Land Based Approaches to Healing
Workshop Description:
This one-day, land-based workshop invites participants to reconnect with the land as a source of identity, strength, and healing. Rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems and wellness practices, this experiential and hands-on training explores how meaningful relationships with the land and all living beings support mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing.
Participants will engage in guided land-based activities that model practical approaches for supporting youth, families, and communities in their healing journeys. Through reflection, discussion, and experiential learning, attendees will deepen their understanding of how land, culture, and ceremony are interconnected, and how these relationships strengthen personal identity and belonging.
Grounded in teachings that honour our plant and animal relatives and the medicines they provide, this workshop highlights practices that have sustained Indigenous Peoples since time immemorial. Participants will explore how these teachings can be respectfully integrated into wellness programming in ways that are culturally grounded and trauma-informed.
By the end of the workshop, participants will:
- Understand the connection between land, ceremony, and holistic wellbeing
- Recognize key components of land-based healing approaches
- Identify strategies to support youth in connecting to land as part of their healing journey
This workshop is ideal for educators, youth workers, helpers, and community leaders seeking to deepen their understanding of land-based approaches and incorporate culturally grounded wellness practices into their work.
- Registration Fee: $249 per person
- Max Capacity: 30 persons
- Start Time: 9:00 a.m.
- Facilitators: Chantel St. Germaine, Elder Cheryl Thomson & Sonya Kubrakovich
Dawn Isaac |
Dawn Isaac is Anishinaabe-ikwe from Sagkeeng First Nation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in human Ecology and a Masters degree in applied communications. She has several years of experience in research & training with a focus on intergenerational, developmental, and organizational trauma as well as Indigenous issues in both a historical and current context. She is passionate about promoting a wide-spread understanding of trauma-informed and trauma-responsive services as a best practice approach across multiple sectors. Dawn is also committed to advancing Indigenous knowledge(s), resilience, healing practices, and creating safe spaces, as well as fostering reconciliatory relationship building. Dawn spent more than a decade working as part of an intergenerational team (grandmother-mother-granddaughter) facilitating workshops and healing sessions on intergenerational trauma and resilience. Through this transfer of knowledge, she has been part of an interdisciplinary team developing a Reconciled Healing Model as an overarching clinical framework for organizations in the healing and helping profession. Dawn has also worked closely with Dr. Sandra Bloom, to pilot Creating Presence; a new and innovative clinical approach to transform organizations and foster trauma-resilient practices. |
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Chantel St. Germaine is a proud Indigenous woman who has a great amount of passion for what she does. Chantel brings forward a Bachelor Degree in History, and teaches our youth the importance of Indigenous culture and Culture Identity. Chantel is also a crafter and teaches our youth how to make Ribbon skirts, beading, drums, rattles, traditional foods, attends ceremonies with the youth and so much more. She takes pride in who she is as an Indigenous woman and passes her knowledge and teachings on in a respectable and honest way. Outside Marymound she also carries out cultural workshops for different organizations and enjoys attending ceremonies with her children. |
Location
MM Training Centre, 442 Scotia Street