Christine Diindiisi McCleave, enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Nation, is the past CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition where she worked with the United States Department of the Interior to investigate Indian Boarding Schools. She is currently a doctoral student in Indigenous Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Center for Cross-Cultural Studies with a concentration on Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Her research is focused on Indigenous use of entheogenic plant medicines for healing.

With a Bachelor of Science in Communication Studies and a Master of Arts in Leadership, she conducted her master’s thesis on Native American spirituality and Christianity and the spectrum of Native spiritual practices today including Peyote religion.

As a nonprofit executive, she pioneered an unprecedented national research scope, spoke at the United Nations in New York and Geneva, raised over $13M, and helped write a bill for a truth and healing commission in the U.S.

As an independent consultant, she was part of the Truth and Reconciliation Workgroup for the City of Minneapolis, has conducted primary source research for the Alaska Native Heritage Center, and facilitated program development for the Association on American Indian Affairs. She has also worked at the grassroots community level for the exclusion of Peyote in the decriminalization of entheogens in Minneapolis. Currently, she is a facilitator with Project Mosaic for the Federally Recognized American Tribes & Indigenous Community Working Group under Colorado’s SB23-290 Natural Medicine Health Act legislation.

Overall, her work continues to concentrate on the intersection of cultural, political, and spiritual agency for the rights of Indigenous Peoples globally and the healing of historical trauma as a generational survivor of genocidal U.S. Indian Boarding Schools.

In 2023, she was listed as one of the 75 most influential, innovative, and disruptive women in Psychedelics by DoubleBlind magazine. She is currently a member of the board directors for the Minnesota Council of Churches and Vice President of the board for the Psychedelic Society of Minnesota.

https://christinemccleave.com/articles-1

https://christinemccleave.com/video