Boozhoo · Tansi · Welcome
Stewart Cameron, Kiwetinohk Acahkos · Adrienne Lewis · Angela Carter, Kisêwâtisiw Iskwêw
Three distinct strengths, working together in relationship.Indigenous-led Cultural Safety · relationship-centred learning · organizational practice
From concept to a way of being
Makwa SC brings Elder knowledge, clinical experience and Indigenous executive leadership together to help people and organizations move beyond awareness—toward Cultural Safety reflected in relationships, decisions and everyday practice.
Relationship first
Every organization comes to Cultural Safety from a different place.
Cultural Safety concerns all peoples. It asks us to reflect on our own assumptions, how we use power, and how our actions affect others. It can guide changes that build respectful, power-balanced relationships in everyday life and within organizations, institutions, Nations, and governments.
For Indigenous Nations, whether Treaty or non-Treaty, Cultural Safety can support the work of shaping governance and relationships grounded in their own laws, teachings, and priorities. It can also guide how governments and institutions work with Nations through respectful, accountable, Nation-to-Nation relationships.
You may be beginning the conversation, building on previous learning, strengthening relationships with Indigenous peoples and Nations, or asking how Cultural Safety can become more deeply reflected in the everyday life of your organization.
Makwa begins with relationship. We listen to understand where your organization is today, the people you serve, what you may be experiencing and where you hope to go.
We don't begin with a pre-packaged answer. We listen first, then shape the work with you.
Makwa's work is grounded in our own Indigenous knowledge, ways of being and lived experience. We do not bring one Nation's teachings to replace another's. Within many Indigenous teachings, being human means recognizing ourselves as part of Creation and living in balance with self, one another and all life forms. Cultural Safety offers a relational way for all of us to return to that understanding. It supports each Nation, community and organization to carry forward its own worldview, governance, laws and responsibilities.
Look inward · Setting your own table
What is experienced outwardly is influenced by what is practised inwardly.
Cultural Safety is not only about external relationships. It also asks how we relate to ourselves and to one another within the organization—how teams communicate, share power, make decisions and work through differences.
Makwa does not set that table for you. We bring Cultural Safety knowledge, teachings, tools and guided reflection that support your organization in examining what it brings to its own table and how that may be experienced by others.
Put learning into practice
Awareness is a beginning, not the outcome. Without reflection and changed practice, the same assumptions and power imbalances can remain.
The work grows across three connected relationships: with self, within the organization, and with Indigenous peoples and communities.
Relationship with self
Participants explore Worldviews, history and lived experience, assumptions, perceived biases, professional roles and the use of power—and how these shape the way we understand and relate to one another.
The aim is reflection that can be practised between sessions.
Relationships within the organization
Cultural Safety can strengthen trust, teamwork and accountability when it is reflected in communication, leadership, decisions, policy, governance and everyday practice.
More respectful and power-balanced relationships within the organization shape what people experience outwardly.
Relationships with Indigenous peoples
We support relationships grounded in trust, dignity, respect, listening, choice, self-determination and appropriate sharing of power.
Cultural Safety is experienced—not claimed—through respectful, power-balanced relationships, self-determination and everyday practice.
Your path forward
It grows as people, organizations, communities and circumstances change. It calls upon us to keep listening, reflecting and adapting.
Cultural Safety is not something Makwa owns. We share knowledge, tools and guided reflection so organizations can strengthen their own capacity to practise it.
Success is seeing Cultural Safety take root in people, relationships, decisions and everyday practice—then continue after our work together.
From awareness to Cultural Safety
Cultural Safety emerged from Māori nursing in Aotearoa New Zealand in the late 1980s, through the pioneering work of Dr. Irihapeti Ramsden and other Māori nurses. They challenged health systems to examine power, colonial structures and whose experience determines whether care is safe.
Its lessons, however, reach far beyond health care. Cultural Safety invites each person and every organization—whether in health, government, education, industry, community services or Nations—to reflect honestly on how power, assumptions and systems shape relationships. It creates an opportunity to move from imbalance toward respectful, power-balanced ways of working together.
“Cultural Safety asks each of us to look honestly within ourselves—at the assumptions and power we carry—so we can build safer, more respectful relationships with others.”
Cultural Safety begins with the first stitch—with the first binding that holds everything else in place.
The Nursing Council of New Zealand’s Cultural Safety guidance features Tūmatakahuki, a kākahu created by Māori weaver Veranoa Angelique Hetet. Tūmatakahuki refers to the first stitch in a tukutuku panel: the stitch that establishes where those that follow will sit.
Through the Anishinaabe, Cree and Haudenosaunee teachings I have received, I continue to learn about relationship, responsibility and balance. One teaching I carry is that of the binding rope—the first tie that joins the three foundational tipi poles. When that relationship is properly secured and balanced, the structure can stand and provide shelter.
— Stewart Cameron
These are distinct teachings from distinct Indigenous Nations, carried through different languages, ceremonies, designs and ways of knowing. Yet they reflect a shared relational foundation found among many Indigenous peoples: life is held together through right relationship, responsibility, balance and respect.
We call this Creator's Relational Law.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous people work together in many of our organizations. We may follow different spiritual, cultural or personal paths, but we can meet in a shared principle: being good to ourselves, to one another and to Creation.
We call this good power.How our strengths come together
Creator's Relational Law is the binding rope that ties the first three foundation poles together and holds our unique strengths in balance. It does not ask us to become the same. It creates space for peace, sharing and coexistence without one person's knowledge overpowering another's.
In our teachings, the lodge represents the space of our mothers—where life is given and where we first learn how to live in a balanced, good way. It is a place of shelter, family, responsibility and relationship.
Before we invite others into a culturally safe space, we attend to the relationships, practices and responsibilities within our own organization. We set our own table first, creating a steady foundation from which to walk alongside others in building power-balanced relationships.
Each of us brings one of the first three foundation poles raised to form the lodge—our own knowledge, lived experience and strengths. No pole stands above another, and no single pole can hold the shelter or carry the weight of the family alone.
These three foundation poles are carried through the distinct knowledge, lived experience and leadership of Stewart, Adrienne and Angela. Together, they create the foundation from which Makwa works.
Meet the team
Stewart brings decades of experience in Indigenous leadership, governance, inter-Nation relationships and organizational development. As a former Chief, Tribal Chief and Indigenous technical advisor, he understands the responsibilities carried by leadership and the importance of relationships grounded in respect, accountability and responsibility.
As an Indigenous Elder and Knowledge Sharer, Stewart brings Elder knowledge and a relational approach to work with leaders, boards, organizations and communities. He helps create deeper understanding of shared responsibilities and the practical changes needed within leadership, governance and organizational practice.
Adrienne brings more than 25 years of nursing and clinical experience working with First Nations communities, together with expertise in Indigenous Cultural Safety, health systems and organizational change. Her clinical background gives her a clear understanding of Cultural Safety where it is experienced most directly: in relationships among providers, patients, families and communities.
Her work includes Cultural Safety, health information, organizational transformation and the Cultural Safety Walkthrough Project. Adrienne connects frontline experience with broader systems and organizational learning, helping organizations examine the relationship between what they commit to and what people experience in everyday practice.
Angela brings extensive experience in Indigenous health, executive leadership, community development and organizational change. Her work within First Nations organizations, Indigenous health, community-serving organizations and larger public systems has given her a strong understanding of leading within complexity while remaining accountable to community, relationships and the people those systems are intended to serve.
Angela brings an executive and organizational lens to Cultural Safety, connecting leadership, governance, policy and organizational practice with everyday experience. She works with executives, boards, leadership teams, staff and communities to identify practical steps toward stronger, culturally safer ways of working and sustainable systems change.
“Stewart and Adrienne were recommended by the Peace River Regional District, prompting us to reach out. Stewart and Adrienne guided conversations to assess what the District hoped to achieve in our initial Cultural Safety and Awareness journey. From that, we were able to develop a phased plan for setting the table, learning, listening, developing policy statements, and implementing Cultural Safety throughout all aspects of municipal service delivery and decision-making.”Lisa ScottChief Administrator, District of Tumbler Ridge
“Mr. Cameron’s Indigenous knowledge, combined with Ms. Lewis’s academic skill, has resulted in a deep understanding of the importance of Cultural Safety and how it can be introduced to organizations that care about developing an environment where various worldviews can be recognized and supported. The development and implementation of policies, practices and education that ensure cultural sensitivity and awareness—and ultimately Cultural Safety—are a key focus of our Indigenous and Community Engagement Team.”Sean SurerusPresident, Surerus Pipeline Inc. · Chairman, Surerus Murphy Joint Venture
“With the help of Makwa Consulting and Sam Bradd, the Peace River Regional District is proud to have finalized a Cultural Safety mission statement to help establish the principles of Cultural Safety at all levels within the Regional District and guide future decision-making. Through this successful work, the Regional Board and staff will continue to use Cultural Safety as a mechanism to frame successful and mutually beneficial relationships.”Shawn DahlenChief Administrative Officer, Peace River Regional District
How Makwa works
Where it will serve the work, Makwa partners with a graphic artist who creates the visual in real time as participants identify their own path toward becoming a more culturally safe organization. The result is a shared visual roadmap, made with the people in the room. Past clients have found this process invaluable for carrying commitments into action.
Makwa does not arrive with a finished answer or declare an organization culturally safe. We help build the shared language, reflective capacity and practical conditions for people to keep asking, listening, reflecting, practising, learning and changing. Each Nation, community and organization carries its own worldview, responsibilities and path forward.
Where does your organization begin?
You do not need to know exactly what kind of Cultural Safety learning or support your organization needs. We begin with a conversation, at no obligation. Tell us where you are and where you hope to go, and together we can decide whether working together feels right.
Based in British Columbia, Canada
Working alongside Nations, communities and organizations