makes me really angry when I think about it. And yet at the same time, I know in one single lifetime we can end cycles, we can change everything. We can bring love back, we can initiate healing. We can begin to, just by the choices that we decide to make, we can begin to reduce, those statistics that tell us that we are likely to die young because of autoimmune conditions, inflammation related disease, diabetes, which is a chronic condition, obesity, which is a chronic condition. there's so much healing that we need to do that really is so connected to our physical bodies that I think, like, when I say healing, I mean emotional, spiritual healing that will be, be manifested and experienced in our physical, physical bodies that will begin to change those statistics. And I mean, there's lots of ways in which we could do that to embody healing practices. And I know that you're working on some of that stuff through the yoga work that you do, through this holistic approach that you do. And I just want to say, you know, to folks who are listening to us talking and thinking, oh my God, like, where do you begin? How do you begin? And I think that just simply, you know, calling your love back is one of the ways. And the other way is to blow the lid off of the things that we have long been silent about. And, you know, up until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission started to do its work here in Canada, shining, a light, a bright light on the residential school experience. Nobody was talking about residential school. Like, I remember when I went to law school at UBC, I went to law school with Bev Sellers, and she later wrote a book called they call me number one. And because we were given numbers when we went to residential school, I went to residential school in Saskatchewan. And it's so funny, but like, not funny, haha. How we would walk to school every day. Never ever did we talk about residential like that. We both went to residential school. And it wasn't until TRC did its work that we started to feel, okay, we could actually start talking about this. I think the next movement that needs to come in terms of talking about what we've experienced is sexual abuse, because it's like, it's a shame based, horrible secret a lot of us hold on to, and it doesn't serve us. And I love, you know, that there are nations that are beginning to do this work and explore this and also really confront the reality that, but we don't become healed as nations without also including the focus of healing to, those who perpetuate this abuse, because if we're only focusing on survivors or victims or targets of sexual abuse, it's going to continue to happen because we're leaving out sexual predators, sexual perpetrators. And the reality is, and I know this to be true from the work that I have done, listening to hundreds and hundreds of survivors, is that if you were taught very early on that this is how you behave, the risk for you conducting yourself in this way, later in life, is really high. I mean, not to say we all become sexual perpetrators if we've been sexually abused, but I know when I started having kids at 18, I had heard that a lot, and I was terrified that I was going to become an abuser, that I was going to harm my children, because this is what I heard, and I know that that is actually, it's not the truth. However, there are some people that when you add on addictions and you add in other things that really take people away from their bodies, like, create, like, fragmenting and fracturing in themselves, where they become so incredibly disconnected from themselves that they will behave in these ways. And, I mean, I remember years ago, many, many years ago, I listened to Don Bernstick, who had a one man play called I am alcohol. And there was a segment of that one man play where he talked about how alcohol wanted to take the light from children and used the body of the person that had been consuming the alcohol to sexually abuse children. And that was how you took a. The light from them. And it just haunts me when I still think about it. It gives me, like, ah, all these, like, chills. But we need to talk about shame. We need to talk about sexual shame as a result of being sexually abused. We have to talk about those who harm and those who've been harmed. And, when I think about, you know, my friend Harold Johnson, who I had on my podcast before, you know, a couple years ago, and he's since passed away, he talked about a story of how a community member killed his brother through drinking and driving. When that community member came out of prison through mad, mothers against drinking and driving, they traveled to different schools. And, this person talked about what it was like to wake up in cells to hear, that he had killed. Killed somebody when he. And he has no recollection of it because he was so drunk. And Harold talked about what it was like to lose a brother to a drunk driver. And together they told the story. And Harold said it was through, this work that that fellow earned his way back into community, because he says prison does nothing to heal people, they need to be able to. For those who are truly, full of Morris and committed to healing and committed to reconnection and rehabilitation, we need to allow them to earn their way back into community. And this was one of the ways in which that fellow did that. And this is courageous work, and this is like, deep, loving, heart filled work. And I know it's not easy for everyone, because it's too, it's, it's. It's too, I think the default is to, like, cast them all into fire, like, whoever they are, right? The drunk drivers of the world, the. The people who've perpetrated against their own family members. but that does nothing to heal communities, I think. And it does nothing to, allow people to redeem themselves. And I see who they can become when they are fully reconnected to themselves. because I know if I was held to shit that I did when I was like 16 or 25 or 35, I could never be who I am today if I was always held against whatever that standard was when I wasn't actually loving myself or being good to myself. And so healing really, you know, includes, allowing people to transform themselves and earn their way back into community.
Vina Brown: No, Myrna, everything you're saying, I'm just like, yes, yes, yes. You know, I, think one thing, too. Let's be very clear about what we're saying here. Is it like, you know, because I know this is such a triggering topic for so many people. People. And there's a lot of angry people at, you know, like that are just like that. Like, cast them away, get rid of them, you know, ostracize them. but one thing that we forget to mention and talk about is that, like, usually these people are people. Someone's father, uncle, sister, brother, mother, you know, people, family member. And there it's like, oftentimes when children, have been harmed by their own family members, they don't want them to go to jail. They just want it to stop. They just want it to stop. And I think that that's the main goal of these grassroots folks who are creating, this new program. We're not going to talk about the name, but we're going to say there's something coming up. And, you know, this work, and I'm sure there's other places in the world where this is happening, is like, what I've heard from these people is like, we need to try something. We need to be creative and think outside the box here, because what we're doing right now, this whole justice system of, just throw them away, push them outside the community, like, isn't working. And I've heard that from people. Like if we, if we, if every person who caused this harm was taken away to jail like that, so many people, there would be hardly any people in the community. Like, I've heard that from other people and elders, like, and that's a call out to say, you know, we got something. It's not working. Whatever the system is, isn't working. It's failing our people, like, to just people. Because oftentimes we said these people who are harming have been harmed from a system that's not our own. And we have to remember that, like, this stuff didn't come from us. Like this came from residential schools. And now this new system in place, this justice system. And this is why I love the work that you do, is because you're teaching other humans, from other cultures about our, about the trauma that our people go through and have been through and why. The why, why what happened to you and the why you've done what you've done. And I think that it needs to be holistic. And that's what it's saying from the communities is that. And it's be very clear about that, that this has come from the communities. As the overarching goal is we just want this to stop. We want art to restore, our communities back to holistic way humans, like, from our, like the individuals back to healed humans. And we want our children to be safe in their own communities and not have to be exposed or be afraid of their own people. And, you know, and I think that, that the part right that we have, we don't. No one's even talking about it. To get to that place of being like, there are people that are. But to that place of being, like, what happened to see the whole bigger picture. And that's really hard when there's lots of trauma in the body. And that's why, like, I agree with you, the food, you know, using food. Like, I was writing and working on. I'm working on it. And I was doing a translation with my late grandfather, Robert hall. And I had all these words like these sayings and I was doing like a full like couple paragraphs. So it was a lot of work. And my sister isla was helping there as well. Brown. And we were sitting down and there was this one word, like, phrase. I said, food is medicine. And I know a lot of indigenous people have used that concept too. In their work. So I was like, how do you know? And some of the words and stuff, he was like, I don't know, because, you know, it's English to Haitla. It's so different, right? So somebody's like, go and talk to, I'm going to say this, but go and talk to Granny Caroline. Go talk to, you know, these other elders and language speakers to make sure. But for this one, food is medicine. He was like, so. He was like, nope. This one I know for sure, because my late granny, Sarah Vickers, she, whenever she'd set to the table, she would say this, and it means food is medicine. And I can't remember the phrase, but she would put the food on the table, and she would say that. So here's like, you know, several by my I great, great grandmother. And she's saying this phrase. And so that, to me, shows that there was this concept that food was medicine. Food is, when you take it in, it heals you. You know, that's how we take our western medicine, our pills or whatever we're taking, right? So we knew that food could heal and was healing. And so when you take that medicine away from people and you starve them and you do these awful things to them and you disconnect or create this dysfunction or chaos around food, it shows up in the body. Like you said, it changes our DNA, right? And it comes out as diabetes, hypertension, like, all this pain and, like. But we're not talking about it as much. Like, we see the symptoms in our people and everyone's got the pain, but we're not saying, well, yeah, physical, but what's causing it? Like, why is it happening? It's not just, oh, you need to eat healthier. It's like, no, there was some real, real things done to the generations before and, and some that are like us now, and that needs to be addressed. Right. Our relationship with things, something that was medicine before, and now it's, it's something that's killing us.
Myrna McCallum: Yeah.
Vina Brown: What, major shift there.
Myrna McCallum: Yes. And, you know, like, food. Yes. Sex too, right? Like, you know, the story you just shared about, like, sex, sexuality, has, like, direct connection to creation and how, how it was sacred. And now what we see in our communities, at least, you know, on the prairies, indigenous people have the highest rates of hiv positive status, and, like, sex is killing our people, too. And, unprotected sex, promiscuity sex while intoxicated, you're not making good decisions. Right. And, I mean, I don't even know how we began to initiate a conversation between bringing the sacred back to our sexuality. But that's something I'm now going to want to think about. But I want to get back to the food and, how we hold trauma in our bodies, because maybe I said this at the talk that I gave, but I've been reflecting on this a lot lately. So in my community, all my aunties and even my grandmother, all past now, but I noticed, in my community, for many of the older women who are now gone, there was a lot of morbid obesity and being very sedentary, like, never moving. I remember I had this auntie, never ever saw that woman move. She just sat in her chair, smoked a lot of cigarettes, never moved, but there was lots like that. Now that I'm learning more about trauma, there's this guy named Resma Manikim who wrote this book called my grandmother's hands. He uses the language metabolizing trauma. And when I read that, I thought, holy shit. I never thought about trauma as something that we could metabolize. I always thought it was something that was stuck in the body and that was stuck with us, that had us in a chokehold, and I had no idea about, how do we get it off of us? How do we get rid of it? When I read metallic about metabolizing trauma, and he talked a little bit about it, and I started to reflect, well, how do we metabolize stuff? Well, we can sweat, we can move, we can shake our bodies, we can cry, we can release tension in our muscles, we can speak, we can scream. There's all these ways in which we can begin to just work it out. And it doesn't mean always having to go into talk therapy and try and dredge up old memories from when we were five or when we were two or whatever it is. Sometimes the way to healing and beginning to release trauma begins with simple movement. Going for a walk, going for a run, doing yoga, crying, screaming, talking, you know, like, whatever it takes to allow it to move through us. My friend Scott, just who have had on the podcast, he and his wife do, they have twisted yoga Wellness, studio in Edmonton. And I remember, during COVID I decided to sign up for some yoga classes over Zoom. And he had this one exercise he wanted us to do at the end, which is where essentially we're just brushing off our arms and brushing off her body. I started crying, and I don't even know why, but I just started to cry as I was brushing myself off. And then it reminded me about, like, a lot of these coast salish folks do brushing and like, with cedar. And I was like, holy. I must be holding on to some stuff that really needs letting go. And so for people who are listening, like, where do I be? like, how the. How of it, it can be as simple as taking a walk. It could be as simple as, as moving the body. It can be as simple as brushing your body off. It could be as simple as taking a yoga class, sweating, screaming. how do you metabolize? Right. And so maybe this is a good segue to talk about, like, your work, as, like, in your commitment to yoga.
Vina Brown: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought this up. I really wanted to share this. This was a, there's a couple things here. Like, I'm such, I'm going to share my story and it's deeply personal. It's only going to be the second time I've shared this but recently. And I because I want to share it to give hope to people. Because of the metabolization of trauma that recently happened to me. And it wasn't through, it was through a few mediums, yoga. then what's that guy who wrote the body keep score? That author's name?
Myrna McCallum: Oh, Bessel van der Kolk.
Vina Brown: Yeah. So I watched this eight minute video on him. And then when they were studying trauma and the third thing on their list that they studied of what heals trauma and they were specifically in war veterans, they, one with the third thing on their list they studied that was working, was yoga. That they were doing this yoga because of the somatic release that you're talking about, that, that movement. And so going back to me, my story is that, you know, 16 years old, started having a food, an eating disorder, like, for lack of better words, like white girl bulimia is what it was, right. throwing up my food, had my weight fluctuated. as a young person, I gained a lot of weight because I moved away from my community and I was carrying a lot of that feeling alone. Like, I moved away from my parents, I moved with family, but it was hard. I was 14 years old, moved to Vancouver, went to a school, like, coming from a community of 1500 people to, went to a school of 3500 people. It was just a lot. And, being, not being away from my parents and it was for the best. They sent me because, they wanted me to have a better education. That's a whole nother topic now. I don't see it that way, but that's the internalized belief that our schools aren't as good, that we need to go somewhere else, right? And that's kind of, I think, a debris, too, of residential school, that we need to go away from our communities to get a better education. I don't believe that anymore. But that was me and my parents, and I knew it came from love. They wanted the best. But, you know, like, I think that there's some shifts there that have happened now. So I gained all this weight, then I lost all this weight. And so my started, you know, being in, like, my body. I was like, in this. This realm of, like, being in multicultures, being influenced by what beauty standards are. Feeling not enough, right? Feeling like I'm not enough. And from there, this. This mental health part, being navigating this very alone, so much body shame around it. plus all this other layers of trauma going on in the body. I have so much empathy and compassion for that 16 year old girl that I was like, sometimes I just talk to her. And that's part of the work, too, is, like, going back and I. And taking care of her, navigating that alone. And this has been a really recent thing for me, this kind of aha moment, this connection, this processing, and I'm sharing it to support those. And so I developed this disorder, and I didn't have help through it. Like, I was. Some family members knew, but no one, like, really, people just didn't have the tools and the resources that. To see it as, like, oh, this isn't just like a, she's throwing up her food. Like, this is something mental going on, right? Like, she needs support. And I. I basically stopped it on my own. And it was because I kept so recently, I kept throwing out my back. I was a basketball player, high level. I went on to play collegiate, but I, all of a sudden, I started having these back issues, like throwing out my back, back spasms after back spasms. And I thought it was from basketball injuries. My mom got me, you know, some massage therapy, things like that. I went to physio. and then it wasn't until very recently, like a month and a half, two months ago, I was throwing up. I got sick. Like, something else, I was sick. And then I had this flashback memory, and through listening to that author, talk about yoga being a healing, which I already knew because I felt that experience of the healing power of yoga in my body. And just to have to be very clear about this, yoga is an eight limb science. I practiced two of them. Pranayama which is breath, and asana, which is form. So those are the two limbs that I'm really, that I practice that, you know, and I've also looked done a lot of the philosophy as well. but for me, in my daily practice, it's breath work and movement. And so, going back to the story, I had this experience throwing up and I flashbacks. And I was like, it wasn't the basketball that was causing these issues in my back. It was the trauma of violently throwing my food up every day, that all of a sudden I was making my back spaz, taking me out of basketball, you know, and I remember that, and it was through talk therapy. I was, see a counselor. You know, I have a great counselor, so. But it's not just one thing, it's many things, and it's whatever works for you. So really encouraging people. Sometimes it be one thing, maybe it'll be like five things. Maybe it's your culture, talk therapy, maybe it's not talk therapy. Maybe it's yoga, maybe it's swimming, whatever it is, like, I always recommend, like having, maybe it's just sitting down with a relative for some tea, right? So to come to this conclusion, and I really made that connection. So 16 year olds developed, eating disorder. 17. I stopped. And you know why? It's because I started practicing yoga. Because my late granny Elsie, the one I talked, mentioned already, she said, look at granny, huh? Look how strong I am. Because I was ending up on the couch for a week, taking pain meds, just lying there, not being able to move. And I didn't want that because I was like my, until my back got better, and then I would go back to, you know, go back to basketball, and that would happen again. It was a vicious cycle for well into my twenties. And, but when I'm consistent with my yoga, I haven't had those spasms in like, years. But when I'm consistent with my yoga, it's like my medicine, it processes things. So now I'm making this mind map of like, stars, I call them, where I'm m connecting all the stars, making all my, connecting the dots up there of like, how yoga has helped me metabolize my trauma, in the body from that disorder. And then that was a really hard thing to get through. And I went to yoga for my physical, and then it ended up healing me up here, like, in my head, in my heart. It, it's been such a gift. When they found the, those little babies, the 215, sometimes I even avoid it because like, that, I avoided getting on my mat because I knew as soon as, like, what you're talking about, that visceral reaction of crying. No. As soon as I get in my body and cry, like, there's gonna be a big release. So I kind of avoided it for a bit because I was like, you know, really weepy and so raw, but I just could feel it, like, oh, there's going to be a big release coming. And once I got on my mat, sure enough, like, just the tears came because the body is so intelligent, and our ancestors knew that. That's why, like, the new tunnel, the Helsink, the coastal ish, that we had used branches to literally get people back in their bodies and remind them to release. And then you take it, the physical act of taking those branches and putting them back into the water to be cleansed and alchemized back into something, you know, powerful, is, like, such an act of self love. and it's such an act, a gift that we've been passed down to use. So the only times, like, I felt that kind of release in yoga was in my culture. So when I started practicing yoga, I was like, this is so familiar. This feels like when I'm dancing on the. Like, when I'm in the potlatch and I'm doing our dancing, I always go into, like, a meditation where I clear my mind. I'm not thinking about how I look. I'm not thinking about how I'm more, like, in the moment, and I'm, offering my body and being in my body to, like, to give, like, homage to this dance, the sacredness, the sound of the drum, that rhythm. That rhythm, right? And then after you just feel this big release, you feel emotional. You feel like, you know, because you're fine. You're connecting back to your body. And same thing when I paddled on the canoe, the Gilwell. Right. I'm very connected to the canoe. You know, it's my business name, but it's also my haystack name. Glaucous Gillwocks. But, like, I've literally been in the canoe and had witnessed so many youth just. We take a break, and they just break down and they just sob. They're just sobbing. Like, it. Like, you know, we pause and we all just sit there and hold space. And then, you know, usually there's, like, a leader that's like. Like, let it go. Give it to the water. Let it go. Release it. Let it come. It's okay. You know, so, like, that intelligence, this trauma informed, somatic release that we need is in our cultures. It's there, and I felt it. The only other time I felt that same feeling was when I was practicing yoga, having that release, using that. And, so through this experience of going to this beautiful ancient science of yoga and our indigenous knowledge systems and science of our culture and having those two pathways, I've been able to do a lot, move a lot of things out of my body. And when I became a yoga teacher when I was 22, because of that healing I got, I was like, holy crap, there's something to this shit, man. It's amazing. Like, I wanted to. It helped me heal my body, my back, but it helped me heal in ways I didn't have the language until I was later, until my cortex developed. Cause I was like, started learning about trauma. I was like, oh, my. And I'm still learning. Like, I'm 36 and I'm still like, wow. Oh, dang that. Like, connecting things and having breakthroughs and being like that wasn't that. That was this and feeling it and having that mind body connection. That's what yoga can do. It can connect your brain to your body. The breath taking, a mindful breath reading what's going on in the nervous system. How are you feeling? How. How regulated are you? How dysregulated are you? You know? And, so that's what I like. I'm a self proclaimed trauma informed lawyer in terms of, like, having my lived experience, knowing what I know about trauma, and. And then also, teaching from that place. It's all about empowerment. Like, we're not saying yoga can heal you. It's actually not the yoga. It's actually not. It's you. It's you that does that because you're getting in. It's the empowerment piece. You go to the practice, you go to that system that's been there for thousands of years, whether it's yoga, your culture, whatever it is, your teachings, whatever the tapping, whatever m it is, and then you implement that, and your body literally does. Does what it needs to do because it's so intelligent. so that's, where I'm coming from with that is like, when I work with people. Like, I go and I do, work in treatment centers, with people who have survived sexual assault and violence. I've worked with many BIPOC groups. Many indigenous youth travel around, and I just want to set up a space where they can do the work because, you know, I'm guiding the process, but it's really people just. They're going into it, and I've just seen amazing things happen. I think one of the most powerful ones was when I was doing them, gathering our voices years ago. There was this youth that came up to me, and they're like, like, what happened to me? And I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like, every time, after every session, I want to go have a smoke. This is the first time ever. I've never wanted to go and have a smoke. I just. I don't want to smoke. What happened to me? Like, well, I was like, your body's feeling regulated. I said, that's you soothe through smoking, right? That's your self soothing. I was like, but you're regulated enough that you, you don't feel like you need it, because you've already got that soothing. You've soothed already. You're regulated. You should explore it more. Maybe you should pick up a yoga practice and try it. Try more. And I gave them some videos and stuff, and so it was quite incredible to see people, like, have those moments, those connections, too, in their bodies. And that's the work, too. that's my passion. Work is just, One more thing on it is that, we mean my best friend, Annalee Fink Bonner. She's, Hadatsa and Arikra and Mandan from North Dakota. We recently just got our paperwork in to start a non profit. We're calling it rooted resiliency. And that's what we want to do our. Continue our, trauma informed movement meditation, this work of holistic wellness through this nonprofit. So we just got the paperwork, we got our board set up. We have an all indigenous woman board, which we're both on. And, we want to make this access, whatever the holistic wellness is that, like, it could be culture, art, food sovereignty, language, movement, meditation, all the things. And I always pose to my participants, like, what do you need to be? Well, what do you need to be well? Like, what do you need? Do you need community? Do you need access to your traditional foods? Whatever it is that you need to be well? And exploring that and also not being stuck just on what the answer is now. Like, it changes over time as we grow and develop. Right? We, our, needs change. So we're working on that. That's coming down. I wanted to, you know, really mention that rooted resiliency. So look out for that, because we want to do, through the. My business will be. Some of my profits will be going towards, you know, starting up this nonprofit. And then we want to look for funding and whatnot, to, to do this work, to bring other people on board, to continue, to support the healing in our communities because we need it. And, and really, I'm just so grateful I've had access to and found pathways to heal. And there's billions of ways. Like yoga is one pathway, there's many ways, other ways to that healing. And whatever it is that works for you, find it, identify it, grow it, nurture it. And for anyone listening to that, you know, something that works for me, not one might not work for you. Don't be discouraged. Try to find something else. Find it until you find it. And that's why I teach yoga is, you know, it's really a passion thing. It comes, you know, that's the work on the other side is because I'm like, man, this works. It's helped me, I felt that healing power and I really think our people, because we are so somatic in our, the way our culture is that our people would respond to it, it. And so that's why I'm doing that, done that work for the last, like shoot, how many years I've been, over ten years anyways, been teaching yoga in our, in our communities. And I have, yeah, we have some great plans for that too. We want to do trainings, yoga teacher trainings, all of that too, for. To teach our people how to teach in their communities as well.
Myrna McCallum: I love it. I love what you're doing. And, you know, as, as I listen to you, fine. I just think about like my aunties and my cook them and all these people, all these women who are now gone who didn't know what we know now, all the things that we're learning, that I just think, oh my gosh, who might those women have been had they had these tools, had this knowledge, you know, as I think about them sitting and smoking and never moving, I think about like how just the state of their bodies were probably telling me just how much trauma they were carrying and carrying it in their weight and how, you know, like, especially sexual abuse trauma. Because what tends to happen when we're sexually abused, and I definitely started being sexually abused very, very, very young. and, one of the things that we hear often is don't move. And either while it's happening or what happens is the body immediately goes into freeze mode, right? And we do not move. And I think as we get older, that stays in our body that like frozen, don't move, right. And the traumas got us by in a chokehold. And I just think, man, if those women knew, what I know now, even a fraction of what I've learned, who might they have been? How much could they have healed? How much longer might they have lived? And what would have been the quality of their life? And so I feel like every time I get up and I go for a hike, every time I make a good decision about what I'm going to eat or every time I cry or every time I pray or every time I brush myself, I'm not just healing me a little bit, I'm healing all the stuff that they could ingest. I'm healing them a little bit. And when I hear about how, you know, some of our people and other nation, like, other nation healers, will talk about how we can heal seven generations behind us, like, this is how we do it. And, so I do it for me. And, yes, of course, I do it for my descendants and my, you know, my children, my grandchildren, on and on, but I'm also doing it for my mom, who couldn't. My cook them, who couldn't myself, on, couldn't. All these aunties, right? And so, And, like, not even, you know, we haven't even talked about the men. And maybe one day I'll have to have a conversation that includes a man in. In this, because indigenous men have a very specific experience as well. And one day, we. We. Well, we need to include them in these conversations. Today, though, we're so. We have so much. There's so much in this. And I want to say, I just really, like, love what you're doing. And, like, all of this is part of this love back. Like, you are this love back movement that I've been calling for. I'm so glad that we connected. I want to say, like, you inspired me. like, you and all the survivors I've heard and listened to and reflected on have really inspired me. And I, you know, I think about, survivor that I listened to, in a confidential hearing. So I'm not going to disclose a lot of details, but one of the things that he told me, he had been through hell. He had been harmed in unspeakable ways by other men, like, who were also students, also his people in his community. And when I met him, he was so loving, and he was so. He was such a beautiful human being. And I said to him, after it was all over, the hearing was done. The settlement was agreed upon. Nothing outstanding. I just, like, leaned into him, and I said, how did you become this man that I'm looking at and listening to today, because you're just nothing but love. And how do you. How do you become that after going through that and then harming yourself? Like a lot of us when we come out of residential school, we harm ourselves with alcohol, drugs, all kinds of things. Like, after you went through your self harming period, how did you come to this? And he said, I did a couple of things. One is, I went back to the land because land is a healer for our people. I went to the land. I put my pain there. I put my trauma there. I just said, I'm not carrying this pain anymore. You carry it for me, because the land can do that, and the land can take it and turn it into something beautiful that sustains us. So I went to the land, and I lived there for, I think, months or years. He was on the land, like, not just a camping trip. And he says, and second, I realized if those boys could do that to me, somebody must have done that to them. And then this is where I began to learn compassion. Compassion for them, but also compassion for me. When I was hurting people, when I was drinking, I didn't know better. I was operating from a place of having been harmed, and I was putting harm into the world. And he's like, so I had to have compassion for myself. And in doing so, I began to have compassion for everyone. And so I was just incredibly humbled listening to his story. And I was like, I hope one day that you write a book and you tell your story. And better yet, I hope that you create an audiobook and you tell I about it, because his voice is just so. Brought so much comfort to me, who was traumatized doing this work. Of course, he didn't know that. Others didn't know that because they didn't talk about it then. But, I just saw possibility in his story. And I really think, you know, indigenous people listening to you and I talking today, I hope if there's anything they take away, it's that the possibility for a return to love and possibility for healing exists. And I hope you hear it in my voice and the stories I've shared and the, people I've referenced, and I hope you hear it in Vina and her story and the people that she has referenced, that we are more than the traumatized. We are more than the wounded warriors that media portrays us to be. We are healers, and we are thrivers, and we are artists, and we are successful entrepreneurs, and we're all of these, and we're taking our love back. And we're taking our love back. Yes, love back. So let me tell you how you inspired me. So, folks listening, I have to say, you need to go to Vina's instagram. Is it copper canoe woman?
Vina Brown: Yes, copper canoe woman.
Myrna McCallum: Yeah, copper canoe woman. So Vina created these really beautiful loveback earrings. And I was like, oh, my God. And she talked about how I inspired her to design a. These earrings. They're beautiful. You have to go look at them. And when I saw that, I was like, I was thinking, oh, my God. Like, if she has been moved to act, I need to be moved to act too. And how can I do that? So I decided I'm going to do a two day course that is indigenous specific for indigenous people only. To teach them about trauma, to teach them about recognizing it in others, but also recognizing it in. In themselves for the purpose of helping us move through environments, work environments that bring and create toxic stress in us, that have to have, like, that force us to have to navigate, you know, racism that sometimes becomes internalized racism. having to navigate situations where lateral violence is present, having to, you know, just overcome a whole lot of stuff and managing, like, burnout and figuring out our connection to boundaries and. And, you know, if we understand the trauma fragments and fractures and that. That begins in ourselves, I'm hoping that this course is going to inspire those who tend to begin to think about how do they. How do they mend their own fractures and fragmenting, so that they become whole again. How can we become whole again? How do we come back to ourselves and, to create healthier workplaces to protect ourselves, particularly if we work in environments where we don't feel safe, because maybe safety isn't available for us as indigenous people, particularly in colonial environments where we're upholding law and justice, like colonial laws and colonial ideas of justice, if we know that, like, how do we survive that experience in a way that doesn't further harm us? And that's what this course is going to do. So I'm calling it a love back for us. that is focused on indigenous healing and resilience practices for professionals. And we're going to do it in here, in North Van. My buddy Shain gave me his studio for those two days on Squamish Nation. And, yeah, two days. And, I have a sliding scale, so no indigenous professional who wants to take it will be turned away. And, June 24 and 25th. And so for every indigenous professional listening to this, if you want to be part of this love back movement and learn a little bit about this and begin to explore healing, in yourself and recognize trauma and in others so that maybe you could bring a little healing to them. This course is for you. And so I want to thank you Vina because when I saw your earrings, I was like, holy shit, this woman has taken action on something. I said. I need to take action, because I spent a lot of time educating a lot of non indigenous people. But, like, what good is it if I'm not making time to help my own people and help other indigenous people? So thank you for inspiring me.
Vina Brown: Yeah, thank you, Myrna M. You know what? Like, I think the work you do is like, yes, I'm so excited about this course. I already have a few people I'm going to send to it. that are exactly what you're saying. I'm hearing their horror stories of working in toxic work environments and not like. And they've come. They're coming to me, friends and family, and they're like this. And I'm like, it's trauma, you know, and then they're getting re traumatized, and their triggers are coming up. So this is such important work. Amazing. I'm so excited for that. but I also really wanted to just reiterate, if I haven't said it yet, is that the work you're doing of, like, work educating non indigenous people is, like, so important because it creates safer spaces for our people? The more that people from outside our communities understand what happened to us and what happened to our families and our communities, the generations before, the more compassion and empathy that's created to keep us safe so that we can have time and space to heal. And that is so important. So I really want to uplift you and kakhila, you, because that is how you're helping our people, too, is that work is keeping us safer so that we can catch up and do that work and have safe spaces to heal. That if we don't have people around us, allies, that understand and really dug deep to what happened to indigenous people, then we're constantly, like you said, getting re traumatized, re triggered, and just feeling like there's just never enough time or space for us to do that work. And so I think that that's really important. So if you're a non indigenous person, listening and, you know, you know, do some training with Myrna, because she's amazing. And it helps create safety for non indigenous people for to be around us. And we need that more than ever. We need that, empathy and compassion and and, I just want to say, yeah, like, I'm really excited. I feel like, this calling of the earrings, like, I left just. My body was on fire. Like, I was like, I need to get this design out and hopefully this spreads and that our people pick it up, that we're ready for that, right? Like, and land back. Yes, land back. But, you know, Saul said he's like, land back is love back, right? Like that survivor, you mentioned he went to the land to reclaim his love, right? So it's all interconnected. He went there to heal, and it's everything. Ceremony back, land back, children back, language back, everything. And, this part of ourselves, and it's all interconnected, and it's amazing. And I'm so excited that we're finally in this place where I. We're doing this part of the work where we're, like, making ourselves whole again. So thank you for having me on the show, on your podcast.
Myrna McCallum: Oh, my God. Well, thank you. And I'm going to tell you something that I don't think I've ever said, on this podcast before. But, you know, the truth is, the reason I decided to do this work and become this trauma informed lawyer who educates, like, lawyers and police officers and judges and that's my main sort of focal point, you know, my main audience on trauma is because I'm of the view that if I can help these non indigenous people reconnect back to their own humanity, then they're going to treat my people better when my people come into the courtroom, and it really is for my people. And so when I say my people, I mean all native people everywhere, because we're all related, we're all connected. And so, if I can help those white people heal, then they might harm my people less or they might stop harming my people. And that's really the goal. And plus, I want to see all of us heal. I work in a profession that is highly traumatized and traumatizing, and that cycle needs to end because lawyers are experiencing overwhelming rates of, mental health issues, self harming practices, substance abuse. And this is not okay, right? Like, hurt people hurt people. And as long as we're hurting, others are going to be hurt when they come and intersect with our. With our, legal processes and procedures. And so it has to end. It needs to end. We lawyers can be healers, and I want people. People to embrace that. And indigenous people, I think we're natural born healers, and we need to return to that. And having, you know, this love back movement is one of the ways in which we return to our heal, our natural healing abilities.
Vina Brown: For sure. I see. That's like exactly it right there. That's that silicon. It's that cycle, right? We're such a cycle, people. And it's all about the return. It's recycled energy, right? That's what we're on, borrowed time. We're recycling our energy. And what, what we do with this, this time. Like, I loved what you said earlier about, your aunties and doing it for them and he, like, healing yourself for them so that it's, they get healed. I think that goes from the little, the children who never made it home, right? The ones that never made it home and the ones who did, you know, they survived. And I think that that is who we do it for. Like, we get to make, live our lives to the fullest because they didn't. And we're here to do anything but heal. And when we heal, we heal others. We do, you know, like you, you see your family members, your community members struggling and you want to help them, then heal yourself, right? You want to help others. Heal yourself first, right? Because we can't heal help others unless we've helped ourselves. And we know what that feels like to have that, that what it feels like in the body, in the mind and the spirit to come to wholeness. And that's what I always say to folks, like, it's, you know, it's got to start with you. And then, and then it trickles out and it pours out. If you're just filled with so much love, it just can't help but pour out and impact others. And. And that's what this came to be, right? We ended up in the same place, time and space, and there, you know, and then inspiration. And now we have a physical manifestation through earrings. And now this podcast episode. And now you're doing a training and that's how it's done. Folks like that, you know, you have an idea, you have something you want to act on. Like, act on it. You know, there's something you've been contemplating about doing some work. Like, now is the time, right? Like, we, we have this opportunity in this time and space to, to do this work, to fulfill our purpose, to heal. And through that, we, our wildest dreams of our ancestors healing and the next generation's healing will come, will happen. It will. Like, we've lived it. I've experienced it. It's amazing.
Myrna McCallum: Me too. Me too. Absolutely. By now. And oh, my God, as you're talking, I'm just like, oh, my God, I love you. I just love this woman. Love the work you're doing. So tell us, as we come to a close, where can people find you and find your work?
Vina Brown: Okay. Yeah, so I on Instagram, copper canoe woman. We have a website, coppercanoewoman.com, and woman is singular. Copper canoe woman. We, do have a Twitter account. We have a Facebook account. and we will be starting a YouTube account soon. So look out for that within the next month. And, remember the name, rooted resiliency as well. We're working on a website for that, to start that work in the community, which we're already doing. We're just making it more official through this nonprofit, and we'll be doing some fundraisers for that down the line and to continue this good work. So we, Yeah, so that's really. Those are the platforms you can find me. we do have earrings. I do a lot. Like, that's what I love. I love to design, and that's my healing work. Right. And to alleviate some of what you're talking about, like, with. With the non indigenous people. Like, I have this little bit. It started with a chip on my shoulder. It's definitely not that anymore. But it was like I was always hearing these negative things, especially when I first moved to the city, about our people not being beautiful or smart enough or anything. You know, like, I'm just thinking, no wonder my young self developed that. Not enough thinking is because I just. It was always projected that my people and community were never enough. But so I use my art to show them no, like, we're way more than enough. And look at how beautiful our culture is. Look at how beautiful our art is, and look at how beautiful our communities are and our children are. Despite everything we've gone through, we still have this amazing connection to the earth, to each other, and we're still, like, you know, picking up those babies that maybe, you know, like, there's always someone to pick up the babies that get left, you know, where we're fulfilling those areas, and we always do that. We take care of one another still, even through our dysfunction. And so I really want to show that to the world. And I, To our people especially, so that they feel like you can walk into spaces and wear your culture in a contemporary way and be proud. And that's part of the healing work, too. That simple act of just, like, I'm going to wear this physical manifestation of my culture in a way that shows that I'm powerful and that I'm protected and that I'm enough and isn't it beautiful? And, like, you know, like, that's the whole point is, like, to empower our people. That's what the whole brand is about, that divine feminine energy, empowerment, and all people. Doesn't matter. Your gender, all people. And, that's what. That's why I feel like people resonate with my brand a lot is because I'm really real about it. Like, I can't be, you know, it's kind of funny being an indigenous person running a brand, because you're like, I'm like, you know, marketing and stuff, I'm like, I just speak from my heart and my truth, and I share from my heart. And that's what if I'm inspired by something like love back, and I'm going to make that. And so come and check us out. We have great things, and I'm really proud of my team and my family and my partner, and. And I'm, definitely community made. I've been supported by my family and community, and. And I'm really excited about to see how far we can take it, so see what we can do with it.
Myrna McCallum: Amazing. Amazing. Thank you, Vina Brown, for joining me on this episode today. All right, that's my episode for today. I hope you enjoyed Vina. she's a forest, and I love her. I am so happy to be podcasting. I've missed just putting stuff out there for you. I really have. I want to say a, huge thank you to Jennifer Young, who has joined me and become my business partner. We go way back. we went to law school together, and I trust her, and it's so nice to have someone take care of me. so I could just do what I do. And I know that someone's taking care of all the things that need taking care of, and in that way, she takes care of me. So, like, we're gonna be a force, and we're gonna build something. Like, this is the beginning of the empire. So lots of love to Jen and lots, of love to. To you for supporting my podcast, for listening, for subscribing, for sharing it with folks. thank you so much. If you want to continue to support me by leaving me a tip, go to ko-fi.com, thetraumainformlawyer, and you can leave me a tip there. I think that's it. You're the best. You can find me on instagram, twitter, and LinkedIn. If you have have any feedback, any questions, any thoughts, you can leave them there. And until then, may the fourth be with you. This episode was recorded on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Tsleil-Waututh people.