The Return of the Buffalo Podcast

Marina Coates: ”The Grounding of Being on the Land”

Marina Coates is one of the moms who joined the Return of the Buffalo community in the summer of 2018. Her infectious delight in her young son was immediately noticeable, as was the way she and her whole family came home to their best selves when they were on the land together at Sandy-Saulteaux. Marina reminds us how the sweat ceremony and time on the land are simple and central practices for Indigenous wellness and healing. Her story also reflects a reality that is known to many who are recovering their sobriety: Often when the sobriety journey is undertaken by two partners, it can be hard for the pair to keep pace with each other. When do you wait for a partner to catch up, and when do you know that it is time to move ahead on your own? Marina shares some hard-won wisdom that will speak to many.

Rachael White-Simard: Blue-Eyed Métis

Rachael White-Simard says she was always a curious girl growing up, asking a lot of questions, looking in a lot of corners where her mother didn't always want her to look. Although her last name was literally "White," there were parts of her family tree that weren't white at all. With her blue eyes and fair complexion, Rachael easily passes as white, but as the years passed she kept digging for her roots, and found out more about her hidden Indigenous ancestry and came to this part of her identity. When she was a helper in the Return of the Buffalo retreats, she received a spirit name that echoed her journey of emergence: Turtle Woman Coming Out. In this interview, Rachael shares some memories from the Return of the Buffalo retreats and talks about a life as a helper who continually is moving in the tensions between different worlds and worldviews.

Patricia Vickers: Where the Return of the Buffalo Began...

Patricia June Vickers [https://www.patriciajunevickers.com/] was "born into complexity—the heritage of a missionary mother who went to teach in the village of Gitxaala where she married an Indigenous fisherman." Patricia says of her family inheritance that it was "not only a playing-out of oppression, but also an invitation to creative possibility." Patricia has paid attention to healing possibilities wherever she has found them, from the Eucharist to the Sweatlodge to Neurofeedback therapy. All of these have come together in Patricia's recovery from her own trauma of childhood sexual abuse, and in her accompaniment of others on their healing journeys. When she was Keeper of the Learning Circle in 2014, Patricia planted the seed of Indigenous family healing work at Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre that has grown into the Return of the Buffalo Indigenous Family Well-Being Initiative. She has gone on to become an internationally respected leader in the field of trauma research and programming, specifically for Indigenous peoples. Her interdisciplinary doctorate included research into Ts’msyen language (Sm’algyax), and  the transformative aspects of ancestral law. In this episode, Patricia talks about her history with the Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre, and her vision for what is possible for Return of the Buffalo, based on her own experiences with traditional ceremony and cutting edge clinical trauma treatment methods. Links to learn more: * https://www.patriciajunevickers.com/ [https://www.patriciajunevickers.com/] * Patricia mentions her time at The Meadows [https://www.themeadows.com/] Clinic, which has some excellent primers on some of the treatment methods she describes, including Neurofeedback and EMDR. * She also mentions the Deep Brain Reorienting work of Frank Corrigan [https://deepbrainreorienting.com/].

Mitch Bourbonniere: Bringing back the village

It is said that the Inuit have forty words for snow. Mitch Bourbonniere would like to have forty words for love to explain the kinship approach to healing work that he inherited from his Metis parents and has continued to expand under the guidance of Indigenous elders like Luc Arquette and Margaret Lavalee. Mitch calls his work with vulnerable youth and young adults "Action Therapy." His philosophy of "lateral empathy" gets people helping themselves by helping others. Circumventing the credentialism that keeps many gifted helpers out of roles in community healing work, Mitch has offered mentorship, inspiration and opportunity for a network of Action Therapists who have become a go-to resource for First Nations Child and Family Service agencies in Manitoba, as "uncles and aunties" for youth in care, and more recently, as supports to Indigenous families in preventing apprehensions in the first place.

Stan McKay: The Earth is our Faculty, the Land is our Healer

Stan McKay (Walking Buffalo) is a founding elder of the Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre. His stories and his vision are cherished by our community, and inform much of our work. In this wide-ranging conversation, Stan shares about his happy early childhood in the self-sustaining village of Fisher River, about some traumatic memories of residential school, and about his healing journey back to the lodge of his own people. He highlights the healing power of reconnection with the Earth and challenges us to "forget the imposition of fake wealth and security, and to find community and family and our real sense of being a person on the land."