Therapists for the Indigenous Community

Find therapists who support the Indigenous community.

Therapist Support for Indigenous Community Members

Why Cultural or Community Alignment Can Matter

For many Indigenous people, support that respects culture, land, language, and community history can feel especially important. Experiences of colonization, displacement, and ongoing systemic oppression may shape how someone understands safety, trust, and connection. Working with a therapist who understands some of these contexts, or who is open to learning, can help some people feel more fully seen and respected.

Cultural or community alignment may support:

• Feeling understood without overexplaining lived experiences such as racism, intergenerational impacts, or community responsibilities.
• Honoring relationships to land, ancestors, and spirituality as meaningful parts of identity and resilience.
• Recognizing community strengths like kinship networks, ceremony, storytelling, and collective care, not only focusing on harms.
• Avoiding cultural harm through more awareness of historical trauma, stereotypes, and past abuses in institutional systems.
• Respecting autonomy and choice around if, when, and how cultural elements are brought into conversations.

Some people prefer working with Indigenous therapists. Others feel supported by non-Indigenous therapists who approach the work with humility, cultural responsiveness, and a willingness to be guided by the person’s own knowledge and preferences.

How Therapists Adapt Approaches Respectfully

Therapists who aim to support Indigenous community members in culturally responsive ways may focus on listening first and allowing each person to define what care and respect look like for them. This can involve recognizing that there is no single “Indigenous experience” and that nations, tribes, bands, and communities have distinct traditions, languages, and histories.

Respectful adaptation can include:

• Centering self-determination so the person chooses what they want to talk about, what goals matter to them, and how culture does or does not show up in the space.
• Using language carefully, checking in about preferred terms for identity, community, and family, and avoiding assumptions about beliefs or practices.
• Making space for community and family context, such as caregiving roles, traditional responsibilities, and community expectations.
• Considering historical and ongoing harms in education, child welfare, health care, policing, and other systems, and acknowledging how these may affect trust.
• Inviting but not pressuring cultural elements, such as prayer, ceremony, or teachings, and recognizing that some people may not want these involved.
• Being transparent about limits of their own cultural knowledge, while showing a commitment to continued learning and accountability.

Some Indigenous people also explore community-based resources, Elders, cultural programs, or survivor-focused supports such as https://www.dv.support alongside or instead of individual therapy, depending on what feels right for them.

Examples of Considerations (Soft, Non-Specific)

Each Indigenous person’s needs and preferences are unique. The following are gentle, non-specific examples of areas that may come up in conversations with a therapist who is striving to be supportive:

• Identity and belonging: navigating mixed identities, reconnection to culture, distance from community, or feelings about enrollment, status, or recognition.
• Land and place: the meaning of homelands, relocation, urban living, or living away from one’s community.
• Family and kinship: complex family structures, kinship care, adoption and foster care experiences, and different understandings of who is considered family.
• Intergenerational impacts: how boarding or residential schools, child removal, or other historical harms may echo across generations, while also recognizing family and community strengths.
• Spiritual and cultural practices: comfort levels with sharing about ceremony, teachings, or traditional healers, and any concerns about privacy or respect.
• Language: relationships to Indigenous languages, loss or revitalization, and how language may hold meaning, humor, or memories.
• Experiences with systems: past interactions with health care, law enforcement, immigration, or social services that may influence how safe it feels to seek support.
• Community roles and responsibilities: balancing caregiving, activism, work, and cultural responsibilities, and how these may affect stress and well-being.
• Privacy and confidentiality concerns: comfort with seeing a therapist within one’s own community versus outside it, and worries about being recognized.