Services
Social Innovation
“Social innovation is the process of developing and deploying effective solutions to challenging and often systemic social and environmental issues in support of social progress.”—Soule, Malhotra, Clavier
It is clearer now than at any point in history, that the established systems that govern the lives of Indigenous peoples in Canada simply do not work. But how do we envision change when we are mired in the realities of our existing lived experience?
We must encourage the dreamers.
I believe that we are all experts in how systems might better serve us, but we get stuck when trying to understand how those ideas reach implementation.
Social Innovation is about supported social change. When private, public and philanthropic sources support Thinkers to shift the roles and relationships within long held systemic approaches, our communities prosper. Copperwolf Consulting can provide a systematic approach to realizing new ideas, values, and processes, and to creating new systems to guide the next generation. True innovation needs a confident hand to support access to information, funding and follow-through.
Facilitation
Maybe your organization is struggling through the endless maze of pivots that we are all now called upon to execute? Change is difficult, and once you’ve identified the need to consult with your community, stakeholders, shareholders or colleagues, the anxiety begins. How will we navigate potential conflicts to become a stronger, more effective group?
Don McIntyre has more than 20 years of facilitation experience, constantly honing his skillset through practiced research. From some of the most fractured client groups, he has guided lasting change and cohesiveness.
Indigenous Leadership & Management
Leadership is lighting a fire in the hearts of people. Management is lighting that fire under their butts. It is essential that organizations and the people within them, clearly recognize their value and purpose. Are you Leading or Managing, or both? In most circumstances, the answer is yes.
Indigenous Leadership is a term afforded far too freely. Through CopperWolf Consulting, I work with Indigenous organizations to determine their specific needs. I can help you understand how to truly lead your organization, community, nation, or international confederacy to your desired destination.
Using Western Best Practices, and your own unique Wise Practices, I will help you create tools, tactics, and techniques that are unique to you as a Leader, and to your organization or community.
Guest Speaking & Virtual Teaching
Whether you are looking to engage, educate, or collaborate, I can be there for you. Either in-person or online, I can create the information and content you need to take your audience to the desired outcome.
Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning is about understanding where your you want your organization to get to in the next 25 years and breaking that vision down into easily understandable and communicable pieces. Strategic Planning helps organizations identify who the Stakeholders are, what motivates you, what lines you will not cross, and the steps necessary to take you to the next level. At CopperWolf, we look at Strategic Planning through an Indigenous lens. We are aware that a Strategic Plan for an Aboriginal organization must hold true to their Indigenous values while being recognizable within a Western context. Also, for Western organizations, our Indigenous perspective may be just what you need to take your next Strategic Plan to another level.
Cultural Competency Training
Depending on which definition of ‘nation’ one uses, there are between 60 and 120 Indigenous Nations in Canada. This fact is further complicated by the Band system, and by the abundance of terms used to identify Aboriginal populations. All of these intricacies create a complicated place for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations to maneuver. Even with the best of intentions, trying to understand roles and responsibilities surrounding Reconciliation and Indigenization is daunting.
CopperWolf Consulting offers safe, comfortable spaces to have the conversations that you are afraid to have. The only way forward is to share our fears, anxieties, and frustrations. And the only way to do that is through competency training that is non-accusatory, informative, engaging, and useful.
E.L.M.
Essential Leadership Model (ELM), like many leadership initiatives, models, frameworks, and processes, is simple: roles, processes, and outcomes. But below the surface ELM is about sharing, nurturing, and amalgamating the very best in cross-cultural leadership assets to create new approaches to leadership that can be merged, nurtured, and shared. We have created a model that draws from leadership practitioners in the Western and Indigenous mindsets. ELM will feel simultaneously familiar and strange. ELM provides the opportunity to challenge your common leadership tropes and introduce you to new-to-you leadership ideas. No matter what perspective you come from, ELM proposes that leaders listen to other leaders on the same journey and incorporate alternative approaches creating new perspectives that are unique to you and your work. As a collective, these leaders improve their leadership capacity through engagement with other leaders and establish a Related-World.
Don’s Original Artwork
Don was taught the traditional forms of the Ojibway peoples by his Uncles. These forms have lived in Anishinabek territory for all time. They are both simple and complex. Originally used as a communication system in hunting and prayer, these forms can be read and spoken while sharing both pragmatic and abstract ideas. Don was also taught mark and image making after his adoption by the Dangeli family of the Nisga’a Nation. For Don, these images in all indigenous traditions are both sacred and secular.
His work has appeared in shows in Europe, Australia,
and across Turtle Island