Meet Dr. deWolfe
Dr. Kelvin deWolfe is Mi’kmaq through his mother, who grew up on the reserve at Potlotek (Chapel Island) in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and left when she married his father. He was born and raised off the reserve, but visited his relatives at Potlotek throughout his life and attended the community’s ceremonies and celebrations on the island. His family belongs to the Mi’kmaq Nation (sometimes spelled Micmac).
His mother later earned a PhD in Mi’kmaq inventions, history and traditions. Her research demanded digging up and reading everything on record about their ancestors, and she shared her findings with him along the way: articles, book chapters, rare records. Over those years his knowledge of the tradition became as much a matter of study as of upbringing.
His father’s side is the deWolfes, descendants of the Dutch/English family of Balthazar DeWolf (late 1600s), one of the New England Planter families granted farmland in the Annapolis Valley after the British deported the Acadians in 1755. That land was Mi’kmaq territory, and the Mi’kmaq never ceded it; their treaties with the Crown were for peace and friendship, not for land. He is a descendant of both the people whose land it was and the settlers who came and took it.
He has spent his life searching for and testing what the old teachers left for us to decipher. Another passion of his drove him to become a lifelong martial artist, and from the age of nine he trained across multiple styles in multiple countries. In the internal arts, while being trained by a small group of old Chinese martial arts masters, he saw and experienced effects that he could not explain. These discoveries were so impactful that he went on to find out how the body actually works, earning a doctorate in Chinese medicine, followed by more than twenty years of clinical practice.
Without realizing it at the time, he spent his life making himself capable of piecing together the very system he found in his ancestors’ tradition. He has traced its roots back to most ancient traditions that existed around the world, and even the latest findings in quantum physics and neuroscience corroborate his worldview and the practical approach of the system he reconstructed.
He also went looking inside the institutions he suspected carried degrees and symbolism similar to those of the Mi’kmaq traditions. He is a Freemason, 32nd degree in the Scottish Rite, and a Knight Templar in the York Rite. He took these degrees for the same reason he completed his doctoral studies: to examine firsthand the inner workings of these societies and the depth of the knowledge they carried, before drawing any conclusions about the parallels he had found in his own ancestral traditions.
The Way of Heaven is the initiation training born out of the spiritual traditions of the L’nuk, the name the Mi’kmaq have for themselves. It means “True Human Beings”: those who see and treat all other people as kin and whole, as they are, rather than splintered by faction, nation, or color.
A few years ago his mother suggested that he share it beyond the Mi’kmaq, with those who are ready, because this knowledge is just as invaluable to all people. It matters even more today, when so much of what was once hidden is becoming visible to everyone who is paying attention, and changing how we understand the world we live in.
Dr. deWolfe teaches this initiation training as a member of the Mi’kmaq Nation, at his mother’s asking and with his Chief’s and the Grand Council’s blessing.
Education and practice
- Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Emperor’s College
- Master of Traditional Oriental Medicine, Summa Cum Laude, Emperor’s College
- Acupuncture Fellow, Good Samaritan Hospital, Acute Rehabilitation Dept., Los Angeles
- B.Sc. Psychology, Dalhousie University
- 20+ years private clinical practice, acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine
Martial arts
- Wrestling
- Chitō-ryū Karate
- Jeet Kune Do
- 1000-Year Style Karate and Shaolin Kung Fu
- Taekwon-Do
- Kickboxing
- Shotokan Karate and Muay Thai
- Aikido
- Kenpo
- Jiu-Jitsu