Consulting

I started consulting in 1996 after realizing many tribal organizations had the people—but not always the capacity to drive resilience initiatives. I’ve spent the last two decades weaving contract work and graduate school into capacity building relationships. Following are key areas with brief descriptions that might help you to refine your needs:

Research

Throughout the 1900s academia established a pattern of favoring Western researchers’ interpretations of Indigenous experience over Indigenous researchers telling their people’s own stories. My research goal is to make sure that tribal organizations are able to gather their data, conduct rigorous analysis, tell their stories and contribute to research ethics decisions as full partners—not subjects. 

Language and Cultural Workshops

Language and culture are inextricably linked. The history of diminishing Indigenous cultural capacities and imposing English-only relationships has resulted in the distrust syndrome. Here Indigenous communities view linguistic and cultural resources with skepticism, even where they can become useful tools. The following workshops were designed to reconnect Indigenous community members with their language, their culture and themselves.

Teaching Practice

I started teaching during the senior year of my undergraduate degree, inspired by an Alaskan Native professor at Western Washington University. Since that time I’ve tried to reach across a diverse selection of undergraduate, graduate and doctoral level courses.