About the Author

Valerie Cloud Clearer Schwan Ringland PhD is an Indigenous East Frisian (and Jewish-Sumerian) woman. She is the first generation born off her traditional lands.

Her spiritual name is Wulkenkloorjer (Cloud Clearer) because she works to clear internal clouds polluting the mind to enable learning and healing. 

Valerie has lived-experience knowledge of intense trauma, grief and loss, health challenges, spiritual crises and conflict resolution. She has more than a decade of experience in healing work and has done apprenticeships in Indigenous healing methods, including ceremonial dancing, earthing ceremonies, dreamwork, sweat lodge ceremonies and sacred circle keeping.

Valerie's qualifications include a PhD in social work, for which she did a dissertation on Indigenous trauma healing, and certifications in mediation and restorative justice. She also has more than a decade of experience in facilitation, research and social policy and practice around the world, including in Australia, the US, India, South Africa and Peru. 

She lectures at the University of Peace in the Masters of Indigenous Science and Peace Studies Program, and works as a researcher, spiritual social worker and blogger through Earth Ethos from her home on Yuin country on the south coast of NSW.