Practice 4 Relationality

Abstract

In Practice 4 Melissa, Sandra, and Janelle invite deeper awareness of practitioner positionality within colonial relationships. Janelle illustrates the All My Relations Teaching through an Indigenous, community-based, berry monitoring project, grounded the chapter in relationality and relationship to land and place. Throughout the chapter the authors invite readers to honour their shared humanity and interconnectedness. They reflect on how counselling, psychology, and other healthcare professions came to a place where they risk doing more harm than good, because of their roots in colonial histories and ideologies. They examine critically the colonial and individualist worldviews and the persistence of coloniality and white supremacy. The authors draw on the examples of ecological violence and racial violence as continued legacies of coloniality. They invite readers to consider their own positionality with colonial relationships as part of their own consciousness-raising. They propose that by recognizing our interconnectedness—as human beings, clients, students, practitioners, and educators, and as shared inhabitants of the earth—we can lean into relational accountability. The chapter ends with an invitation to action: coming together in solidarity to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in our professions and our society.

The chapter is enhanced through the practice illustrations provided by the following co-authors.

• Zuraida Dada offers a series of videos throughout the book. In the first two videos in this chapter, she shares her insights on the relationship between apartheid in South Africa and the colonization of Indigenous Peoples in Canada as well as the legacy of colonization in Canada.
• Lisa Gunderson provides insights into racialized violence in Canada from the perspective of a Black woman who grew up in the US and immigrated to Canada as an adult. She includes important tips on cultural responsivity for counsellors working with racialized minorities.

Co-Authors

Melissa Jay (she/her), PhD, RPsych, is a cisgender nehiyaw (Cree) member of the Métis Nation of Alberta and lifelong student of yoga philosophy. She is a cisgender, able-bodied woman who moves through the world with white-passing privilege. She is a psychologist and associate professor at Athabasca University. Her work is centred in reciprocity and relationship, decolonized healing, anti-oppressive practices, and the integration of ancient wisdom and psychology. Her intention is to share trauma-informed, culturally responsive care, alongside her ongoing collaborative research exploring relational accountability, Indigenous methodologies, and ethical engagement with community.

Sandra Collins (she/her), PhD, is a co-editor of this book. She writes from the perspective of a feminist, lesbian, cisgender, woman with an invisible disability, who is a white, retired professor, and inhabits a privileged social class. Over the 25 years of her academic and professional career, she focused her research, writing, and teaching on cultural responsivity and social justice in theory, research, and practice. This is her fifth book on these topics, two of which were awarded the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Counselling biannual book award. She also received a silver medal for best e-book design by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. 

Janelle Baker (she/her), PhD is of mixed settler and Métis descent. She is an associate professor in anthropology at Athabasca University and recipient of the 2024 Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations’ Distinguished Academic Early Career Award. Her research specializations include ethnography of contamination, environmental and ecological anthropology, ethnobiology and ethnoecology, posthumanism and the anthropocene, anthropology of food, food sovereignty, political ecology, and ethnographic writing. She was the winner of the 2019 Canadian Association for Graduate Studies “ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award,” arts, humanities, and social sciences category.

Zuraida Dada (she/her), MA, RPsych, CPsych, Registered Psychologist (South Africa), is South African by birth and lived under apartheid for most of her life. SheI was an anti-apartheid activist and was part of the first wave of IBAPoC “intelligencia” in postapartheid South Africa. She is the founder and president of Invictus Psychology & Consulting, an international psychology private practice. She is a seasoned psychologist with over 20 years of experience in South Africa and 16 years of experience in Canada, specializing in counselling psychology and industrial organizational psychology. She was the recipient of the Canadian Psychological Association’s 2021 John C. Service award and was recognized for her volunteer efforts by the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta as a Contributor of the Year in 2020.

Lisa Gunderson (Akua Offeibea, she/her), PhD, RCC, ACS, is the founder of One Love Consulting and an award-winning educator and equity consultant for families, educational, and organizational institutions. She is a registered clinical counsellor in British Columbia and an approved clinical supervisor in California. For almost 30 years she has focused on equity and anti-racism issues for racialized and minoritized populations, including Black ethnic identity in Canada and the U.S. In 2023 she received the John Young Advocacy Award from VCPAC for “courageous, principle-based efforts advocating for equity and access for all students.” For almost 10 years I have worked clinically with the ȽÁU,WELṈEW̱ Tribal School and the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Secondary School where I served as a clinical school counsellor, peer, and intern supervisor.

Citation

Jay, M., Collins, S., Baker, J., Dada, Z., & Gunderson, L. (2025). Practice 4 Relationality: Unlearning disconnection. In S. Collins and M. Jay (Eds.), Decolonizing health, healing, and care: Embodying culturally responsive and socially just counselling (Chapter 2.2). Counselling Concepts. https://doi.org/10.71446/96932354