Healing Spirits, an aftercare group from the Peaceful Spirit Treatment Center, celebrates National Poetry Month and Alcohol Awareness Month with several family-oriented events in April.
“We are pleased to offer a wide-range of events for the community,” Esther Belin, the Intake/Aftercare Coordinator at Peaceful Spirit said. “The group has been planning these events with the youth in mind. The goal of these events are to strengthen and encourage young people to be healthy representatives of this community.”
A dinner and panel entitled, “Journey of Healing,” on Thursday, April 7 kicks off the celebration. The event held at the Multi-Purpose Building starts at 5:30 p.m. with a dinner sponsored by the Daughters of the Red Road. The panel will start at 6:30 p.m. and is comprised of Southern Ute/Ute Mountain Ute tribal members and will be the highlight of the evening.
“When I speak of healing, I include the healing from historic trauma. It is an important framework to build from. In that sense, this panel is more than issues of substance use. It embraces all the elements of achieving community health,” Belin adds.
Belin and SkyDawn Sandoval, Peaceful Spirit Intern, have been meeting with Shirelle Garcia’s Native Studies classes at both the middle school and high school to gear them up for a Poetry Workshop and Community Poetry Slam on Friday, April 8 at the Multi-Purpose Building. During the workshop, students will craft poems, which will be displayed on the walls for the dinner fundraiser. Students and their families are invited to come back, eat and take part in the slam. The dinner is $5 per person and starts at 6 p.m. The Poetry Slam starts at 7 p.m., with categories for middle school, high school and adults. There will be prizes for the top two winners in each category. Marjorie Borst, Oolcu Buckskin, and Renee Morgan are confirmed judges.
The finale to the week will be a Children’s Pow Wow on Saturday, April 9 at the Ignacio Middle School with a 1p.m. Grand Entry. The MC, Arena Director and Head Staff are all youth from the local community and sister tribe, Ute Mountain Ute. The day promises to be an opportunity to strengthen cultural traditions, “it’s who they are,” states Powwow committee member, Marettas Frost. “We are stronger when we are on the same side, when we are against each other, it doesn’t go right.” She summarizes the event as cultural survival, “just being here, helps save each other, helps save our reservation. We are fighting for our lives.”
For more information, please call 970-563-4555.