Projects
Anishinaabe gikendaasowin (our original way of knowing) offers insights into complexity and a systemic view of life based in kinship with each other and the natural world --- gidinawendimin (we are all related). I am on a wisdom journey to uncover pathways to address society's most entrenched problems via Anishinaabe ancestral teachings. Here is a tea flight of some of my work. Sit by the ishkode (fire) with me and have a cup of niibiishabo (tea).
Publications
I published my first peer reviewed article in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Awareness Based Systems Change in 2021. To date it has had over 34,000 downloads! See link below:
The Philanthropist journal
"Reparations and Reconciliation" I was invited by the McConell Foundation to write this piece for the journal (2019) after I founded a think tank called Turtle Island Institute (based on my doctoral work). I am no longer affiliated with that project, it is no longer a fit for purpose for the nature of my change maker work.
Duck Shit Tea
"Duck Shit Tea, Yarning & the Magical Space in Between Things" an essay by Melanie Goodchild (2022)
positive deviants
In this 2-part episode, the first of the Positive Deviants Podcast series, Julian Norris, founding director of Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Learning sits down with Melanie Goodchild, an Anishinaabe complexity thinking scholar. She is Moose Clan from Biigtigong Nishnaabeg and Ketegaunseebee First Nations, and she is a visionary practitioner who is bridging Indigenous ways of knowing with systems thinking in ever evolving and creative ways.
Melanie, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) Elder Dila Houle from the Piikani Nation, and Julian Norris at the Banff Centre in 2015, after their adoption ceremony as sister and brother.
collaborations
Stories of the shadow network, my mob.
Collective change Lab
The systems storytelling initiative. I join a diverse Community of Practice (CoP) to discover how Storytelling can help us transform social systems.
CYNEFIN CENTER YARN 3
Complexity yarns with Indigenous thinkers, featuring Melanie Goodchild (Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Learning), Tyson Yunkaporta from the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab (Deakin University Australia), Beth Smith and Dave Snowden Welsh Cynefin Centre colleagues (Wales).
Binesiwag Center for Wellness
At Wolf Willow we are pleased to be working with Binesiwag Center for Wellness to host the Indigenous Changemakers Systems Studio, A six-month initiative that brings together Elders, storytellers and changemakers from the Treaty Three region in northern Ontario looking to bring a culturally-centered systems lens to the opioid crisis.
Media
Royal Ontario Museum
NOW OPEN! The first gallery of its kind in North America brings the DAWN OF LIFE to life. I am so pleased to join other Indigenous knowledge keepers to narrate part of this epic journey back - about 4 billion years - to the origins of life on our planet. Enter ROM's exciting new gallery and explore, through an astounding fossil collection, the wondrous beginnings of life up to the age of dinosaurs. Listen for my share on Anishinaabe kinship systems in the Cambrian Explosion - The origin of animals section of the exhibit. Level 2/Peter F. Bronfman Hall. See you at the ROM
