Native American

Raven Juarez Teaches Kids to Express Their Feelings Through Adventures in Art

/ Sydney Parker / Leave a comment

Raven Juarez. Photo: Joshua Huston

Raven Juarez first developed an interest in art while drawing on a yellow legal pad under her mother’s desk. The child of two busy lawyers, Juarez had to find creative ways to entertain herself while her parents finished up work at the office.

“I used to make up stories and characters and draw them doing different things,” says Juarez. “I always felt that I had a closer relationship to myself through drawing than through spoken or written words.”

Today, Juarez is a professional artist and shares her love of creating with her early-education students at an infant-toddler program in North Seattle. Her teaching philosophy is grounded in the Reggio approach; cultivating a space for curiosity and development through play and art-making.

“Just like kids babble before they learn to talk, they also scribble before they develop their own pictorial language,” says Juarez. “Art is a language that can be used for something deeper and more important than just something that looks nice on a wall.”

READ THE FULL STORY ON SEATTLE’S CHILD

What To Do When You’re Raped: An ABC Handbook for Native Girls

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Graphic Art from What To Do When You’re Raped: An ABC Guide for Native Girls 

“‘What do I tell my daughter when she is raped?’

This was the question posed to Charon Asetoyer, CEO of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center by a young mother on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in Lake Andes, South Dakota.

“The feeling … I can’t even begin to explain how that made me feel. Not if she’s raped, but when she’s raped,” said Asetoyer of the Comanche tribe. “We’re aware of how bad the problem is in our reservation community, but when somebody puts it to you that way, you realize it’s even worse than you thought it was.”

Asetoyer is well aware that Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault crimes than all other races in the US and that more than one in three Native American women report having been raped during their lifetime. She speaks with survivors of sexual assault in her community every day.

Recognizing an immediate need to prepare and support indigenous young women in the likely event of a sexual assault, Asetoyer and her colleagues teamed up with graphic designer Lucy M Bonner to create a graphic novel entitled, “What To Do When You’re Raped: An ABC Handbook for Native Girls”. The book is available to download free online or to order in print.”

Read the full article for The Guardian here

If this story moves you, Charon Asetoyer and Pamela Kingfisher say there are many ways you can help. Call your local government representatives and tell them this is unacceptable. Buy Plan B in bulk and donate it to your local Native American community. Donate to the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center and women’s shelter here.

The History of Seattle’s Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center

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“The Daybreak Star is an Indian Cultural Center in Seattle, described by its parent organization, United Indians of All Tribes as “an urban base for Native Americans in the Seattle area.” The Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center is located on 20 acres in Seattle’s Discovery Park in the Magnolia neighborhood.

The center owes its existence to Native American activists, including founder Bernie Whitebear. Together with the Indian community, they staged a peaceful militant takeover and occupation of the land in 1970 after most of the Fort Lawton military base was declared surplus by the US Department of Defense.”

Read more about this amazing center here.

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