Author and teacher
Marie-Josée Tardif
A life devoted to what unites us.
In 2026, Religions for Peace, an international organization affiliated with the United Nations, named her one of three women worldwide to receive its 2025 Women of Excellence in Multi-Religious Action Award. It isn’t a tribute to a career. It’s the recognition of a path.
Two chapters of one life
For as long as she can remember, Marie-Josée Tardif has lived with questions most people set aside: How do we find the stillness at our centre and learn to rest there? What does it take to know real peace? Not a calm we arrange on the surface, but peace that holds when everything else shifts.
She spent twenty years following those questions wherever they led. To teachers and sages across many traditions, to retreats on several continents, into the kind of encounters that leave you changed. Trained as a journalist, she knew how to draw close to another person, to listen for what goes unspoken, to look for common ground rather than difference.
That instinct is what brought her to Dominique (T8aminik) Rankin, hereditary chief and elder of the Anicinape First Nation, and one of the most important carriers of Indigenous wisdom alive today. What began as a meeting became an alliance. What began as learning became her life’s work.
Twenty years later, she is still at his side. She has received his people’s teachings with deep respect, never once mistaking them for her own to claim. What took root in her, she has lived in her own way, through experience, through the act of passing it on, and through years spent walking beside others as they find their way back to who they truly are.
Her own medicine
What Elder Dominique Rankin passes on to her, she shares alongside him, with gratitude and in the same spirit of openness.
Her work grew out of two decades of searching and two more of putting down roots. It draws on the wisdom of the circle, on the feminine dimension of our being (listening, intuition, circularity) and on the transformative power of being fully present to oneself. It’s for anyone who feels that something essential in them has gone quiet, and is waiting to be found again.
And Marie-Josée’s path reaches further still, toward what already connects us beneath every tradition: a centre with no name and no border, one that each of us can find within.
An alliance in the service of reconciliation
Chomis Dominique Rankin
Dominique (T8aminik) Rankin, whom those close to him call Chomis, “Grandfather” in the Anicinape language, carries a wisdom passed down through countless generations. He is its keeper: the one who holds the tradition, the teachings of the circle, and the living breath of his ancestors.
Together, he and Marie-Josée form a rare alliance, complementary, balanced, grounded in deep mutual respect. Two distinct people, two distinct paths, meeting in a single purpose: to reconcile people with themselves, and peoples with one another.
Together they founded Les Enseignements Kisis, the Dominique Rankin Foundation, and Kina8at. Their retreats and teachings welcome people of every background.
Recognition and commitments
- Women of Excellence in Multi-Religious Action Award, presented by Religions for Peace (a United Nations affiliated organization)
- Elected member of the International Women’s Coordinating Committee (IWCC), Religions for Peace
- Nominated, with Dominique Rankin, for the Niwano Peace Prize (twice) and for the Zayed Award for Human Fraternity
- Contributor to the Muscat Plan of Action for traditional and Indigenous peoples and leaders, launched at the United Nations
- Participation in the State of the World Forum, the Fetzer Institute, and the Ethics in Action initiative at the Vatican
- Presence and commitments in several European countries, the United States, South Africa, Réunion Island, and Martinique
Welcome home: A word from Marie-Josée
Two questions have stayed with me since I was a child. Vast, almost bottomless questions, and yet, over time, they became a path:
How do we find real joy and real peace? How do we reach the centre of who we are, and stay there?
For the first twenty years, those questions took me everywhere they could: to wise teachers across many traditions, to retreats on several continents, to the books and lives of people who seemed to know something about being truly alive. Countless encounters, countless quiet hours, and all of it changed me.
I was trained as a journalist, so I knew how to approach a stranger and really listen. That’s how I came to meet Dominique (T8aminik) Rankin, hereditary chief of the Anicinape First Nation. A simple interview became a friendship, and that friendship became an alliance richer than I could have imagined.
Then came twenty more years at his side. I received his people’s teachings with respect, and what took root in me, I’ve lived in my own way: through experience, and through years of walking beside others as they make their way home.
The home I’m speaking of has no walls. It’s the one place no one can ever take from us. That quiet, sheltered space I sometimes call our “deep river,” where we reach the boundless intelligence of love.
Maybe you’ve spent a long time believing the world outside was stronger than the world within. If you’re ready to find out it’s the other way around, then… welcome home.
— Marijo