Cultivating Safe Spaces

Cultivating Safe Spaces draws upon the Indigenous teachings and ancestral wisdom of Elaine’s lineage to show you how to apply the four necessary conditions of understanding self, love-based practice, patience, and discipline and will also share with you how to incorporate protocols into your everyday life. Throughout this presentation, Elaine will weave in her lived and living experience regarding her own substance use and eating disorders and how it ties into Indian Residential Schools and the multi-generational trauma.

Learning Objectives:

Following this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Understand the intersection of substance use disorders and eating disorders
2. Recognize the history of Indigenous populations and addictions/eating disorders
3. Cultivate safer spaces in recovery settings
4. Implement decolonized approaches to recovery

Elaine Alec Bio:

Elaine Alec is from the Syilx (Okanagan) Nation and Secwepemc (Shuswap) Nation and is a member of the Penticton Indian Band in the Interior of British Columbia.

She has been a political advisor, Chief of Staff for the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations, Community Planner for her own First Nation, employee for the Province of BC, and Federal Government and Entrepreneur.

Elaine has spent over 20 years in over 100 communities across Canada to promote healing and wellness. She is a partner of an Indigenous owned and operated planning company called Alderhill Planning Inc.

Elaine is a first-time author of “Calling My Spirit Back” a memoir about growing up as an Indigenous girl in Canada and the impacts of colonization. It also provides Indigenous knowledge, teachings on how to cultivate safe spaces for diversity and inclusion.