My name is Catherine Richardson. My Cree name is Kineweskwêw, which means Golden Eagle Woman. I am a mother, aunty, therapist, educator, former director of First Peoples Studies at Concordia University and c0-founder of Response-Based Practice. I am a member of the Métis Nation of British Columbia, with maternal ties to Fort Chipewyan and Red River. My Métis family names are Flett, Hardesty, and Wylie. My relatives received scrip in 1898 in Alberta. My mother Greta and her sisters were raised on a trapline at Hill Island Lake. As a young woman, my mother moved to Vancouver to study pharmacy at University of British Columbia where she met my father Edward and married after graduation. I was raised on Vancouver Island.
After graduating from high school, I felt great freedom in escaping my hometown and spending a few years travelling the world. I lived in a few different countries including Sweden and France. When I finally returned home, I enrolled as a student at the University of Victoria and eventually received a number of degrees: a Bachelors in Political Science and French, secondary school teaching credentials, a Masters in Education in Counselling Psychology and finally a PhD in Child and Youth Psychology. I worked in a number of community organizations before becoming an academic and taking a position at the University of Victoria in the School of Social Work. I am currently a professor at Concordia University and have been rooted in Montreal for over a decade. I have a private counselling practice and have recently started beading. I have always been interested in healing, well-being, and spirituality. I have Level Two certification in Reiki and am currently a student of shamanic journeying. In all of my practices, I integrate western and Indigenous approaches to healing in ways that affirm personal agency, desire and resistance to oppression.
I was born as a child with a mobility disability. The women in my family have suffered from environmental extractivism, which disproportionally affects Indigenous communities. My mother spent her teen years with her family in Uranium City, Saskatchewan. Surrounded by active uranium mining, it is likely that her body, and later the bodies of her two daughters, were negatively impacted by the radioactivity in the area. My sister Judy and I were both born with problems that inhibited our walking and movement, and spent our earliest years in body casts.
I have written about this experience in my book Facing the Mountain: Indigenous Healing in the Shadow of Colonialism. In 2000, I experienced my first bout of cancer; it later returned in 2016. After receiving medical treatment and doing personal healing work, I am now illness free. Part of my research has involved studying and experiencing the social (medical, professional, clinical) responses offered by our systems and exploring the relationship between dignity-based practices (including kindness, loving care and social justice) and recovery.