One of the most influential Canadian indigenous Two‑Spirit businessmen, entrepreneur, producer, and multi-nominated recording artist shares his astounding journey.
From childhood trauma and homelessness to multi‑million‑dollar enterprises and a new vision for a cultural healing village and mass reforestation operation, Massey Whiteknife builds pathways so others can rise.
Quote by Massey: “Let’s change the conversation.”
When Massey Whiteknife steps into a room, the air shifts. For some, he is the chaos that’s under a strategic executive who can create companies and negotiate contracts in an oil‑patch boardroom. For others, he is Iceis Rain, a powerhouse Two‑Spirit whose voice and presence cut through stigma. For the communities he serves, he is a bridge: a leader who turned a life of trauma, homelessness, and addiction into a practice that heals, trains, and employs.
This is the story of how one man moved from survival to systems‑building; of the hard truths he refuses to hide and the hope he is building, literally, with a plan for a Cultural Healing Village, Koda‑House, and a native seedling nursery that will help heal burned land and burnt lives alike.
A Childhood No Child Should Bear
Massey is from Fort Chipewyan, AB, Canada, and a mikisew cree First Nation member, but was raised in Conklin, and at 16 ran away from home and the physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse. Massey was homeless in fortmcmurray and with no guidance or resources, he learnt to survive. Then spent 25 years in Fort McKay, Ab, the RMWB communities in northern Alberta, where the rhythms of traditional life met the boom of the oil industry. Behind the early hustle was a private life of pain. He has written and spoken candidly about his childhood sexual abuse from the age of 4, till he was 12, by multiple men in the community, being gang raped as a young teen, bullying, addiction, and periods of homelessness. Those experiences left scars that shaped him, not into retreat, but into resolve.
“I know the pain of having your power of choice taken away from you,” Massey has said. “If it happened to me, how many other people out there is it happening to?” That question became the engine of his work: he would not only survive; he would build systems so others would not have to.
Iceis Rain: An Alter Ego that Taught him to Stand
In the darkness of trauma and recovery, Massey created Iceis Rain, a fierce, larger‑than‑life persona who taught him how to stand tall. Iceis was not an escape from responsibility; she amplified it. Through performance, writing music, and storytelling, Iceis Rain opened doors for conversations about Two‑Spirit identity, mental health, and Indigenous resilience.
Iceis Rain’s presence on screen and stage, from starring in the documentary Oil Sands Karaoke, commercials on anti-bullying, to having their own award-winning reality series Queen of the Oil Patch, brought Massey’s story to national attention. But beyond the spectacle, his performances have been deliberate acts of advocacy: raising awareness about bullying, supporting mental health and employment programs, and reshaping what Indigenous Two‑Spirit leadership can look like.
From Safety Officer to Indigenous Business Leader
Massey’s business life began in the oil sands, where he learned the language of safety, compliance, and operations. With industry certifications and a strategic outlook and practical eye, he founded ICEIS Safety Ltd., bootstrapping it with just 10,000 dollars to scale it into a 20-million-dollar enterprise. The company’s success was not just economic; it demonstrated that Indigenous leadership could meet the highest corporate standards while remaining rooted in community values.
That operational credibility enabled collaborations with major clients and First Nations. It also gave Massey leverage to design programs for the people he cared about most: Indigenous participants who needed culturally safe, trauma‑informed pathways to work.
Koda‑Cree: Healing Built into Training
Koda‑Cree: Massey’s flagship program he created, is a holistic, skilled labor program that is dual globally certified and a community‑based model, integrating certified, job‑ready training, financial fitness with cultural reconnection, counseling, and sustained mentorship. Graduates earn safety and workplace certifications, employment, and remain connected to mentors for the first 12 weeks of employment, a period where many otherwise fail without continuous support.
The model’s success, a reported astonishing 85% employment placement rate that has attracted funders and partners, rests on one principle Massey repeats: you cannot build a career without first building confidence. For a person reeling from intergenerational trauma, that confidence often begins with ceremony, story, and human connection as much as it does with a resume or toolbox.
Hard Truths and the Courage to Name Them
This story is not romanticized. Massey does not ask to be admired for resilience alone; he insists on the importance of facing the deep roots of harm. He names the cycle of intergenerational trauma, the realities of abuse, and the impact of social isolation. He has taken those hard truths into public forums to insist that policy and programming reflect lived experience.
His candor has helped destigmatize subjects too often left in the shadows. In doing so, he has invited funders, corporations, and Nations into honest collaboration rather than token gestures.
Koda‑House & the Cultural Healing Village: Scale with Soul
Massey’s next chapter is audacious but practical. Koda‑House and an Indigenous‑led Cultural Heritage & Healing Village (proposed on his 370‑acre property near Drayton Valley Alberta Canada will combine: a native tree nursery producing 200,000+ seedlings a year; koda-house a 50 bed sober living style resource for indigenous homeless, at-risk and people who need a second chance will get on‑site accredited training in safety tickets nursery and restoration work, intergenerational trauma therapy, addictions education, employment preparation and reintegrated in to society gaining employment and coaching and mentoring. This unique house aims to be all across Canada by 2031, including a 75-bed indigenous cultural healing center and ceremonial spaces, and reforestation crews to restore post‑fire landscapes.
The plan links economic opportunity with ecological restoration. Seedlings pay dividends in jobs and carbon capture; homes and communal spaces provide the stable base needed for healing; accredited credentials connect participants to long‑term employment. Massey created a model designed to scale and to be shared across the Nations in Canada.
Pull‑quote (spread placement):
“Healing and opportunity must go hand in hand. You cannot build a career without first building confidence.”
Leadership that Blends Grit and Humility
Massey’s leadership is kinetic and relational. He pulls from a broad base of credibility, industry certifications, board work, and award recognitions- but the axis of his work is relational: mentoring, listening, and building structures that survive his tenure. Graduates routinely return as mentors, expanding the cycle of support.
He also deploys creativity as a tool: creating performance platforms, producing cultural content, and learning how to translate Indigenous protocols into environments that employers and funders understand.
A complex Public Identity
Massey’s public persona is deliberately multifaceted: businessman, Two‑Spirit leader, performer, public speaker, and community builder. That complexity has at times been a lightning rod. In male‑dominated industries, he once faced outright rejection; in public life, he has had to navigate assumptions about identity and presentation. Yet those tensions are also his strength: he models what it means to carry many truths at once and to insist that identity need not be simplified for others’ comfort.
Pull‑quote (spread placement):
“Success is not about what you achieve alone; it is about how many people you lift along the way.”
Measured Impact and Concrete Results
Across enterprises, Massey has delivered measurable outcomes: safety certifications, employment placements, company growth, helped countless indigenous people, and community programming. Koda‑Cree’s public metrics, job placement success, participant completion rates, and employer retention are the kinds of data funders and partners use to evaluate impact. His brilliance now includes the proposed nursery’s production target (200,000+ seedlings annually) is similarly quantifiable, a clear deliverable to municipalities and grant programs.
How the World Can Help
Massey is using everything he has to create Koda‑House and the Cultural Healing Village, including Canadian indigenous grants and financing, plus seeking funding from federal/provincial programs, and is open to philanthropic donors, contributors, and partners, including corporate partners for contracting and job placements.
Beyond funding, Massey seeks collaborators who will commit to the integrity of the project: Indigenous governance, cultural oversight, trauma‑informed delivery, and long‑term local employment, to then replicate and see Koda-Cree all across Canada. Massey is a trailblazer and a global ambassador for Indigenous people and a true humanitarian. Join the movement, his call to action.
Final Note: Truth as a Tool for Change
Massey Whiteknife’s story refuses easy binaries. He invites us to sit with contradiction: pain and power, industry and ceremony, flamboyance and quiet governance. What makes his work remarkable is not only survival but the ability to system-build, the decision to take personal trauma and architect institutions that offer different outcomes for others is remarkable.
If the proposed Koda‑House project realizes its targets, seedlings in the ground, accredited credentials in hands, steady paycheques for Indigenous workers, it will be a model in which cultural revival, economic development, and environmental stewardship are not competing priorities, but mutually reinforcing strategies.
