Engaging in Cultural Safety, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Identity with Susan Dupuis RMT

Today, we're thrilled to introduce you to Susan Dupuis, an RMT and educator from Manitoba. She's here to engage us in a poignant dialogue about cultural safety and reconciliation. Our conversation kicks off with a symbolic offering of tobacco, setting the stage for a respectful and open discussion. Get an insight into Susan's captivating presentation titled, "10 Things for RMTs to Learn about Reconciliation" and explore her background, and her educational journey.

Listen closely as Susan reveals what inspired her to enter the realm of education and her thoughts on cultivating therapists. We then shift our lens to the profound issue of intergenerational trauma and the power of touch, linking it to our nervous system and our inherent need for emotional bonding.

Our conversation takes a heartfelt turn as Susan recounts her personal quest of reconnecting with her Anishinaabe identity. Learn how this newfound understanding led her to question the potential impact of therapist age on the profession and the concept of Indigenous massage therapy.  As we wrap up, reflect with us on the criticality of addressing intergenerational trauma and the importance of reclaiming an Indigenous identity for RMTs and their clients.

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Transcript

Eric: 0:12

Hello and welcome to the Purves vs Podcast. My name is Eric Purves. I am an RMT course creator, continuing education provider and advocate for evidence based massage therapy. Thank you for being here today. This is one of the most impactful and most powerful conversations I have ever experienced. In this episode, I welcome Susan DuPuis, who is an RMT and brand in Manitoba. Susan has been doing work educating RMTs about cultural safety with a fantastic presentation called 10 Things for RMTs to Learn about Reconciliation. Susan brings up many important topics that we need to discuss more openly in our society. So please listen to this episode in its entirety and take the time for some self reflection afterwards.

Susan: 0:53

Eric, thank you so much for inviting me onto your podcast and inviting me to share with your listeners, I guess, some of the things that I'm doing as an RMT and I guess as a blossoming educator or someone who's taking their first steps in that direction, in this field. Anyway, to begin our conversation, they always say, like are they meaning traditional teachers in Anishinaabe culture? And it seems to be consistent among many indigenous cultures in North America, as far as I know, which is to it's tobacco first. So you always start with tobacco and the reason why tobacco first is it's a tobacco offering. Okay, and the tobacco offering is basically to for us to have a really good conversation.

Susan: 1:53

This conversation has the power to possibly change minds, change direct trajectories, even like to go within a little bit more and consider. So, because it is such an important conversation and it hasn't really been talked about in maybe in massage therapy circles or manual therapy circles. I take it as a great honor to start this conversation with you and for you inviting, so I'm offering this tobacco to our ancestors, past, present and future, who will benefit from the ripple effects and the fruits of this conversation. And many blessings for that journey, for I guess, as we walk together as inhabitants on this earth to help with our empathy, mutual respect, understanding and to get to know each other and to laugh and to learn from one another and bond in a healthy way. So I offer this tobacco with the spirit of that and I guess I should say announce that my spirit name, which was retrieved by a beautiful man named Charlie Nelson who has since passed on, he retrieved my spirit name and my spirit name is Baute Gunn Bemosed. So Baute Gunn Bemosed in indigenous cause.

Susan: 3:46

I'm inviting all of our ancestors in to participate in this conversation and to help us with our good thoughts and good intentions and to be able to come away from this conversation with fresh eyes and a good heart. So I'm offering that tobacco to all of us listening, whether it's now or whether it's sometime in the future. So, miigwech, I'm going to put this on the earth after our conversation. I'll just set it aside for now. Yeah, thank you, miigwech.

Eric: 4:22

Thank you very much, susan.

Eric: 4:24

I'm lovely to have you here and I'm really honored to have you on my podcast episode today, just for the listeners.

Eric: 4:32

We connected probably about a year and a half ago I think it's my first connected with you and in the last couple months or recently, you presented your a brief webinar to my membership community on 10 things RMTs need to know about reconciliation, and that was I found such a powerful, powerful webinar and such a powerful message and story that you told.

Eric: 4:57

That just really triggered a completely different understanding of your story and the importance of reconciliation, and I thought more people need to hear this stuff, and so I thought nothing better than to put you on a podcast where your message is open to the world and so anybody can listen to it. So I just want to say thanks again, susan, for being here. I'm really, really honored and I'm looking forward to this conversation and I'm looking forward to hearing more about what you have to say and the importance of it, and the one thing you've said before is about encouraging change or expanding our perspectives, and that's something that if we don't talk about these things, then we're not going to change and our perspectives aren't going to be expanded, because we need to tell stories and we need to share our own experiences, to educate and to inspire and to lead. So thank you again.

Susan: 6:08

Thank you. And I guess the other part to sharing and telling stories is to create the conditions necessary for proper listening. So one of the things that I really value in my life is deep conversation. There's the cursory hello, how are you fine, have a good day? That sort of thing. That's quite surface conversation and it's necessary conversation. And also conversation where it's like the person is waiting for an opportunity to tell their story but they're not really listening and not really getting to the heart of what the person is saying. So I think this conversation is about understanding one another a little bit more and getting into that deeper listening mode.

Eric: 7:05

I love that and I know from the conversations that I've had with you in the past that you are such a great listener that I find it's you're just so easy to talk to and I never feel rushed, because I know sometimes I can get my brain going a million miles and I feel like when I talk to you I can just slow down and work my mind and my being and work at a normal pace. So, thank you, you do create a great environment for listening and conversation.

Susan: 7:38

That's a high compliment, Eric.

Eric: 7:42

So thank you for that. Before we get started, though, today, because before we get into kind of some of the work that you're doing and a little bit more of your kind of professional story, and then the burgeoning educator that I know that you are and that the great educator I know that you're going to be, why don't you just introduce to the audience a little bit more about you, like, who are you, where you live? Tell us a little bit, tell us a little bit of background about Susan.

Susan: 8:14

Yeah, okay, I'd be happy to do that. So at the moment I live in Brandon, manitoba, canada, and it's right in the middle of the prairies. I live in a valley and it's fed by the. We're watered by the Asiniboine River, a beautiful, beautiful river, and I've been here for over 20 years I'm 52 now and I lived here when I was in my team. So I did my I guess my junior, high and high school here, and then I moved to Winnipeg and I actually started in the Faculty of Science with the aim of going into medicine at that time, and obviously that didn't go the way I intended and it just seemed that no, I'm a different sort of healer. And so here I am as a massage therapy, a massage therapist. So lots of things have transpired between those times. But I live on Treaty 2 and I'm originally from Treaty 1, which is in Winnipeg, so that's where I was born and I lived in Northern Minnetoba from the ages of three until nine, and so that land and those experiences have really, really, really shaped me into really who I am.

Susan: 9:44

I'm going to just tell you some fun anecdotes about my time up north. One of the great things about my childhood was we had a lot of unsupervised place. So anybody who was born in the 70s, maybe the 60s or whatever we had a lot of unsupervised play, and so I would just go out as soon as my feet hit the floor in the morning, I was outside and my mom had to remind me to come in to have a drink or have a bite to eat or something. Because I was just so absorbed in play and one of the things the neighborhood kids and I used to like to do is we'd like to go and hunt frogs. Well, we wouldn't kill them, we would collect frogs and we thought they were so cute, and so we got pails and we brought them home and our mother said you can't bring them in the house.

Susan: 10:40

I was like, well, why not? We want to keep them as pets. It's like, well, that's not fair to the frog, but what we'll do is we'll let you keep them in their pails overnight on the porch and then you have to release them in the morning. So we went, yeah, ok, that makes sense. And so we agreed and there was this one little girl on our block and she wasn't very good at collecting frogs and she was whining and wanting us to share our frogs with her. It's like no, here's your pail, there's your, just go in there and get it, like we didn't see the big deal. So she never got any frogs and she went home and complained to her dad and then at nighttime her dad was caught trying to steal our frogs and he got into a great big fight with the neighborhood moms and all of us heard the fight.

Eric: 11:38

Oh, my goodness.

Susan: 11:40

Anyway, he went home empty-handed. So no frogs for Shonda, which is our friend. So we had beautiful things like that. That we did often and it's just. I guess why I share that story is there has always been this tremendous curiosity that I've carried with me and that's just part of a core piece of my personality and that's what I bring to this work. And to thread that piece in with what I do now is I guess I won an educator award or an education award. So I think in Manitoba here we have a Heather Whitaker of Memorial Award. So if you get over 100 credits then you get that award. So in my first few years of practice, as soon as I qualified, I got it. And that's just because of that curiosity, wow.

Eric: 12:43

That's a lovely story. So your reward was because you had pursued so much education, like you'd kept on taking courses and then doing workshops and whatnot to keep learning. I love that and that's such a great thing to hear because this is a conversation probably not in the context of what we're going to have today, but just in general for massage therapy is that I would love for more people to be curious and to explore things that maybe they don't know well or things that maybe make them a little bit uncomfortable, Because if you just keep searching for the same type of information, you get stuck in that bias of just learning the same thing or variations of the same thing. I think it's so important for curious and we want to expand our knowledge. We have to explore a whole wide variety of different topics and ideas. So I love that you write out of the gate, see where, boom right into being curious and just trying to learn all the different things that you could. That's great.

Susan: 13:49

And what you say about that bias? Is there a name for that kind of bias? Isn't it at the Dunning-Kruger effect?

Eric: 13:55

Yeah, dunning-kruger is. I believe someone's probably going to tell me I'm wrong, because they listen to us when I get a message, I think it's basically it's kind of like you don't know what you don't know, or you think you know more than you do, kind of thing.

Susan: 14:09

Okay, so that's slightly more nuanced than what you're talking about.

Eric: 14:13

I mean one thing that humans do and I see this all the time in our professions there's that confirmation bias. We want to search for things that make us feel good, which is great. I like to do that too but I think that the real learning occurs is when we search for knowledge that makes us feel a little bit uncomfortable, because that's how it's going to expand our minds and our way of thinking. This challenge is my bias. This challenge is what I think. I know I don't like how that feels, but it must mean it's important. At least that's how I've had to switch my thinking over the years.

Susan: 14:46

Absolutely. And you know, I think that's probably a maturity marker when you can set aside your own ego and say well, wait a second here. Why don't I just listen to what the person is trying to tell me? And do I have the skills and the capacity to put my own thinking aside and just listen to what they're trying to tell me? Yes, yeah, and that takes a lot of skill and that's a maturity marker in my view.

Eric: 15:18

Like you and I were probably. We're on that mature spectrum, I think, of life. Now we're not 20 anymore, so I think, as time goes on, time is a learner or time is a teacher. I guess you should say, time teaches us too, yeah.

Susan: 15:35

And we never stop developing. I guess one of the gifts I can offer this profession is our Anishinaabe and indigenous people. We really value elders, and when I say elders I don't mean elderly, but I'm people who have been able to survive many things. They know a lot of things about life, and so those people are revered in our culture. So whenever I go to indigenous led anything and then I come back from that into mainstream society, it's always jarring. For that reason it's like oh, we're such a youth worshiping culture. Mainstream culture is. And I'm the oldest therapist in our clinic. So the clinic I work out of there's 11 therapists and, as I say, I just turned 52. And I'm working alongside many 20 year olds and some are a little bit older than that, but I notice the attitudes even amongst the clients. I see the interactions are a lot different.

Eric: 16:57

That's such an interesting thing. I never really thought about that before. How do you find that the other therapists that you work with do they, like you, get on well with them? Is there a mutual respect or is it just kind of you guys share workspace? I?

Susan: 17:11

think we get on quite well. Yeah, yeah, but there's definitely some generation gaps. Things that I find historically funny are kind of blasé. I think I'm in the category of dad jokes. Oh, I love it.

Eric: 17:35

I'm a dad, so I got a hold of it.

Susan: 17:39

It's a great clinic environment and we do get on well. But I do notice a few little interesting things and I also wonder how do clients choose their therapist when they're in a clinic and there's a variety of choices? So I always find that interesting and sometimes I wonder. It's like, well, if they see me, they see my picture or whatever, and then notice that I'm an older therapist or whatever, how that's perceived. Is that perceived as oh, I don't want an old one because they may not give as much pressure as I want? Or it might be the opposite oh, this person might have been around for a long time, I want somebody more experienced. So the bias is I'm only five years into RMT practice. It's just very interesting to me. It's a question I wonder.

Eric: 18:33

Yeah, I've always wondered that too. You bring up a good point there too. But there is this youth bias on profession. But I think a lot. I think I would love to see what the actual numbers are. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the people in our profession are probably in that late 20s to maybe 40-ish age range. It's probably most people. So it's probably a youth-dominated profession. Because you don't tend to see at least in my experience, you don't tend to see a lot of therapists when they're 50s or 60s. It tends to be lower numbers.

Susan: 19:13

On the other hand, whenever I go to an association event, I'm always delighted to see older practicing therapists and it gives me a lot of encouragement and a lot of hope. It's like, yeah, because I want to be doing this for a very long time to come.

Eric: 19:32

Of course. Of course you go through all that time and energy and money to go to school. Why only lasts 10 years? That's one thing that you hear often all the time. Well, an average massage therapist only works for 10 years, and I think. Well, is that true? I don't know. I know a lot of therapists. I'm doing my 16th year of practice and most people I went to school with are still practicing. Like you said, when you go to these events, whether it's an association event or a conference of some kind, I usually see more older or experienced therapists there than younger ones. I almost wonder if that's just as we get older. Maybe we want to become more involved with the profession, or we want to maybe leave some type of mark on the profession as we're on our way out or as we're on our way to retire. Maybe people I feel that people maybe want to get more involved. Now, that's just a totally biased observation, but that's what I see.

Susan: 20:32

That might be a very interesting line of question for associations to determine from membership.

Eric: 20:40

Yeah, yeah, I'll send a message to MPAM and ask them see what they say at your profession or your association in the map. So I wanted to talk to you today, susan, about your journey into being an educator and just maybe just tell us a little bit about your motivation for that.

Susan: 21:00

Okay, that's a cool question, all right. So there's a poet by the name of Robert Croach and he wrote this collection of poems called the Seed Catalog, and in one of those poems there's this one line how do you grow a poet and I think of massage therapy that way how do you grow a therapist? I find that question really, really interesting because you know, you don't just go to a person, doesn't just go to school and get qualified and then start practicing, like there's antecedents to that whole process. So I like to say that I started massage therapy. It has really long roots I'm going to get into it now here.

Susan: 22:09

So in my as an intergenerational survivor of residential schools, and intergenerational survivor means that my parents went through the residential school system and they survived school and then I was born and I survived them and yeah, yeah. And so part of one aspect of being an intergenerational survivor is the lack of touch, and I'm the kind of person who really enjoys touch and I enjoy the process of coming into somebody's space with their permission. I enjoy inviting people into my space for a hug or just an interpersonal exchange, a touch on the elbow, that kind of thing. So there is a part of me that just really really craves touch and needs touch on a regular basis, and that was something that I was denied as an intergenerational survivor and that has roots, I would say, in the kind of touch that my parents received in school. So there was no touching allowed and whatever touch there was, it was usually punishment strapping. There is usually neglect, like kids would often get locked up and confined for a variety amount of time. So there's this disconnect with touch and we all need that nurturing touch. I remember being really blown away by hearing one of our massage teachers talk about how our skin is our first brain tissue right, it evolved out of brain tissue and my mind was totally blown when I heard that. And then he gave me a little nudge and said well, if you want to learn more about that, you should learn about etymology. So I read up a little bit about that and I thought that makes perfect sense why I would crave touch and why I've got this curious nature too, because those two things go hand in hand. It's all about the nervous system and the intellect and, I guess, the emotional bonding.

Susan: 24:51

So in surviving and being survivors, that bonding, the mechanisms of bonding with another human being, was really, really, really disrupted and I always wanted just to feel better. And I remember I know I'm jumping timelines and stuff, I hope everyone can keep up here but I remember when I was in theater school and I was in my 20s and I had my first taste of relaxation in an Alexander technique class and we also did some Feldenkrais, so working with the jaw, and I was so relaxed. That was the first time I had felt relaxation in a very long time I've got, I'd say probably 10 or more years, if I ever felt relaxation. And I remember going home and I cried for three days and then when that was finished, I sat up and I looked around and went. What just happened? What's that all about? Why did I have that kind of response? And I never got an answer to that question until I started massage school and learning about the nervous system, doing my own reading about attachment, bonds and touch and understanding not just the mechanisms but just the profound connection that can happen. And then another thing that prompted me on this journey was another deep, somatic response in a yoga class and our teacher very, very skilled teacher. He led us in a loving, kindness meditation, but we did it with holding a yoga pose. So, for instance, we would hold downward facing dog for maybe a minute or two, and all the time we were we were to repeat in our minds may I be happy that one dropping that one thought in, and then we'd go into another pose that we could hold for about that length of time comfortably, and then we would go on to another section of the loving kindness. And so we were after about an hour and a half of dropping loving kindness messages into my body like an IV drip, drip, drip.

Susan: 27:35

By the time it came to Shavasana there was a volcano. My body cried and heaved and stopped. There was no controlling it and, thank goodness, my teacher was trauma informed and he just sat by my head and he held my head very, very gently a craniocacral gentle and let it pass through me. He didn't try to stop it, he didn't try to comfort me, he was just there in it, the gentlest way. And then, when it was starting to come down and I started to stabilize, he waited till I was stable enough and then he very gently took his hands away and then carried on, closing up the practice. And then and then he just carried on as if nothing unusual had occurred, and so he was teaching that whole class how to respond to a somatic response by just being himself, but in a very skilled way, and not to be afraid of it.

Eric: 28:50

Wow, that's just holding that safe space for you just to experience what you're experiencing, without judgment, without anything, just being there for you sounds super powerful and really something that influenced your life in a huge way.

Susan: 29:11

And in an unflinching manner. You know, I don't know if you've ever experienced somebody being confronted with somebody's pain or somebody else being confronted with your pain and they flinch and so that makes you think, oh no, there's something wrong with me. So all of your pain science background would have thoughts to say on that topic. So very important in those kinds of scenarios to be strong enough to not flinch. Yeah.

Eric: 29:51

Yeah, that's one thing we talk about. You know this isn't about me, but yeah, just you bring that up. There's one thing that it's really important to talk about in a lot of the courses that I do, and I think it's important for anybody listening that if you are in somebody that's experiencing that is really like you said. I love that. I love the word uses unflinching. It's just, it's really just sitting in that empathy with the person and just without judgment, without flinching, without reacting, and just being there is making the person really feel safe, like it's okay and it's this is this needs to happen, and this is just part of the process, of what you're going through right now. You know, sometimes it feels like you're not doing anything, and this is the thing.

Eric: 30:31

I think what happens with a lot of therapists is they, they feel like they need to say something, you feel like they need to jump in, they need to do something, but sometimes just just do nothing, just just kind of. By doing nothing I'm putting that in air quotes. You know this is going to be audio only, so be willing to see us with this is that doing nothing is actually you're doing a lot, and it's extreme can be extremely powerful for the person. So your story is, I think, is really important to share.

Susan: 31:03

I think I should also add to that that the it's not about pushing down or suppressing your own like, say, somebody has a somatic experience on your table. So, for instance, for our listeners listening in, maybe maybe they're reflecting and thinking about their own clinical practice that it's not so much about not doing anything but you have to be strong enough to hold that. Yeah, you know. And it's not about suppressing, it's about still being, still feeling connected to your center. Right, the moment you step out of your center and go into fear is where things can get a little bit shaky, where you're not holding the space well enough for that somatic response to complete.

Eric: 31:55

Yeah, Thanks for that clarification. Yeah, I was kind of being a bit flippant with the doing nothing, just meaning like. But yeah, you're you're, you're being present and you're being strong, but it's sometimes it can feel like you're not doing much to the outside observer and look like you're not really doing much.

Susan: 32:14

Yeah. So let's just remember this part of the conversation, because that I'd like to talk a little bit about holding space, but I'm going to save that for later, so, just if I forget, remind me that that that whole experience again, that made me go, what just happened here, and so that was another part of the curiosity that led me on to eventually becoming an RMT many, many years later. The answers didn't come just like that, they had to sit. I had to go through a lot of life experiences, make decisions, feel the consequences of those decisions good or bad or neutral and then and then you know, and so those things guided me forward, and I'll share another story that led me to this path.

Susan: 33:17

Well, I guess there's two more things, but one thing was when I was in theater training, I was always told you're not in the moment, and that, and dissociation is something that happens to trauma survivors, and I didn't realize that I was so dissociated, and so it come out in my creative work and I did not know what they meant by being present. And so I'd ask well, what do you mean? I'm not in the moment? Well, it means you're not present. Well, what does that mean? And and so the on and on the question went and the more my teachers who were trying to be helpful, the more they talked, the less I understood.

Eric: 34:06

Isn't that?

Susan: 34:06

funny, yeah, and maybe they themselves didn't have a handle on what that meant. You know so what? I started the journey on with my yoga teacher and the yoga studio that helped me on my way there. When I first felt my feet like, really felt my feet on the ground and really felt my own gait cycle, I'm like that's what my feet feel like, that's what my legs feel like, that's what my hips, and, oh my God, I was overjoyed. It felt so good to be embodied, because I had been disembodied for so long and I had never been taught any of this. And so I became a very dedicated student in yoga and eventually became a teacher and taught classes for a few years here in Brandon.

Susan: 35:12

But my curiosity carried on. I got into Thai massage. I went out east to Montreal and Toronto area. I followed my teacher, and Hart Hart Laser is his name, he co-owns United Yoga Montreal and I took a few courses and seminars with him there and continued the journey a little bit more. And then I got into the Thai massage, which was very interesting. And then I started noticing that when I was practicing Thai massage, that there were certain movements that the ordinary desk jockey couldn't do, and I wondered well, why isn't that shoulder moving, why doesn't it have full range of motion? And so should I just yank on it more? Should I? Just I didn't know. It's like sometimes that didn't have such good results, and so then I thought, well, I definitely need to know more. And then that's when I saved up my money and decided it was time to go back to school to become an RMT, and then I got some answers from that education, which I'm very grateful for.

Eric: 36:32

That's fantastic. I love the story, I love your journey and I love the varied background that you have and remember you told me before about your journey to theatre and I think that's a neat place to come from and it sounds like I taught you a bunch of great lessons about yourself but also about kind of triggering you into the world that you live now as a massage therapist.

Susan: 37:02

I guess I should say that, coming back to the intergenerational trauma piece is that's. The other thing that was stripped away and quite heavily shamed was identity, and so it was. No. It's a no brainer now when I look and reflect back on my life and the choices that I made. Why theatre, you know, and the theatre is all about playing with your identity. You can become a different person. You can play with your image and shape yourself. You can be a shape shifter, so I became a very good shape shifter in my theatre years.

Susan: 37:49

What ultimately happened, though, was because I didn't have my core identity as an Anishinaabe Kwee, as an Indigenous woman.

Susan: 38:05

That made me not want to be Indigenous at all, so it made perfect sense for me to find ways around that, but that eventually did catch up with me, and because I didn't have that core, there was only so far that I could go.

Susan: 38:22

I couldn't run forever, and so I made that painful journey of coming out of shame, out of the Indigenous, of my Indigenous identity, and a large part of that came from reading the Truth and Reconciliation reports and going to the first event in Winnipeg and understanding and owning really really owning that story and understanding myself as a survivor, understanding my parents as survivors, understanding my grandparents as survivors. And then, when I sat and reckoned with that whole family story and the agenda and the reasons behind it, the agenda, that was both very painful but yet it was extremely liberating. It's like aha, that's why. That's why, and so, all of a sudden, things just started falling into place and then I began to see like a tapestry or a mosaic. It's like that magic eye. You remember those magic eye things. You look at it and you have to relax your gaze and then you see the image. It was like that.

Eric: 39:47

Wow. So your journey. This is interesting. This is something that you can expand on more if you'd like to. I'm interested in that. Hopefully the Lawrence would be too. You mentioned both shame and about how you didn't want to be an Indigenous woman, and so you found other avenues or outlets to express who you thought you should be, or who you didn't want to be who you were. How was that transition is that the right word to go from being somebody who you didn't want to be an Indigenous woman to all of a sudden identifying and then kind of bringing that back and now being somebody who's a really big advocate for reconciliation and for Indigenous identity? Can you tell a bit more about that story?

Susan: 40:45

That's a very difficult question to. I don't know if there's an answer. I don't really know if there's an answer, but all I know is that it was liberating to read, as painful as it was. I think it was a lot of undoing some of the cultural narratives that are out there in society, which is a barrier to the outside. I guess the mainstream culture wants to keep those shame pieces in place. You're no good as a human being, you're drunk, you have a tendency to have diabetes and you're prone to disease. You're prone to this. You're prone to that. I have all negative messages which I'm surrounded by to this day. I still have to. I encounter that in the clinical encounters and I have to remain professional and get my ego out of it and go and listen. What is this person really saying? How do I manage that? I guess I'm not really answering your question, eric, because I don't know if there is an answer. Maybe there's a different way to asking that question or maybe it's not the right question right now. I don't know.

Eric: 42:15

Yeah, it was just a thought just because of just listening to your story a couple of times here. This is the second time I've heard part of your story. I was just curious about the journey of what you've been through to where you were you are today. I don't know if there's a good question. I don't know if that is really a question or if it's just an open-ended statement.

Susan: 42:47

Yeah, Okay, okay. Sometimes I have to sit with a question and hear it again and then something comes up. This is one of those instances. So, definitely, reading the TRC reports, talking to my mom, spending time with her, forgiving her and coming to unconditional love with her those have all been things that have helped To notice that she carries a lot of shame To go. Oh, I see, I see, because I clear up my own shame, maybe I'm helping her clear up hers, I don't know. So, when all of those reading of the reports happened, it was such a powerful time.

Susan: 43:44

And then I also realized, you know, I haven't really looked at my. I don't know my language. I don't know the Anishinaabe language. I don't know the ceremonies. That's something that I really longed for. I didn't know where they were happening. One day I saw a post on Facebook and Marie Sinclair had posted or reshared where ceremonies were happening and it said everyone welcome. And I went. I'm everyone and that's my heritage, so I should go. So I went.

Susan: 44:21

That was last year and I had another one of those somatic reactions. I was listening to Anishinaabe Moin, the Anishinaabe language, and I didn't understand, but I could feel the language in my body and again I had another somatic response and that whole time I was at ceremony I was having those somatic responses and that was really powerful. And so I thought, okay, this must be that melting of that shame coming off. And then I started thinking I wonder how many Indigenous massage therapists there are. I wonder how many Indigenous clients there are, who of us are seeking treatment. And so I became interested in that question and also in the association. There were some people who were coming, who were approaching to me, approached me and asked me about Indigenous this, indigenous that and that kind of got my mind thinking about some of these questions. And so it went from there and then I started reading the calls to action and with massage therapists in mind, and that's how I started putting things together and thinking, ah, you know, this would be great for massage therapists to know about whether they're Indigenous or not.

Susan: 46:07

And then I took Pam Fitch's trauma-informed care course.

Susan: 46:14

And at that point I didn't know Pam personally, I knew her by reputation.

Susan: 46:19

So I took her course.

Susan: 46:20

I think it was six weeks, six Saturdays in a row and after we were finished the course then I reached out to her and she responded and we set up a time to meet and we chatted and I reached out to her because I felt and she always gives this impression that she will be there for you unconditionally.

Susan: 46:51

She has an unconditional positive regard for anybody she talks to and she, just by her talking, just her presence, she gives off that vibe and I knew that she was a safe person to talk to and that she'd have a sense of openness and curiosity as well about what I was thinking about, even though I wasn't really sure about what I was thinking. But I just had a spark of an idea, and so her and I came up with, through many conversations, many hours of hashing out content and putting together the 10 things RMTs should know about reconciliation. And so we developed a webinar together on that topic, which we've shared twice now to this date. We shared a webinar for MTAAM, for the Massage Therapy Association of Manitoba, and for RMTAO in Ontario.

Eric: 47:58

Yeah, and I've seen the one that you did without PAM and I'm assuming they're both very similar. One of them is you guys together or are they separate? And so when you presented to my community, that was the 10 things RMTs need to know about reconciliation. Is that the exact same presentation that you do with PAM or is they slightly different?

Susan: 48:25

There's slight variations when PAM is presenting. She goes more into trauma-informed care and considerations for that, and she also gives valuable content and insights into her settler identity. Okay.

Eric: 48:47

Which is very interesting. Yeah.

Susan: 48:51

You were going to ask a question. No, I was just going to say no, go ahead.

Eric: 48:54

I was just going to ask you how, with the kind of feedback and how things have been received during your presentations. But you can maybe answer that after you tell us a little bit about PAM and her settler identity.

Susan: 49:09

That's interesting to me. Yeah, I wanted to do it like that, because having a settler person and an Indigenous person present together is actually even more powerful, because then there's a dialogue happening, for one thing, and we both come from very different identities. And how do those identities come together and talk about the same thing? We'll have a different perspective depending. So PAM brings her settler identity and she's modeling allyship. So allyship is where you become an ally and you stand alongside and support a more marginalized voice. So she does an exquisite job at that. So she relates to herself as a settler.

Susan: 50:13

In the presentation she talks about her own relationship to her land or the land that she resides on, and people listen to her a little bit differently than they listen to me If I do the presentation on my own. Sometimes I worry about whether I just sound like an angry Indigenous person or a wounded person. And because PAM comes with whiteness comes privilege. So there's this white privilege aspect. So we tend there's a bias on listening to people who are white, because whites have more authority and more social power than a marginalized voice does, and so people will listen to a white voice a lot easier than a non-white voice. And not only that, but PAM also has like 30 plus years of practice under her belt. She's an authority in her own right and she's earned that. But we also do need to acknowledge that there is some unearned privilege there and she demonstrates. You know, she acknowledges that and that way she's a very good role model and showing other people how to demonstrate allyship.

Eric: 51:47

And that's something that when I heard you talk before, that you know, something you just never really you never really think of is. You know? I should say, a lot of us don't think of. It is that kind of that settler privilege and you know, when you mentioned that before I just really made he's kind of really hits you like, hits you deep in your soul. You realize that, yeah, like the privileges that we have and the lifestyle that we have and how it came to be.

Eric: 52:23

We need to acknowledge that and understand that, because it does set us up for that privilege for sure, and that, you know, I don't think many of us spend much time thinking about that. We just go on about our lives and don't realize.

Susan: 52:44

Yeah. So if I were, if I didn't know you and I came to you seeking care, I would be watching you very, very carefully. What you say, what you don't say, how you say it. Are you dismissive, are you accepting? What kinds of words do you use? Like there's a lot of watching to make sure is like okay, am I going to be okay with this person you might agree with to have a treatment with you, but even during the treatment I'll still be, I'll still be kind of watching.

Eric: 53:35

Yeah, and that's something we probably we never think about, is it? I mean? That's why these conversations are so important. So thanks for sharing that, that's I mean. The more I listen to you and the more I try to learn about these really powerful, important topics, it's every time I listen to you speak it's I get something. I get something more for me to reflect on and to think about.

Susan: 54:04

And, yeah, this sounds like a good time to talk a little bit about cultural safety, yeah please.

Susan: 54:12

Indigenous cultural safety, Also a topic that I came across, a term that I came across in my reading. So I read this book which is a chapter of it's a chapters of essays on, and it's called white benevolence and that's how even like white people, like in professionals, can come across as like benevolence can be a form of violence. And that's where it's like. It's like white whiteness knows better and you know and can think better, make better decisions, and so like social workers and any kind of caring profession can fall into that, into being caring, but it has a. It has a bit of a weird vibe to it, but culturally safe practice. I'm going to now refer to my notes here because I want to make sure I get this right, so bear with me.

Susan: 55:29

Here there is a piece by a dissertation by Dr Laurie Harding, and she wrote a dissertation called what's the Harm and it's all about how Indigenous people have been harmed in the healthcare system and how to, how to fix it, how to address it.

Susan: 55:56

And so the cultural safety was first articulated by a Maori nurse and her work was published for the Ministry of Education for New Zealand in 1990. So I'm just going to go over what she says about this and she's coming from a nursing perspective, but we can certainly draw from that as therapists. Here's what she says. She says the effective nursing practice of a person or family from another culture and is determined by that person or family. Culture includes, but is not restricted to, age or generation, gender, sexual orientation, occupation and socioeconomic status, ethnic origin or migrant experience, religious or spiritual belief and disability. The nurse delivering the nursing service will have undertaken a process of reflection on his or her own cultural identity and will recognize the impact that his or her personal culture has on his or her professional practice. Unsafe cultural practice comprises any action which diminishes, demeans or disempowers the cultural identity and well-being of an individual. So, in short, she's saying that the cultural safety is a practitioner who reflects on their own cultural identity and understands that that's going to impact the person who they're providing care for.

Eric: 57:46

That's really well said and I know from our conversation that we had previously. I just speak of Maori the Bernie, who is part of our membership group too. She reached out and I think I shared that message with you about her experience being a Maori woman and therapist in New Zealand and it was so interesting to hear and I've talked to her quite a bit over the years back and forth, but that was the first time she really shared her experiences being an Indigenous woman down New Zealand and realizing that the Indigenous culture is all over the world, how they've been impacted. And then cultural safety is the one thing that seems to resonate or seems to be consistent across the world. So let's talk about I mean just because I feel, like we could probably do an entire.

Eric: 58:48

We could probably talk for 10 hours, susan, which is great, but let's just there needs to be a part too. We might not need to do a part too. We might, yeah, because I'm just looking at how long we've been going here for which is great and it just feels like we barely even brushed the surface of the topic.

Eric: 59:03

So maybe we will do a part too again, but I guess the one thing I really wanted because I really wanted to kind of promote your message and what you're doing and I really want people to understand the importance of the work you're doing. But maybe if you could just tell the listeners a little bit more about, kind of like, some of the main takeaways of your, of the content that you're teaching, and what do you hope people are going to walk away from if they listen to you teach or they take a course of yours or listen to you speak at a conference. What are the things that you want them to know?

Susan: 59:43

Well, I think, reconciliation and the TRC reports. I really want people to read the reports, and just as citizens of this country, but also as their development as a human being. So I'll go back to that point that I made earlier about how do you grow a therapist? Yeah, please. That inspired by Robert Croach and this is part of how you grow yourself as a therapist and how you grow yourself as a human being. I want to really relay the message that you can be felt through your touch. Like that might sound like stating the obvious, and I find many profound things are about stating the obvious, but and it's not just about safe touch, but it's also about like this person gets me Right. So if you're providing massage therapy for a, say, an indigenous person, they're going to feel like. If I'm receiving care from another therapist who is not indigenous, I can feel through their touch if they get me or not, and I think that's a very, very, very human thing is we all want to be understood 100% agree.

Susan: 1:01:15

Yeah, I think that's just fundamental, in my view at least. So I want people to be able to expand on their touch repertoire of you know, do I understand this person? Do I understand this person enough to be in a place where I can give them unconditional, positive regard, like Pam does, even just with her presence over Zoom Right? Yeah, if you can do that for the person on your table you know, no matter where they come from or what their your own cultural identity or that person's cultural identity, is there some way that we can just tap into our own humanity, human to human right?

Eric: 1:02:08

Like I've already said, everybody wants to feel understood and how you want.

Eric: 1:02:16

People can feel that, whether the therapist gets you or not and that's something we've all experienced, I think, as therapists, giving massage as well as receiving them. And there is, you know, if we want to bring the science to it too, there's lots of evidence that suggests that people can yeah, they can read or what that person is intending with their touch and what they're feeling and what they're thinking. And our touch is so powerful and so often we try to, I think in our profession we try to turn the massage aspect of the hands on into some kind of just specific, mechanistic explanation about like this is what we're doing to joints and to tissues and stuff, whereas I think that we really need to have a lot more of that kind of like somatic, kind of perceptual, you know, emotional context, effective context of our touch, and realize how powerful that is. And that's probably more powerful than the mechanistic kind of stuff that often gets portrayed as being the most important in our profession, and I don't know if I agree with that.

Susan: 1:03:37

I mean it's important, absolutely, there's no question it's important, but this is the next level of competence, right, yeah, yeah.

Eric: 1:03:52

It's true they're all important. But yeah, you're right, there's like level one and there's the next level. I like how you said that. It's great.

Susan: 1:03:59

Yeah, and you can become more of yourself too, which feels really great to say. You know, and I always know when something is being spoken that feels right. I can feel it through my whole body that you become more of yourself.

Eric: 1:04:18

Yeah.

Susan: 1:04:19

I never have those clients where it's like, yeah, this person is my muse. This is where, working with this person, it brings out the best in me.

Eric: 1:04:33

Oh, for sure.

Susan: 1:04:35

And I think, yeah, I want to treat those people all day long, just connect with us really well yeah.

Susan: 1:04:45

And even if I can't connect with somebody, then I will look for ways to connect that are appropriate. And some people they're a bit more boundary than others and maybe they don't want you in that deep, but some people it's just really effortless. There's a flow to it, right. And so with this work, with reconciliation work in massage therapy, yeah, I just want people to take away that next bit of development as a human being. I wonder if there's anything more that needs to be said on that.

Eric: 1:05:31

I think you put that into a very succinct explanation, susan. I guess the one thing I wanted to ask you, and just if anyone listens do you have any future speaking gigs lined up or any courses that you're going to be teaching in the future?

Susan: 1:05:52

That is something that I'm just looking at my notes here just to see if there's anything else I wanted to go over here. But no, I think I've said what I needed to say on that last question. But okay, with speaking and with courses, pam and I will probably be working again together to as word spreads on this topic and as we continue to refine the content and the work, because, quite honestly, when we started looking at like it's such a big, big, big topic, right. So when we first started work, it's like well, what do we talk about? We were both kind of doing this with each other. What do we say? I don't know. What do you say? I don't know. But Pam and I are looking to do some more of these presentations and we'd certainly like to be invited if anybody listening is curious and wants to know more. I'd like to develop a course on this topic because there's many, many facets. Like we said, we need a part two to this conversation because we haven't even gotten to a lot of things that we might have wanted to talk about. So that's what's in the future for that.

Susan: 1:07:18

I'm also doing another podcast with elder Jerry Ollman. He has a beautiful podcast that I'd really love people to listen to and it's called Teachings in the Air. So it's so cute because like unpowerful, unpoignant and all that, because like all you have to do is look around and there's teachings everywhere, everywhere you look. Isn't that such a beautiful thing to think about? Jerry is an elder and he is a podcaster and he is a residential school survivor and he talks about healing body, mind, spirit, what keeps our bodies, what keeps our spirits fed, those kinds of things. So he always likes his listeners to take responsibility for their own health and to encourage that. He's very restful to listen to as well. He's quite enjoyable, and so I get the privilege of talking to him later in the week. So that's what's next for me at this time, but it's going to be a growth process for sure.

Susan: 1:08:33

One last thing I wanted to touch on before we start to close is I did mention earlier in our conversation about holding space and one of my friends, heather Platt. She wrote a book called the Art of Holding Space and I was a facilitator for a couple of years for her program. There's a coaching program on how to hold space and this is what she has to say about what holding space is. It's what we do when we walk alongside a person or a group on a journey through liminal space. Liminal space is like an in-between space, like moving house, say. That would be a liminal space. You don't quite live here, but you don't quite live there. We do this without making them feel inadequate, without trying to fix them and without trying to impact the outcome. We open our hearts and offer unconditional support and let go of judgment and control. So that's what Heather has to say about what holding space is in short.

Eric: 1:09:53

I love that. That's great. I've never heard of it being defined that way, so I like that a lot.

Susan: 1:10:00

And that just adds to what you were mentioning about doing nothing.

Eric: 1:10:04

Yeah, doing nothing but actually doing a lot, yeah, that's great, that's great. Well, thanks, susan, for being here today. I really appreciate your time and I feel very privileged to have you as a guest and to have got to know you over the last year a little bit better. Did you have any final words you wanted to say before we sign off?

Susan: 1:10:30

No, just thank you so much, eric, and thank you to all of your listeners for listening and engaging in this topic and this conversation. And, yeah, I look forward to more conversations and talking about practice and that. So that's all I have to say for now. Make much.

Eric: 1:10:53

Thank you, susan, and I appreciate that. And yeah, let's see if we can get a part two, because when I look at my notes or things I want to talk to you about, we've only basically got through about half of them. So we'll look to do that in the future. So thank you very much.

Susan: 1:11:07

Bye, bye, eric Thank you.

Eric: 1:11:10

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