Rueben George is a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and a Sundance Chief, adopted into that role by two Lakota families. A spiritual leader deeply rooted in Coast Salish culture and ceremony, Rueben brings both ancestral wisdom and real-world action to everything he does.

A semi-retired therapist, Rueben now serves as manager of Sacred Trust — the Tsleil-Waututh Nation's initiative to protect Burrard Inlet and their traditional territory from the proposed Kinder-Morgan/TMX pipeline. His advocacy has taken him around the world, building solidarity with Indigenous peoples who stand for water, land, and human rights.

For over a decade, Rueben has consulted with multiple businesses and is the founder and President of Salish Elements, a green hydrogen energy company. He is also a national bestselling author — his book It Stops Here brought his message to readers across the country.

 What does it mean to truly live in relationship with the land and waters we call home?

​This month, we welcome Chief Rueben George for a conversation on the Spiritual Ecosystem. It is a topic that sits at the heart of why reconciliation asks more of us than policy or procedure ever can.

​Rueben grew up on Burrard Inlet, where his people have lived, fished, and held ceremony for generations. The Tsleil-Waututh carry a sacred and legal duty to protect those lands and waters, expressed through the teaching naut-sa mawt, "one heart, one mind, one prayer", a recognition that we are interconnected to everything that holds spirit, including the water and the creatures within it.

​For those engaged in reconciliation work, it can be tempting to focus on the practical: policies, hiring practices, service delivery. And yes, cultural safety lives there. But it also lives in how we understand the world — what we believe has value, what we treat as sacred, and what we have been taught to overlook.

​Rueben's teaching invites a different way of seeing. One where the land is not a resource and the water is not infrastructure. Where spirit is not a metaphor.

​You do not need to arrive with an opinion or a framework. What is asked is simply presence, and a willingness to let something new take up space in you.