Welcome & What's Here
(Hello, how are you?)
Thanks for being here! My name is Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee \o/ I carry bloodlines from the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō, Kanaka Maoli, French & Irish. I grew up on Mission IR#1, the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh community of Eslhá7an. I am currently living in Stó:lō on Skway IR#5 also known as Shxwhá:y Village, held by the mountains that once held my late Granny Eva.
I'm a anti-colonial designer and writer, I carry Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Teachings, an MA in Communication from SFU and am a PhD candidate in Pedagogy and Curriculum Studies at UBC. I am the author of Decolonize First: a A Liberating Guide and Workbook and The Colonizer Playbook: Patterns, Protection & Praxis.
I fuse my cultural teachings with Indigenous Critical Theory through pattern realization - the same epistemological practice my grandmother used to see basket patterns, applied to seeing colonial architectures. I've spent the last eight years designing and facilitating interventions of ongoing colonialism within governments, universities, NGOs and corporations. It was an honour to share transformative space with groups who want to learn to see and respond to the legacies of harm that continue to impede even the best of intentions.
Welcome to Ta7talíya Labs, my learning platform where I offer foundational courses, a future dialogue community and live seminars that build the language, knowledge, attitudes and skills to decide and activate who we want to be, moving from awareness to accountable action.
With the writing of The Colonizer Playbook, my work has evolved beyond decolonizing, allyship and inclusion toward liberatory pedagogy BUT these foundation courses remain essential entry points that prepare you for deeper pattern work.
My foundation courses are the doorways, providing essential entry points. The pathways include the workbook which strengthens your abilities to stay in the work. The playbook teaches pattern realization and interruption. The seminar and future dialogue space will bring it all into a community of practice.
Each of these Foundational Courses takes 60-minutes or less, but I've been told the doors they will open stay with you for life.
1. Shifting from Exclusion to Inclusion
2. Indigenous Resistance to Colonialism
3. Why we need UNDRIP, FPIC and TRC
4. Countering Supremacy with Liberation
Indigenous Cultural Protocols, Empathy and Safety
1. Identifying Bias to Change It
2. Our Intersecting Cultural Protocols
3. Practicing Cultural Empathy
4. What is Indigenous Cultural Safety?
Activating Critical Allyship with Host Nations
1. What is Critical Allyship?
2. Sympathy vs Empathy
3. Territorial Acknowledgements
4. Reciprocity & Accountability
Activating Critical Allyship with Indigenous Peoples
1. What is Decolonizing?
2. What is Indigenizing?
3. What is Reconciling?
4. What is Self-Actualizing?
and how do they work together?
Activating Critical Allyship with Yourself
1. Beyond "Doing it Right"
2. Allyship as Recalibration
3. The Three A's
4. Questioning Perfectionism
1. False Equivalency
2. Decentring Yourself
3. Colonial Myths
4. Empathy & Accountability
A self-guided, deceptively simple 14-page workbook guides you through personal and systemic framings that shift you out of colonial defaults and into critical consciousness.
Decolonize First explores definitions and dimensions of decolonization, the five stages of grieving your complicity in settler-colonialism, and why decolonizing must come before Indigenization or reconciliation. Features prompts, exercises, and curated resources to support deep reflection and preparation for sustained anti-colonial practice.
What teams are saying: "Deceptively simple and brief-looking, but you can (and should!) go deep into every little part of it." — BCcampus Learning + Teaching Team
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Learn to recognize four predictable colonial plays (Recognition Trap, Consultation Con, Diversity Dodge, Allyship Ambush) and deploy counter-moves rooted in Coast Salish teachings and Indigenous Critical Theory. 88 pages, full-colour.
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An 80-page activating companion workbook for The Colonizer Playbook with pattern recognition exercises, counter-move worksheets, documentation templates, and design intervention tools. The applied practice toolkit.
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Activating the Colonizer Playbook: Nkw'áyk'an Seminar, March 19, 2026
90-minute live seminar (March 19, 2026) on pattern realization as Indigenous technology. Learn the 4 colonial plays running in every institution and practice counter-moves in small groups.