Gentle Teaching and Indigenous Knowledge, by Jessica Pratt-Longman
“Gentle Teaching and Indigenous culture are essentially one and the same.”
– Jessica Pratt-Longman
When Jessica Pratt-Longman stands before a room, she doesn’t bring slides or a script. She brings her whole self—raw, honest, and deeply rooted in story. Her voice resonates with grief, healing, resistance, and love. Jessica is from the George Gordon First Nation, and she’s the Indigenous Culture Advisor at Creative Options Regina (COR). But more than a title, she is a sister, a knowledge keeper, a protector, and a warrior of compassion.
In a world that too often fails to protect and affirm Indigenous lives, Jessica’s journey—her life with her brother Patrick, her path through trauma, and her embrace of Gentle Teaching—is a profound example of how love, connection, and culture can rebuild what colonial systems have tried to erase.
A Life of Courage, A Life of Care
Jessica’s story is one of survival. Removed from her family’s care at a young age, subjected to violence and systemic failures, and living with both borderline personality disorder and autism, she has faced adversity most cannot imagine. And yet, she has carried love as a constant, especially for her brother Patrick, who is non-verbal and autistic.
She took on his care when their parents could not. She slept in front of doors to keep him safe. She worked tirelessly to provide for him. She became not only his sister, but his safe place.
And when Patrick’s needs were deemed “too much,” when a home breakdown left him once again vulnerable, Jessica was terrified. But then COR appeared as a possibility—a home, a team, a hope.
A Promise of Safety
Jessica remembers calling her former manager, now a Team Leader at COR, Mara Schrader, in tears:
“Are they going to hurt him? Are they going to restrain him? I’m scared.”
Mara’s response was simple, human, and full of promise:
“Jessica, I promise you, if Patrick comes to COR, he will be okay.”
And he was. Jessica speaks of the small, meaningful signs of trust: being welcomed into his home, being given the code to the door, seeing him fold towels or go to the bathroom in new ways. She saw Patrick not just survive—but begin to thrive.
COR became a part of Jessica’s healing, too. It welcomed her as she was—neurodivergent, grieving, powerful, and learning. In return, she brought her culture, teachings, and vision to COR, helping to intertwine Indigenous values into the very spirit of Gentle Teaching.
Culture is Not a Race—It is a Way of Life
Jessica emphasizes a truth often misunderstood: Indigenous culture is not the same as the trauma of residential schools. Culture is the medicine. It’s the smudge, the song, the stories, the names, the feathers, and the belonging. It’s knowing where you come from and who claims you.
Through COR, Jessica helped ensure every home had a smudge pan. She led ceremonies. She helped individuals receive their spirit names, colours, and clans. She guided teams in understanding why hair is sacred, why feathers matter, and why the land is teacher and healer.
And she did it while navigating her own grief, countless losses, too many funerals for those younger than her. Still, she carries love like a drumbeat.
“Gentle Teaching is healing,” she says. “We call it love, we call it kindness, we call it gentleness. But what it really is—it’s healing.”
Self-Love as Resistance
Jessica shares how she began to practice loving herself, using her sister KitKat as a guide.
“What would I say to her? How would I show up for her?” she asked herself.
Then she did those things for herself.
This shift-this act of self—love—ripled outward. Her household now supports with COR. They attend therapy. They speak openly about trauma. They walk in healing together.
Weaving Indigenous Knowledge Into COR
Jessica’s hope is clear: that Indigenous ways become so deeply woven into COR’s fabric that they cannot be undone.
“It just is.”
And this is already happening—from the teepee raising after three years of work, to the first feathers gifted, to the smiles of people like Ruby Walker, proud to hold her name and her medicine.
The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is intention.
“I’m not trying to rush. I’m doing what I do with meaning.”
A Final Invitation
Jessica leaves us with this:
“Please, love yourselves. I don’t think you can really give or spread something that you don’t genuinely have.”
If we love ourselves, if we love each other—especially the most vulnerable—we change the world. Maybe not all at once. But we change our world. And that ripple becomes a wave.
