How do you start to set new boundaries in your ILR practice? I’m a recovering people pleaser who suffers from Human Giver Syndrome. (See the amazing book Burnout for more on HGS.) ILR is filled with people pleasers and human givers who decided to give their lives to language revitalization. Boundaries are not exactly our…
I worked with a great team of people from the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival to create this guide to journaling as a reflective practice. Strongly encourage you to print it on paper not just look at a digital version.
A visual of embodied experience. In My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (2017), Resmaa Menakem outlines how racialized historical trauma in America is an embodied experience. Embodiment is a way of representing that the mind, the body, the spirit, and the world around us is a…
What is a resilient relationship? A working definition (incomplete): A resilient relationship is one that can handle adversity, disagreement, misunderstanding, stress, and hurt through healthy conflict and skillful communication. While it can feel uncomfortable to sit in the discomfort of conflict, surface positivity, false harmony, and avoidance don’t create resilient relationships. Like trees planted…
Well, kid, nothing turned out the way you thought it would. You didn’t become a super NDN or start a revolution. You are still mostly the same Heinz 57 oddball who moved home and wanted to learn our language. You did that. Not as fluent as you wanted, but you did it. It took way…
There’s a lot I still don’t understand about myself. I used to be so confident about what mattered to me and what guided my behavior. I had a really strong sense of purpose. I believed in my ILR practice. Many things I thought I knew about myself fell apart when I burned out. I used…
I’m going to keep this introduction to creating systems simple. Here’s the deal: I’m an ADHD, dyslexic, neurodivergent ILR practitioner whose life is chaotic and filled with responsibilities. I struggle with concentration, impulsivity, and decision making. The only way I get things done (and I get a lot done) is by creating systems. This is…
Why does safety matter for ILR practitioners? I believe it’s important to understand, and accept, that many ILR environments start out unsafe. They start out unsafe because of historical trauma; because Indigenous people carry so much fear, shame, and pain around language loss. They also start out unsafe because many ILR efforts are forced to…