Northern hosting Indigenous Resilience Gathering

A group of agencies is bringing educators, students, and state and education officials together in Havre to discuss what is working and what needs to be done in Indian education in the state.

“Attendees of the gathering will get an opportunity to interact, share and talk about the work that we’re doing in Indian education, including the successes and the challenges,” Montana State University-Northern Little River Institute Director Erica McKeon-Hanson said. “The Indigenous Gathering provides for an opportunity to be together in a shared space to learn from each other, something that doesn’t happen often enough when we are doing the work.” she said. “We also expect to have youth there, and students, and college students, and learning from the students themselves, and just this shared experience, so we can continue to stay connected and do this work together in the state of Montana.”

Little River Institute, Northern’s center for mentoring, tutoring and support for Native American students at the university, is hosting the premiere two-day Indigenous Resilience Gathering Wednesday, March 18, and Thursday, March 19, beginning at 8 a.m. each day.

“The indigenous gathering is just an opportunity for educators throughout Indian Country to come together and look at what they’re doing to incorporate culture and self-identity in language into schools,” said Lona Running Wolf of Montana Office of Public Instruction’s American Indian Student Achievement Division.

She and someone from Montana Office of Public Instruction had attended a restorative practice training conference with multiple tribes in attendance there and based on discussions that were brought up at the event, an indigenous gathering was brainstormed, she said

“We just talked about having a gathering where we could share all the different things that we are doing in Indian communities to kind of help combat historical trauma and from that we talked to Erica (McKeon-Hanson) and she got on board. We talked with another OPI partner Don Wetzel and he got on board, and we just went from there and it’s been in the organic process,” Running Wolf said

McKeon-Hanson said she thinks the event is an opportunity for people with a shared vision that are doing similar work to come together and share what people as educators are doing to support the Native youth and Native students.

“We have this partnership between the American Indian Achievement division at the Office of Public Instruction, Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, and the Little River Institute at MSU-Northern coming together with this shared vision and inviting educators and professionals in tribal communities who work with our Native youth and Native students to come and share our work, learn from each other, share with each other and grow together,” she said.

She added that the intent is to include youth as well as the people who are working hard for Indian education at both the K-12 and higher education levels.

Running Wolf said culture and self-identity are key in helping indigenous students throughout the state of Montana lower the statistics in suicide and crime rates and also increase the statistics in student achievement

She added that what she is excited for is the discussion in how to bring back culture and self-identity.

“So that they have the tools, they begin to develop the tools, to be able to be resilient through all of these barriers they have in their lives and, so, I’m excited because I feel like this is like the first time we’re going to come together as multiple tribes,” she said. “We may have different cultures, but we all have the same issues, and the issues are surrounded by poverty, addiction and those kinds of things, so we’re excited to bring everybody together and really open the floor with honest conversations and talking about solutions.”

She said the workshop is for anyone involved in those issues.

“I think it’s important for anybody that works with American Indian students. We want to make it clear it’s not just for people that are indigenous, it’s for anybody who works or works closely with communities or with American Indian students,” Running Wolf said. “The sessions that we are offering is a lot of informational sessions around cultural inclusion in schools, but we are also offering things like how you can protect children, what are jurisdictional issues that our Native children face as far as federal, state and tribal regulations in policies.”

She added that the event will also include presenters from tribal colleges as well as sessions for youth leadership.

McKeon-Hanson said the workshop’s goals mirror the goals of the institute and of Northern.

“For the Little River Institute, we are really looking forward to hosting this event on the campus of MSU-Northern. One of the things we really focus on and try to do in our work is to facilitate our Native students in higher-ed to be able to remain connected to their culture and, as Lona said, to be connected to their self-identity and to not feel like they have to leave their culture and community behind when they come to our campus,” McKeon-Hanson said. “I’m hoping that we also have people that come in and participate in our conference that are from non-tribal schools and in higher-ed that serve American Indian students, but aren’t necessarily located in tribal communities, so that they can learn how to help their students remain connected and remain firmly in their culture, and learn how to support that from our faculty at the college to staff members.”

Running Wolf said this is the first year of this event, but she hopes to make it an annual one.

The two-day gathering is free, with a free lunch, and continuing education unit credit will be available.

People interested in registering for the two-day event can visit https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfnRMawHfhVrBhQod_KKsuJm-zjmjqHSy9XavBmZlsjosmX2w/viewform or http://bit.ly/2xpE37R . The form is also available on the Little River Institute’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/littleriverinstitute .