An Edmonton-based entrepreneur from Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation is a finalist in the 2025 Pow Wow Pitch.
The annual competition celebrates Indigenous entrepreneurs from across the country while offering funding, mentorship and a national platform to showcase talent.
Jackie DeCoteau-Gill, founder of Kokums Helper Society, has already won an Alumni Choice award from the competition worth $1,000 for her work focused on Indigenous end-of-life care.
Now, DeCoteau-Gill has advanced to the Pow Wow Pitch final round alongside 17 other entrepreneurs from across the country. The grand finale takes place online on October 22 at 4pm MT.
Wendy Landry-Braun of Fort Providence has also secured a place in the final after finishing first in the Kamloopa Pow Wow Pitch. Three NWT-based businesses reached this year’s semi-finals.
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Born and raised in Edmonton, DeCoteau-Gill – a 2022 semi-finalist in the competition before reaching this year’s final – grew up in the inner city with a single mother navigating addiction and trauma. She met her father, who is from Fort Simpson, when she turned 20 years old.
For years she pursued a corporate career, working at a bank and for the government. But a decade ago, she said she began reconnecting with her culture and decided to become a support worker in the inner city.
“We were always surrounded by lots of death and lots of grief, just like other Indigenous families. Growing up, I just thought I could work myself out of trauma,” she told Cabin Radio.
DeCoteau-Gill said she naturally gravitated toward end-of-life care after taking a year-long course with Kihew Awâsis Wakamik, a group of Indigenous birth workers and midwives, which also deepened her connection to ceremonies.
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In 2021, she launched Kokums Helper Society with the long-term dream of opening an Indigenous end-of-life care centre.
The society has organized grief circles and memorial round dances to honour those who have passed. She said grants worth $127,000 have supported the society to date.
DeCoteau-Gill envisions both a harm reduction facility and a safe space for urban Indigenous people.
“They’ll be surrounded by community and love and culture, and those are all the things that help me do all the things that I do now,” she said.
“My life has changed so much since I took that birth workers program. Now, I’m a community auntie and I have a ribbon skirt business and I do grief circles.”
DeCoteau-Gill said she hopes to secure grants to establish a building for her work, possibly in partnership with existing organizations like George Spady Centre or Edmonton’s Rosedale Hospice.
Through Pow Wow Pitch, she hopes to secure funding not just for ceremonies, but for the administrative support needed to bring her larger vision to life.
“The basis of all the work I do is really finding ways to decolonize myself in a modern era and what that looks like, to connect back to culture, for especially us urban Indigenous who sometimes don’t have as much access,” she said.
“I just know how much my life has changed since being able to reconnect and to find community. I’m a better Jackie, I’m a better mom.
“That’s truly what I want to do. I just want to love people at the end of their life. It’s a transition that’s scary … you want to surround anybody with love and connection and access to who they are.”
