Today, the 41st Annual Protecting Our Children Conference started by welcoming over 1,800 advocates for Native children. The excitement to be together was clear.
Emcees Stephanie Weldon and Tessa Baldwin helped us start off the conference by introducing this year's theme, "Healing Our Spirits: Nurturing and Restoring Hope," and grounding us in the collective healing we know as Indigenous peoples. Through healing ourselves, we can stop the transmission of intergenerational trauma, help families heal together, and protect our children.
Yéil Koowú Shaawát, the Raven Tail Woman Program, was our first plenary panel which shared its expertise, stories, and experience in building and enhancing culturally based programs designed to strengthen community and family resilience. Leona Santiago, elder and advisor for the Tlingit and
Haida Tribal Family and Youth Services Department program, stated, “As a case manager or an ICWA worker, when you come to trainings like this you leave with healing. But the most powerful thing is when you heal on your own land. That’s powerful. That’s how we came up with Healing Village because a lot of us grew up in the village.”
Our second plenary panel included a kinship navigator program, program evaluator, personal lived experience, and a representative from the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network: A National Technical Assistance Center. Georgie Makris, who shared her experience onstage being a grandmother raising her three grandchildren, said, “My grandchildren saved me as much as I saved them.” Cheryl Miller ended the panel by encouraging the audience to work together and said, "This work is not done alone. It takes a wraparound [approach]. You can do it."
