Healing through Art: Ritualized Space and Cree Identity (Volume 41) (McGill-Queen's Indigenous and Northern Studies)

In Healing through Art Nadia Ferrara shows how art therapy has been used as a successful form of healing among Crees. The result of her work as an art therapist in communities in northern Quebec, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of the nature of her patients' experiences. Ferrara examines how individual experience of trauma is perceived, defined, and narrated by Cree individuals and discusses the role that Cree culture and Cree definitions of self play in therapy.

In Healing through Art, Nadia Ferrara shows how art therapy has been used as a successful form of healing among Crees in northern Quebec. Although Ferrara is not Native and was not using a traditional method, her art therapy became a ritual for her patients and she was accepted in Cree communities as a healer. Through analysis of her patients' experiences, Ferrara shows that Crees often associate art therapy with their time in the bush and argues that both the bush and the therapeutic space constitute places where they re-affirm their notions of self. She also examines how individual trauma is perceived, defined, and narrated by Cree individuals and discusses the role that their culture and definitions of self play in therapy. By including patient drawings and letting us hear their voices, Healing through Art gives us a sense of the reality of everyday Cree experience. This innovative book transcends disciplinary boundaries and makes a significant contribution to anthropology, native studies, and clinical psychology.

Near the beginning of her career, Nadia Ferrara met a Cree elder who encouraged her to continue working with his people. Your art therapy was probably created for us to help us heal. Aspaayimotam. We have faith in you. Ferrara was subsequently given special status by Cree patients and community workers. In Healing through Art: Ritualized Space and Cree Identity, she describes her specialized form of art therapy and how it reveals contradictory and ambiguous tendencies in the construction of the modern Cree self. Ferrara's work helps Crees with the creation of a new self by deconstructing the old, redefining its components and building a new, multivocal self. Telling their stories also gives Cree patients an opportunity to impose order on otherwise disconnected events and to create continuity between past, present, and imagined worlds.

"In Healing through Art, Nadia Ferrara shows how art therapy has been used as a successful form of healing among Crees in northern Quebec. Although Ferrara is not Native and was not using a traditional method, her art therapy became a ritual for her patients and she was accepted in Cree communities as a healer. Through analysis of her patients experiences. Ferrara shows that crees often associate art therapy with their time in the bush and argues that both the bush and the therapeutic space constitute places where they re-affirm their notions of self. She also examines how individual trauma is perceived, defined, and narrated by Cree individuals and discusses the role that their culture and definitions of self play in therapy." "By including patient drawings and letting us hear their voices, Healing through Art gives us a sense of the reality of everyday Cree experience. This book transcends disciplinary boundaries and makes a significant contribution to anthropology, native studies, and clinical psychology."--Jacket Ferrara, who is accepted as a healer in Cree communities, shows how art therapy became a ritual for her patients, noting that Crees often associate art therapy and their experience in the bush and arguing that both constitute a place for them to re-affirm their notions of self. By including patient drawings and letting us hear Cree voices, "Healing through Art" gives us a sense of the reality of everyday Cree experience. This innovative book transcends disciplinary boundaries and makes a significant contribution to anthropology, Native Studies, and clinical psychology.