Initiatives

In alignment with the asset- and action-based, participatory, and experiential approaches developed by Community Psychology, Cultural Psychology, Ecopsychology, and Narrative Psychology, the goal of “community hygiene” is to strengthen human to human and human to nature bonds by creating self-sustaining community partnerships and channels for collective initiatives and resource mobilization.

The “rite of passage” from adolescence to adulthood is offered here as a viable channel for collective agency and a vehicle for bridging different cultures and peoples. Contributions from both Indigenous and Western psychological orientations are utilized to explore creative, culturally-valid, and efficacious suggestions that facilitate strength-based, community- and ecologically-oriented constructions of self. The rites of passage model also serves to ground various interdisciplinary and cross-cultural threads of research in a manner that directly benefits people while simultaneously generating new knowledge.

Individual adolescents, each with their own personal manifestations of transitional crises, offer the occasion for collective mobilization of energetic and attentional resources. That includes the mobilization of local elders, parents of youth, community leaders, and indigenous elders. When the broader community responds in kind(ness), with compassion and determination, a passageway is formed to help guide youth through uncertainty. In rising to and meeting that challenge, the community itself will have achieved passage; it is able to regenerate itself, correct itself, survive, and thrive. This is the practice of community hygiene and intentional world renewal.

~ ancient practices & words of wisdom for cultivating a nourishing &
 restorative relationship with our menstruation (moontime)
~ alternative practices for disposing of blood, acknowledging the
 sacredness of the female womb & its processes
~ working with the powerful medicine, creativity, & sensitivity afforded
 during this time
~ tips & tricks to move through unpleasant symptoms with grace & ease
~ honoring the feminine power to give life & using our power of creation
 wisely
~ sacred sexuality & the importance of relationships; learning how to guard
 & sustain our own energies with integrity, respect, & Love

is more than living in a traditional tribal setting or running around with bows & arrows (with utmost Love & gratitude for those humans who still do so).

Being Indigenous is to remember ourselves as extensions of the Land & Earth before & around us. It is to live in conscious reciprocity & relationship with all of Life--the People & ancestors, the Land, the cycles & seasons, the plants & animals, the rivers, streams, mountains, seas, fundamental elements. Being Indigenous involves feeling & communicating with the whole of what makes us human and alive.

The mountains, rivers, stars are speaking, singing to us...but we have forgotten our true mother tongues, we have forgotten how to listen--having largely lost our natural sensitivity to hear & feel over generations of misuse & distraction.

And yet, nothing is lost. All needed resources & keys for this endeavor are here now; the memory is within us!

An initiative which aims to give place and space to the cultivation of our innate abilities of listening & feeling, of living according to the wisdom and generosity that Nature affords us...to honor the cycles & gifts of Life & Death and our part within & beyond the two...to take our seat as guardians and sustainers of Place, of balance...to dance together to the symphonies of Creator & creation in celebration of all that we are.

We are young, we are ancient, we are healers, warriors, weavers...
We are the orphans of our own story, walking both forwards and backward in time as we track the memory of true family, tribe, being a nation.
Hunters of the good word, stewards of a possibility and proposal to live today the seed of our origins. We are the children, we are the ancestors of tomorrow. And we are gathering...to understand how best to advance forward as a People.