One of the speakers at this weekend's ELEVATE "We are Cochrane" will be Joanne Reeves.
Reeves is a fellow Cochranite of 13 years that grew up with the rich culture of the Woodland Cree in Northern Alberta just outside Wood Buffalo National Park. In January she graduated from an online leadership and education program with a masters degree. She was nominated for valedictorian for her program because of her work toward reconciliation for Canada and its Indigenous people. This encouraged her to further her education and finish her doctorate.
Reeves will be speaking on topics of climate awareness, healing Mother Earth and sharing Indigenous ways of knowing.
"My work to share Indigenous ways of knowing through Indigenous pedagogy which is a way of teaching and so one of the things I'm doing right now to work to climate awareness is I'm building a curriculum called the moccasin teachings. It's a two-day workshop and I talk about Indigenous knowledge. I teach you how to smudge and how to build a moccasin and what the moccasin represents and how that can connect you to Mother Earth and how you can use that to heal any ailments that you have. There's a lot of new research on healing and grounding and people are beating diabetes and all types of auto immune diseases the research is showing just 15 minutes and the body goes into a self healing when it's connected and grounded to mother earth," said Reeves.
Being a certified teacher, Reeves is hoping to bring mindful breathing, yoga, mediation and grounding into the schools and their curriculums along with further teachings about Indigenous history. She explains that there was and continues to be suffering within the Indigenous community and there needs to be reconciliation before a bond can be formed that will act as an avenue for communication and healing.
"Indigenous people have the knowledge to be able to heal Mother Earth and they want to share that but there needs to be an open dialogue that facilitates sharing this knowledge in a respectful way," said Reeves.
"My work and research endeavours to share Indigenous ways of knowing. Teaching everybody no matter what race, colour, or age about the intrinsic connection that they have to Mother Earth and using her through a healing modality called grounding or earthing to heal yourself and this in turn helps to heal her and work toward the climate crisis because when you have a connection and a relationship with Mother Earth and you learn from indigenous people how to communicate with her, how to treat her, how to respect her, when you develop that relationship with Mother Earth you heal yourself and therefore the connection that you build is healing."
With plenty of knowledge about indigenous ways of knowing, healing Mother Earth and climate awareness, Reeve's presentation will be one that will educate and inform.
Tickets will be $18 for the "We are Cochrane" segment of ELEVATE. It will get underway this Friday, October 4 at 6:30 p.m. at the RancheHouse theatre.
