RiverWay Counseling

04/25/2026

04/25/2026

Remember, these can be helpful boosting tools!

03/18/2026

Happy Social Work Month!

The theme for Social Work Month 2026 is Social Workers: Uplift. Defend. Transform.

The 2026 Social Work Month theme honors the prime mission of the Social Work profession – to enhance human well-being, meet the basic human needs of all people, and put special attention on the needs and empowerment of people are vulnerable, oppressed and living in poverty.

The ability of Social Workers to uplift, defend and positively transform the millions of people they work with each day is needed now more than ever. That is because our nation is experiencing a period of deep cultural, political, and economic divide.

Go to bit.ly/naswncswmonth for more on how you can celebrate and support the profession this month!

03/09/2026

To all the outstanding women and people who take on parenting roles, and who love, dream, work hard and rest despite it all happy International Women's Day.

03/08/2026

My colleague Tova Abelman and I gave a presentation at the North American Drama Therapy Association virtual symposium.
We focused on integrating metaphysical tools in individual client work, emphasizing ethics and psychospirituality. It was very well received!

12/31/2025

NARA NW is hosting a fantastic sober New Year's Eve pow wow/celebration!!

10/16/2025

Riverway Counseling will be attending the North American Drama Therapy 2025 Conference in New Orleans, where the focus on shared stages is the theme. Very exciting!

04/24/2025

03/31/2025

Two-Spirit or Indigiq***r? 🤔

This Transgender Day of Visibility, we are honoring our Two-Spirit, transgender, and gender nonconforming Native relatives by taking a closer look at two terms for Indigenous people whose gender and sexual identities fall outside of the traditional Western binary. 🏳️‍⚧️ ✨

The term “Two-Spirit” was adopted in 1990 at the 3rd Annual Native American Gay and Le***an Gathering in Winnipeg. Though it is an umbrella term for Indigenous LGBTQ+ people, it’s important to remember that Two-Spirit cannot replace the diverse and nuanced vocabulary that exists within Native languages. There are hundreds of Indigenous nations and languages in North America, and each has its own concepts regarding gender and sexuality.

Indigenous filmmaker TJ Cuthand (Cree) coined the term “Indigiq***r” as a title for a program he curated at the Vancouver Q***r Film Festival in 2004. In a blog post in 2017, he said that he had created it as an alternative to two-spirit because some people were uncomfortable with its implications of binary gender. He also liked the term “q***r” for its confrontational nature and history of reclamation, and enjoyed the idea of combining that with the history of resistance within Indigenous identity.

Identity is inherently an individual and unique experience, so finding one term to describe a community will always be a challenge. Because many Indigenous cultures’ ideas of gender are multidimensional and complex, while Western ideas of gender are traditionally binary, direct translation between the two loses some context and nuance.

At Native Americans in Philanthropy, we strongly believe in the right to self-determination, which includes respecting our relatives’ identities. In our current era of increasing attacks on transgender and q***r people, it is imperative that we stand purposefully in solidarity with all our relatives, and give full dignity and respect to ALL Native peoples.

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