2025
Village Presenters + Keepers
Astarte Sellars
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Join Astarte in a spiritual, and physical, practice of Dance of Universal Peace.
In this workshop Astarte will facilitate specific movements and songs that when combined create a meditative prayer.
Astarte had her first experience with Dances of Universal Peace on International Women’s Day 1993. Since then, she has been captivated by the feelings of embodied strength and unity with the circle.
After many years hosting the dances in Cranbrook BC with leaders from Spokane, a few dedicated dancers stepped up to become leaders. They travelled to Montana and in 2007 they completed a two year training to become leaders of this practice, offering monthly dances for community to participate in.
This practice was first envisioned by Murshid Samuel Lewis in the early 70’s in San Francisco. He predicted that it would spread over the world - and it has!
Elise Brathwaite
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There is a sight beyond sight, a knowing beyond thought—an ancient wisdom that sleeps within the sacred chambers of your heart, waiting to awaken.
This is the vision of the Seers, the wisdom of the Elders, the song of the Ancestors that echoes through your very being.
In this sacred gathering, you will be guided beyond the veils of illusion, beyond the conditioned mind, into the luminous depths of your heart’s eternal knowing. Through ceremony, sacred invocation, and deep inner journeying, we will activate the forgotten codes that lie dormant within you, awakening the divine sight that perceives truth beyond the visible world.
Your soul hears the call because the time of remembrance is now.
The wisdom of the heart is rising once more, and through you, LOVE will walk this Earth again.
Elise Brathwaite is an Aquarian Oracle & Power Alchemist. She supports deep level transformation for her clients and students through an alchemy of healing modalities, teachings and initiations. Elise comes from a strong line of intuitive healers through her Afro-Caribbean and Irish ancestors. Elise Brathwaite, is an Oracle of Truth, a Soul Speaker and Sage and an Alchemical Healing Facilitator. With over 25years of experience, Elise’s presence and essence naturally invites you to radically reclaim your power, so you can access your unique source codes and step into powerful and authentic leadership in your life!
Through her ability as a channel, she helps you clear energies and blocks created in past incarnation and acts as a guide to your family constellation so you can unhook from the ancestral trauma and programming that is binding and blocking you.
Freyja Ulveland
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Freyja will be hosting and tending to the Weavers Tent, a place for Villager’s to gather and learn the ancient trade of basket weaving.
Within the Weavers Tent quarters will be a specific area housing a casket made of willow. Villagers will be invited work quietly on the casket. This space will also be a designated Grief Altar, with an invitation to bring photos of loved ones past, human and non-human, to offer love letters, songs and a space for your dead and your grief.
Freyja is a basketry teacher and founding member of the Alberta Basketry Guild. She finds joy in exploring the connections between craft, community, and the natural world through the practice of weaving.
Freyja hosts a variety of workshops in central Alberta and shares what she has learned about working with cattail, bulrush, dogwood and willow.
“My small children love attending this gathering! It’s a place where their whole, very busy, BIG selves are welcome and add to the vibrancy and joy of the village.”
Jason Duclos
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Join Jason in learning the fundamentals of how to safety operate a chainsaw and properly use an axe.
From sharpening to sawing logs, this workshop is intended to help others develop skill, confident and self-sufficiency.
The workshop will also include an overview of different style of axes, which ones are best to use for different purposes and types of wood.
*You must wear closed-toe shoes to participate in this workshop and have adult permission/supervision if you are younger than 16 years of age.
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Authentic relating is a series of fun exercises that help you not only get to know others, but also get a deeper understanding of yourself.
Jason is an outdoors man and entrepreneur, having run his own landscaping company for 32 of his 53 years earth side. He is a community builder and enjoys showing others different ways to expand their personal skills whether it be mentally, physically and/or emotionally.
Jason is also a certified ecstatic dance facilitator and has dived deep into person development. Jason consciously began his inner journey 18 years ago and is still learning new things. He love connecting with new people and creating healthy communities and is excited to offer two different styles of workshops for folk at Remembering the Village this year.
Jennilee Barazzuol
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Held by our beautiful Mother Earth, Welcome Om Breathwork invites you into deep connection and remembrance. This holistic healing modality combines the ancient wisdom of Conscious Connected Breathwork, toning, movement, touch, and togetherness. Your breath is the bridge between the conscious and unconscious, seen and unseen, known and unknown. It takes courage to feel, deep surrender and trust, and the ability to reclaim what is yours. Through your voice, your movement, your prayer, we walk the path of the breath and Reclaim The Wild Within.
Jennilee is a compassionate, curious, and wild woman who loves immersing herself in safe, healing spaces with others walking this path. With a deep love and respect for shadow work, she illuminates and reflects what needs to be seen, felt, and known within. Her personal healing journey has been a co-created collaboration of experiences, teachings, and guidance from mentors worldwide for over 20 years. Her background includes meditation, breathwork, yoga, psychedelic-assisted therapy, reiki, and somatic therapy. Jennilee's offerings are an extension of her personal work, honoring all who have walked, and continue to walk, alongside her. She has the heart of a warrior and carries a deep prayer of healing for the whole.
Jeri Tourand
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In this heart-opening and transformational workshop, Jeri will guide you through a profound journey to birth The Next Level of Love within yourself.
You will discover the tools and practices to cultivate connection, trust, and unshakable inner peace.
This is your invitation to step into a new paradigm of conscious awakening, where love isn’t just something you seek but a state you embody.
When you align with your divine essence, you tap into a limitless well of peace, trust, and joy.
Are you ready to elevate your life and relationships to The Next Level?
Join us on this sacred journey and birth your next chapter of awakening and connection.
Jeri Tourand, B.Ed., is a self-love & relationship coach empowering visionary souls to bridge heaven and earth, embodying their authentic selves. A former school teacher and radio show host, she is now a dedicated Zen Trilotherapy practitioner, integrating transformative modalities like ho’oponopono and mindfulness to awaken self-love and inner freedom. Since 2009, she has led retreats and workshops guiding deep truth and self-love, helping clients release emotions, trust life's flow, and live fully. Through Zen Trilotherapy and Unconditional Love retreats, Jeri invites participants to experience "Heaven on Earth." Her mission: inspire you to embrace your Divine essence, express your potential, and live a life of love, vitality, and freedom.
Katie Jolicoeur
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A workshop designed to reconnect you to the wild beauty of your nervous system.
Take time to understand and learn about the physiology of your nervous system, the filter in how we take in our world around us, and the understanding in which the health of the nervous system determines the depth in which we are able to connect to ourselves and the world around us.
Our nervous system holds the information around our patterns, behaviours, and beliefs and working through this lens can support us in letting go of what's no longer serving us.
Katie is a wild wolf woman living among the pines in Alberta with her husband and two sons. She is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, a counsellor, yoga instructor, photographer and poet. She has many loves in this life and a deep creative spirit. Katie always had a connection to the natural world spending her childhood on horseback and sitting with the trees. Growing her deep reverence for the natural world and initiating her belief in the magic of it all. I love to meet people where they are; where we are in this moment is potent and important and should not be brushed over but welcomed for what it is.
Katie is passionate about the physiology of the nervous system and how beautiful and intricate this system is, and how it literally touches every part of our life and who we are. Katie has felt in her own experience that once she began working through this lens of the nervous system she was able to become more present and feel more alive, seeing the awe and beauty in this world even when it’s not pretty.
“This Village space is incredible - I can’t express how fortunate and blessed I feel for the way my children were honoured. The experience they were gifted to be present in that space and how impactful it was for me to be there as a father - I have never had that experience of Villaging before.”
Laryssa Toroshenko
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“We are created by a sound.”
In a world of war, disconnection and dissonance - learn to harmonize again.
Join the Village Voices workshop and unite voices with your fellows in the ancient ritual act of choral music.
You do not have to sing, or sing well to join. We will learn to open our bodies, hearts, minds and spirits to the healing power of music and vibration.
Disclosure: absolutely no guarantees the songs will be contained within the bounds of the workshop. In fact, the intention is for them to spill out into this pop-up village and permeate all they touch, all hours of the day and night!
Laryssa was born on the prairies of big sky country, with all her roots in the black fertile soils of what’s now sovereign Ukraine.
Raised with traditional songs, dances, foods and language, now her journey is weaving her culture of origin into a reemerging village-mindedness, through a nature-connected lens.
Laryssa spends her days in the forests and waters of the pacific coast. Foraging, mentoring kids, singing aloud, tending sacred space, dancing and re-connecting with the world of seen and unseen others
Marcus Fung
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The Rhythm Cradle is a guided group healing protocol which incorporates gentle drumming melodic vibrational tones, gentle percussion, guided meditations & visualization, along with (when deemed appropriate) hands-on healing support.
This process is carefully crafted and is supported by a trained ICDC Facilitator to ensure a safe space for emotional healing, sound-based journeys, connection to the divine mothering healing energy that lives within all human beings.
With careful guidance, individuals are given the option to be curious when exercising self-agency and conscious choice throughout the experience.
This workshop is an intentional process that balances the process of giving and leverages active meditation components that teach us to embrace the present moments of life.
This process offers the opportunity to embrace and to honour the intuitive healer within us all - You are the medicine.
Marcus Fung blends his training as a classical and jazz musician, alternative healing and expressive arts therapy practicioner to facilitate transformative experiences using the original gifts of rhythm, sound, music and movement.
Marcus founded “Earth Harmony Sound & Wellness” and it has been operating for over 15 years. Serving diverse populations, they are pioneers, advocates and explorers in the field of using sound, rhythm and participatory music making for therapy and enhanced well-being. Their mission is to educate and empower holistic, personal and planetary well-being through the power of sound, rhythm and related therapeutic practices.
Matt Baillie
Before becoming a train conductor, Matt spent a decade running programming for youth and children. Originally from BC, Matt moved to the Alberta Prairies in early 2024 and is excited to participate in this years gathering.
In his spare time you can find Matt rick climbing, reading, playing any kind of game, fishing, and cooking dinner for others.
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When we live in a results-oriented society, matched with a high-stress modern culture, often ‘play’ and ‘games’ are the first things to go when there aren’t enough hours in a day.
Yet, imagination & play hold a crucial role within the community; and games support people of all ages to get out of their intellectual, connect with others and have some fun!
Not to mention, games allow us to be in our body.
Throughout the course of the weekend, Matt will offer a variety of games for the children, youth and adults of the Village.
Michelle and Chris Cunningham
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Drums have been used across many cultures, in ceremonies, prayer work, creating music, meditation, and so much more.
This workshop is your opportunity to create your own drum, a sacred journey in connection to self.
The drums created in our workshop are as unique as you are. From the size, to the hide itself, no two drums are the same. When you build a drum, you create a little piece of yourself, a tool that can assist you in connecting to your heartbeat, and the heartbeat of Mother Earth.
The heartbeat represents rhythm, the rhythm of life, the flow in which we all live. For me, drums have been an essential tool in reminding me to find daily rhythm.
About the workshop:
This four hour workshop will be about connecting to the animal and learning that you are a Creator in this world. You will work on building your drum and learn how to care for your hand drum. Chris will share his walk in this world to bring the drum to life and remember who you are.
16'' drum is $325, Participants will register by messaging Chris at 780-523-1482 to book their spot and register via e-transfer to wolfdrum@live.com
Chris and Michelle are the makers of TriSpirit Creations. Together, these two loving souls guide others along a sacred journey of building a personalized drum. Their passion is to assist others and offer insight and wisdom.
TriSpirits creates an exceptional experience that is felt deep within your heart and soul. Chris & Michelle guide each step of the way in creating your drum!
Chris is from Sucker Creek First Nation and has been a Master Drum Builder for 9 years he learned to build drums from his teacher (Okwaho Leblanc) Lisa Tardiff from Eastern Malecite and Anishinaabe tribes, he also learned from Annie Smith Drum maker from BC coast and Will Mcleod also from BC.
Over the years Chris has also been guided by Treaty 8 Elders and drum makers. Michelle is a matriarch of the Moonlodge and Medicine Woman, she has been supporting Chris’s dream of getting as many heart beats into the hands of those called to try spirit. Feeling the heartbeat of mother earth is so important in this day and age.
Together they have helped birth hundreds of drums across Alberta, BC and Saskachewan.
Michelle Christine
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Radical hospitality is what brings out the best in us, and in our culture.
It is what allows us to host others in a way that brings them in, closer to the hearth, nourishes their bones and their soul after their journey on the long and sometimes hard road.
Radical Hospitality invites us to lean into all we were entrusted with from those who came before us, and share it with those we meet along our way and those to come.
This workshop will explore an embodied sense of what radical hospitality can be, and how we might build our capacity for it.
Michelle Christine is a wellness practitioner who supports individuals, youth and families on their healing journey. She is a certified energy practitioner, ecstatic dance and breathwork facilitator and full time supervisor with Provincial Campus Based Care in Alberta.
Michelle is also one of the founders and core visionaries of the Remembering the Village gathering.
At her core, Michelle is a ritualist, earth lover and student of the old, mythic ways. She values storytelling, song and gardening as means to transform how trauma is experienced in the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual body.
Michelle is a passionate caregiver and is committed to creating collective experiences for individuals of all ages to explore the essence of healing, connection and culture.
Nathalie Jackson
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Join Nathalie for the basic introduction to kitchen herbalism. You will learn how to craft your own healing oil, infusion, tincture, decoction and salve and learn the basic components and ingredients for a first aid kit using plant medicine. The workshop will include making your own healing salve. Herbal First Aid Kits will be available for purchase in the vendor area.
Nathalie guides individuals in overcoming personal challenges, reaching new levels of growth by breaking through limitations and delving into their inner worlds through powerful healing practices such as Fire Walking (Sundoor Certified) and Shadow Work®.
As a dedicated holistic practitioner and healer, she offers a comprehensive approach to wellness and transformation. Nathalie is the visionary behind the 12 Archetypes of a Powerful Woman Wheel, Unveil the Mythic Feminine Oracle Deck, Women Unveiled Mystery School. and the 12 Archetypes Program. She is also the author of the spiritual fiction novel All the Light and Dark Things.
Natu Mbanefo (they/them)
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This workshop will include breaking into smaller groups to scout the woods and collect materials that you will need to create the parts of your bowdrill kits.
Natu will demonstrate the creation of a bowdrill while sharing teachings and songs. Once the bowdrills are created, you will work to create an ember of your own!
This is hard work and you will most likely break a sweat - an offering to the fire!
For this workshop please bring:
- Pocket knife
- Small hand saw
- Paracord
Natu has been an avid nature nerd (and technically an Environmental Scientist) with a passionate focus in plant identification and birding for the past 10+ years.
Anytime they are in nature, they have their keen senses tuned into the diverse plants and birds that surround them. In 2022 they took a 9 month Adult Immersion program with the famed Wisdom of the Earth nature school.
Some of the skills they learnt there included, animal processing, hide tanning, foraging, shelter building, basket weaving, tracking, bird language, nature connection, bushcrafting, and FIRE MAKING!
Nicole Hartley Bradford
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You may already be familiar with the agony that happens when your physical, emotional, mental, energetic and archetypal bodies are not well-fed.
Disease, overwhelm, confusion, hopelessness, despair…it can be crazy-making.
What if you were more clear about what is happening with these states and what you could do to shift into something completely different?
This workshop offers no quick fixes.
It took time for you to build the survival strategies you are still unconsciously using to survive. They worked to survive childhood, and many of them are now hindering you from what could be.
How a space is held determines what is possible in the space. YOU are the space. How you hold space for YOU determines what is possible for YOU, and then…for the world around you.
We will focus on how to feed your Five Bodies the foods they require to be ALIVE, not just surviving.
We will do this as a team of Villagers-in-the making, and there will be next steps laid out for when we diverge into our lives again.
Mothering her four children was ecstatic...and agonizing. The agony was about watching herself, them and their fathers end up in wars. It was about missing the village, and not knowing how to have it. Nicole could see the village in her mind's eye, but couldn't keep her own small family together.
In 2020, she encountered a global team committed to helping Gaia's risky human experiment succeed. Since then, armed with the new distinctions, tools, thought,-maps and processes from Possibility Management, among others, she has been on the adventure of her life!
Nicole is part of what she missed as a child, as a mother, as a person alive for this work: an expansive network of radically responsible Gaian ecovillagers, village-making - to the ends of the Earth.
Orest Zwozdesky
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If you’re looking for deeper meaning, understanding and purpose and you’re READY to let go (even though you might be a bit scared) we invite you to join us for the Ancestral Healing Experience.
You’ll be invited to call in the ancestors to create a safe and sacred space, as you explore forgiveness and ancestral release through your family lineage.
This change will uplift, elevate and empower you to create an amazing future.
This sacred sovereign event was created to allow you to:
- Forgive and release your past (self- forgiveness included)
- Move forward feeling assured and confident, knowing you are on the right path
- Deepen your spiritual connection and rejuvenate your sense of self
- Tap into the amplified energetic field of possibilities
- Connect to your Ancestral Guidance and access your deeper knowing.
Orest is a person of Metis ancestry born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. His mother’s family comes from Green Lake, Saskatchewan.
Over the last 26+ years, he has spent thousands of hours studying, researching and participating in workshops, seminars and events, gathering teachings and lessons from Elders, Mystics and Innovative Thought Leaders.
Orest has accumulated a wealth of practical experience through sacred teachings, ceremonial rituals and inner reflections. He is a community minded leader who understands the power of life-long learning and growth.
He allows life to serve as a guide to expand his awareness and understanding of Ancestral Healing, Re-Generative Community and Conscious Leadership.
Sine McKenna
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This workshop is an invitation for folk to gather and listen to Gaelic songs and stories.
Sine will also offer a number of songs for participants to practice and share together.
Blessed with parents devoted to the cultural legacy of their forebearers, Sìne was immersed in the still waters of her Irish and Scots Gaelic heritage. From these beginnings, she developed a passion to pass on the wisdom of her ancestors in story and song, which she has been doing for over 35 years.
Sìne has always been captivated by songs of loss and longing; songs which express feelings too great for words, and which are powerfully expressed through the medium of the lyrical Gaelic language.
In recent years she has been called to carry her songs to people longing for peace of heart, which she does virtually or in person. She is particularly drawn to hospice, hospital and graveside.
Since will be joining Remembering the Village all the way from Ontario, driving across 4 provinces to be with us.
Stas Tron
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We know that emotions are important, and yet for many of us they seem to get in the way or can be overpowering.
By the end of this workshop you will know how alchemize your emotions to supercharge purposeful action, learn how to listen to the messages your emotions are bringing you, and learn how to change the intensity of your experience of emotions.
Stas has been keenly fascinated by human behaviour, working through trauma, building strong humans bonds, moving through conflict, creating culture and spiritual understanding.
After 20 years of deep diving into these topics, Stas is excited to start sharing some of his knowledge with the world.
Tad Hargrave
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Often a story begins long before it reaches our ears; some begin so long ago you might be able to hear the sounds of the shore from where that story was first told.
Over the course of the weekend Tad will offer his gift and skill in storytelling to weave a through-line during our time together.
If we’re lucky, we might be able to make the link between storytelling and culture - but that might be up to us as the audience and the ones listening.
Tad’s cultural work is primarily on Substack where he writes on the deeper layers of European folklore and mythology, culture-making, the courting of beauty and spell-breaking for those descended from those people who wanted those of us who came later to live as creatures, not as machines.
Between Sept 2004 – Feb 2006, Tad dedicated himself to learning his ancestral language, Scottish Gaelic, in both Nova Scotia and Scotland. He can speak Gaelic with conversational fluency.
Tad currently lives in Duncan, BC, Quw'utsun territory, though he hails from Edmonton, AB (traditionally known, in the local indigenous language of the Cree as Amiskwaciwaskihegan (Beaver Hill House). His ancestors come primarily from Scotland with some from the Ukraine as well.
Theresa de Rox
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In these times of great change, Mother Earth and the Crone archetype offer profound teachings about resilience, transformation, and renewal.
This intimate workshop invites people of all ages and backgrounds to explore these ancient wisdoms while weaving new understandings for our modern world.
The Crone - representing seasoned wisdom, fearless truth-telling, and deep connection to Earth's mysteries - guides us alongside Mother Earth's timeless teachings.
Through gentle, intuitive movement and creative imaginings, we will:
-Dance with Time's Wisdom
- Learn from Earth's cycles of death and rebirth
- Transform personal and ancestral experiences into present wisdom
- Envision futures rooted in Earth's ancient knowing
- Embrace the Crone's understanding that every ending births a beginning Cultivate Earth Connection
- Develop relationships with stones, plants, and natural elements
- Feel the pulse of seasonal rhythms in our bodies
- Listen to Earth's whispered guidance for these changing times
- Learn the Crone's ways of speaking with nature's wisdom In partnership with Mother Earth and the Crone's guidance, we can transform challenges into gifts, wounds into wisdom, and uncertainty into possibility.
The Earth's cycles teach us that time moves in spirals, not lines, revealing new layers of understanding with each turn. Together, we will:
- Learn practices for deep listening to Earth's guidance
- Develop personal ceremonies and rituals that serve our times
- Strengthen our bonds as an intergenerational community
- Discover what wisdom we each carry that is most needed now.
This workshop welcomes all people who feel called to explore their relationship with Earth's wisdom and the Crone's teachings, creating a rich tapestry of perspectives essential for navigating our changing world.
Sage, Mage, Crone, Mystic, Prophetess, Wise Woman, call her what you will, but she will bring the magic!
Theresa is an all-out Aliveness Advocate, an Expressive Arts Consultant/Educator, speaker, mentor, meditation teacher, author, and creative who believes in empowering people to love themselves, to love nature, to love life!
She has activated/reclaimed/honoured the Crone Archetype within herself, by sacred right, by holy inheritance, by seasoned authority. And she wants every one to know that they have access to this same capacity within them - Crone Magic. She believes that creativity - in the widest version of itself - is a tool for reclaiming our innate and inherent fire, that juicy stuff that flows through our veins, ignites our passion, and liberates our souls. She has devoted her life to facilitating personal growth, emotional regulation, and empowered living through creative expression because she believes it takes all of us standing in our power, in our wholeness, to create a beautiful world.
As we remember our dreams, reclaim our passions, find our voice, share our gifts, and celebrate all of life, together, we empower one another to live the best and highest version of ourselves, and thus influence and inform the beauty of the world through our own beauty.
“May this be a place for you and your people to gather with your neighbours and their people - from near and far - and somehow be in the practice of what it is to come together… the way our old once did.”