Melanie Nelson is from the In-SHUCK-ch and Stó:lo¯ Nations, and has experience teaching kindergarten through grade 12, as well as adults in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. She has taught in mainstream, adapted, modified, and alternate settings, at
the classroom, whole school, and district levels. Trained as an educator in science, Melanie approaches Western science through an Indigenous worldview and with Indigenous ways of knowing. Her Master of Arts thesis explored the experience of Indigenous parents who have a child identified as having special needs in school, and she is currently completing a Doctor of Philosophy in School Psychology at the University of British Columbia.