Creating a connection with the land

Editor's note: The following article adopts a modified oral history approach to tell the story of four days on the land, the first four days of the Faculty of Social Work’s Centering Indigenous Knowledge course.

It’s beautiful September morning at the Ann and Sandy Cross Conservation Area on the southwest edge of the Mohkinstsis. A brisk wind ripples through the knee-high grass, while high overhead a hawk effortlessly rides the thermals and eddies of a perfect Alberta, blue-sky day. 

The morning chill, a reminder that winter is not far off, has faded, giving way to the warmth of the sun who seems reluctant to leave summer behind. On a grassy hillock, next to a tipi, a group of University of Calgary social work students listens intently to the teachings of Elder Charlotte Yellow Horn Macleod. 

The gathering is part of UCalgary Social Work’s new Indigenous Ways of Knowing in Leadership Graduate Certificate. The cohort’s opening course, Centering Indigenous Knowledge, begins not in a classroom, but on the land itself. It’s a historic moment for the faculty, and the first time any social work program at UCalgary has started with four full days of land-based learning, guided by Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and Elders from Treaty 7 and beyond.

It's been a long time coming and, for many students, faculty and Elders involved, it feels like something long overdue.  

Honouring Indigenous Ways of Knowing 

For Dr. Terry Poucette, PhD, associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work and director of Kiipitakyoyis (Grandmother's Lodge), beginning the certificate with four days on the land is fundamental to the program’s purpose.

“Today we’re here because of the Faculty of Social Work’s brand-new certificate which begins with four days of land-based learning,” says Poucette, who is a member of the Goodstoney First Nation, one of the Stoney Nakoda Nations. “To really get a sense of the knowledge that Indigenous people get from the land and from nature and Mother Earth.”

The four-day land-based learning features teachings by Stoney-Nakoda, Blackfoot, Tsuut'ina and Métis Nation Elders to ensure that students are exposed to a diversity of Indigenous world views. 

For Poucette, this approach helps students learn about diverse Indigenous teachings and healing practices that come from the land and prepares them to better support the Indigenous people they work with now and in the future.

“We need to realize that there’s more than one way of knowing,” she says. “Often the Western ways of knowing dominate, and the Indigenous ways of knowing have been marginalized. 

"It’s important for social work students to understand Indigenous ways of knowing, because many of the clients that they’re going to be working with will be Indigenous people.”

One of Poucette’s roles within the faculty is to help lead the creation of an Indigenous strategy, that extends ii’ taa’poh’to’p, Calgary’s Indigenous Strategy, to social work. She says the new certificate is a crucial part of the faculty’s broader commitments to decolonize the faculty and, by extension, the social work profession, and the university's Indigenous Strategy.

“It allows the Faculty of Social Work to honour its commitment to decolonization and to do some genuine reconciliation as opposed to performative reconciliation,” she says. “I think that it’s a more authentic way of engaging in Truth and Reconciliation.

“It’s historic that this is the first time that the Faculty of Social Work has delivered land-based learning. It’s a really awesome way to start an academic program.” 

“We are finally seeing it come to life”

For Deandra Neufeld, BSW’05, MSW, RSW, who works as the lodge advisor with Kiipitakyoyis, watching the program launch has been deeply moving.

“It’s really hard to explain,” says Neufeld, who is Mohawk, Turtle Clan from the Six Nations of the Grand River on her mother’s side, and has German settler ancestry on her father's side. 

“First of all, I’m just so grateful to see this course come to fruition,” she says. “I’m so grateful to see our thoughts, ideas and our knowledges coming alive here, and seeing it all happen on the land.”

The land-based course was created by a Working Circle, which included Elder Kerrie Moore, BSW’03, MSW’04, Hon. LLD’24; Elder Leona Carter; Dr. Jennifer Hewson, PhD; Dr. Jennifer Markides, MEd’13, PhD’20; Dr. Jacqueline Warrell, MEd’09, PhD’16; and Neufeld, who says her feeling of gratitude comes from watching the students thrive through the experience, making the Circle’s hard work so worthwhile.

“To see our students now connecting and understanding why land-based learning is important — well, it’s been very humbling and I’m full of gratitude,” says Neufeld.

“I think that the students came here not knowing what to expect. But from what I've heard, everyone is feeling really connected to each other, to Mother Earth and understanding a bit more about how this learning is so important for social work. I've heard a lot of people saying, ‘This is exactly what my spirit needed. This is exactly what I needed this week.’ They're very, very grateful.”

The experience also reinforces how essential it is that social work education include Indigenous worldviews, Neufeld adds.

“We have our own ways of knowing, our own ways of healing, our own traditions, our own medicines, our own ways of being helpers," she says. "I was always taught that we don’t call ourselves social workers; we call ourselves 'helpers' in our community.

“We have so many natural, healing methods that aren't always taught in social work, in the Western curriculum. I think it's important when students go out and are working with an Indigenous person or family, that they know that Indigenous person comes from a long history of ancestral knowledge … with healing ways with our own medicines … and Indigenous people have always had their own ways of helping in their community that, because of colonization, have been lost."

“Nature is our first teacher”

On the day of our visit, the third day of the course, Blackfoot Elder Charlotte Yellow Horn McLeod sits with students as they paint stones they selected from the land. 

Her teaching shows how stones, the grandfathers and grandmothers, hold deep knowledge and stories of the land and how they can help people who find it difficult to speak find a way to communicate. 

“In the Indigenous world, everything has a spirit … the rocks have a spirit, the grass has a spirit,” she says. 

“We also forget that the origins of everything we eat and drink are from Mother Earth.”

Painting the stones becomes a way of touching and voicing emotion without forcing it into words. She shares the story of a youth who painted a rock black for anger, then added red for healing, yellow for hope and white for the good things slowly returning to his life.

“He wouldn’t talk about his feelings,” Yellow Horn McLeod says. “But, by painting the rock, it became a way to describe how he was feeling inside.” 

As a social worker and former probation officer, she has seen first-hand how land-based practices can restore balance.

“I think the connection to the land is so important as a social worker … the land can be a part of healing and a part of change,” Yellow Horn McLeod says, adding that the other important part of the course is to remind the social workers themselves about the importance of getting onto the land. 

“You go into social work because you want to help,” she says.

“But, you know what? You’ve got to fill your gas tank along the way. I’ve been in social work and been burnt out. You give and give and give, and you’re exhausted when you come home. You’re not the same person walking in nature as when you walk out, because of the way nature makes you feel.”

Yellow Horn Mcleod looks appreciatively at the group of students chatting by the tipi and shook her head.

“This is a dream come true," she says. "I remember in 1981, I was at a conference in Lethbridge, and they had these two detectives from Chicago who got up and started telling Native jokes. In Lethbridge, there’s a lot of racism. There are people that go around just to beat up Indigenous people. And you know that’s still in our day.

“When I was young, the racism was so bad, I wondered if our day would ever come. You know, when is it going to be our day? When are we going to be able to share the information and share the value of who we are with everybody else, and have everybody value that? Well, you know what? It’s today.”

Student voices: a transformational experience

Just three days in, many of students were already speaking about the connecting energy of the course. In fact, Amanda Mavin, BSW’18, describes the experience as nothing short of transformative learning.

“In social work, we talk a lot about putting theory into practice. And I really think this course has helped me make that connection of what theory looks like and where it comes from,” she says. 

“A lot of the things we’ve been learning are almost bigger than you can comprehend in your mind. I am who I am in relation to where I am … my environment.”

While everything Mavin learned had an impact, she says one Elder’s teaching, focused on rites of passage, stayed with her.

“The Elder yesterday was saying that they teach their sons to break a horse before they become a man. And I was thinking about it at home," she says. "It’s not that they are teaching their sons to break the horse; what they’re teaching them is patience and communication. That translated into how I was raising my kids, because my kids are my horse.”

For Peggy Nepoose, BSW’15, RSW, returning to UCalgary felt like coming full circle for the Cree student, who originally studied at the faculty’s Edmonton campus. 

After more than a decade away, Nepoose felt ready to pursue her Master of Social Work, and the faculty’s graduate certificates provided her with the flexibility she needed as a parent.

She was thrilled to find a certificate that was rooted in Indigenous knowledge.

“When I first started with UCalgary Social Work, we didn’t have this opportunity," Nepoose says. "In 2015, we didn’t even have a place to smudge at the Edmonton campus. So, just having that access to culture and starting off your program on the land — which is Indigenous leadership — It talks and it gives that. It’s walking your talk.”

Holding up her painted heart-shaped stone, Nepoose smiles: “I lead with my heart. And I fully believe in order for us — as Indigenous people — to help not just ourselves but our communities, we have to lead with our heart.”

Walking in their footsteps 

Métis Cree student Jordan Joseph, BSW’19, RSW, says the experience has been deeply grounding and reconnecting.

“It reminds us how to reconnect with ourselves and with our spirits, and most importantly to the land,” she says. “We’ve learned a lot about different kinds of relationships … how everything is so interconnected.”

Joseph already holds a Bachelor of Social Work from UCalgary and also chose the new certificate as a pathway to pursue her master's. She explains that her original decision to become a social worker began with the example set by her grandmother.

“My grandmother, my kokum … went on to become an Elder in her community,” she says. 

“I largely walk in her footsteps. She’s a big reason why I entered into this field to become a helper.”

Joseph says the certificate provided a way to return to Indigenous teachings she didn’t always see reflected in post-secondary education.

“Being a helper isn’t necessarily about being a social worker — it’s about being a helper,” she says. “So, we can learn how to work again together, and how we can learn how to serve another?”

A new path forward for social work education 

It’s a fitting time to mark this extraordinary new program, since this week the Office of the Vice-Provost (Indigenous Engagement) will commemorate eight years since launching ii’ taa’poh’to’p. 

The Nov. 26 event included stories from UCalgary staff and faculty in support of the strategy’s visionary circles: Ways of Knowing, Ways of Doing, Ways of Connecting and Ways of Being.

Social Work’s new Indigenous Ways of Knowing in Leadership graduate certificate is another powerful example of this alignment and support in action with four courses that speak to the visionary circles: Centering Indigenous Knowledge, Legacies of Colonization, Relational Healing Practices, and Shifting Indigenous Leadership Perspectives.

Students take one course at a time; a model designed for working professionals and caregivers. But the spirit of the certificate is more than curriculum.

It is ceremony.

It is relationship.

It is reclamation.

It is future-building.

Looking across the distant hill with the breeze against her face, Poucette pauses. “I think it’s historic that this is the first time the Faculty of Social Work has delivered land-based learning,” she says. “This course is about decolonizing education and getting back to Indigenous ways of knowing, being, doing and connecting.”

For her part, Elder Yellow Horn smiles at the question of what she hopes students take away from the course.

“I really think the connection to the land is so important as a social worker … the land can be a part of healing and a part of change,” she says, gesturing to the rolling hills. “Everything has a spirit … the rocks have a spirit. Our future depends on our relationship to the land because it sustains us.”