Thriving Women's Initiative - Alaska

Thriving Women's Initiative-Alaska USING AN APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY APPROACH TO EVALUATE SEVEN NATIVE WOMEN-LED VIOLENCE PREVENTION PROJECTS IN ALASKA Evaluatio by Dr. Michael Yellow Bird Published by Seventh Generatio Fund for Indigenous Peoples

Thriving Women’s Initiative-Alaska

ð USING AN APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY APPROACH TO EVALUATE SEVEN NATIVE WOMEN-LED VIOLENCE PREVENTION PROJECTS IN ALASKA

Photo Credit: © 2018 Diane McEachern, Bethel, Alaska

Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples This evaluation report was prepared for the Seventh Generation Thriving Women’s Initiative- Alaska (TWI-AK).

COPYRIGHT © Thriving Women's Initiative-Alaska

By Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Inc. Reproduction or republication strictly prohibited without prior written permission.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to the staff of the seven projects who gave their valuable time to be interviewed for this report. Your words, ideas, thoughts, and feelings were thought-provoking, hopeful, and inspiring. Your insights and experiences have contributed a great deal to understanding and preventing violence against Native women. Special thanks to the leadership and staff of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous People, Inc., for all your help, support, and patience in the completion of this report: Chris Peters, CEO and President; Tia Oros Peters, Executive Director; Louis Gordon, Program Director; and Shenae Bishop, Program AssociateThriving Women’s Initiative.

Evaluator: Dr. Michael Yellow Bird is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara). He is the Director of the Tribal and Indigenous Peoples Studies program and Professor of Sociology at the North Dakota State University.

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The Report Process: The evaluator, Dr. Michael Yellow Bird worked with the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Inc., to evaluate the progress, accomplishments, and challenges of seven Alaska Native women-led projects under Thriving Women’s Initiative – Alaska (TWI-AK).

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) was used to perform the analysis of the project interviews which were conducted over a period of several months. Time was spent reviewing the AI literature and researching topics, studies, and stories related to violence against Native women. To gather the data, interviews were performed in-person or by phone. AI was chosen since it gathers qualitative responses that can be used to analyze organizational decision-making and strategic change.

The AI approach is detailed in the methods section of this report. Several of the positive core attributes of the projects are described in the narratives section, the 4-D Appreciative Inquiry Cycle Model, and the appendix of this report. The evaluation period lasted from June 30, 2017 to June 30, 2018. The TWI-AK initiative was intended to support and optimize the impact of the projects in their efforts to build organizational and staff capacities and community empowerment for the prevention of violence against Alaska Native women. The projects that were interviewed in this report included the following seven grantees:

• Hoonah Indian Association • Arctic Winds Healing Winds • Alaska Native Women's Resource Center • Healing Native Hearts Coalition • United Tribes of Bristol Bay • Emmonak Women's Shelter • Yup'ik Women's Coalition 3

CONTENTS Page I.

PREFACE……………………………………………………………………..

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II.

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………… 9 The Decolonization of Violence…………………………………………. 10 A Word About Colonialism, Settler Colonialism, ……………………….. 11 and Internal Colonialism A Glance at Violence Against Alaska Native and American Indian Women………………………………………….… 15 Contextualizing Violence………………………………………………… 18 What is Violence? …………………………………………………….….. 21 The Ubiquity of Violence………………………………………….….….. 26 Earliest Violence: God’s Killing Fields……………………………..…….. 29 Your Brain on a violent God………………………………………...…… 32 Violence: Nature or Nurture? ……………………………………………. 33 More Violence in the here and now………………………………………. 35 Violence in our brains, neurochemistry, and genes………………………. 37 Hope: Some lessons learned………………………………………..…….. 39

III.

METHODS: APPRECIATE INQUIRY……………………………………… 43 a. What is Appreciative Inquiry? …………………………………………..…. 43 b. The 4-D Appreciative Inquiry Cycle Model……………………………….. 46 Positive Core of Elements…………………………………….…….. 48 Positive Core of Native organizations, workers, and communities……………………………………………………. 49 c. Questions of the Study……………………………………………………… 50

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IV.

INTERVIEWS: NARRATIVES OF STRENGTH, BUILDING CAPACITY, AND COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT……………………………………………………...…….. 52 A. B. C. D. E. F. G.

Hoonah Indian Association………………………………….……….. 54 Arctic Winds Healing Winds……………………………….………… 65 Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center…………………….………. 74 Healing Hearts Coalition…………………………………….……….. 82 United Tribes of Bristol Bay………………………………………….. 89 Emmonak Women’s Shelter……………………………………….…. 96 Yup’ik Women’s Coalition……………………………………………. 108

V.

CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS.……………………………………...….. 118

VI.

APPENDIX: POSITIVE CORE ATTRIBUTE FIGURES……………..…… 123 Cohort One………………………………………………………….……. 123 Cohort Two………………………………………………………….……. 124 Cohort Three………………………………………………………….…. 125

VII.

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………. 126

VIII.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR/EVALUATOR………………………………….... 130

IX.

ABOUT SEVENTH GENERATION FUND…………………………………. 130

X.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………131

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I.

Preface “Biodiversity is essential for guaranteeing the healthiness of humans.”

—Tom Lovejoy “We are so dependent upon sea ice conditions. It’s our life, our culture.”

—Vera Metcalf, Yupik, Director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission This report was written for the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, which

is located in Arcata, California. The mission of the organization focuses on promoting the selfdetermination, empowerment, and sovereignty of Native Nations by working at the grassroots community level. An important priority of the Seventh Generation Fund is engaging directly with tribal communities to help them gain access to resources, technical assistance, and the training needed to acquire the capacities they need to create healthy and sustainable environments. The work of the organization “has consistently been based upon traditional Native concepts of holistic ecological stewardship” and the reality that there are “direct relationships between a healthy environment, social justice and community well-being.

Indeed, research social scientist Erika Svendsen writes, “Thanks to long-standing and ongoing scientific research and community engagement, we widely appreciate the health benefits of a clean environment. Trees, native vegetation, parks, and open spaces are valued throughout the world. After a century of urban park development, we are still uncovering the importance of these spaces to a wide range of social and cultural groups across the life course” (Sevendsen, 2011). In 2001, The National Academies convened scientists from science, engineering, medicine, and research to discuss a “new vision for environmental health for the 21st Century.”

One of the major conclusions of these groups was that “The natural environment,

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broadly conceived, can also enhance health, for example, many pharmaceuticals are derived from plants and animals, providing a compelling argument for preserving biodiversity. In addition, contact with the natural world may be directly beneficial to health” (Institute of Medicine, 2001).

More recently, following an extensive review of the emerging research related to the natural environment and mental health, Annemarid Mantler and Alan C. Logan (2015) concluded that our “Ancestral experiences and evolutionary processes continue to influence the brain in ways that may escape conscious awareness by contemporary adults. It is becoming increasingly evident that the 2.2 million years our genus has spent in natural environments are consequential to modern mental health. This might be especially true in the context of rapid global urbanization, loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation. Here, we examine some of the emerging research related to natural environments (and specific elements within them) and mental health. Our synthesis includes research from various branches of science and medicine, e.g., epidemiology, psychology, physiology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, and microbiology. Significant knowledge gaps remain. However, the accumulating strength of research from multiple disciplines makes it difficult to dismiss the clinical relevancy of natural environments in 21st century mental health care.”

The importance of a healthy natural environment is not a new concept to Indigenous Peoples. Many different tribal and Indigenous groups have passed on oral histories from generation to generation regarding the special relationship that each has with the climate and landscapes they live upon. With the arrival of settler colonialism, that sought to eliminate the native, came the loss of traditional territories, sacred lands, waters, monuments, and storied places. The continual loss of Indigenous Peoples’ environments and territories has been legion.

Today, Alaska Native peoples, like the rest of the world face a challenging future due to dramatic 7

climate changes. However, it may be that Alaska Natives are in greater peril since many depend on a stable land and sea environment to survive. In an online article in the British newspaper, The Guardian, writer Oliver Milman (2016) reports that “environmental changes are taking a toll on food supply and even language in Arctic communities” and “Alaska indigenous peoples see culture slipping away as sea ice vanishes.” Indigenous leaders, scholars, activists, and communities believe that before any settlements between Indigenous Peoples and colonizers can occur the issue of land must be resolved. Alaska Native peoples remind us that we must also focus on resolving the issue of disappearing ice, hunting and gathering habitat, and clean waters.

Lands, waters, ice, forests, and air are all sacred. In acknowledgment of the distinction between the spirituality and politics of our environment, Dakota scholar and activist Vine Deloria, Jr., wrote: "Before any final solution to American history can occur, a reconciliation must be effected between the spiritual owner of the land – American Indians – and the political owner of the land – American Whites. Guilt and accusations cannot continue to revolve in a vacuum without some effort at reaching a solution."

--Vine Deloria Jr., from God Is Red: A Native View of Religion

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II.

INTRODUCTION The Alaskan Native Thriving Women’s Initiative (TWI-Alaska) is a special project that

was launched to support Native-run programs that are exploring and engaging in culturally relevant prevention strategies to stop violence that is perpetrated against Native women and children. A goal of the initiative was to “demonstrate that Indigenous women are the hearts and backbones of our communities and nations, and are alarmingly the most exploited, targeted, and invisibilized women – nationally and globally.” Another goal was to illustrate “how the Thriving Women’s Initiative further magnetizes the self-determined revolution led

by Indigenous women that is fueling the ongoing rebalancing of power for communities and nations to thrive” (Gordon and Trillo, 2018).

The purpose of this evaluation was to examine how seven non-profit Alaska Native women-led projects, funded under Thriving Women’s Initiative- Alaska (TWI-AK), were succeeding in their efforts to address violence against women in their communities. The evaluation focused on the progress, accomplishments, strengths of each program, and the challenges that were encountered in their work. Of special interest was how decisions were made, strategic change occurred, and what core strengths and attributes are present in the organization, workers, and community. Since the disproportionate rate violence in Native communities prompted this initiative, it’s important to begin grounding, conceptualizing, and operationalizing what violence is and how it appears to be connected to violence against Native Alaska women.

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The Decolonization of Violence “The whites told only one side. Told it to please themselves. Told much that is not true.

Only his own best deeds, only the worst deeds of the Indians, has the white man told.”

Yellow Wolf, Nez Perce, c 18771 This study was interested in how seven Native women-led programs might be creatively using a positive core of attributes of the Appreciative Inquiry approach to transform their projects to address the disproportionate rates of violence against Alaska Native women. The attributes are: knowledge, strengths, capacities creativity, resilience, skills, talents, wisdom, and resources. It goes without saying that this violence should be condemned and prevented, and all actions and measures should be pursued to curb the rates of violence and make them a thing of the past; which is precisely what the leaders and workers in these programs are striving towards.

However, it is important to recognize that the phenomenon of violence is widespread and complex throughout all of society and, for some, it is generational and intense. Many Alaska Native communities are marginalized and isolated which exacerbates their situation.

Moreover, there is a lack funding to develop prevention, treatment, and aftercare programs for survivors and perpetrators of violence. Given these myriad challenges it is not always possible for organizations, workers, and communities to draw from a positive core.

Finally, another difficulty related to controlling and eliminating violence against Native women is that a significant amount of violence comes from non-Native offenders, which are often immune from prosecution due to state and federal laws that suppress Native justice and sovereignty.

The rest of this introduction focuses on several key areas: (1) the importance of understanding how colonialism and settler colonialism drive violence against Native women; (2)

In “Stolen Continents: The ‘New World’ Through Indian Eyes by Ronald Wright. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Penguin Books (p. 4).

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The startling rates of violence against Native women and its linkages to the continuing war against Indigenous Peoples; (3) The context and the degree to which violence occurs and how it looks in its many configurations. A number of critical factors (see pp. 23 – 26) that can predict intimate violence and mediate violence are shared. (A number of the mediating factors are being employed by the Thriving Women’s Initiative-Alaska projects ). Several of the predictive factors that are identified in this report, while concerning and deserving of appropriate changes in policy, treatment, and attitudes, are clearly markers for the degree of disruption and oppression that has been caused by settler colonialism.

For instance, it is clear from interviews with the projects that individual risk factors for violence such as unemployment, poor parenting, and emotional dependence and insecurity, would have been addressed successfully in the past using traditional approaches. Factors such as alcohol and drug use, desire for power and control in relationships, low academic achievement, and having few friends and being isolated from other people, can be easily argued to be artifacts of colonialism; (4) The introduction looks at the ubiquity, nature, and prevalence of violence in everyday life; (5) Violence in old and new testament Christian religion and the human brain; (6) Violence: Nature or Nurture? (7) Violence in the here and now; (8) Violence in our brains, neurochemistry, and genes; and (9) Reason for hope and some lessons learned and how they might be added to the work of the projects in the Thriving Women’s Initiative – Alaska projects.

A word about Colonialism, Settler Colonialism, and Internal Colonialism In order to understand the depth, history, and pervasiveness of violence against Native women, it is important to understand some fundamental differences between colonialism, settler colonialism, and internal colonialism. Colonialism is a practice of domination which involves the subjugation of one people by another. Classic colonialism or metropole colonialism concerns

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itself with the conquest and the exploitation of the lands, resources, and labor of the Indigenous population. Colonizers engage in the conquest of Indigenous Peoples through slavery, murder, displacement, abductions, rape, genocide, and religion. During this period, Native women were sex trafficked, raped, murdered, sold, stolen, disappeared, enslaved, and were marginalized when decision-making between Native men and colonizers took place. Some married and became companions with white men and integrated in white society. Eventually colonizers returned to their homelands.

Settler colonialism is unlike classic colonialism in four important ways. First, settler colonizers come to stay, settle permanently, and assert their sovereignty over Indigenous Peoples and lands. Second, settler colonialism is an imposed structure and not an event. The structure of settler colonialism embodies the laws, beliefs, values, behaviors, and characteristics of the settlers which are used to subjugate Indigenous Peoples and advance settler interests, sovereignty and identity. The settler state replaces the native population with an invasive settler society that, over time, develops a distinct identity and sovereignty, for instance, producing new people called “US citizens” or “Americans.” Fourth, following subjugation, Indigenous Peoples accommodate settler processes and structures and gradually or partially abandon their own.

The violence against Native women might also be analyzed from the lens of internal colonialism. Internal colonialism concerns the exploitation of minority groups by a country’s dominant group for the purpose of economic advantage. In the genre of television, movies, and literature, Native peoples have been viewed as violent, savage peoples that needed to be conquered, culled, and civilized by heroic white Cowboys, settlers, missionaries, government agents, and the U.S. Calvary. Examining the influence of the American western movie for The Atlantic magazine, writer Michael Agresta (2013) says, “After World War I and leading into World War II, Hollywood specialized in tales of heroes taking the good fight to savage enemies 12

and saving defenseless settlements in the process.� Hollywood movies, television, and literature reaffirmed settler superiority while constructing an unwavering, violent Native imagery that was economically exploited for generations. Economic exploitation also occurs with the sex trafficking of Native women, taxing of Indian gaming, other state and federal taxation, foster care for Native children, taking of Native resources, and the incarceration of Native women and men.

In today’s settler society, while many Native Women have fared better than their ancestor female-counter parts, many still face numerous challenges, barriers, oppression, discrimination, and racism. Many remain vulnerable to higher rates of abuse, murder, poverty, incarceration, and victimization. The colonization of the economic earning and status of Native Women results in their earning less than black, white, and Asian women and their overrepresentation in low paying jobs and underrepresentation in high paying jobs (Patrick and Tucker, 2017). Native women need health coverage. In 2013, only 67.7 percent of Native women had access to health insurance, while a 2014 study showed that American Indian/Alaska Native women were nearly two times as likely to die of the disease than White women residing in the same counties (NCAI Policy Research Center, 2015).

Losing freedom in settler society and being imprisoned is common for many Native women. In a study of Native women incarcerated in Alaska it was found that they are locked up at six times the rate of white women (Flanagan, 2015). In 2014, the Alaska Department of Corrections reported that there were 593 women offenders incarcerated in Alaska correctional facilities. Even though Alaska Natives make up only 15 percent of the Alaska population, 27 percent of the total incarcerated female population was Native.

Both colonialism and setter colonialism have, for generations and generations, disrupted the lifestyle of many Alaska native villages and resulted numerous individual and societal problems and left a legacy of unhealed of trauma that pervades many lives and communities.

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Nearly every factor of intimate partner violence (IPV), identified by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, that is found among Indigenous Peoples in the United States can be traced to the history, goals, and structures of settler colonialism.

The aggression, control, and domination of Alaska Native villages by external bodies has a long, layered colonial and settler colonial history. Similar to American Indian groups, Alaska Natives, despite often considerable cultural divergence, also share significant symmetries that have evolved from the common experiences of European, Russian, and American colonialism: an ancestral birthright in the land, a common core of collective interests concerning the protection of their human, territorial, and cultural rights; and, of course, the shared experience of dispossession, discrimination, genocide, violence, exploitation, chronic diseases, and marginalization that have been precipitated through colonial and neocolonial state and churchsponsored initiatives.

Lawrence Lee Okdaker (2001) writes that, “Alaska’s history of discrimination dates back to long before statehood to an era of Russian occupation and settlement, which began in the 1740s. Russian settlers came to Alaska to establish the seal fur trade and to develop seaside outposts. In the process, the land’s Native peoples, particularly the Aleuts, suffered greatly, as they were forced into enslavement. The tribal lives of Native Alaskans were disrupted for nearly 100 years as the Russians forced them to become loyal subjects and members of their church.”

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A glance at the violence against American Indian and Alaska Natives “And Indian-hating still exists; and, no doubt, will continue to exist, so long as Indians do.

– The Confidence Man: His Masquerade, Herman Melville, 1857 In a major report examining violence against Native women, Harper and Entriken (2006), citing Native women violence scholars conclude that there are two fundamental reasons that give rise to the violence: “One explanation is that the attempted destruction of Native culture has created an atmosphere in which violence directed against Native women is condoned, tolerated, or ignored. A second explanation is that the federal prohibitions that restrict tribal governments’ ability to protect their women citizens perpetuate violence against Native women.”

According to a 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) (Rosay, 2016), 84.3 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native women reported that they had experienced violence in their lifetime compared to 71.0 percent of Non-Hispanic White Only women. The “relative risk” of violence towards Native women was 1.2 making them 20 percent more likely to have experienced violence in their lives. In regard to sexual violence, 56.1 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native women reported at some point in their past they had experienced this type violence. 49.7 percent of Non-Hispanic White Only women reported past sexual violence. Interestingly, the “relative risk” between the two samples was not significant (NS), which means there may be no difference between the two groups.

What about stalking? The National Center for Victims of Crimes says stalking refers to “a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.”

Some examples include “following you and showing up wherever you are,” “sending unwanted gifts, letters, cards, or emails,” and “driving by or hanging out at your home, school, or work.”

The stalking that has occurred in the lifetime between Native women and Non-Hispanic White

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Only women is startling. Nearly fifty-percent (48.7%) of Native women reported being stalked compared to 26.8 percent of Non-Hispanic White Only women. The relative risk of being stalked was 1.8, meaning that Native women were 80 percent more likely to have been stalked in their lifetime.

Another disturbing statistic from the study is the amount of interracial violence directed towards Native women and men. Incredibly troubling is that in their lifetime, 97% of Native women and 90 percent of men reported experiencing violence by an interracial perpetrator.

Comparatively, 35 percent of Native women and 33 percent of Native men experienced violence from their own race. Interestingly and importantly, the wide differences in these numbers suggest that the rates of violence against Alaska Native women might drop significantly if interracial violence was eliminated or significantly reduced.

Adding greater validity to the continuing impact of interracial violence, the results of an earlier national study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice from 1992 to 1996, suggests that interracial violence against American Indians and Alaska Natives may have increased in the last 15 years.2 In this study “At least 70% of the violent victimizations experienced by American Indians are committed by persons not of the same race — a substantially higher rate of interracial violence than experienced by white or black victims. (Greenfield and Smith, 1999, p.

7).

Sadly, the interracial violence of American settler populations and governments perpetrated against Indigenous Peoples in the United States has existed, nearly continuously, for more than 500 years. Despite the incendiary rhetoric by anti-Indian/Native voices and the

While the it appears that interracial violence against Native people has increased, it is difficult to draw this conclusion since there may be significant differences in the research design, sampling, and methods between the Department of Justice and National Institute of Justice (NISVS) studies.

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second-rate research and “comfortable fictions”3 of settler scholars, who are quick and eager to point out that Indigenous Peoples committed atrocities against one another, history shows that all the inter-tribal wars, the “sacrificial and revenge killings” and “cannibalistic behavior,” that Indigenous Peoples are accused of, pale in comparison to the brutal, genocidal private and statesponsored campaigns that non-Indigenous Peoples carried out against Indigenous Peoples.

Another theory that may help to partially explain some of the disproportionate rates of violence against Native women may be that they are the least likely of all American women to meet the image of America’s “ideal woman.” In this regard historian Stephanie Coontz (1992, p.

63 – 64) writes: “The more that women are defined in terms as an ideal myth, for example, the more possible it is for men to ignore or actively abuse women who do not meet that ideal. Thus in the nineteen century, the cult of True Womanhood was perfectly compatible with the exploitation of female slaves and factory workers. In the twentieth century, a recurring theme in rape and sexual harassment cases have been the notion that if a woman has ever departed from the ideal behavior in any way, she has no real ‘womanhood’ to be violated or offended. The wives and mothers of rapists almost invariably, and usually in good faith, defend them as the soul of chivalry – at least toward women’s who conform to the prevailing myth.”

Settler violence against Indigenous Peoples is an historical structural phenomenon that stubbornly persists. Comparing the U.S. Global War on Terror (GWOT) to the previous U.S. wars on Indians, John Brown (2006), a former U.S. Foreign Service officer who resigned over the war in Iraq, wrote an essay entitled, “Our Indian Wars are Not Over Yet”: The essential paradigm of the War on Terror -- us (the attacked) against them (the attackers) -- was no less essential to the mindset of white settlers regarding the Indians, starting at least from the 1622 Indian massacre of 347 people at Jamestown, Virginia. With rare exceptions, newly arrived Europeans and their descendants, as well as their leaders, saw Indians as mortal enemies who started the initial fight against them, savages with whom they could not co-exist. The Declaration of Independence condemned "the inhabitants of Deloria, Vine, Jr (1990). Comfortable Fictions and the Struggle for Turf: An Essay Review of the Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Policies 3

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our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." When governor of Virginia (1780), Thomas Jefferson stated: "If we are to wage a campaign against these Indians the end proposed should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes of the Illinois River. The same world would scarcely do for them and us."

Contextualizing Violence To understand the violence perpetrated upon Native Alaska women it is important to understand the pervasiveness of violence in history and contemporary times. It begs the question, why do humans kill, maim, torture, harass, intimidate, threaten, rape, murder, abuse, enslave, exploit, and hurt one another? The answer is not simple. Whether or not violence is a natural, normal human condition has forever occupied the minds of scientists, philosophers, religious leaders, historians, and journalists. Violence in its many dimensions, from postured threats to what journalist Chris Hedges (2006) calls war – organized murder – has been a sickeningly constant visage in the face of all societies throughout human history. Whether one lived in a hunter-gather community, a village, town, city, or an empire, the specter of violence has haunted all humans. In other words, “We are always shadowed by the threat of other humans harming us” (Sapolsky, 2017, p. 2): We have the means to create thousands of mushroom clouds; shower heads and subway ventilation systems have carried poison gas, letters have carried anthrax, passenger planes have become weapons; mass rapes can constitute a military strategy; bombs go off in markets, school children with guns massacre other children; there are neighborhoods where everyone from pizza delivery guys to firefighters fears for their safety. And there are the subtler versions of violence – say, a childhood of growing up abused, or the effects on a minority people when the symbols of the majority shout domination and menace” (p. 2) Beyond our fear and anxiety of human on human violence, as a part of our evolutionary heritage, we have learned to fear the violence that comes from being crushed, swallowed, eaten, stomped, and squeezed to death by large animals (Dunn, 2012). In other words, we are primed to

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take flight, freeze, or react with violence in order to protect ourselves from these threats. Some of us live in dreadful fear of being stung by insects, bitten spiders, or eaten by sea creatures large and small. We cower at the thought of being clawed by large birds or gored by animals with sharp, menacing horns. And, of course, we fear coming in contact with fuzzy little creatures called mice. We live in fear of violent weather, earthquakes, tsunamis, erupting volcanos, abductions by aliens, hauntings by ghosts, having our Facebook hacked, or being eternally cast into hell, “a spiritual realm of evil and suffering, often traditionally depicted as a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth where the wicked are punished after death.”

Early White settlers lived their lives creating, advancing stories, and living in fear of Indigenous peoples as the savage, bestial archetype who is bloody-thirsty, barbarous, cannibalistic, violent, and wild. In an interview discussing his book, ‘The Barbarous Years…”

Pulitzer prize winning historian Bernard Bailyn (2013) says that the Antichrist obsessions of early American colonialists left them in a state of dread. This thinking drove “elemental fears peculiar to what was experienced as a barbarous environment—fears of what could happen to civilized people in an unimaginable wilderness...in which God’s children [as they thought of themselves] were fated to struggle with pitiless agents of Satan, pagan Antichrists swarming in the world around them.” Indeed, astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan (1997) speaking of the inability of humans to be thoughtfully skeptical said, “We live in a demon-haunted world.”

However, the idea that violence was equally widespread among humans and that it is a part of our human history, was missing during the period of invasion and colonization of the Americas. The concept of violence was appropriated and colonized by the west as it came to believe that white Christian people were the exception: they were a civilized, chosen race, who were cast in the image of God, and destined to rule over all other peoples and the earth. Award

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winning Canadian author Ronald Wright (1992, p. 6) termed this phenomenon self-apotheosis or the white god myth: “Another of Europe’s hoariest ideas about America is the self-apotheosis known as the white god myth. According to this, the natives were so overawed by the strange white men, the guns, and the horses that they mistook the invaders for god.”

Any violence that white settlers committed against peoples who were not White or Christian appears to be done under the approving eye of God, or at least the Pope, long considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be God’s representative on earth. On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued The Papal Bull "Inter Caetera," (also referred to as the Doctrine of Discovery) which served as the centerpiece of the Spanish attempted conquest of the “New World.” This edict said that any land that was not inhabited by Christians was available to be discovered, claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself. (https://www.gilderlehrman.org/content/doctrine-discovery-1493).

Those barbarous nations were comprised of Indigenous Peoples who were regarded as possessing all of the dark human traits and imbued with natural tendencies towards violence, savagery, bloodlust, sexual deviance, and cannibalism. Some early views of Native peoples were derived from the “noble savage” archetype who was cast as a wild human who was not blemished by civilization and symbolized man’s innate goodness. But this view did hang around too long. Professor Ronald Takaki (1993) writes that in the early American colonies there were two views of Native Americans. In Virginia, “Indian savagery was viewed largely as cultural: Indians were ignorant heathens. In New England, however, “Indians had come to be condemned as a demonic race, their dark complexions signifying an indelible and inherent evil”

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(p. 44). Russians who set about exploring and invaded the traditional territories of Alaska Indigenous Peoples regarded them as “uncivilized native tribes” (Gustafson, 1994) and “savages” (AlaskaWeb.org).

Decolonizing violence begins with an understanding that some groups claim that they are exempt from the commission of violence while others are not. Societies throughout the world, regardless of race, color, social class, religious beliefs, or geography, have throughout their history, engaged in acts of interpersonal and structural violence – often bloody and brutal. In his national bestseller, “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning,” veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges (2002) observes that, “Civil war, brutality, ideological intolerance, conspiracy, and murderous repression are part of the human condition – indeed almost the daily fare for many but a privileged minority” (p. 13).

What is violence?

Most of us know violence when we see or personally experience it. Even babies, little children, and family pets whom we may regard as not having the conceptual intelligence to understand violence, react in horror and fear when they see it occurring. Children cry, scream, and freeze, while dogs bark and may attack; and cats…well they mostly just run and hide from the situation. The online Oxford Living Dictionary defines violence as “Behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.” The World Health Organization defines violence as: The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation. The WHO goes on to report that: Each year, more than a million people lose their lives, and many more suffer non-fatal injuries, as a result of self-inflicted, interpersonal or collective violence.

Overall, violence is among the leading causes of death worldwide for people 21

aged 15–44 years. Although precise estimates are difficult to obtain, the cost of violence translates into billions of US dollars in annual health care expenditures worldwide, and billions more for national economies in terms of days lost from work, law enforcement and lost investment.

In his book, BEHAVE, award-winning scientist, author, and neuroendocrinologist, Professor Robert Sapolsky (2017), examines the biology of human behavior, including the ubiquity and differentials of violence in human societies: The experience of violence also various enormously by culture. Someone in Honduras is 450 times more likely to be murdered than someone in Singapore.

65 percent of women experience intimate-partner violence in Central Africa, 16 percent in East Asia. A South African woman is more than one hundred times more likely to be raped than one in Japan. Be a kid in Romania, Bulgaria, or Ukraine, and you’re about ten times more likely to be chronically bullied than a kid in Sweden, Iceland, or Denmark (p. 272).

Typologies of violence are helpful in understanding its scope. The government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, identifies nine distinct forms of violence. A number of these categories are relevant to what some of the projects report in regard to the type of violence affecting their communities. This report only uses them only as guiding framework to show how violence can be better identified, operationalized, and conceptualized:

Nine Types of Violence and Abuse

Physical Violence

Sexual Violence

Emotional Violence

Physical violence occurs when someone uses a part of their body or an object to control a person’s actions.

Sexual violence occurs when a person is forced to unwillingly take part in sexual activity.

Emotional violence occurs when someone says or does something to make a person feel stupid or worthless.

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Psychological Violence

Spiritual Violence

Spiritual (or religious) Psychological violence occurs violence occurs when when someone uses threats someone uses an individual’s and causes fear in an spiritual beliefs to manipulate, individual to gain control. dominate or control that person.

Verbal Abuse

Financial Abuse

Financial abuse occurs when Verbal abuse occurs when someone controls an someone uses language, individual’s financial whether spoken or written, to resources without the person’s cause harm to an individual. consent or misuses those resources.

Cultural Violence Cultural violence occurs when an individual is harmed as a result of practices that are part of her or his culture, religion or tradition.

Neglect Neglect occurs when someone has the responsibility to provide care or assistance for an individual but does not.

Factors that predict Intimate Partner Violence Drawing from an extensive research data base and literature, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a list of “certain risk factors” that are grouped according to the risk associated with individuals, relationships between partners and within the family, community, and society. Based upon observational and association research, these characteristics are regarded as having predictive power of who is likely to become perpetrators or victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). Rightly so, the agency says that these “risk factors contribute to IPV but might not be direct causes. Not everyone who is identified as ‘at risk’ becomes involved in violence.” There are four categories that are associated with the risk of becoming an IPV perpetrator or victim: Individual, Relationship, Community, and Societal.

Several of these factors have relevance to Alaska Native villages and on American Indian

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reservations. A major risk factor missing in this framework within the Individual category is being a Native woman. Some factors such as “low academic achievement and low verbal IQ” have inherent race and cultural bias.

Intimate Partner Violence: Risk and Protective Factors for Perpetration (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/riskprotectivefactors.html) Individual Risk Factors •

Low self-esteem

•

Low income

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Low academic achievement/low verbal IQ

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Young age

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Aggressive or delinquent behavior as a youth

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Heavy alcohol and drug use

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Depression and suicide attempts

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Anger and hostility

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Lack of non-violent social problem-solving skills

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Antisocial personality traits and conduct problems

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Poor behavioral control/impulsiveness

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Borderline personality traits

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Prior history of being physically abusive

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Having few friends and being isolated from other people

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Unemployment

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Emotional dependence and insecurity

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Belief in strict gender roles (e.g., male dominance and aggression in relationships)

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Desire for power and control in relationships

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Hostility towards women

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Attitudes accepting or justifying IPV

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Being a victim of physical or psychological abuse (consistently one of the strongest predictors of perpetration)

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Witnessing IPV between parents as a child

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History of experiencing poor parenting as a child

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History of experiencing physical discipline as a child 24

•

Unplanned pregnancy

Relationship Factors •

Marital conflict-fights, tension, and other struggles

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Jealousy, possessiveness, and negative emotion within an intimate relationship

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Marital instability-divorces or separations

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Dominance and control of the relationship by one partner over the other

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Economic stress

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Unhealthy family relationships and interactions

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Association with antisocial and aggressive peers

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Parents with less than a high-school education

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Social isolation/lack of social support

Community Factors •

Poverty and associated factors (e.g., overcrowding, high unemployment rates)

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Low social capital-lack of institutions, relationships, and norms that shape a community’s social interactions

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Poor neighborhood support and cohesion

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Weak community sanctions against IPV (e.g., unwillingness of neighbors to intervene in situations where they witness violence)

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High alcohol outlet density

Societal Factors •

Traditional gender norms and gender inequality (e.g., women should stay at home, not enter workforce, and be submissive; men support the family and make the decisions)

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Cultural norms that support aggression toward others

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Societal income inequality

•

Weak health, educational, economic, and social policies/laws

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Protective Factors The CDC also has listed a number of protective factors for intimate partner violence perpetration. Several of the projects in this study have been successfully focusing on using, rebuilding, and enhancing a number of these factors in their work.

Relationship Factors •

High friendship quality

•

Social support (e.g. tangible help, support from neighbors)

Community Factors •

Neighborhood collective efficacy (i.e., community cohesiveness/support/connected-ness, mutual trust, and willingness to intervene for the common good)

•

Coordination of resources and services among community agencies The Ubiquity of Violence There is no shortage of violent acts in the world, there never has been, and unfortunately,

there may never be. Acts of violence are committed within and between all demographic groups, regardless of gender, age, socioeconomic status, political or sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and geographic location. Many of us have observed, first hand, as well as watched news story or online videos of violence happening in many different contexts. For instance, violence can happen in professional sports and in the legislative halls of Parliament; two seemingly different venues. In sports, we give a bit of room recognizing physicality and aggression are a big part of what “contact” sports are all about. In football, boxing, mixed martial arts, soccer, lacrosse, hockey, roller derby, rugby, and basketball we expect people to hit or foul each other, and are not surprised when someone gets injured, which is why there are referees overseeing the action.

Many of us have come to appreciate this form of violence, and we find ourselves cheering when it

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happens; especially when the violence ensures the successful defeat of a rival team and/or disables the teams star players.

However, in politics, many of us might expect that politicians, generally the middle to upper middle classes of society, are graced with civility, reasoning, and intelligence. (Still, there are “Speakers” of the House and “Sargent of Arms” in the Parliament that are charged with keeping order – which should tip us off that there may be some aggressive, violent disagreements). During intense political disagreements, debates, or social displays of disrespect and intimidation, the façade of civility quickly evaporates into open, unrestrained, deadly brawls of violence that take place in the halls of government. Some examples can be found in the British online newspaper, The Telegraph, which has posted a video of Parliament fights around the world, featuring politicians from Jordan, Ukraine, Nigeria, and South Korea slugging it out, wresting and restraining one another, throwing chairs, and choking each one another with the ferocity of a professional Mixed Marital Arts fighter (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/9931916/Parliament-fights-around-theworld.html).

Violence knows no boundaries and can be found in the most sacred human spaces. There are videos that have recorded major violent brawls erupting inside Christian churches, at weddings, and during the christening of a child. On June 28, 2018 a news story and shocking video was released showing a Catholic priest, who is speaking French, squeezing the mouth and slapping a crying baby during a baptism. The priest was forced to retire shortly after (Mann, 2018). A number of the comments of folks who saw this video on YouTube responded to the priest’s violence with their own violence: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mjH7f-_ioY).

One individual said, “I understand how perplexing this must be for them as parents and religious followers, but i would have struck the old crow in his face. You're a father first.” Another said, 27

“evil ald bastard i would have punched him in his face he is not a man of god he is a monster of evil.”

Finally, another who appears to believe that the devil was involved, and that evil must be confronted with violence said, “First, let me remind the reader that until the ceremony of baptism has been completed, the child is under the dominium of the Devil due to his original sin.

So, it is not unusual for the Devil to impel the child to rebel against the baptism, since in it he loses his power and Our Lord Jesus Christ conquers that soul. Thus, sometimes a slap has an exorcistic effect, as in Confirmation. Perhaps the priest, who likely still believed in the Devil, was not targeting the child but the Devil when he slapped him.'' (The wording in these posts was not edited or corrected for spelling, grammar, or intent).

Violence invades stores and in shopping malls, especially during the holidays and when special sales promotions such as “Black Friday” are thrown upon an aggressive consumer society, like raw meat thrown to wild, starving predators. There are videos posted on the internet that have recorded the “Top 10 Worst BLACK FRIDAY Moments 2017 (Black Friday Fights and Fails)” found on YouTube that show everyday soccer moms, teachers, parents, and community leaders engaging in all out human violence: fighting, yelling, and skirmishing, over the year’s most popular consumer products. The RaphaelSonLevine, Personal Injury Law Firm shares “Black Friday Safety Tips To Avoid Discounting Your Health This Holiday Season.” Well aware how deadly Black Friday can be, the Law Firm warns, “From fist fights to identity theft, shopping on Black Friday brings a few safety risks all should know.” (https://www.raphaelsonlaw.com/legal-insights/black-friday-safety-tips/) Even among spiritual sects of Buddhists, whose beliefs and practices are centered upon seeking peace, happiness, compassion, and the practice of non-violence, there are news stories and videos of rival Buddhists groups violently fighting one another or other non-Buddhists they 28

regard as a threat. In March 2018, National Public Radio (NPR) reported on a story in Sri Lanka where the “Buddhist Sinhalese majority torched Muslim homes and businesses in the island-nation's central hills near Kandy, a day after the government imposed a state of emergency to quell days of violence” (Neuman, 2018). ARAB NEWS reported that: The unrest – which has killed more than 250 people and left 140,000 others displaced – began last year in the western state of Rakhine, where nationalist Buddhists accuse the Rohingya Muslim community of illegally entering the country and encroaching on their land. The violence, on a smaller scale but still deadly, spread earlier this year to other parts of the country, fueling deepseeded prejudices against the Islamic minority and threatening Myanmar’s fragile transition to democracy.” (http://www.arabnews.com/news/462428) Earliest Violence: God’s Killing Fields Looking back on the recent history of Alaska, it appears that many of the problems of today are related to the attitude of the non-Native caregivers who came to the state in great numbers to “save” the Native people…

Before the newcomers came to Alaska the Native people were not in need of salvation. For many centuries their cultural traditions and their knowledge had provided them with the skills to survive successfully in their own environment.

The disintegrations started when the non-Native culture, totally foreign to the natural environment of Alaska, caused great disruption between the land and the Native people (Alaska Native Commission, 1994) An important strategy in the colonization and oppression of Indigenous Peoples has been the use of a violent, white God and religion. It is important to mention at this point that the discussion in this section is in no way intended to offend or dismiss the importance that religious beliefs may have for any individual or group. The intention of this section is only to provide evidence that violence pervades nearly every aspect of our lives.

In his book, “The God Delusion,” Richard Dawkins (2006) examines the Christian God in all of his forms and asserts that the irrational belief in God and religion has inflicted terrible harm on society. God in the Old Testament says Dawkins, “is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a

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vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” (p. 31). So what drives Dawkins’ position about God and religion?

Maybe it’s the manner in which God dispenses his uncontrolled, unrepentant violence.

There are numerous passages in the Old Testament Bible that document God’s mind-boggling killing of people - “lots of people.” In his book, “Drunk with Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible,” author Steve Wells (2013) scoured the Bible beginning with Genesis to document God’s killing spree. In his introduction, Wells asks his readers who killed more people – God or Satan? His estimates conclude that it was God who killed approximately 25 million versus Satan who only killed 60. The title of his book, ‘Drunk with Blood…” seems fitting since God first uses this phrase to describe himself (his arrows are drunk with blood): “I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh.” (Deuteronomy 32:42). In Jeremiah 12:12 God says, “The sword of the Lord shall devour from one end of the land to the other end of the land: no flesh shall have peace.”

Some of the larger number of people killed are tallied up in different chapters of the Bible. In Genesis 7.23, the Flood of Noah killed all of the 20,000,000 people on earth, except for Noah and his crew. The flood probably killed most of the animals that did not make onto the Ark, along with most of the insects, plants, trees, grasses, and parasites. In Genesis 41.25-54 God sent a worldwide famine that killed 70,000. During the seventh plague sent by God, which was hail, 300,000 were killed (Exodus 9.25). God was exceptionally tough on children. In Exodus (12.29-30) God killed 500,000 first born Egyptian children. What about pacifists that complain about God’s killing ways? In Numbers (16.49) God kills 14,700 people for complaining about God’s killing. In Numbers (31.1-35) God orders the annihilation of Midianites. Wells says he

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estimates that 200,000 were killed. In the final passage, it appears that Moses believed that sexual violence, pedophilia, rape, sex trafficking, and infanticide was a part of God’s plan: “The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2 Avenge the people of Israel on the Midianites.

Afterward you shall be gathered to your people. 3 So Moses spoke to the people, saying, Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian to execute the LORD's vengeance on Midian. 4 You shall send a thousand from each of the tribes of Israel to the war.’ So there were provided, out of the thousands of Israel, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war…They warred against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every male…And the people of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones, and they took as plunder all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. All their cities in the places where they lived, and all their encampments, they burned with fire, and took all the spoil and all the plunder, both of man and of beast. Then they brought the captives and the plunder and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of the people of Israel, at the camp on the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.

“And Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.15 Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live? Behold, these, on Balaam's advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the LORD in the incident of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.”

In Kings (20.28-29), God killed 100,000 Syrians for calling him a god of the hills. In (2 Kings 19.34, 37.36) an angel of God killed 185,000 sleeping soldiers. Finally, in (2 Chronicles 14.9-14) God aids in the killing of a million Ethiopians (Cushites).

Is there violence in the new Testament? When most think of this religious text it is with the idea that it is a story about love, mercy, and peace. However, according to religious scholar Professor Shelly Matthews (nd) the: New Testament text often, reflect rather than challenge, the violent household and political structures of the ancient world. Jesus tells parables in which beatings, and even killings, of household slaves are affirmed as disciplinary measures (for example, Luke 12:45-47). Paul warns Corinthians, that as their “father,” he might return to them “with a rod,” presumably to beat them (1Cor 4:21). In Gal 5:12, Paul expresses the wish that those who disagree with him on the matter of circumcision might “castrate themselves.”

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Matthews goes on to say: Paul imagines Christ at the end of time, handing over the kingdom to God, but only after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power” (1Cor 15:24). 2Thess 1:5-1.0 promises a final judgement with Jesus revealed “in flaming fire,” and inflicting the “punishment of eternal destruction.” Luke’s parable of the nobleman’s return, likely meant to represent Jesus’s second coming, calls for his enemies to be brought forward and slaughtered in his presence (Luke 19:27).”

Your Brain on a Violent God The violent God of the Old and New Testament and early and later American Christianity is certainly one to be feared, and that fear continues to linger among many believers.

In their book “How God Changes Your Brain,” co-authors Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman (2012), examine what the human brain looks like when it contemplates God. In this work they discuss the results of a Baylor University national study that asked, “Americans to describe which qualities symbolized their impression of God.” They found that “four distinct personalities emerged:” authoritarian, critical, distant, or benevolent. More than one-third (34 percent) of the respondents believe in an authoritarian God who is “very angry and willing to punish anyone who is unfaithful or who acts in an ungodly way” (p.107).

These folks might “even believe that God causes earthquakes and human disasters as a wake-up call about the sinful behavior of people.” For instance, in 2017, a number of Christian leaders claimed that LGBT people and acceptance of their lifestyle caused Hurricanes. Minister Kevin Swanson, who “holds notoriously homophobic views” said “God set California on fire for legitimizing Homosexuality,” and sent Hurricane Harvey to Huston, Texas because it sinned by having a ‘very, very aggressively pro-homosexual mayor” (Robinson, 2017).

The next largest group (24 percent) consider “God as distant and uninvolved.” In their view, God “does not hold opinions about the world or about personal behavior; thus we are left to our own free will to decide what is right and wrong. This God is less of a person and more like 32

a cosmic force that set the laws of nature into motion” (p. 109). A total of “16 percent of Americans believe that God is critical but will neither punish nor comfort his flock. This God has unfavorable view of society. He does not intervene with the world, but he will cast judgment on people in the afterlife” (p. 108).

Finally, Newberg and Waldman write, “in contrast to the 72 percent of Americans who believe in an authoritarian, critical, or distant God, only 23 percent see God as gentle, forgiving, and less likely to respond with wrath” (p.110). This group believes that God is deeply involved in their lives; “He listens, responds to prayers, and cares deeply about the suffering of others, but he sometimes causes suffering and pain” (p. 110). So, which God did Christians force upon Alaska Natives and for how long? It’s important to remember Lawrence Lee Okdaher’s words on p.12 which state, “The tribal lives of Native Alaskans were disrupted for nearly 100 years as the Russians forced them to become loyal subjects and members of their church.”

Violence: Nature or Nurture?

Is violent behavior against one another in our nature or is it something that arose when we moved from small hunter-gatherer groups to larger more complex, organized societies which “provided the motivation and organization to collectively kill” (Ferguson, 2018, p. 78). In an article in “Scientific American” Anthropology professor R. Brian Ferguson (2018) writes, “Do people, or perhaps just males, have an evolved predisposition to kill members of other groups?

Not just a capacity to kill but an innate propensity to take up arms, titling towards collective violence?” His article splits violence scholars into two groups: (1) Hawks who believe that humans have always been violent and made war way back to our earlies ancestors; and (2) Doves who believe that “armed conflict has only emerged over recent millennia, as changing conditions provided the motivation and organization to collectively kill” (p. 78).

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Speaking about gendered violence, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and science writer, Rush W. Dozier, Jr. (2002) writes that “Violence is overwhelmingly a problem of male behavior. In every culture ever studied, men commit the overwhelming majority of violent acts.”

In agreement, Howard (2014, p. 821) says that “Males are arrested for around 90 percent of all violent crimes, except for rape, where males account for 99 percent of those arrested.” Citing Daly and Wilson (1988), Howard (2014, p. 821) says “over a seven-century period, on average males kill other males 30 – 40 times more frequently than females kill females…and most of these murders occur during the period when men are seeking a mate – from late teen years through the mid-20s.” Geary (1988, p. 318) says the “inciting cause for most of them [murders] comes from male-male competition for dominance, resources, and mate selection.” Finally, “researchers suggest that increased educational and employment opportunities would address many of the causes of violence” (p. 318). While it may sound like these researchers could be talking about male chimpanzees or lions, they are talking about human males.

The archeological record, so far, shows that competition and violence over resources dates back as far as 17,000 to 30,000 years ago to the Paleolithic period. One piece of evidence is an ancient cave painting from the early Magdalenian period (17,000 ago) that depicts humans pieced by arrows over what appears to be a confrontation over “game resources.” According to a study in Nature, a multidisciplinary science journal, the earliest physical evidence of organized warfare that resulted in “deliberate mass killings” among humans occurred 10,000 years ago at a site called Nataruk, west of Kenya’s Lake Turkana.

The scientists that have studied this site have determined that those who were killed had their “skulls smashed by blunt force, bodies pin-cushioned by projectile points and hapless victims – including a pregnant woman – abused with their hands bound before receiving the fatal coup de grâce.” Researchers suggest that the attackers may have been from another area and 34

that the evidence of “premeditation and planning” of the attack “implies that the resources the people of Nataruk had at the time were valuable and worth fighting for…this shows that two of the conditions associated with warfare among settled societies – control of territory and resources were probably the same for these hunter gatherers…” The co-author of this study, Marta Mirazon Lahr, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, noted that “what we see at the prehistoric site of Nataruk is no different from the fights, wars and conquests that shaped so much of our history, and indeed sadly continue to shape our lives.”

More Violence in the here and now But one doesn’t have to travel back tens of thousands of years to witness this type of violence over resources. Although not in the same class of organized warfare, news outlets regularly report stories of patrons in fast food or grocery stores getting into heated arguments and sometimes deadly physical confrontations when ordering and buying food. On October 16, 2018, a customer stabbed a South Carolina restaurant employee multiple times over a food order (Kulmala, 2018). The Inside Edition (IE) news program reported that “some fast food restaurants look more like a battleground than a place to grab a quick bite.” Citing Bureau of Labor Statistics studies, IE reported that fast food violence events “are not isolated incidents. Assaults on fast food workers have doubled in five years.”

Competition for resources happens outside of the stores as well. Violent confrontations between store patrons over limited car parking spaces in many different cities occur with regularity; some of them turning deadly as in summer of 2018, when an unarmed Florida man was gunned down in front of his young son by another man after having a dispute over a parking space. Police say the killer was justified, according to the state’s “stand your ground” law (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGQQ3DY97w).

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In another story, a surveillance camera recorded a young woman in Texas being viciously beaten by a large man during an argument over a parking space. According to the story a “Texas man beat Anjelica Lozano multiple times and hurled her small body onto the road in San Antonio.” After seeing the man kick her mother Norma's car the young lady walks over and punches him in the side of the face. The man reacts slamming her head against another vehicle then punches her several times in the head and body before she falls to the ground (Simpson, 2018).

Being in a moving car is does not shield one from violence. Road rage is a global problem and a “‘serious public health crisis’ according to Leon James, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii who has studied road rage for three decades. And it's going to continue to get worse, unfortunately, because our cultural tradition is to see the other driver as the enemy" (Marrero, 2016). A study conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, reports that “there are more than 1,200 incidents of road rage on average reported per year in the United States, a number of which have ended with serious injuries or even fatalities. These rates rose yearly throughout the six years of the study; a number of studies have found that individuals with road rage were predominantly young (33 years old on average) and 96.6% male.” In total: More than 78% of U.S. drivers reported having engaged in at least one aggressive driving behavior at least once in the past year. The most common such behaviors, reported by roughly half of all drivers, were purposely tailgating another vehicle, yelling at another driver, and honking their horn ‘to show annoyance or anger.”’

Approximately one-third of all respondents indicated that they had made an angry gesture at another driver. Approximately one in four drivers reported that they had purposely tried to block another driver from changing lanes, and 11.9% reported that they had cut off another vehicle on purpose. A small proportion of drivers even admitted to engaging in behaviors beyond the scope of general aggressive driving and which may be considered road rage: 3.7% of drivers reported that they had exited their vehicle to confront another driver, and 2.8% reported that they had bumped or rammed another vehicle on purpose” (http://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Prevalence-of-AggressiveDrivig-2014.pdf).

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Violence in our Brains, Neurochemistry, and in our Genes Humans are wired for violence and aggression. We know from the historical roadmap that violence has been found in nearly every-known human society. We know that violent, aggressive tendencies are embedded in our neural networks, neurochemistry, and genetic blueprint. There are many structures, transmitters, and modulators in the human brain that are associated with emotions such as anxiety, stress, aggression, and violence. None act alone and it is not possible to review all of them in this introduction. However, some of the more important have to do with our brain’s activation and wiring in our prefrontal cortex, including the orbital cortex, ventral medial Prefrontal Cortex (vmPFC), Dorsolateral Prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), Insula, Amygdala, and Limbic region. Neurochemicals that are important to consider are serotonin, testosterone, vasopressin, and oxytocin. Optimal functioning of the PFC is critical. Studies show that “criminal psychopaths have decreased activity in the frontal cortex and less coupling of the PFC to other brain regions (compared with nonpsychopathic criminals and noncriminal controls)” (Sapolsky, 2017, p. 54). In agreement, Dozier (2002, p.137) has found that a number of studies show that: “The more densely wired the orbitofrontal cortex, the more that hate and violence in males is suppressed. The orbitofrontal cortex – part of the massive human prefrontal cortex – is the area that gives us our capacity for empathyadvanced impulse control. When men and women live together and raise their children together in an equal setting, the men tend to activate this empathy center much more frequently as they interact with their wives and children.

And this empathetic attitude towards other men tends to strongly influence their sons.”

Citing the work of several studies, Sapolsky (2017, p. 76) reports that low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin are, “associated with elevated levels of human aggression, with end points ranging from psychological measures of hostility to overt violence.” Research further shows that when stress, difficult living conditions, and a harsh upbringing are combined,

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serotonin levels plunge (Howard, 2014). The hormone testosterone is highly implicated in aggression and violence. However, “some male aggression is testosterone independent,” meaning that even after “testosterone and androgens are completely eliminated, some aggression remains” (Sapolsky, 217, p. 100). Finally, the hormone, oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the love hormone also plays a role in human aggression, violence, and helpful behavior. Oxytocin suppresses “fear and anxiety, and activates the ‘calm, vegetative parasympathetic nervous system,” (p. 112) which decreases blood pressure, heart rate, and induces a state of calm.

However, there is also a “darkside” to oxytocin. Some studies show that “oxytocin makes you more prosocial to people like you…but spontaneously lousy to Others who are a threat” (p. 116).

What about our genes? A frequently cited study by researchers Donna R. Miles and Gregory Carey (1997, p. 207) says that “A meta-analysis was performed on data from 24 genetically informative studies using various personality measures of aggression. There was a strong overall genetic effect that may account for up to 50% of the variance in aggression.”

Although children have tendencies towards being helpful and expressing kindness, they are no means blank slates in regard to being self-serving, expressing aggression, and fantasizing about violence. Quartz and Sejnowski (2002) suggest that aggressive behavior starts early and depends cultural training to mediate such aggressive responses. Professor of Pediatrics, Dr. Barbara J. Howard (2011), says that 40 percent of adult violent behavior started before the individual was 8 years old. Researcher Richard Tremblay says that “the typical two-year old engages in eight to nine aggressive acts an hour” (Howard, 2014).

Katch (2001) found in her classroom that little boys, when permitted, engage in fantasized violent play that includes suicide, murder, using their fingers to shoot and kill one another, or play wild animals that tear people up. What about babies? Hamlin, et al., (2013) found that infants and children “prefer those that harm dissimilar others.” The authors state: “Across two 38

experiments with combined samples of more than 200 infant participants, we found that 9- and 14-month-old infants prefer individuals who treat similar others well and treat dissimilar others poorly. A developmental trend was observed, such that 14-month-olds’ responses were more robust than were 9-month-olds’. These findings suggest that the identification of common and contrasting personal attributes influences social attitudes and judgments in powerful ways, even very early in life.”

HOPE: Some lessons learned The amount, type, and frequency of violence that exists today is unfathomable if one considers all of different types and factors that have been discussed above. The rates and types of violence against Native women is one subset within the many different variations of violence we see today. And, like most other violence it has a multi-faceted, layered, and complex history. In the United States, a major focus is now on gun violence where drive-by shooting once dominated the news. Now, it’s mass murders and mass killings. A mass killing is defined as the killing of three or more people. In 2017, there were 346 mass shootings. By November 2018, there were another 307; and there is no end in sight on how to stop this epidemic – nor have any reasonable proposals been accepted on how to end gun violence.

Violence can be found in the media, religion, newspapers, books, video games, movies, online, and in sports; it shows up in churches, at weddings, funerals, political rallies, in fast food restaurants, and during war and peacetime; it spews out of the mouths of religious and military leaders, judges, teachers, police officers, politicians, and radio personalities; it occurs in shopping malls, parking lots, on the road and off the road, in schools, daycares, and among the rich and among the poor. It has no boundaries.

Violence is pervasive and has existed throughout human history. The brutal, sustained violence, directed by God at Native people via settlers, rewarded them with an entire continent 39

of resources. In the old testament, God has a much, much higher kill ratio of people than Satan.

The origin of violence is something that most don’t talk about until after it occurs – that is, acknowledging and admitting our natural human tendencies towards violence and aggression.

Instead, violence is often treated as an aberration that occurs among those that are suffering from some level of deprivation, affliction, sickness, or an emotional imbalance: Normal people are not violent. Or it suggested that violence arises due to an individuals or group’s own fault for their lack of positive, normal, and ideal attributes and qualities. While some have asked if today’s violence is “the new normal,” a mountain of compelling evidence says differently.

So, violence pays, it’s widespread, it’s in our genes, God approves of it, and those that experience and suffer from greater levels of violence deserved it and had it coming. That said, controlling and resolving violence may represent one the greatest modern challenges to humanity. There may one day be cures for some of the most virulent diseases and disorders, but a cure for violence? That may be a very long way off. So, what do we have in the meantime?

Harper and Entrekin’s (2006), “Violence Against Native Women: A Guide for Practitioner Action” publication is an excellent resource and offers numerous examples and steps that can be taken to prevent, address, and heal the violence perpetrated against Native women.

This work discusses the evolution of violence against Native women, the response of the United States, efforts to respond to violence, barriers to justice and healing for survivors, and guidance for practitioners. There are a few areas that have been investigated in this report that may be helpful to Harper and Entrekin’s body of work: 1. Violence must be decolonized. The colonization of violence peddles the belief that violence was an important social, political, and religious tool used to civilize Native women and communities. The brutal violence inflicted upon Indigenous Peoples is rarely acknowledged by settler politicians, governments, religious groups, educators and education systems.

Pointing out and challenging this brutal, ongoing violence, and linking a good deal of it to

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settler colonialism is an important decolonizing methodology.

2. Violence is overwhelming a problem of male behavior. Men kill, murder, maim, intimidate, and harass many, many times more frequently than women. Problematic male behavior provides an important commentary on the breakdown of community relationships between Native men’s groups and societies and the training of younger males. In the past older, healthy men provided guidance, role modeling, and mentorship to young men and boys that helped to mediate the violence and the warrior tendencies of young men. A number of the Alaska Native Women’s projects (ANW) in this study have described how they are involved in restoring this connection, by helping older Native men to engage younger men in traditional activities and healthy behaviors.

3. Settler colonialism plays an important role in the level of violence against Native women and its effects, processes, and structures must be discussed and mediated. As Harper and Entrekin (2006) have said, the history of violence against Native culture and present federal prohibitions that restrict the protection of Native women are problematic. In what ways does this happen? (1) Settlers remain on Indigenous lands and have pushed Native people to much smaller traditional territories or into foreign urban areas where survival can be difficult and community cultural support absent or fragmented; (2) Settler colonial laws, beliefs, values, and behaviors advance settler interests while subjugating those of Native peoples; and (3) Settler society has established its identity and sovereignty as preeminent and Native peoples have accommodated it, even if it diminishes theirs. Some of the projects share how they are using various political and social activist approaches to address the effects of settler colonialism.

4. A lot has been written about the disproportionate rates of violence against Native women.

However, it is important to do a lot more exploration of the rates of interracial violence and perpetrators. What is the profile of the offender and the victim and how can Native communities mediate the threats and vulnerabilities? In addition, young Native girls and women might be educated about the greater threats of interracial violence (and this is not to say that interracial violence should not be studied as well). Preemptive interventions with younger non-Indigenous perpetrators who are likely to commit violence against Native women and girls could be beneficial to prevention.

5. Violence must be contextualized in the past and present. The individual, relationship, community, and societal factors that drive violence must be elaborated on and decolonized in greater detail so that appropriate interventions can be made.

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6. Humans are a fearful species. Education can be undertaken to understand the evolutionary, social, and cultural roots of fear and how it drives tension, anxiety, aggression, hate, disgust, bullying, suicide, and violence.

7. The Doctrine of Discovery (The Papal Bull, “Inter Caetera�) issued by the Catholic Church spread violence against Native peoples through genocide, murder, enslavement, rape, and dispossession. This document which should be repudiated by the Catholic Church. It should be studied by young Native men and women to understand it connection to the history of violence against their ancestors and how it is connected to the violence in their communities.

8. The protective factors against violence (p.26) must be studied and implemented where appropriate. These are factors and situations that could be shared with young Native people who could role play and practice how to build healthy, high quality friendships, social support with each other, community collectivism, and cooperation and sharing. Several of the projects in this study have been focusing their work on improving relationships and community connectedness and support.

9. Violence is ubiquitous. Children and youth should be able to view some media that shares some less violent situations under the guidance of adults, teachers, and elders, so that they process it and come up with alternative solutions that they would engage to minimize or prevent it from happening. Violence should not be treated as an aberration.

10. Religious groups have used God as a weapon of violence against others who look different or have different beliefs. Research shows a large percentage of people see God as a critical, authoritarian, or distant being who is to be feared. A small group regard God as a benevolent, kind, and embracing being who wants us to love and have compassion for everyone. It is important to educate children and adults that if one believes in a fearful or distant God it activates your amygdala an older, more primitive part of the brain that is associated with fear and aggression. If one believes in a loving God it activates a newer part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is involved in love, compassion, and empathy.

11. Research strongly suggests that violence is embedded in our nature and genetic profile. This reality is an important conversation that should be happening between parents, teachers, adults, grandparents, community leaders, and youth. Remember, children see difference at a very early age and studies show that they are prefer individuals who treat other similar to themselves well and are okay with others harming others that are dissimilar (see p. 38 - 39).

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12. Finally, research shows that contemplative practices such as mindfulness meditation can have dramatic effects on reducing violence. Research shows that different networks and neurochemicals in the brain can increase or diminish violence. The Orbital Frontal Cortex, including the Ventral medial Prefrontal Cortex (vmPFC), Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (dlPFC), Insula and Amygdala are all associated with fear, anxiety, aggression, and violence.

Neurochemicals such as are serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, and testosterone are also implicated with violence and aggression. A large body of research on mindfulness meditation shows that mindfulness practices can positively change key brain areas and neurochemicals leading to increased feelings of positivity, calm, happiness, and compassion. It also decreases feelings of anxiety, depression, fear, and anger. Recent research shows that mindfulness can decrease race bias (Lueke and Gibson, 2014), which has many implications for reducing the interracial violence against Native women. Mindfulness approaches should be implemented to prevent, treat, and heal violence against Native women, children, and communities.

III. METHODS Analyzing the work and activities of the projects in a manner that would steer as much as possible away from a colonized, positivistic, interrogatory method that focuses on the limitations, weaknesses, and what’s gone wrong with the projects, is the main goal of this research. Without question colonialism and settler colonialism have deliberately marginalized and harshly judged all of what is right with Indigenous cultures by focusing on what is wrong and lacking according to a western standard paradigm – and then attempted to fix or correct it. An Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach strongly departs from this methodological approach and was, therefore, used to document the positive core of progress, accomplishments, strengths, and challenges of the seven Alaska Native Women’s-Led Violence Prevention projects.

A. What is Appreciative Inquiry?

Appreciate Inquiry (AI) is an approach that has been used in many different organizational, individual, group, and community development contexts. Appreciate Inquiry scholars, Stavos, Godwin, and Cooperrider (2015) state that: “At its heart, AI is about the search for the best in people, their organizations, 43

and the strengths-filled, opportunity-rich world around them. AI is not so much a shift in the methods and models of organizational change, but AI is a fundamental shift in the overall perspective taken throughout the entire change process to ‘see’ the wholeness of the human system and to “inquire” into that system’s strengths, possibilities, and successes.”

AI researcher, consultant, and author Jackie Kelm (2011) says that AI is used to transform organizations by focusing on what’s right, positive, and what works within the organization rather than what’s wrong or broken. As a tool for problem solving Kelm says AI goes beyond fixing the problem. You engage in transforming a situation to settle on an outcome that opens new possibilities and goes far beyond fixing the problem.

Bliss Brown (2009, p. 1) the founder and president of the organization Imagine Chicago and AI innovator says AI: Has been used worldwide to cultivate hope, build capacity, unleash collective appreciation and imagination, and bring about positive change.

It is based upon the simple idea that human beings move in the direction of what we of what we ask about…when groups study exalted human values and achievements, like peak experiences, best practices, and worthy accomplishments, these phenomena tend to flourish.

David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney (2005, p. 2) two AI experts suggest a definition of AI that mirrors the above: “Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system ‘life’ when it is most effective and capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to heighten positive potential. It mobilizes inquiry through crafting an “unconditional positive question’ often involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people.”

A major evaluative tenet that guides this approach is that when the system under review understands what is working, it can use this knowledge to guide its activities and positively influence its future. Bliss Browne states that AI “deliberately asks positive questions around affirmative topics to ignite constructive dialogue and inspired action within organizations and 44

communities.”

Appreciative Inquiry experts Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom (2003, p. 1) state “Appreciative Inquiry is the study and exploration of what gives life to human systems as they function at their best. This approach to personal change and organization change is based on the assumption that questions or dialogue about strengths, successes, values, hopes, and dreams are themselves transformational.” They suggest that following beliefs about human nature and organizing are the “foundations for Appreciative Inquiry:” •

People individually and collectively have unique gifts, skills, and contributions to bring life;

•

Organizations are human social systems, sources of unlimited relational capacity, created and lived in language;

•

The images we hold of the future are socially created and once articulated, serve to guide individuals and collective actions;

•

Through human communication (inquiry and dialogue) people shift their attention and actions away from problem analysis to lift up worthy ideas and productive possibilities for the future.

The nature, philosophy, and procedures embedded within of AI approach have proved to be an important in the documenting of the progress, accomplishments, strengths, and positive changes of the seven ANW projects in this study. They have as Brown (2009) suggests, implemented “community innovation methods that evoke stories, and affirm and compel groups of people to envision positive images of the future grounded in the best of the past, have the greatest potential to produce deep and sustaining change and inspire collective action.” As we will soon see, the ANW projects have shared stories, engaged in work to create change and increase community connectedness, and have envisioned positive futures that they believe are possible through the incorporation the traditional wisdom, beliefs, and values of their cultural past and present.

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B. The 4-D AI model This evaluation incorporated the classic 4-D Appreciative Inquiry model as an analytical tool to assess how the projects had measured their progress, recorded their accomplishments, found their strengths, and met their challenges. In her article, “What is Appreciative Inquiry?�

Brown (2009) shares the classic 4-D cycle basic model of Appreciative Inquiry that is used to analyze and document four different domains which tell of the experiences of the organization: (1) discovery (valuing); (2) dream (envisioning); (3) design (through dialogue); and (4) destiny (co-constructing the future). The following diagram is frequently used to illustrate this model.

Appreciative Inquiry scholar Edwin C. Thomas (2006, pp. 3-4) provides an excellent narrative of each of the phases of the 4-D Model:

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1. Discovery: The Discovery phase is a diligent and extensive search to understand the “best of what is” and “what has been.” It begins with a collaborative act of crafting appreciative interview questions and constructing and an appreciative interview guide. Appreciative interview questions are written as affirmative probes into an organization’s positive core, in the topic areas selected. They are written to generate stories, to enrich the images and inner dialogue within the organization, and to bring the positive core more fully into focus.

2. Dream: The Dream phase is an energizing exploration of “what might be”: a time for people to explore their hopes and dreams for their work, their working relationships, their organization, and the world at large. It is a time for groups of people to engage in thinking big, and thinking out of the boundaries of what has been in the past. The intent of the Dream phase is to identify and spread generative, affirmative and hopeful images of the future.

3. Design: The Design phase involves making choices about “what should be” within the organization or system. It is a conscious re-creation or transformation, through which such things as systems, structures, strategies, processes and images will become more fully aligned with the organization’s positive past (Discovery) and highest potential (Dream).

4. Destiny: The Destiny phase initiates a series of inspired actions that support ongoing learning and innovation—or “what will be.” Since the entire 4-D cycle provides an open forum for employees to contribute and step forward in the service of the organization, change occurs in all phases of an appreciative inquiry process. The Destiny phase, however, focuses specifically on personal and organizational commitments and paths forward which result in changes in organizational systems, structure, processes or procedures.

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Positive Core: At the center of the model is the Positive Core. It consists of attributes such as strengths, talents, capacities, knowledge, creativity, resilience, wisdom, skills, and the resources of the organization and individuals (Thomas, 2006). The assumption is that these attributes are available and can be called upon to build capacity, unleash imagination, and empower the organization and the lives that it touches (Brown, 2009).

Positive Core of Elements:

Resilience

Creativity

Wisdom

Knowledge

Skills

Capacities

Resources

Strengths

Talents

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Positive Core of Native Organizations, Workers, and Communities: What makes up the elements of the positive core of Native organizations, workers, and communities? In a study of ten tribally-based non-profit organizations in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions of the United States, Yellow Bird (2015) found that seven themes emerged as important attributes within the positive core of these projects: (1) traditions of the tribal community; (2) tribal identity; (3) culture and tribal language; (4) positive thinking and actions; (5) knowledge, presence, and guidance of tribal elders; (6) spirituality; and (7) holistic beliefs and lifestyle:

Positive Core of Native Organizations, Workers, and Communities

Cultural Traditions

Holism

Identity

Culture and Language

Spirituality

Tribal Elders

Positivity

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C. The Questions of this Study: To employ the 4-D Appreciate Inquiry approach in this study the evaluator chose nine questions to illuminate the four phases of the model. Some of the projects answered some of the questions in combination with the other questions, which appears in the interview section as fewer (or shorter) responses. However, sufficient data was provided to assess each of the phases for each of the projects. There were times when the respondents gave answers that moved between and combined the different phases of the model. This was not a significant concern or threat to the analysis. To deal with this issue, the evaluator selected the concepts, phrases, and words from the interview that most closely fitted a particular phase of the model and inserted them into that phase during the analysis. The average time the project staff spent answering the questions was approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes: Question

Phase

Discovery 1. (a). How did this project come about?

(Community need/Organizational (b). Why was it necessary? and Cultural Probe) 2. To accomplish your work, how does your project draw upon the best of what has been or is in your organization and community?

3. (a). Why did you get involved and what makes you stay? (b). What is important about what you do and what do love most about the work?

4. When your organization has been operating at its best what have been the best, most inspiring, and creative moments and accomplishments of your project?

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Discovery (Positive Core Probe of the Organization and Community) Discovery (Positive Core Probe of the Organizational and Staff) Discovery Exploring Life Giving Forces (LGFs) of the Organization

5. (a). Thinking big, outside the circle/box, what is the dream of the organization (What might be)? (b). How might this come about and how would you communicate this dream to others?

7. What do you appreciate most about those that they work with and what do they appreciate most about you?

6. (a). What are some of the strengths, skills, and gifts of the people in the organization? (b) What are the strengths of the organization? (c) What are some of the strengths and gifts of the community?

7) (a) What do you feel are the most important strategies and practices of your project? (b) How do they serve to empower the community? (c) What has your community appreciated most about what you do?

8. What positive images do you and your organization envision for the future of your work and the people you serve?

Dream (What Might Be Probe: Hopes, Dreams, Thinking big)

Dream (What Might Be Probe: Hopes, Dreams, thinking big, Exploring working relationships) Design.

(What Should Be; Transforming Systems, Structures, Strategies, Processes, and Images)

Design (What Should Be, Transforming Systems, Structures, Strategies, Processes, and Images)

Destiny (What Will Be: what are the personal and organizational commitments that will make changes in the organization happen) Destiny

9. (a). What commitments do you and your organization have to make sure you are on the right path that will lead to positive changes in the organization and your community?

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(What Will Be: what are the personal and organizational commitments that will make changes in the organization happen)

IV.

Narratives of Strength, Building Capacity, and Community Empowerment “Leading change is all about strengths. It has nothing to do with weaknesses.”

-- David Cooperrider This section shares the thoughts, ideas, and experiences of the each of the seven projects

as they reflect on and identify the positive core aspects of their programs, staff, and community.

Program staff openly discussed the lessons they learned, as well as the resources, capacities, hopes, and imagination that they were able to tap into in order to meet their challenges, evaluate their progress, appreciate their accomplishments, and identify their strengths.

The stories illuminate a number of important themes that the respondents felt were instrumental to driving the success of the projects and the many transformative moments with the community: traditional practices – including using Indigenous values, language, ethics, and cultural beliefs; being positive, honest, generous, using prayer, and having gratitude; sharing personal experience, a deep personal commitment to the work, love for their people, and respect for the culture; the use of Elders for teaching and guiding younger people; using religious and spiritual beliefs to maintain hope and resilience; and storytelling to recount the positive past of the people. (A complete list for each project is provided in the appendices).

Following each narrative, the Appreciative Inquiry analysis uses the 4-D cycle to frame the responses that are representative of each phase of the model (Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny). The text that used to illuminate each phase is extracted from each project’s narratives that were provided to answer each question. The information is presented in a in italicized quotes. This information is further broken down into tables in the appendix of this report.

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The order of the projects was simply based upon the availability of each when the interviews were being carried out. Some of the responses of the projects are not as lengthy as others since the timing of the interviews and availability of the interviewees was an issue.

However, the evaluator felt enough data was collected in each interview to do an adequate assessment. In addition, the evaluator felt it was important to not press for additional information during the period of availability and, instead, preferred to conduct interviews that respected project staff time which seemed to lead to a more natural and open flow of sharing – which is consistent with an Appreciative Inquiry approach.

The order of interviewees is as follows: (1) Hoonah Indian Association; (2) Arctic Winds Healing Winds; (3) Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center; (4) Healing Native Hearts Coalition; (5) United Tribes of Bristol Bay; (6) Emmonak Women’s Shelter; and (7) Yup’ik Women’s Coalition. One other project was scheduled to be interviewed for this study. However, timing and staff obligations and availability did not make this possible. The names of the interviewees are listed alongside the name of each project. Names are in bold lettering when there is more than one subject answering a question.

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Hoonah Indian Association

Interviewees: Darlene See & Amelia Wilson Tlagoonks 1. How did this work come about? And why was it necessary?

Darlene: I had been previously working on using art programs with adult survivors of violence. I attended a workshop with the 7th Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples and asked them if we could apply for the Native Women’s Initiative grant. I received information about the grant and decided to apply. Our group had limited funding, so I talked with another colleague about the grant and we decided that we wanted to do something with “Raven’s-Fal Weave,” which is one of the oldest forms of weaving in our community. Weaving in this way requires one to be mindful of the importance of being in the moment, and not to bring trauma into in the weaving; it’s something that is very healing. A non-Native brought this artform back from Russia to the Native women.

An important factor for applying for the grant was that we began to notice the terrible statistics of violence against women and saw a lot of abuse, many survivors, and knew about the depth and seriousness of the scars that were being carried. We could relate to it all and remembered that some of the best healing moments in our work were with women. So, we held discussions with people that were going to be involved in this work and about what needed to be talked about and decided that this project would be necessary in order to help begin addressing and healing the effects of violence against women in our community.

One of the motivating factors was that a fire in Hoonah burned up all lot of treasured items, including the weaving that had been done, which was a terrible loss for our community.

For a long time, past colonization and trauma made it so that no one was weaving and more and

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more we believed that it would be a healing experience for women who would start weaving again.

Amelia: I got involved because I believed that weaving would be an important part of the healing that women needed. The title of the project “Strength for Women” was about how to literally use “weaving” as the strength of the project. What we were doing was important because it created a space that did not exist; a space that would bring women together to connect, gather, and weave.

Life is busy and demanding and we believed that what we would do would help to create an opportunity for women’s healing. I felt a strong connection with women and the gatherings built better relationships and support and the arts served as conduit to help healing.

Weaving offered the use of our first traditional art form that gave participants in our program a sense of accomplishment as they created beautiful art. As they weaved, they gained the strength to discuss and reclaim that which was taken away from them. Once we invited a domestic violence worker to group to speak about violence and prevention, which was important for many of the women to hear. A lot of women in the community didn’t know the weaving was happening, but as word continued to grow and they started linking up with one another, participation and interest began to grow. The art that was created was symbolic of the treasure that was inside each of the women that were weaving. As interest grew, we took a trip to the “Tribal House,” which is a symbolic place that is alive and in our original homelands. A lot of special things happened when people went there. The weaving that was being done created the space and a safe environment where women could share deep, personal stories. It was not possible before. We made sure that the language we spoke was both Tlingit and English.

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2. To accomplish your work, how does your project draw upon the best of

what has been or is in your organization and community?

Our use of arts as an approach to healing violence has been successful. Weaving is a traditional art form that we understand and can use to do our work. Our people are weavers; it is an important part of who we are. In our experience, other approaches to healing violence have been less successful and have not always used traditional approaches. We combined art with traditional language and traditions; we ate together, laughed together, and bonded over fresh, healthy foods, and traditional foods. Respected elders with a lot of life knowledge who were fluent in tribal language and traditions were brought in to help teach the participants about language and life.

Amelia: There was a lot of humor and enjoyment that took place as women interacted with the elders and learned new things about language and traditional ways. All of what we were doing made it a very supportive and enjoyable environment. What we were doing made it so that women could more easily feel the trust and support and could articulate what had happened to them. We came to the tribal house which was symbolically important, which is not always open to all, but Darlene had access to it and is connected to those elders that watch over it.

3. (a). Why did you get involved and what makes you stay? (b). What is important about what you do and what do love most about the work Darlene: One of the things was that we believe is that culture and being together can be healing. We wanted to be involved and to see more traditional healthy women weaving in the community so that it would catch on. Amelia: It opened my eyes and strengthened me and boosted my self-esteem. I see what weaving it can do to create healing and I wanted to pass it onto others, so they get can the benefits. For me, it is an opportunity to learn, create, and see change happen. (b). We love humor and time together; it is healing. Eating and creating together, creating beautiful, meaningful art was important. We bonded and formed deep

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connections with one another: a sisterhood. We know that the “ancestors are with us, watching over us and we feel them. We loved laughing and enjoyed the sacred space.”

4. When your organization has been operating at its best what have been the best, most inspiring, and creative moments and accomplishments of your project?

Darlene: For me, it was seeing a particular weaver, weaving a bag for sister who was a survivor of violence. At was at that moment that it all fell into place for me. I watched and listened as she shared deep details as she weaved. I could see that she was feeling so good to share her story. Before she had a secret, and as she weaved, she suddenly became freed from the past and began to tell all that had happened to her. All the weight was lifted off her shoulders. Her father, whom she loved and had lost, was one of her main protectors. She used some of her father’s shirt as the lining in her weaving as a way to remember that he would always be there for her.

Amelia: The stories that unfolded in the artwork were unique from each woman.

There was great depth and meaning. One participant had a father who couldn’t afford the raven’s tail weave, due to the expense. She worked and worked on completing the Raven’s shawl for him. After some time and a lot of hard work she finished and gave him the blanket and then brought a picture of him dressed in the blanket with a big, beautiful smile. The Raven’s shawl is very limited and expensive to create, but now women participating in the project were able to create them and I was inspired by their participation and dedication. The issues that some of the participants were dealing with ranged from cancer to substance abuse. They felt disconnected and it was very inspiring for them to reconnect to culture.

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5. (a). Thinking big, outside the circle/box, what is the dream of the organization (What might be)? b). How might this come about and how would you communicate this dream to others?

Amelia: (a) To not be isolated or to be one-time experience or project. We have seen what happens when you bring people together and how the connections, activities, and relationships bring about change and healing. We want to keep going and create our own weaver’s guild that would be highly inclusive and have the same initiatives. We want to be able to purchase materials and make a place to keep women learning. We have dreamed of creating a healing robe that is made by our women’s classes that would represent the strength we have to heal ourselves and the successive generations of our people. It takes many. The cost to do something like this would be high but worth it. Wearing a robe is a sign of prestige. It brings about respect and status of those wearing it and it is revered by the people. Such a healing robe would be used for healing events; a women’s robe would be for healing women and it would be a powerful symbol and statement.

Darlene: (b) Creating more weavers, who get more experience, learn more techniques, experience greater healing, and to develop skills that will help the community dream about all the possibilities. Our community has been here for thousands of years, we have a strong history of being at the forefront of having skills and craftsmanship in the arts, strength from our ancestors, and stories of survival in our history. We are matrilineal society, and in the past, our women have been resilient and strong. We can regain that strength. We survived hardships, wars, and glaciers that moved as fast as a dog runs. When men were away women had to step up. Men went hunting and to war. During difficult times, women took over. Women were part of political system, and most women were shamans, a very revered position in society.

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6. What do you appreciate most about those that you work with and what do they appreciate about you?

Amelia: Darlene has a vision and makes into reality with a lot of hard work, connecting people, figuring things out, and using her good relationships that she has with others. She made things happen and worked for success. She has skills to teach us; skills we did not know about and she is a good cook (laughs).

Darlene: I appreciate Amelia’s encouraging optimism and sense of hope. Amelia got hired into Hoonah Heritage Foundation (HHF) in a leadership position. She built linkages between HHF and Ravens and was involved in networking and strengthening partnerships.

Amelia stood her ground. Amelia’s gift was to be really clear about staying in the community.

She provided the effective work that should be in the community.

7. What do you feel are the most important strategies and practices of your project? (b) How do they serve to empower the community? (c) What has your community appreciated most about what you do?

Darlene: Working in the community to reconnect people with what we used to know and how we used to live. This takes building the appropriate cultural protocols in the community that can reorganize and re-empower. We have had traditional practices that have been used and been here before; they’ve have been used for thousands of years and are still available to us.

Today, people are still trying to connect to the practices and do potlatches, ceremonies, and follow traditions. But the protocols that go with them are not fully understood and connected, and we are trying to help in our own way to do that. I think people appreciate what we are doing with our work. We believe that appropriate prayer and actions will happen when things come together; positive things will happen in the right time.

Amelia: We believe that strong and positive motivation of the women will help lift up the men so that they can change. As women, we need to remain strong to lift them up.

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8 and 9 What positive images do you and your organization envision for the future of your work and the people you serve? What commitments do you and your organization have to make sure you are the right path that will lead to positive changes in the organization and community?

Amelia: We see ourselves as committed to work together as organization to rebuild bridges and reestablish good will, promote healing through our work, and helping to revive what is necessary to heal. We are committed to work with all people. When we see people gathering, connecting, telling their stories, creating, and healing and growing, we know we are on a positive path.

Darlene: I think we will know we are on the right path to positive change when it becomes clear to our community and board members that change is happening and we have funding that is self-sustaining.

Applying the Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle I. Discovery: The Discovery phase is a search to understand the “best of what is” and “what has been.” It begins with a collaborative act of crafting appreciative interview questions and constructing an appreciative interview guide.

Appreciative interview questions are written as affirmative probes into an organization’s positive core, in the topic areas selected. They are written to generate stories, to enrich the images and inner dialogue within the organization, and to bring the positive core more fully into focus.

The discovery of the community needs of the project centered on an understanding of the toll that violence against women was taking, and a belief in the value, strength, and healing capacities and wisdom of time-tested cultural practices. Staff had convincing insights about how the introduction, organization, and return of traditional weaving circles in a program could serve

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to attend to the traumas of their participants. They believed and discovered that those that took part in this traditional art form would have cathartic, healing experiences:

“We began to notice the terrible statistics of violence against women and saw a lot of abuse, many survivors, and knew about the depth and seriousness of the scars that were being carried; we could relate to it all. We wanted to do something with ‘Raven’s-Fal Weave,’ which is one of the oldest forms of weaving in our community.

“Weaving offered the use of our first traditional art form that gave participants in our program a sense of accomplishment as they created beautiful art. As they weaved, they gained the strength to discuss and reclaim that which was taken away from them.”

For Darlene and Amelia, drawing on the positive core of what is best in their community meant understanding who their community truly is and how the value of bringing survivors together, using traditional approaches, required the skills of insight:

“Our people are weavers; it is important part of who we are. In our experience, other approaches to healing violence have been less successful and have not always used traditional approaches. We combined art with traditional language and traditions; we ate together, laughed together, and bonded over stories, fresh healthy foods, and traditional foods…We came to the ‘tribal house’ which was symbolically important.”

Darlene and Amelia have learned that communities have strengths and resources that can be built upon. Being involved and staying in the community to do this work was healing for the staff and it created a strong connection to the past. There is a enduring belief that culture is sacred, healing, creates healthy connections, and brings about empowering links to the past:

“We believe that culture and being together can be healing. We wanted to be involved and to see more traditional, healthy women weaving in the community.

We bonded and formed deep connections with one another: a sisterhood (laughing). We know that the ancestors are with us, watching over us and we feel them. We loved laughing and enjoying the sacred space.”

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The discovery of “life-giving forces of the organization,” happened as the staff observed the depth of healing that occurred with the weaving and how it gave birth to creative moments that bridged deep emotional gaps in the lives of participants and their families.

II. Dream: The Dream phase is an energizing exploration of “what might be”: a time for people to explore their hopes and dreams for their work, their working relationships, their organization, and the world at large. It is a time for groups of people to engage in thinking big and thinking out of the boundaries of what has been in the past. The intent of the Dream phase is to identify and spread generative, affirmative and hopeful images of the future To dream is to envision what might be. Hopes blossom when one can think big and communicate it to others. A part of the dream is recalling the resilience, strengths, symbols, and circumstances that are connected to the people, especially the women, that insured survival and growth during challenging times:

Amelia: “We want to keep going and create our own weaver’s guild that would be highly inclusive…we have dreamed of creating a healing robe that is made by our women’s classes that would represent the strength we have to heal ourselves and the successive generations of people. Wearing a robe is a sign of prestige.”

Darlene: “Our community has been here for thousands of years, we have a

strong history of being at the forefront of having skills and craftsmanship in the arts, strength from our ancestors, and stories of survival in our history. We are a matrilineal society and, in the past, our women have been resilient and strong. We can regain that strength. During difficult times women took over; women were part of a political system, and most women were shamans, a very revered position in society.”

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III. Design: The Design phase involves making choices about “what should be” within the organization or system. It is a conscious re-creation or transformation, through which such things as systems, structures, strategies, processes and images will become more fully aligned with the organization’s positive past (Discovery) and highest potential (Dream).

Transformation takes place in stages through the use of different strategies and processes.

Envisioning the changes depends upon the synchronous flow of the work between individuals.

Appreciation for the skills, talents, positivity, commitments, and social capital of colleagues is important to the organization’s structures, processes, and pursuit of change: Darlene: I appreciate Amelia’s encouraging optimism and sense of hope

and networking to strengthen partnerships. Her gift was to be really clear about staying in the community.”

Amelia: Darlene has a vision and makes into reality with a lot of hard work,

connecting people, figuring things out, and using her good relationships that she has with others.”

IV. Destiny: The Destiny phase initiates a series of inspired actions that support ongoing learning and innovation—or “what will be.” The Destiny phase, however, focuses specifically on personal and organizational commitments and paths forward which result in changes in organizational systems, structure, processes or procedures.

Strategies of change include commitment to change, the skill of reconnecting important parts of the system, and the knowledge that things may only emerge in their own time: Darlene: “Working in the community to reconnect people with what we used

to know and how we used to live is important. This takes building the appropriate cultural protocols in the community that can recognize and re-empower. I think people appreciate what we are doing with our work. We believe that appropriate prayer and actions will happen when things come together; positive things will happen at the right time.”

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An important aspect of the destiny of the project is that, despite that men have been the major perpetrators of violence, staff are committed to using their skills, talents, and experience to bring about healing for Native men.

Amelia: “Strong and positive motivation of the women will help lift up the men

so that they can change. As women, we need to remain strong to lift them up.�

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Arctic Winds Healing Winds

Interviewees: Elise Boudreau and Tami Truett Jerue 1. How did this work come about? And why was it necessary?

The name of our project tells of the mission of our organization. The “Arctic” signifies the speaking of truth; it’s about the importance of telling the story. The meaning of “Winds” is about healing. When we speak the truth, we heal. It comes from the Yup’ik way of being, our personal experience, and that of others we know. Elise: I am a survivor of abuse. I had to arrive at a place in my life when I stopped blaming myself and realized that what had happened to me was not my fault. I was able to work with other survivors and found that many others also blame themselves for the violence they experienced; I wanted to change that. So, I began by working on a film. I was able to meet with a trauma expert out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and through this connection I was able to go to the Teleos Institute.4 There I learned of noble purpose and the idea of our non-profit developed from this connection. I collaborated with two other programs to create a program for 3-day sessions that focused on the belief that solutions for our social ills come from within each of us. We have change agents that focus their work on addressing many difficult social ills. We get a picture of what’s going with people and the understanding of how to address the challenges. It started with a leadership project that was sponsored by 7th Generation fund for Indigenous Peoples. We were guided by the belief that it is necessary for us to address ills from within and not from the outside.

2. To accomplish your work, how does your project draw upon the best of the what has been or is in your organization and community?

In order to accomplish what we were doing, we organized a leadership summit that brought six groups together at Arctic Winds Healing Winds (AWHW). During the meetings they

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focused on developing and implemented change projects in their communities. For instance, a group called Village Fairbanks worked on a project for tobacco cessation and cultural ways of knowing; Another group worked on suicide prevention posters and meeting the needs identified within the community; Another group worked on bullying; and another worked on addressing opioid use.

Our organization, AWHW, focused upon collaborations with other communities and working on growing our own leadership. We developed working relationships with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the Tanana Chief’s Conference, and with other Native organizations. Cooperation in funding, training faculty members from within the community, and including other change agents were priorities.

3. (a) Why did you get involved and what makes you stay? (b) What is important about what you do and what do you love most about the work? (a). Elise: I believe that healing from trauma is possible. We’re all leaders and have solutions and personal experience dealing with the challenges of trauma.” Tami: It’s been my dream to work with my people. I have worked with victim advocates which helped me understand the importance of the work. I appreciate what they/we do. I’m also supporting Elise in the work and I have trained to be a facilitator so I can continue this work. (b). Elise: What’s most important is to have the opportunity to build community with the people that participate in the groups, and to help them understand what the social ills are in the community and how they affect people. I appreciate it when they get the ‘Aha moment’ and we see it and we know that change is beginning to happen. Tami: I believe that it is helping people to transform themselves: this kind of approach “actually works.” I believe that everyone is a leader and can create change.

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4. When your organization has been operating at its best what have been the best, most inspiring, and creative moments and accomplishments of your project?

Elsie: One of the most inspiring moments was watching this lady, Mary,5 transform. She had a soft, quiet voice like a kitten; after the training she had a voice like a lion. Her inspiration and motivation was learning about emotional intelligence and the processes of the project. Before finding her voice, she had been going to meetings and didn’t speak up and was not balanced, and not able to articulate clearly what she wanted to share, but she was hanging in there. Her difficulties in expressing herself were due to the trauma she had experienced. As we went along, she developed courage and found her voice and was able to express what she needed to. She was able to voice that she was sexually abused as a child and was able to say it that wasn’t my fault.

She became a trainer despite all of this and she is amazing. Another inspiration was using the film, “Celebrate What is Right with the World (http://celebratewhatsright.com/film).

5. (a) Thinking big, outside the circle/box, what is the dream of the organization (What might be)? (b) How might this come about and how would you communicate this dream to others?

Elsie: We have a need for funding to support what we do. There is no shortage of people interested in the work we are doing. We would like to take our work to a philanthropist and show them that it works and that if they saw the success that is happening they would fund our project.

Tami: There is so much need for more training and it is expensive to pay for what we are doing. The costs for airfare, food, lodging, materials, facilitators, participants, faculty fees, and space are very expensive. We thank the 7th Generation Fund and are grateful for the support and we want to share with other philanthropists what we are doing so we can continue.

5

This not the subject’s real name.

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6. What do you appreciate most about those you work with and what do they appreciate about you?

Elsie: The faculty we work with are intelligence. They know how to listen, fill-in, and are well-accepted by the villagers. They are knowledgeable and have world-wide experience. They put people at ease, and are humble, respectful, and understanding. We appreciate our facilitators. They are excited, enthusiastic, energized, and love what they are doing. They love their communities and have lots of hope for them. The people from the villages are also open, caring, and embracing. They want to make a difference and they want to change.

Tami: There is an appreciation expressed by the Rez (Reservation) for the work that we do; they are thankful for the project and for Elsie speaking her truth.

7. (a). What do you feel are the most important strategies and practices of your project? (b). How do they serve to empower the community? (c). What has your community appreciated most about what you do? (a). The most important strategies of our program are open, inviting collaborations with community and our work with different groups such as the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and Tanana Chiefs Conference; (b) Our work helps to build and grow leaders that can give back to the community; (c) We feel that the community appreciates the collaboration and trainings we offer and the growing of our own leadership.

8 and 9. (a) What positive images do you and your organization envision for the future of your work and the people you serve? (b) What commitments do you and your organization have to make sure you are on the right path that will lead to positive changes in the organization and community? (a) We want to keep doing this work and show that we are committed to what we are doing.

It is working. We want to tell about what we are doing. It’s about our people getting the right information; (b). We know who we are and we know what that needs to be done and will continue to do this work; A positive image of the work we are doing that comes to mind is the

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creation of a community made quilt from our project work – a project from a village that was featured at a summit that was held to show the change and transformation of the people in that village. We envision that participation in the summit would be part of the graduation requirement of our program, and the cost of the quilt would have to be affordable. We know we would be on the right path when the dignitaries and village leaders come in and attend the graduation. And, if we could get letters from our people that would say that they need this project in our villages we would know we are on the right path.

Applying the Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle I. Discovery: The Discovery phase is a search to understand the “best of what is”

and “what has been.” It begins with a collaborative act of crafting appreciative interview questions and constructing an appreciative interview guide.

Appreciative interview questions are written as affirmative probes into an organization’s positive core, in the topic areas selected. They are written to generate stories, to enrich the images and inner dialogue within the organization, and to bring the positive core more fully into focus The discovery of community needs and the value of culture are apparent in the naming of this project (AWHW), which is derived from a traditional Yup’ik experience and an understanding of how one can heal through the re-telling and remembering of place and event.

Valuing place, time, and experience, also involves connecting personal insights to one’s truth, and an understanding of how that truth can blossom into collective knowledge and be passed among survivors of violence for the purpose of change:

The “Arctic” signifies the speaking of truth; it’s about the importance of telling the story. The meaning of “Winds” is about healing. When we speak the truth, we heal. It comes from the Yup’ik way of being, our personal experience, and that of others we know. I am a survivor of abuse. I had to arrive at a place in my life when I stopped blaming myself and realized that what had happened 69

to me was not my fault. I was able to work with other survivors and found that many others also blame themselves for the violence they experienced; I wanted to change that.

As it is with humans, when times are challenging, we often forget the capacities that we each have. Thus, a rediscovery and a vision of the strength of human nature is critical. As is the case in this project’s experience, sometimes it takes an outside force and an event to help one remember the positive core of inherent resilience that humans have for healing trauma. It must be done deliberately.

We get picture of what’s going with people and the understanding of how to address the challenges. It started with a leadership project that was sponsored by 7th Generation fund for Indigenous Peoples. We were guided by the belief that it is necessary for us to address ills from within and not from the outside.

To accomplish their work AWHW focused on reconstituting the building of leaders to the work in the communities they worked with. By inviting talented, motivated, and intelligent individuals, they drew upon the individual and collective talent of the groups they worked with so that they could holistically address a number of challenges that were connected to violence, abuse, and compromised emotional and physical health:

We organized a leadership summit that brought six groups together. They focused on developing and implemented change projects in their communities.

One group worked on a project for tobacco cessation and cultural ways of knowing; Another worked on suicide prevention posters and meeting the needs identified within the community; still another group worked on bullying; and another worked on addressing opioid use. Arctic Winds focused upon collaboration with other communities, working on growing our own leadership.

The discovery of positive core of the staff of AWHW is deeply embodied in a strong belief that survivors of abuse have the tools of resilience to recover from their experience. One must not only believe this but must also be able to hone-in on the significance of how others have healed and take what they learn from that recovery process and apply it in their own work.

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Elise: I believe that healing from trauma is possible. We’re all leaders and

have solutions and personal experience dealing with the challenges of trauma.”

Tami: It’s been my dream to work with my people. I have worked with

victim advocates which helped me understand the importance of the work.

I appreciate what they/we do. I’m also supporting Elise in the work…

AWHW provided a safe, open environment and training that inspired individuals to dig deep in their quest for healing. In this particular case the transformation of an individual who was suffering from a previous trauma was apparent:

Elsie: I was watching this lady, Mary transform. She had a soft, quiet voice like a kitten; after the training she had a voice like a lion. Before finding her voice, she had been going to meetings and didn’t speak up and…not able to articulate clearly what she wanted to share, but she was hanging in there.

Her difficulties in expressing herself were due to the trauma she had experienced.

As we went along, she developed courage and found her voice and was able to express what she needed to.

II. Dream: The Dream phase is an energizing exploration of “what might be”: a time for people to explore their hopes and dreams for their work, their working relationships, their organization, and the world at large. It is a time for groups of people to engage in thinking big and thinking out of the boundaries of what has been in the past. The intent of the Dream phase is to identify and spread generative, affirmative and hopeful images of the future A website called “Spark of Hope” asks us to consider that pragmatism and dreaming are not mutually exclusive endeavors and that one can be a pragmatic dreamer: “Many people give up too quickly on their dreams, under the guise of being pragmatic. Not that pragmatism is wrong, but it must never be taken out of context. Pragmatism is not an escape hatch for avoiding the hard work dream-making requires. It is an essential dream-making process, which helps us recognize what is important, worthwhile, and fulfilling about our dreams. It is pragmatism that separates the fanciful from the doable, then plans out the best available route to success (dream 71

realization).6” Such is the case of AWHW. For this project, funding to support something that they’ve already dreamed and want to continue requires finding the right ears to listen to their successes.

Elsie: We have a need for funding to support what we do. There is no shortage of people interested in the work we are doing. We would like to take our work to a philanthropist and show them that it works and that if they saw the success that is happening, they would fund our project 3. What do you appreciate most about those you work with and what do they appreciate about you?

Exploring existing relationships and how they support the work and make dreams possible is important and must be appreciated by pointing out what key attributes are involved:

The faculty we work with are intelligence. They know how to listen, fill-in, and are well-accepted by the villagers. They are knowledgeable and have world-wide experience. They are excited, enthusiastic, energized, and love what they are doing. They love their communities and have lots of hope for them III. Design: The Design phase involves making choices about “what should be” within the organization or system. It is a conscious re-creation or transformation, through which such things as systems, structures, strategies, processes and images will become more fully aligned with the organization’s positive past (Discovery) and highest potential (Dream).

AWHW has designed itself by a consistent and unfettered interface of collaborative work with like minds to increase support and appreciation from those that they serve. Transformation happens when AWHW contributes to the capacity building of their own organic leadership:

Inviting collaborations with community and our work with different groups helps to build and grow leaders that can give back to the community; We feel that the community appreciates the collaboration and trainings we offer, and the growing of our own leadership.

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Spark. Be a Pragmatic Dreamer. Spark of Hope. https://www.sparkofhope.net/be-a-pragmatic-dreamer/

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IV. Destiny: The Destiny phase initiates a series of inspired actions that support ongoing learning and innovation—or “what will be.” Since the entire 4-D cycle provides an open forum for employees to contribute and step forward in the service of the organization, change occurs in all phases of an appreciative inquiry process. The Destiny phase, however, focuses specifically on personal and organizational commitments and paths forward which result in changes in organizational systems, structure, processes or procedures.

AWHW has envisioned the co-constructing a future through the metaphor of a quilt that is representative of the commitments that they have about change in the community and organization. For them, the positive image is embedded in the creation of that quilt and what it represents: the meaning of the coordination of sacred colors and symbols; and the strengthening of the seams of the community by strong interlaced stitching which represents the education and graduation of individual community members from their leadership program:

A positive image of the work we are doing that comes to mind is the creation of a community made quilt from our project work – a project from a village that was featured at a summit that was held to show the change and transformation of the people in that village. We envision that participation in the summit would be part of the graduation requirement, and the cost of the quilt would have to be affordable. We know we would be on the right path when the dignitaries and village leaders come in and attend the graduation.

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Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center Interviewee: Tami Truett Jerue, Director 1. How did this work come about? And why was it necessary?

Our work came about as the result of the “Thriving Women’s Initiative Alaska” grant.

We received the training and technical assistance necessary to pull things together to apply. We are aware of the amount of sexual violence, sex trafficking of women, and there are 229 tribes in the state, and combined they have the highest rates of sexual violence. It makes sense that there are native advocates to address these concerns, so we needed a resource center to take on these tribal issues; to work together with tribes to solve these problems.

2. To accomplish your work, how does your project draw upon the best of the what has been or is in your organization and community?

We are building a new coalition that is addressing sexual violence. One way is through raising awareness about violence through a performance using a play that is customized to our situation in Alaska. We brought in actors, including Alaska actors that would perform, educate, and raise important issues in a non-threatening way. People don’t understand the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and we wanted to raise awareness through our play. It is an important means by which to inform and to work with lots of communities on addressing violence against women. There is need to provide anti-violence training that addresses cultural realities and traditions and we believed that we could inform community through the play. It is a way to bring policy home. It’s important for us to ask ourselves what can we do to strengthen our communities and get the rates of violence down?”

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3. (a) Why did you get involved and what makes you stay? (b) What is important about what you do and what do you love most about the work?

All of us have been working in the field for a while and have gained a lot of knowledge of what’s been happening. We sat down at a table and worked on a curriculum. We drew upon the expertise of many who worked in the field and that is what developed the objectives of the community: a program that has a community-based voice along with traditional language and teachings. I got involved because of the trauma that I saw and experienced growing up. I got involved when I was about 18 years old. I’ve been trying to change how communities looked at trauma and violence against Native women. I’ve been working in the field for a long, long time. I have always wanted the system to be different; I am tired of burying relatives, but I believe in the strength of community to make changes. I have seen violence all around me and it’s so frustrating. I know that taking it on is where we have to go. We deserve to be heard in order to stop the violence. What I love must about the work is when the light bulb goes off and they realize I don’t have to be this way. It’s then that they get it.”

4. When your organization has been operating at its best what have been the best, most inspiring, and creative moments and accomplishments of your project?

We have seen that when the tribes get engaged in conversation they often don’t believe or realize that they have the power to change things. But, when a particular tribal leader suddenly realized how important the conversation about violence is, and that it needed to be discussed, he became critical to helping and convincing other leaders about its importance. This was possible because he is an influential leader.

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5. (a) Thinking big, outside the circle/box, what is the dream of the organization (what might be)? (b) How might this come about and how would you communicate it to others?

I want to engage every tribal community in Alaska to come up with a community response to address the problem of violence. They would develop their own process, response, and whatever else might work for them. It would include addressing drugs and alcohol and providing treatment, and using cultural and western approaches, along with safe homes. All of this could come about one community at a time; it takes a lot of time, energy, planning, and identifying who will be served. It would be a comprehensive plan doing what the community needs and wants.

6. What do you appreciate most about those that you work with and what do they appreciate about you?

I depend on a volunteer committee to keep the organization going. The staff person I work with is very supportive of our cause and is easygoing. The environment we work in is respectful and supportive – and this is what we want to mirror in our community. Our board works hard, and they speak their minds. I appreciate how they act on what they believe in. They build on each other’s strengths and they have lot of different skills and talents. They are focused, educated, good forward thinkers, good advocates, and they are around when you need them. I work closely with Shirley Moses, the director of the Healing Hearts Coalition. Her generosity is phenomenal and it carries over to others.

7. What do you feel are the most important strategies and practices of your project? (b) How do they serve to empower the community? (c) What has your community appreciated most about what you do?

An important strategy of our project is to be honest and clear about what we are doing and what needs to happen. When we want engagement from the community or tribal leaders and are seeking change, we are not just giving them lip service. I think that they appreciate that we are

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persistent in our efforts of what we want and believe. We have learned to listen carefully to what others have to say. We are told by the community that we have a lot of love and empathy.

8 and 9. What positive images do you and your organization envision for the future or your work and the people you serve? What commitments do you and your organization have to make sure you are on the right path that will lead to positive changes in the organization and community?

We are tribal advocates for building strengths and assets in our communities. We are upfront with the tribes we work. We remind ourselves that ego does not run the show. We are on the right path when we let community be the driving force and use our organization as the voice for our people, especially for the training needs that they want. Positive changes must meet the cultural needs of the community. We are very thankful to the 7th Generation Fund for Indigenous People. The grant that we received has had a huge impact on what we do. It enabled us to not have to fully rely on other funders and it helped us to carve our path for the work we are doing. We are grateful for support and that they trust us.

Applying the Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle I. Discovery: The Discovery phase is a search to understand the “best of what is” and “what has been.” It begins with a collaborative act of crafting appreciative interview questions and constructing an appreciative interview guide.

Appreciative interview questions are written as affirmative probes into an organization’s positive core, in the topic areas selected. They are written to generate stories, to enrich the images and inner dialogue within the organization, and to bring the positive core more fully into focus.

Discovery for the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center began with an awareness of the high amount of sexual violence directed against Native women and that the work they were doing was necessary and required training and technical assistance to apply for the Thriving Women’s Initiative Alaska grant. The best of what is points towards experienced people from the 77

community who understand the need for change, who step up to do the work and can collaborate with others to address the challenges of violence:

It makes sense that there are native advocates to address these concerns, so we needed a resource center to take on these tribal issues; to work together with tribes to solve these problems.

To draw upon the best of what is in the organization and community, ANWRC builds upon the positive core of creativity to accomplish their work by using theater. Through this activity they were able to connect the dots between the play and informing the community of need to address violence:

One way is through raising awareness about violence through a performance using a Play that is customized to our situation in Alaska...There is a need to provide anti-violence training that addresses cultural realities and traditions and we believed that we could inform community through the play. It is a way to bring policy home.

Getting involved in anti-violence work is personally and professionally challenging. In this case, Tami felt that “what should be” in the design of the organization was experience and a belief in the inherent strengths of people. She was healed on a personal level and returned to back to the community, determined to persist and change the system:

I got involved because of the trauma that I saw and experienced growing up.

I’ve been trying to change how communities looked at trauma and violence against Native Women. I have always wanted the system to be different; I am tired of burying relatives, but I believe in the strength of the community to make changes.

Tapping into the resilience and the moment of enlightenment of the women who receive support from the organization enables their liberation from suffering and is an important process of the project:

What I love most about the work is when the light bulb goes off and they realize I don’t have to be this way. It’s then that they get it.

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When ANWRC is operating at its best it uses its knowledge to bring about the synergy of the group, an inspiration to change, and a subsequent domino effect:

When tribes get engaged in conversation they often don’t believe…they have the power to change things. But when a particular tribal leader suddenly realized how important the conversation about violence is…he became critical to helping and convincing other leaders about its importance.

II. Dream: The Dream phase is an energizing exploration of “what might be”: a time for people to explore their hopes and dreams for their work, their working relationships, their organization, and the world at large. It is a time for groups of people to engage in thinking big and thinking out of the boundaries of what has been in the past. The intent of the Dream phase is to identify and spread generative, affirmative and hopeful images of the future A dream of the organization is the development and implementation of a master plan that would fuse the cooperation and camaraderie that is needed to address and end violence against Native women:

I want to engage every tribal community in Alaska to come up with a community Response to address the problem of violence. They would develop their own process, response, and whatever works for them. It would include addressing drugs and alcohol and providing treatment, and using cultural approaches, along with safe homes.

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III. Design: The Design phase involves making choices about “what should be” within the organization or system. It is a conscious re-creation or transformation, through which such things as systems, structures, strategies, processes and images will become more fully aligned with the organization’s positive past (Discovery) and highest potential (Dream).

The ANWRC depends on volunteers to make their work happen which reflects the positive core of commitment and the use of the strength and talents of the community. The leadership of the organization can be an important driver of transformation if they reflect and recreate a positive environment that acknowledges the contributions and strengths of others:

The environment I work in is respectful and supportive – and what we want to mirror in our community. Our board works hard, and they speak their minds.

I appreciate how they act on what they believe in. They build on each other’s strengths.

A strategic choice of the project focuses on using the skills of open and authentic language and approaches with the community to demonstrate the commitment and trustworthiness of the organization and staff:

An important strategy of our project is to be honest and clear about what we are doing and what needs to happen. (We) are seeking change, we are not just giving lip them lip service. I think that they appreciate that we are persistent in our efforts of we want and believe.

IV. Destiny: The Destiny phase initiates a series of inspired actions that support ongoing learning and innovation—or “what will be.” The Destiny phase, however, focuses specifically on personal and organizational commitments and paths forward which result in changes in organizational systems, structure, processes or procedures.

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Inspired actions of the organization that support what will be, again, centers on a positive image and commitment for the future. The right path means that the community is also going on the journey:

We are upfront with the tribes we work with. We remind ourselves that ego does not run the show. We are on the right path when we let the community be the driving force and use our organization as the voice for the people‌

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Healing Native Hearts Coalition Interviewee: Shirley Moses, Director 1. How did this work come about? And why was it necessary?

We applied for the “Thriving Women’s Initiative, Alaska grant. There are a lot of murdered and missing Native women in Alaska which is a really big concern. There are a lot of cold cases that need to be reopened, and because of the lack of investigation, this doesn’t happen. For those still missing there is no closure for the families or community. This contributes to ongoing trauma. In some instances, those that have murdered or committed a crime against a Native woman will also plea bargain their way to a lesser charge and be out of prison in a shorter amount of time. With our women, it could be years before the crime committed against them is solved, if it is ever solved. Our work is necessary to raise awareness and honor missing women.

We were showing a video related to violence and it opened up this can of worms; we didn’t realize how it would impact others and that this would lead to so much more in the development of our work.

2. To accomplish your work, how does your project draw upon the best of the what has been or is in your organization and community?

We have strong women in our communities and we draw upon the strengths and resilience of women to help guide what we do. Women have been through a lot and have a lot of knowledge.

There are also others who are sincere and want to help out and we depend on them too. There are a lot of talented, giving people who support what we are doing. Many of them end up volunteering to help however they can.

3. (a) Why did you get involved and what makes you stay? (b) What is

important about what you do and what do you love most about the work?

Growing up I saw a lot of violence and I knew how important it was to address it.

Women in our communities were not being helped which was a big concern. The systems that 82

worked with us were not representative or responsive to what we needed in many of our villages.

We don’t have counselors available in many areas to intervene or help us. We rely on the use of traditional ceremony and whatever else works to address the violence. I love that we are able to use our voice to advocate for change in the laws and to pursue alternative ways of healing. Using traditional approaches and not just western ways.

4. When your organization has been operating at its best what have been the most inspiring, and creative moments and accomplishments of your project?

There have been many inspiring moments in our work. What happens in our training has provided a lot of inspiration: the men who are not normally involved in addressing the violence are brought into the change and process of understanding violence and what must it be done to end it. In the training we do it in a more traditional, holistic way using a community approach.

The men, elders, and women are all engaged in discussing why sexual assault must be resolved in order to break the cycle of violence. The process has a big impact on those that go through it.

5. (a) Thinking big, outside the circle/box, what is the dream of the organization (what might be)? (b) How might this come about and how would you communicate it to others?

I want to engage and work with partner agencies to build on the strengths of the villages to respond to the violence and meet the needs of the village. We want to use what is needed in (Child Protective Services) to work with families instead of pulling them apart. Aftercare (counseling and traditional healing) and a basic response that meets the needs of communities is important. Doing presentations to other agencies about our work and what we believe needs to be done and would be one way of communicating it to others.

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6. What do you appreciate most about those that you work with and what do they appreciate about you?

Tami (from the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center) values our guidance and supports us to do our best and lets us walk our talk. She builds on a person’s strengths, and values, and all that they have to offer. She is open minded to the possibilities and is able to think outside of the box. She is engaged and committed in a positive way and understands the history of the anti-violence movement. She shares in the responsibility of what we are doing.

7. What do you feel are the most important strategies and practices of your project? (b) How do they serve to empower the community? (c) What has your community appreciated most about what you do?

Community folks would say that we [our staff] can admit that we didn’t know what the best strategies or practices of the project would be. But that we are committed to work to find the solutions. And, we don’t have to spend time educating the community; they take care of this themselves.

8 and 9. What positive images do you and your organization envision for the future or your work and the people you serve? What commitments do you and your organization have to make sure you are on the right path that will lead to positive changes in the organization and community?

We are not driven by grant funding. We are doing what we do because we believe in the importance of what we are doing. Our organization works closely with the people and is a voice for our people. We work closely with them to identify and secure the training and support that they need. We are committed to meeting the cultural needs of our communities. Our board has expressed its gratitude and support for what we are doing and is very grateful for the support that we have received from the 7th Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples. The funding helps to gives us the tools to address and create changes through the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

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Applying the Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle I. Discovery: The Discovery phase is a search to understand the “best of what is” and “what has been.” It begins with a collaborative act of crafting appreciative interview questions and constructing an appreciative interview guide.

Appreciative interview questions are written as affirmative probes into an organization’s positive core, in the topic areas selected. They are written to generate stories, to enrich the images and inner dialogue within the organization, and to bring the positive core more fully into focus.

Although the Appreciative Inquiry literature does not feature tenacity as one of the major positive core attributes, it can take its place alongside resilience when it concerns the best of what is in the staff and the organizational priorities of the Healing Native Hearts Coalition. The project understands that missing Native women must not be forgotten and that their absence has detrimental effects on the community – so they keep this concern at the front and center in their work:

There are a lot of cold cases that need to be reopened, and because of the lack of investigation, this doesn’t happen For those that are still missing there is no closure for the families or community.This contributes to ongoing trauma…

Our work is necessary to raise awareness and honor missing women.

Similar to other projects it is the women in the community that display the positive core of strengths, resilience, wisdom and knowledge. The project understands this and considers their presence and contributions a large part of the best of what is:

We have strong women in our communities, and we draw upon the strengths and resilience of women to help guide what we do. Women have been through a lot and have a lot of knowledge.

Getting involved and staying in a job that is extremely emotionally challenging requires a positive core that is loaded with resilience, strength, and optimism. What got Shirley involved

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was discovering she had a lifetime of experience, there was a lack of help for those in need, and a need for change:

Growing up I saw a lot of violence and I knew it was important to address it.

Women in our communities were not being helped which was a big concern…we don’t have counselors available in many areas to intervene or help us.

In discovering what makes her stay, and is important about what she does, has a lot to do with her knowledge that a cultural, holistic approach works and can resolve violence, and that she is afforded the opportunity to use her voice to create important legal and political changes:

We rely on the use of traditional ceremony and whatever else works to address the violence. I love that we are able to use our voice to advocate for change in the laws and pursue alternative ways of healing.

The most inspiring and the best of what has been accomplished in the Healing Native Hearts Coalition project has to do with the organization’s training approach, that brings Native women, men, and elders together to address violence using traditional healing strategies:

What happens in our training has provided a lot of inspiration: the men who are not normally involved in addressing the violence are brought into the change and process of understanding violence and what must be done to end it…we do it in a more traditional, holistic way using a community approach [that includes] men, elders, and women.

II. Dream: The Dream phase is an energizing exploration of “what might be”: a time for people to explore their hopes and dreams for their work, their working relationships, their organization, and the world at large. It is a time for groups of people to engage in thinking big and thinking out of the boundaries of what has been in the past. The intent of the Dream phase is to identify and spread generative, affirmative and hopeful images of the future Exploring what might be for the Healing Native Hearts Coalition has to do with creating networks that rely on the positive core of talents, strengths, and wisdom of Native communities:

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I want to engage and work with partner agencies to build on the strengths of the villages to respond to violence and meet the needs of the village [and] work with families instead of pulling them apart.

III. Design: The Design phase involves making choices about “what should be” within the organization or system. It is a conscious re-creation or transformation, through which such things as systems, structures, strategies, processes and images will become more fully aligned with the organization’s positive past (Discovery) and highest potential (Dream).

Relationships, vision, and commitment are what constitutes the what should be in a strong organizational design. The way a system is perceived by those outside of it can help to articulate what should be and what is working within the organization. Seeing the attributes of others you work, with is important and can unleash creativity and provide validation of what one is doing:

Tami [from the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center project] values our guidance and supports us to do our best and lets us walk our talk. She builds on a person’s strengths and values and all that they have to offer. She shares the responsibility of what we are doing.

What should be within the design of the organization can be complex, layered, and constantly in motion. However, there are some important constants that are simple, yet critical to an organizations positive past, future, and highest potential. What the community has appreciated most about the Healing Native Hearts Coalition is understanding that it knows its limitations, but is still driven to succeed:

Community folks would say that we [our staff] can admit that we didn’t know what would be the best strategies or practices of the project, but that we are committed to work to find the solutions.

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IV. Destiny: The Destiny phase initiates a series of inspired actions that support ongoing learning and innovation—or “what will be.” The Destiny phase, however, focuses specifically on personal and organizational commitments and paths forward which result in changes in organizational systems, structure, processes or procedures.

Destiny concerns inspired actions that support ongoing learning and what will be. How do workers contribute to this effort and what commitments do they have? The positive core of destiny for this project is doing what they do for the love of the people and maintaining a hopeful commitment to the work:

We are not driven by grant funding. We are doing what we do because we believe in the importance of what we are doing. Our organization works closely with the people and is a voice for our people We are committed to meeting the cultural needs of our communities. Our board has expressed its gratitude and support for what we are doing…

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United Tribes of Bristol Bay (UTBB) Interviewee: Lindsay Layland

1. How did this work come about? And why was it necessary?

The project is part of a larger organizational approach. There was a need for a purely tribal voice to preserve the environment and resist the mining organizations. There was a need for someone to give accurate, relevant information to people for policy development and decision-making. The work that we do is to protect life and creation to and acknowledge that women play a central role in the project – protecting the Indigenous way of life. Women are involved at many levels in the project. All of our staff are female, which is five full-time women.

They play an important role and are committed to further work at the institutional and societal levels. Women are the creators of life. Our work is aimed at keeping women safe and healthy.

2. To accomplish your work, how does your project draw upon the best of the what has been or is in your organization and community?

We work hard to partner with women and children’s shelters; women face difficult situations and we work to connect them with other groups who can support them. We learn from the wisdom of the elders and the young people in order to speak to and follow the culture and tradition. Hundreds of women from the region have signed on to a letter to inform local and state policy-makers of the strength, resilience, and importance of women’s participation in policymaking.

3. (a) Why did you get involved and what makes you stay? (b) What is important about what you do and what do you love most about the work?

I got involved to help UTBB bring forward a voice that was needed for the people and is critical to raising the importance of protecting the traditional way of life. I am personally connected to the land, salmon, and waters and it really hits home for me. I was born in this region. My future is here, and I want a place that is healthy for community members. What is 89

important about what I do is having a connection to the people. I go to the community and listen, talk, share, and hear stories about the lives of the people, the elders. They speak of their livelihood and how it depends on a healthy environment. I recall listening to a 75-year-old woman talk passionately about catching fish as a child, like her grandchildren are doing today.

4. When your organization has been operating at its best what have been the best, most inspiring, and creative moments and accomplishments of your project?

The most inspiring moments have been when the people of Bristol Bay come together, tracking and attending public hearings and giving comments about policy. It is inspiring to see when they turn out in record numbers to tell policy makers they will not stand for the destruction of their lands and waters. There have been important state-wide initiatives that UTBB has led and supported. Our organization works to encourage people to participate in how to protect their resources, and they come out in force.

5. (a) Thinking big, outside the circle/box, what is the dream of the organization (What might be)? (b) How might this come about and how would you communicate this dream to others?

The dream is to ensure tribal sovereignty for the tribes in the region and to prevent violence against the earth and women. The dream is that the tribes are truly sovereign and able to govern their own way of life; how they see fit. This would be amazing. To keep out major development projects that work against the interests of the people. This will come about by listening to our people in regard to what they want and their ability and willingness to effectively communication it to policy makers 6. What do you appreciate most about those you work with and what do they appreciate about you?

I appreciate my boss, the staff that I work with, and other coalitions that are involved in this work. I appreciate our executive director, Alannah Hurley, who as the ability to lead, write,

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and recognize the importance of the voices of others. She is good and grounds the thoughts and voices of those we work with. Her communication skills are excellent, and she has been a good advocate for me. My co-workers see this in her and I as well. Peoples appreciate that I am doing this work out of true passion and not for paycheck. I am driven by my commitment to what we are doing.

7. (a). What do you feel are the most important strategies and practices of your project? (b). How do they serve to empower the community? (c).

What has your community appreciated most about what you do?

Sharing knowledge of traditional practices, language, and wisdom, and having the ability to have relationships and to understand and highlight nature based upon traditional knowledge.

Bringing in Yup’ik speakers, dancers and storytellers that can share narratives of overcoming difficult challenges and adversity. In appreciation for the work we are doing, a woman came into the office and gave a beautiful quilted piece that was hand sewn. This provided a positive image of the traditional way of life – there was also an anti-mining image on it.

8 and 9. (a) What positive images do you and your organization envision for the future of your work and the people you serve? (b) What commitments do you and your organization have to make sure you are on the right path that will lead to positive changes in the organization and community?

We have to prepare people and educate them on public participation, so they know what to say and how to respond to the threats against their lands and lives. We have an annual traditional feast and the numbers of people attending is growing. At this event, we give updates on the work we are doing and our efforts to get out the word. There are traditional foods served at the feast and hundreds of different dishes from different villages. It is a very diverse and intimate time. People come together to eat, share, and talk. It is a community-oriented time that unifies all of us and there is a realization that we are all in it together.

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The positive image presented is recognizing the sacred role that women play in life. We want to bring an understanding to the importance of healthy Native women. We want to bring this vision to the outside, across the state, and across the country to show the importance of healthy Native women and communities. Our organization has a commitment to act on behalf of member tribes, but we are guided by their vision; the people know what they want and we listen to their tribal voices.

Applying the Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle I. Discovery: The Discovery phase is a search to understand the “best of what is” and “what has been.” It begins with a collaborative act of crafting appreciative interview questions and constructing an appreciative interview guide.

Appreciative interview questions are written as affirmative probes into an organization’s positive core, in the topic areas selected. They are written to generate stories, to enrich the images and inner dialogue within the organization, and to bring the positive core more fully into focus.

The UTBB believed that Native perspectives would provide the insights, stories, and the science that was necessary to provide a clear perspective on the detrimental effects that extractive industries would have on the environment, and that Native women’s voices and contributions represented the best of what is and has been:

There was a need for a purely tribal voice to preserve the environment and resist the mining organizations. There was a need for someone to give accurate, relevant information to people for policy development and decision-making. The work that we do is to protect life and creation and acknowledge that women play a central role in the project – protecting the Indigenous way of life.

Developing partnerships and creating connections are are critical elements in creating a healthy, unified community. As noted earlier in this report (see p. 26 ), research on has

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demonstrated that “community cohesiveness, support, connectedness, and mutual trust, are powerful protective factors against violence:

We work hard to partner with women and children’s shelters; women face difficult situations and we work to connect them with other groups who can support them. We learn from the wisdom of the elders and the young people in order to speak to and follow culture and tradition Another important protective factor from violence that is generated from community connectedness is a “willingness to intervene for the common good:

The most inspiring moments have been when the people of Bristol Bay come together, tracking and attending public hearings and giving comments about policy. It is inspiring to see when they turn out in record numbers to tell policy makers they will not stand for the destruction of their lands and waters.

II. Dream: The Dream phase is an energizing exploration of “what might be”: a time for people to explore their hopes and dreams for their work, their working relationships, their organization, and the world at large. It is a time for groups of people to engage in thinking big and thinking out of the boundaries of what has been in the past. The intent of the Dream phase is to identify and spread generative, affirmative and hopeful images of the future A key characteristic of the positive core of the dream is the ability to have hope for positive change and what that may look like. UTBB regards a true tribal sovereignty to be a means by which violence can be prevented and hopes of transformation realized:

To ensure tribal sovereignty for the tribes in the region and to prevent violence against the earth and women. The dream is that the tribes are truly sovereign and able to govern their own way of life and how they see fit. That would be amazing.

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III. Design: The Design phase involves making choices about “what should be” within the organization or system. It is a conscious re-creation or transformation, through which such things as systems, structures, strategies, processes and images will become more fully aligned with the organization’s positive past (Discovery) and highest potential (Dream).

UTBB believes that the present systems is not adequate or highly relevant to the needs of Native communities. There must be a “conscious re-creation” and implementation of the cultural ways of knowing and living. This can be done by using the:

Knowledge of traditional practices, language, and wisdom, and having the ability to have relationships and to understand and highlight nature based upon traditional knowledge.[and] bringing in Yup’ik speakers, dancers and storytellers that can share narratives of overcoming difficult challenges and adversity.

IV. Destiny: The Destiny phase initiates a series of inspired actions that support ongoing learning and innovation—or “what will be.” The Destiny phase, however, focuses specifically on personal and organizational commitments and paths forward which result in changes in organizational systems, structure, processes or procedures.

It is clear that the UTBB are committed to continue to build community and strengthen connections between members and villages. The project acknowledges and uses traditional Native practices to bring communities together to share food, have conversations, build unity, and to emphasize the important role that Native women have both locally and globally:

We have an annual traditional feast and the numbers of people attending is growing.

At this event, we give updates on the work we are doing, and our efforts to get out the word. There are traditional foods served at the feast and hundreds of different dishes from different villages. It is a community-oriented time that unifies all of us and there is a realization that we are all in it together. The positive image presented is recognizing

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the sacred role that women play in life. We want to bring an understanding the importance of healthy Native women. We want to bring this vision to the outside, across the state, and across the country to show the importance of healthy Native women and communities.

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Emmonak Women’s Shelter Interviewee: Joann Horn

1. How did this work come about? And why was it necessary?

The project had already begun before I started working there. I am a survivor of domestic violence. I started working in this area in 1978. I have been working in this area for 25 years. In 1984, I helped to organize another program and we got our own building. I started as an advocate and served in this position for many years. There was a big need to address violence against women and children and the program was badly needed. Women had nowhere to go to escape the violence.

The project was necessary because of the alcohol use in the villages and surrounding areas. There were incidences of drownings, sexual abuse, and violence. To escape from the violence, women would hide in tall grass, among the trees, and in abandoned buildings because they nowhere else to go. The village magistrate had a lot of cases, so she got women together to get a safe house and had to talk to the city manager to get a building; this was granted and this got things going. It was also open to surrounding villages.

In the fall of 2006 alcohol became legal to be brought back to the villages which increased deaths, suicides, teen dating violence, teen pregnancy, and lack of involvement of parents in their children’s lives. The measure to bring alcohol back into the villages was opposed and lost by only a few votes in the referendum.

2. To accomplish your work, how does your project draw upon the best of the what has been or is in your organization and community?

We draw from a resource group that includes a handful of people. We get support from the shelter, two churches, behavioral health, clinic, police department, and elders. We have our own board of directors and the mayor and city manager also attend and help out at the meetings.

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We also take the opportunity to attend meetings elsewhere that are discussing the same issues.

This helps us get new ideas. We work with the young people in order to prepare them for the future; we talk with them about healthy ways of living and not drinking or using drugs. Our message is that we came here for a purpose, not just to live in this way. The young people are happy to hear what we have to say – I don’t know if they are hearing this same message at home.

We host activities that are educational. We sponsor traditional dancing and during the breaks we remind them the best way to live. Women from our organization and clinic talk to young women and men talk to young men about how to live a healthy life.

3. (a) Why did you get involved and what makes you stay? (b) What is important about what you do and what do you love most about the work?

I am a survivor and have been in and out of the shelter program until I had three children. The oldest and second oldest were put up for adoption and the father was using them against me. The violence in our home against me was still going on with the birth of my third child so I left. I became a relief advocate and had experience and talked to other women about this kind of life and how unhealthy it was. I spent a lot of time educating women about how unhealthy living in a violence situation is and that it is not normal and that it’s not good for children to see you beaten and bloody. That’s why I worked here and wanted to work here.

I went from a relief advocate to advocate to outreach coordinator to executive director.

When I used to cry my kids cried with me. My kids are now adults. I used to really talk with them about the violence and abuse and that it is not normal. I tell them don’t live like that – not like their dad. I’m happy for my kids and how they’ve grown up; my youngest went to college. One son struggles and another son is getting better. I don’t know how I did all that I did taking care of my family, my mother, and people I cared for and did my work.

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We pray hard that families are okay in our community – and when we don’t have clients coming to see us, we are really happy. I talk to mothers and they understand that they must change their situation. I am happy when I am able to share and see others that are happy for the advice and attention that they are given. I’m still working here because it is needed and we need funding because we have lots of needs from families from here and the other villages. We want to keep the center open because there is a big need. We always share the knowledge from our elders which is helpful for the families.

4. When your organization has been operating at its best what have been the best, most inspiring, and creative moments and accomplishments of your project?

When there are youth gatherings, it brings young people together for workshops – kid’s workshops – and they are able to sit with us in the shelter and we can tell them what we do. We discuss topics about bullying, good touch/bad touch, respect, and not putting others down. They in turn chop wood for the elders and help them hunt. The elders teach them about respect. We have activities on the river and have potluck dinners and social and educational gatherings. We acknowledge their teen groups, such as the prevention of pregnancy group, and discuss how to learn to be dependable friends. We talk to moms and use elders to help guide the conversations.

The men’s groups uses elders too. There is a core group of men that gather and talk to the young men about behavior, and that through prayer, we can keep going and not have doubts. Some elders have used holy pictures and have asked the blessed virgin Mary to help us with the crises we are in.

People who are very agitated and upset call me. After a while they calm and quiet down and thank me for talking to them in a calm way. I keep going through lots of prayer.

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5. (a) Thinking big, outside the circle/box, what is the dream of the organization (What might be)? (b) How might this come about and how would you communicate this dream to others?

No more violence in our community. No more need for a shelter. We get happy when we have no business and when we see the shelter empty. We have three bedrooms, two beds per room, and we have cots at one end. We have had 30 people in all of these rooms and they were completely full. Even the space in the kitchen, bedrooms, and kid’s rooms were full. I want to see less families and to see more shelters in the villages, but the cost is very high for food and cleaning supplies. Our clothes dryer gave out and we have to look for funding for another one. We need clean sheets, blankets, and other items.

It is important to teach our families how to love, respect, and care for each other. We must challenge them with statements like, you don’t want to see your daughter beaten up and abused. The first time I was beaten up I thought I was going to die, because my parents never did this. They loved us. I put my partner in jail a hundred times, maybe more. I don’t know.

6. What do you appreciate most about those you work with and what do they appreciate about you?

We have two regular advocates and relief workers on call. They have the strength and skills necessary to help and support. When I need help, I can go to the advocates to help me make decisions so I can help people coming here; but because airfare is too high it can be difficult to get them home when they are ready to leave. I talk with co-workers to get advice about the best way to help and work with others. We all stop what we are doing when there is a crisis and work together. We are generous, but because of high costs, we need to learn how to say no to some communities that are responding to the needs of their members that need services. Those that work with us give us good advice and support. They give donations of food, wild game, and whatever else they can. They are generous. When we call on them, they help us.

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7. (a). What do you feel are the most important strategies and practices of your project? (b). How do they serve to empower the community? (c). What has your community appreciated most about what you do?

When we have gatherings and activities for the children and women, they support and share with one another so that they know they are not alone in their struggles. They thank us for the support we give them and for helping them learn new things. The generosity among those that attend the gatherings runs deep. One young woman who was attending a gathering did not have a warm coat to wear. Another young woman saw this and gave her a sweater that she was wearing. Community members appreciate what we are doing and always ask about when the next gathering will be. They appreciate us teaching young women and men.

8 and 9. (a) What positive images do you and your organization envision for the future of your work and the people you serve? (b) What commitments do you and your organization have to make sure you are on the right path that will lead to positive changes in the organization and community?

We are an organization that is known for the transmission of information to younger generations to contribute to them making positive changes in the community. We believe it is important to educate them about what is happening in their generation and that they are in charge of their own destiny. We let them know that one day they are going to have to take charge of things – the school, their health, their lives.

We make sure we have the commitment to take care of each other, to educate others when they are doing wrong. We use traditional teaching to help make the point. My grandfather used to tell a story about leadership: Men used to come to him and talk with him. I was just a little girl at that time. They would get advice about their behavior or have questions they wanted him to answer. The teachings always included reminders not to think in negative ways but positive thinking and actions would always work better.

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We are committed to using elders and traditional teachings to build positive change and to be on the right path. I have taken a lot of notes from the things that elders have said, and I remember them. I re-read them and they are helpful. If I didn’t have elders guiding me I don’t know where I would be today.

Applying the Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle I. Discovery: The Discovery phase is a search to understand the “best of what is” and “what has been.” It begins with a collaborative act of crafting appreciative interview questions and constructing an appreciative interview guide.

Appreciative interview questions are written as affirmative probes into an organization’s positive core, in the topic areas selected. They are written to generate stories, to enrich the images and inner dialogue within the organization, and to bring the positive core more fully into focus.

The evolution of the Emmonak Women’s shelter (EWS) is marked by several of the factors that spurred the development of other Native Alaska Women’s anti-violence projects in this study: personal experience, the lack of services to address violence, and an unwavering commitment to end the violence. In this phase of discovery, the best of what is, is that Joann was willing to use her experience as a survivor of violence to add her knowledge, skills, and resilience to this project. The EWS was born out of desperation, but it’s important to remember that the best of what is, is women helping other women escape violence to recover and heal:

The project had already begun before I started working there. I am a survivor of domestic violence. I started as an advocate and served in this position for many years. There was a big need to address violence against women and children and the program was badly needed. Women had nowhere to go to escape the violence. The project was necessary because of the alcohol use in the villages and surrounding areas. There were incidences of drownings, sexual abuse, violence. To escape from the violence, women would hide in tall grass, among the trees, in abandoned buildings because they nowhere else to go.

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Collaborating and coalition-building is an important part of the best of what is. The EWS is well-connected to other stakeholders in the community that help support the work of the project. These linkages are critical for long-term operation and success. Joann and the staff do a continuous amount of outreach to others. The best of what is includes investing in activities with youth to improve their prospects for a positive future:

We draw from a resource group that includes a handful of people. We get support from the shelter, two churches, behavioral health, clinic, police department, and elders. We have our own board of directors and the mayor and city manager also attend and help out at the meetings. We also take the opportunity to attend meetings elsewhere that are discussing the same issues.

This helps us get new ideas. We work with the young people in order to prepare them for the future; we talk with them about healthy ways of living, not drinking or using drugs.

EWS has discovered that integrating western public service messaging and traditional culture to youth, and bringing older women and men together with younger women and men, is another important part of what is the best of what is and has been:

We host activities that are educational. We sponsor traditional dancing and during the breaks we remind them the best way to live. Women from our organization and clinic talk to young women and men talk to young men about how to live a healthy life.

In order to discover what makes Joann stay in her position one has to understand the very nature of the positive core of resilience, faith, and strength. In this instance, the best of what is, is being able to tell a very difficult personal story to help one to understand the struggles and strengths of survivors of violence:

I am a survivor and have been in and out of the shelter program until I had three children‌The violence in our home against me was still going on with the birth of my third child so I left. I became a relief advocate and had experience and talked to other women about this kind of life and how unhealthy it was‌ When I used to cry my kids cried with me. My kids are now adults. I used to really talk with them about the violence and abuse and that it is not normal.

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What Joann regards as what is important about what she does, and what she loves about the work, is evident in her ability to use her experience to thoughtfully advise other survivors, use the knowledge of tribal elders, and to use prayer as means to keep on going:

I spent a lot of time educating women about how unhealthy living in a violence situation is and that it is not normal and that it’s not good for children to see you beaten and bloody. I tell them don’t live like that. We pray hard that families are okay in our community – and when we don’t have clients coming to see us, we are really happy…I’m still working here because it is needed and we need funding because we have lots of needs from families from here and the other villages.

We always share the knowledge from our elders which is helpful for the families.

The most inspiring and creative moments of the project are about community and membership. It is about collectivist people that need one another coming together to share, reflect, pray, listen to elders, and forming a closeness that is supportive and necessary. There is a knowledge that exists among the survivors of violence and the elders. And, there is a long tradition of cultural reciprocity between young and old that has existed since time immemorial:

When there are youth gatherings, it brings young people together for workshops – kids workshops – and they are able to sit with us in the shelter and we can tell them what we do. We discuss topics about bullying, good touch/bad touch, respect, not putting others down. They, in turn, chop wood for the elders and help them hunt. The elders teach them about respect. We have activities on the river and have potluck dinners and social and educational gatherings.

An important accomplishment of Joann and the project is having the ability to help those in need to be able to lay down their burdens and lighten their load by being heard and valued.

Again, Joann believes and finds comfort in the power of prayer to do her difficult work. Author and physician, Larry Dossey (2006, p. 9), says, “The urge to pray is universal. We know of no culture, past or present, in which prayer does not occur. People pray when they are happy and sad, during celebrations and tragedies, at births and deaths, during peace and war, in cathedrals and cars, in poverty and plenty.:

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When people who are very agitated and upset call me. After a while they calm and quiet down and thank me for talking to them in a calm way. I keep going through lots of prayer.

II. Dream: The Dream phase is an energizing exploration of “what might be”: a time for people to explore their hopes and dreams for their work, their working relationships, their organization, and the world at large. It is a time for groups of people to engage in thinking big and thinking out of the boundaries of what has been in the past. The intent of the Dream phase is to identify and spread generative, affirmative and hopeful images of the future The dream of the organization is simple, clear, and profound. It is one that has been dreamed many times by many of the staff of the different projects. Joann Horn says, end the violence:

“No more violence in our community. No more need for a shelter. We get happy when we have no business and when we see the shelter empty. We have three bedrooms, two beds per room, and we have cots at one end. We have had 30 people in all of these rooms and they were completely full.”

How can the dream of no more violence be communicated and realized? EWS believes that it is necessary to share with others that the need for change involves caring for one another.

Change also must be include an understanding of the stark, gut-wrenching reality of violence.

For Joanne, in order to understand violence, it must not be sugar-coated. Instead, it must be understood that the experience of being violated might be to the point of near-death. And, the best of what is, is telling the story and never giving up the effort to end violence.

“It is important to teach our families how to love, respect, and care for each other. We must challenge them with questions like, you don’t want to see your daughter beaten up and abused. The first time I was beaten up I thought I was going to die, because my parents never did this. They loved us. I put my partner in jail a hundred times, maybe more. I don’t know.”

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III. Design: The Design phase involves making choices about “what should be” within the organization or system. It is a conscious re-creation or transformation, through which such things as systems, structures, strategies, processes and images will become more fully aligned with the organization’s positive past (Discovery) and highest potential (Dream).

Systems and structures depend on how well the people in an organization work and support one another; it’s the what should be in an organization. Transformation of the organization and the challenges it faces depend cooperation, sharing, and vision. The positive core includes the strengths of commitment, service to one another, open arms, and skills and determination that create a successful organization. The best of what is, is a full organizational and community that does whatever is necessary to create positive transformation:

We have two regular advocates and relief workers on call. They have the strength and skills necessary to help and support. When I need help, I can go to the advocates to help me make decisions so I can help people coming here; I talk with co-workers to get advice about the best way to help and work with others. We all stop what we are doing when there is a crisis and work together.

We are generous…Those that work with us give us good advice and support.

They give use donations of food, wild game, and whatever else they can. They are generous. When we call on them, they help us.”

The EWS believes that what should be in the organization is work that focuses on the building of community. That is, deliberately connecting survivors, face-to-face, with other survivors to form social bonds of support. Most survivors and witnesses of violence often suffer from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). EWS has the knowledge and skills to provide education in regard to the risks of PTSD and how it can affect survivors and loved ones; in return, community members often express their appreciation for the work that EWS is doing:

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When we have gatherings and activities for the children and women, they support and share with one another so that they know they are not alone in their struggles. They thank us for the support we give them and for helping them learn new things.

An important strategy of EWS is bringing out the best in the people that it works with.

For instance, within Indigenous Peoples societies, collective generosity and gifting is frequently practiced. However, when communities are ravaged by violence and oppression these positive core traits can be forgotten, taken for granted, and overlooked. The generosity that happens between individuals and groups, which is facilitated by the organization, can create important connections and reaffirm traditional cultural practices, and is part of the best of what should be in the organization:

“The generosity among those that attend the gatherings runs deep. One young woman who was attending a gathering did not have a warm coat to wear. Another young woman saw this and gave her a sweater that she was wearing.”

IV. Destiny: The Destiny phase initiates a series of inspired actions that support ongoing learning and innovation—or “what will be.” The Destiny phase, however, focuses specifically on personal and organizational commitments and paths forward which result in changes in organizational systems, structure, processes or procedures.

The positive image of what will be in the EWS centers on their role as a central transmitter of critically important information that can be used to create what will be in the community. It is the personal and professional conviction of staff that education to the next generations should prepare them for their future destiny:

We are an organization that is known for the transmission of information to younger generations to contribute to them making positive changes in the community. We believe it is important to educate them about what is happening in their generation and that they are in charge of their own destiny. We let them 106

know that one day they are going to have to take charge of things – the school, their health, their lives.

What will be the destiny of the organization can be found in its commitment to the idea that traditional culture can offer important components of wisdom to address the violence. Rich and important stories of how elders and traditional knowledge can inspire a positive destiny have been indispensable to the destiny of the EWS:

We make sure we have the commitment to take care of each other, to educate others when they are doing wrong. We use traditional teaching to help make the point. We are committed to using elders and traditional teachings to build positive change and to be on the right path. I have taken a lot of notes from the things that elders have said and I remember them. I re-read them; and are helpful.

If I didn’t have elders guiding me I don’t know where I would be today.

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Yup’ik Women’s Coalition

Interviewees: Lenora (Bird) Hootch and Priscilla Kameroff 1. How did this work come about? And why was it necessary?

We had a women’s shelter in 1979. The safe homes and women came together to discuss the importance of them. We live in a population of 500 members in village. When it became legal to import alcohol into the village it caused lots of violence, pain, and real abuse. Women had a safe place to go to avoid the violence. The village magistrate was very concerned about the violence and abuse directed at women with children being abused which created an opportunity to start a program in the village to deal with the violence.

In 1983, we worked with the city council and they donated an old community hall to see how it might work out for a year; we were interested in how many people it might serve during the year. We had no funding and operated using only volunteers. Bethel had the nearest shelter and we were able to get information about how it operated and got some seed money from Bethel to operate. All we needed was heat to get started since we already had a number of volunteers.

Before long, a lot of women were coming to center for to escape the abuse. There was a lot of drinking in homes and it ended up that there were 7-8 children in the center. We applied for grant to build a shelter going from a residential home to a shelter. We were getting donations and different funding through the state of Alaska. In 2005, the shelter was defunded, despite having community confidence and that there was still a big need. We felt like it we were discriminated against because funding was going to more women’s centers rather than shelters like ours. Working through Sarah Deer we were able to get a victim’s support grant from the Department of Justice, Office of Violence Against Women. In 2006, we applied for grant to do

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education about violence. We received the Tribal Coalition grant in 2007. The primary purpose of the funding was to promote safety through education and advocacy using traditional Yupik beliefs and values. What we were doing was dedicated to safety of women.

2. To accomplish your work, how does your project draw upon the best of the what has been or is in your organization and community?

We draw upon the traditional values and beliefs of Yup’ik people. Our work was first organized and grounded by our elders who are involved in all of our gatherings and take part in our educational presentations. They guide us how to do with things and how we should face the challenges we encounter today. One elder told us to do your work with compassion and kindness and don’t be nosy with your work. Elders tell us that when we do our work in public that we will come into contact with angry peoples. They tell us not to feel or take in the anger. Instead, be kind, calm, and compassionate to everyone. If we use this approach our work will go a long way.

We are reminded that this is how the Creator wishes us to work with humility, compassions and understanding.

3. (a) Why did you get involved and what makes you stay? (b) What is important about what you do and what do you love most about the work?

Lenora: It just happened. I remember that my mother was a midwife and helped others.

The village was small. There were only log cabins and small roads. It was a five-minute walk to my grandmother’s place and I enjoyed going there. But her nephew stayed with her and liked to drink. She was small and petite and he used to bring her food, soup, and Native food. During one of my visits to her place she wasn’t there. I found out that a volunteer came to the village from the Catholic Church carrying grandma on his shoulder to my home. It was because her nephew was drinking and she wanted to get a way. It was my first time providing a safe home.

That family member was very abusive. So, I grew up with a passion to help others.

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It is important to make sure that the women and children in the community that are experiencing violence can get away from it and be safe and have a place to go. It hurt my heart to see them roaming around the village with no place to go. They often have to flee and hide in willows, smokehouses, or abandoned houses.

4. When your organization has been operating at its best what have been the best, most inspiring, and creative moments and accomplishments of your project?

Priscilla: Doing whatever we can to do healthy activities that make a difference.

Lenora: When we host regional conferences, we see our organization growing and more women and men becoming involved. We see and understand the intergenerational trauma and what it means to our well-being. A number of accomplished people, young people, are beginning to understand the dynamics of violence and that it must be addressed. There is a danger that we are losing our cultural traditions, but we also see people hanging onto it and sharing it with others.

It is very moving and inspiring when women share stories of the pains they went through and that they are not able to say now I know why I feel the way that I do. They speak of marital rage, different types of abuse and violence and the turmoil they’ve been through. It is inspiring to hear them say that this is not how we used to be in our culture. Families agree with this statement. The most important accomplishment is that we have many survivors of violence and we have survived many challenges for thousands and thousands of years.

5. (a) Thinking big, outside the circle/box, what is the dream of the organization (What might be)? (b) How might this come about and how would you communicate this dream to others?

Our biggest dream is to see no more violence and to return to who we once were. We had lots of food resources to draw from like moose, fish, and berries. An elder said one time, “Why do

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we need that shelter building? Why do we need a shelter like that? We took care of each other, women and children. We weren’t like this.” We dream of being able to live in harmony without violence or despair. We are now understanding how the violence in our community happened and that is important for healing. The Tribal council wants the tribal courts to have elders meet with abusers or struggling families with unacceptable behavior. The tribal council is gaining momentum and moving forward, even stronger to help remove the violence.

6. What do you appreciate most about those you work with and what do they appreciate about you?

We have a core group here that works together to support one another and the mission. We appreciate working with our co-workers, community, and organization partners because they understand the work we do. The staff especially understands who we are and why we do what we do. We work well together on the problems we encounter. I think that people appreciate that we are trying to be good role models in the community.

7. (a). What do you feel are the most important strategies and practices of your project? (b). How do they serve to empower the community? (c). What has your community appreciated most about what you do?

In 1979, we opened our women’s shelter. Today, we have one of the oldest shelters among the tribal nations. We do outreach to outlying villages to prevent violence. Alcohol, violence, drugs, homelessness are major issues. There are struggles because of language and value differences with mainstream society, especially for those that grew up traditional home and families. Our work is guided by our elders and the traditional beliefs and values of the Yup’ik people. We make sure that that women and children in our community are safe and have a place to go. There is not enough housing.

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8 and 9. (a) What positive images do you and your organization envision for the future of your work and the people you serve? (b) What commitments do you and your organization have to make sure you are on the right path that will lead to positive changes in the organization and community?

The vision is for the people to understand what happened to us and how we were before.

We want our people to understand our inherit rights and sovereignty because the system has been failing us. In the 1970s we had more deaths, drownings, and accidents due to the bringing of alcohol into our village. Now we are working to change things in a positive way. We will continue to work with our elders and use our traditional ways. Lenora: I have been working there for over 30 years. I get burnt out, stressed, and wish to do other work, but I cannot walk away from what we are doing and what needs to be done. Priscilla: It is so needed in our village.

Applying the Appreciative Inquiry 4-D Cycle I. Discovery: The Discovery phase is a search to understand the “best of what is” and “what has been.” It begins with a collaborative act of crafting appreciative interview questions and constructing an appreciative interview guide.

Appreciative interview questions are written as affirmative probes into an organization’s positive core, in the topic areas selected. They are written to generate stories, to enrich the images and inner dialogue within the organization, and to bring the positive core more fully into focus.

A program to address violence against women and children has been operating for a long period of time in the community where the Yup’k Women’s Coalition (YWC) is located.

Discovering what is the best in the organization and community meant people getting involved to create a safe space for women, even though dramatic changes were happening which created unstable and dangerous conditions.

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We had a women’s shelter in 1979. The safe homes and women came together to discuss the importance of them. We live in a population of 500 members in village. When it became legal to import alcohol into the village it caused lots of violence, pain, and real abuse. Women had a safe place to go to avoid the violence.

In the discovery phase of the organization there was a deep commitment to address and resolve violence in the community, despite the lack of the most simple amenties, funding, and being overlooked. Volunteers were an important resource in this effort:

We had no funding and operated using only volunteers. All we needed was heat to get started since we already had a number of volunteers. Before long, a lot of women were coming to center for to escape the abuse. There was a lot of drinking in homes and it ended up that there were 7-8 children in the center.

In 2005, the shelter was defunded, despite having community confidence and that there was still a big need. We felt like we were discriminated against because funding was going to more women’s centers rather than shelters like ours.

To realize the best of what is, the project draws creatively upon a positive core of traditional values, beliefs, and spiritual teachings, which frame the strengths, knowledge, wisdom, and natural resources present in the organization and community:

We draw upon the traditional values and beliefs of Yup’ik people. Our work was first organized and grounded by our elders who are involved in all of our gatherings and take part in our educational presentations. They guide how to do with things and how we should face the challenges we encounter today. They tell us not to feel or take in the anger. Instead, be kind, calm, and compassionate to everyone. We are reminded that this is how the Creator wishes us to work using humility, compassions and understanding.

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In getting involved in the work, Lenora shares that there is a tradition of helping in her family and, as a young woman, it prepared her to know how to intervene and support others when necessary:

I remember that my mother was midwife and helped others. The village was small. It was a five-minute walk to my grandmother’s place and I enjoyed going there. But her nephew stayed with her and liked to drink alcohol. During one visit to her place she wasn’t there. It was because her nephew was drinking and she wanted to get a way. It was my first time providing a safe home. So, I grew up with a passion to help others.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Empathy motivated Lenora to get involved. She witnessed the desperate lives of women in her the community who were doing all that they could to flee from violence. She felt a deep emotional wounding seeing this pain and struggle:

It is important to make sure that the women and children in the community that are experiencing violence can get away from it and be safe and have a place to go. It hurt my heart to see them roaming around the village with no place to go. They often have to flee and hide in willows, smokehouses, or abandoned houses.

The YWC has the capacity to transform violence by bringing people together to connect their stories and lives. The best of what is, is that YWC makes it a priority to educate the next generation to understand and discover the importance of addressing and ending violence:

Doing whatever we can to do healthy activities that make a difference.

When we host regional conferences, we see our organization growing and more women and men becoming involved. We see and understand the intergenerational trauma and what it means to our well-being. A number of accomplished people, young people, are beginning to understand the dynamics of violence and that it must be addressed.

A particularly interesting discovery and inspiring moment seized upon by the organization is that despite the challenges of violence against women in the community, the

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incorporation of traditional culture in the project has enabled some to continue to hang onto their traditional culture. This inspiring moment reflects a positive core of resilience and the knowledge of the best that has been:

There is a danger that we are losing our cultural traditions, but we also see people hanging onto it and sharing it with others.

Another inspiring moment happened when the YWC used their organizing talents to provide a forum for Native women to demystify violence and share their understanding and affirm that it was not a part of Yup’ik culture:

It is very moving and inspiration when women share stories of the pain that they went through and that they are not able to say now I know why I feel the way that I do. The speak of marital rage, different types of abuse and violence and the turmoil they’ve been through. It is inspiring to hear them say that, this is not how we used to be in our culture.

A survivor is one who has the capacity, strengths, and talent to overcome difficulties. In the discovery phase, there is an acknowledgement by the project staff that the people in the community are survivors. Despite the violence in the community and a long tumultuous and intense history many difficult challenges – they have survived:

The most important accomplishment is that we have many survivors of violence and we have survived many challenges for thousands and thousands of years.

II. Dream: The Dream phase is an energizing exploration of “what might be”: a time for people to explore their hopes and dreams for their work, their working relationships, their organization, and the world at large. It is a time for groups of people to engage in thinking big and thinking out of the boundaries of what has been in the past. The intent of the Dream phase is to identify and spread generative, affirmative and hopeful images of the future The hopes and dreams of the YWC for their organization and community is to recapture traditions, behaviors, values, and behaviors that were compromised by a history of oppression 115

and colonization; to regain a traditional life without violence. Within the wisdom of Yup’ik elders there is the knowledge that ancestors possessed the capacities to sustain and care for themselves and one another:

Our biggest dream is to see no more violence and to return to who we once were. We had lots of food resources to draw from like moose, fish, and berries.

An elder said one time, “Why do we need that shelter building? Why do we need a shelter like that? We took care of each other, women and children. We weren’t like this.” We dream of being able to live in harmony without violence or despair.

III. Design: The Design phase involves making choices about “what should be” within the organization or system. It is a conscious re-creation or transformation, through which such things as systems, structures, strategies, processes and images will become more fully aligned with the organization’s positive past (Discovery) and highest potential (Dream).

There is a deep appreciation between the workers in the YWC. Understanding and supporting one another means greater success resolving issues of violence, along with the many challenges that come with it. What should be in the organization are workers who are appreciated by the community for their efforts:

We have a core group here that work together that support one another and the mission. We appreciate working with our co-workers, community, and organization partners because they understand the work we do. The staff especially understand who we are and why we do what we do. We work well together on the problems we encounter. I think that people appreciate that we are trying to be good role models in the community.

Important strategies and practices are essential to what should be in the organization in order to manifest success and culturally appropriate services. Having the capacity to reach out to others to help them understand what their community has been through and what it needs contributes to the empowerment, resilience, and wellness of the people:

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We do outreach to outlying villages to prevent violence. Alcohol, violence, drugs, homelessness are major issues. There are struggles because of language and values differences with mainstream society for those that grew up traditional home and families. Our work is guided by our elders and the traditional beliefs and values of the Yup’ik people. We make sure that that women and children in our community are safe and have a place to go. There is not enough housing.

IV. Destiny: The Destiny phase initiates a series of inspired actions that support ongoing learning and innovation—or “what will be.” The Destiny phase, however, focuses specifically on personal and organizational commitments and paths forward which result in changes in organizational systems, structure, processes or procedures.

The destiny of the YWC is inspired and influenced by an understanding of how past events shaped current circumstances. Throughout this interview the positive core of commitment has been an ever-present factor and commentary, as has been traditional knowledge and the natural wisdom and cultural resources of elders.

The vision is for the people to understand what happened to us and how we were before. We want our people to understand our inherit rights and sovereignty because the system has been failing us. Now we are working to change things in a positive way. We will continue to work with our elders and use our traditional ways.

In the end, the destiny of the YWC might be best articulated in the individual unique gifts, skills, experience, and commitment that Lenora embodies in her own resilient nature:

I have been working there for over 30 years. I get burnt out, stressed, and wish to do other work, but I cannot walk away from what we are doing and what needs to be done.

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V.

CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS “One must be wise in knowing what to prepare for and equally Wise knowing in being prepared for the unknowable.”

--Yup’ik Quote, Native Voices “When money is used for external reward for activity the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity – in other words money can deliver short term boosts but the effects wear off – and worse can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.”

--Daniel Pink, 2011 The seven Alaska Native Women’s projects are succeeding in their efforts to reduce

violence in Native villages and communities, despite the numerous vexing factors that contribute to the disproportionate level of violence against Native Alaska Women. Humans have a long and complex history of violence and aggression. Violence has been colonized leading to the presentfocus of Native on Native violence while generally ignoring the rate high rates of interracial violence against these groups, especially towards Native women. Colonialism and the structures and processes of settler colonialism (e.g., settler laws, beliefs, values, policies, identity, and sovereignty) have advanced the goals of settler colonialism while diminishing those of Indigenous Peoples which has contributed to the present rates of violence towards Native women. The context of violence is undergirded by human fears, anxiety, and aggression of real and imagined threats. The types of violence and the factors that predict intimate violence are complex, diverse, and numerous and require tremendous efforts to address.

Violence is embedded in all societies, classes, and genders, and is much more of a problem of male behavior. Arguments continue about whether violence is nature or nurture. The scientific community leans towards the idea that it is more likely in our nature, while studies show that nurture can be a powerful mediator of violence. And, several studies show that the capacity

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for human violence and aggression can be found in our genes, brain, and neurochemistry. This is not to say that we are not capable of love, compassion, empathy, and trust – we are.

The seven Alaska Native Women’s projects have engaged themselves in challenging work and environments and demonstrated an impressive commitment to what they do. The narratives and the statements from the 4-D Appreciative Inquiry analysis provide important evidence that all of the projects have (1) made progress; (2) have a number of accomplishments; (3) possess a multitude of positive core attributes and strengths within the individual, organizations, and communities; and (4) have confronted and successfully dealt with many of the challenges before them.

It is important to mention that a strategic inquiry to study the progress, accomplishments, strengths, and the challenges of an organization using an Appreciative Inquiry approach is a more recent analytical phenomenon in organizational research. For some time, organizational analyses were based upon “rational” approaches that were aimed at assessing organizational change, function, efficiency, and effectiveness; this is also true of American Indian and Alaska Native organizations. Much of the assessment focused on the threats to an organization (as in what is wrong with the organization) and how the threats could affect change, function, efficiency, and effectiveness, and how they might be dealt with.

One of the most well-known organizational analytical approaches used to assess the function of the organization was the “rational model,” which is the precursor to many of the rational organizational approaches around today. The rational model was created by Fredrick Taylor (1911) under the paradigm of “scientific management.” Its main goals were improving economic efficiency and labor productivity. The major focus of the model was on the organization and not the external people, units, or audience it served. Therefore, not surprisingly, in the opening sentence of this classic work Taylor states “the principle object of 119

management should be to secure maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employé” (p.1).

The rational model at this time, and to some extent today, focused/focuses on improving organizational performance by concentrating on what had or was going wrong, failing, lagging, or underperforming – and then engaging in processes to improve the situation by using “inducements” or “incentives,” which, according to the findings in motivational research, have short term benefits but lose effectiveness over the long term (Langelett, 2009).

New models of organizational analysis, such as Appreciative Inquiry, have opened up to the understanding that rather than inducements and incentives being at the core of the strengths of the organization, it is the drives, knowledge, creativity, and wisdom of the people in the organization that provide the key ingredients. For example, author Daniel Pink (2011), in his bestseller book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” uses four decades of scientific research on human motivation to demonstrate that high performance and satisfaction at home, work, and school is based upon three key ideas: (1) Autonomy: that there is a deep human need to have control and be able to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery: that there is a need for each of us to learn and create new things and get better at what we do; and (3) Purpose: that there is a need to do better by ourselves and our world and to be part of something that is bigger than we are. Each of the Native Alaska women’s projects have at different times and in different ways, added aspects of autonomy, mastery, and purpose to the lives of their workers, organizations, and communities.

In sum, the newer models of organizational analysis that focus on what is positive about an organization and its people, such as Appreciative Inquiry, have ushered in a new era of evidence that effectively argues for the need to radically shift how organizations operate.

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Throughout the Narratives of Strength, Building Capacity, and Community Empowerment section, the seven projects in this study shared several important examples of how the staff and the project activities were engaged in understanding their progress, accomplishments, strengths, and challenges. Much of this was found using the 4-D cycle Appreciative Inquiry model, which helped to generate the attributes of the positive core of the staff, organizations, and community. Throughout the interviews staff shared how they were able to call upon several positive core attributes in order to build capacity, unleash imagination, and empower the organization and the lives it touched (Brown, 2009). Several of the Thriving Women’s Initiative-Alaska projects shared their immense gratitude to the 7th Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Inc., for providing the training, support, and funding that enabled them to do their work.

A number of key attributes that populate the positive core were identified. As Thomas (2006) has stated the positive core includes the strengths, talents, capacities, knowledge, creativity, resilience, wisdom, skills, and resources of the organization and individuals. Brown (2006) further states that there is an assumption that these characteristics are available and can be called upon to build capacity, unleash imagination, and empower the organization and the lives it touches. It is through the positive core of each project and the drawing from that core that the seven Alaska Native women’s projects were able to able to gauge their efforts to build community capacities and empowerment.

The key positive core attributes of each project are shared in the following three diagrams. The diagrams are split up according to a cohort designation: Cohort One: Hoonah Indian Association, Arctic Winds Healing Winds, and Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center; Cohort Two: Healing Native Hearts, United Tribes of Bristol Bay, and Emmonak Women’s Shelter; and Cohort Three: Yup’ik Women’s Coalition.

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There is a page number included in each attribute box that serves as a reference to the page where the attribute is located. To the right each attribute, below the PC, are the abbreviations of one or more of the positive core themes (PC) that are associated with the attribute:

Positive Core

Attribute Abbreviation

Strengths

=

STR

Talents

=

TAL

Capacities

=

CAP

Knowledge

=

KNW

Creativity

=

CRE

Resilience

=

RES

Wisdom

=

WIS

Skills

=

SKL

Resources

=

RES

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VII:

APPENDIX: POSITIVE CORE AND ATTRIBUTES

Positive Core Attributes: Cohort 1 Hoonah Indian Association

Arctic Winds Healing Winds

Attribute Weaving as healing (p. 54) Healing with women (p. 52)

(PC) Attribute RES Telling the Story KNW (p. 65) Healing power of the SKL wind (p. 65)

Mindfulness weaving (p. 54) Connecting women (p. 54) Tribal House (p.55)

SKL Yup’ik way of being KNW (p. 65) SKL Building connections (p. 65) WIS Collaboration (pp. 65, RES 66, 68) KNW Cultural ways of CRE knowing (p. 65)

Language and stories (p.55) Cultural Traditions (p. 56) Traditional Foods (p. 56) Humor (p. 56) Bonding/connecting (p. 56) Ancestors (p. 57)

RES STR STR CRE RES TAL SKL STR WIS

Personal experience (p. 65).

Building Community (p. 65) Belief in healing (p. 64).

Gratitude for 7th Gen support (p. 67) Intelligence (p. 68) Humility (p. 68)

Sacred Space (p. 57) Gifting (p. 57) Reconnecting to Culture (p. 57) Traditional robes heal (p. 58) Here for thousands of years (p. 58, 59) Matrilineal strength (p. 58); Prayer (p. 59); Strength of Women (p. 59)

RES STR RES

Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center

(PC) SKL CAP WIS RES WIS STR

Attribute Coalition-building (p.74)

STR SKL SKL TAL WIS RES

Working in the field (p.74)

Using performance play to address violence (p.74) Cultural realities and traditions (p. 74)

Personal experience as a survivor (p. 75) Belief in strengths of community to change (p. 75)

KNW Using culture (p.76) RSL KNW Respect (p. 76) STR STR Generosity (p. 76) KNW Listening (p. 77) SKL CAP Humility – “ego does not run the show” (p. 77) Letting community be the SKL driving force (p. 77)

Respect (p. 68)

TAL

Positive change (p. 77)

We know who we are (p. 68) KNW Creating community, STR collaborating (p. 68) RES Committed to work (p. 65) “We know what needs STR to be done” (p. 68) RES

STR

Understand Cultural needs (p. 77) Honesty (p. 76)

SKL

123

WIS RES STR STR KNW

Gratitude for 7th Gen support (p. 77) Love & Empathy (p. 77)

(PC) SKL CAP RES CRE WIS KNW CAP KNW KNO RSL STR TAL WIS RES SKL CAP CAP SKL RSL CAP SKL RES RES RES CAP

Positive Core Attributes: Cohort 2 Healing Native Hearts

United Tribes of Bristol Bay Emmonak Women’s Shelter

Attribute Draw on strengths of women (p. 82)

(PC) TAL

Attribute Resistance to mining (p. 89)

(PC) SKL CAP

Attribute Survivor of Domestic Violence (p. 96)

(PC) RSL CAP

Sincerity (p. 82)

SKL

Women play a central role (p. 89)

Personal experience: “Growing up I saw a lot of violence.” (p. 82) Volunteering (p. 82)

RSL

CAP RES CAP STR

25 years of experience working in area (p. 96) Collaboration, networking with other agencies/programs (p. 96) Belief in we’re here for a purpose (p. 97) Using traditional dancing (p. 97) “I didn’t know how I did all that I did… (p. 97).

RSL CAP CRE TAL KNW

Use of traditional ceremony (p. 83) Using alternative Healing (p. 83)

Commitment to the work (p. 89) SKL Women are creators of life (p. 89).

WIS Connecting women to KNO other groups (p. 89) KNW Wisdom of the elders CRE (p. 89)

Project training creates inspiration (p. 83) Using traditional and holistic practices (p. 83)

RES SKL STR CRE

Building on Strengths of villages (p. 83).

Doing presentations to others – collaborations (p. 83).

Building the strengths and values of others (p.

84) Men, Elders, Women are all engaged (p. 84)

TAL SKL SKL TAL

Committed to the work (p.84) Belief in what we are doing (p. 84) Working closely with others (p. 84) Use of Elders (p. 84) Gratitude for support from 7th Gen (p. 84)

SKL TAL CAP

STR SKL WIS RES

Cultural Traditions (p. 89) Connected to land, Salmon, and waters (p. 85) Connected to People (p. 90) Encourage People to participate and give voice (p. 90) Protecting Resources (p. 90)

KNW Power of prayer (pp. 98, 98) RES Sharing knowledge of elders KNW (p. 99, 102) STR STR Potluck dinners created KNW important gatherings (p. 98) SKL Men use knowledge from TAL elders (p. 98)

Listening to the People (p. 90).

SKL

CAP SKL

Use of sacred images to create peace (p. 98)

CAP KNO RES RSL CAP STR CAP SKL WIS RES RES CAP RES

Love, respect, and caring for one another (p. 99) CAP RSL TAL “I put my husband in jail RSL CAP Ability to lead (p. 90) SKL one hundred time or more CAP for domestic violence” (p.99) CAP Importance of many STR Use of Generosity (p. 99) voices (p. 91) RES CAP KNW Traditional knowledge WIS Using gifting to bond and STR (p. 91) KNW heal (p. 100) RES TAL RES Traditional feasts & RES Using traditional teachings SKL TAL gatherings (p. 91) STR (p. 100) Building Community CAP (p. 92); guided by a CRE Gifting (p. 100) RES vision (p. 92) RES Positive thinking (p. 100)

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Positive Core Attributes: Cohort 3 Yup’ik Women’s Coalition Attribute Collaborating with outside sources to obtain funding (p. 108)

(PC)

SKL Networking with City council (p. 108) SKL Using Traditional Yup’ik beliefs and values (p. 109, 111) Use of Elders in project work (p. 109, 111, 112)

KNW SKL RES SKL RES

Elders share their experiences and wisdom of how to do our work (p. 109)

WIS RES

Growing up with a passion to help others (p. 109)

KNW CRE

Having spiritual beliefs about humility, compassion, and understanding (p. 109) RSL Compassion: “Hurt my Heart to see” (p. 106) “We understand historical trauma” (p. 106)

STR KNW

“We have survived challenges for thousands and thousands of years (p. 110)

RSL

Return to traditional culture (p. 110)

KNW STR

“Elders meet with abusers” and give traditional teachings (p.

111)

CAP WIS

“We support one another and our mission” (p. 111); Working with the community to understand what happened to us (p. 112) Resilience: “I get burned out…but I cannot walk away from what we are doing and what needs to be done” (p. 112)

125

RES KNW RSL CAP

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Harper, S. S., and Entrekin, C. M. (2006). Violence Against Native Women: A Guide for Practitioner Action. Office On Violence Against Women, National Center on Full Faith and Credit: https://www.bwjp.org/assets/documents/pdfs/ncpoffc_violence_against_native_women.pdf Howard, B. J. (2011). The Hyperagressive Young Child. Commentary. Pediatric News: https://www.mdedge.com/pediatrics/article/46808/hyperaggressive-young-child Howard, P. J. (2014). The Owner’s Manuel for the Brain: The Ultimate Guide To Peak Mental Performance At All Ages. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

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Yellow Bird, M. (2015). Building Power and Optimizing Impacts: Reservation Based Non-Profit Capacity Building Grant Pilot Initiative. Using an Appreciative Inquiry Approach to Evaluate Ten Native-led Emerging Community-Based Non-Profit Groups (CBOs) on or Directly serving Reservation Communities in Idaho, South Dakota, Montana, and North Dakota. Seventh Generation Funding for Indigenous Peoples, Inc. Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples; PO Box 4569, Arcata, CA 95518.

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About th Author/Evaluator DR. MICHAEL YELLOW BIRD (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara) Dr. Michael Yellow Bird is a Professor of Sociology and the Director of Indigenous Tribal Studies at North Dakota State University. He is a citizen of the Three Affiliated Tribes, (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) and joined North Dakota State University faculty in the fall of 2014. He has held faculty appointments in the Schools of social work at the University of British Columbia, University of Kansas, Arizona State University, and Humboldt State University.

His teaching, writing, research, professional presentations, and community work focus on Indigenous Peoples health; the effects of colonization and methods of decolonization; neurodecolonization and mindfulness approaches; neuroscience, microbiome science, genetic science and Indigenous Peoples; and ancestral and paleo eating and lifestyle. Dr. Yellow Bird is the author of numerous scholarly articles, book chapters, and the coeditor of four books. “Choice Magazine” selected his work, Decolonizing Social Work, as a 2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Choice Outstanding Titles are given extraordinary recognition by the academic community and are designated to be “the best of the best.” He is the coauthor of the forthcoming book, Integrative Social Work.

About Seventh Generatio

Fund

Founded in 1977, the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples is the oldest international identity-based, non-governmental organization in the United States. As a culturally relevant, Native-centered philanthropic and community development model, our organizational purpose works directly with Native nations, communities and organizations throughout the Indigenous World to help them design and actualize self determinative, sustainable, and empowered futures.

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Acknowledgements THRIVING WOMEN SUPPORTERS Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples expresses our gratitude for the many supporters of Thriving Women: Amanda Coslor Community Foundation Serving Boulder Colorado Everywoman's Leadership Regranting Fund Groundswell Fund Kalliopeia Foundation NoVo Foundation TAO Fund Tri-Mindful Zak Sinclair

DR. MICHAEL YELLOW BIRD A long-time consultant of Seventh Generation Fund, Dr. Michael Yellow Bird has contributed multiple works and insights to our organization. We thank him and recognize his invaluable contributions to Thriving Women and beyond.

EDITORS Tia Oros Peters (Zuni) Chelsea Miraflor Trillo (Pangitaa)

131

Photo and items courtesy of: Tia Oros Peters

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