Melaina is Georgian Bay Métis and currently resides on the unceded territory of the Quw’utsun Hwulmuhw. Her familial roots are located around the northeastern shore of Lake Huron, particularly Penetanguishene and McKerrow, ON. She grew up in Calgary and attended post-secondary in Edmonton and holds a B.Sc. in Nutrition and Food Science and an M.A. in Indigenous Community Development, both from the University of Alberta. She also holds a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Community Development from Royal Roads University, is a Certified Cultivating Safe Spaces Facilitator, and a Tul’ix/Arvigo® Abdominal Massage Therapist. Throughout her life Melaina has also been gifted with traditional knowledge around plants as food and medicines. Her teachers have included her paternal grandmother, Lillian Cormier, her father, Robert Patenaude, Elise Krohn, Rachel Beck, Micheline Boisvert, and Della Rice-Sylvester, among others. Melaina has worked for fourteen years in the non-profit sector as a community developer. She has worked in food security, alongside Indigenous communities across Western Canada and the Territories, helping to strengthen local food systems and empower local knowledge keepers. She has also worked in the homelessness sector, influencing systems change using a decolonizing lens. More recently, she completed the Cultivating Safe Spaces Trainer-the-Trainer with Elaine Alec and has witnessed how impactful the framework can be for organizations seeking to decolonize their internal and external practices. Melaina connects deeply to the importance of fostering collective stewardship for the natural world and values cultivating meaningful relationships with people, animals, and Mother Earth. She is passionate about the preservation of ancestral skills and regularly facilitates herbal medicine workshops in Indigenous communities and organizations, connecting people with plants and sharing traditional knowledge that has been passed down to her.