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Since the early 2000s, the opioid epidemic has had a devastating sweep across Indian Country. The White Earth nation declared the epidemic as a public health emergency back in 2011. Since then White Earth has developed community-based harm reduction and culturally grounded models of intervention for substance use disorder that continue to influence Native Nations across the U.S. This project centers on Anishinaabe approaches to the ongoing opioid public health crisis but also elaborates on Anishinaabe forms of healing and resistance. My primary method was conducting oral histories with White Earth community youth workers and advocates. My research project asks: what are the cultural frameworks and practices that inform and shape substance abuse interventions in White Earth, specifically for Indigenous youth? My research and interviews revealed that culturally informed, intersectional approaches to Indigenous wellness and healing— healing across generations—require continual resistance to ongoing settler-colonial and white supremacist, heteropatriarchal violence.

In this paper, I reflect on my experiences as an Anishinaabekwe, Sicangu Oyate queer woman organizing at Macalester College and beyond–that have shaped my major research interests on the convergences of Indigenous intergenerational healing, art, and youth organizing. From the fight to assert Anishinaabe sovereignty against the Line 3 oil pipeline in Northern Minnesota to honoring the lives of Black relatives who were stolen by Minnesotan police forces, 2020-2021 have been years of massive social upheaval. What does Black and Indigenous solidarity/co-resistance look like today, in the past and how can it continue here in Mni Sota Makoce? How is this work limited at a predominantly white institution such as Macalester College? Building on the work of Macalester Alum Guy Chinang ’20 how do institutions that practice neoliberal multiculturalism constrain radically emancipatory futures? What are the possibilities opened through intergenerational healing, art, and youth organizing? I argue that the collaborative community space opened through Powwow X: Expanded Cinema here at Macalester College–presented by Missy Whiteman and organized by P.I.P.E. and the DML on November 19th, 2021–models the abilities of art, activism, and ceremony to help Black and Indigenous peoples heal and generate new worlds. The beauty of Black and Indigenous solidarity work needs to be recognized and celebrated, while also practicing truth-telling and accountability.

In this paper, I reflect on my experiences as an Anishinaabekwe, Sicangu Oyate queer woman organizing at Macalester College and beyond–that have shaped my major research interests on the convergences of Indigenous intergenerational healing, art, and youth organizing. From the fight to assert Anishinaabe sovereignty against the Line 3 oil pipeline in Northern Minnesota to honoring the lives of Black relatives who were stolen by Minnesotan police forces, 2020-2021 have been years of massive social upheaval. What does Black and Indigenous solidarity/co-resistance look like today, in the past and how can it continue here in Mni Sota Makoce? How is this work limited at a predominantly white institution such as Macalester College? Building on the work of Macalester Alum Guy Chinang ’20 how do institutions that practice neoliberal multiculturalism constrain radically emancipatory futures? What are the possibilities opened through intergenerational healing, art, and youth organizing? I argue that the collaborative community space opened through Powwow X: Expanded Cinema here at Macalester College–presented by Missy Whiteman and organized by P.I.P.E. and the DML on November 19th, 2021–models the abilities of art, activism, and ceremony to help Black and Indigenous peoples heal and generate new worlds. The beauty of Black and Indigenous solidarity work needs to be recognized and celebrated, while also practicing truth-telling and accountability.

Since the early 2000s, the opioid epidemic has had a devastating sweep across Indian Country. The White Earth nation declared the epidemic as a public health emergency back in 2011. Since then White Earth has developed community-based harm reduction and culturally grounded models of intervention for substance use disorder that continue to influence Native Nations across the U.S. This project centers on Anishinaabe approaches to the ongoing opioid public health crisis but also elaborates on Anishinaabe forms of healing and resistance. My primary method was conducting oral histories with White Earth community youth workers and advocates. My research project asks: what are the cultural frameworks and practices that inform and shape substance abuse interventions in White Earth, specifically for Indigenous youth? My research and interviews revealed that culturally informed, intersectional approaches to Indigenous wellness and healing— healing across generations—require continual resistance to ongoing settler-colonial and white supremacist, heteropatriarchal violence.