Nurturing Cultural Understanding and Relational Accountability
TRAINING
Purpose & Goals
The primary purpose of this training is to guide groups beyond traditional "diversity and inclusion" initiatives toward cultural understanding and relational accountability. Grounded in Indigenous values, historical wisdom, and community lived experience, this curriculum equips institutions to recognize, address, and dismantle systemic workplace harms that disproportionately impact Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, and QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) staff.
The training centers and educates participants in pre-colonial understandings of gender variance, historical resilience, and highlights culture relevance. This training transforms organizational policies from rigid compliance models into living commitments of mutual respect, restorative care, and collective responsibility.
Core Training Goals & Objectives
Day 1: Knowledge to Shift Perspective
1. Cultivate Cultural Safety & Deep Belonging
Dismantle Systemic Workplace Harms: Equip leadership and HR teams to identify and counteract subtle workplace inequities, including cases of tokenism, fragility backlash, credit erasure, the sidelining of cultural guidance, and "cultural fit" hiring bias.
Establish the relation between the organizational culture and the impact of the individual: Address how policy shapes or informs the embedded biases of the workplace and its potential harm to employees.
Create communal belonging: Recognize how policy and culture of the workplace can alienate employees identifying as QTBIPOC/2S/Indigiqueer
2. Root Practice in Historical Context & Cultural Humility
Deepen the understanding of indigenous life-ways: Ground participants in the origins, history, and revered ceremonial and social roles of Two-Spirit individuals—such as healers, warriors, mediators, and knowledge keepers—across diverse Tribal Nations.
Deconstruct Colonial Gender Binary Assumptions: Examine the historical impacts of colonization, boarding schools, and gender erasure on modern language, HR systems, and institutional norms.
Practice Humility: Foster active listening, and direct accountability, and honest self-reflection regarding organizational power dynamics.
Day 2: Practice and Action
3. Relational Accountability (Trauma Informed)
Analyze Real-World Scenarios: Utilize scenario-based learning to navigate power dynamics and repair trust intentionally when harm occurs.
Implement Restorative, Non-Punitive Frameworks: Develop holistic approaches to workplace conflict that hold space for the complex intersections of historical trauma, language loss, and identity-affirming care.
Ensure Fair Attribution & Recognition: Establish policy standards that protect Two-Spirit and QTBIPOC staff contributions, ensuring strategies and innovations are publicly credited and rewarded.
4. Operationalize Structural HR & Policy Transformation
Implement the ABCDE Best Practices Framework:
A – Allow for Self-Identification: Support individual sovereignty in personal naming, pronouns, and self-expression.
B – Be Respectful of Confidentiality: Maintain strict privacy protocols and consent-driven disclosures.
C – Create Inclusive Spaces: Align physical, visual, and cultural environments with safety and respect.
D – Develop Inclusive Language Habits: Normalize accurate pronoun usage, neopronouns, and gender-expansive terms without placing educational burdens on marginalized staff.
E – Educate Yourself Continuously: Build sustained institutional knowledge through ongoing learning rather than relying on QTBIPOC staff for uncompensated instruction.
Drive Institutional Trust & Health Outcomes: Increase community trust in tribal and public services, close care disparities, reduce stigma, and improve retention for Two-Spirit and QTBIPOC employees.
Intended Impact
This training is designed to transform organizational culture from rigid compliance and superficial "diversity" initiatives into deep, living commitments to cultural safety, shared power, and relational accountability. Grounded in Indigenous values, pre-colonial understandings of gender variance, and community lived experience, the intended impact of this curriculum spans structural, relational, cultural, and community levels.
1. Structural & HR Policy Transformation
Shift from Token Representation to Co-Governance: Transitions organizations from using marginalized staff as tokenized advisors toward establishing structural equity, co-governance, and shared decision-making authority.
Mandated Compensation for Cultural Labor: Establishes formal HR policies and job charters that properly define, workload-adjust, and compensate Two Spirit and QTBIPOC staff for identity-based labor, equity leadership, and cultural guidance.
Equitable Talent & Hiring Practices: Eliminates coded, biased hiring criteria—such as exclusionary "cultural fit" standards—and equips hiring panels with anti-racist, culturally humble evaluation frameworks.
Fair Credit & Attribution Standards: Enforces policies that ensure innovations, strategies, and programs developed by QTBIPOC employees are publicly credited, celebrated, and tied to career advancement.
2. Organizational Culture & Sacred Belonging
Establishing Sacred Belonging: Redefines workplace environments so that safety is understood not merely as the absence of harm, but as the active presence of belonging, self-sovereignty, and cultural respect.
Overcoming Managerial Fragility: Trains leadership and management to receive feedback on systemic inequities without shifting focus, deflecting discomfort, or retaliating against staff.
Operationalizing the ABCDE Framework: Normalizes everyday inclusive habits across teams through five core tenets:
A – Allow for Self-Identification: Honoring individual naming and pronoun sovereignty.
B – Be Respectful of Confidentiality: Maintaining strict privacy protocols and consent-driven disclosures.
C – Create Inclusive Spaces: Aligning physical, visual, and interpersonal environments with safety.
D – Develop Inclusive Language Habits: Standardizing affirming pronoun and gender-expansive language use.
E – Educate Yourself Continuously: Shifting the burden of education away from QTBIPOC staff onto continuous institutional learning.
3. Relational & Restorative Accountability
Trauma-Informed Harm Repair: Replaces punitive disciplinary models with relational, trauma-informed conflict resolution that accounts for historical trauma, boarding school legacies, colonization, and language loss.
Protection from Uncompensated Diversity Burden: Builds organizational boundaries that protect Two Spirit and QTBIPOC staff from carrying isolated responsibility for equity work on top of their core job duties.
4. Community Trust & Service Delivery Outcomes
Restoring Institutional Trust: Rebuilds community trust in Tribal Nations, public agencies, health equity teams, and social service organizations.
Closing Service Disparities & Removing Stigma: Improves health, wellness, and retention outcomes for Two Spirit and QTBIPOC youth and employees by removing identity-based stigma as a barrier to care.
Honoring Pre-Colonial Cultural Heritage: Reconnects modern workplace practices with revered pre-colonial roles (such as healers, mediators, and ceremony leaders) and supports land-based healing and cultural revitalization.
Who this Gathering is For
Overview & Structure
This 8-hour interactive gathering, structured across 2 days (4 hours per day), is designed for any institution, agency, or team seeking to move beyond superficial diversity metrics toward deep-seated cultural safety, relational accountability, and shared governance.
Audience & Eligible Organizations
Human Resources & Talent Management: HR leaders, recruiters, and managers who oversee hiring, workplace policies, employee retention, and conflict resolution systems.
Executive Leadership & Organizational Decision-Makers: Board members, executive directors, program directors, and supervisors responsible for institutional governance, budget allocation, and culture setting.
Tribal Nations & Indigenous Organizations: Tribal government leaders, urban Native health centers, Tribal youth programs, and community councils navigating the intersection of tribal sovereignty, cultural protocols, and staff wellbeing.
Public Agencies & Health Equity Teams: Public health departments, county agencies, social service providers, and educational institutions serving Indigenous, Two-Spirit, and QTBIPOC communities.
Forward-Thinking Non-Profits & Corporate Entities: Any organization committed to dismantling systemic workplace harms, such as tokenism, "cultural fit" hiring bias, credit erasure, and uncompensated identity-based labor.
2-Day Curriculum (4 Hours / Day)
Day 1: Knowledge to Shift the Paradigm (4 Hours)
Grounding in Indigenous history, pre-colonial gender variance, and revered Two-Spirit cultural roles (e.g., healers, mediators, ceremony leaders).
Examining the historical impacts of colonization, boarding school legacies, gender erasure, and language loss on modern HR systems.
Identifying systemic workplace harms, tokenism, uncompensated diversity work, and coded hiring bias.
Day 2: Practice & Actionable Transformation (4 Hours)
Analyzing real-world workplace scenarios to mitigate managerial fragility and handle feedback constructively.
Implementing trauma-informed, non-punitive relational accountability and establishing fair credit attribution standards.
Operationalizing structural HR policy transformation through the ABCDE Framework (Allow for Self-Identification, Be Respectful of Confidentiality, Create Inclusive Spaces, Develop Inclusive Language Habits, Educate Yourself Continuously).
Contact us
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