6 minute read
Feature profile: L’nuita’simk
Thinking like an L’nu, in praxis
By Lewis Rendell
Reached at her home in Pictou Landing First Nation, in the company of her energetic puppy as the rain fell on her medicine garden on a gloomy winter morning, Michelle Peters had a lot to say. Drawing on the wisdom and power of the past and energized by the promise of the future, she’s ready to continue breaking barriers.
Michelle is the first M’ikmaq social worker to be registered with the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers in private practice.
Asked about her groundbreaking achievement, she answers with her signature humility, “I was proud of myself. I didn’t feel any reason to boast about it, but I was certainly feeling great breaking glass ceilings. But the more that I reflected on it, I thought, ‘Why am I in 2022 the first Mi’kmaw woman to be registered in private practice. What is going on, where is the gap?’ I think it was an epiphany moment for a lot of people. This is great, but we’re missing something here. We have lots of social workers, so why are there not more Mi’kmaw people in clinical practice at this level? I don’t have all the answers to that, that’s a question we’re trying to address.”
To Peters, it’s not about her, but rather about who comes up next. She’s encouraged by the number of Indigenous students she sees entering the social work sphere. “All the narratives that have been said about us as Indigenous people from the colonial perspective has really impacted us in a very large way. The social workers that are coming up today have a chance to tell a different story. A story from our perspective.”
Asked why the decision to open her own practice was so important, Peters answers bluntly. “Working with the community, sometimes there’s a lot of work that has to happen. You wouldn’t consider them clinical hours; you have to integrate into the community. You need to attend events, you need to be a part of the community, you need to be visible. You need to show up when there’s a death or a crisis, but you also have to be there during the good times. There’s so much more required of you, that if you were working for another organization they wouldn’t necessarily see that as a part of your job description.”
Growing up off-reserve in Truro, Peters’ earliest role model was her mother, Mary, an educator and councillor who instilled the importance of education from an early age. “My mom has always emphasized the importance of education as an Indian Residential School Survivor. She championed that education is a significant way to create a positive change in our communities.”
Peters’ early years of learning didn’t hint at what was to come. At the age of 16, she became a teen mom and faced significant barriers related to poverty and racism. After struggling for a time, Peters attained her GED and this opened the door to her educational journey to begin.
Feeling out of place in the western education system — “It’s not our history,” she says, “it’s not our teachings, our culture or even our languages that are being taught. Institutions, even education institutions, become a way of forcing colonialism onto our people. It’s trauma being perpetuated. It’s not our reality being reflected in the curriculum.” — Michelle sought out mentors and role models in her own community, through the women who were her managers, supervisors, and held leadership roles in the community. “To me that meant a lot. It was women supporting women, lifting up other women,” she says, smiling.
Now the matriarch of a large, blended family, Peters speaks wistfully of the early days of her post-secondary education, balancing her roles as a mother and student. “You can’t hang around campus, you have to go home and take care of your kids.” She worked hard at her bachelor of business degree from STFX, graduating in 2010 after nine years of studying. That same year, her social work journey began in earnest at Dalhousie with an intense 24-month program.
In the nine years that followed, Peters worked as a counselor at shelters, in residential youth facilities, women’s programs and other institutions across the non-profit, federal, and provincial sectors.
Eventually landing at NSCC Truro and Pictou as the Indigenous student advisor, Peters found herself being the type of role model she’d wished she had. “I think what really kept me going was the kids, I really wanted to break that fear factor of being unsure about the future. I wanted to create a home that was safe for them and provide them with a different story about who we are now. The kids growing up now are the first generation in colonial history that are able to celebrate their culture and ceremonies and all of the things we identify as L’nu; we’re not ashamed of it anymore. I really wanted them to experience that about themselves, I didn’t want them to grow up thinking that being an L’nu was something to be ashamed of. I wanted them to be proud of who they were.” As she tells me that one of the students she advised is now herself in an advisory role, Peters beams with pride.
To Peters, the work of decolonizing is a matter of “walking the walk,” as she puts it. It “requires the practitioner to deconstruct the western frameworks of practice. It requires us to reconnect with the L’nu ways of knowing and being.” How does that look in practice? Attending ceremonies, learning from Elders and Knoweldge keepers and being present in the community. “I’ve grown a lot, not only as a clinician but as a Mi’kmaq woman, by being willing to attend ceremony and talk to Elders and just have tea and chat,” she says.
Peters’ practice is centered in L’nuita’simk, the Mi’kmaw ways, of knowing, and being. Etuaptmumk, a Mi’kmaw term translated as “two-eyed seeing,” is what Peters sees as the future of culturally responsive social work; “Western practice has a place,” she says, “but what has been missing is being able to heal from the L’nu perspective. They can co-exist, and the clients’ needs are what dictates the approach… but this requires a clinician to be familiar and comfortable using a two-eyed approach.”
LEWIS RENDELL is an Anishinaabe freelance writer in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
