About Us
MFS is a 100% indigenous registered charity. We support indigenous peoples, knowledge, projects and systems change. We are solutions focused, including projects that address environmental protection, decolonization, climate change, food security, community organizing and youth mentoring. We embrace our responsibilities to future generations, rooted in ancient indigenous ways of being.
Bev Sellars
Secwepemc Nation
President
Founding member and president, Bev Sellars is an award winning author of "They Called Me Number One," a memoir and historical record of her experiences at the St.Joseph's Indian Residential School near Williams Lake, BC. Bev has served on many boards, and was the elected chief of her Secwpemc community, Xat'sull First Nation, for 12 years. She is an outspoken leader on indigenous rights and environmental protection, delivering keynote addresses at conferences, universities and museums. She is a mother and grandmother, but is more famously known as Auntie Bev, and brings her vision and years of experience and skills to the forefront in helping our organization grow and succeed.
Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack)
Nuxalk & Secwepemc Nations
Executive Director
Nuskmata is an international spokesperson on indigenous rights and community advocacy. Following the 2014 Mount Polley Mine Disaster, which happened in her motherland of Secwepemculecw, she traveled globally to share her experiences with mining, and indigenous teachings of growing up in a traditional indigenous family. She has a Master of Arts Degree in Communications & Culture from York University (Toronto) and is a mother and auntie who loves to cook, sing, harvest traditional foods and travel. You can find her in the smokehouse and on the front lines of Nuxalkulmc organizing and rebuilding her ancestral village of Nusq'lst.
Jean William
Secwepemc Nation
Director
Jean William is a member of the Texelc community (Williams Lake Indian Band). She is currently an Elder mentor and Cultural advisor. She is an experienced Secwepemc language speaker and long term Secwepemc language teacher in Williams Lake, BC.
Jean provided valuable input for the Band’s Traditional Use Studies and Traditional Use Projects that focussed on oral histories. She preserved the traditional knowledge by interviewing, recording, and documenting the knowledge the Texelc Elders were willing to share. These Elders inspired her teachings and she is active in preserving, protecting and sharing her own traditional knowledge.
Jean realizes the importance of caring for all of Secwepemculecw because the land for the Secwepemc is so important. The land provides sustenance for the Elders and community members. They continue to rely on the land and water to harvest their traditional foods of salmon, deer and moose meat, berries and medicinal plants. Jean willingly offers her traditional knowledge to others in order to continue to pass on the traditional knowledge of the Secwepemc people.
Snxakila (Clyde Tallio)
Nuxalk Nation
Director
Snxakila is from the Nuxalk Nation and is a knowledge keeper and fluent language speaker. He studied with his elders over the course of two decades, and is highly respected within academic and indigenous communities for his deep love and dedication for all things Nuxalk. He has been a critical link between generations in the revitalization of Nuxalk language and culture, and is an expert consultant to the Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Royal British Columbia Museum, the Canadian Museum of Man, among others. He lives with his partner and pets in Nuxalkulmc (Bella Coola, BC), where he continues to educate, lead and revitalize.
Cecilia DeRose
Secwepemc Nation
Director
Cecilia DeRose is a highly respected and loved Secwepemc elder who spent much of her life teaching her language and culture to hundreds of students, and was acknowledged with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Although officially retired, she stays busy with her many grandchildren and can be found on the dirt backroads picking berries and medicines, making moccasins and sharing a meal, and laughing and sharing in the Council of Keye7es (grandmothers) in Northern Secwepemculecw.