Senator Patti LaBoucane-Benson is a Métis from Treaty 6 territory in Alberta. She is currently the Government Liaison and is the first Indigenous woman to hold a leadership position in the Senate. Her 30-year career has been dedicated to serving her community in Alberta, across Canada and around the world—as the director of a Boys and Girls Club in St. Paul in 1990, through 23 years of service at Native Counselling Services of Alberta (NCSA), and Conference Director and Lead Facilitator of the Nelson Mandela Dialogues in Canada, an international gathering of freedom fighters that took place on Enoch Cree Nation in 2017.
Dr. LaBoucane-Benson’s research for her PhD in Human Ecology focused on how Indigenous families and communities experience their own resilience in response to multiple forms of trauma. Her lifelong work has become an extended conversation about healing from historic trauma.
Dr. LaBoucane-Benson brought her PhD research to life through a work of creative non-fiction, an award-winning graphic novel—The Outside Circle—that tells the story of an inner-city Aboriginal family who transcend poverty, gang affiliation, and hopelessness. Her teaching materials are used in classrooms across Canada and in training sessions for professionals.
Appointed to the Senate in October 2018, the Senator lives fully in the space that helps define Canada. She is an avid gardener and her husband Allen is a traditional Nehiyaw (Cree) hunter; they believe that food security includes the respectful harvest of food from the land. They live near Stony Plain, Alberta, with their son Gabriel, on an acreage that has hosted ceremony, workshops, and dozens of transformational conversations with Elders, elected officials, and leaders from around the world.
Winner, CODE’s 2016 Burt Award for First Nation, Inuit and Métis Literature
In this important graphic novel, two brothers surrounded by poverty, drug abuse, and gang violence, try to overcome centuries of historic trauma in very different ways to bring about positive change in their lives.
Pete, a young Indigenous man wrapped up in gang violence, lives with his younger brother, Joey, and his mother who is a heroin addict. One night, Pete and his mother’s boyfriend, Dennis, get into a big fight, which sends Dennis to the morgue and Pete to jail. Initially, Pete keeps up ties to his crew, until a jail brawl forces him to realize the negative influence he has become on Joey, which encourages him to begin a process of rehabilitation that includes traditional Indigenous healing circles and ceremonies.
Powerful, courageous, and deeply moving, The Outside Circle is drawn from the author’s twenty years of work and research on healing and reconciliation of gang-affiliated or incarcerated Indigenous men.
HOSTED BY
Pam Rocker
WHAT TO EXPECT
90-minute storytelling and interviews
HOSTED BY
Shelagh Rogers
WHAT TO EXPECT
75-minute conversation
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
