In this article, we reflect on the chaos and stress educators and students endured during the move to emergency remote teaching, acknowledge the ongoing need for relational approaches in our classrooms, and draw from Yakama teachings about how we might make educational spaces more welcoming for everyone. Our work in this article is a beginning, an offering, an invitation for us to pause and reflect on our experiences and to consider ways of moving forward. We draw from our experiences in higher education as scholars of online learning and Indigenous education. We aim to address multiple and diverse audiences: educators and students, Indigenous education scholars and practitioners, scholars of online learning and digital relationality, as well as anyone interested in equity issues in education. We understand that learning within virtual spaces may result, in what is discussed in online learning scholarship, as increased transactional distance between students and teachers. Participation in virtual learning also may pose risks to relationality within these digital communities of inquiry. These risks to communication and community, social presence and teaching presence between teachers and students reflect technology-based solutions to this problem. Instead, we propose that Indigenous and relational pedagogies can be applied in ways that foster humanizing approaches to virtual learning, support student social-emotional needs through digital togetherness, and maintain an equitable virtual community of inquiry.