Fall 2025 graduate Krystal Brant is focused on making healthcare systems safe and welcoming for Indigenous people
Categories: Indigenous Trauma and Resiliency field of study, Programs + Teaching, Students
Krystal Brant loved her decade-long career as an educator with Indigenous people, but she often felt that she needed counselling and support skills as much as her teaching expertise. Wanting to fill that knowledge gap, she enrolled in the Master of Social Work – Indigenous Trauma and Resilience program at U of T’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. Now that she’s graduated, Brant feels equipped to go even further in her mission to help Indigenous communities thrive.
A turning point for her came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when several Indigenous students she’d worked with during her years in postsecondary education died by accidental drug overdoses. “It hit me really hard, and I thought I could be a better educator if I had a social work background,” she says. “I wanted to do more for these young people.”
While she intended to return to education after completing her Master of Social Work (MSW) degree, the program led her to a new career path where she’s combining her dual expertise in education and social work with her lived experience. Today, Brant is an Indigenous Relations Specialist at Niagara Health, where she discovered the Indigenous Health Services & Reconciliation team while working in addiction treatment.
“I would never have considered working in healthcare prior to my MSW,” she says. “But this role allows me to bring my professional and educational backgrounds together with my desire to change systems that harm Indigenous people. On the personal side, it’s also about honouring my aunt, who I cared for over four years when she had cancer, and every Indigenous person who’s felt unsafe or unseen in the healthcare system. This makes the work so meaningful to me.”
Brant’s role at Niagara Health focuses on educating employees on Indigenous history, healing traditions and intergenerational trauma through staff development programs and consultations. The big-picture aim, she says, is to make healthcare systems feel safe and welcoming for Indigenous people.
“It’s all about increasing awareness. I don’t want to just talk about reconciliation in healthcare. I want to help staff members understand how they can take action and do the things that need to be done.” Some of these actions include informing Indigenous patients and families about the supports and services available to them, being sensitive to the impact of trauma, and facilitating access to traditional ceremonies and medicines in hospitals.
Brant says she finds hope in the real progress that’s been made in the healthcare system’s treatment of Indigenous people, such as many hospitals now allowing smudging ceremony to take place within the building. Still, she acknowledges that there’s a long way to go.
As for how she maintains her own strength and wellbeing in a tough, emotionally taxing job, she says that being part of an all-Indigenous team is vital, but so are the lessons she learned in the Indigenous Trauma and Resilience (ITR) program.
“The faculty members emphasized the importance of holistic health for both clients and social workers, and as students we all had to create wellness plans for ourselves. Doing that has helped me remember that you can’t pour from an empty cup.”
Brant is open about her own history of trauma growing up in a family that struggled with addiction and developing an eating disorder as a coping response in that environment. She also jokes about the fact that she didn’t graduate from high school, a surprising fact given the multiple degrees – including a Master of Education in addition to her MSW – she later earned.
This lived experience has fueled her passion to push for positive change in Indigenous communities over the last two decades. It also helps explain how she completed her MSW as a single working mother of five children while serving as the president of the Ontario Native Women’s Association. A few months before graduating, Brant also found time to speak at the United Nations in Switzerland, urging action in support of Indigenous women and youth.
At times when it all got overwhelming, Brant credits her ITR professors and close-knit classmates for keeping her going. “They weren’t willing to let me fail and gave me the support I needed to succeed.”
Brant says she always draws strength from the values instilled by her Mohawk culture and, more directly, her mother. “Despite carrying her own intergenerational trauma and the challenges of being raised by a residential school survivor, my mother modelled the importance of community connection and reciprocity for me,” she says. “That example, more than anything she ever said, instilled in me the values that I carry forward in my work.”
Brant’s mother was instrumental in the establishment of many Indigenous organizations that still exist in the Niagara region. “Growing up, I learned to continually give back to my community, and I’ve never stopped,” she says. “When people ask me how I do it, I say that I don’t know how not to do it. If I want things to change for my children, I have to help drive that change.”
Looking towards the future in her post-MSW career, Brant has a counterintuitive goal: making her current job redundant. “I want to see a day when Indigenous people don’t need specialized support teams when they walk into a hospital,” she says. “A day when they’ll feel safe and culturally supported wherever they go.”
The first of its kind in North America, the Factor-Inwentash Faculty’s Master of Social Work program in Indigenous Trauma and Resiliency is dedicated to preparing advanced social work professionals to work with individuals, families and communities who have been affected by historical and generational trauma. FIFSW is deeply grateful to the Fu Hui Education Foundation for its generous support to help sustain this important program and its students.