Indigenous Wellness
Program Overview
Utilizing Indigenous pedagogies such as storytelling and land-based teachings, this certificate explores key aspects of Indigenous wellness. It honours Indigenous voices and histories to promote strengths-based and trauma-informed understandings of Indigenous survivance, wholistic wellness, and Indigenous counselling in school contexts. This certificate weaves in context and content knowledge, perspectives, and practices committed to enacting responsibility and accountability towards decolonizing and Indigenizing cited as key by ministries of education (e.g., Alberta’s Ministry of Advanced Education) and psychology governing associations (e.g., Canadian Psychological Association).
Program Details
Three of the four courses in the program are offered online, and one is blended/hybrid. Online courses are held in both an asynchronous environment (D2L) and a synchronous (real-time) environment (Zoom) which allows students to virtually meet and talk with one another and instructors and experience a live exchange of ideas, engage in class presentations, and do group work with access to a whiteboard. For additional information regarding online delivery, refer to the eLearn website. The blended/hybrid summer course combines a one-week on-campus residency and online components.
This certificate can be taken as a stand-alone certificate or as an option for Year 2 of the MEd in School Counselling Program. It provides an Indigenous lens to wellness in schools and highlights ways comprehensive school health strategies can properly reflect Indigenous values, knowledge systems, and ways of being and doing. It also considers how non-Indigenous people can ethically engage with Indigenous knowledges and wisdom in the school context and beyond. It enables learners to enter the space of ethical relationality and embark and/or continue their journeys towards decolonizing of selves and Indigenizing beliefs, practices, communities and societies as a foundation towards (re)conciliation with Indigenous Peoples.
Experiential learning is learning by doing that bridges knowledge and experience through critical reflection. This program offers the following kinds of experiential learning opportunities:
- Employing cultural humility to learn, confront, and dismantle Canada’s past and present histories of colonial oppression and genocide
- Learning principles of Indigenous wellness from the land
- Critically analyzing Indigenous wellness resources for the school context
- Conceptualizing individual and school-wide interventions to wellness in schools from a decolonizing lens
This topic is organized, structured, and delivered in a way that individuals who have completed an undergraduate degree (e.g., social sciences, humanities, education) and professionals in the field who work with children, youth, and adults (e.g., teachers, nurses, social workers, and various mental health professionals and paraprofessionals) can further enhance their professional capacity and/or transition to advanced education in school and counselling.
A registration package will be sent to new students after they have been admitted. Registration for the summer term will be available in late winter. Fall and Winter registration opens in the spring. Your Graduate Program Administrator will send more information about registration to you.
Fee details are available on the Faculty of Graduate Studies website.
The University of Calgary offers multiple ways to meet the cost of your education. Please refer to the Awards, Scholarships and Bursaries page to learn more about options available to students. For additional information, please contact Student Financial Support.
Please refer to Admission Requirements for Master's Programs.
Program Schedule & Course Descriptions
- Program begins each Summer term (refer to the Academic Schedule for specific dates)
- Outlines are normally available 1-2 weeks prior to the start of term in D2L
- 3 units per course
Term 1 - Summer
Truths about Canada’s Past and Present Colonial History (online)
In this course, students will explore the past and present history and impact of colonialism and settler-colonialism on Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Paths towards decolonization, Indigenization, and (re)conciliation with Indigenous Peoples will be explored, including ways non-Indigenous peoples can respectfully and ethically engage with Indigenous students, teachers, communities, and knowledge systems.
Term 1 - Summer
Indigenous Wellness: Land-based Teachings (blended with 1-week on-campus summer residency)
This blended course will include face-to-face experiential land-based pedagogy and online learning components. The experiential portion will be facilitated by the instructor and Knowledge Keepers. Indigenous wellness and ways of being, seeing, and doing will be covered.
Term 2- Fall
Dismantling Conceptualizations of Trauma (online)
In this course students will learn about individual, intergenerational, and collective trauma from strength-based perspectives of Indigenous survivance, resurgence, and resistance. Trauma will be discussed in the context of ongoing colonial oppression. Ways of dismantling long-standing structural, ideological, cultural, and historical traditions of systems of power and privilege will be explored.
Term 3 - Winter
Indigenous Approaches to Counselling in Schools (online)
Building on the two previous courses, this course will provide foundational information about strength-based and cultural-safe promoting approaches to counselling in schools. The course will also enhance students’ skills in implementing principles of Indigenous counselling such as those offered by anti-colonial and community-engaged and participatory practice. This course is intended to foster meaningful intercultural understanding and joint action to support Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, teachers, school and larger community.