INTERMOUNTAIN YEARLY MEETING

Dear Friends, 

It's time for the IMYM Winter Newsletter 2024: A Message of Hope and News to the IMYM Community. IMYM has been and is on the move. As you read further in this Newsletter you will see some of the results of this progress. Following the lead given by members of the IMYM community to the Way Forward Group, new focus, energy, and initiatives are underway. A leading came clear for IMYM to become a greater year-round resource to all Quakers and Meetings in the Intermountain region. IMYM is you - it is all of us, responding to the Light, to be the Quakers we are called to be at this time. Read on Friends, to see the unfolding progress and learn how YOU can join these spirit-led efforts.

CLICK HERE to read the PDF version of the IMYM Winter Newsletter 2024. 

Your Western Friend Board of Directors is pleased to announce that Caitlin Churchill will be our new Editor/Executive Director, starting on January 1, 2025.

Check out this article to learn more about Caitlin and her visions for Western Friend. 

https://westernfriend.org/news/welcome-caitlin-churchill-our-new-editor/

Toward Truth and Healing: How Churches Face Accountability for their Indian Boarding Schools

Many Christian church denominations operated Indian boarding schools during the 19th and early 20th centuries, in collaboration with the federal government’s policy of forced assimilation. Now they are re-examining the roles they played, the harms that were done to Native American families and nations, and the ongoing impacts in Native communities today. Representatives of Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Quaker faith communities will share how they are conducting research and approaching questions of accountability, apology, reparations, and healing.

Sunday, November 10, 8-9:30pm ET; 7-8:30pm CT; 6-7:30pm MT; 5-6:30pm PT

REGISTER HERE: https://friendspeaceteams.org/accountability-boarding-schools-2024/

Image is Wounded Yellow Robe, Henry Standing Bear and Chauncy Yellow Robe: Lakota boys before and after they entered school in 1883 and three years later.

Santa Fe Monthly Meeting Middle East Minute

October 27, 2024

“The Middle East conflict is escalating quickly and the United States needs to use the leverage we have to bring peace.  We must win a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, Israel, and  Lebanon while ensuring a broader regional war does not break out between Iran and Israel.Friends, FCNL and the USA need to focus on stopping new offensive weapons going to Israel.  Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, has invaded Lebanon, and there is a  risk of full-blown war between Israel and Iran.”

Friends, 

IMYM sends you end-of-summer greetings with the Summer Newsletter. As we move into the next season let us remember the encouraging quote from Socrates: "The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new."

Link to a PDF version of the Summer Newsletter is HERE (or simply scroll through this issue below by clicking anywhere on the right hand side of the image to advance to the next page). 

Signing off in the light. 

2024 IMYM Summer Newsletter 

Dear Friends,

See this update about Alaska Friends' growing relationship with the Kake community. Last year Alaska Quakers raised $92,000 for construction of a community healing center in Kake, where Friends had operated a mission and provided teachers for a day school in the early 1900s. They have been building relationships with the community over the past few years, and now a descendant of one of the Quaker teachers has returned some objects that she had inherited to Kake . I'm wondering if other Quakers will find items that have come to them from family members who taught at the other Quaker schools. Last year a Quaker in Wabash IN returned several pairs of moccasins that she found among her grandfather's belongings. He had served as superintendent of White's Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker-operated boarding school for Native children. In our conversations with Friends about Quakers' role in the forced assimilation of Native children, let's raise this question. - Paula Palmer

https://alaskabeacon.com/2024/08/09/alaska-native-artifacts-returned-to-kake-as-quakers-continue-reparations/?emci=c6a1e4e9-d656-ef11-991a-6045bddbfc4b&emdi=bcd121d7-2057-ef11-991a-6045bddbfc4b&ceid=558953

Tom Stritikus says Indigenous reconciliation efforts have been “most profound and important work” of his career

By ELIZABETH HERNANDEZ 

Tom Stritikus, a white guy from out of state who talks a mile a minute, in the summer of 2018 took the helm of a rural southern Colorado college with a significant Native American student body and an institutional history of Indigenous oppression and cultural genocide.

It was a nuanced task, with the potential for distrust and risk of amplifying a more palatable, revisionist history of Fort Lewis College’s past as an Indian boarding school. But Indigenous tribal leaders, students and staff say Stritikus chose a different path.

Under Stritikus’s leadership, Durango’s Fort Lewis College confronted its brutal past and welcomed a future of healing and reconciliation that wasn’t always easy but was honest.

“He wasn’t shying away from it even though it was such a dark history,” said Ernest House, a Ute Mountain Ute Tribe member who sits on Fort Lewis’s Board of Trustees. “He wanted to be sure to get it right.”

Now, after nearly six years as Fort Lewis College’s president, Stritikus is heading west, where he’ll serve as the head of Occidental College, a four-year liberal arts school in Los Angeles.

Stritikus, 54, leaves behind a transformed higher education institution with people and policies in place to ensure the commitment to acknowledging old wounds while working toward a thriving future continues.

“The reconciliation work we have done is the most profound and important work I’ve done in my professional career,” Stritikus said in an interview with The Denver Post last week. “This was us as an institution having an obligation to tell the truth and figure out what that truth meant for our history going forward.”

“He genuinely cares”

Stritikus, the son of Greek immigrants, grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was a first-generation college student who finished high school just as his father earned a GED.

The importance of education was always drilled into him, Stritikus said.

“It’s sort of that immigrant thing,” he said.

Stritikus earned his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley in language, literacy and culture. His scholarly work examined the impact of bilingual education policy and teacher practice on the academic lives of Latino and Asian immigrants.

Early in his career, Stritikus became an educator with Teach For America in Baltimore. That experience had the young teacher ruminating about how schools met the needs of students of color.

“I developed a sense of what happens when schools don’t rise to the tremendous set of resources that students should have,” Stritikus said. “It put a fire in my belly of trying to do the right thing by students and having a lot of drive to do so because the consequences of getting that wrong are pretty grave.”

Stritikus took what he saw as a teacher and, from 2014 to 2018, applied it to his work as deputy director of education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he helped build a strategy to improve education in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Around that time, House served on the search committee for Fort Lewis’s new president and remembers combing through more than a hundred applicants. He wondered whether this guy from Seattle would fit well in Durango. When he met Stritikus in person, House was impressed by his interest in the Indigenous roots of the college.

“What I did know coming in was it felt like Fort Lewis was a very important national story that the world didn’t know about,” Stritikus said.

Before starting as president in 2018, Stritikus visited the nearby Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes to ask how Fort Lewis could be a better partner.

“I said, ‘Hey, I get you’ve seen this movie before,'” Stritikus said. “‘Fast-talking white guy comes in, and this movie doesn’t turn out very well for you. But I’m going to come back.'”

Stritikus turned to House and other Indigenous leaders on campus for advice on how best to engage with the tribes.

“He moves at one speed, and that’s 100-plus miles an hour,” House said. “What I was always a little bit concerned about was, are we going to be able to slow him down a bit?”

House, who previously served as the executive director for the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, advised Stritikus to be present for meetings with tribal leaders without sneaking glances at phones or watches.

“With some great advice from (Dr. Heather Shotten, the school’s vice president for diversity affairs) and Ernest House, I was able to show up in those relationships in a way that was authentic and hear what they had to say,” Stritikus said. “This can’t be a one-and-done thing. If I were giving advice to a white leader… you have to keep going back and building authentic relationships.”

Stritikus worked on projects to benefit the Native community, including a program to tackle the shortage of Indigenous nurses while bolstering rural health care in the Four Corners region. He abolished administrative parking spots, so when students complained about having to park far away, he could join them in outrage. He made it a requirement to have a Native American tribal member on the college’s Board of Trustees.

Delving into Fort Lewis’s dark past

Stritikus felt distrust among the administration and faculty at the beginning of his tenure. The new president sat down with the faculty and asked for honest feedback.

A Fort Lewis alum-turned-chemistry-professor, Joslynn Lee, sent Stritikus an email about what it meant to be an Indigenous student on campus and walk past a commemoration to the college’s Indian boarding school that glossed over the atrocities and inaccurately portrayed the former boarding school as a “happy” place.

Lee was the nudge the campus needed, Stritikus said, to form a committee to work on examining the history of the college and move toward reconciliation. The exhibit came down in 2021 in a powerful ceremony. Reconciliation work continues.

Not long after, 215 unmarked graves were discovered by Canada’s Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc First Nation at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, sparking a search among North American tribes and researchers for marked or unmarked gravesites holding the remains of Indigenous children.

That 2021 discovery prompted U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native cabinet member in American history, to launch a full review of this country’s own legacy of Native American boarding schools, which forcefully assimilated Indigenous children and stripped them of their culture.

Fort Lewis, under Stritikus’s leadership, was all in on reviewing its own legacy.

In October, the college was included in a 139-page report by State Archaeologist Holly Norton and History Colorado that illustrated the experiences of Native children who at times were kidnapped and coerced into schools like the former Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School and woefully mistreated.

The research, which focused on the years 1880 to 1920, identified 31 Native students who died at the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School. A bygone cemetery at the former Fort Lewis site in Hesperus is believed to have nearly 50 children buried in it, according to an archaeological investigation, with another 30 to 100 burials, or more, potentially associated with students at the boarding school.

Stritikus said he had a high-level understanding of the history of the boarding school when he started working at Fort Lewis, but only after talking to the community did he learn how decades of intergenerational trauma have impacted the Native students and staff on his campus.

The report, he said, was a painful but necessary read.

Watching the now-thriving Native American population on Fort Lewis’s campus — accounting for nearly 30% of the student body — absorb the heaviness of that report, Stritikus said, was among the hardest parts of its release. He and other campus leaders made sure there were resources for students processing their ancestors’ trauma.

Stritikus kept showing up — and inviting others in.

Manuel Heart, chairman of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, said Stritikus always invited him to big events on campus and reached out to partner on different initiatives. Heart has been to Stritikus’s house and met his family.

“He’s really open,” Heart said. “He’s honest. We built a good relationship, and I consider him a good friend of mine.”

Brittany Bitsilly, who is Diné from the Navajo Nation, is the student body president at Fort Lewis College.

“I know for a fact he genuinely cares,” Bitsilly said.

How does she know? Well, Stritikus has cooked Greek food for Bitsilly and other student government leaders in his home with his family. He shows up to their student government meetings to listen and pops up at events all around campus. Just last weekend, Stritikus and Bitsilly ran a campus 5K to honor the lives of children lost in the Indian boarding school era.

“He’s everywhere,” Bitsilly said. “It’s refreshing to see the leader of a campus who cares this much. It means the world.”

“This is a great job”

When tribal leaders felt comfortable enough to tease him, Stritikus said, he knew he’d made it.

Not everything was jokes and public appearances, though. When dealing with such painful topics, conversations between Stritikus and Indigenous leaders, students and staff have inevitably turned somber and, at times, critical.

It’s important to Stritikus to listen to critiques without jumping to defensiveness. “You realize that no matter if it stung or not, there’s probably a good deal of truth to it,” he said.

Sometimes, Stritikus said, students, staff and community members said he wasn’t doing enough, fast enough, well enough.

“As leaders, we can and should expect critique all the time,” he said.

While Durango has filled Stritikus’s cup, he’s a city guy at heart and, as his May departure looms, he looks forward to working and living in Los Angeles.

Whoever fills Stritikus’ shoes has a lot of listening to do if they plan to succeed, he said.

“My advice to the successor is just go listen to this community,” Stritikus said. “The Durango community is an incredible community. The Southern Ute, Ute Mountain Ute — just go and sit and listen to see what they want. Sit and listen to our students. They know so much.”

Bitsilly and other Fort Lewis students are rooting for a BIPOC president, she said. Chairman Heart said he wants a president who will partner with the tribes authentically.

“I saw so much potential at Fort Lewis because of the commitment to faculty and diversity in students,” Stritikus said. “I also realized a lot of that potential was not being realized at the time I walked in the door. I’m proud that, over the six years, we started to realize a great deal of that potential. I think there is a great deal of that potential left to actualize at Fort Lewis. This is a great job.”

Anna Baltzer is back—Jewish-American activist who has long helped Quaker meetings learn about Palestine and then take action.  We are invited to see and discuss her film, Occupied Palestine:  Eyewitness Stories and Photos,” next Wednesday, April 24,  7-8:00 pm MT,  to see how we may share the Fact of Occupation with our meetings.  Hosts will be friends from the Boulder FCC church, as part of their “Crisis in Gaza” series.  After the film, Anna, a Boulder native, just back from Palestine, is scheduled to tell how she has arranged for photographers to catch ongoing interactions between settlers and Palestinians.

To join the Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86892880708?pwd=b1d6U1hZSFZ3UTZTVk5SRHI3N2FzZz09 

Meeting ID: 868 9288 0708

Passcode: 151610  

Invite others from your meeting to join.

03/23/2024

From the IMYM Peace & Social Justice Roundtable: 

Please read an important update on LandBack to Nisenan tribe posted below.

If you want to learn more about about the Nisenan LandBack project, please watch the ZOOM recording of the March 23rd, 2024 IMYM Peace & Social Justice Roundtable here. 

CHIRP-Woolman Q&A 

(Updated 3/6/24) 

1) In addition to Quaker Meetings, individual Friends, and friends of Friends, are there other  contributors that have committed major support for this initiative, that will help ensure that the  fundraising goals are reached? Can these sources be identified and shared with the rest of us for  our information? (We do know about and are sharing the recent $565,00 contribution). CHIRP’s campaign is going out far and there are many sectors of the community amplifying and  donating. Woolman’s Executive Director Jennifer Dickey (with her husband Andrew Huang) and  Woolman board member Alexa Hauser have donated over $20k each. CHIRP's Board president Julie  Baker (with her husband Richard) donated $5k, as did Nia Impact Capital in the East Bay. There have  been a few other $5k and $10k donations, though some have asked to remain anonymous. There are a  few local businesses and clubs who have donated in the $500 range. Beyond community contributions,  CHIRP is still in conversations with Foundations and potential major donors and will keep sharing as  there are solid commitments made such as the $565k commitment recently shared. 

2) What is the actual sale price and how was that figure arrived at? What are the anticipated  improvements that will be needed once the land transfer happens? (In other words, what is the  $1.5million based on?) 

The total fundraising goal of the campaign is $2.4 million. The $1.5 million figure is the portion  _{CHIRP hopes to have raised by April 4}^th. The $2.4 million includes the purchase price of the  land/buildings (which is confidential); water/sewage system inspections, associated fees and upgrades;  housing inspections, permitting and compliance; infrastructure inspections to shift from propane to  electric; and a six-year endowment for insurance, maintenance, and upgrades. 

3) What happens if the $1.5 million goal isn’t met by April 4? Can the escrow period be  extended? Can the price be lowered? Is there a contingency plan? 

_{April 4}^th is not a hard deadline - so long as CHIRP is certain it can raise the funds prior to April 4th,  CHIRP will continue to fundraise beyond that date. Escrow goes another 30 days beyond that - that's  just the date that the $75k deposit CHIRP made is no longer refundable. If mutually agreed, escrow  extensions are possible for either party to meet its contingencies for the sale. It is not known at this  time whether an escrow extension will be needed or agreed to. Contingency plans are under discussion but are confidential in nature, at least while CHIRP and Woolman are in contract. 

4) When is the total $2.4 million due? 

The portion of the $2.4 million that is the purchase price will be due upon close of escrow. There is not a due date for the remainder. Beyond purchase price, CHIRP is raising funds for needed repairs and an  operating endowment (more in answer to question #5) and these are things CHIRP will handle as  CHIRP has the funds for them, in the order of timing needed for each issue. At some point CHIRP will  end the GoFundMe campaign and move to grants for the things that will need more funding than  CHIRP would attempt to raise while including community donations.

5) Is there any specific information on how the $2.4 million will be used? More specific than is on  the website? 

There will be more on this on CHIRP’s website soon. The $2.4 million will be used for the following:  purchase price of the land; water/sewage system inspections, associated fees and upgrades; housing  inspections, permitting and compliance; infrastructure inspections to shift from propane to electric; six year endowment for insurance, maintenance, and upgrades. 

6) Is there a public statement that we can cite about the casino question? (Unfortunately this keeps coming up.) 

CHIRP asked the Woolman Board to amend the sale agreement to add a deed restriction prohibiting  casino gaming on the land forever by any person or entity. CHIRP did this because the casino question  keeps coming up here too. The purchase contract was amended, the deed restriction executed, and it  was recorded on 2/26/2024 at the County Recorder's Office in the chain of title. It is a public  document. 

7) What happens to the money raised by CHIRP if the totals are not reached by the deadline (as  it is or as it might be extended), and the transaction does not close, whether for that or any other  reason? In particular, would money from individual donors be refunded, or offered to be  refunded? 

The CHIRP Board has adopted a resolution directing that the funds raised in this campaign be  dedicated to creating a tribal homeland. So if the Woolman trasaction does not close escrow, the funds will remain in a segregated account dedicated to a tribal homeland, and will not be used for any other  purpose. CHIRP’s GoFundMe site states: “NOTE: All funds raised for purchasing the Woolman land,  will be applied exclusively for the identification and purchase of a property that fits the needs identifiedby the Tribe, should the Woolman land purchase fall through for any reason.” CHIRP’s legal counsel  Frank Lawrence is not aware of any discussion about refunding donations if escrow doesn’t close, but  he will pass the question along to the CHIRP Board to discuss.

REGSITER AT: https://ahym-registration.pmm.life/