HEALING IS POSSIBLE
This work exists to advance understanding of Colonial Trauma Healing, Cultural Wellness, Indigenous Thriving. Here you will find a relational, Indigenous and sociocultural approach to healing, research, clinical practice and education. Through psychoeducation, clinical counselling, writing, workshops, speaking, research translation, and media engagement, the aims are to make complex ideas about Colonial Trauma Healing understandable, practical, and hopeful, while honouring the diversity of Indigenous peoples, cultures, communities, and healing pathways.
Cultural Wellness can be reclaimed.
Grounded in Indigenous knowledge, lived experience, clinical counselling, social science, and doctoral research, the purpose of this platform is to explore how colonization has affected wellness, identity, culture, relationships, and all one’s relations, while refusing to place the burden and predictable and intentional outcomes off colonization on Indigenous peoples, and place it more correctly on colonization itself.
Therefore, it is “colonial trauma”, not “Indigenous trauma”.
Weyt-kp xwexwéytep
Shawna Biron ren skwekwst te re st̓7é7kwen Adams Lake Indian Band.
My name is Dr. Shawna Biron. My work is rooted in two streams, therapy and more broadly Indigenous health, mental wellness, and decolonization. Over the past decade, I have worked across mental health, health care, Indigenous wellness, leadership, operations, and therapeutic practice in both the public and private sectors.
Dr. Shawna Biron, BBA, MA, MACP, RCC #12956, DScoSci
Dissertation
Inspiration for Healing and Reclaiming Cultural Wellness and the Spirit of Indigeneity in a Colonial “Canadian” Context
by SHAWNA BIRON
Abstract
Colonization has profoundly disrupted Indigenous people; it affects a person’s wellness, culture, traditions, governance, families, health, lands, and all one’s relations. While there is a plethora of research focused on decolonization, limited research features personal decolonization in contemporary life to achieve wellness and Indigeneity.
Health and Wellness Consulting
Shawna’s Wellness Consultation Services brings First Nations wellness support to you organization, nation, or community. Shawna can advance wellness projects through technical writing and innovative developmental work from a holistic wellness paradigm. Her service orientation is from a community development and strength-based approach that focuses on capacity building and developing sustainable relationships. Shawna can lead or support diverse health administrative projects and files including, health governance, mental wellness, primary care, and systemic health themes in advising, proposal writing, program model design, strategic and policy development, and health legislation.
Equine Therapy
Shawna uses horses to facilitate healing. Her equine facilitation practice is grounded in a strength-based, experiential approach that fosters self-awareness, builds on individual and collective capacity, and supports meaningful, sustainable change. Shawna can lead or support equine-facilitated experiences focused on personal growth, communication, leadership, confidence, and relationship development, creating opportunities for participants to explore new perspectives, recognize existing strengths, and develop practical insights that carry into their everyday lives.
