“Our journey is what it’s supposed to be,” beams Meg Olmstead. She was born and raised in Winnipeg and her spirit names are Sacred Clear Rock and Soaring White Eagle Woman. Her family is from St. Peter’s Indian Reserve and they also have ties to Peguis First Nation. She’s Ojibwe Metis with settler and Cree ancestry. While she’s been a city girl her whole life, she loves being out in the bush.

As far as what she does professionally, Olmstead is a registered social worker. She graduated with her social work degree in 2022 but has worked in social services for 15 years. She ran after school programs and worked in daycares while she figured out what she wanted to do with her life. She was inspired towards social work while sitting in ceremony. She got her education and was a few credits shy of finishing a psychology degree and realized it wasn’t what she wanted to do.

To reset her path, Olmstead took a break and talked to a professor at her university who recommended she pursue social work, something her mom had been suggesting for years but she had been resisting. In her mind, social work was working with child welfare but she started learning what all she could be involved with as a social worker and decided to pursue it. Since then, she’s worked in nearly every setting you can work in as a social worker, from mental health, to poverty, to houseless relatives, to youth work, which is her specialty.

“Ultimately, every single thing I do always comes back to community and ceremony and getting to live my life and have my job be in ceremony. It doesn't even feel like work most of the time when I'm doing what I'm doing… that's exactly what I was hoping for out of my career and out of my life,” she reflects.

When it comes to the people who motivated her, Olmstead thinks of her family, her mom, her sister, her dad, her grandparents and her community. She was also encouraged by her best friends, her brothers and sisters in ceremony, friends who are facilitators and business owners. “Being a community helper, it does get really exhausting, and it does get hard sometimes. Especially being a jingle dress dancer,, being a healing dancer, I think people sometimes don't understand how tough that can be sometimes, especially when you're called into community who are grieving or mourning and going through a lot, and there's a crisis happening to be brought in to do that work can be, sometimes be really, really hard, but luckily, I've surrounded myself with some really, really incredible people who have really been able to help me through that,” she shares.

As a business owner, Olmstead is fortunate in that she is able to go where she is needed without having to do the Monday to Friday 8:30 to 4:30 grind. Now, she facilitates workshops and goes into ceremony and doesn’t have the added pressure of a colonial job.

.Thinking of students having to leave to go to university, Olmstead shared her own experiences at university. She really struggled as a person with disabilities but what she shares is, “The scariest things to do are also the most worthwhile… those things that scare me the most, that's when I know I need to do it.” While she couldn’t personally imagine leaving her community to pursue her education, she appreciates that it is necessary because professionals are needed in community. “We need those youth and even adults to go get those diplomas, those degrees, that education, so they can come back to the community and bring that experience back to the community. And that's what's going to help our communities grow, in my opinion,” she concludes, summarizing her advice to just do it, despite homesickness, to create change.

Reflecting on her first university experience where she was just three credits shy of graduation, she doesn’t see it as a failure or a waste of time. Olmstead learned so much, met her best friend, and ultimately met the professor who set her on the path towards social work.

When it came to obstacles, Olmstead learned to advocate for herself as an Indigenous woman with disabilities, something she learned from her mom. Her mom advocated for her throughout her childhood and adolescence and helped her get to where she is today. It’s a fight she took on for herself in university, going to a colonial educational space that wasn’t built for her, and she had to fight for her right to an education. “Sometimes we’re going to be told we’re too much. Sometimes we’re going to be told that we’re intimidating,” she recalls, remembering the reactions of those who are not used to Indigenous women standing up for themselves. She did her best to keep her experiences from happening to anyone else and she learned about working with her people, communities and with people in colonial institutions. She also learned about fighting for what she wanted, for her people and her community.

Looking back, Olmstead wishes someone had told her when she was younger, ”Don't give up on yourself, because the best is yet to come.” She struggled a lot with not feeling white enough to be with the white kids and not feeling Indigenous enough to be with the Indigenous kids. Not growing up with her culture and only going back to her traditional ways in her teens, she had to learn not to count herself out and she says, “sometimes we need to go through the rough stuff to really get to the beauty in life.” She’s been through a lot of hard times and fought to stay alive through it all, benefitting from the lessons of incredible guides. Those experiences help her relate to youth because she has been through what they are talking about.

As far as tools helping her wellbeing and mental health, Olmstead points to her culture as being huge. Her first sweat lodge, becoming a jingle dress dancer, drumming, sewing regalia or doing beadwork. Being a sundancer has also been a journey that has brought her strength and healing.

She was on a path towards psychology when she realized she was headed in the wrong direction. Once Meg Olmstead dropped her preconceived notions about social work, she found her way to a career she loves. After overcoming obstacles as an Indigenous woman with disabilities fighting for her education, she got her degree and opened up doors to a future that would make her happy and create change.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.