The Healing-Centered Indigenous Regulation Framework©
A Proprietary Methodology That Transforms Organizations From the Inside Out
Most organizational development approaches focus on compliance, performance metrics, and behavior management. While these matter, they miss the deeper truth: sustainable organizational change requires healing.
The Healing-Centered Indigenous Regulation Framework© integrates Indigenous wisdom, neuroscience, and trauma-informed practice to help organizations become places where people—and systems—can regulate, relate, and thrive.
What Makes this Framework Different?
Five Core Principles.
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We start with what's already working. Every Tribal organization has strengths, wisdom, and resilience already present. Our work amplifies these assets rather than focusing solely on deficits or problems.
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This framework is rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing and being. We honor traditional healing practices, incorporate ceremony when appropriate, respect community protocols, and ensure that cultural knowledge guides every decision.
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We understand that trauma lives in the mind and in the body and impacts how people show up at work. Our approach addresses the nervous system's role in regulation, helping individuals and teams develop capacity for co-regulation and resilience.
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We don't just work with individuals— though we do offer individual coaching and mentoring - we look at the big picture to transform relationships and systems. Organizations are living ecosystems. When we shift how people relate to one another, we shift organizational culture.
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Nothing about you, without you. We design every intervention alongside the communities and organizations we serve. Your knowledge, values, and vision shape the work from beginning to end.
From Assessment to Sustainable Transformation
PHASE 1: Foundation & Assessment We begin by understanding your organization's current state, strengths, challenges, and goals. This includes stakeholder interviews, organizational assessment, and identifying both trauma impacts and historical and contemporary strengths. We use Indigenous community-based participatory interactions, circle work and appreciative inquiry when completing needs assessments,
PHASE 2: Co-Design & Planning Together, we design a customized roadmap that aligns with your values, honors your sovereignty, and addresses your specific context. We work to center your cultural values, into a programatic medicine bundle, then identify key leverage points for transformation while building internal champions.
PHASE 3: Implementation & Integration We work alongside your team to implement healing-centered practices, utilizing ceremony, language, shared meals, talking circles and embodied practices to build capacity, and shift organizational culture. This may also include leadership development, policy alignment, workforce training, and systems redesign.
PHASE 4: Sustainability & Transition We don't create dependency; we build your internal capacity to sustain change. We train internal facilitators, document processes, and ensure you have the tools to continue the work long after our contract ends.
Understanding Regulation in Organizations
In neuroscience, "regulation" refers to the nervous system's ability to manage stress, return to baseline, and engage with others. In organizations, regulation means:
Individual Regulation: Staff have tools to manage their own stress and emotional responses
Co-Regulation: Teams can support each other through difficult moments
Organizational Regulation: Systems and policies support people's collective and individual wellbeing
Cultural Regulation: Values, practices, and norms create safety and belonging
When organizations develop regulation capacity, they become able to handle challenges without fracturing, burning out, or losing connection to their mission.
Why Indigenous-Led Matters
Mainstream organizational development wasn't designed for Tribal communities. It often:
Ignores historical trauma and ongoing colonization
Prioritizes efficiency over relationship
Treats culture as an "add-on" rather than foundational
Measures success through Western metrics alone
Extracts knowledge without reciprocity
Our framework centers Indigenous epistemology:
Seven-generation thinking guides decision-making
Reciprocity and relationship come first
Collective wellbeing matters as much as individual performance
Traditional knowledge is honored as evidence
Sovereignty and self-determination are non-negotiable
Practice-Based Evidence
Evidence-based practice is important, but this framework also draws from much older systems of practiced-based evidence, including:
Indigenous Knowledge
Traditional healing practices
Relational accountability
Intergenerational wisdom
Collective care models
Native science
Indigenous Neuroscience & Trauma Research
Web-based thinking
Spirit-led
Land-based
Stone and plant allies integration
Ceremony
Polyvagal theory
Interpersonal neurobiology
Trauma-informed and trauma-responsive care
Embodied somatic approaches
Organizational Development
Systems thinking
Complexity theory
Leadership development
Cultural transformation
Designed for Tribal Systems and Workforces.
Ideal for:
Tribal behavioral health programs
Human services departments
Education systems (K-12 and early childhood)
Workforce development and Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation programs
Tribal courts and justice systems
Leadership teams and councils
Multi-departmental organizational transformation
Works best when:
Leadership is committed to change
There's readiness to examine systems and culture
Community voice will be centered
You're willing to invest time (not just money)
You want sustainable change, not quick fixes