R.O.C.K. Mat-Su takes on racism in the Mat-Su Valley through “Braided Stories”
FOSTERING JUST COMMUNITIES By Lila Hobbs
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vincing a permeable boundary between present and past and transecting landscapes, braided rivers evoke an intersection of place, identity, and history in Alaska. These rivers require a broader viewing perspective in order to understand their interwoven, ever-changing structure fully. Up close, their intricacies are not apparent. Both the rivers and those that view them provide a salient metaphor for the integration of Western and Indigenous knowledge streams and the navigation of what is seen and unseen within them. This familiar and fluid imagery prompted the name for an emerging community workshop in Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley. Raising Our Children with Kindness, also known as R.O.C.K. Mat-Su, is a diverse group of community members working collectively to promote family resilience and end child maltreatment. At the heart of this organization are its steering committee and various working groups. Driven by a collective impact framework, R.O.C.K Mat-Su utilizes locally relevant approaches, convening people to create shared vision for solving complex issues. Its work includes 16 synchronous strategies that support the overarching goal of making systematic change to reduce child abuse while increasing family resilience.
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A L A S K A H U M A N I T I E S F O R U M FA L L 2021
Creating Space to Explore Forgotten and Erased Histories
At R.O.C.K. Mat-Su’s inception five years ago, the steering committee wanted to turn its focus to the issue of racism. Few things are more insidious and widespread than racism when it comes to barriers preventing children from having opportunities to thrive. Working group members grappled with how to address racial disparities, given the multifaceted and engrained complexities of the topic. They knew that in order to work toward shifting the culture of the community towards equity, first they would need to create space for bringing light to systemic racism and racism in the Mat-Su as a whole. Deliberately exploring and transforming racism would involve a precursory process of unearthing, examining, and unlearning it. Working group member and Project Coordinator for the Knik Tribal Council, Isha Twitchell, describes this undertaking as, “Giving light to the untold history of the area and recognizing that the lands that we are on are lands that people have resided on since time immemorial, for thousands of years. It is important to understand that the history that is told or really highlighted is a colonist history. Many people believe that no one resided in the Cook Inlet region/Dena’ina territory before the colonists arrived.”
