9 minute read
Fostering Just Communities
By Lila Hobbs
Evincing 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.
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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.
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.”
OMARI RICHINS ON IDENTITY
“We can forgive, but we can’t forget because that’s what made us who we
"The word colony,
“We can forgive,
in our community, but we can’t forget because permeates that’s what made us who we are.” PATSY GARCIA everything." ON PATTERN
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Patsy Garcia Lisa Wade
on Colony
10 “I was not Native “I was not Native enough... enough…I was I was the White city girl.” NAIDENE BAECHLER ON IDENTITY the white city girl.”
LISA WADE ON COLONY
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A Brave Space to Share, Listen, and Learn
R.O.C.K. Mat-Su’s work to address racism originally was planned as a two-day, in-person, pilot workshop. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the workshop was adapted, shifting to a four-day, virtual format. Working group members quickly tackled many unknowns determining how they would build trust and cultivate an honest space for participants even from afar. Kameron Perez-Verdia, workshop facilitator and President and CEO of the Alaska Humanities Forum, said, “Our approach is very different from what you might think of as a traditional training or class; there is very little ‘teaching’. Most of the learning comes from participant discussions. Each person brings their ideas and life experiences to the group as content for the workshop. Our goal is to build trust and create a brave space for participants to understand and explore racism within their own history, culture, and current perspectives, as well as the history of our country, state, and specifically the Mat-Su Valley. We want them to begin to see the power structures and built-in oppression that exist all around them: in their families, churches, schools, health care centers, and communities. These systems can show up as organizational structures, policies and laws, or simply embedded ideas within dominant culture that are often accepted as being the norm. Participants finish the workshop by discussing examples of systems change and developing actions and ideas for making change within their own workplaces and community.”
Developing a Culturally Responsive Workshop
As R.O.C.K. Matsu began to collectively address systemic racism, they engaged with national platforms and curricula. The Outside trainers and their messaging, however, did not resonate with participants or speak to our state’s unique perspectives or history. Isha Twitchell notes, “In the past, there were many trainings brought up from the Lower 48, which didn’t accurately depict our diverse community here in the Valley, particularly Indigenous culture. The Valley doesn’t necessarily go through the same issues as the Lower 48 does because Alaska is so different, and our demographics are different as well.” To overcome this dissonance, R.O.C.K. Mat-Su thoughtfully approached how it would move forward, translating big questions into a hyper-local context, enabling participants to see history through the lens of their own. What came about was a workshop format featuring four layers of stories intertwined together: personal stories, history from our nation, from Alaska, and a robust history of racial issues in the Mat-Su. And, out of this workshop, “Braided Stories: Building Equitable Communities for Alaska’s Children & Families” was born.
One aspect of the workshop’s distinct methodology is incorporating a historical timeline of Mat-Su that parallels a statewide narrative and a national narrative to show how our country, state, and community were formed. One of the workshop’s facilitators, George Martinez, Vice President of Communications and Community Engagement for the Alaska Humanities Forum, explains, “It goes to show that keeping the curriculum as local as possible is going to be more effective in terms of relevance, context, and language. We have an opportunity here, and R.O.C.K. Mat-Su is really invested in that opportunity, not to have to be cookie-cutter or rely on just national platforms. There’s value and learning opportunities from all sorts of sources, so that’s not to diminish. Still, when we are talking about what connects with people in real-time and in a way that will drive local outcomes, it has to be relevant to the culture and history to bring people along.”“IT GOES TO SHOW THAT KEEPING THE CURRICULUM AS LOCAL AS POSSIBLE IS GOING TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE IN TERMS OF RELEVANCE, CONTEXT, AND LANGUAGE.
GENERATING MOMENTUM
R.O.C.K. MAT-SU’S VISION is to expand upon the efforts of this pilot workshop eventually. This September (dates TBD), R.O.C.K. Mat-Su will hold a Train-theTrainer event for those interested in being part of this vital antiracism work. R.O.C.K. Mat-Su hopes to fully launch the Braided Stories: Building Equitable Communities for Alaska’s Children & Families workshop in 2022. If you would like to learn more: Go to rockmatsu.org/equity Or email info@rockmatsu.org
Engaging in Meaningful Dialogue and Taking Actionable Steps
With one essential question at the forefront of the workshop, participants consider, “How do we strengthen Mat-Su families and keep children safe by creating equitable and just communities?” From that central inquiry, the workshop encompasses activities and materials to expand participants’ historical framework, hone their critical consciousness, and identify tangible steps to practice antiracism in their lives and communities. At each session, new focus questions emerge, such as, “How do communities develop resilience?” These questions encourage participants to reflect on identity and racism and how those aspects of daily life interplay with re-
silience, empowerment, and well-being. As the discussion encompasses the past, present, and future, participants gain a more comprehensive understanding of systems and patterns of oppression and their impacts in the Mat-Su. Participants also come to recognize patterns of resistance and resilience, which enable them to realize behaviors and actionable steps that will help them move from current reality to desired reality.
Embedding Safety into Storytelling
Sharing stories can be a transformational process for both storytellers and listeners. But behind its transformative power lie nuances and sometimes uncertainties relating to safety, vulnerability, trust, and re-traumatization. R.O.C.K. Mat-Su’s Director Betsy Larson acknowledged the responsibility to be mindful about planning projects involving storytelling and observed, “We learned that when People of Color (POC) attend racial equity trainings, often the onus is on them to share their stories and make the point that racism exists and has impacts. It can be a painful process for POC at the expense of trying to help White people understand what they experience,
and this happens again and again. The word ‘re-traumatizing’ has been used to describe it.” To build more safety into how people shared, R.O.C.K. Mat-Su conducted a number of hourlong interviews with POC in the Mat-Su. All of the individuals consented to share their stories and the impacts of racism on their lives. In the end, everyone that participated volunteered to do so, shared only once instead of multiple times, and allowed their stories to be made available to the workshop going forward. R.O.C.K. Mat-Su also created diptychs (photos of each individual paired with a pulled quote) and linked their recording to the PowerPoint.
Like many stories, this one is still being written. The workshop and its pilot participants generated a confluence of ideas, histories, paradigms, and personal stories. Though braided rivers surprise us with change, they continue to flow; their powerful torrents able to transport and transform whatever they touch. It remains to be seen whether the model of “Braided Stories” will prove to be a catalyst in other Alaska communities, moving them in the direction of healing and justice, hearing and being heard. ■
Cecelia Andrews & Alice Frank Demientieff, Deg Xit’an Athabascan
JOYFUL SISTERS
THE USE OF TEA PARTNERS (Sixoldhid) is a Deg Xit’an Athabascan traditional practice that instills a responsibility toward the welfare of others in the community and beyond. Other cultures in Alaska may have similar versions of this practice. Elders and parents connect tea partners together, someone older with someone younger, and a male with a female.
They are described as friendships, mentors, and thinking partners. The spirit of the tea partner means that you share your best food with your partner—king salmon, moose, fish ice cream—that you help your tea partner and offer them support when they come to your community, and that you gift them with things like beaver mittens or a warm marten hat, and in turn they will share their catch with you. It is about sharing and caring for others, about reciprocity and balance, and survival.
Your tea partner is someone you will honor throughout their lifetime and in turn they will honor you. It’s about responsibility for others. You can imagine the strength these connections create. Tea Partners build a grassroots safety net into and across communities.
Lila Hobbs works throughout Dena’ina Ełnena and is the founder of Wild Voices, which utilizes storytelling as a medium to build community, inspire activism, and enhance stewardship of a wilder world. To learn more about her work, visit: ourwildvoices.com.
