Description: 

This workshop is about the toxic drug crisis as  it continues to disproportionately impact Indigenous people. While Naloxone is an effective life-saving medicine to reverse an overdose, it is not the only response.

The Tonya's workshops teach participants to facilitate community based conversations about :

• Racism  and prohibition in so called Canada
• Decolonizing substance use
• Indigenous harm reduction practices
• Trauma and resiliency informed practice
• Anti-stigma work
• Naloxone training (nasal/injection)

Instructor: Tonya Robitaille

Tonya is an Anishinaabe- Metis womxn with strong family kinship ties to the Ktunaxa and Secwepemc First Nations. She is a proud member of the Indigiqueer community and lives in the forest on the unceded territories of the Ktunaxa and Sinixt Nations on beautiful Kootenay Lake. She is passionate about Indigenous sovereignty, building empowered community capacity, harm reduction and decolonizing mental health, wellness and substance use. She is a dedicated advocate for marginalized people; sharing a wealth of lived experience surviving intergenerational trauma from the residential school system, involuntary mental health “treatment’ as a youth and adult, addiction, and homelessness. She is currently a social work student, a proud mother and titi (grandmother), gentle friend to all animals, and spends her free time on the land gathering and making traditional medicines. She gratefully carries the teachings gathered from her own personal healing journey to share in her work with organizations like Foundry,  and her role at Health Justice. She endeavours to create experiential and embodied educational opportunities which invite people to actively participate in their learning, and to apply their understandings to create change in their own lives, work spaces, and the current colonial mental health system. `