LIFE COURSE, MISSIVE, and METHODOLOGY

LIFE COURSE, MISSIVE, and METHODOLOGY

Edited By: Erin Gurr & Catherine Richardson, PhD

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LIFE COURSE, MISSIVE, and Methodology
Edited By: Erin Gurr & Catherine Richardson, PhD

Step into a book that treats wellness as a living story, carried in relations rather than reduced to metrics. The book moves between missives (letters), story, and methodology to follow wellness across the life course, showing how kinship, land, language, ceremony, and systems shape what “mental health” can mean. Inside, you hear a chorus of perspectives: Indigenous scholars, helpers, community voices, and reflexive practitioners writing in direct address as much as in academic prose. Rather than extract-and-measure, it centers relationship: consent, reciprocity, and responsibility to community and Indigenous self-determination. Open it when you’re ready to trade the checklist for the circle and let your work become a good relation.

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  • Table of Contents

    Foreword

    PART I: INFANCY AND EARLY CHILDHOOD
    Epigraph: “The first six years of my life were magic.” — Tomson Highway

    1. Poetry for a Change — Naja Graugaard
    2. Considering the Relationships Between Thought and Language from an Onkwehón Lens — Miller et al.

    PART II: ADOLESCENCE, YOUTH, AND YOUNG ADULTHOOD
    Epigraph: “In those piercing seconds, we were possibility more than anything else.” — Billy-Ray Belcourt

    1. Being an Indigenous Graduate Student — Mushquash et al.
    2. Global Theories, Nuanced Realities: Reinterpreting Durkheim’s Suicide Types Through Perspectives of South Korean Youth — Anderson
    3. Memory Under Siege — Erin Gurr and Bryce Anderson

    PART III: MIDDLE TO LATE ADULTHOOD, ELDERHOOD, AND LEGACY
    Epigraph: “The future of mankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things.” — Vine Deloria Jr.

    1. Ecologies of Survivance — Erin Gurr and Catherine Richardson
    2. Good Grief: Affective Medicine — Jeffrey Ansloos
    3. As the Snow Geese Fly: Métis Voices — Shaun Hains

    Index

  • Erin Gurr & Catherine Richardson, PhD

    Erin Gurr is a Métis scholar, psychology intern and doctoral candidate in Applied Psychology at Western University. Her work sits at the intersection of mental health, transnational identities of Indigenous peoples, and systems-level policy reform. Erin holds an MA in School Applied Child Psychology from McGill University and has extensive experience across public health, child and family services, and community-based research in Canada and internationally. Erin is also recipient of the 2024 Nelson Mandela award from SSHRC/CIHR.

     

    Catherine Richardson, PhD is a Métis scholar and former Director of First Peoples Studies at Concordia University in Montreal.  She currently holds a research chair in Indigenous Healing Knowledges.  Cathy is a former Associate Professor at the Université de Montréal. Prior to moving to Montreal, Dr. Richardson spent seven years as a Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Victoria.  Dr. Richardson is a co-founder of the Centre for Response-Based Practice, an organization dedicated to helping people recover from violence. She is a family therapist and received her Ph.D. in the School of Child and Youth Care in Victoria, British Columbia. In addition to this edited book, Dr. Richardson has authored, Belonging Métis(2016) and co-edited Calling Our Families Home: Métis Peoples’ Experiences with Child Welfare (2017), Speaking the Wisdom of Our Time (2020), and Facing the Mountain: Indigenous Healing in the Shadow of Colonialism.