Co-Chairs

Chastity Davis-Alphonse has been a long-time advocate for the optimal health, wellness, and safety of Indigenous women and girls in BC and across Canada. She has held many official roles in advocacy in not-for-profits on boards, and in her tenure of 9 years serving on the Minister’s Advisory Council for Indigenous Women. Her experience as an advocate, academic, practitioner, and Indigenous women of lived experience spans across many sectors including federal/provincial governments, corporations, natural resource development industries, not-for-profits, Indigenous communities, and organizations.

Chastity’s advocacy work started with the Minerva Foundation in BC where she leads leadership workshops for Indigenous women around BC and quickly expanded to starting her own organization called Professional Aboriginal Women’s Network that brought professional Indigenous women together in BC to learn, support, and grow together. Chastity served on the Minister’s Advisory Council for Indigenous Women for over 9 years and served as Chair for about 6 of those years of service. During her time as Chair, she lead the council to influence policy changes at the provincial level that lead to improved quality of life for Indigenous women and girls, educated several elected Ministers and senior public servants, advocated for and received funding for community-based healing projects for Indigenous women, represented BC at several national round-tables for Indigenous women, and lead the council to develop relationships across government departments to eventually creating the Indigenous Gender-Based Analysis Plus toolkit that will be released in 2022. Chastity’s experience and leadership is grounded in the knowledge, wisdom, and lived experience of Indigenous women.

Chastity also works as a strategic advisor and brings the Indigenous women’s lens to all her work with her government and corporate clients. Some of the roles she has recently held was advisor to the federal Department of Justice for their public awareness campaign on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, strategic advisor on IGBA+ to NWO on their Impact Assessment process in Ontario, creator of the Tsilhqot’in Gender Based Analysis toolkit to be applied to Tsilhqot’in Nation on their tripartite agreement with

federal/provincial governments, and most recently to co-lead the creation of the Minister’s Advisory Council on Indigenous Women’s IGBA+ toolkit with Dr. Natalie Clark. Chastity has been asked to speak on several national and international panels on IGBA+ and is viewed as one of the leading experts in this field in Canada and internationally.

Chastity is also visionary and creator of one of the only online learning platforms that centres the knowledge, wisdom, voices, and lived experiences of Indigenous women titled, “Deyen – An Invitation to Transform” (deyen.ca). She is again on the leading edge of creating an online movement to elevate the voices, knowledge, wisdom, and lived experiences of Indigenous women in Canada and beyond.

More can be found on Chastity on her website

In addition to her role as a Professor at Thompson Rivers University in the School of Social Work, Natalie continues to practice as a clinical supervisor, educator and counsellor specializing in violence and trauma as well as a violence counsellor for Neskonlith community and a girls group facilitator for Indigenous grrlz from the Secwepemc Nation (including non-binary, gender-diverse youth). Natalia has over 25 years of experience in the area of trauma and violence with a focus on healing and resistance, and the coping responses to trauma/violence in particular the impact of colonial and gendered policies on Indigenous children, youth, families and communities. 

Natalie’s work is informed and mobilized through her interconnected identities including Settler ancestry (Irish, Welch, English) and her intersecting kinship relationships to Indigenous communities (Secwepemc, Métis), in particular as a parent, auntie and grandparent of Secwepemc children and youth, and part of the Secwepemc community; an academic; activist and sexual abuse counsellor. Natalie’s work is grounded in an intergenerational approach, and an Indigenous gender-based and intersectional violence informed practice, that not only recognizes the multi-generational impact of colonization and trauma – but that also point towards policy solutions that acknowledge sovereignty, build on resistance, and emerge from the strengths within the community and within Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTI+ individuals themselves. Natalie’s established reputation in BC’s Indigenous, Metis, and First Nations communities will enable her to support research related to this project. 

• Trauma and Violence Counsellor Neskonlith Education Centre and FNHA, Clinical Supervisor, Girls Group facilitator and specialist trainer on trauma and violence 
• Professor, School of Social Work, Thompson Rivers University teaching courses on trauma and violence informed practices; groups and practice 
• Registered Social Worker, Registered FNHA trauma counsellor 

Education: 

• Bachelor of Social Work UBC (1990) 
• Masters of Social Work focus on healing from abuse and trauma (1992) 
• PhD with specialization in Secwepemc and Indigenous approaches to healing children and youth from trauma (2018)