Wigwas is the Anishinabe word for birch, a tree known for its strength, versatility, resilience, and the many ways its bark has supported life and livelihood over generations. Like the birch, Wigwas Consulting is built to be useful in many ways, adaptable to many contexts, and rooted in values that remain steady even as the work evolves.

Wigwas Consulting is an Indigenous owned and led professional services consultancy founded by Shady Hafez, an Algonquin Anishinabe and Syrian member of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg. Our work spans the areas of Indigenous governance, rights, policy, and community, bringing together academic rigour, senior leadership experience, and deep cultural knowledge to serve the organizations and communities that are doing work that matters.

We believe that strategy, policy and innovative solutions must be shaped by community, honour lived experiences and knowledge, and strengthen organizational capacity and self-determination. That commitment shapes everything we do, from the way we facilitate an engagement, to how we conduct research.

Our practice spans facilitation, policy, research, governance, education, communications, event coordination, and economic development. We work with First Nations governments, national Indigenous organizations, federal departments, and institutions.

When you work with Wigwas Consulting, you are engaging a team of professionals grounded in relationships, accountability, and a genuine commitment to the communities we come from and the ones we serve. As such, our work is grounded in decolonial and liberatory frameworks, which represents a genuine commitment to how we engage, what we prioritize, and who we centre.

Indigenous experiences, knowledge systems, and self-determination are never an afterthought in our work; they are the starting point. We draw on Indigenous methodologies that honour relationality, reciprocity, and community, and we believe meaningful work in this space must move beyond inclusion toward the active dismantling of colonial structures and systems.