The Arbutus Review • 2020 • Vol. 11, No. 1 Special Issue on Indigenous Wellness •
https://doi.org/10.18357/tar111202019685

Letter from the Indigenous Guest Editor

Chokma, Readers,

I write this letter of introduction while in my community, the Chickasaw Nation, in what is now
southcentral Oklahoma, US. I begin by acknowledging my connection to place in my ancestral language
of Chikashshanompa': Aba'Bínni'li'at yaakni'yappa ikbittook. Yakkookay imanhili. I am the Indigenous
Guest Editor for this issue of The Arbutus Review and a postdoctoral fellow for the NEȾOLṈEW̱ “one
mind, one people” Indigenous Language Research Project at the University of Victoria. I join with The
Arbutus Review and the Indigenous Mentorship Network of the Pacific Northwest (IMN-PN) in acknowl-
edging with respect the Lekwungen peoples on whose traditional territory the University of Victoria
stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land
continue to this day. I invite you to acknowledge the lands and territories on which you live and work.

This special interdisciplinary issue, focused on Indigenous wellness, is the result of a partnership be-
tween The Arbutus Review and the IMN PN. We welcomed submissions from Indigenous undergraduates
at post-secondary institutions in BC. A guiding principle of this issue was Indigenous mentorship. Under-
graduate writers received feedback from graduate student peer reviewers and also worked closely with
me, as the Indigenous Guest Editor, and Editor Gillian Saunders from The Arbutus Review team.

This Indigenous-led issue is itself unprecedented, and has also come together under unprecedented
circumstances. Our undergraduate authors completed their submissions during an ongoing global pan-
demic and urgent Black Lives Matter movement, white supremacy, and colonization. We stand with the
Indigenous Nations and communities of colour that are being impacted by COVID-19 and with our Black
relatives, including the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others who have lost their lives to
police violence. As we collectively work toward justice, the writers’ theme of wellness is all the more
timely.

We open this issue with a personal narrative by ȻELÁSTENOT (Bonnie Seward) entitled “The Jour-
ney of ȻELÁSTENOT.” From W̱SÁNEĆ Territory and a student in the W̱,SENĆOŦEN IST Language
Revitalization Program at the University of Victoria, ȻELÁSTENOT shares a personal account of recon-
necting to her Indigenous heritage language of SENĆOŦEN. She writes of her family, which is continuing
to heal intergenerational pain inflicted by English-only residential and day schools: “I want each of them
to take back their power through the language.” As this narrative reminds us, learning one’s Indigenous
language is a foundational step toward wellness.

Olivia Ryan-Schmidt, who is of Métis, Irish, Russian, and German ancestry and a social work student
at the University of Victoria, asks university students in helping fields to consider the place of trauma in
their wellness journeys. “The Trauma within Our Knowledge Bundles: Indigenous Helpers Navigating
Trauma within Social Work” suggests that a decolonizing framework positions trauma as an integral
component of a knowledge bundle, which holds medicines, teachings, and what has been learned from
lived experience. Ryan-Schmidt writes, “The more I learn from my trauma, the more I am able to reach
for its teachings within my bundle.”

In the next essay, “The Healing Power of Storytelling: Finding Identity through Narrative,” Seren
Friskie, a student at Douglas College whose relations are Sts’Ailes, Stó:lō, and Cree, explores storytelling
as integral to Indigenous wellness. Friskie recounts the creation of an Indigenous Youth Storytelling Circle

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The Arbutus Review • 2020 • Vol. 11, No. 1 Special Issue on Indigenous Wellness •
https://doi.org/10.18357/tar111202019685

on Coast Salish territories. Through the Storytelling Circle, youth found community and healing. Friskie
writes of the power of gathering youth: “We all shared a journey of gaining knowledge and strengthening
our identities through story.”

Also critical to Indigenous wellbeing is rematriating the power of those who identify as women, girls,
Two-Spirit, and LGBTQQIA+. Madeline Burns, a Métis person from The Red River Settlement and a
student at University of Victoria, explores how the work of an Indigenous burlesque group to reclaim
Indigenous sexuality is an expression of sovereignty and decolonizing practice. The essay entitled, “Re-
claiming Indigenous Sexual Being: Sovereignty and Decolonization Through Sexuality in Vancouver,
B.C.” draws on examples from how performers in the group Virago Nation disrupt damaging stereotypes.
In doing so, Burns writes, Indigenous peoples “are representing our sexualities …in order to heal through
the embodiment of sovereignty.”

In “Let the Land Heal You,” Charlene Menacho also addresses gendered experiences of colonization
and calls for support for those who identify as men in their healing journeys as well. As a Dene woman,
Menacho writes a personal letter to her brothers, addressing experiences of intergenerational trauma for
Dene men in Denendeh, a name meaning “Land of the People” and referring to the Northwest Territories
in the Dene language. Menacho exposes the damaging legacies of colonization on her home community
of Tulita while also offering an inspiring message of resiliency: “Indigenous Peoples …are not the pain
we carry. We are hope, love, resistance, strength, and joy neatly sewn together, like the floral designs on
our moccasins.”

The theme of wellness as intricately connected to relationship to land is carried through the final essay,
“An Urban Cree Finding Place at xʷc̓ic̓əsəm.” Hailey Bird Matheson, a Cree social work student at the
University of British Columbia (UBC), reflects on experiences of learning and strengthening identity at
UBC’s Indigenous Health Research and Education Garden, which is called xʷc̓ic̓əsəm (the place where
we grow) in hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, the language of Musqueam people. Matheson writes, “I have discovered that
a personal sense of self and ceremony in my life is facilitated by the interactions I have with ancestral
medicine and spending time with Elders.”

Also included in this special issue are two poems. In “living in the in-betweens,” Madeline Burns
explores the tensions that arise when one’s identity does not conform to others’ expectations. Similarly,
in “Native enough,” Hailey Bird Matheson questions what it means to be enough as an Indigenous person,
to one’s own people and mainstream society.

The student authors remind us that our healing and wellness journeys are both individual and collective
and entail work to reclaim our ancestral identities, tell our stories, speak our languages, and strengthen
our relationships to land and one another.

Hachinchokma'ni sabanna. I hope you all are well.

Kari A. B. Chew

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