Healing our Collective Trauma & Restoring our Souls – with Sherri Mitchell 2019
Participants will be asked to look at the history that led to this traumatization and explore how it continues to impact their lives.
We will also learn how to hold sacred space for one another while our trauma is present. In this process, we will learn that there is a safe space for us to occupy together, whole and intact. Then, we will examine the influence of embedded colonial ideologies and how they shape our lives and systems. During this portion of the workshop, we will look at the illusion of separation; use of language; our relationship to the sources of our survival; ritual and ceremony; economy and ecology, and; states of dependence. Participants will leave with tools that can guide them toward a more harmonious way of being in relationship with all other living beings.
This program is an initiative of the Peace and Friendship Project, which builds reconciliation through gatherings which bring together Indigenous and Settler peoples in ceremony to seek right relationships. The name for this project comes from the treaties of this region, signed in the 1700’s, and still legal today.
Program Cost:
We work hard to make our programs accessible for low income people, while ensuring that the true costs are covered. Thanks to our funders, we are able to support people to participate in this program.
True Program Cost: $585/person (tuition, meals & accommodation in double occupancy)
To ensure that this program is accessible – especially to Indigenous people – this program is subsidized by the Peace and Friendship Project with funds provided from the Maritime Conference of the United Church of Canada and the Mennonite Central Committee
A request for a single room adds $50 to the overall program cost. No accomodation required (if you are staying nearby) reduces the overall program cost by $80.
Can’t afford it?
Don’t worry – please register as normal, and in the payment section, please indicate “partial bursary” or “full bursary” and we will be in touch with you.
Leadership
Sherri Mitchell
Sherri was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian reservation (Penawahpskek). She speaks and teaches around the world on issues of Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and spiritual change. Her broad base of knowledge allows her to synthesize many subjects into a cohesive whole, weaving together a multitude of complex issues and articulating them in a way that both satisfies the mind and heals the heart.
Sherri received her Juris Doctorate and a certificate in Indigenous People’s Law and Policy from the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. She is an alumna of the American Indian Ambassador program, and the Udall Native American Congressional Internship program.
Sherri is the Founding Director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the global protection of Indigenous land and water rights and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life. Prior to forming the Land Peace Foundation, Sherri served as a law clerk to the Solicitor of the United States Department of Interior; as an Associate with Fredericks, Peebles and Morgan Law Firm; as a civil rights educator for the Maine Attorney General’s Office, and; as the Staff Attorney for the Native American Unit of Pine Tree Legal.
She has been actively involved with Indigenous rights and environmental justice work for more than 25 years. In 2010, she received the Mahoney Dunn International Human Rights and Humanitarian Award, for research into Human Rights violations against Indigenous Peoples. In 2015, she received the Spirit of Maine Award, for commitment and excellence in the field of International Human Rights. In 2016, Sherri’s portrait was added to the esteemed portrait series, Americans Who Tell the Truth, by artist Robert Shetterly. And, she is the recipient of the 2017 Hands of Hope Award from the Peace and Justice Center.
Sherri has been deeply committed to cultivating and renewing the traditional and ceremonial practices of her people. She has worked in many capacities over the past 30 years helping to highlight and advance the position of Wabanaki peoples. In addition to helping her own people, Sherri has been a longtime advisor to the American Indian Institute’s Traditional Circle of Indian Elders and Youth and was a program coordinator for their Healing the Future Program. She also served as an advisor to the Indigenous Elders and Medicine People’s Council of North and South America for the past 20 years. In this role, she has worked with Indigenous spiritual leaders from across the Americas, helping to ensure that their voices are heard within the larger society. This has included bringing their messages to political leaders in the U.S., and Canada and the Indigenous Peoples Forum at the United Nations.
Sherri is the visionary behind “Healing the Wounds of Turtle Island,” a global healing ceremony that has brought people together from all corners of the world. The ceremony is designed to heal our relationships with one another as human beings, and then to heal the relationship between human beings and the rest of Creation. It has been attended by people from every continent (except Antarctica), who have come together to pray with one heart and one mind for the healing of all life on Mother Earth.
Sherri is also the cohost of the syndicated radio program Love (and revolution) Radio, which focuses on real-life stories of heart-based activism and revolutionary spiritual change.