TRAUMA-INFORMED JURISPRUDENCE

Myrna McCallum's unconditional commitment to advocacy and empowerment in law

Damian Ali

[Content/trigger warning: The following article includes discussions on trauma, systemic discrimination and racism. Readers are encouraged to seek support if needed.]

For Myrna McCallum, founding lawyer of Miyo Pimatisiwin Legal Services in North Vancouver, navigating the legal profession is about more than just practicing law—it's about centering safety and understanding in her approach as a regulated professional.

“I think for those who want to bring in trauma-informed principles to their practice, you have to be malleable,” she explains. “If we want to be human-centred, we must ask questions, actively listen, and adapt our practices to meet people where they are in more ways than one.”

Discovering her legal calling

Raised in Treaty Six territory in northern Saskatchewan, McCallum grew up in an environment rife with uncertainty. As a former student of an Indian Residential School, she found it challenging to cope with the violence and lack of safety that dominated her childhood.

Despite her challenging upbringing, Myrna was determined to pursue a career in law, focusing on advocating for Indigenous communities and victims of violence. She remembers being captivated by the portrayal of lawyers in the media during her teenage years. These legal professionals seemed powerful and detached from emotional situations, an image that strongly appealed to McCallum at the time.

To escape her turbulent surroundings, she embarked on the path to becoming a lawyer. McCallum explains that initially, she was unsure about the approach she would take to cultivate a sense of safety and empowerment through her legal practice. “Part of why I went to law school and chose to become a lawyer was because I thought building this life for myself would help me avoid addressing what I lived through,” she says. “I didn’t have to deal with or heal my trauma, as I could live this very disconnected life.”

Myrna was called to the bar in 2007, having graduated from the University of British Columbia’s Peter A. Allard School of Law in 2005. She began her career in criminal law, where she encountered disconcerting realities in the courtroom, including frequent cases involving sexual violence and abuse. This exposure significantly reignited her own traumatic experiences. However, her perspective and practice began to shift after meeting a young boy who was also a victim.

“I saw a lot of me in him and I knew I couldn’t harm him the way I think I was harming witnesses in my transactional, ‘facts only’ way of lawyering,” McCallum says. “I shifted, got in touch with my own humanity, and transformed my practice as a result.”

A ‘do-no-further-harm’ approach

McCallum’s approach to navigating society and the legal profession is distinct, due to her Métis-Cree heritage. She was raised in the northern village of Green Lake Saskatchewan and she became a member of her grandmother’s First Nation, Waterhen

Lake, in 2011. Her roles as a Crown prosecutor and later as an adjudicator in Indian Residential School hearings required her to conform to the Canadian justice system, a system she found often perpetuated harm against her community and others. Reflecting on this time, McCallum notes that many in positions of power inflicted harm on her community and other communities of brown and Black people.

“I wasn’t actually fueling any transformation because I was upholding a very colonial mandate, and was just another brown face doing that historically, white-privileged job,” she explains. “I decided that if I could help these people become more self-reflective, and understand racial traumas, then they will do less harm to those who look like me.”

Continuous improvement in regulation

McCallum’s passion for human rights and ‘do-nofurther-harm’ approach to legal practice led her to advocate strongly for trauma-informed practices. She explains how a trauma-informed practice can be impactful in the regulatory sector.

“Just the subject of trauma in the last four years has shown that people are curious about how this term affects their lives or practice,” McCallum says. “To me, being trauma-informed is about prioritizing personal agency and creating experiences that are welcoming and inclusive, but also to challenge processes. Being adaptable and transparent, making spaces for people to ask questions and recognizing each individual’s background and behaviours is crucial.”

McCallum’s expertise has assisted regulators to integrate trauma-informed practice. She provides specialized training sessions on cultural humility and trauma-informed practices to various regulatory bodies, including the British Columbia College of es and expertise in her award-winning podcast, 'The Trauma-Informed Lawyer.' She initiated the podcast as a passion project at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. With her background in delivering keynotes on trauma in legal contexts, she aimed to assist local lawyers by introducing them to the principles of trauma-informed practice

Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO). While acknowledging the rigidity often inherent in regulatory practices, she underscores the significance of ongoing improvement.

McCallum emphasizes the necessity for regulatory bodies, and all professions, to not only strive for continual enhancement but also to scrutinize existing systems, particularly those that have historically treated individuals in a dehumanizing way in disciplinary hearings or investigations. “We can still reach those standards that we’re required to reach, but in the process level up our competencies to be more humanizing and recognize that we are human beings who bring pain and trauma into these spaces,” she says.

McCallum is a lawyer licensed with the Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC), one of several regulatory bodies that are taking concerted steps to integrate trauma-informed principles into regulation. In 2023, the LSBC approved the Indigenous Engagement in Regulatory Matters (IERM) report and recommendations which aimed to identify systemic barriers experienced by Indigenous complainants and witnesses, recommend proposed solutions, and establish culturally safe and trauma-informed regulatory processes. The LSBC has since introduced a new Indigenous Navigator role to support trauma-informed processes, to create safe spaces for Indigenous people and communities within the organization and legal profession.

“The podcast’s reach went global after doing an episode with Dr. Gabor Maté, an acclaimed author and leading expert on addiction and trauma,” McCallum says. “What I really found satisfying was that it wasn’t just lawyers listening to this podcast. Other professionals like doctors, social workers, and teachers have all reached out letting me know they have used these principles in some way.”

She continues to make strides at the local, provincial, and national levels, having recently hosted ‘Justice as Trauma,’ her first interdisciplinary conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre, and is currently conceptualizing her book on becoming the trauma-informed lawyer.

Reflecting on her own difficult past and overcoming feelings of disassociation, McCallum encourages all professionals to prioritize the value of bringing psychological safety to their practice. “Everyone needs safety, since anyone can arrive in survival mode,” McCallum says. “If you can identify when someone is in this state and take the appropriate steps to become emotionally self-regulated, you can then perform in an empathetic and just manner.”

The Trauma-Informed Lawyer

McCallum continues to leverage her lived experienc-

Connect with Myrna on her website, and listen to The Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast .