THE STEWARDS

Ariel Waagosh

FOUNDING DIRECTOR AND CONVENER

Ariel Waagosh (she/they) is the Founding Director of Gwekwaadsing // Walking in a Good Way. An Anishinaabe lawyer and peacemaker, her work supports cultural renewal, healing justice, and the restoration of life-giving relationships among peoples, waters, lands, and all Life.

Rooted in Anishinaabe teachings and shaped through decades of legal practice, ceremony, and community leadership, Ariel works alongside Elders, communities, and movement partners to strengthen relationships, restore cultural practices, and create spaces where people can remember, practice, and carry forward ways of living grounded in reciprocity, kinship, and collective care.

Through Gwekwaadsing, she helps cultivate spaces where ceremony, storytelling, land-based practice, and peacemaking support cultural renewal and collective flourishing. Her work is grounded in the belief that every people carries ancestral and cultural wisdom that, when remembered and renewed, strengthens communities and all Life.

Through a year-long collaboration of deep listening and sense-making with community leaders, Listening to the Land emerged as a collective offering honoring kinship and care across Turtle Island. The experience continues to shape Ariel's understanding of what is possible when communities listen deeply to one another, to the land, and to future generations.

Ariel is honored to work alongside many teachers, collaborators, and organizations, including Life Comes From It, Nokomis Cultural Heritage Center, Benefit Honoring, Urban Indigenous Collective, Roots To Sky Sanctuary, and the Black & Indigenous Re-Storying initiative. She sings with Wiingashk Negamajig Kwe’ok (Sweetgrass Women Singers) and helps facilitate a weekly women’s circle at Nokomis Cultural Heritage Center. Her hand drum is among her greatest teachers.

Ariel holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan and a JD from Berkeley Law. She also maintains a small relational law practice supporting a limited number of values-driven organizations with organizational formation, ethics, governance, and strategic counsel. She is an enrolled Tribal citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa & Chippewa Indians.

She remains a lifelong learner, grateful to continue learning from Elders, communities, the land, the drum, and the responsibilities of this work.

Robert "Roman" Haferd (he/him) is a restorative justice practitioner, civil rights attorney, farmer, and student of healing. Roman serves as the Executive Director of the veteran team at Restorative Arlington, a county-wide effort that has brought restorative diversion to Arlington County and beyond through its award-winning Heart of Safety program. Roman is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, and remains engaged as a restorative justice facilitator, innovator and trainer, having facilitated or overseen hundreds of restorative justice conferences in criminal and uncharged cases diverted from traditional prosecution, including serious violent offenses. Prior to Restorative Arlington, in 2017 Roman was hired as the first Restorative Justice Coordinator for the Office of the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, where for seven years he helped build the nation’s largest in-house restorative justice program in Washington DC’s Justice Department. He and his team’s trailblazing work establishing evidence-based restorative justice in the nation’s capital has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.  

Roman serves as an advisor and partner to jurisdictions and organizations to design and implement precedent-setting restorative justice outcomes, and support new community projects in peacemaking, restorative justice, land-based healing and transformative justice. In 2020, Roman became a founding partner of Roots to Sky Sanctuary, a 125-acre BIPOC-owned regenerative farm and community hub located at the headwaters of the Potomac River, that fosters cultural, spiritual, and psychological sovereignty for individuals, families and youth traditionally lacking access to rural spaces. The Sanctuary is a recipient of a Mellon Foundation “Humanities in Place” Award for its fellowship program “Re-Storying the Potomac,” and recently hosted, with Life Comes From It, a gathering of native and non-native land-based healing community leaders from around the country following the 2024 National Association for Community & Restorative Justice (NACRJ) Conference.  

Roman holds a BA from Bucknell University, and a JD from Harvard Law School. In his private legal practice, Roman has represented parties in numerous federal and state jurisdictions in cases involving deprivations of Constitutional rights. Roman is regularly invited to speak about restorative justice, drug policy ethics and community healing.  He is originally from Akron, Ohio, and carries both African and European ancestry.  He is an identical twin and the son of a strong single mother, with farming in his blood on both sides of his family tree.

Sherrie McCumber is a mixed‑heritage mother of two boys, carrying her mother’s Ecuadorian roots, grounded in the place where her mother was born, and her father’s European immigrant lineage, each shaping her understanding of identity, resilience, and the work of repair. She spent fifteen years in San Diego before returning home to Illinois with her husband, where they continue to build a life grounded in family, community, and shared values.

Sherrie is a paralegal by training with experience supporting community‑rooted legal and organizational efforts. Guided by her heritage and a deep respect for relational ways of working, she focuses on building systems grounded in care, integrity, and cross‑cultural collaboration.

Her personal relationship with neurodivergence deeply shapes her worldview. As the mother of a neurodivergent son, she is a fierce advocate for his needs and for the broader systems that support children like him. This advocacy informs her commitment to creating environments - at home, in community, and within organizations - that honor difference, dignity, and the full humanity of each person.

Outside of work, Sherrie finds grounding in nature - hiking, being on the water, and spending time outdoors with her husband and sons. She brings a steady, relational presence to her work and community, guided by her heritage, her family, and a deep commitment to integrity and care.