June 21, 2022 - 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm MDT
This event is presented in partnership with the Alberta Native Friendship Centres Association and the National Film Board.
On National Indigenous Peoples’ Day, ACWS is hosting a virtual screening of Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy followed by a post-screening discussion moderated by Leigh Sheldon, psychologist at Indigenous Psychological Services and the Consultant for the Indigenous Community of Practice with the Blueprint Project, and featuring Dr. Tailfeathers and other special guests.
The film is an intimate portrait of survival, love and the collective work of healing in the Kainai First Nation in Southern Alberta, a Blackfoot community facing the impacts of substance use and a drug-poisoning epidemic.
FREE for ACWS members, staff, and shelter clients. Open to the public by donation, with all proceeds going to ANFCA.
Dr. Tailfeathers is a family physician in her home community of Standoff, Alberta, and served Fort Chipewyan, where she flew in for one week a month to provide 24-hour service for seven days. She is Indigenous Medical Lead with the Indigenous Health Program, Alberta Health Services, and an emergency room doctor in Cardston, Alberta.
One of the biggest challenges that Dr. Tailfeathers has faced in her medical career is a fentanyl crisis in her community. She led the fight against the epidemic before the scope of the problem was recognized in the rest of Canada.
Her experience dealing with this crisis reinforced her commitment to improving health care providers’ recognition and understanding of the social determinants of health. More attention must be paid to the emotional and mental trauma behind addiction and other illnesses, she argues, including the continuing impacts of the residential school system.
Leigh is an Indigenous Registered Psychologist from Swan River First Nations. She has also operated Leigh’s Counselling Services since 2018 and served clients throughout Alberta. She founded Aboriginal Psychological Services in 2017 and it is now called Indigenous Psychological Services. Indigenous Psychological Services is located in Slave Lake, Enoch, Edmonton and Calgary and entails 16 practitioners. She has been in practice since 2013.
Leigh specializes in providing Psychological Services for Indigenous peoples and Decolonization. Her focus has been on research on the impacts of colonization, historical influences that impact our clients, systematic racism and oppression, trauma informed techniques that honor the medicine wheel approaches and integrating cultural techniques in a clinical setting. She honors the two eyed seeing approach when it comes to operating a practice and how to work with clients.
Leigh provides an internship program that honors the unique needs of our clients by creating specialization in trauma and culturally informed techniques. She also provides presentations to organizations, schools and first Nations communities on clinical and cultural awareness.
Leigh also specializes in Complex trauma with her dedication to ongoing trauma training in the past six years. She is certified in Somatic Attachment Practitioner two year training. She is completing her third year Somatic Experiencing training, narrative therapy and Self-Regulation Therapy. Leigh personally believes in holistic approaches and embodying the Medicine Wheel to provide balance and direction. With compassion, gentleness and kindness, humans have the ability to heal and overcome many things.
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