ʻImi Ke Ola Mau a Mau: The Wellbriety Movement and The Healing Forest Model: A Process for Community Change

Objectives:
1. Participants will gain knowledge on the Four Laws of Change, the Healing Forest and other principles, laws and values that provide the foundation for this community change process.

2. Participants will learn a set of strategies and process that will guide a culturally appropriate community change effort.

Summary
Ms. Coyhis will introduce the concept of Wellbriety as balance and connection to the natural laws that create healing within the native community. Culturally based tools are discussed as a way for living in harmony with the laws, principles, and values to have balance in our life. The challenge facing every individual, family, community and nation at this time is: What do we need to do to heal and how do we get started? Community leaders and grassroots organizers search for programs, projects and best practices from Western and Traditional Native sources. To assist with this effort, Ms. Coyhis will present a process that uses cultural teachings and practices to bring about healing for our communities. The Healing Forest Model is the center of change efforts. The focus of the Healing Forest Model is to create shift away from the anger, guilt, shame, and fear that feeds dysfunctional social issues. This is done by reintroducing a vision of a healthy community, and the relearning of traditional principles, values, and laws as a framework for healing. Healing begins with a willingness to make a change, the vision of a possible future, and a concerted effort on the part of individuals, families, communities, and nations to change thinking, habits, beliefs, and expectations. The process takes time and requires commitment and consistency.

Speaker:
Kateri Coyhis – Executive Director White Bison – WhiteBison.org
Kateri Coyhis, Mohican Nation, is the Executive Director of White Bison in Colorado Springs, CO. White Bison, Inc., is an American Indian non-profit 501(c)3 corporation dedicated to creating and sustaining a grassroots Wellbriety Movement that provides culturally based healing to the next seven generations of Indigenous People. Kateri serves the Wellbriety Movement by providing community presentations, webinars, podcasts, and virtual presentations to bring awareness to the programs White Bison offers for individual, family, and community healing.

Kateri also is co-author for a chapter in Radical Psychology: Multicultural and Social Justice Decolonization Initiatives (2018). Kateri received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.