Pawa Haiyupis
Research Assistant, Aboriginal Title Lands Cluster
pawatsqʷačiił (Pawa) is ahousaht, tla-o-qui-aht, French and Scottish. She is a graduate student in Indigenous Nationhood at the University of Victoria and holds an undergraduate degree in First Nations Studies from Vancouver Island University. For 21 years, she facilitated transformational gatherings in First Nations communities by providing meaningful engagement in decolonial systems change initiatives by encouraging connections to traditional waterways, lands, languages, songs and ceremonies. Pawa hosts safe spaces to explore difficult governance questions to put back in place everything colonialism disrupted. Her approach is rooted in the belief that nation rebuilding is healing and is most effective when more people participate.
Pawa is skilled at the Art of Hosting, a collaborative approach to process design, group facilitation, training and capacity building. The facilitation draws on various processes, like Open Space Technology and World Café. She adjusts what she offers to meet each group’s unique needs and challenges with weaving traditional Indigenous teachings and modern systems thinking tools.