Cedar Bridges Consulting Ltd.

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 In collaboration and relationship, I want to build bridges of compassion, understanding, and healing on this reconciliation journey. I hope that in sharing my knowledge in ways that are grounded in Indigenous values and creating belonging, that we can do the work of healing together. I want to offer a perspective that honours the reconnecting, reclaiming, urbanized, multi-racial, and caught in-between feeling that I’ve had and that I know many urbanized community members have experienced. I can’t speak for all of us, but I can share my story, my experiences, and the knowledge I have been gifted. 

I am committed to: 

• Rooting myself, my practice, and my business in Indigenous values of relationality, responsibility, reciprocity, respect. This includes slowing down and ensuring I’m upholding my intentions, that teachings are shared with permission and protocol, and doing the extra work to ensure that I am decolonizing myself, practice, and business along the way.

• Being accountable for my actions, including how they impact myself, my family, my community, and the path to reconciliation. I will hold myself accountable to and learn from my mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable on this journey, but they should be respected as a growing opportunity that we learn from and do not repeat. 

•  Approaching the work of Truth and Reconciliation from a place of healing. There will be tough conversations, but there will not be harmful conversations. To honour the intention and spirit of Truth and Reconciliation it must be rooted in the intention of healing and creating new pathways forward for future generations.

• Ensuring that my work is a balanced feather. This means ensuring that the work I do aligns with my values and my community. My intentions in this work must always be to increase Indigenous equity and success. This also includes balancing conversations of Truth and Reconciliation and who we are as culturally diverse Indigenous Peoples. 

  At this moment, the business team is just one person: me. But, that doesn’t negate my responsibilities to the Land or my community to be sustainable.

Here are the ways that Cedar Bridges is approaching sustainability: 

• Cedar Bridges respects the social responsibility of building bridges of reconciliation.  My intentions are always to build meaningful and sustainable bridges of reconciliation by rooting the work in healing, community safety, and belonging. As doing this work deeply impacts my local community and the larger Indigenous community, it also needs to be done intentionally, ethically, and responsibly. 

• Cedar Bridges honours, embodies, and educates on Indigenous perspectives on Land - which includes being respectful caretakers. We must walk the territories we reside upon with gratitude and reciprocity. These are teachings that I follow and that I pass on to others to form and deepen respectful relationships with Land. (If we’ve met, I’m sure we would have chatted about George! If we haven’t, ask me. It’s one of my favourite teachings to share.)

• Cedar Bridges Consulting approaches Indigenous consulting work as a community of collaboration. I recognize my role as an urbanized Indigenous consultant, to build bridges of reconciliation and to amplify voices in the community doing this work. When work is outside my role or abilities, I value collaborating and referring to others also doing this work. There is no competition in community, all our voices are valuable and all have a place. To be sustainable and successful in reconciliation, we must  celebrate and welcome community collaboration. 

• Cedar Bridges Consulting is digital, home-based, and prioritizes limiting its carbon footprint. Communications, accounting, and banking are all completed in electronic formats. By offering virtual consulting services, energy consumption, waste, and travel are all reduced. In addition, when travelling for in-person events, Cedar Bridges prioritizes using public transportation to lower carbon emissions, reduce idling traffic, and to limit personal car use.    

As Cedar Bridges Consulting Ltd. grows and changes, my intentions of building bridges of reconciliation and for supporting a bright future for the next generations will grow too. My dream over the next five to seven years are to grow relationships of reconciliation and to offer opportunities that support local Indigenous communities and youth. 

In the next five years, it is the intention that Cedar Bridges Consulting will grow and give back to community by: 

• Onboarding new team members in a partnership model that offers new team members support in their role, honours their gifts and talents, and decolonizes our perception of business leadership. In addition, new members would strengthen and grow this healing approach to reconciliation with the intention of Indigenous equity and success for future generations.  

•  Offering mentorship opportunities to Indigenous youth with the intentions of offering flexibility and support during post-secondary education, as well as offering an opportunity for work experience. 

•  Offering scholarships and bursaries for Indigenous post-secondary students, recognizing that finances are a major barrier for Indigenous students attending post-secondary and my responsibility to give back to the community that supported me through my education. 

• Offer reciprocity to the community for what the community needs. Cedar Bridges Consulting wants to co-create programming and/or funding opportunities with the local community in response to community needs and visions. Part of decolonizing and indigenizing is ensuring that goals, dreams, and/or visions are made in a collaboration. 

Future Vision Published: April 2025