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When Our Dinosaur Brains Remember: Reflections on Working with Indigenous Peoples and the Ongoing Journey of Allyship 🦖

  • Writer: Stephanie Smith
    Stephanie Smith
  • 2 hours ago
  • 7 min read
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Throughout my career, across all kinds of settings, I’ve been given the privilege of working alongside Indigenous peoples. Every time I sit with someone who shares their story — their pain, their history, their healing — I’m reminded of how deeply trauma lives in the body, in families, and in communities. It’s not just old trauma or something for the history books. It’s living, breathing, generational — the kind our “dinosaur brains” still react to, even decades later (Bombay, Matheson, & Anisman, 2011). 🧠🔥


I will never forget the first time I learned about residential schools in my undergraduate degree. I felt like a switch had flipped in my nervous system. My dinosaur brain — that part of me that reacts instinctively to fear, shame, and disbelief — went into overdrive. I remember sitting in that classroom, blown away and horrified, trying to make sense of what I was hearing.


It was a course that, at the time, was called Aboriginal Social Work. The professor, an amazing Indigenous woman and scholar, began talking about the legacy of residential schools and their ongoing impact. She taught how intergenerational trauma has a direct link to overrepresentation in foster care, corrections, poverty and substance misuse. Realities that I have come to witness again and again over the last 15 years of my career. I can still see myself sitting there, stunned and heartbroken. I remember thinking: How did I not know this? How did I grow up in this country, surrounded by this history, and never learned the truth? What else did I not know!?


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As a white person, I had been living in a bubble. I’d had the privilege of not knowing. When that bubble burst in class that day, I felt devastated, embarrassed, and ashamed — not only because of what had been done, but because I’d been so unaware of the systems that allowed it to keep happening. That was the beginning of my journey toward being an ally of Indigenous peoples (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). 🌧️🦖


Growing Up Next to Silence 🚲🏚️

I grew up living down the road from the site of the Coqualeetza Indian Residential School (1889-1940) and Indian Hospital (1941-1969) in Chilliwack, BC (Coqualeetza Timeline). It was literally my "backyard playground". As a kid, and even teenager, it was this big, mysterious building that everyone whispered about. My friends and I would sneak around the perimeter of the grounds, half fearful, half curious, wondering what had gone on there. We never really knew. No one talked about it.


Years later, in that university classroom, I realized what had actually happened in that place — so close to where I grew up — and I felt awful. I couldn’t believe that I had no idea. While my friends and I were running around having fun in the fields and bushes surrounding the Coqualeetza, Indigenous peoples had suffered there. And they had brought that suffering home to their families and their communities.


That moment in Social Work 392 changed me. It woke me up to the depth of harm caused by colonialism — harm that still lives in the nervous systems of the people I now work with every single day (Barnes & Josefowitz, 2019).


Learning to Listen 👂🔥

Since then, I’ve had the honour of working with Indigenous peoples providing social work services, trauma therapy and community support in many different settings — prison, community corrections, health care, harm reduction, substance misuse, counselling and outreach to folks living on the street. And in every one of those spaces I’ve been humbled by the strength, resilience, and grace of the people I’ve met.


My clients have shared stories about residential schools, lost language, lost culture, broken communities, the Sixties Scoop, Indian hospitals, child welfare, incarceration, substance misuse, poverty, racism and generations of trauma — and I’ve also been witness to the incredible beauty of cultural healing, ceremony, resilience and community.


I’d estimate at least 60% of my caseload today are Indigenous folks. Many clients carry the weight of what their parents and grandparents endured, but they also carry the fire of survival — the strength to say, “I've got this!" and "This ends with me.” That strength, perseverance and resilence takes my breath away. 🔥💪


Trauma, the Body, and the Dinosaur Brain 🧠

Trauma doesn’t live only in stories or statistics — it lives in bodies, in habits, in the tiny automatic responses that show up when someone feels unsafe. Historical and intergenerational trauma — from residential schools to the Sixties Scoop to discriminatory healthcare and child-welfare practices — changes how safety is experienced across generations (Bombay et al., 2011).


Our dinosaur brain is not being dramatic; it’s being literal. When trust has been broken at systemic and familial levels, that ancient part of the brain ramps up protection: hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, emotional numbing, dissociation, or overt reactivity. In communities affected by colonial violence, those survival patterns are often repeated across generations because the environment actually keeps signalling danger. The nervous system learns to expect threat. ⚠️


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What I see in practice is this: a child who reflexively avoids eye contact because previous generations learned to keep their heads down; a parent whose hypervigilance is interpreted as “angry” when it’s actually a protective strategy; an elder whose memory and grief are tangled with shame and silence. These are not personal flaws — they are the footprints of survival (Bombay et al., 2011; Barnes & Josefowitz, 2019). 🕊️


Linking the body back to cultural healing is essential. Ceremony, language reclamation, community connection, and Indigenous-led therapeutic models provide experiences that slowly re-teach the nervous system what safety and belonging can feel like. That’s when the dinosaur brain can finally breathe a little — and a whole community can begin to reprogram its collective alarm system. 🌱🪶


This Isn’t History — It’s Now ⚠️

I am sad to say that I to often hear, “They should just get over it.” Or, “That was a long time ago.” But in the therapy space I see how untrue that is. The trauma is alive and ruling right now!!


It’s in the stories of children who say they are "thankful they don't look Indigenous.” It’s in the fear of being mistreated at the hospital emergency room, the grief of losing another community member to substance use, the silence of a family who’s lost too many already.


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Intergenerational trauma is real.

Racism against Indigenous people is real.

Stolen traditions, stolen land, stolen family — it’s all real.


When trauma is this deep, our dinosaur brains stay on high alert. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn — these survival responses aren’t signs of weakness. They are the body’s ancient way of saying, I’m trying to keep you safe. 🦖💥




Bearing Witness to Healing 🌼

There is also healing. I’ve seen it — in the circles, the ceremonies, the reconnections. I’ve watched clients reclaim language, culture, and traditions that were once taken from them.

Healing isn’t linear, and it isn’t quick. It takes resources, community, and safety. It takes Indigenous-led programs and culturally grounded supports. It takes settlers — like me — stepping up to be real allies, not just performative ones.


When I sit across from a survivor — still haunted by childhood atrocities at 85 years old— I often have no words. There’s no fixing that kind of pain. The only thing I can do is bear witness. To listen. To honour. And then to act, to use my therapy office for healing, support and trauma processing so clients can find calm and relief.


What It Means to Be an Ally

Being an ally isn’t a title you claim; it’s something you practice. It’s ongoing, humbling, and uncomfortable — and that’s exactly how it should be.


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Listen deeply.

Not to respond — but to understand. Honour lived experience.


Challenge racism.

Silence equals complicity. Speak up, gently if you can, firmly if you must.


Support Indigenous-led healing.

Back programs, voices, and leadership rooted in community and culture.


Celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day (June 21).

Show up. Learn. Listen. Witness.


Correct misinformation.

Unlearn colonial myths. Share truth.


Keep learning. LEARN-Really learn!!

Ask: How am I using my privilege? Where am I still blind? What can I do differently tomorrow?


To My Indigenous Clients and Readers — thank you 🌺

If you are an Indigenous person reading this — or one of my Indigenous clients — thank you.


Thank you for trusting me, for letting me walk with you on your healing journey. Thank you for sharing your teachings, your stories, and your culture. Thank you for helping me see the world through a lens that is bigger, braver, and truer than the one I grew up with.


As a social worker — knowing the harm that social work and child protection have caused Indigenous families — I do not take your trust lightly. Every day, I strive to be worthy of it.


To my fellow settlers: we can’t change the past, but we can take responsibility for how we move forward. The trauma may live in the body — in our dinosaur brains, in our collective nervous system — but so does resilience. So does connection. So does hope.


Healing begins when we face the truth, stay curious, and walk beside each other — not in front, not behind.


This isn’t about guilt.

It’s about humanity.

And it’s about now!!!


Thank you so much for reading—I would love to hear from you. Scroll down and like this post or leave a comment.


Stephanie Smith

Registered Social Worker and Therapist

Olive Branch Counselling

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References

Barnes, R., & Josefowitz, N. (2019). Indian residential schools in Canada: Persistent impacts on Aboriginal students’ psychological development and functioning. Canadian Psychology, 60(2), 65–76. https://doi.org/10.1037/cap0000154


Bombay, A., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2011). The impact of stressors on second generation Indian residential school survivors. Transcultural Psychiatry, 48(4), 367–391. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461511410240


First Peoples Wellness Circle. (n.d.). First Peoples Wellness Circle. https://fpwc.ca

Horn, K. (Host). (2023). Telling Our Twisted Histories [Audio podcast]. CBC Podcasts. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/906-telling-our-twisted-histories


Indian Residential School Survivors Society. (n.d.). Indian Residential School Survivors Society. https://www.irsss.ca


Joseph, B. (2018). 21 things you may not know about the Indian Act: Helping Canadians make reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a reality. Page Two Books.


King, T. (2013). The inconvenient Indian: A curious account of native people in North America. University of Minnesota Press.


Legacy of Hope Foundation. (2023). A toolkit for aspiring Indigenous allies. https://legacyofhope.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Ally-Toolkit-2023.pdf


National Association of Friendship Centres. (n.d.). National Association of Friendship Centres. https://nafc.ca


National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. (n.d.). National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. https://nctr.ca


Reconciliation Canada. (n.d.). Reconciliation Canada. https://reconciliationcanada.ca


Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Truth and reconciliation commission of Canada: Calls to action. Government of Canada. https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.801236/publication.html


British Columbia Teaching and Learning Council. (n.d.). Suggested land acknowledgements for all regions of British Columbia. https://bctlc.ca/land-acknowledgements/


 
 
 

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