Recognized for a career of trauma-informed care

Brenda Reynolds Cert. Indian Social Work ’86, BISW ’87 receives the UN Nelson Mandela Prize

By Katie Doke Sawatzky MJ’18

This past summer, Brenda Reynolds Cert. Indian Social Work ’86, BISW ’87 was awarded the United Nations Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela Prize at UN headquarters in New York. Awarded every five years since 2015, the prize is given to a female and male laureate for their services to humanity, and who exemplify Mandela’s commitment to reconciliation and social transformation. A selection committee representing five member nations—South Africa, Bahrain, Poland, Egypt, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Finland—received hundreds of nominations from 66 member states.

“It’s the biggest compliment I have ever received,” Reynolds says. “I have admired Nelson Mandela’s work and what he did for his country. There are so many parallels, and to hear from the committee members that my nomination consistently made it through the decision-making process, was absolutely heart-warming.

Reynolds is the first Canadian and the first Indigenous person to receive the Prize, awarded to her for her development of the Indian Residential School Health Support Programme in 2006 and for her work with Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

 

Advocate in the making

Reynolds grew up on her grandparents’ farm on Fishing Lake First Nation. She attended school in Wadena, fifteen minutes away. She remembers the buses that came in late summer each year to pick up children from Fishing Lake and how the community went into mourning afterward. One of only a few Indigenous kids at her school, Reynolds advocated for an after-school sports program in Wadena for kids from the reserve and was elected to student council in high school.

“I remember presenting in Grade 10 social studies about where I lived. I described the farm, the chickens and the big garden, similar to what people had in Wadena. The teacher said, ‘Brenda, that isn’t true’. I said, ‘What do you mean that isn’t true? The cows are the same cows. Our wheat on the reserve is no different than the wheat in the grainfields I see going home on the bus.’ She goes, ‘But you live on a reserve.’ That was when I started learning about how differently Indigenous people are treated by non-Indigenous people.”

It wasn’t until Reynolds was a young social worker in Saskatoon, running a play-therapy after-school program at an inner-city school, that she learned about residential schools. “Every single child in my after-school program was living with an Indian Residential School Survivor,” Reynolds says. “That was the first time I knew about them.”

Reynolds negotiated a contract to provide counselling at Gordon’s Residential School, where children from Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba attended. Across Canada, 150,000 children attended residential schools and many did not return home.
“I never attended residential school, so it was a real emotional awakening,” she says.

At Gordon’s, the students’ shirt collars were numbered, the food was processed and within Reynolds’ first and only year of work at the school, in 1988, 17 young women shared with her their experiences of abuse at the hands of a staff member. “Gordon’s was the worst residential school in Canada in terms of abuse,” Reynolds says.

After moving to Alberta, Reynolds worked with various levels of government before starting her own consulting service in mental health. She was asked to develop a health support program as part of the Indian Residential Settlement Agreement of 2006, which addressed the harms of residential school, and to this day, is Canada’s largest class-action lawsuit settlement.

“Because we were talking about 150 years of trauma at the time, we couldn’t rely on a conventional, Western model of health support, “Reynolds says. “We had to do things differently and to support the workers who would experience vicarious trauma exposure.”

Reynolds says there wasn’t a model to follow, so she based the program as best she could in healthy ways of dealing with trauma. “I knew that we had to include cultural interventions because in our Indigenous ways, we do have ways of managing mental health. We have the same principles as the Western way, but they are more congruent to the culture.”

The health support program is funded to this day and includes cultural and emotional supports, mental health counselling and transportation for residential school survivors and their family members.

Group shot at UN
Brenda Reynolds (centre) at the United Nations in May 2025.


‘We’re still here, Columbus’

Reynolds was asked by Murray Sinclair, the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to develop a similar program with cultural supports for the TRC’s national events and hearings. The TRC held events were held across Canada from 2010 to 2014 and gathered statements from residential school survivors about their experiences. Since then, Reynolds has consulted with the United Nations, the state of Vermont and the European Union on psycho-social supports for their reconciliation initiatives. “I’ve helped so many others in different sectors who are still unravelling what the experiences are of residential schools,” Reynolds says.

The reality of being a UN Nelson Mandela Prize Laureate hasn’t sunk in. “When I found out in May, I cried and cried and cried for ten days,” she says. “I just do the work. I always say I’m a helper. I help people try to understand what their traumas are. I’ve spent my whole career understanding the trauma caused by residential schools and I’ve come to understand it as cultural genocide. And it continues to this day. The government tried with residential schools, day schools and now it’s the child welfare system, which has more kids in care now than the residential school system ever did.”

In New York, the day before the award ceremony Reynolds met and spoke with a group of Indigenous youth from the United States who were advocating for better mental health supports. “It was such a great experience because here are these kids who are trying to change their lives by understanding their own mental health,” she says. “It felt full-circle because my career started with kids in Saskatoon and at Gordon’s.”

Before the award ceremony, Reynolds invited the youth to join her in a pipe ceremony in Central Park, close to Columbus Circle, a traffic circle and intersection with a monument to Christopher Columbus, built in 1892, at the height of the residential school system in Canada. Later, the youth danced in their regalia out in front of headquarters to honour her.

“It was so good. Like, ‘We’re still here!’” she laughs. “The dancing was so incredible. It will always be very, very, special to me.” Reynolds gave a speech at the ceremony and met the UN Secretary General. Some of her children and grandchildren were there to celebrate the day with her.  “Standing at the same podium where so many world leaders have stood and talked about hope and change, that was really amazing.” she says.


Still work to do.

Looking back over her career, Reynolds has seen positive change because of how Indigenous peoples are talking openly about what happened to them. But she says there is still a long way to go. Racism and discrimination are ongoing, and attitudes still need to change. “The trauma we experience from racism and discrimination is systemic; we face it on a daily basis. It has implications for how we receive services, whether it’s education, healthcare and social services. We have to change attitudes and accept people for who we are.”

Hope, for Reynolds, lies in nurturing acceptance within families and communities, recognizing that Indigenous people love their kids and want to raise their kids. It also means recognizing how children encounter difference. “On a playground, most kids are going to play with each other regardless of what colour they are,” she says. “That’s how I met my first friend at school, a little Swedish girl, and we’re still friends to this day. I didn't even know any English then. I spoke Saulteaux and yet we were friends. We played.”

Reynolds continues to consult and is a PhD candidate at California Southern University studying cultural interventions for cultural genocide. “There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done,” she says. “That’s what keeps me motivated.”

About the Author

Katie Doke Sawatzky MJ’18 is a Regina journalist and writer who writes for local publications.

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Krista Cornish Scott, BMus'97 (Distinction), and Brett Scott, MMus'96, first crossed paths in the University of Regina Chamber Singers almost 30 years ago. Their involvement in the choir had a major impact on their lives, both personally and professionally; today, they're married with four children and have successful careers that centre around choral music. The Chamber Singers are celebrating their 50th anniversary with a reunion and concert in August. Both Krista and Brett will be attending, and Brett will be one of three guest conductors.

It was my choral experience at U of R that formed me and was the biggest influence on me for my life-long career. I'm also grateful that that's where I met my life partner-we've been together almost 30 years because of Chamber Singers. Krista Cornish Scott

Q: Why did you get involved in the Chamber Singers?

Krista: I joined the choir when I was in Grade 12 [1992-93]. Read Jorgensen was my music teacher at Sheldon Williams Collegiate; he was married to Kathryn Laurin [director of the Chamber Singers at the time] and encouraged me to audition. That was the year that they toured to Carnegie Hall and I leapt at the opportunity. I was so excited to be part of a group that was doing this high-level repertoire. I also sang with the choir all four years of my undergrad degree and came back to sing with them in the summer in 2000.

Brett: In fall 1993, I started my master's degree studying with Kathryn Laurin. It was part of my degree to be involved in Concert Choir and Chamber Singers­-it was important for me to get both perspectives and different approaches. I hadn't experienced being part of that level of singing before. It was a very valuable opportunity, and I learned a lot. I stayed in the group until I came down to Cincinnati to start my doctoral work in the fall of 1999.

Q: What part did you sing?

Krista: I was high soprano-I like to say I was a boy soprano, because I had that high straight tone.

Brett: Kathryn had me singing tenor most of the time, even though I'm not really a tenor. I'm going to sing baritone or bass for the reunion.

Krista: I'm singing alto for the reunion. I can't do the high straight tone stuff for very long anymore.

Brett: Time changes things.

Q: What are your memories of working with Kathryn Laurin?

Krista: One of her incredible talents was her gift for programming. She introduced me to the amazing repertoire of composers I haven't heard of, including Canadian voices. She was very adventurous and programmed difficult pieces. Some of the pieces I was introduced during my time with Chamber Singers, I've now programmed myself. I took conducting with Kathryn, and some of the pieces she used in those classes are long-time favourites of mine. She was such an excellent programmer. I think that's why we won the chamber choir of the world competition. I feel so lucky I was there during that bubble of time she was there.

Brett: I studied intensively with Kathryn for three years when I was doing my master's degree. She really lay the foundation for me for what I do now. A lot of the things I focus on and my success as a teacher and conductor are from the time I had with her. She put me through the wringer-it was an intense period of studying. It was foundational. A lot of the music she introduced me to­-music by living composers-that has become a big focus of what I do in my work, whether it be at university or in the professional world. I was able to study with her at an important turning point in my life, and I don't think I would be where I am without those three years I spent with her.

Q: Tell me about what you're both doing now.

Krista: I spent the last couple of decades working as a professional choral singer. I've travelled around and sung for a lot of American conductors and got a Grammy nomination for one of the recordings I did. But with four kids, it became harder to do travel singing gigs, so I stayed close to home [Cincinnati, Ohio]. I had my conducting debut locally before the pandemic, and it went better than my wildest dreams. I thought, "What if I did more of that?" I reached back into the wonderful training I got from Kathryn Laurin to access the kind of conductor I wanted to be. I now conduct a professional women's treble chorus called Heri et Hodie [translation: yesterday and today], which explores early music and contemporary living composers. And then Brett and I are the co-directors of Coro Volante [vocal ensemble that performs and records the music of living composers]. I still do professional singing work, but I've moved more into directing, conducting and recording. I frequently lecture on women in early music. Brett and I have both presented at various conferences in the U.S., Europe and Canada.

Brett: I'm primarily in academia. I taught at the University of Rochester Eastman School of Music for six years. I've taught at the University of Cincinnati at the College Conservatory since 2007. I'm very lucky-both are considered top five institutions in the United States for conducting. I wrote a book on R. Murray Schafer [renowned Canadian composer] and got permission to dive into his diaries for that. Between Coro Volante, Krista and I, we've done nine recordings. We've probably done almost 100 world premiere recordings of living composers. Recently, I've gone into early music and published some new editions of Portuguese sacred polyphony, so I'm sort of all over the map.

Q: What is your fondest memory of the Chamber Singers?

Krista: It's hard to beat the feeling of singing on the stage at the world choir games in Wales [National Eisteddfod of Wales festival, U.K., 1997]. When they announced that we won, we just lost our minds! It was like being at the Olympics. We never thought we could reach that high level.

Brett: The recording sessions. [Under Kathryn Laurin's direction, the Chamber Singers recorded several CDs]. I have very vivid memories. The mental and musical focus it took to do multiple takes of the same piece was demanding-the tempo had to be the same and you had to keep the pitch up for editing. It was a gruelling, intense, wonderful experience. That's where I got my first interest in doing recording. I found the process so interesting and fascinating. It's different than live performance-you need different skills.

Q: Tell me about you met.

Krista:  Brett and I had crossed paths a little in music festival before that, but we didn't really know each other. One day at Chamber Singers rehearsal, in walks this strange man with a red beard and a long red ponytail. He stood up in front of the choir and started conducting us and I was like, "Who is this mystery man?" It was intrigue at first sight. We started dating and got engaged on the same trip where we went to Wales. Our love is inextricably entwined with the Chamber Singers. The Chamber Singers sang at our wedding, and Kathryn Laurin conducted.

Q: What are you looking forward to most about the reunion?

Krista: I'm looking forward to singing the pieces that they've chosen. I opened my packet and saw that one of the songs the Chamber Singers sang at our wedding is on the program-"Rise up My Love" by Healey Willan. I am really looking forward to seeing Kathryn and Read again. I want to say "thank you" in person for the incredible education and encouragement that I got from them. Sometimes, you don't realize except in retrospect how special something was. I feel that that unique bubble of time I was in Chamber Singers was amazing in what we were able to accomplish. It will be nice to really be able to thank her for putting me on the career and musical path I've ended up on, which is largely in part of the education I received as part of Chamber Singers. It was my choral experience at U of R that formed me and was the biggest influence on me for my life-long career. I'm also grateful that that's where I met my life partner-we've been together almost 30 years because of Chamber Singers.

A recent headshot of Brett and Krista, taken by Krista DeVaul. A recent headshot of Brett and Krista, taken by Krista DeVaul. [post_title] => If Music Be the Food of Love, Play on: An Interview with Krista Cornish Scott, BMus'97 (Distinction) and Dr. Brett Scott, MMus'96 [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => if-music-be-the-food-of-love-play-on-copy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-07-17 09:48:40 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-07-17 15:48:40 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.degreesmagazine.ca/?p=9572 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )