2023 Indigenous Communities Fellowship
Holistic and Indigenous Online Curriculum Rooted in Culture
What is the name of your solution?
Holistic and Indigenous Online Curriculum Rooted in Culture
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
An Indigenous wellness app rooted in ancestral and cultural knowledge systems to support the healing and empowerment of Indigenous people and communities.
What specific problem are you solving?
The average adverse childhood experience score among American Indians and Alaska Natives was 2.32, higher than those of individuals identifying as White (1.53), Black (1.66), and Hispanic (1.63). Female participants had a higher average adverse childhood experience score than male participants (2.52 vs 2.12). 82 percent of Indigenous men will experience violence in their lifetime. Every Indigenous person has either a parent, grandparent, or extended relative that attended the Residential Schools in Canada or the Indian Boarding Schools in the United States. Trauma is killing Indigenous youth by way of suicide. In 2019, suicide was the second leading cause of death for American Indian/Alaska Natives between the ages of 10 and 34. Indigenous people are dying from addiction and violence at higher rates than all other ethnic groups in the US and Canada. The leading cause of death for Indigenous people is heart disease, cancer, and diabetes; all which are being studied now and are being suspected of leading back to food trauma, poverty, and the legacy of residential school. Our people deserve better. All of our people that we have lost along the way never had opportunities to reach their full potential. The negative impact of trauma caused by colonization has had negative effects on every single North American Native human being and anywhere else on the planet that colonization reared its ugly head. As an Indigenous woman who grew up on the reserve I have witnessed first hand the impacts of intergenerational, complex, and vicarious trauma. I attest to the fact that trauma has killed many of my relatives and friends. This is my call to act, and to find solutions to support the healing and empowerment of Indigenous people.
As far as I know there is no app that is specifically for Indigenous people and their wellness. I presently use the "calm app"that supports my mental wellness and health. There was amazing and innovative human beings on this app, and yet I always wish to hear a more familiar voice and even my own Indigenous language. This lack of culturally relevant modern tools and technology is not acceptable. Our people need our own app to support our wellness journeys. An app created by us for us.
What is your solution?
My Auntie Contessa Brown from Heiltsuk Nation, Bella Bella BC said “connection is the correction.” The reclamation of Indigenous somatic healing practices, body sovereignty, ceremonial sovereignty, worldviews and empowerment of individuals is what is going to support intergenerational healing. Further, we want to support the above statement by connecting Indigenous people to each other and to culturally safe and relevant holistic wellness curriculums through an Indigenous wellness app. This app would include programming such as trauma-informed movement, meditation, Indigenous language revitalization, food sovereignty, traditional plants and medicines, somatic release, coping tools, content for children, Indigenous parenting support, and more. The app would also be accompanied with downloadable pdfs with activities and curriculum for other Indigenous wellness leaders to use in their workshops. The app would include videos and listenable podcasts. We would want to work with as many Indigenous Wellness leaders as possible to create as much holistic and trauma-informed wellness content as that would be available all in one place. This app would enable Indigenous people access to healthy coping tools to support their wellness journey.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
We want this app to be available to all Indigenous people, communities, and programs. We especially see value in the app being available to remote and isolated Indigenous communities. I grew up in a small and very isolated Indigenous community, and understand the value in having wellness services available. Further, I have been teaching yoga, movement, meditation, traditional plant medicine making, beading and art, sport and kinesthetics, and more since 2010. My clients are 90-100 percent Indigenous people. Nearly every time after every workshop people ask me “where can I practice movement and meditation with you?” I do have a few recorded YouTube videos but I always wish I could offer them more tools and resources. This app would enable us to scale up and have the potential to serve all Indigenous people that have access to a cell phone or computer. Our people need and want more culturally relevant resources available via modern technology. It would be an modern concept rooted in ancient ancestral knowledge systems.
Which Indigenous community(s) does your solution benefit? In what ways will your solution benefit this community?
We are more than ever conscious of the negative impacts that colonization has had on our minds, bodies, and spirits as Indigenous people. We know what we need to restore our communities and people back to wholeness and that is to empower and heal individuals, and yet we heal in community. We need our communities to heal. We are a team of four Indigenous people at this present time. We come from the Heiltsuk, NuuChahNulth, Three Affiliated Tribes, Lummi, and Hopi tribes. We are presently a team of four Indigenous women and one Indigenous man. We deeply rooted and connected to our tribal groups and presently are either employed by their tribe or do contract wellness work for their tribes. We want to continue to serve our own tribal groups but also the 565+ Nations within the US and all the First Nations in Canada. We specifically want to ensure that our app has place-based and authentic Indigenous content by contracting as many Indigenous wellness thought leaders as possible to develop content for the app. The impact of this app is immeasurable as there is nothing like this on the market. There are apps to revitalization of language, and Indigenous people have created their own apps for their programs and offerings but this app has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people in North America and around the world.
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
We are ready. We recently had our 501c3 status approved as a federally recognized US non-profit. All of us are delivering workshops, working in fitness and wellness spaces within the Lummi and extended Coast Salish communities. We have the local support of the Lummi Nation, the Coast Salish Institute, Northwest Indian College, and have extended partnerships with organizations/departments within our own tribal Nations. Several of us teach movement and wellness classes at the local tribal fitness center, three of us are trained collegiate coaches, and one of us is a scholar and adjunct professor at the local tribal college. All of us participate in canoe culture by way of Tribal Canoe Journey and the Coast Salish War Canoe culture. We have hosted at least a hundred wellness workshops for the local community on numerous topics and have been invited back repeatedly at the school, college, and within the tribal departments. We believe our relationship with the local Indigenous community is healthy and is based on respect and reciprocity.
We are already doing this important work at a grass root level and are looking for funding to support us to expand and scale this work to support the wellness and healing of all of Indian country. We all have numerous certificates in yoga, personal training, and group fitness. We all have Bachelor degrees or higher, and we have all grown up within our own tribal communities and cultures. We have a language learner and teacher on our team that is also a yoga teacher and has already created movement flows that include cues in her Indigenous language. We are ready to do this work through an online platform. Please see our non-profit vision and mission statement.
Rooted Resiliency Vision and Mission Statement:
Vision:
Reclaiming Indigenous wellness in communities, within our culture and worldview
Mission:
To restore and define Indigenous wellness practices by empowering Indigenous people to live healthy, holistic and authentic lives.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Promote culturally informed mental and physical health and wellness services for Indigenous community members.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Lummi Nation, Pacific Northwest
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
What is your solution’s stage of development?
Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model, but which is not yet serving anyone
How many people does your solution currently serve?
hundreds per year
Why are you applying to Solve?
I want to work with Solve because I see it as an opportunity to act on true reconciliation. It was only two generations ago that my ancestors were complete wards of the State of Canada. We have been completely economically disenfranchised from the rest of the United States and Canada. This was intentional and not a mistake. I see this opportunity to create bridges from my community to the opportunities that are available within western society. I know that Solve has access to mentors, accelerator programs, technology, and the economic financial market that I would have no access to otherwise, working with Solve would not only liberate me it would liberate all the other Indigenous people I work with, the Indigenous people and communities I serve. Two Indigenous values are reciprocity and empowerment, as we are a generous people we don’t hoard our knowledge and culture. An investment in my idea would be an investment into my lineage and my future descendants.
Solve would provide us with access to the technology world, the app platforms, and connect us with potential investors and coders that we would need to create this app.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Vina Brown, one of the original founders of Rooted Resiliency and chair of the board
Please indicate the tribal affiliation of your Team Lead.
Heiltsuk and NuuChahNulth
How is your Team Lead connected to the community or communities in which your project is based?
This is first and foremost the homelands of the Lummi Nation, and I have nothing but gratitude, respect, and appreciation for the opportunities to teach and learn on their land. The Lummi Nation has as concept called Schelangen which "is a term that embraces our entire way of life: our worldview, our culture, traditional lifeways, how we treat one another and how we treat all our relations and the place we call home." Although Schelangen is not my traditional teaching it does align with many of my learned and embodied traditional values. I want to continue to work within the framework that Schelangen provide across all aspects of my life. Especially while I serve the Lummi people and live within their homelands.
My name is ƛáqvas gḷ́w̓aqs, I am from the Heiltsuk and Nuu-Chah-Nulth Nations both located in B.C. My father, Frank Brown, is Heiltsuk and carries the name and chieftainship λáλíyasila. It was at our latest family potlatch in Bella Bella 2022 that I had my name ƛáqvas gḷ́w̓aqs affirmed within our most secret and sacred ceremony, the Caiqa, also known as our red-cedar bark ceremony. I am my family’s copper carrier; therefore, my name translates into English as Copper Canoe Woman. My mother, Kathy Brown, is Nuu-Chah-Nulth, from the Ahousaht First Nation. Her father was a hereditary Chief and carriedthe name Kaput, which translates to “to stand on the hill and look down.” My mother’s older brother, Russell Robinson, now carries
the responsibility of this name and seat.
I share my lineage and genealogy because it is a traditional and powerful way to exist in the world; it explains my inherent responsibilities. It is also an important branch of our Gvi’las- the laws of our ancestors. Sharing
who I am demonstrates that no matter where I go in this world, I carry these responsibilities which are ancient, and which connect me to my homelands, my ancestors, and my community. This understanding of my Indigenous identity is foundational for me. It gives me strength as I navigate western society and institutions that are anchored in a history of colonialism yet often seeking reconciliation with First Peoples.
I have dedicated the past nine years to my professional and educational journey. I have been working toward an Indigenous Studies PhD program at the University of Alaska. My concentration is Indigenous education, research, and knowledge systems. My dissertation topic is "Food, Art, and Ceremony: A Holistic Approach to Wellness." My recent success as a graduate of the Masters of Jurisprudence in Indigenous Law from the University of Tulsa and Native Studies Leadership (NSL) from Northwest Indian College (NWIC) has prepared me for the opportunities, tasks and challenges that a Community Leader would need to embody. I graduated from Northwest Indian College’s NSL program with high honors, and I am completely committed to empowering other Indigenous people to be self-determining and to help them strengthen their Indigenous research paradigm. My Master’s program informed my Indigenous worldview in the topics of Self-determination, Tribal Sovereignty, Federal Indian Law and policy, and the Inherent and Treaty rights of Tribes in the United States and Canada. My masters’ thesis is titled “The Cultural Protocol Laws of CoastalFirst Nations.” Further, it enabled me to explore the cultural protocol laws of the Heiltsuk Nation, our Gvi’las as well as that of hundreds of other Tribal Nations and groups. This research enabled me to root my paradigm in understanding that Tribe’s have distinct traditional laws that are inherent and directly connected to their relationships to the land and oceans. I am well-versed in the political and governmental structures that exist within Bella Bella, Lummi, and many other tribal Nations, elected and hereditary. I have an understanding of the community dynamic in urban population and on reserve, which would enhance my ability to coordinate and facilitate community engagement with the diverse backgrounds of the Indigenous people our app and programming would serve. The invaluable and diverse Indigenous knowledge and connections I have to many Tribal people and communities would strengthen the relationship building between the entities like the Solve team in a respectful and culturally appropriate way. For the past eight years, I have worked for NWIC. Recently, I taught cultural sovereignty classes as part-time faculty in the NSL program at NWIC. I believe that being a student of NSL and now a Faculty member has prepared and equipped me with an integral responsibility to continue to advocate for Indigenous rights and worldviews. Through this work I have been enabled to deepen my Indigenous research paradigm while doing meaningful and tangible research with the Lummi Nation, and tribal students. I am extremely well immersed in Indigenous research theory and methods. This unique training and experience would be invaluable to the Solve program and our project. Further it would ensure that the research being conducted for the app, past and present, would be written and researched from a beneficial and culturally significant place.
From 2015 to 2019 I was employed full-time at the Cooperative Extension as the Indigenous Programs Coordinator. This opportunity enabled an invaluable education, which allowed me to immerse myself in a series of progressively more senior and professional opportunities within the community of Lummi and NWIC. I have worked on research projects, data analysis projects, professional development, and cultural sovereignty curriculum development. I have mentored students as a writing tutor and as an instructor. I deliver
workshops to NWIC students and other Tribal community members all over Washington State and into Oregon, Canada, and Alaska. Because of my strong connections to tribal leaders (elected, cultural, and hereditary) I have been invited to deliver workshops at Tribal Canoe Journeys for the last five years,
representing NWIC. In 2014 I worked as one of the project managers for my Nations hosting of the Tribal Canoe Journeys in Bella Bella, BC. I was the communications coordinator. From this opportunity came an
opportunity to work closely with many different sovereign Tribal Nations all up and down the Coast from Alaska to California, Hawaii, and New Zealand. I have strong skills in press-releases writing as well as grant-
writing. I was required to contribute to both on this project. I have worked on the Sacred Journeys Project for the Heiltsuk Nation since 2014 as film director, researcher, and have co-authored several Memorandums
of Understandings between the Heiltsuk Nation and Institutions listed here: Royal BC Museum, University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, and many other neighboring First Nations. I am thrilled at the prospect of contributing my writing skills, curriculum development, unique place-based
understanding of Indigenous education, recruiting skills, and enthusiasm to a successful launch of an holistic and trauma-informed Indigenous wellness app that includes as many Indigenous voices as possible. I know that my vast extended connections within many Indigenous communities will be an immeasurable asset to the success of this project.
Extending on and telling Indigenous stories properly is of utmost importance it me, and would be a great honor. Further, the prominence of including a Indigenous paradigm to this project would shine through in the materials and information created and distributed to the community via the app.
In 2020, I founded Copper Canoe Woman, a successful Indigenous-woman owned adornment art business. I started as a bead artwork artist working from home to support myself through university and college. Now today, Copper Canoe Woman presently has seven full-time employee and four part-time employee team, and I am the CEO and Creative Director. In 2021 one of my dear friends and Copper Canoe Woman team members Anna Leigh Finkbonner, and I wanted to be more intentional with the work we were doing in our communities. We have both lived through intergenerational trauma and have been witness to so much pain within our communities that we want to continue to make a positive impact by giving back. This is why we co-founded 'Rooted Resiliency.' We recently received our 501c3 status and are excited to raise the funding to continue to do the important work within our communities. It should be noted that profits from Copper Canoe Woman will be funding 'Rooted Resiliency' work and had already been funding grass root initiatives such as full funding of '100 traditional food boxes' delivered to Residential School Survivors on Orange Shirt Day in Canada, and scholarships for Indigenous youth sports, and Indigenous women training and tribal college programs, and donations to Two-spirited youth initiatives and programs.
Through my career path in academia, within the wellness field, and now as a Indigenous Entrepreneur I have always known one thing; I want to continue to empower my people to reclaim their inherent right to be well, and to define that from within our own worldview. I am ready to expand this work and connect as many Indigenous people to more healing tools, contemporary and ancient.
What makes your solution innovative?
Before there was modern-day technology in the western hemisphere and before colonization Indigenous children had their information, technology, and education at their finger tips. They did not have to go far to access a doctor, a teacher, a hunter, a agriculturalist, a healer, a spiritual guide, a storyteller, and more. All the information they needed came from their elders, extended family, and community. Further, they had deep relationships with the land, sky, water, and non-human relatives. There were supernatural beings and metaphysical aspects of communing with the natural world for information. It was very scientific and was the impact and evidence of truth was measured over hundreds of generations and passed down very thoughtfully with intention to build and grow. Indigenous pedagogy was done cross-generationally and through holistic practices. Technology was passed down and refined to be sustainable which honored our interconnection with all living beings on Mother Earth. Our Indigenous ancestors were extremely innovative and our ability to adapt and build resiliency is immeasurable. Despite all the horrific atrocities and the attempted genocide of the settler state, we are still here, and we remember everything. It lives in our DNA, the study of epigenetic tells us that we carry the trauma of the generations before, and we also carry the resiliency of those that came before. We have thousands of years of relation with our homelands and technology which has sustained us since time immemorial. We are the ORIGINAL innovators of this land, and it will the return to our culture, languages, worldviews, and values that will strengthen and continue to sustain us. We have been able to adapt to change in ways that most humans would have perished into the abyss. Our ability to adapt while using foreign and new technology has always been creative. Today, we are in a unique position because we don’t need to be in survival mode anymore, we can move from survival to thriving. Our ancestors used everything that was available to them while remaining aligned with their connections to place and core values. We plan to do the same with this app, we want to bring the values, and teachings from our ancestors on the app so that once again Indigenous youth have access to their elders, their stories, tools for healing, their languages, and methods of empowerment. We want to use modern day technology to connect Indigenous people back to our original pedagogy but in a modern way. This app would be a modern-day tool that would bring culturally relevant information back to the finger tips of Indigenous youth once again.
What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?
Our goals for the first year would include the following
- Create a strategic framework to develop a clear vision, assess our needs, and understand what our app needs and how it will disseminate information. We would do this process with our Board of Directors and other members of our team
- Develop the outline for the curriculum on the map
- Recruit Indigenous Wellness Leaders to participate in the content and curriculum development (this could be a five year goal after raising funds or we could have one workshop session and pay honoraria to participants during year one)
- Raise funds and attract/recruit technology investors to support the app development process (we are not technologically trained in this field but we do have the content) We would need support here.
- Begin the "Mobile Application Development Platform" (MADP) stage where we decide what platform we will use
- Plan the design and creation of the app - what features we want and more
Our goals for the next five years would include:
- Recruit Indigenous Wellness Leaders to record and develop their content for the app
- Work with app developers on the planning, development, and testing stages.
- Recruit Indigenous people to test the app in focus groups
- The branding and marketing of the app
- Deployment of the app
- Continue to raise funds to support the ongoing evolution and advancement of the app which would include the addition of new content in the forms of: meditation, podcasts, movement videos, language resources, traditional food demonstrations and recipes, traditional plant knowledge and demonstrations, music, regulation tools, strategies for self-protection and self-preservation, healthy coping tools, and practices for metabolizing trauma. All of this would be done in a culturally relevant way by Indigenous for Indigenous people. Note: This app would not be just for Indigenous people, it could be utilized as a space for settler-allies and Non-Indigenous people to learn about Indigenous people in a authentic and accurate way. The cost of the app could be scaled to have Non-Indigenous people pay extra to support the access of Indigenous people to the app. We would have a goal to raise enough resources that the app would be free to all Indigenous people.
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?
The primary Indicators for the development of this app will include focus groups that we would use is focus groups, we would gather quantitive date and qualitative date to ensure that our content and curriculum is relevant and aligned with community goals. We would have open online forums where people could share their feedback on the app. We would utilize Indigenous research theory and methodology to assess if we are aligning with Indigenous values and concepts such as the empowerment theory.
We have already pitched the idea in our inner circle with rooted individuals and asked for their feedback on what they would want to see on an app like this. We have gathered this qualitative data via social media platforms and through personal interviews. One significant response from a participant was "When I am in an active trauma trigger I like to do meditations on YouTube and on the Calm app but sometimes it gets me more dysregulated because I can tell it is a person from the dominant culture and having a settler guide me through a wellness practice can be more triggering, especially if my trauma trigger is directly connected to racism I have experienced." (Brown, 2023)
There are many more like the above testimony for Indigenous to people seeking culturally relevant online tools to support their healing and regulation of the nervous system as they metabolize the intergenerational trauma and complex trauma within our communities.
We would also gather surveys and code the themes out of the surveys.
What is your theory of change?
Empowerment
We say "healed communities need healed individuals, and safe communities need safe spaces.” I am not sure who said these things but I know that we need to support the healing of individuals to enact healing within our communities. We need safe spaces within our communities to do the work in order to heal. Our communities now include the online realm. Therefore, creating safe online community spaces for Indigenous people make sense. Dr Greg Mahle describes the empowerment theory as “ The empowerment theory refers to developing the power to move. It is not a commanding or demanding power; it is the power of recognition and voice. The recognition occurs when somebody has been in an oppressive state and has come to realize that the current condition is a detriment to themselves, their families and their people. Empowerment theory encourages people to envision a future for their people and works to move their people in that direction free from oppression.” (Mahle, 2018)
Our framework reflects the natural world, it can be viewed as a traditional big house. It includes all the people from the community, and in the centre of the big house is the fire. The fire represents our inner strength, and it is our culture where we gather strength. The more connection and access we have to our knowledge systems, worldviews, language, origin stories, creation stories, songs, dances, foods, and the land the healthier we will be. (Simpson, 2014) Authentic Indigenous wellness practices rooted in reclamation of body and cultural sovereignty are of utmost importance Mohawk scholar Taike Alfred states “key to the reclamation of spiritual, physical and psychological health and to the restoration of communities characterized by peace and harmony and strength.” (Alfred, 2009) We know we need our culture to heal and become whole again, and we know that it needs to come from within our minds, bodies, spirits, and hearts.
Relational Accountability
Our knowledge systems and knowledge keepers tell us that every animate and inanimate being on Mother Earth has life-force and spirit. Chilisa (2012) and Wilson (2008) termed the theory as all objects relations. Through this theory we understand that our measurements of impact do not only include human beings and Indigenous people but all life on the planet. We know that our action has direct impact on the generations before and the generations after. We understand that when we are assessing and making decisions around the work we do we are accountable to each other, our communities, and the non-human world.
Alfred, T. (2009). Colonialism and state dependency. Journal of Aboriginal Health, 5(2), 42-60.
Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous research methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.Simpson, L. (2008). Lighting the eighth fire: The liberation, resurgence, and protection of Indigenous nations. Winnipeg, MB, Canada: ARP.
Simpson, L. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 1-25.
Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Winnipeg, MB: Fernwood Publishing.
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
We want to offer a tool to our community to coincide with their community work. We heal in community, and we need to see healed Indigenous people mirrored back at us.
We want to authentically fuse modern technology with Indigenous technology and utilize both to support the healing regulation of Indigenous people through this app.
We will enact our Indigenous ways of knowing, understanding, measuring, assessing, and story-sharing to ensure that this apps content is as authentic and as recognizable to Indigenous people and communities as possible.
We will engage Indigenous wellness leaders with knowledge around fishing, hunting, and food sovereignty technology. We will engage Indigenous wellness leaders with knowledge in cultural arts, weaving, beading, painting, dying, spinning wool, tool making, formline, and other mixed medium artists. We will engage Indigenous wellness leaders with knowledge and experience in language revitalization that could provide content and techniques for healing trauma interwoven with language revitalization, and methodologies for language retention and experience. We will engage Indigenous wellness leaders with knowledge in physical and movement activities, ancestral and modern day movement, as well as Indigenous wellness leaders from South Pacific Asian cultures that can share authentic yogic teachings.
We will enact the reclamation of Indigenous STEM and technology as much as possible while utilizing modern platforms such a zoom and our app platform itself.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technology
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
In which parts of the US and/or Canada do you currently operate?
Pacific Northwest (BC and Washington State)
In which parts of the US and/or Canada will you be operating within the next year?
Hopefully all of the US and Canada
What type of organization is your solution team?
Nonprofit
How many people work on your solution team?
eight
How long have you been working on your solution?
We all have been working and serving our own and extended Indigenous communities in the wellness field for at least ten years. We recently formed and received Non-profit status for our organization 'Rooted Resiliency.'
What is your approach to incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusivity into your work?
When we chose our board we wanted to ensure we had as much representation from disenfranchised demographics within our community as possible.
- We have two elders on our board- Sharon Kinley, Lummi and Vina Robinson, NuuChahNulth, Residential School Survivor
- We have queer identifying people on our board and consulting team
- We have youth on our consulting team
- We have men on our consulting team
We understand that we are all related and we are connected. Our board was selected to ensure that we have as many voices at the table as possible, especially distinct voices that can advocate for those that need support advocating for themselves.
We have a saying in the Heiltsuk language which means kaxla and it means to uplift. We uplift all relatives and understand that our liberation is directly linked to that of all other living and non-living people. Our cyclical systems of restoration of balance enable us to be reflective and see our "relational accountability" (Wilson, 2012) to one another.
What is your business model?
We hope to provide impactful wellness trainings, workshops, and tools for healing through our programming and our on our app. Through this process we wish to create meaningful and culturally rooted employment for all the Indigenous people that presently work with us and will work with us in the future.
Providing culturally relevant employment is important to our entrepreneurship because often Indigenous people are forced to work in westernized systems that are still oppressive, racist, and don't align with the cycles of Indigenous cultural and ceremonial life. We want to bring our people closer to their cultural ways and knowledge systems not further away. This goal is of utmost importance for us.
We don't want to have our people choose between their culture and providing for their families. We see this program as providing opportunity for the 100's of Indigenous people we will engage to consult with us to develop content for the app; and we wish/plan to pay them equitably for their knowledge and expertise as they are part of the overall goal of providing accessible and authentic healing tools for Indigenous people. Further, they will be contributing to the scholarship and continuation of Indigenous worldviews and cultures.
We as Indigenous people have our own unique and place-based experiences. We recognize that we are not a monolith and have distinct cultures. We want to ensure that we engage with as many different tribal groups and people from those Nations as possible to amplify the uniqueness of Indigenous wellness and cultural practices. We also honor our vast parallel experiences.
We want to engage with potential funders that see value in the continuation of Indigenous people, Nations, and cultures, and want to continue to do reconciliation work by supporting the unraveling and healing the harm that was done by the settler state and colonization. We welcome these allies, partners and potential collaborators.
Our business plan is rooted in an Indigenous paradigm that is not frozen in time, just as our rights are not frozen in time neither is our technology. We want to remain open to utilize every tool available to us to support the healing of trauma within our communities.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable?
We are currently a brand new registered 501(c)(3) federal charity:
- Apply for local and Nation-wide grants
- Research and look for donors that align with our values
- Continue to research and educate ourselves and executive committee on what it means to be a social enterprise and how to raise monies ethically
- Continue to charge for educational services that are aligned with our values
- Sell art and other products as fundraisers
- Host fundraising events every year, some larger scale such as a gala and some smaller such as raffles and art sales. This is create a sense of community support and involvement. We have lots of support from the local Indigenous and Non-Indigenous community and we have observed that it makes the community feel good to support our works and ultimately their programming and services that we provide.
Solution Team
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VB
Vina Brown Rooted Resiliency
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Our Organization
Rooted Resiliency