ish’kē’nā biyátí · The Medicine Lives Between Us
Indigenous Trauma-Informed Solutions™ Certificate
A six-month virtual certificate program for Indigenous helpers, leaders, healers, and allies.
Most trauma training centers pathology and individual deficit. This certificate centers belonging, kinship, reciprocity, and the restoration of harmony - because trauma, in Indigenous worldviews, does not live inside a single person. It lives between us, in the places where connection has been severed. And healing, too, lives between us.
Designed and led exclusively by Indigenous professionals and rooted in Chiricahua Apache teachings and the Sacred Wound Framework™
“The wound is not the trauma event; the wound is the disconnection. When we bring the Sacred Wound into circle, we are not reopening trauma. We are restoring relationship.” — Sacred Wound Framework™ (Olson, 2025)
Why Conventional Trauma Training Falls ShortMost trauma training was built on Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) frameworks that do not account for Indigenous worldviews, collective experience, or the sophisticated healing technologies our ancestors practiced for millennia. These frameworks can be useful. They were not built for the realities that shape trauma and healing in Tribal Nations, Alaska Native communities, and Indigenous-serving organizations.
For over five hundred years, colonization has disrupted the kinship systems, ceremonial practices, languages, and land connections that kept Indigenous peoples in balance. The impacts, inlcuding historical trauma, intergenerational grief, ambiguous loss, lateral violence, and what Chiricahua Apache scholar Maria Yraceburu calls “the sorrow felt in our bodies from Mother Earth herself”, are not relics of the past. They are a living process, carried in the nervous system, in the blood memory (epigenome), in family patterns, and often in the very systems designed to help. Before polyvagal theory, we had ceremony. Before narrative therapy, we had storywork. Before somatic experiencing, we had dance, shaking, and sweating. This certificate reclaims that legacy.
Five Cultural Frameworks at the Heart of the Certificate
This certificate is built upon five frameworks that emerge from Chiricahua Apache and Quero Apache teachings, over three decades of clinical and community practice, and original dissertation research. We also recognize that there is nothing new — anything developed by us comes from our ancestors, our teachings, and our lineages, both biological and non-biological.
The Sacred Wound Framework™
A concentric-circle model of wounding and medicine
In the Chiricahua worldview, wounds are not simply damage to be repaired; they are teachers with their own spirit. Four concentric rings map the ecology of healing. We will look at the Original Wound (colonial rupture: loss of land, language, ceremony, and kinship), what is Carried Forward (neuroepigenetic imprinting and survival adaptations), Manifestations Today (lateral violence, burnout, trauma-organized systems, internalized oppression), and the Medicine Path (ceremony, kinship repair, land-based healing, storywork, and collective restoration). Healing ripples outward through self, family, community, and systems.
The Medicine Wheel of Regulation™
A ceremonial map for restoring intin’hozoni — balance, the beauty path
Nervous system regulation mapped across four directions: East/Mind (clarity, orientation, storywork), South/Body (somatic awareness, grounding, movement), West/Emotions (honoring feeling and flow), and North/Spirit & Relationships (co-regulation, kinship, ancestors, land). The four phases of Indigenous regulation — Settle, Sense, Shift, Sustain — position regulation as communal and ceremonial, not merely a clinical technique.
The Echo Project →
Advanced Service
The Brightline Project →
IncludedInitial Consultation
Brainstorming Session
Collaborative Planning
Customized Deliverables
Multiple Feedback Rounds
Actionable Recommendations
Post-Project Support
Recommended“Their attention to detail and commitment to quality truly stood out. We’ve already recommended them to others.”
– Former Customer
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