“We have a long way to go in this country in the work of Truth and Reconciliation, and I hope to contribute to this by using my voice to call others to listen to the voices of Indigenous people. It is important for everyone to hear their stories.”
-- Vanessa Bork, Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology (2019)
Vanessa Bork, MA, CCC, explores the impacts of adoption under the Sixties Scoop, a time when Indigenous children were taken from their families in an attempt to eradicate their Indigenous culture and assimilate them into mainstream Canadian society.
“I believe it is important that we hear the stories of these families and how the legacy of the Sixties Scoop may be impacting the next generation and their own sense of identity,” says Bork.
Bork is a Canadian Certified Counsellor who runs an online private practice (Vanessa Bork Counselling). She graduated from Trinity Western University’s Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology in 2019.
This past April, Bork won a nationally competitive award – a Doctoral Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ($105,000). She begins her Ph.D. studies at UBC this September.
Bork hopes that her work will act as a platform for the voices of Indigenous families to be heard.
“We have a long way to go in this country in the work of Truth and Reconciliation, and I hope to contribute to this by using my voice to call others to listen to the voices of Indigenous people. It is important for everyone to hear their stories,” she says.
Bork shares how she found her calling in counselling: “Over the years, I’ve inhabited a number of roles that centred largely around emotional support, and I found that every turn I took along my path led me back to counselling.”
“I feel as though this profession just kept calling for me, and it felt right to answer that call,” Bork says.
Regarding her choice of counselling program, she says, “I decided to study at TWU because of the unparalleled reputation of the MA Counselling Psychology program. My experience in this program has quite literally been life-changing for me—academically, professionally, and personally.”
With COVID-19, the work of local BC counsellors has changed. Bork sees some benefits in online counselling:
“Online therapy offers flexibility to clients so that attending counselling becomes more feasible, where in-person sessions may be so arduous that [clients] may be left without the ability to access counselling services at all. To me, this is one small silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic—it has highlighted online therapy as a viable option for the future of counselling.”
Please see below for our full interview with Vanessa Bork:
Please tell us about your current doctoral research.
My doctoral research will center around Indigenous family stories of adoption. This builds off my master’s thesis research in which I explored adoption narratives that are passed from the adoptee down to their children. The literature shows that the family stories we inherit help us shape our understanding of our own identity, and I was interested in what this looked like in the context of adoption as one particular kind of family narrative. My first study provided valuable insights into the experiences of adult adoptees and the co-construction of their family story of adoption they shared with their children. None of this had been explored much in research before, so there is still a great deal to learn. With this next project, I want to expand on these discoveries by exploring the impacts of adoption under the Sixties Scoop. This was when Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed with Euro-Canadian Christian families in an attempt to assimilate them into mainstream society by eradicating their own Indigenous culture. I believe it is important that we hear the stories of these families and how the legacy of the Sixties Scoop may be impacting the next generation and their own sense of identity.
What drew you to this area of research?
I am passionate about narratives of identity, especially narratives that position individuals in the greater context of stories that span generations. I study how passing down these stories help shape an individual’s identity as they find themselves being a part of this larger narrative.
My interest in passing down family stories of adoption in particular is inspired by my own family. My mom was adopted in infancy, and the stories she passed on to me about her adoptee identity always felt as though they shaped my own story as well. For instance, my mom does not know who her biological mother is, which means I do not know who my biological maternal grandmother is. It all trickles down, and I wanted to look at this trickle more closely.
My initial exploration yielded results from participants who were relatively privileged and identified their adoption story to be ultimately positive. This still leaves a gap in our understanding of populations impacted by adoption that were not favourable experiences. In the case of the Sixties Scoop, Indigenous children were stripped of their culture, language, traditions, and families. There was a lot stolen from them that is different from a typical consensual adoption story. The common hardships faced by an average adoptee pale in comparison. I am interested in what the family story around this experience is that the adoptee passes on to their own children, and what impacts might still be felt by that next generation.
What do you hope will be the outcome of your work? How will it impact society?
I hope my work will act as a platform for the voices of Indigenous families to be heard. We have a long way to go in this country in the work of Truth and Reconciliation, and I hope to contribute to this by using my voice to call others to listen to the voices of Indigenous people. It is important for everyone to hear their stories.
For the field of counselling psychology, understanding the impacts of intergenerational trauma associated with the Sixties Scoop is paramount to our ability to best support clients who are living out these stories and longing for growth and healing. By taking the time to listen to the community, we can learn from them, and we can then work to help give them what they need.
This study will be exploratory, and thus just one step in the journey of understanding. But every small step we take to show up and learn is crucial. As a counsellor, I believe that the client is the expert on their own experiences and that good counselling is done in collaboration with the client. There are no one-size-fits-all treatments. Every person’s story and needs are unique. In order to come alongside a client and support them in their journey toward growth and healing, I must first learn from the client about who they are, what their experiences have been, what they’re needing, and what direction they hope to move in. My aim is for this study to be like that.
What inspired you to become a counsellor and to study at TWU?
I have always been captivated by the human experience. Ever since I was a little girl, I was acutely aware of everybody having unique identities and different ways of responding to the world around them. This fascinated me. I also learned that my curiosity, compassion, and openness toward other people seemed to draw them toward me. Over the years, I’ve inhabited a number of roles that centred largely around emotional support, and I found that every turn I took along my path led me back to counselling. I feel as though this profession just kept calling for me, and it felt right to answer that call. I decided to study at TWU because of the unparalleled reputation of the MA Counselling Psychology program. My experience in this program has quite literally been life-changing for me—academically, professionally, and personally. I will forever be grateful for my time here, the education I received, and the relationships I built.
How has your counselling work changed since COVID-19? Have you observed any interesting trends in your field, or among people you work with?
The biggest shift in my work since COVID-19 has been moving my practice fully online. This was something that all counsellors I know did right away when the initial COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. Since some restrictions have eased, many counsellors have gone back to in-person counselling.
What has stood out in my own observations is a pretty clear divide between counsellors who enjoyed online counselling and those who were eager to get back to in-person sessions as soon as possible.
The research shows that online counselling (such as over video chat) is just as effective as in-person counselling. But what it seems to boil down to, from my perspective, is a matter of preference—both for the client and counsellor.
I personally have not returned to in-person counselling because I have compromised lungs that make me more vulnerable in the face of COVID-19. As a person living with a physical disability (I am wheelchair-reliant), I was interested in online therapy even before COVID-19. I see it as a way to eliminate some of the obstacles around mobility, accessibility, time constraints associated with commuting, anxiety or depression symptoms impeding someone's readiness to enter into public spaces, and so on.
Online therapy offers flexibility to clients so that attending counselling becomes more feasible, where in-person sessions may be so arduous that they may be left without the ability to access counselling services at all. To me, this is one small silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic—it has highlighted online therapy as a viable option for the future of counselling.
About Trinity Western University
Founded in 1962, Trinity Western University is Canada’s premier Christian liberal arts university dedicated to equipping students to find and fulfill their purpose in life. It is a fully accredited research institution offering liberal arts and sciences, as well as professional schools in business, nursing, education, human kinetics, graduate studies, and arts, media, and culture. It has five campuses: Langley, Richmond-Lansdowne, Richmond-Minoru, Ottawa, and Bellingham, WA. TWU emphasizes academic excellence, research, and student engagement in a vibrant faith community devoted to supporting vibrant leaders seeking to have a transformational impact on culture. Learn more at www.twu.ca or follow us on Twitter @TrinityWestern, on Facebook and LinkedIn.
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