Shelley Spear Chief, MCSW, RSW

Shelley Pompana Spear Chief, MCSW, RSW, is a Registered Clinical Social Worker specializing in complex, complicated trauma and member of the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation.

Shelley is a Leading First Nation Presenter on issues of historical trauma and intergenerational trauma and its effects on individuals, families, and overall familial systems within a community. She utilizes her own learned experiences and cultural ways of understanding in her work with First Nation clients who have experiences of past or present trauma.

For the past 30 years, Shelley has counselled First Nation individuals with numerous emotional challenges. And for the past 20 years, she has worked on and with the Kainai Nation, supporting children, youth, and their families.

Shelley worked as a Clinical Lead for First Nations with the Livingstone School Division, advocating support for all First Nation and Metis youth attending the school system. She has been affiliated faculty for the University of Calgary and Red Crow College, teaching and infusing an Indigenous framework into university transfer courses. Prior to this, Shelley worked with women experiencing domestic violence, homelessness, and familial violence.

In Shelley’s clinical practice, she uses EMDR and Somatic approaches, as well as traditional psychotherapy, art therapy, mindfulness, and hypnotherapy within the cultural understanding of the client. She has a strong passion to support individuals in crisis—most recently, supporting First Responders with the use of EMDR. Shelley also has a keen interest in studying and working with dissociative issues in supporting the traumatic history of the First Nation Peoples. She has sat on numerous committees and Boards as a First Nation representative, including the ACSW Clinical Committee and the Alberta Clinical Hypnosis Society.