Catherine Richardson Kinewesquao
Catherine Richardson/Kinewesquao, PhD is a Métis scholar and current Director of First Peoples Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. She is a former Associate Professor at the Université de Montréal. Prior to moving to Montreal, Dr. Richardson spent seven years as a Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Victoria. In 2013, she was the Chair of the Indigenous Specializations Program. Dr. Richardson is a co-founder of the Centre for Response-Based Practice, an organization dedicated to helping people recover from violence. She is a family therapist and received her Ph.D. in the School of Child and Youth Care in Victoria, British Columbia. In addition to this edited book, Dr. Richardson has authored, Belonging Métis (2016) and co-edited Calling Our Families Home: Métis Peoples’ Experiences with Child Welfare (2017) and Speaking the Wisdom of Our Time (2020).
Books (1)
Synopsis:
Nowhere in the texts on counselling, recovery, or lifespan development does it make links between well-being and not having your land stolen. When an entire people are generally portrayed as mentally ill, because that is, of course, what it means to have a diagnosis of clinical depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder, it is easy for the State to view these people as unfit to manage their lives. Then, all sorts of functions are performed on Indigenous families that are tantamount to victim-blaming formulations that, in the end, deny opportunities associated with full citizenship.
The author goes beyond offering social analysis, and possible pathways toward healing, and shares her own experience as an Indigenous woman with Metis, Cree and Gwichin heritage. She talks about her approach to a second cancer diagnosis, and explores the way she characterized her experience of chemotherapy and radiation in a way that cast the journey as personal and heroic, rather than merely medical and out of her control.
One of the main contributions of this book is a discussion of how mainstream counselling and the helping professions have overlooked important facts about oppression, including the reminder from Gloria Steinem that the personal is political.
Additional Information
135 Pages | 6” x 9” | Paperback
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