Weytk. Welcome.
My Story
I am Cheryl Matthew, PhD — a Secwépemc author, scholar, educator, medicine guide, and mother from the Simpcw community within the Secwépemc Nation.
For much of my life, I have moved between worlds often treated as separate: universities and Indigenous communities, government and ceremony, policy and story, research and lived experience. I have come to understand them as different parts of the same life.
Professional Journey
More than two decades of work across Indigenous governance, federal government, universities, research, education, land and resource stewardship, community development, and reconciliation — guided by questions of Indigenous authority, knowledge, and relationship: Who participates in decisions? Whose knowledge matters? How do Indigenous peoples exercise authority over the decisions affecting our lands, waters, cultures, children, and futures?
Career highlights include:
- Simon Fraser University — Research Associate and Lead for Indigenization, Faculty of Environment
- Western Washington University — Visiting Professor
- Skwlax te Secwepemcúl̓ecw — Referrals Manager (land and resource stewardship)
- Justice Institute of British Columbia — Associate Director, Indigenization
- Indigenous Services Canada — Manager, Child and Family Services; Senior Policy Analyst
- Service Canada — Provincial Manager, Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy
Education and Research
I hold a PhD in Anthropology (Carleton University), a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership (Royal Roads University), a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology (Simon Fraser University), and a 2026 Master of Sustainability Leadership (Arizona State University) that expanded my work into systems thinking, climate resilience, sustainable innovation, ESG, stakeholder engagement, and organizational sustainability.
Land, Culture and Ceremony
Academic knowledge is only one source of knowledge in my life. I have been connected to ceremony since I was young, and land, family, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, ceremony, dreams, and spirit continue to shape my understanding of responsibility, healing, and relationship. I founded Q Healing to bring together language revitalization, culture, ceremony, land stewardship, and food sovereignty — rooted in a simple understanding: our relationships with land cannot be separated from culture, language, family, community, and spirit.
Writing
Writing is another way of bringing these parts of my life together. I am the author of Reconciliation Over Coffee, Of Spirit and Bone: Legacy of the Wolves, and Everyday Intentions — books that move across nonfiction, spirituality, Indigenous knowledge, and fiction, yet share the same questions: What do we inherit? What do we choose to carry forward? How do we live in relationship with one another and the land? And what responsibilities do we hold to those who came before us and those still to come?
My forthcoming novel, Prince of Veya, moves fully into fiction — a world where Indigenous life, ceremony, kinship, land, spirit, and relationships with the unseen exist on their own terms.
The Wolf Star Press
I created The Wolf Star Press as a home for this growing body of work — a publishing space where scholarship can sit beside story, without dividing my writing into academic, literary, spiritual, Indigenous, or personal categories. Those divisions have never reflected the way I experience the world. The Wolf Star Press is where I bring those worlds together.