Obtain an education in cultural humility, Indigenous history, systemic racism and other injustices which continue to challenge Indigenous people before taking up the work of advancing their rights, adjudicating their claims or policing within their Nations. This short episode serves as your starting point.
This episode provides guidance and advice for working with Indigenous people whether as a lawyer, judge or police officer. It also introduces you to the concept of cultural humility with the hope that you will practice humility as you commit to the hard work of transforming our justice system from one of "deliberate destruction" to one of fairness, equal representation and healing.
Episode 5: “Indigenous Intergenerational Trauma” Published: June 28, 2020
Episode Description: This episode provides guidance and advice for working with Indigenous people whether as a lawyer, judge or police officer. It also introduces you to the concept of cultural humility with the hope that you will practice humility as you commit to the hard work of transforming our justice system from one of “deliberate destruction” to one of fairness, equal representation and healing.
Find Myrna on LinkedIn or Twitter or contact her at myrna@miyopimatisiwin.ca.
Listen to the Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast.
MYRNA MCCALLUM: I’m Myrna McCallum, Métis-Cree lawyer, and passionate promoter of trauma-informed lawyering. Welcome to my new podcast, the Trauma-Informed Lawyer brought to you in partnership with the Canadian Bar Association.
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, challenging you to critically reflect on your personal behaviours, 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. This podcast comes to you from the traditional, unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh [Squamish], səl̓ilwətaɁɬ [Tsleil-Waututh], and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm [Musqueam] people.
Welcome back everyone, to the Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast. I’m going to be talking about the Indigenous experience within the courts and with lawyers generally. It’s kind of a heavy topic. I also want to say, before we get into it, thank you so much for coming back and for listening and for supporting the work that I’m doing. I’ve received several messages from various listeners, and you know, it just blows me away. It humbles me. So, thank you so much for your feedback and for your support. I also want to say welcome to my listeners or subscribers in the UK and Australia and New Zealand and the Netherlands. It totally blows my mind that people are listening to me in those parts of the world. So, thank you for subscribing!
I’d say today’s conversation would mirror some of the history of the Maori and Aborigines in New Zealand and Australia and what we have in common as Indigenous People or the original peoples of these lands is that we’ve all experienced colonization. The effects of which are very similar. First, I want to say that I am incredibly grateful to all of the Indigenous people that I’ve encountered, whether it was in the courtroom when I was a prosecutor, or in the hearing room as an adjudicator. It’s really Indigenous people who have taught me how to become a trauma-informed lawyer.They taught me the importance of cultural humility and understanding why my approach and my perspective needed to change. And deciding to hold true to maybe what I was taught in law school was doing more harm than good. To them I raise my hands because I am incredibly and profoundly grateful.
I want to begin by just saying that I have encountered many lawyers who have done really good and profoundly positive work with Indigenous people. To them I really appreciate the work that you’ve done and the approach and the heart that you bring to advocacy. I’ve also observed some lawyers who have not done good work with Indigenous people, who’ve walked into a community hall to talk about the Indian Day School Process in a way where they brought their, to quote Gabor, “fancy articulation” and an air of superiority with them. Clearly no self-awareness, no understanding of who their audience is, no willingness to read the room, so-to-speak. I just thought, what a profound disservice this lawyer is doing to these people sitting here, these Elders who don’t even understand what he is saying and cannot connect it to their lived experience. It’s really in observing him and having observed others who brought a similar approach to their engagement with Indigenous people that really got me thinking that lawyers and judges who work in largely Indigenous communities or work in the area in Indigenous rights or tend to work with Indigenous people in the criminal justice system, you’re going to see a lot of Indigenous People in the courts. This episode really is for you. There are some things you really need to know. There are changes that you need to make, so let me just offer up my perspective, my understanding, and my own lived experience to help guide you in a better direction.
So what you need to know, first and foremost, is when Indigenous people show up within systems and they appear quite resistant or suspicious or angry, well, the root of that is fear. And they have fear for good reason. Lawyers, the courts, the police, those are all agents of oppression really. I mean, if you look at the history of Indigenous people in terms of how they were treated by the courts, or how they were treated by police and lawyers, they have good reason to be afraid. Usually when those players show up, it means a loss for them. So it’s a loss of land, a loss of home, a loss of community, a loss of freedom, a loss of children. That is the real reality, the real lived experience of Indigenous people. Not just historically, but today. So if you’re going to work with Indigenous people, or in Indigenous communities, get an education in the history of Indigenous people particularly those Indigenous people on whose territory you are living and working.
You need to read about the Indian Act and how it has imposed so many restrictions on the lives of status Indians across the country, how it has confined us to reserves and even prohibited us from being able to become lawyers or obtain legal counsel up until 1951. Read the Indian Act. Understand how we were held back. Find out about what residential schools operated in the area or territory that you live and work in. Find out how Indigenous people are facing the challenges that they face individually and collectively. How are the overcoming? How are they thriving? How are they fighting? Understand what the history has been, what their relationships have been with these authorities and what the relationship is today. How it got that way. How their healing, and resisting, and overcoming. Because, you know, Indigenous People… we’re not victims. We’re not mere survivors. We’re also overcomers and were thrivers, and we’re healing. Have a really broad look at how we were taken down and how we are rising.
I think most people know that Indian Residential Schools were profoundly destructive when it came to Indigenous People’s cultures and communities. Did you know that the last Residential School closed in my home province of Saskatchewan in 1996? I went to Residential School, my brother who is four years younger than me went to Residential School. You’re going to encounter people who went to Residential School and have experience direct traumas, intergenerational traumas, because these schools existed for so long. So Residential Schools have impacted Indigenous People and communities in so many ways.
And if you haven’t yet made the connection between the impacts and that lived experience let me try to help you a little bit. The Government, the churches, and the RCMP worked together to kidnap Indigenous children from their communities. Now, most Indigenous People, their cultures, their kinship ties, their traditions, everything is so tightly inter-connected to parenting and relationship, and having a role as a grandparent, a parent, a child. When that’s disrupted and disconnected, what do you think is going to happen? Suddenly your community that is thriving with children and grandparents who are teaching and healing and guiding suddenly, there is no more children. So, who is to teach, who is to love, who is to guide? Can you imagine the hole that that leaves in the hearts of those grandparents and those parents? And there is no one left to love.
Imagine what happens to those children when they are no in a foreign environment, and they are not safe. They are subject to unspeakable cruelties and they don’t understand what is happening to them and why their parents and their grandparents are not there for them. I mean, the damage that that causes has had quite the ripple effect, and we feel it today. We see it today. You know, in the child welfare system, you see Indigenous parents struggling to parent. Why, because they never had one. In the educational system you see Indigenous Peoples sometimes having the inability to problem solve. There is a direct connect to Residential Schools there.
Another example is addictions and self-harm.That is an inability to cope with emotional and mental disturbance. Intimate partner violence, an inability to form healthy relationships. In the criminal justice system, there is an inability to make good decisions that is seen all the time. Of course, an inability to love, which fuels it all while generating crisis and chaos. Those are just some of the effects that I’ve observed, I mean there is so many out there. I raise those things as examples so that when you are seeing Indigenous People embroiled and trapped in the criminal justice system and you’re thinking ‘man, why can’t these people just stop offending?’ or stop drinking, or stop giving up their kids, or stop dropping out of school. Or stop killing themselves.
Maybe what you actually need to be asking is what happened to them that brought them to this point. I mean that also, that questions echoes what Gabor said in an earlier episode, it’s not what’s wrong with you, it’s what’s happened to you? And I think that as justice participants, you all need to ask that question when encountering people who are trapped in these systems. What happened to you? And the answer you might receive could change your entire world.
When I deliver training to folks, I always have to talk about Justice Langston, and a sentencing decision of his. Justice Langston was an Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Judge, he’s retired, I think he retired in 2018. But he said something in sentencing Barbara Holmes for manslaughter that I’ve never heard a judge say, and honestly the first time I read his words I cried. If more judges would state the same obvious historical events that have led Indigenous People to the courtrooms that they find themselves in today, the whole justice system would have to transform itself. Relationships between judges, lawyers, police, and Indigenous People would have to change. So, I’m just going to quote a little bit of what he said. He said:
“This is an Aboriginal offender. She is in a system which is imposed upon Aboriginal peoples and I use that word deliberately. Our history in relation to Aboriginal people is one of deliberate destruction. We have systematically destroyed their culture, their way of living. We have done everything we can to take from them their sense of spirituality, identity. I’m not saying anything new. You can look in the volumes of reports and studies that have been done on Aboriginal peoples for decades. Those reports are gathering dust in libraries and parliament buildings.”
He goes on to say:
“Aboriginal peoples are entitled to a sense of dignity when they come into our courts. They are entitled to a recognition of their history and their culture. You can’t talk about those two things without a notional recognition of their spirituality.”
He adds:
“There is a fundamental disconnect between the Aboriginal view of justice and the system I am a part of.”
So, in case any members of the RCMP, or Brenda herself is listening, I think that in a nutshell captures what systemic racism is. How it looks, how it plays out. Deliberate destruction. That has been the Indigenous experience, at the hands of the police and the Court. And sometimes at the hands of the lawyers themselves who are supposed to be advocating and helping Indigenous Peoples. There is so much I can say about Justice Langston’s words, but I’m just going to leave it there for you to sit with and think about. Think about how his words are a call to action for judges and for courts all across this country to do better. To be better, to transform and look at how they are complicit in upholding a racist system that in the words of Ivan Zinger of Corrections Canada, that has led to the Indigenization of Canadian prisons.
How have you played a part in that? What system do you uphold? There are things you need to think about, we all need to think about. I think about these things and I’m an Indigenous lawyer. I think about this all the time, what am I upholding? Why and I upholding systems that I don’t necessarily believe in. I would also say that Justice Langston’s observations and truth-telling and call to action is also a very clear demonstration of a man who has developed cultural humility. I know that language is probably pretty foreign for some, and I’m going to do my best to help define it and distinguish it for you from cultural competence.
As I’ve come to understand it, cultural competence is really about promoting this idea that we can become experts in the cultures of other people. Which, I kind of think that is so whack and offensive, like really? I’m going to be an expert in your culture, I don’t think so! Cultural humility, however, is a recognition that you can never be the expert in someone else’s’ culture, that they are the experts in their culture, and you will always be the student. You will always be the learning; the learning never ends. It’s like, a lifelong process. And how do you develop cultural humility? Through listening, through building partnerships with Indigenous communities, Nations, leadership, by walking into a community with the understanding that you are there to learn. Cultural humility requires a willingness to openly talk about cultural differences, misunderstandings, a history of deliberate destruction. You can’t get over something, you can’t transform something, without identifying it first. Name it. Confront it. And then transform it.
Cultural humility is going to challenge you to confront your biases, to reflect on what you think you know, and what the source of your knowledge is about Indigenous People. It’s also going to call on you to change the way you ask questions. To ask open-ended questions, to thoughtfully listen. To get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s critical to recognize and respect the unique histories of Indigenous Peoples, and the traumas they have experienced at the hands of the state, the church, and the police. And yeah, by extension, the courts. You want to avoid re-traumatizing and re-victimizing Indigenous People. The pathway to doing that is cultural humility. I like to say if trauma-informed practice is the left hand, cultural humility is the right hand. Those things go together. What is my call to action for you? Know your client. Earn their trust. Leave your sense of entitlement behind. Acknowledge your privilege. Be humble when you walk into a room. Practice humility.
Remember, in an earlier episode I talked about self-awareness. Well, become self-aware! It’s really simple. The things that you can do to transform the way you engage with Indigenous People, the way you come on to their territories and into their communities, leave behind any sense of superiority. Adopt a practice of humility. Be prepared to learn. Be prepared to be uncomfortable. Be prepared to be patient. Be prepared to be silent. Leave behind your fancy articulation, and along with it your fancy suit and your fancy bag.
I also want to just comment on Gladue Report writers. You know, my hands go up to Gladue Report writers across this country. I know the kinds of traumatic stories that you are hearing as you are compiling these reports for the courts. I know the pain and the sorrow and the fear and the anger that you are exposing yourself to as a result of getting as much information about an offender as possible. I just want to say, thank you all for doing the work that you’re doing. It takes tremendous courage and bravery to be able to confront the lived experiences of Indigenous People who are in the courts. It’s all pain, it’s all shame, it’s all hardship. It’s sorrow and sexual abuse. Abandonment, drug abuse and addictions of all sorts. So I hope that you are all taking care of yourself while you do the work that you’re doing, so you can continue to do this work for the long haul.
There is so much more that I would like to share about how to work with Indigenous People, that recognizes and accommodates and respects trauma. Unfortunately, we’re running out of time today. Thanks for listening to today’s episode. I’d love to know what you think. You know you can find me at @legaltrauma on Twitter, as well as The Trauma Informed Lawyer on Instagram. Of course, you can always find me on LinkedIn. Next time we come back I’m going to have an interview to share with you that I did with Chris Howarth who is a former police officer in the UK who is delivering quite a bit of training to police on trauma-informed policing. I thought this is such an opportune… an excellent time to talk about policing, but more importantly trauma-informed policing and the difference that that makes, not just to the public but to the police force themselves. So, I hope that you will come back and listen to that interview, it was quite informative.
Today I’m going to just leave you with a recording by Leonard Sumner. He recorded a piece called “I Know Your Sorry” and I think everybody should listen to this Anishinaabe artist. His words are profound. I hope you enjoy.