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About Us
Founder • Author • Witness
Rev. Dawn Helton-Anishinaabeqwa, MDiv, is an author, ordained United Methodist elder, and enrolled citizen of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. Her writing grows from a lifetime of ministry, family history, and cultural witness.
Web Artist
Franz brings the vision of Deep River Works into digital form through the website and the systems that help the work reach people and communities.
Web design inquiries: franz.maquirang@gmail.com
Deep River Works
Spirit-Called · Woman-Led · Earth-Rooted
Sometimes we live for years with a story we think we understand.
A father who could not love us the way we needed.
A husband who disappeared into silence.
A son we can no longer reach.
A family story no one knew how to tell.
Deep River Works creates books, workshops, circles, and retreats that invite us to look again.
Within this work lives a question:
What happens when there is no longer a circle strong enough to help carry what life asks of us?
And a simple conviction:
No one was ever meant to carry life alone.
The Work
What Men Carry and Where It Goes
Bones of My Brother is the first book born from Deep River Works.
Written from the intersection of her life as an Ojibwe woman and ordained minister, these spare, stark stories bear witness to the inner lives of men and to the wreckage patriarchy can leave inside them.
These are men shaped by silence, duty, work, war, fatherhood, anger, tenderness, loss, and the expectation that they carry what life gives them.
For men, the book offers the recognition of seeing what is rarely spoken put into words.
For those trying to understand a man in their life, it opens a door into what he may never have known how to say.
A Live Experience for Women
The men in these stories are speaking what the man beside you may never have been able to say.
Stepping Into the Circle takes the recognition that begins in the book further. In this live experience, women begin to understand what he carried, where it went, and how it may have shaped the relationship between them, making room for a different way of seeing both him and themselves.
Rooted in a Larger Vision
Deep River Works is rooted in an understanding that none of us stands alone.
We belong to those who came before us, to those beside us, to those who will come after us, and to the earth that holds us.
What one person carries can become part of another person’s story. What happens in one generation can travel into the next.
This is why we gather. To tell the stories. To witness what has been carried. And to remember that what belongs to one of us belongs, in some way, to all of us.
One Book One Man Seen
One way this vision is already moving through the world is through Bones of My Brother.
As a book moves from one person to another, it may reach a father, husband, brother, son, friend, or elder who recognizes himself in its pages.
If you are a spiritual director, circle holder, clergy
member, chaplain, retreat leader, or community leader bringing this work
into your circle, group, or community, we would love to hear from you.
dawn@deepriverworks.com
The Circle Is Widening
Deep River Works is in its founding season.
We invite you to step into the circle and be part of what comes next.