Instructors

Harley Eagle

Harley Eagle is of Dakota & Ojibway Indigenous ancestry. He is a member of the Whitecap Dakota First Nations Reserve, in Saskatchewan, Canada. He was raised in Saskatchewan until the age of 16 when his family moved to Vancouver Island where he has lived at different times totalling 25 years. His most recent time started in 2014 when he returned to Courtenay, British Columbia with his partner Sue and their two daughters to take a position with Island Health as an Indigenous Cultural Safety Facilitator. His role was to initiate and implement cultural safety practices and values throughout the entire organization that create safe settings for Indigenous patients, families, and communities. Prior to working in the health field and with the concept of Indigenous Cultural Safety, Harley and his family spend over 15 years in several roles working for Mennonite Central Committee.

His work in the cultural safety setting in addition to his decades of experience working on Indigenous issues nationally and internationally has given him a broad base of experiences to work from as he works with organization to increase their cultural safety capacity.

In 2018 Harley reduced his role at Island Health and increased his consulting practice to full-time. Harley holds a MA from Royal Roads University (RRU) and a Healing from Trauma certificate. Currently he works with clients in BC, Canada and the US across many sectors including, public service and advocacy agencies, BC health authorities and healthcare related projects, for profit companies, universities, policing related organizations, and non-profits.

His current roster of clients includes, The BC Office of the Representative of Children and Youth, The Provincial Health Services Authority, Several University BC Health related projects, Royal Roads University, the University of Victoria, The Rural Coordination Center of BC (rural and remote health support), Michael Smith Health Research BC, The North West Company, Mennonite Central Committee Central States USA, the Office of the Police Complaints Commission, the BC Association on Child Development, and Intervention (BCACDI), BC Center for Ability (BCCFA), and the BC Family Hearing Resource Society to name a few.

The main concepts that are the foundation to his work are:

• Relational, collaborative practice drawing from Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
• Working from an analysis of systemic racism which clarifies the colonial experience and intersections with other oppressions.
• Builds on the experiences and knowledge of participants.
• Applies and informed by anti-racism strategies.
• A de-colonized Trauma Informed Practice (TIP) lens.
• Centers the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on Indian Residential Schools on Canada Calls to Action and other commissions and reports pertaining to Indigenous Peoples.

Elaine Enns

Elaine Enns has worked across the restorative justice field since 1989, from facilitating victim-offender dialogue in the Criminal Justice System to addressing historical violations and intergenerational trauma. With a DMin from St. Andrews College Saskatoon, she trains and teaches throughout North America, and with her partner Ched published Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization (Cascade, 2021) and the two-volume Ambassadors of Reconciliation: A New Testament Theology and Diverse Christian Practices of Restorative Justice and Peacemaking (Orbis Books, 2009). They codirect Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (www.bcm-net.org).

Monika Kalcsics

Monika Maria Kalcsics is a journalist with more than 20 years of experience in public service media, print, TV and film. Reporter, producer and commissioning editor of award-winning documentaries and reports. Currently employed by the science, education and society department at Austria 1, the national information radio channel of ORF (Austrian Public Broadcasting Corporation). She is the head of the multimedia initiative “Fixing the Future – Casting new ideas.” Founding member of the production company name>it positive media, covering underrepresented areas in the media. Across this time, she also made emergency aid missions, establishing communication lines. Her combined career as a journalist and emergency aid worker has allowed her to understand the challenges we face when confronted with a humanitarian disaster and the need to report it. She was granted a fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University to research the relationship between aid organizations and the media in a "competitive compassion market".

Katie Kish

Katie Kish is a systems thinker and ecological economist with an interest in alternative ways of measuring success, beyond GDP. Her research and interests focus on livelihood and the home as the central piece to a sustainable and healthy economy. She is the Senior Development Officer for the York Footprint Initiative and co-chair of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics Advisory Committee. Katie also teaches ecological economics at the University of British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii Institute and is a research fellow for the Leadership for the Ecozoic program at McGill University. She received her PhD in Social and Ecological Sustainability from the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability and was a research fellow for the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation.

Ched Myers

Ched Myers is an activist theologian and New Testament expositor working with peace and justice issues. He is a popular educator, animating scripture and literacy in historic and current social change movements. Myers has published over a hundred articles and eight books, including Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Orbis, 1988). He and Elaine Enns are ecumenical Mennonites based in the Ventura River Watershed of southern California in traditional Chumash territory.