Excitement was building as the Midyear conference drew near. In Downtown Phoenix, Arizona more than 600 Native youth would gather for a weekend of storytelling, cultural sharing and creativity. In UNITY fashion there were many pre-conference activities planned for those that arrived early, including the Healing Circle. There were more than 60 youth that participated in peer led discussions about community asset mapping and connecting to local resources.
The National UNITY Council Executive Committee had prepared themselves to prior to the conference to lead healthy conversations about challenges that many Native youth may face in their communities. The objective of the Healing Circles are not to only bring awareness to the issues that youth face in their day to day lives, but to also discover resources that are readily available to them within their communities and how they may be able to access those resources by building relationships with local community members. Each member of the Executive Committee took part in leading the youth through the exercises of the Healing Circle and made sure that each individual was comfortable enough to participate and share within their groups.
The session started off with participants getting into small groups with whom they would spend the session with. A long standing tradition of UNITY is to create a clan name, cheer and shield. Then the groups went into discussions about what wellness means to them and where they find wellness their lives. This included safe places like community or youth centers, local youth councils, community events, traditional ceremonies, family gatherings and self care focused activities. In order to keep spirits high, the Executive Committee lead everyone through ice breakers every so often. This not only helps break down any walls first time participants may have, it also fuels them with positive energy that they can bring to the conference. Groups then got back together to talk about what they would envision a perfect Native community to be like. This exercise not only gives participants a chance to be creative in what they want to see in their own communities, but to also gain ideas about what possible projects to events they could do to achieve the outcome they desire.
Through this short three hour Healing Circle participants were able to identify key community advocates and resources to strengthen community growth and use asset mapping as a strength-based approach to community development. Helping youth develop skills to identify positive factors with their community that they have access to is one of the key takeaways that UNITY’s Healing Circles hope to achieve.
Of course this is only a shortened version of the Healing Circle training that UNITY provides. If your tribal community is interested in bringing this three day Healing Circle to your Native youth, feel free to reach out to UNITY at headquarters@unityinc.org.