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About

Geneva Ensign

Geneva Ensign is now retired from a 45-year career in the helping profession. Formerly self-employed, her company, Explorations Counselling & Training Services, provided one-to-one counselling and group psychotherapy, teaching and training in a variety of human relations workshops, community development and social program planning. Her work with Indigenous people began in the early 1970s when she signed a contract to design and deliver experiential learning modules to Indigenous communities whose leaders were enrolled in an innovative (for that time) outreach social work program. She says, “That experience was the beginning of my “real” education.” She continued to work by contract, learning through each new challenge. Her clients included Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals, communities and organizations in northwestern Canada: British Columbia, The Yukon, Alberta, Northwest Territories as well as Manitoba and Ottawa. The last ten years of her career involved weeklong residential Healing Circles with the women of the Samson Cree Nation. Her book, Community Healing: A Transcultural Model, presents the “essence” of what she has learned about healing over the years—that personal healing leads to community healing. Dr. Duane Massing, professor emeritus of social work, Grant MacEwan University, says that Geneva “… distills her decades of experience and wisdom into a powerful, practical and visional model. It is, through and through, a strength-based book about healing the wounds that beset individuals, families and communities.”