Kerrie Moore is integrative psychotherapist who lives in Calgary, but has roots in Saskatchewan. (University of Calgary)

By Derek Cornet

seminars

Elder specializing in intergenerational trauma and healing coming to La Ronge

Aug 17, 2021 | 5:00 PM

A Cree/Métis Elder and psychotherapist who specializes in intergenerational trauma and integrative healing will be in La Ronge next month for two seminars.

Kerrie Moore, originally from Prince Albert, will be talking about the epigenetic passage of trauma from one generation to another. She explained Indigenous Peoples are whole beings who build relationships with everything around them, and that they carry the trauma in their own lives and their ancestors.

“We still carry memories and behaviours of our ancestors and, for that reason, we often have a lot of blame and shame, anger, anxiety, depression, intolerance,” Moore said. “All of those pieces are coming from trauma.”

When the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools became public, Moore said many Indigenous Peoples went into deep grief called disenfranchised grief because for so long society wouldn’t believe the unmarked graves were there.

With it out in the open now, she mentioned people can begin to heal the grief of their ancestors, so they don’t pass it down to the next generation.

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“I am going to be talking about what happened, how do we heal that trauma of our ancestors, how do we face that grief and heal that without having to go through a lot of counselling and things we have been doing in the past,” Moore said. “I’m going to really give a process of what happened and how we begin to heal and how we do that.”

The seminars are organized by Roots of Hope and Saskatchewan Health Authority. (Facebook/La Ronge and Area Roots of Hope)

Moore also noted she will be talking about the spirit and how Indigenous Peoples were disconnected from that through colonization. She said all beings, including plants and animals, have a spirit where values such as kindness, love and respect are kept.

Through colonization, language, culture and ways of knowing were lost, but so did the sense of feeling. Moore said emotions are the antibiotics from the Creator and people need to know how to feel before they can heal.

“Our head plays tricks on us, our heart plays tricks on us, our body plays tricks on us, but our spirit never plays tricks on us. That’s who we are,” she said. “We are the values we carry, not the behaviours. When you see anger, anxiety and depression in our families and within us, that’s not normal behaviour. That’s trauma behaviour.”

Moore will lead two seminars Sept. 2 at Jonas Roberts Memorial Community Centre. The first is for professionals from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and the second is for community members from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Residents can register by following directions on the poster above.

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derek.cornet@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @saskjourno