Willow Abrahamson, MSW, LCSW, CCTP, CAIMH, CMNCS
Lemhi Shoshone Clinician and Cultural Advocate
Willow Abrahamson is a Shoshone-Bannock clinician, consultant, and cultural advocate. She is Lemhi Shoshone, Salmon Eater, a lineal descendant of Chief Cameahwait, brother to Sacajawea, and the last of her band born in their homeland. Her kinship relations extend across Colville, Coeur d'Alene, Interior Salish and Kootenai, Crow, and Cree peoples. Bestowed the traditional name Medicine Woman by elders spanning the turn of the 1900s, she holds 18 years of experience grounded in the integration of cultural knowledge and clinical practice. She is a licensed clinical social worker, a certified clinical trauma professional, and a champion jingle dress dancer. She is not coming in from the outside to explain Indigenous communities to themselves. She speaks from inside these systems, these relationships, and these ways of knowing.
She currently serves as a clinician at the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes' Waapi Kani Cedar House Mental Wellness and Recovery Services and is a member of the regional Zero Suicide Task Force. Her work spans every level where healing and harm actually happen: with individuals in crisis, in federal policy rooms, in ceremony, in classrooms, and in clinical settings. Her academic training includes an MSW in Administrative and Advocacy Practice from the University of Kansas, a BS in American Indian Studies with Honors from Haskell Indian Nations University, and a Certificate in Medicinal Plants from Cornell University. She has served on the OPRE FACES Workgroup and the National Indian Head Start Directors Board, Tribal Early Childhood Development TA specialists, and founded the Haskell Indian Nations University Indigenous Empowerment Summit. In June 2026, she was featured on CNN as an Agai Dika subject matter expert on Sacajawea for the This Land series marking America's 250th anniversary. She was requested a special audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in September 2005. She is active in ceremonial traditional doings and a carrier of plant medicine healer bloodlines. What she brings to this conference is a framework built from that full range of experience: cultural identity as a protective factor from birth to post-doctoral, belonging and intergenerational knowledge as infrastructure rather than a supplement, and a clear understanding of what breaks people down and what brings them back.
Credentials & Certifications
- Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
- Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP)
- Certified Mental Health & Nutrition Clinical Specialist (CMNCS)
- Certified Addictions-Informed Professional (CAIMHP)
- QPR Instructor Trainer — Suicide Prevention
- Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) Certified
- Medicinal Plants Certificate, Cornell University
Willow Abrahamson, LCSW, CCTP, CAIMH, CMNCS, Suhuuvii Donzia
Agai Dika Lemhi Shoshone | Enrolled Member of Shoshone Bannock Tribes. Descendancy: Colville Confederated Tribes, Coeur d'Alene Tribe, Spokane Tribe, Confederated Tribes of the Salish & Kootenai, Crow Nation, and Cree Nation.