Unalaska bench over the ocean.jpeg
Unalaska bench over the ocean.jpeg

Indigenous Facilitator Certificate I: The Sacred Container

from $595.00

The Indigenous Facilitator Certificate I: The Sacred Container is a six-month, cohort-based certificate program designed and led exclusively by Indigenous professionals. Offered through Juniper & Pine Consulting, LLC, it is the foundational credential in the Mastering the Sacred Art of Facilitation pathway, a comprehensive training system that positions Indigenous healing-centered facilitation as a distinct and sophisticated professional practice.

Participants meet virtually one full day each month across six consecutive months, moving together through a carefully sequenced arc that braids Indigenous knowledge systems, polyvagal neuroscience, relational accountability, healing-centered design, and professional facilitation craft. Each month maps to one of the six core competencies of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), while grounding every competency in Indigenous wisdom traditions, neurochemical awareness, and the understanding that facilitation is sacred, relational, and embodied work.

We will meet the third Friday of each month, from 7:00 am-2:00 pm PACIFIC STANDARD TIME starting Friday, September 18, 2026 and ending Friday, January 15, 2027.

Where mainstream facilitation training centers on methods, tools, and meeting management, this program centers the facilitator as the instrument. This is the understanding that your regulation, your groundedness, your cultural identity, and your integrity are the foundation of every process you hold. Participants leave not merely with techniques but with a transformed understanding of who they are as facilitators and what their communities need them to become.

Certificate I serves as the entry credential for the full Juniper & Pine professional development pathway and is a required core course for the Indigenous Healing-Centered Regulation Practitioner Certification.

Why This Program Matters

“The person holding the circle must be well. The person carrying medicine must first be in right relationship with their own healing. This has always been the teaching.”

— Foundational Teaching, Certificate I

Indigenous communities are in urgent need of skilled facilitators who can hold space for the complex work of healing, planning, and governance that sovereignty demands. Strategic planning sessions, community healing circles, organizational development, family group conferencing, youth program design, Elder councils, and restorative justice gatherings all require facilitation skills. The settings are diverse, but they share a common requirement: someone who can create a container that is safe enough for truth, structured enough for progress, and grounded enough in cultural knowledge to honor the people in the room.

Yet the vast majority of facilitation training available today was designed within western, corporate frameworks that do not account for Indigenous worldviews, relational values, or the neurobiological realities of working within communities carrying historical and intergenerational trauma. These trainings teach participants to manage agendas but not to read nervous systems. They teach process design but not energetic container creation. They teach conflict management but not co-regulation. They teach neutrality but not cultural humility.

This program exists because Indigenous communities deserve facilitators who understand that space is medicine, that the facilitator’s own regulation is the first intervention, that talking circles are not merely a participation structure but a form of ceremony, and that every gathered group carries ancestral wisdom that does not need to be extracted but honored.

What Makes This Program Different

•  Healing-Centered, Not Technique-Driven: Guided by the understanding that facilitation is sacred work, this program centers the facilitator’s own healing, regulation, and cultural groundedness as the foundation of professional practice. Techniques are taught within the context of embodied, relational, healing-centered facilitation, never as standalone tools.

•  Two-Row Medicine Approach™: Inspired by the Haudenosaunee Two Row Wampum Belt Treaty, and the words of Dr. Karen Hill, is the idea that Indigenous knowledge systems and western facilitation science travel side by side as sovereign, equally legitimate paths. Participants learn to walk between both knowledge systems with integrity, knowing when to draw from each and when to stand in the relational river between them.

•  IAF Competency-Mapped with Indigenous Grounding: Each month maps to one of the six IAF core facilitator competencies (A–F), creating a credentialing pathway recognized by the international facilitation profession. But every competency is taught through an Indigenous lens first; western frameworks serve as supporting evidence, not as the primary frame.

•  Embodied and Experiential: This is not a lecture series. Each session includes talking circles, somatic practices, breathwork, neurochemical strategies, role play, skill-building labs, and embodied activities that engage body, heart, mind, and spirit—the four directions of wholistic learning.

•  Neurochemical Awareness Throughout: Every segment of every session is designed with explicit attention to the neurochemistry of the room, including oxytocin for bonding, cortisol management for safety, dopamine for engagement, and serotonin for belonging. Participants learn not only what to facilitate but what is happening in the nervous systems of the people they serve.

•  Community-Centered: Learning happens in cohort; a circle of kinship that carries the medicine of shared learning, mutual witnessing, and collective accountability. Practice pods of 3–4 participants meet between sessions for peer learning and feedback, building the relational infrastructure that sustains practice long after the program ends.

•  Built on Indigenous Science: Neurodecolonization research (Yellow Bird, 2013) confirms what our ancestors knew: that traditional contemplative practices create real neurobiological change, strengthening the prefrontal cortex, reducing amygdala reactivity, and restoring the brain’s capacity for regulation and presence. Western science is running to catch up.

CHOOSE YOUR PRICE POINT: We ask that your choose your own price point for this course. There are six options. We do not police or gate-keep the options, but ask that you responsibly and respectfully choose the option that best fits your ability to pay. The $595, $695 and $795 options are for Tribal Members and those who identify as Indigenous. The $1095, $1195 and $1295 options are for those who identify as allies and those working in Tribal programs. We also offer at least three work/trade scholarships for Tribal Members and Indigenous participants. Please contact us to discuss this option and/or see if this option is still available.

You can read more about our ethical pricing structure on our Terms Page.

Choose:

The Indigenous Facilitator Certificate I: The Sacred Container is a six-month, cohort-based certificate program designed and led exclusively by Indigenous professionals. Offered through Juniper & Pine Consulting, LLC, it is the foundational credential in the Mastering the Sacred Art of Facilitation pathway, a comprehensive training system that positions Indigenous healing-centered facilitation as a distinct and sophisticated professional practice.

Participants meet virtually one full day each month across six consecutive months, moving together through a carefully sequenced arc that braids Indigenous knowledge systems, polyvagal neuroscience, relational accountability, healing-centered design, and professional facilitation craft. Each month maps to one of the six core competencies of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), while grounding every competency in Indigenous wisdom traditions, neurochemical awareness, and the understanding that facilitation is sacred, relational, and embodied work.

We will meet the third Friday of each month, from 7:00 am-2:00 pm PACIFIC STANDARD TIME starting Friday, September 18, 2026 and ending Friday, January 15, 2027.

Where mainstream facilitation training centers on methods, tools, and meeting management, this program centers the facilitator as the instrument. This is the understanding that your regulation, your groundedness, your cultural identity, and your integrity are the foundation of every process you hold. Participants leave not merely with techniques but with a transformed understanding of who they are as facilitators and what their communities need them to become.

Certificate I serves as the entry credential for the full Juniper & Pine professional development pathway and is a required core course for the Indigenous Healing-Centered Regulation Practitioner Certification.

Why This Program Matters

“The person holding the circle must be well. The person carrying medicine must first be in right relationship with their own healing. This has always been the teaching.”

— Foundational Teaching, Certificate I

Indigenous communities are in urgent need of skilled facilitators who can hold space for the complex work of healing, planning, and governance that sovereignty demands. Strategic planning sessions, community healing circles, organizational development, family group conferencing, youth program design, Elder councils, and restorative justice gatherings all require facilitation skills. The settings are diverse, but they share a common requirement: someone who can create a container that is safe enough for truth, structured enough for progress, and grounded enough in cultural knowledge to honor the people in the room.

Yet the vast majority of facilitation training available today was designed within western, corporate frameworks that do not account for Indigenous worldviews, relational values, or the neurobiological realities of working within communities carrying historical and intergenerational trauma. These trainings teach participants to manage agendas but not to read nervous systems. They teach process design but not energetic container creation. They teach conflict management but not co-regulation. They teach neutrality but not cultural humility.

This program exists because Indigenous communities deserve facilitators who understand that space is medicine, that the facilitator’s own regulation is the first intervention, that talking circles are not merely a participation structure but a form of ceremony, and that every gathered group carries ancestral wisdom that does not need to be extracted but honored.

What Makes This Program Different

•  Healing-Centered, Not Technique-Driven: Guided by the understanding that facilitation is sacred work, this program centers the facilitator’s own healing, regulation, and cultural groundedness as the foundation of professional practice. Techniques are taught within the context of embodied, relational, healing-centered facilitation, never as standalone tools.

•  Two-Row Medicine Approach™: Inspired by the Haudenosaunee Two Row Wampum Belt Treaty, and the words of Dr. Karen Hill, is the idea that Indigenous knowledge systems and western facilitation science travel side by side as sovereign, equally legitimate paths. Participants learn to walk between both knowledge systems with integrity, knowing when to draw from each and when to stand in the relational river between them.

•  IAF Competency-Mapped with Indigenous Grounding: Each month maps to one of the six IAF core facilitator competencies (A–F), creating a credentialing pathway recognized by the international facilitation profession. But every competency is taught through an Indigenous lens first; western frameworks serve as supporting evidence, not as the primary frame.

•  Embodied and Experiential: This is not a lecture series. Each session includes talking circles, somatic practices, breathwork, neurochemical strategies, role play, skill-building labs, and embodied activities that engage body, heart, mind, and spirit—the four directions of wholistic learning.

•  Neurochemical Awareness Throughout: Every segment of every session is designed with explicit attention to the neurochemistry of the room, including oxytocin for bonding, cortisol management for safety, dopamine for engagement, and serotonin for belonging. Participants learn not only what to facilitate but what is happening in the nervous systems of the people they serve.

•  Community-Centered: Learning happens in cohort; a circle of kinship that carries the medicine of shared learning, mutual witnessing, and collective accountability. Practice pods of 3–4 participants meet between sessions for peer learning and feedback, building the relational infrastructure that sustains practice long after the program ends.

•  Built on Indigenous Science: Neurodecolonization research (Yellow Bird, 2013) confirms what our ancestors knew: that traditional contemplative practices create real neurobiological change, strengthening the prefrontal cortex, reducing amygdala reactivity, and restoring the brain’s capacity for regulation and presence. Western science is running to catch up.

CHOOSE YOUR PRICE POINT: We ask that your choose your own price point for this course. There are six options. We do not police or gate-keep the options, but ask that you responsibly and respectfully choose the option that best fits your ability to pay. The $595, $695 and $795 options are for Tribal Members and those who identify as Indigenous. The $1095, $1195 and $1295 options are for those who identify as allies and those working in Tribal programs. We also offer at least three work/trade scholarships for Tribal Members and Indigenous participants. Please contact us to discuss this option and/or see if this option is still available.

You can read more about our ethical pricing structure on our Terms Page.

Program Format

The cohort meets virtually one full day per month for six consecutive months. Each session follows a consistent rhythm that honors Indigenous ways of gathering:

 

A Day in the Program

▶  Opening Talking Circle (90 minutes) — Sacred space for connection, check-in, and setting intentions

▶  Morning Teaching Session (90 minutes) — Core content with interactive discussion and demonstration

▶  Nourishment Break (60 minutes) — Mindful lunch and personal reflection

▶  Afternoon Teaching & Experiential Activity (90 minutes) — Deeper content with hands-on practice

▶  Interactive Activity Block (60 minutes) — Creative expression, small group work, embodied exercises

▶  Closing Talking Circle (45 minutes) — Integration, gratitude, and commitment-setting

 

Participants also engage in between-session practices including daily journaling, grounding exercises, and self-care commitments that build progressively across the six months.

A comprehensive Pre/Post Assessment measures growth in knowledge, self-awareness, and confidence. Each participant receives a Participant Guidebook with worksheets, journal prompts, activity templates, and resource lists.


 

The Six-Month Journey

 

Month

1

Naming the Shadow

Ndee bidáá’ — The People’s Burden

Understand vicarious trauma, secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout. Learn the neurobiology of carried trauma. Identify personal signs through body mapping and Indigenous frameworks for understanding the weight we carry.

 

Month

2

Restoring Balance

Go’zhoo — Returning to Balance

Experience story, language, and ceremony as neurobiological regulation tools. Practice breathwork synchronized with drum rhythm. Share personal resilience stories in circle. Create Story Medicine Cards as portable healing resources.

 

Month

3

Boundaries & Kinship

Shí k’é dóó dah ne’áá — My Kinship Is My Shield

Develop relational shields rooted in reciprocity and kinship. Practice somatic boundary-setting through the “No Pose.” Create a Kinship Map of your protective network. Examine patterns of over-giving and practice receiving.

 

Month

4

Releasing & Renewing

Ni’gosdzán — Mother Earth Takes What We Cannot Carry

Learn how ritual completes incomplete trauma cycles. Practice witnessing (speaking and being truly heard). Engage in movement-based release. Participate in an earth release ritual and Four Directions Blessing.

 

Month

5

Building Healing-Centered Systems

Restoring the Bundle

Move from individual healing to organizational transformation. Recognize trauma-organized cultures. Apply the Restoring the Bundle framework. Create an organizational healing action plan grounded in cultural values.

 

Month

6

Walking Forward Together

Bik’ehgo’ihi’na’ — Walking in a Good Way

Complete a comprehensive Personal Healing Plan. Create a Healing Bundle as a symbolic commitment to the journey. Establish peer support partnerships. Close with ceremony, drum circle, and collective affirmation.


 

Key Learning Areas

 

1. Understanding Vicarious Trauma

Recognize the signs, symptoms, and impacts of carrying others’ burdens across physical, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, and relational domains. Understand how secondary trauma, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout differ—and how they interact. Learn the neurobiology of trauma absorption through the lens of both Western science and Indigenous knowledge systems.

2. Restoring Balance Through Story, Language & Ceremony

Experience how narrative, language, and ceremonial practices serve as powerful neurobiological regulation tools. Understand the science behind why story circles heal, why drumming resets the nervous system, and why ceremony completes interrupted stress cycles. Reclaim Indigenous practices of song, story, and ritual as first-line protective factors against vicarious trauma.

3. Boundaries & Kinship as Protective Practices

Develop relational shields rooted in reciprocity, kinship, and right relationship—not disconnection. Learn to establish healthy boundaries that honor the web of kinship central to Indigenous communities. Practice somatic (body-based) boundary-setting and map the protective networks of kin, ancestors, community, and spirit that surround you.

4. Releasing & Renewing Through Ritual and Movement

Engage in embodied practices to release carried stories and incomplete trauma cycles. Practice witnessing circles where speaking and being truly heard allows the body to complete its stress response. Use movement (shaking, stomping, drumming), breathwork, and guided ritual to give back to the earth what was never yours to carry.

5. Building Healing-Centered Organizations and Communities

Move beyond individual self-care to systemic transformation. Learn to recognize trauma-organized cultures in organizations and apply the Restoring the Bundle framework to create healing-centered, culturally-driven workplaces. Develop concrete organizational healing action plans that align with Indigenous values and community vision.

6. Sustaining the Healing Path

Create a comprehensive Personal Healing Plan with daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal practices. Build peer support partnerships for ongoing accountability and connection. Assemble a symbolic Healing Bundle that represents your commitments and carries the medicine of six months of shared learning.


 

Program Learning Objectives

 

Upon completion of Chí’íiyáhí Gózhó, participants will be able to:

 

Knowledge & Understanding

1.     Define and differentiate between vicarious trauma, secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout, including their distinct mechanisms and impacts

2.    Describe the neurobiology of trauma and stress responses, including the role of the autonomic nervous system, polyvagal theory, and the brain structures involved in trauma processing

3.     Explain how cultural and historical trauma compounds the risks of vicarious trauma for Indigenous helpers and communities

4.    Articulate the role of Indigenous healing practices (story, ceremony, kinship, land-based wisdom) as neurobiological regulation tools with both cultural and scientific foundations

5.     Identify the characteristics of trauma-organized cultures in organizations and understand the Restoring the Bundle framework for systemic healing

 

Self-Awareness & Personal Growth

6.    Identify personal signs and symptoms of vicarious trauma across physical, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, and relational domains using body-based and reflective assessment tools

7.     Recognize personal patterns of over-giving, boundary dissolution, and depleted reciprocity that contribute to compassion fatigue

8.    Demonstrate increased awareness of how carried trauma manifests in the body through somatic practices such as body mapping, grounding, and the No Pose

9.    Articulate a personal understanding of how cultural identity, kinship, and ancestral connection serve as protective factors against vicarious trauma

10.  Identify personal sources of resilience, strength, and healing through Kinship Mapping and Story Medicine practices

 

Skills & Application

11.   Apply at least three evidence-based and culturally-grounded regulation strategies (breathwork, movement for release, drum-synchronized breathing, witnessing practice) in daily life and professional settings

12.  Establish and maintain healthy boundaries rooted in cultural values of reciprocity and right relationship, using both verbal and somatic boundary-setting techniques

13.  Facilitate a basic talking circle in their own organization or community following the protocols and principles learned in the program

14.  Develop and implement a comprehensive Personal Healing Plan with daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal self-care practices integrating both Indigenous and evidence-based strategies

15.  Assess their organization’s culture for trauma-responsiveness and create a concrete healing action plan incorporating healing-centered, culturally-driven practices

16.  Utilize peer support partnerships for ongoing mutual accountability, connection, and professional resilience beyond the program

17.  Create and use a personal Healing Bundle and Story Medicine Cards as portable, symbolic tools for grounding and renewal


 

Who This Program Is For

 

Walking the Healer’s Path is designed for anyone who walks alongside those carrying trauma—and who feels the weight of that walk. This includes:

 

•       Indigenous behavioral health providers (therapists, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists)

•       Social workers and case managers serving Tribal communities

•       Community health representatives and community health workers

•       Peer support specialists and recovery coaches

•       Tribal child welfare and family services staff

•       Substance use disorder treatment providers

•       Victim advocates and domestic violence specialists

•       Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation counselors and staff

•       Tribal program directors, supervisors, and organizational leaders

•       Elders and cultural practitioners who provide healing support

•       First responders serving Indigenous communities

•       Non-Indigenous allies who work alongside Indigenous communities and are committed to culturally responsive healing practices

 

No prior training in trauma or psychology is required.

This program is written at an accessible level and builds progressively. Whether you are early in your career or have decades of experience, the teachings and practices meet you where you are.

What is required is a willingness to show up honestly, to sit in circle with others, and to do your own healing work alongside the learning.


 

Guiding Principles

 

“Before polyvagal theory, we had ceremony. Before parts therapy, we had song. Before somatic experiencing, we had dance. We are reclaiming what was always ours.”

This program is guided by five core pillars that honor Indigenous knowledge systems while integrating contemporary science:

 

1

Language & Story as Medicine

Words carry power. Stories heal and teach across generations. Naming our experiences is the first step toward transformation.

 

2

Kinship as Protection

Right relationship forms a living shield around helpers and communities. We are held by networks of kin, ancestors, and the natural world.

 

3

Ceremony as Release

Ritual completes trauma cycles and returns the body-mind-spirit to balance. Our ceremonies are technologies of healing refined over millennia.

 

4

Balance (Go’zhoo) as Goal

Wellness is not the absence of struggle but the presence of harmony across the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of life.

 

5

Collective Healing as Sustainability

Individual healing without community is incomplete. When one helper is strong, the circle is strong.

 


 

What Participants Receive

 

•       Six Full-Day Virtual Sessions — One day per month for six months, each session approximately 7.75 hours including breaks

•       Comprehensive Participant Guidebook — Includes key concepts, worksheets, journaling prompts, activity templates, self-assessments, Personal Healing Plan template, and resource lists

•       Pre/Post Assessment — Measure your growth in knowledge, self-awareness, and confidence across all five key learning areas

•       Sacred Supply Kits — Materials lists for each session so participants can gather supplies for hands-on activities (stones, journals, art supplies, smudge materials)

•       Story Medicine Cards — Create a portable set of resilience stories, affirmations, and teachings to draw upon in difficult moments

•       Healing Bundle — Assemble a symbolic medicine bundle carrying items from each month of the journey

•       Personal Healing Plan — A comprehensive, individualized plan with daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal self-care practices

•       Organizational Healing Action Plan — Concrete steps for transforming your workplace using healing-centered, culturally-driven approaches

•       Peer Support Partnership — Matched with a cohort partner for ongoing mutual accountability and connection beyond the six months

•       Certificate of Completion — Awarded upon completion of all six sessions and the post-assessment

•       Continuing Education Hours — Approximately 46.5 contact hours (subject to approval by your credentialing body)