A Conversation with LIFE as Medicine — Canadian Art Therapy Association

Art Therapy Conversations is a regular column in Envisage, developed and written by Rebecca Montgomery. We thank Rebecca for her dedication and creativity in facilitating learning and expanding connections between art therapists!

This month, Rebecca had the pleasure of speaking with two members of the leadership team for “LIFE as Medicine: Circle of Indigenous Healing Arts:” Fyre and Jen. The third member of their core team, Jean, has also joined in for the writing of the article. LIFE as Medicine is a Circle of First Nations, Metis and Inuit Creative and Expressive Arts Therapists whose work promotes collaborative relational healing with Indigenous Peoples and communities. This leadership team launched the first-ever Indigenized Art Therapy and Indigenized Expressive Arts diplomas in Canada in 2020, in collaboration with WHEAT (Winnipeg Holistic Expressive Arts Therapy Institute). They are eager to lead the way with LIFE as Medicine for future generations to bring Healing Arts to our communities in ways that honour traditional knowledges, knowledge keepers and land-based practices.

Say hello to Dr. Fyre Jean Graveline. Fyre Jean is a two-spirited resilient survivor, a Métis Grandmother, healer, heARTist, activist, and educator. Fyre specialises in creating a sustainable expressive arts healing practice through an Indigenous, eco-arts-based lens. Working in education and social work for over forty years, Fyre has consistently challenged individuals and organisations to examine their oppressive, eurocentric, patriarchal attitudes and practices. In addition to this, Fyre is the author of Circle Works: Transforming Eurocentric Consciousness (Fernwood, 1998) and Healing Wounded Hearts (Fernwood, 2005). Still emerging is newest book LIFE as Medicine: Creating TransFormative Change. Being a knowledge keeper and community activist, Fyre Jean is an incredibly powerful and grounding person to talk with.

Say hello to Jen Vivian. Jen is of Inuk and European descent, and has developed a model of art therapy using Traditional Indigenous Healing Philosophies, mainly based on the Medicine Wheel (which you can read about here). Originally from Newfoundland, she completed her Masters of Art Therapy at Concordia University in Montreal, and then relocated back to the East Coast, to the rural Cape Breton. In her work with Indigenous communities, she is inspired to call art therapists to support the decolonization of art therapy. She is a conscientious and thoughtful person to talk with. You can learn more about Jen and her work on her website, Grounded Journey Art Therapy.

Rebecca’s narrative in italics below.

Hello Fyre and Jen! Thank you for joining me in conversation. When we all talked over Zoom together, Fyre opened our conversation by burning sage, prayers, acknowledgment, and grounding words. Fyre, could you describe to our readers how you begin conversations like this?

Fyre: Within our LIFE as Medicine practices, we welcome an infusion of Indigenous Spiritual practices in all teaching and healing spaces. We open with Smudging, which is a ceremony for Cleansing our Minds, Spirits, Hearts, Bodies, and shared space that we are in together. This was a challenge at the beginning of COVID and the shift to online teaching and healing sessions, and we, like our Ancestors, have continued to emerge into new forms of practicing very old traditions. We believe that it is very important to take time to land in the space together, to invite our Ancestors to join us, and to set our Intentions for what we are gathering for, as well as how we want to be together: caring and sharing in honest and respectful ways.

Thank you, Fyre. I would love to ask you both a couple of short and sweet questions.

In one word, how are you each feeling right now?

Fyre: Curious.

Jen: Hopeful.

What was the last thing that made you laugh?

Fyre: Last evening, a Grandmother Co-Collaborator called our cell-phone, and as I answered, I talked myself through it out loud. By the time I was on the speaker phone she was giggling so hard that I had to giggle too. We spent 5 minutes getting on the call together laughing at my lack of tech wizardry, on my not-so-new phone.

Jen: My daughter and I were playing on the couch and making silly knock-knock jokes back and forth. Joyous playful laughter of both myself and my daughter.

When we met and spoke for the first time, it was not long after National Truth and Reconciliation Day, Orange Shirt Day. You each shared with me what you had experienced on/around that day—would you be able to share that with our readers?

“The Tobacco offerings at the fire brought more in-depth sharing, where we heard of how meaningful singing and drumming were for both the young singer and her dad, and received appreciations from Indigenous people present who had not spoken of their story within our Settler community before. ”

Fyre: LIFE as Medicine hosted a local Gathering where we invited Indigenous people and Settlers to share songs, poems, thoughts, intentions, and actions. We closed with a Collaborative Mural Co-Creation with participants marking the page with an Orange handprint with thoughts or words reflecting how we can each contribute to Reconciliation in our own ways. What was most inspiring was providing a first-time opportunity for a young Indigenous woman, 11 years-old, to sing the Mi’kmaq Honour Song, with her father on a hand drum they had just made. What was also deeply inspiring and brought hope were the younger Indigenous Peoples and Settlers who spoke their truths and commitments to change, eloquently and energetically. We offered Tobacco ties to everyone who shared, and welcomed everyone to a ceremonial fire when the public event closed. The Tobacco offerings at the fire brought more in-depth sharing, where we heard of how meaningful singing and drumming were for both the young singer and her dad, and received appreciations from Indigenous people present who had not spoken of their story within our Settler community before. Events like these are a tremendous amount of effort, and it was so gratifying to hear from Indigenous peoples in attendance that they had finally attended a TRC event where they actually felt supported and that they had not only educated Settlers, but had also received healing.

Jen: It is really important to me to include my daughter in learning the Truth of so many things, but specifically the Lived Experiences of Indigenous peoples- including her own Ancestors. We consider seven generations ahead when working on our own healing and what we bring into communities. My daughter is five, and on Orange Shirt Day I had asked her if they were being taught at school what Orange Shirt Day was for. She responded that she was told her class was too young. I took the time then and there to talk to her about the stolen and lost children. I made sure that my language was easily understood by her, and we sat, held and rocked with each other while we talked. Indigenous children were her age or younger when taken. When the first 215 children were found, my daughter (then three) and her friend went outside to ring bells and sing lullabies to the “lost children to help them find their way home.” LIFE as Medicine welcomes and will be inclusive of all ages and all stages—from children, youth, adults, and Elders—to all come together and collectively heal, learn, share, play, and create.

“LIFE as Medicine welcomes and will be inclusive of all ages and all stages—from children, youth, adults, and Elders—to all come together and collectively heal, learn, share, play, and create.”

Tell me about LIFE As Medicine!

Fyre and Jen: LIFE as Medicine: Circle of Indigenous Healing Arts has been gathering for the last six months to create a new School, specifically arising to provide healing and educational experiences that value and include all forms of Indigenous Healing Arts. As Indigenous Grandmothers, Artists, and Healers, we are multi-modal and incorporate multi-media in our own arts practices as well as in our ceremonial and ancestral ways. We are all about promoting Healing Arts by, for, and with Indigenous Peoples, and collaboratively supporting the healing and education of our Allies. We are all in this together, and it will take all of us to create the change that needs to happen in our shared world at this very challenging time.

LIFE as Medicine currently encompasses staff training and professional development, as well as hosting educational (including post-secondary training) and healing opportunities for Indigenous and Ally peoples. Simultaneously, we provide trauma-integrating educational opportunities and community based services that address current challenges and resiliencies related to the ongoing colonial legacies arising from Indian Residential Schools, Day Schools, Sixties Scoop, and Climate Catastrophe. We also are aiming to supply scholarships, bursaries, and other forms of financial, academic, and emotional support for Indigenous Peoples seeking training in the Healing Arts. We are still emerging, and are welcoming collaborators to assist with their Gifts, and to share expressions of need to shape our Offerings.

What is the meaning behind the name, LIFE As Medicine?

Fyre and Jen:

L stands for Lived Experience

I stands for Indigenous Spirituality

F stands for Feminist Awareness

E stands for Ecological Oneness

Taken all together, LIFE as Medicine reflects Ancestral Wisdom Teachings: from our Sap, our Woundedness, from the challenges and struggles and successes of our Walk here on Earth Mother, we receive our Medicine, our Lessons, our Gifts, our Offerings, our Purpose, or Call to Service–what we are here to provide for our Relatives.

What were LIFE As Medicine’s latest workshops?

“All our events have been organized with tremendous volunteer efforts and all funds raised are being 100 percent donated to LIFE as Medicine: Circle of Indigenous Healing Arts. We remain open to a generative, regenerative, and emerging process and welcome collaborators who have requests, ideas, and offerings to give.”

Fyre: In July, we hosted a workshop near Truro Nova Scotia for Allies, sponsored by the Nova Scotia Self Help Connection, called Building Allies through Sharing Knowledge in Ceremony, facilitated by our collaborators Grandmothers Ruby Peterson and Louisa Lamothe. In September, we hosted a Land-Based Healing retreat on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia called Me as Tree: We as Forest, facilitated by our collaborator Grandmothers Chris Larsen and myself, with special guest Grandmother Earthkeeper Nukumi, Selina Mu. We hosted a commemoration Gathering requested and sponsored by the Old School Gathering Place, in Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia, dedicated to Remembering Our Children. In mid-October, we hosted a group from University of New Brunswick to have a Land-Based sharing of Life as Medicine Teachings on Leadership, in collaboration with Dr. Allan Sabattis. We also facilitated an Arts-Based Circle for the Matriarchal Firekeepers Group for Tapahtêyimôkamik: Two-Spirited Youth, Families and Aunties, through University of Alberta, in collaboration with Dr. Lana Whiskeyjack.

We have held Welcome Back Circles for LIFE as Medicine Collaborators to touch base and reconnect after the summer on Wednesday Oct 5th and Oct 12th, focusing on our ongoing fundraising plans, upscaling our communications and generating our offerings for Fall and Winter. All our events have been organized with tremendous volunteer efforts and all funds raised are being 100 percent donated to LIFE as Medicine: Circle of Indigenous Healing Arts. We remain open to a generative, regenerative, and emerging process and welcome collaborators who have requests, ideas, and offerings to give.

We also recently offered a national online full-day workshop focusing on ReMatriation: Relationship and Reciprocity, hosted by the Canadian Art Therapy Association. We have had an incredibly heart-warming response to this Offering and hope to showcase this event in the next edition of Envisage. We intend to continue to offer in-person and online workshops for art therapists, expressive art therapists, social workers, school counsellors, and other helpers and for Indigenous communities and our allies, beginning with Collaborative Eaglevision with Fyre Jean Graveline, Jean Tait and Collaborators starting on Thursday November 17, from 7-10 PM Atlantic time. A description and registration details will be out soon through CATA.

Fyre, I remember you telling me about Me as Tree: We as Forest. Could you tell our readers a little bit about the activities you did during this retreat?

Fyre: Me as Tree was a fun-filled Eco-Arts Retreat with Chris Larsen, Fyre Jean Graveline and LIFE as Medicine Collaborators. During the retreat, we experienced welcoming around a Sacred Fire and Eco-Bricolage to set our Opening Intentions. We woke up for Personal Healing, Me as Tree Meditation, Creating our Living Landscape Eco Sculptures with Natural and Found Materials, and sharing our Creations and Inspirations through Song, Dance and Spoken Word, and closed our Sacred Space by Creating and Sharing our Divine Grandmother Dollies in Ceremony with Grandmother Nukumi to Bless Trees and Honour We as Forest. Here is a short biography for Chris, another one of our collaborators: Chris Larsen is an award winning Manitoba Métis artist and art therapist. Embedded into her soul is the land, water and forest. Conserving the natural environment has always been a compelling mission, as has sharing her love of art and nature through workshops and retreats at her River's Edge Studio. You can find out more about her work on her website here.

*When I Heard the Recent Horrific News*, BlueberryBeet, BeetCarrot, BEAM©Blue, Turmeric, Coffee, Dandelion, Ash, Onion ink on paper.
Read and hear a poetry reading for this artwork here.

Wow, that is a lot of offerings! I’m curious, are there any upcoming offerings from LIFE As Medicine?

Fyre: Yes! Starting November and December, we will be offering a Collaborative Eaglevision and Walking Our Talk series with Fyre Jean and Jean Tait. Upcoming in 2023, we will also be offering another Me as Tree: We as Forest retreat for facilitators, as well as a few other potential offerings:

Ancient Symbols for Healing with Jean Tait
Becoming Allies Through Story and Ceremony with Ruby and Louisa
Arts-Based Social Change with Fyre and Virginia Jahyu
Rematriation: Deeper Dive Symposium (also Land-Based)
Working and Playing with Indigenous Children and Youth with Jen
Transgendered Identity with Stel Raven

We also intend to Offer a certificate and diploma in Indigenous Healing Arts during the Fall/Winter of 2023. To reach out with asks and offerings, contact info@lifeasmedicine.ca

Is there room for those who are interested to get involved?

Jen: Yes! We would love some Offerings from collaborators/facilitators/allies who have Gifts to share and Asks for topics, dates and locations for what people most want to know. We also have LIFE as Medicine's Collaborators Connecting Zoom Meetings twice a month on Thursday evenings 7-10 pm Atlantic. For those who are interested in offering their skills and knowledge, please reach out to us via the links above!

Fyre: Also, we’re HIRING! Please reach out if you are interested in contributing administrative assistance, continued fundraising, upgrading our communications, and launching our blog and newsletter.

Wonderful opportunities. I’m curious, in addition to your work here, do you create artwork as well?

Fyre: Yes! Early in COVID, we were imagining a future where we could no longer buy or easily acquire art supplies. It got us thinking about how the acrylic paints we used to use are actually toxic for our environments, not something we wanted to pour down the drain. Sitting at the kitchen table and eating blueberries, we noticed the beautiful colours of their juices. We continue to make marks with this and use natural food-based paints in our art practice.

Jean, could you tell us about your experience creating Earth Guardian, the artwork featured on the ReMatriation for heARTivists poster for the recent CATA symposium?

Jean: My involvement with ancient symbols has been a life-long pursuit, beginning with interest in Egyptian hieroglyphics in elementary school. An encounter with the Ancestral Spirits at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta re-ignited my interest in the symbols I witnessed in that area. For me, the rock does indeed “speak,” of stories on the stone of everyday life, to historical documentation, to those who have come to that area to do ceremony. It’s heartening to see that the park administration is now hiring local Indigenous people to guide those interested in the rock art.

My interest in symbology is what stimulated my desire to learn more about the healing properties connected with the stories on stone. I’ve travelled extensively to witness many sites where there are painted images, done in red ochre, blue, and black earth paints (pictographs), and those carved into stone (petroglyphs), sometimes into softer stone and others into granite, requiring intense dedication, given the hardness of that mineral. This connection with the symbols on/in stone is also what led me to my interest in Art Therapy. It has birthed the passion I have for working with Fyre, Jen, and others involved with LIFE as Medicine: Circle of Indigenous Healing Arts. It feels like a natural progression for my involvement with the new organization.

The image provided as the poster for the CATA Symposium is connected to the theme of ReMatriation and is a respectful representation of the mother of us all. Earth Guardian is a canvas painting connected to rock art images I’ve seen in the Southwestern US and Texas. These figures, painted in red ochre on rock faces, seem other-worldly, being much larger-than-human! Earth Guardian is painted in blues and greens, as if seen from space, but has connection to Mama Earth in the turtle image on the chest. The “x” stitches that are sewn over the heart, is a nod to “women’s work.” It was as if I was trying to mend my sad heart, as I addressed my own grief and loss of two significant men in my life. There are images in rock art that have lines radiating from the head and with this painting, I’ve represented the connection to Spirit and the larger cosmos through the radiating “halo” around the head. The guardian figure shape has continued to be of interest to me in my painting, with a shawl or blanket wrapped around the figure, faceless and “more-than-human.”

As part of the future offerings of LIFE as Medicine: Circle of Indigenous Healing Arts, I plan to offer workshops that will assist others with making a connection to their own symbols that could just as easily be marks upon the rock as they tell their story.

Thank you both, as well as Jean, for sharing about yourselves and your work with LIFE as Medicine. The learning and healing you are facilitating is heart-warming, challenging, and I believe a crucial direction for us, particularly in Canada, to go towards for healing. I am excited to attend your workshops when I can, to see where LIFE as Medicine leads, and can safely say I will always be keeping you in mind when sharing resources.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers before we close our conversation?

Fyre: We would love to take this opportunity to send Love and Blessings out into the CATA world and beyond, and a big welcome for any who feel Called to help, support, or encouraged to Offer into our work and play at LIFE as Medicine: Circle of Indigenous Healing Arts. Just Reach Out! We are on this Journey Together. We are Forest.

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You can find out more about LIFE as Medicine: Circle of Indigenous Healing Arts at:

Website: https://lifeasmedicine.ca
Email: info@lifeasmedicine.ca
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifeasmedicinecircleofindigenoushealingarts
GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/circle-of-indigenous-healing-arts
Instagram: @lifeasmedicine2022

Rebecca Montgomery has been a regular interview columnist for Envisage since December of 2020. She is an interdisciplinary artist working out of Mount Pleasant in Vancouver, BC, the traditional territories of three Local First Nations: the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh. Art therapists (and the like) are “her people”, she likes to say, as she knows art to be a powerful modality for healing and connection. When she’s not creating, you can likely find her by the ocean with a hot mug of tea, recounting an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race with loved ones.

Interested in being interviewed for this column? Contact Rebecca here.