My Time Last Week in DC

This past week I traveled to DC to be a part of a Conveyancing to learn about organizing, find allies, and figure out how we, as organizations, can help our communities. There were numerous other orgs who are working with their communities to ensure empowerment and support– from healthcare, education, jobs, infrastructure, broadband, clean energy, climate change etc. There are orgs in our nation who are doing the intermediary work to gain and maintain resources to create positive, healthy communities. It was amazing to sit and listen to how people get inspired and motivated to advocate for their communities. They were all simple people– following their passions to make sure their children have futures. Advocating in many communities is a difficult job because not everyone agrees about what the issues are or how to resolve them. But it’s important to not remain stagnant. Instead, we are trying to work and behave proactively to figure out a plan on how to tackle the issue(s). Being in a room full of organizers was helpful to hear how economic issues similarly impact city, rural and tribal people. City people face issues of lack of resources and crumbling infrastructure, as do tribes and rural areas. However most of the time our locations here lack any infrastructure at all. The meeting in DC helped me to narrow my focus and it was amazing to see what others are working on across the country. I am looking forward to continuing this work! *** This past Thursday we did our monthly zoom for column topics at 7pm. We talked over indigenous perspectives and how we, as tribal people, experience our lives and what that looks like in relation to the issues at hand. Some topics I will be talking about in the next columns are Missing Indigenous People/ Two Spirit/, tribal communities, and Boarding Schools-Accountability and I hope to have a guest writer by then!

Hohou! Nohuusoho'. Thank you! Yufna Soldier Wolf