450 The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 4 understand and make meaning of the world and our work. We attempt to embody cultural humility, responsiveness, and antiracist and decolonizing frameworks. We recognize that counseling as a practice has historically applied a pathologizing and therefore harmful lens toward clientele and, in particular, toward communities whose identities have been minoritized by dominant normative systems (Malott et al., 2023). Hence, to counter this deficit-based narrative, we ascribe to a strengthsbased perspective and recommend practitioners do likewise (White et al., 2020). We encourage Native American practitioners seeking to “remember what they already know” about Indigenous practices as they return to their ancestral roots. In light of these points, we will transparently and authentically share the identities and frameworks we bring to this work. Julie Smith-Yliniemi identifies as an Anishinaabe ikwe, an Indigenous woman, who grew up on a Native American reservation in the Midwest. Additional heritage includes Scandinavian descent. Intersectionalities include being a mother, wife, daughter, cisgender, temporarily able-bodied, and a person who engages in her traditional Native American ceremonial practices. Her personal and professional lens is grounded in humanistic and relational–cultural theories. Krista M. Malott identifies with multiple intersecting identities that profoundly shape her lens, some of which include being White, U.S.–born, cisgender, female, temporarily able-bodied, spiritually agnostic, and a member of a transracially adoptive family. She principally assumes humanist, systemic, antiracist, and intersectional lenses, which shape her worldviews and her approach to her work. JoAnne Riegert identifies as an Anishinaabe ikwe who lives and works on a Native American Indian reservation in a rural community. Her ancestral heritage also includes French Canadian and German descent. Her familial roles include being a grandmother, mother, sister, daughter, niece, and aunt. She is steeped in the Native American community and her worldview originates from this perspective. Her theoretical foundation incorporates restorative justice practices and relational-cultural theory. Susan F. Branco identifies as a Latina, South American–born, transracial adoptee, cisgender female, able-bodied, descendent of the Guahibo tribe, and connected to the Anishinaabe culture through marriage. She is an active member of the adoptee community and is working to reculturate and reclaim her lost cultural and Indigenous heritage. Her clinical and scholarly work revolve around relational-cultural and liberation theories. Ethical Application and Considerations For the purpose of this article, we approach the concept of adaptation with a collectivist perspective, whereby we eschew an ownership concept of healing practices by any one cultural group. Consequently, as counselor educators and mental health practitioners, we collectively suggest that some Indigenous ritual or ceremonial healing practices may also be adapted for clients of nonNative identities, and by practitioners of all cultural identities, albeit while keeping certain points in mind—for example, if undertaken with respect and sensitivity, awareness, and guidance, and with the understanding that every person has origins to some tract of land and a spiritual connection to earth and self. This perspective is not true, of course, for all Native interventions, and not all Indigenous people will adhere to this stance. Attending to ethical guidelines can reduce the risk of appropriation, whereby cultural knowledge is used without proper and respectful acknowledgement to the cultural creators (Lalonde, 2021). Ethical guidelines may also increase cultural appreciation, adaptation, and acknowledgement, along with respectful attribution to the creators of certain interventions without stereotyping (Han, 2019; Hiratsuka et al., 2018; Meade et al., 2022).
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