taxayem nyka shiks pi tillixam
Hello friends and family~
This video will be one of a three part segment to delve deeper into specific commitments and tangible objectives to hopefully see some of my ideas come to fruition in my platform areas of:
Elder Care
Education & Youth
Financial Sustainability &
Preserving Culture and Spirituality, all embedded in community.
This first video will focus on Honoring the Past through preserving Culture and Spirituality. Choosing to start with Honoring the Past was not happenstance, I believe it is the foundation for all the rest of it.
So jumping right in: Preserving Culture & Spirituality Has 7 points of discussion:
#1. Collecting and archiving today’s elder wisdom for tomorrow’s leaders and future generations. You can’t buy wisdom or get it by hard work. Wisdom is Maturity through living & relationships, how are we honoring that and capturing that through stories with our elders and learning from them? I think it’s important to not only remember and capture Tribal Elder quotes, “We were restored on prayer”, “We are spiritual people”., but to also have them written down by their author for future generations.
2. To continue to have representation in city, county, state and federal jurisdictions to ensure tribal sovereignty is understood, respected and protected in the future. I believe our current council is doing a great job of this but it’s also a full time job and one that needs to continue to be a priority for continuing to maintain and build those relationships long-term.
3. Preserving the right to protect our tribal culture, spirituality and practices. Personally, I would love to see our tribe establish a Ceremonial Day of Prayer and a Ceremonial Prayer site for family gatherings who live in the area and those traveling to the area during Pow wow time and times of mourning for family funerals, ceremonial services & naming ceremonies to just name of few. Establishing a sweat lodge, and even hiking trails to encourage more time spent in nature where a lot of us connect spiritually.
4. Creating a Legacy Wall of all past Tribal Council members with names, photos and dates of service located at the Governance Center. To some this may seem insignificant but it’s how we remember people and their sacrifices and service and to teach our young ones of those who came before them and made all this possible.
5. Establishing Treaty Signing celebrations for the 6 treaties we have and acknowledgements on the anniversaries of treating signings for community connectedness and cultural education, a time to pray, connect, gather, eat and celebrate, just one more way to honor those brave ones who came before us.
6. And lastly for this segment, Enhancing Elder Care and creating new programs such as an Elder Ambassador Care program, components that include youth and elder mentorships, community ambassadors who volunteer to work with elders on various things such as learning new technology, doing yard work, community service for our elders & general welfare checks. We have a lovely community garden I have had the honor of being a part of for 3 years now and incorporating garden-based educational lessons that improve health and educational outcomes for youth and elders to learn from one another including indigenous foods, and preparation, a harvest gathering, etc. would be amazing!)
So, if any of those 7 discussion items resonates with you and you want to reach out and talk about them more, please reach out to me on Facebook Messenger or email me at mcherry.co@gmail.com and you can also get a sneak peek of the “Serving the Present” objectives on my webpage at michaelcherry.co
