Echoes of Us is entering its soft launch phase. Writing those words feels both exciting and humbling. This work has grown from lived experience, research, community conversations, and a deep belief that people need support in the spaces where systems often go quiet. But it has also grown through relationship. It has grown because people have believed in it, challenged it, encouraged it, and helped me see that this work has a place. Echoes of Us is an Indigenous-founded, traum

Most systems are built to respond at the moment of crisis. They are designed for disclosure, for reporting, for intervention, for emergencies that can be clearly identified and quickly categorized. They are often structured around visible moments: a police report, a court date, a shelter intake, a formal complaint, a documented incident. But survival rarely moves that way. For many survivors, especially Indigenous women, the hardest parts exist in the spaces between those mom

There are some things you do not build because you set out to become a founder, a strategist, or a person with a platform. There are some things you build because the world around you made it clear that if you did not, the silence would keep swallowing people whole. Echoes of Us began there. It did not begin as a neat idea or a polished concept. It began in the places where systems failed, where care was inconsistent, where support came in fragments, and where surviving gende

There is a common assumption about doctoral programs that we don’t often question. That they are about becoming better researchers. Better writers. Better thinkers. That if you follow the process, learn the structure, and meet the expectations, you will come out the other side more skilled, more refined, more “academic.” But that is not what happened to me. What happened was something far more disruptive. My doctorate did not just improve my writing. It changed how I understa

There is something deeply unsettling about not being able to trust your own mind. Before my concussion, I moved quickly. My thoughts came in layers, connections forming almost instantly. Writing, teaching, researching—these were not just things I did, they were ways I understood myself. My mind was a place I could rely on. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. The Invisible Disruption A concussion is strange because it doesn’t always show itself in obvious ways. There is no cast, no

Open Educational Resources are often positioned as inherently good. They are described as tools that increase access, reduce costs, and democratize knowledge. Within many educational spaces, openness is framed as progress, as something that naturally moves us toward equity. But from an Indigenous perspective, the conversation is not so simple. Before we ask how to expand Open Educational Resources, we must first pause and ask what it means to make knowledge open, and at what

Before I knew the word violence I knew the sound of it. It lived in walls that were too thin to hold secrets, in footsteps that taught me to listen before I breathed, in the way silence could feel safer than speaking. I was a child learning a language no one should know— how to read a room before entering it, how to make myself small enough to disappear inside it. I learned that love could come with conditions, that safety could be taken without warning, without explanation,

There is a difference between something ending and something being over. On paper, what happened to me has an ending. There was a process. There were years spent in court. There was a sentence. Four years of fighting. Four years of having to tell my story again and again. Four years of carrying everything into spaces where it had to be explained, questioned, and made legible in ways that never fully captured what it actually meant. And in the end, he received two years of pro

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from having to fight to be helped. Not in a loud or visible way, but in the quiet persistence of explaining your pain over and over again. Of waiting. Of being told to try something else. Of learning how to advocate for yourself in spaces where you thought care would be given freely. This has been my experience with the healthcare system. For years, I have lived with ongoing physical pain. I was diagnosed with PCOS when I wa

It was just a ride. A changed plan. Nothing dramatic, on the surface. That’s how it would seem to most people. A minor miscommunication. A quiet adjustment. No big deal. But for me, it wasn’t small. It was the kind of moment that lingers. The kind that settles into the chest like a stone. The kind that reminds you you’re alone, even when surrounded by family. Here’s what happened: I had worked until 3 a.m. the night before, juggling multiple jobs, deadlines, and responsibilit

Introduction: Embodiment, Distance, and Indigenous Education In my work, I do not understand learning as something that can be separated into discrete parts. It has never made sense to treat learning as a purely cognitive activity, detached from the body, from emotion, or from the relationships that shape how we come to know. Embodied learning offers a framework that helps articulate this understanding. It recognizes the interconnectedness of body, mind, emotion, and spirit,

For a long time, I tried to be the kind of researcher my programs seemed to expect: clear categories, polished methodology chapters, and careful distance from the people I was writing about. But as an Indigenous scholar, that distance never felt honest. This piece is about the moment I stopped trying to force myself into Western methodological boxes and started naming what I was already doing: researching in a way that is relational, story‑driven, and accountable to community

This essay started with a rupture. Not a theoretical one, but a very real break inside a national Indigenous organization where I was working on gender‑based violence (GBV) education. On paper, the organization was committed to trauma‑informed, relational, and Indigenous‑led leadership. In practice, those values collapsed at the exact moment they were most needed. This piece is my attempt to name what happened—and to trace what it teaches me about leadership, power, and pedag

Abstract Indigenous and Western educational paradigms reflect fundamentally different worldviews: one grounded in relational, land-based, and holistic learning, and the other in standardized, outcome-driven models. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape digital education, this paper explores its potential to bridge these epistemological divides, not by assimilating Indigenous knowledge systems but by supporting their revitalization and self-determined expression