{"id":4960,"date":"2025-11-01T01:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T04:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/11\/01\/creating-in-the-unknown-with-communication-specialist-shani-gwin\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T01:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T04:15:13","slug":"creating-in-the-unknown-with-communication-specialist-shani-gwin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/11\/01\/creating-in-the-unknown-with-communication-specialist-shani-gwin\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating in the unknown with communication specialist Shani Gwin"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Shani Gwin is the founder of pipikwan p\u00eaht\u00e2kwan, a communications, public relations and engagement agency aimed at uplifting Indigenous people.   By Laura Mushumanski (ANNews) \u2013 Shani Gwin is the founder of pipikwan p\u00eaht\u00e2kwan, a communications, public relations and engagement agency that is focused on uplifting Indigenous people. Her upbringing helped shape her values and her approach to relating with people. \u201cI was seeing two sides of the coin,\u201d she said. \u201c[My parents] presented this worldview to me that our People aren\u2019t just in these systems. I just saw them as people in different stages of life, as all people are.\u201d Her early experiences helped guide her to see people for where they are at, instead of what they may be encountering in their current lives. \u201cI come from a lot of privilege in certain ways, I guess. Both my parents are connected to the Metis community. [My father] worked in labour development, skills training, project management training, train the trainer. He was really focused on developing skills in our People so they could be employed. My mom worked for my papa at Native Counselling Services of Alberta, then became the warden at Stan Daniels, then CEO of Niginan Housing Ventures. She was on the other side of getting people out of incarceration and addictions and working to secure people in safe housing.\u201d Growing up with family members that supported our Indigenous brothers and sisters, Gwin understood at a young age the importance of uplifting community, which led to her founding pipikwan p\u00eaht\u00e2kwan and \u2018building relationships in a good way.\u2019 In her youth, years before Shani ventured into public relations, she had been impacted when she saw how Indigenous People were being misrepresented in the classroom and how these narratives bled into people\u2019s ways of thinking and engaging with Indigenous Peoples. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t really until I [started] school [and noticed] people would have ideas of how our People were\u2026I started getting this message \u2026 it was such a rude awakening at school, learning about Indigenous history\u2026I kept having these experiences with people and being misinformed.\u201d As a daydreamer, Gwin would create in the unknown, wondering how she could shine light on the beauty of Indigenous ways of knowing and understanding? Her daydreaming was a blessing in disguise that took her on a journey into the world of public relations. \u201cI had heard about public relations (PR). I never saw our People in ads. I didn\u2019t see them in the paper, in movies and when I did see them in those spots it was a stereotype, or harmful or not played by an Indigenous person. I just started thinking about my upbringing\u2026 Nobody had PR people, there was no one doing marketing\u2026 When I got started on my own, community started hiring and supporting me. Community is great like that \u2013 if there is a young person interested in something; they will lift you up.\u201d Gwin was always curious, and she wanted to know more, she wanted to be a part of \u2018how could my perspective improve this field?\u2019 \u201cI looked around there was almost all white people in my class\u2026 My goal became to work in Indigenous relations and somehow work for Indigenous people, somehow doing communications \u2026 I really worked hard on honing my skill\u2026 I took opportunities as they came.\u201d The creation story of pipikwan pe\u0302hta\u0302kwan, is consistent with Gwin\u2019s advice she would gift to her younger self\u2026 \u201cStay curious \u2013 it is okay to do things kind of the hard way sometimes or not the way that people want you to\u2026I look back to my childhood and there was a lot of shame and anxiety around trying to do things the way everyone else is doing or sort of being in a daze or daydream\u2026 I hope more Indigenous youth are given the ability to daydream. That to me is a form of resistance\u2026 It is okay to rest, it is okay to daydream, it is okay to create in the unknown because look what you have done. look what you are going to do. It is not going to be perfect, it is going to be hard. It is not going to be easy, but it is going to be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life and you are going to help a lot of people and they are going to help you too\u2026 Daydream ..maybe you aren\u2019t listening to the thing that you aren\u2019t supposed to be listening to because you are caught up in your own thoughts. Stay curious, daydream and be joyful. And don\u2019t let people bring you down for being joyful.\u201d \u2018pipikwan pe\u0302hta\u0302kwan is a name that was gifted during ceremony. In Plains Cree, it translates to an eagle bone whistle that is heard loudly, one used to wake the ancestors in a specific ceremony\u2026\u2019the eagle whistle will be heard throughout the land and the heavens to wake the ancestors.\u2019 Laura Mushumanski is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter.  <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shani Gwin is the founder of pipikwan p\u00eaht\u00e2kwan, a communications, public relations and engagement agency aimed at uplifting Indigenous people. By Laura Mushumanski (ANNews) \u2013 Shani Gwin is the founder of pipikwan p\u00eaht\u00e2kwan, a communications, public relations and engagement agency that is focused on uplifting Indigenous people. Her upbringing helped shape her values and her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":4961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075,118,1],"tags":[2074,116],"class_list":["post-4960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alberta","category-indigenous","category-uncategorized","tag-alberta","tag-indigenous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}