08/07/2026
When a woman she had just met told Turquoise Skye Devereaux, “I can tell, because you eat like you went to boarding school,” she heard how a history she never lived still shaped the way she moves through a day.
Turquoise is Salish and Blackfeet, a social worker by training, and the founder of Indigenous Skye, where she has spent more than eight years helping schools, agencies, tribes, and child welfare systems create culturally safe spaces.
She talks with host Micaela Tracy about what cultural safety actually means, the Indian Child Welfare Act in plain English, and the questions that help a child feel known instead of tested.
Most of the adults in the orbit of a Native child are not Indigenous, and her message is for every one of them: you only know what you know, being present matters more than being perfect, and for a child, culture and identity are not extra. They are part of safety itself.
Click the link in bio to listen.