Introduction to Healing and Reconciliation: A Community Learning Journey

Introduction to Healing and Reconciliation: A Community Learning Journey

Our Community Learning Journeys center community-based thinking for curious learners of all lineages. In exploring the ways intergenerational healing and harms present in personal, familial, and community settings, participants walk away with deepened understandings of healing and reconciliation, tools with which to be of stronger kinship to community, and Native-led teachings in support of unity, understanding, and peace amongst all Peoples.

It started with Carlisle Industrial

Indian Boarding School, in PA.

One of HRI’s early advisors reached out to our cofounders one day and shared her experience of working to rematriate the remains of ancestors buried at Turtle Island’s first boarding school. This truth-telling was followed by a humbling request: that we develop a culturally-informed curriculum to support bridge-building with community partners, narrowing the gap between Indigenous experience and non-Indigenous understanding.

We immediately got to work, and the discussions that followed lead to the creation of our Introduction to Healing and Reconciliation: A Community Learning Journey.

This online workshop series is carefully designed to guide participants through four deep, interactive, and exploratory sessions that ask each person to set aside pre-conceived notions of history, culture, and privilege, in favor of vulnerability, reflection, and storytelling rooted in lived and inherited experience. Some exercises bring laughter. Some recordings cause triggers. All offerings are carefully selected and gently extended to the brave, compassionate, and visionary individuals who step into this circle.

Past participants have included community organizers, culture keepers, artists, peacemakers, lawyers, parents, students, educators, and more.

The next cohort has a seat saved just for you.

What Can I Expect?

Four weeks of turning inward, reflecting back, and looking ahead towards renewed and repaired relationship with Indigenous Peoples and ways of knowing.
*Private and place-based Learning Journeys for businesses, organizations, and closed-circle groups can be arranged by request. Send us an email

Week 1:

Groundwork for Learning

The circle opens with a setting of intentions, commitments, and agreements to support a safe and transformative learning environment. Land acknowledgments are addressed, the Braid of the Integrated Self is defined and explored, and Ojibway wisdom-keeper and Midewin man Mike Nadjiwon speaks to Indigenous futures and the prophecies of Turtle Island (the United States).

Week 2:

Individual and Family

The group explores Healing and Reconciliation as a process that begins with the Choice to Heal. As the first step of an ongoing journey, participants also develop the practice of meaningful apologies and forgiveness, recognizing our trauma responses and resiliency practices, and naming how these affect the ways in which we each interact with the world on an individual and collective basis.

Week 3:

Community and Collective

The collective story of epigenetics, blood memory, the history of colonization of Europe and Turtle Island (the United States), and what it might mean to be a good guest on Native land.

Pat McCabe invites us to remember European history as one of the many stories of colonization, touching on historic witch hunts and experiences of blood memory within the European diaspora. Malea Powell continues this conversation, specifically with regards to her ancestry in Wales, and brings us back to its intersection on Turtle Island. Through these perspectives, participants are asked to consider how their own families have responded to the various pressures of assimilation, colonization, and multi-generational trauma.

Week 4:

Renewed Pathways

A close focus on Healing and Reconciliation in our communities of influence and in the greater community. This includes Peacemaking practices and active apprenticeship on learning the tools of repair.

Participants are invited to recover our shared humanity as part of walking the reconciliation path. We prepare, listen, and affirm our commitments to our Earth, to our relatives upon it, and especially to supporting the First Nations and Native stewards of the lands we call home.

Helpful Answers

BEFORE YOU REGISTER

  • Public cohorts are announced through our Instagram, Newsletter, and Events page, where registration links are posted for the next available cohort. Your registration is complete once a) the completed form has been filled out in its entirety and submitted, along with b) receipt of a payment correlating with the capacity expressed in your submitted form.

    Registration is open for one cohort at a time, to support our administrative process. Once the current cohort has concluded, registration for the next season’s cohort will open.

    Private cohorts can be arranged on a contracted basis. Email admin@hricommunity.org to begin the conversation.

  • Unlike our Facilitator Training, the Introduction to Healing and Reconciliation is not designed to provide professional or workplace tools (although many participants leave with valued resources for consideration in all aspects of their lives).

    The Introduction to Healing and Reconciliation is a workshop centered on you as an individual, and the way your unique and inherited harms and healing interweave with those of the communities around you.

  • We get asked this question a lot- by Native participants before they register, by non-BIPOC and BIPOC professionals in the fields of facilitation and DEI, by elder participants, and by very young participants.

    Our answer is: if you are curious, this is for you. If you're familiar with the foundations but want to dive deeper into them, this is for you. If this is your first time in these conversations and environments, this is for you. And if you have lots to offer and carry the humility to learn more from not just your facilitators, but also from your peers, this is also for you.

    Whoever you are, however you identify, whatever your background, there is a place for you here. You, and your stories, are welcome.

  • We encourage friends, colleagues, and relatives to register together (we connect each person with a "buddy" insight the cohort, but the added integration offscreen can only ever deepen the experience).

    However, if there are more than two or three of you, you might want to consider coordinating a private learning journey for your community (be it a workplace, a collaborative, or a group of aligned visionaries). This will allow you to speak openly and freely about any confidential workplace or environmental concerns that may be bringing you into this space, and we can also conduct personalized listening, peacemaking, and governance circles to bring your group to sustainable agreements and reciprocal positive practices.

  • Life happens! We understand that folks might arrive a bit late, or need to step away a little early. We also appreciate when each participant is able to fully commit to being present for each session, as part of co-creating a shared space that is supportive of vulnerability, trust, new ways of thinking, and emerging relationships.

    To best promote this comfortable and intimate learning environment for all participants, we ask that you check your calendar before registering. If you have any pre-existing scheduling conflicts, we’d be happy to welcome you to an alternate future cohort (they’re offered on a recurring seasonal basis).

REGISTRATION FEES AND PAYMENT PLANS

  • We consider “full tuition” to be any self-selected amount between $400 and $850 (or more!). Inside the registration form is a link to make your payment in a single installment, as well as the option to select a customizable payment plan tailored to your needs and preferences.

    Your registration is complete once you have a) clicked the "submit" button inside the registration form, and b) made your payment (either in full, or the first installment towards). See below for information on fee waivers.

  • We grant as many full and partial scholarships as we’re able to for each cohort, prioritizing our BIPOC relatives and other historically marginalized communities. Please know that, while we never turn anyone away for lack of funds, we also have our own internal expenses in hosting this offering. If we’re at capacity in granting scholarships for the cohort you’ve registered for, we may humbly ask if you’re able to support us by attending an alternate future cohort.

    If you’d like to chat about this further please send an email to admin@hricommunity.org with your inquiry. Our inboxes do get a bit out of hand at times, so please feel free to follow up with us if for any reason we don’t get back to you within a couple business days.

    We offer two types of financial support:

    1. A Partial Fee Waiver adjusts the self-determined sliding scale payment to any amount between $100 and $400.

    2. A Full Fee Waiver waives the registration fee entirely. Those who receive a Full Fee Waiver will be provided with a link to make an optional donation (at any time) towards the sustainability of our flexible pricing structure.

  • A sliding scale payment program is a system designed to center practices of economic justice. It acknowledges that a flat amount impacts a lower-earning individual differently than a higher-earning individual, and instead invites each to make the payment amount that is consistent with their earnings and financial capacity. When everyone makes the largest investment comfortable for their personal situation, it creates greater financial ease of access for all. A payment at the higher end of the scale goes directly towards accommodating requests for full tuition waivers.

  • We invite folks to consider paying at the lower end of the scale if they: a) have recurring concerns that they may be unable to meet essential needs for themselves or their dependents, b) are elders with limited financial support, c) are unpaid community and/or cultural workers, d) have been denied work/worked in unsafe environments due to a history of incarceration or workplace discrimination, or e) have extensive and ongoing medical needs not covered by insurance.

    We invite folks to consider paying at the higher end of the scale if they: a) regularly travel for personal pleasure and/or can afford to take unpaid time off, b) purchase trends-based apparel, dine out recreationally, decorate their homes seasonally, and/or attend social/leisure events without being concerned about their ability to pay, c) own the home they live in, have inherited money/property, and/or have secure financial investments, d) are able to choose to work part-time based on a personal preference or a prioritization of personal callings, or e) are more likely to have a higher income based on their level of education, gender, racial, or color privilege, or their family’s social status/connections.

    Some of this language has been adapted from Tufas Boulder Lounge, an inclusive climbing gym

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

  • Folks with a background or interest in peacemaking, conflict resolution, restorative justice, and/or Indigenous reconciliation often enroll in our Facilitator Training (which is currently in the process of becoming eligible for CE credits) as a form of professional development. Those who have taken both the Community Learning Journey and the Facilitator Training frequently continue on to become valued and active members of HRI’s Facilitation Team.

    Public learning opportunities also include our quarterly Deep Dives, which explore a wide range of topics such as cultural work when connections to ancestors have been broken, healing the sacred masculine in service to Indigenous futures and reconciled pasts, cultural accountability and restoration for non-BIPOC, and other topics as guided by our Indigenous elders, advisors, and community partners.

  • You can read more about our practitioner pathways here, or send us an email.

    Please note that our facilitators and peacemakers hold project-based contract positions. We are always growing and expanding our teams in order to meet the diverse needs of our various clients and collaborators.