FEATURE COMMENTARY
IMPLEMENTING COMMUNITIES OF CARE IN TRAUMA-INFORMED LEGAL PRACTICE RORY ERICKSON
CLASSIC LAW AND U OF S, COLLEGE OF LAW
Supporting trauma-informed legal practice requires the recalibration of trauma theory for the effective practice of law. The language of trauma in legal discourse has become rooted in European hegemony1, functioning to reproduce the very interests and systems that have enforced trauma by justifying ongoing colonial interventions and the structuring of knowledge involving trauma experiences.2 Dominancebased interactions are framed as ‘wellintended,’ furthering pathologized and deficiency-centered assumptions about trauma. This process contributes to the undermining of community and resilience – a perfect storm that undercuts the advancement of communities and individuals by enacting harm under the guise of care and client advocacy. For trauma-informed practice to happen effectively, healing and selfawareness must occur for those involved in the provision of supports. Interpersonal interactions are impacted by beliefs and biases that become amplified by assumptionsbased interactions involving monoepistemic ways of knowing. A multi-epistemic approach to traumainformed practice “supports the awareness that there are multiple ways of knowing, understanding and assigning meaning”3 to trauma and its healing. Recognizing and supporting anti-colonial and
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Indigenous intersectional perspectives of trauma creates opportunities for the upholding of Indigenous sovereignty and the further reconfiguration of legal practice.4
As a community organization, CLASSIC Law is grounded within client-centered practice, which requires an awareness of the unique and dynamic needs of each individual client. Understanding an approach to interdisciplinary supports requires the emphasis of a client’s priorities by identifying their role within a Adrienne
Huard emphasizes the as one that actively disrupts damage and deficiencycentered narratives because it “encourage[s] a trauma-informed responsibility…that celebrates our kinship, successes, sovereignty, and resistance.”5 Developing this in legal practice provides a potential solution to the dominant discourse of trauma by enabling healing and care to be structured around the client’s self-determination.6 Against colonial subjugation enforced by practitioner-client power dynamics, self-determination presents the client as an expert in their own right - as resilient, celebrated, and determining of their own future through the ongoing support of their communities. Of importance to this notion of self-determination is the inherent limitation of a colonial justice system that attempts to deny Indigenous legal traditions and restorative justice practices, requiring the navigation of limited options through acts of resistance and community connection. In all manners of expertise, including
social work, education, law, healthcare, or governmental decisionmaking, humans remain at the core of decisions made and acted upon. And yet, a demarcation becomes apparent between those who receive care and those who provide it. What emerges from that space in between is the belief that care providers and practitioners, as experts in their field, need not seek out the very care that they intend to provide. Therein lies ‘the arrival’ – for techniques, devices, and an awareness for other people without self-reference. A scope of care that includes ‘the self’ will never allow for an arrival when the practice of care necessarily requires an ‘ever-approaching horizon.’ 7 Trauma is a mark of humanity shared, boundaryless and iterative, however, its existence remains unacknowledged in many of the institutions responsible for both maintaining and preventing its occurrence. As one such domain, the government has articulated the enforcement of trauma through explicit policies and practices witnessed in immigration trauma,8 evictions,9 and programs such as the Saskatchewan Income Support (SIS) program, which inadequately supports participants by significantly reducing income supports. The legal institution has itself prescribed the limits of the necessary qualifications for its practice, resulting in the implicit enforcement of trauma through client-blaming behaviours10 and a lack of awareness about trauma’s presence within the criminal justice system.11 Presently, trauma-informed practice is not a required component of any level of legal education or training.
