At the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, it is important for us to implement and design specific initiatives to engage with Indigenous youth across the state of New Mexico.

It begins with the recognition that Indigenous youth are the leaders of today and stand on the frontlines within our communities with the love they have for the people and their land. As Winona LaDuke (Anishinabe) once stated, “What our seventh generation will have is a consequence of our actions today.” At CSVANW, we believe that each of our Native youth carry with them, the hopes, visions, prayers, and songs of their ancestors.

The values that the CSVANW holds close when thinking about our Native youth initiatives include family, resiliency, respect, reflection, legacy, reflection, future generations, culture, and community, and responsibility and accountability. Because we honor our Native as future leaders of our communities and as a vital contributor to mobilizing strength based-solutions to the challenges our communities face today.

In order to distinguish a CSVANW legacy, we work to implement our organizational values, direct action, creative leadership service to the community, collaborative thinking with Indigenous youth, and developing organizing strategies specific for Indigenous youth. Our role continues to be to bring awareness that focuses on the strengths of our Native Nations, Indigenous knowledge, our people, and our youth. We hope that the strategies that we bring champion recognition and community service through outreach and face to face engagements at social events, cultural events, and social media. Our main focuses remain to support our CSVANW members, tribal programs, community partners, and tribal communities. In order to serve our community, we must be part of the community.

Our Native youth initiatives are youth-focused and designed to cultivate positive social responses while at the same time helping our Native youth to identify and support healthy avenues toward decision making and community involvement. By building
awareness about violence in our Tribal communities, we are creating innovative and strategic approaches that work toward social change and mobilizing community-driven solutions and ensuring that the youth voice is at the table. The initiatives that we work to bring to our Native youth include the following:

• Native Youth Summit
• Social Media Presence
• Indigenous Focused Memes
• Presentations
• Indigenous Youth Blogs
• Young Indigenous Queers Retreat
• Engaging Boys in the movement to end violence

It is our hope that our initiatives will help to empower our Native youth to join us in eliminating violence against our Native womyn and children.

Initiatives

Social Media Presence

Furthermore, our social media presence works to engage with Indigenous youth on a virtual level through our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat outlets. For Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month in February 2017, CSVANW used social media to host an online photo challenge to raise awareness about dating violence and abuse in teen and 20-something relationships while also promoting programs that work to prevent and educate on teen dating violence. The Photo Challenge resulted in an outpouring of submissions from across New Mexico and the country.

Indigenous Focused Memes

Another component that we are working vigorously on includes creating memes and encouraging Indigenous youth to submit content for us to post on our social media as well. Memes are graphic educational tools that are utilized to deliver strength-based and encouraging messages to our followers on social media.

CSVANW Seed Library and Garden Giveaway Project

We created a CSVANW Seed Library and shared seeds with Natives in New Mexico to encourage them to grow their own food. As a part of the start up of the CSVANW Seed Library we created garden giveaway events in Ramah, Acoma, Nambe, and in Albuquerque for urban Natives. We gave away garden boxes, seeds, soil, and live plants. CSVANW recognizes that food insecurity and hunger are violence. Creating access to our Indigenous food ways to Natives in NM is nurturing our land and body connection as well as working to address hunger.

CSVANW Presentations

We also offer presentations that can be provided to Native youth and in Tribal communities to help prepare our next generation to become more aware on various issues and assist in eliminating violence in our Native Nations. We offer the following presentations:

• Balance and Relations – Healthy Relationships and Teen Dating Violence
• Bullying and Cyberbullying
• Under our Masks – A call to everyone to take apart the man-box
• Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women
• Internet Safety

Indigenous Youth Blogs

As our dedication to Native youth, CSVANW is working to ensure that young people have an accessible space to share their own narratives and voices in a healthy and safe manner that promotes self-autonomy and critical discussion with a focus on Indigenous-center knowledge. One way that we are ensuring that a youth voice is present is by encouraging Indigenous youth to submit blogs on their own experiences.

At A Glance

It is also important to us at the CSVANW that our advocacy, prevention and education efforts with young people are strategized by engaging with youth themselves as a form of knowledge-based community building within tribal communities because their knowledge is not only valuable, but needed. We are continually working toward strengthening our inter-generational approaches of working with Native youth while also creating developing strategic relationships to increase awareness and build solidarity with our member organizations. Working towards strengthening our community resiliency begins by starting the conversations that address violence with Native youth and bring resources to our Tribal communities that are created by youth.