Walking a Different Way: Men's Leadership Cohort | Maija West & Gkisedtanamoogk

Walking a Different Way: A Year-Long Leadership Development Cohort for Men

Co-Facilitated by Maija West and gkisedtanamoogk

Registration available for Initial Exploratory Session: October 8, 2026 at 9:00am PT (click here or scroll down to the form below)

Full Cohort begins January 22, 2027

Fridays | Once per Month | 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (PT)

Facilitators: Maija Danilova West and gkisedtanamoogk (click to learn more)

An Invitation

This cohort is for men who sense—quietly or urgently—that the ways we have been taught to lead, provide, protect, and belong are no longer sufficient for the times we are living in.

Many men feel the strain of systems that fragment community, isolate them from one another, and separate them from the sacred rhythms of life. The impact shows up as loneliness, exhaustion, frustration, or a subtle but persistent sense that something essential is missing.

This is not a course about acquiring more information.

It is about remembering how to walk differently.

Rooted in Indigenous governance teachings, matriarchal consciousness, and lived experience, this year-long leadership cohort offers a structured, relational space for men to practice leadership grounded in care, mutuality, imagination, and meaningful action.

This work emerges as a natural extension of The Matriarch Makeover—not as a separate offering, but as the next necessary step. As systems rebalance toward life-centered leadership, men are invited to stand inside that rebalance without collapsing, dominating, or disappearing.

Core Orientation: Rebalancing Masculinity

At the heart of this cohort is a rebalancing.

Not a rejection of masculinity—but a healing of it.

We examine how patriarchal systems have shaped men away from community care, emotional fluency, and sacred relationship with life itself. We explore what becomes possible when men reclaim qualities long devalued or lost:

Deep listening
Patience
Imagination
Reverence
Responsibility to the whole

A central thread throughout the year is the understanding that the sacred carries a feminine undertone—life-giving, relational, cyclical—and that men must consciously engage this reality if we are to meet what is coming with integrity.

The Braided Framework

The cohort moves through three interconnected domains, revisited and deepened throughout the year:

1. The Individual

Inner orientation. Personal responsibility. Emotional and spiritual grounding.

Imagination. Courage.

Less talking, more doing.

2. The Home

The home as a living system—a womb for culture, values, and relationships.

Participants explore communication tools, relational accountability, and the ways leadership is practiced in intimate spaces.

3. Work & Community

Leadership as service. Governance as care.

Economies rooted in mutual responsibility rather than extraction.

Traditional council practices, talking circles, and Indigenous economic teachings inform how decisions are made and how responsibility is shared.

This is practice-based learning. Each month builds on lived application, not abstract theory.

Themes We Will Work With

Traditional governance and relational decision-making
Elders, grandfathers, and intergenerational responsibility
Care-based economies and mutual provision
Imagination as a leadership capacity
Ceremony, sacred attention, and embodied practice
Active love as a guiding principle for leadership
Moving from insight into daily application

Participants are encouraged not just to reflect—but to apply. The real curriculum unfolds in how you live between sessions.

The Relational Container

Many men quietly acknowledge that it can be lonely to walk a different path.

This cohort is designed to counter that isolation. Through monthly gatherings and sustained connection over the year, participants practice showing up for one another—not perfectly, but sincerely.

Effort matters.

Willingness matters.

You will be met with encouragement and accountability—and something men rarely receive: affirmation for choosing to engage at all.

Who This Is For

This cohort is for men who:

Sense that dominant models of leadership are failing life
Are willing to experiment with a different way of being
Want to move from isolation toward mutuality
Are open to heart-centered work, even if it feels unfamiliar
Understand that transformation happens through motion, not mastery

Listening quietly. Speaking cautiously. Taking time to trust.

All are welcome ways of entering.

A Long View

As part of this journey, participants are invited into a collective imagining:

What might life look like ten years from now if we truly walked this path?

This is not escapism.

It is leadership.

When men change how they live, relate, and choose, they quietly expand what becomes possible for families, organizations, and communities.

The fundamental rhythms of existence have not been lost.

They are still here—waiting to be practiced.

Program Details

Format: Live virtual cohort

Schedule: Once per month, Fridays

Time: 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (Pacific Time)

Start Date: January 22, 2027

Duration: One year

If you feel the pull, trust it.

This is an invitation to walk differently—together.

Will the session be recorded?

[coming soon]

What is your refund policy?

Due to the nature of event planning, we are unable to offer refunds for cancellations, except under exceptional circumstances (e.g., medical emergency, death in the family). These will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
If you are no longer able to attend, you may:
Transfer your spot to another woman (pending our approval),
Or gift your space back to the community for someone in financial need (if time and logistics allow).

This class is open to anyone who’d like to take it and is offered on a reciprocity model. NO ONE is turned away for lack of funds. A sliding scale contribution of $40-$400 USD per attendee is suggested for those who can afford it.

Sign up for the Introductory Session (October 8, 2026) now by filling out the form below.

Questions? Contact Maija and her team at maijawest.com

or email info@maijawest.com

Original content by Maija, copy edited by Claude.

Meet The Facilitators

Maija West

Maija Danilova West is a business consultant, mediator, and peacemaker with fifteen years of practice as an attorney in land use, business law, philanthropy, and nonprofit governance. She has advised nonprofits, foundations, Tribal Nations, businesses, and public agencies across all three sectors on governance, conflict resolution, and organizational change.

A dual citizen of Latvia and the United States, Maija's governance work is informed by the matrilineal cultural traditions of her Latvian heritage and by twenty-five years of practice alongside Indigenous communities, including her work as co-founder of the Healing and Reconciliation Institute.

She disclaimed her law license as an act of conscience, having concluded that the current US legal system — in all three of its branches — structurally supports patriarchy. She now works to help practitioners build governance structures that hold what the triangle cannot: lineage, community, ecological accountability, and the long future.

She is the author of Matriarch Makeover: A 30-Day Invitation and the forthcoming From the Triangle to the Circle: Matriarchal Governance Design.

maijawest.com

gkisedtanamoogk

gkisedtanamoogk is Wampanoag from the Native Community of Mashpee on Cape Cod, south of present-day Boston. He is a family member of Nkeketonseonqikom (the Longhouse of the Otter) and T8nuppatonseonqikom (the Longhouse of the Turtle), lineages that carry teachings of balance, care, and responsibility across generations. He is married to Miigam’agan and is the father of three children and grandfather of four.

His work is rooted in traditional Indigenous governance systems in which leadership is inseparable from care for life—elders, children, land, and community—and where decision-making is carried through council, relationship, and accountability rather than dominance or extraction. These matriarchally informed systems center continuity, reciprocity, and the protection of life as their guiding values.

gkisedtanamoogk served as one of five Commissioners on the Maine Wabanaki State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a role that required deep listening, moral courage, and commitment to restoring balance where harm had been done. He also taught for ten years at the University of Maine, Orono, as an Adjunct Instructor and Lecturer in Native American Studies and Peace and Reconciliation Programs, supporting students in unlearning colonial narratives and reconnecting with relational ways of knowing.

Since 2016, he has been a faculty member of the Upstander Academy, a six-day professional learning program for educators that centers Indigenous Peoples’ leadership in challenging false narratives within American education and restoring truth, dignity, and relational accountability.

His applied work spans Cultural and Legal Theory, with particular attention to the social, political, legal, scientific, and spiritual life of Wampanoag and Wabanaki Nations. His advocacy includes Indigenous law, science, linguistics, education, and climate justice—always grounded in the understanding that healing systems requires restoring right relationship with the sacred feminine principles that sustain life.

gkisedtanamoogk is currently a member of the Kairos Indigenous Rights Circle and the Kairos climate justice initiative For the Love of Creation. He resides with his family at Esgenoôpetitj (Burnt Church First Nation) in what is now called New Brunswick, Canada.