About Bead The Change
Our Mission
Bead The Change creates meaningful learning experiences grounded in Haudenosaunee ways of knowing, where connection, creation, and strong relational thinking guide how we learn and grow together.
Through workshops, facilitation, and creative practice, our work supports individuals and communities in understanding what they carry and how to move forward in a good way.
Our Vision
A future where learning is rooted in relationship, responsibility, and respect. Where Indigenous knowledge systems are honoured, and where individuals, educators, and organizations move beyond awareness into meaningful, sustained change.
Bead The Change envisions communities where people come together in a Good Mind to learn, create, and carry knowledge forward with care and reciprocity.
Our Values
Good Mind: We approach all work with intention, respect, and care, recognizing the responsibility we carry in how we teach, learn, and engage with others.
Relational Accountability: We are guided by strong relational thinking—understanding that our work is rooted in relationships with people, community, land, and future generations.
Creation as Knowledge: We believe that learning happens through doing. Beading, storytelling, and creative practices are not separate from knowledge—they are ways of carrying and expressing it.
Connection: We create spaces where people can come together in a meaningful way, building relationships that support shared learning and understanding.
Responsibility to Action: Learning is not passive. We support individuals and organizations in moving beyond awareness into intentional action and change.
Community-Centred: This work is held in relationship with community. We honour the knowledge, experiences, and voices that shape and guide this work.
Fundamental Haudenosaunee Principles
Connection to Two Row Wampum
Bead The Change is grounded in Haudenosaunee principles, including the teachings of the Two Row Wampum. The Two Row represents a relationship between distinct ways of being, moving alongside one another in peace, respect, and friendship, without trying to control or change the other's path.
This teaching reminds us that true learning is not about speaking over or taking from one another, but about building relationships that honour difference while creating space for shared understanding.
Through this work, Bead The Change creates opportunities for people to come together in a good way, learning through connection, creation, and reflection, while recognizing the responsibilities we carry within those relationships.
Foundational Alignment to Truth and Reconcilliation
TRC: Calls to Action and UNDRIP
Bead The Change aligns with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) by creating learning spaces that support understanding, relationship-building, and meaningful action.
Our work centres Indigenous ways of knowing and being, while supporting individuals and organizations in moving beyond awareness toward responsibility, accountability, and change.
TRC Call to Action 62
Education for all Canadians on Indigenous history, rights, and perspectives
TRC Call to Action 63
Building educator capacity
TRC Call to Action 65
Advancing research + knowledge
UNDRIP Article 13 – Language and Knowledge
Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize and transmit languages
UNDRIP Article 15 – Education and Dignity
Education must reflect Indigenous cultures and histories accurately
UNDRIP Article 31 – Cultural Knowledge and Expression
Right to maintain, protect, and develop cultural practices
Seeing Through More Than One Lens
Two-Eyed Seeing
Bead The Change is grounded in Haudenosaunee ways of knowing, being and doing, while recognizing that our work often takes place across Indigenous and Western educational, research, tourism and organizational spaces.
Our approach is informed by Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing), a Mi’kmaw concept shared by Elder Albert Marshall that teaches us to learn from the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing and the strengths of Western ways of knowing, bringing them together where doing so is meaningful and appropriate (Bartlett et al., 2012).
For us, this does not mean blending knowledge systems until their differences disappear. It means recognizing that there can be more than one way of understanding, teaching, learning and creating change.
At Bead The Change, we begin with relationship, community, culture and lived experience. We also recognize the tools that research, education, tourism and other systems can offer. Our responsibility is to move between these spaces thoughtfully while keeping Indigenous voices, knowledge and community relationships at the centre of the work.
Whether we are facilitating a workshop, developing educational resources, working with youth, collaborating with an organization, or creating a tourism experience, we ask:
What can we learn when we are willing to see through more than one lens?
References:
Bartlett, C., Marshall, M., & Marshall, A. (2012). Two-Eyed Seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together Indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(4), 331–340.
Vacalopoulos, P., Jamieson, J., Akhoundoghli, M., & Boluk, K. A. (2026). Engaging Two-Eyed Seeing to enhance regenerative tourism. Leisure/Loisir, 50(1), 89–123.
