As the Outreach Coordinator for a Native American Victim Advocacy Program, I generally attend a lot of tribal gatherings. Our program is a consortium of four Native American tribes with Torres Martinez being one of the tribes we serve. We often conduct activities or awareness booths at various events to begin discussions surrounding domestic violence, sexual assault, and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s movement within the community. Recently, our program’s Therapist and I attended a children’s “Fiesta” (a tribal cultural gathering) on the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Reservation in Riverside County, CA.
At the Fiesta, we decided to create a twist on the Touchstone workshop offered by A Window Between Worlds with the children of the Tribe. For our event, we created a beaded bracelet to tie in both Native American culture and the Touchstone workshop. For this, we associated each color within the bracelet to an affirmation surrounding building healthy relationships. We also used the bracelets to introduce children to the power of positive thinking and as a gateway to ease into topics that may help kids unlearn the effects of historical trauma.
From the workshop, we hoped that participants would be able to determine some common characteristics of a healthy relationship and learn positive affirmations to build a healthy relationship with themselves. Thus, we created the color key so that when each bead was touched by the children, they would say the associated affirmation.
At the beginning of the workshop, we quizzed the children on characteristics of a healthy relationship. Many kids stated relationships that they saw on television they considered to be healthy but also listed some characteristics that generally do not constitute a healthy relationship (i.e., what we would consider love bombing).
As most of the participants have grown up seeing beadwork as part of Native American culture, the children were ecstatic to begin learning how to create a beaded piece of jewelry. Additionally, many parents stayed throughout the workshop to help their kids work through the beading. Many parents enjoyed us facilitating the workshop as it helped open the door for potentially difficult conversations with their children.
This bracelet was created by one of the older kids in the group. Her favorite affirmation that she used was the light pink shade which symbolized “I am worthy.” She stated the workshop “helped me answer questions about dating that I was too embarrassed to ask my parents.”
