Advocates to the Front! 2024 WSCADV Conference

This workshop will consider how our movement requires leaders to hold the complexities of trauma-based work alongside our role responsibilities for grant compliance, laws, and HR.  With a lens of grace and compassion for the weight of that charge, participants will learn topics such as: 1) how nice is not always kind, 2) how positions of power require an ongoing commitment to earning trust 3) FEAST principles 4) how leaders are (good) people too, and 5) how to ensure our own needs are tended to so that we can sustain.  There will be time for Q&A for specific leadership/management questions during the final half hour of the session.

For many survivors who use substances, it is a way to cope with the trauma of abuse, while some are also coerced into using by their abusive partner. Let’s come together and learn how to support survivors experiencing this challenging intersection.

Martin Spotted Bear (Blackfeet), Shanna Howtopat (Yakama), and Madeline Rider (Algonquin Anishinabeg) will share their experiences providing culturally specific, Intergenerational trauma informed, street outreach to Native American survivors of violence. They will share how homelessness response and prevention is intricately connected to ending gender based violence and the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR).

Mother Nation was founded in 2013 by Norine Hill, with a mission to deliver social and cultural healing services for Native women that nurture, create stability, and inspire growth through sisterhood. Today Mother Nation is a Native American 501(c)(3) nonprofit that offers culturally informed healing services, advocacy, mentorship and homeless prevention in Washington State. We support Native and Indigenous women during times of transition from chronic homelessness and gender-based violence to stable housing by providing counseling, connection to social services, sisterhood, community, and spiritual support.