mcm
March 2022 newsletter
indigenous healing center
Vision
The Indigenous Healing Center promotes and strengthens spaces for indigenous families and communities within a framework of visibility, participation, healing, research, spirituality, specific and collective rights, self-determination, self-sustainability, cosmovisions, and the sciences of the original people.
Photography by
Santy Hernandez
Creating Equity
The core of our effort begins through an indigenous worldview. The indigenous perspective is about equitable participation. There’s an understanding that everybody has to be included; from the grandmothers, the grandfathers, the aunties, the uncles, the little ones, the adults, the young adults, and the children.
Equity is built into the values that indigenous people live by, that many indigenous cultures live by. All of the work that we do is always coming from a place of: how do we get everyone to participate? Not just the adults, but also the younger generations.
Impact
The indigenous medicine training is one example that showcases the impact of nurturing community via participation. Individuals from all backgrounds (women, youth, elders) come together to learn and share indigenous medicine, creating a community of practice.
The Indigenous Healing Center has also organized two major indigenous medicine conferences where hundreds of people and community leaders from across the world came together to share their knowledge, perspectives, and lived experiences.
Something really special happening at the center is the local native communities coming together and collaborating – strengthening these partnerships and creating new ones.
Not only has all this increased visibility of indigenous peoples in Marin, but it has also increased their participation in the community.
Looking Forward
We see the center continuing to work for the families in our communities. Not just from illnesses (physical, mental, emotional illnesses) but a place where people reconnect with themselves and fully integrate every aspect (spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally) into their well-being.
This will be a place where anyone can come and feel at home and have a connection to themselves, others, and the land; a place where no one is alone This is a space where participation in the community is encouraged and nurtured. A place that is a constant in the community.
An Equitable Future
From an indigenous perspective, we are all of one race; the human race.
To view each other as the same is to support an equitable future for indigenous people. When we see each other as relatives – as connected, then we can begin to share and collaborate with each other.
Moving away from the colonial thinking of some cultures being better than other cultures would see a decrease in trauma from stress systems that operate from the mindset: “I’m different. You’re different.” This separatist view leaves us all open to hurting and exploiting each other, allowing inequity to run rampant.
If we return to this fundamental truth that we’re all relatives; that we’re all connected; then we can begin to see equity not only in indigenous communities but, everywhere and for everyone.
ihc
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