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Columbia School of Social Work
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E-Poster

Indigenous and Tribal

Intergenerational Trauma and Holistic Ways of Healing: Going Back to Our Roots

Friday, October 25, 2024
2:15 PM - 2:45 PM CT
Location: KC Convention Center, Poster 12B
Through ancestral healing and contemporary social work, this presentation will address how mental health professions devalue Indigenous healing methods. Through an anti-racist lens, we will discuss how intergenerational wounds, Indigenous practices, and ancestral wisdom can be integrated into western healing spaces to decolonize our classrooms and uplift our communities.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Discuss and validate our heridas intergeneracionales (intergenerational wounds). Stemming from centuries of colonization, migration, and acculturation, our wounds are constantly reopened yet simultaneously denied in Eurocentric healing spaces. Trauma inhabits our bodies and gets passed down in our communities. We will explore how this trauma presents individually and systemically.
  2. Describe and reclaim ancestral healing practices that Eurocentric mental health professions have long derided. These Indigenous and holistic methods of healing include group work, plant medicine, energy work, meditation, movement, song, chants, rituals, breathwork, prayer, cleansing rituals, and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
  3. Connect ancestral wisdom to the social work field through anti-racist and decolonial approaches to education and healing. Participants will learn what our ancestors can teach us about sacred medicine, psychedelics, community-led practices, and ecological justice. Together, we will work towards building an accessible and sustainable future.