Natalie is a Metis Cultural Educator through Meeting My Ancestors, a Metis arts and culture organization she founded. As an Indigenous woman, Natalie seeks to bring her traditions, stories, and culture to life. She lives in Northern Alberta on an off grid homestead where she offers traditional skills and Indigenous arts focused classes. Sharing on topics such as brain tanning, moccasin making, beading, traditional Metis silk embroidery and building relationships with the land. Every year, she offers culture camps and Wasakam Indigenous Food Sovereignty camps, where she shares food sovereignty skills such as foraging, butchering, food preservation, and caring for the land. Natalie hopes to connect her community with the skills, arts, language, stories and culture of the Metis Nation.

Natalie graduated from Harvard University (ALB degree) with an understanding of the importance of traditional ecological knowledge as a foundation for all policy, social development, politics, and economic exchanges. She works to promote the sovereignty of Indigenous nations by ensuring they have opportunities to reclaim their culture and to be rooted in an Indigenous worldview. Natalie taught entrepreneurship and small business development at Momentum in Calgary, AB where she supported women to develop businesses as a source of economic opportunity.

Before studying at Harvard, Natalie attended Lethbridge College where she studied Renewable Resource Management where she explored her passion for the land, plants and animals of our nation’s homeland. Natalie supports her community to build relationships with our plant relatives through traditional plant camps with the MNA and the Metis Settlements, through gardening education offerings with the MNA, and by offering assessments and reports on culturally relevant plant species with Buffalo Lake Metis Settlement as a part of their consultation engagements. Natalie shares teachings with organizations across Canada.

Natalie is mother to 5 beautiful children, a Michif and Nehiyawewin learner, and an eager helper for her ketehayak.