I offer consulting and training that bridges Indigenous ways of knowing with evidence-based, trauma-informed practice. My goal is to help organizations create safer, more effective, and culturally grounded services for the people they serve.

Consulting & Training: Braiding Our Knowledge

Signature Presentation: Decolonizing Health Care & Systematic Violence

As part of my graduate studies, I created a presentation on the late Brian Sinclair, an Indigenous man whose preventable death in a Winnipeg ER revealed the devastating impacts of systemic racism and invisibility in health care. While this presentation began as an academic assignment, it has become the foundation for the work I now offer to service providers.

The presentation is designed to help health and human service organizations reflect on systemic violence, racism, and inequities in care — and to explore how services can be reimagined through decolonizing and culturally safe practices.

I also connect this work to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and my prior presentations on Human Rights, showing how commitments to reconciliation must translate into concrete change in frontline services.

✨ Training & Presentations

I provide education, training, and presentations for organizations and service providers who work with vulnerable populations, including:

Alberta Health Services (AHS)
Schools and educators
Child & family services
Justice and policing organizations
Non-profits and community agencies

Topics may include:

Understanding systemic violence and its impacts on Indigenous communities
Trauma-informed and anti-oppressive practice with Indigenous clients
Supporting children, youth, and families affected by intergenerational trauma
FASD awareness and culturally safe supports
Supervisor and leadership training (building capacity in high-demand roles)

By sharing both professional expertise and lived experience, I support organizations in building cultural safety, equity, and compassion in the services they deliver.

"In my counselling and consulting practice, I carry these truths forward. Healing cannot be separated from the systems that shape our lives. Decolonizing health care — and all systems of care — means naming these injustices, honouring Indigenous resilience, and creating pathways toward change."

Dana Nepoose

Red dresses that are part of the MMIW remeberance hang from pine trees above a concrete pa

Indigenous women make up less than 4% of Canada’s population yet account for 16% of all murdered women. Nearly half report experiencing sexual violence, though in my years in Child & Family Services, official reports were disproportionately low. This gap speaks to mistrust of systems, underreporting, and the urgent need for culturally safe, trauma-informed services.

During my MSW practicum at the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton (SACE), I worked within a framework that is anti-oppressive, feminist, and trauma-informed. This framework taught me that responding to violence requires not only individual healing but also systemic change.

By integrating SACE’s commitment to trauma-informed and survivor-centred practice with Indigenous ways of knowing, my counselling and consulting work honours both the urgency of safety today and the long-term need for justice and healing.

Balancing Indigenous and Western Approaches in Social Work

To fully represent my background, I integrate my Indigenous heritage with Western research methodologies. I strive to produce trauma-informed approaches and decolonize social work practices. I am grateful to have Indigenous MSW & PHD role models who exemplify the appropriate social work values. As a social worker, a matriarch, and a healer, I am proud to serve my community.

Guiding Principles

Strengths-Based

Responsibility

Respect

Reciprocity

The Sexual Assault Center of Edmonton (SACE) utilizes a framework that is anti-oppressive, feminist and trauma-informed. In my practicum, I employed an anti-oppressive and polyvagal approach in my intervention with Maria, my case study presented. In my supervision, I determined that longitudinal studies were used and identified polyvagal theory as the efficiency used to reduce trauma symptoms in adults who experienced sexual violence.

Indigenous women make up less than 4 percent of the Canadian population, yet 16 percent of all murdered women in Canada are Indigenous. Though there are shared socioeconomic characteristics as other women in Canada, there remain vast differences, of which nearly half of all Indigenous women experience sexual violence (Heidinger, 2022). Yet when I worked in Child & Family Services the number of reported sexual violence reported was very low.

The Polyvagal and anti-oppressive theories resonate with both my clients and me. They complement my knowledge of trauma-informed social work practice and, more importantly, respect my Indigenous ways of understanding.