Workshop Details:
- Day 2
- Full day in 3 sessions
- Room – Vickers 2
- In English with French translation
Description:
This workshop explores how to embed a trauma-informed approach into educational and support service environments, with particular attention to the wellbeing of learners, teachers, and support workers. Drawing on Indigenous perspectives on wellness and relational responsibility, the session will examine what needs to be in place—at both the human and systems level—to respond ethically and effectively when trauma shows up.
Participants will deepen their understanding of trauma responses (including triggers, dissociation, and shutdown), and learn how to prepare for and navigate “hot moments” in classrooms and helping spaces. We will also focus on the impact of vicarious trauma, staff dysregulation, burnout, and high turnover, and explore concrete strategies for building safer, more supportive teams.
Relationship to Community & Collaboration
The goal of these sessions is to understand the impact of trauma within communities and the importance of activating an approach to educational services with this in mind.
Presenters:
Wanda Gabriel, MSW & Pamela Gabriel-Ferland, SW., M.Sc. A
Wanda Gabriel is a citizen of the Kanehsatake/ Kanieke:hake community. Professionally she is a social worker and healing facilitator. With close to 30 years’ experience working with residential school survivors, victims of sexual assault and intergenerational trauma. In this work she has undertaken the management of several projects regarding program development and Implementation. From her own community to various communities in Quebec and across Canada.
She has also provided clinical supervision to various Indigenous agencies in Canada. In the role of assistant professor at McGill university, she has provided teaching and supervision to students at the bachelor and master’s level of social work education. She continues her academic work as an adjunct professor at McGill university school of social work.
She is presently reigniting a social enterprise that began in 2013; A co-founder of a family/social enterprise, Tsi non we tiota’shá;ronte, (Back to the source). The enterprise provides consultation on community wellness, models of prevention, healing models, training and research and program evaluation.
She has received two awards one from McGill university in 2021 awarded the Community building and equity award and in 2023 she was awarded the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec First people award for life achievement.
Pamela Gabriel-Ferland is a member of the Kanien’kehá: ka (Mohawk) Nation of Kanehsatake, where she lives with her husband of 22 years and their two children; a 16-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter. She comes from a diverse cultural heritage, with family roots in the Kanien’kehá: ka Nation, Quebec, and England.
She is a holistic Indigenous practitioner, blending both her traditional and cultural teachings and Indigenous ways of knowing and doing with her Western education and training. She is co-founder of a family-owned social enterprise named Back to the Source /Retour aux Sources/Tsi non we tiota’shá:ronte in Kanehsatake, QC, whose mission is to address and heal the impacts of colonization through group work, professional training, social development, research, knowledge sharing, and creating awareness and partnerships with non-indigenous allies.
She holds three professional licenses, as a social worker, psychotherapist and couple and family therapist, and has been working with Indigenous people and communities for over 20 years, offering a wide variety of services in the areas of social development, education, research and development, psychotherapy, and cultural safety training. She is motivated by her passion and belief in reconciliation, which for her is about establishing and maintaining a relationship of mutual respect and trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people of Canada.
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