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The experience of being “caught between two worlds” is one that Katelyn Favel knows all too well. Favel, an occupational therapist from , credits her experiences growing up as the spark that led her to practise in school-based settings. 

“I knew who I was from a First Nations perspective, but I also had to walk in this world,” says Favel. “I had to put some of my identity to the side so I could try to make it in a very modern, western world.”

She wants to change things at a systemic level so all children feel like they can show up as their full selves, whoever they are or wherever they’re from.

Favel began her academic path studying recreation therapy but shifted her focus slightly when her interactions with other occupational therapists shed light on the profession and the broader approach it offered. 

“I realized it wasn’t just focused on the leisure side of things, it was looking at the whole perspective of someone’s life,” she says — a holistic perspective that aligned with her values. 

But she also began to notice how western ways of knowing dominated the field, and health care in general. It triggered an “uncomfy feeling” in her gut, a sense that vital Indigenous perspectives were being overlooked. 

She reached out to other Indigenous occupational therapists who seemed to be asking similar questions to the ones bouncing through her mind, challenging the western-dominated perspectives in the field, and realized there was a place for her to transform the system from within. 

“Occupational therapy is beautiful in that it can see the whole person,” Favel acknowledges. However, she notes that within the past decade or so, “we’ve started to really question what ways of knowing are represented in the field, and what is missing.” 

Her spirit of curiosity and passion for change has been a running thread throughout Favel’s studies at the master’s level and now as a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine. 

“I’m always questioning things, I think it’s in my nature,” she says. “That has continued to propel me to keep moving forward, trying to do the best I can in hopes that maybe the field can also potentially change a bit more, a bit quicker.” 

Her doctoral thesis, “LandBack: Decolonizing Occupational Therapy Education,” looks at how this could be done from the viewpoints of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, “which means kind of scrapping everything that currently exists from an institutional perspective and trying to develop something from the ground up, by and for Indigenous peoples.” 

That “ground up” approach envisions an education system where Indigenous ways of knowing are central in everything from curriculum to clinical practice. 

Having her daughter, now three, made Favel even more certain she was going in the right direction with her research. She envisioned the type of school experience she’d want for her child, and for all the other children navigating the western world. 

“They’re the future,” says Favel. “We need to do a better job in terms of investing and making sure they know who they are is important, not to leave that at the door.” 

Favel recently received the prestigious for her LandBack research, a rewarding acknowledgment that the research she describes as “heart work” is something others view as valuable. The scholarships provide $50,000 a year for three years to support doctoral research. 

“It’s all just very wild and surreal.” 

While Favel isn’t sure exactly what path she’ll take after earning her PhD, she’s already moving in the direction she set her sights on early in her PhD studies, offering occupational therapy services and consulting at . She’s also a board member of the newly established , which aims to create a more inclusive decolonial space that is built from Indigenous epistemologies and pedagogies in the occupational therapy profession to transform education, research and clinical practice. 

“I like to envision something larger than myself,” she says. “Ultimately, in some capacity, I would love to do community-led research that benefits the community.”