WHO WE ARE

CONNECTING WITH RELATIVES TO SPARK COMMUNITY COMPASSION AND ENGAGEMENT WHILE ORGANIZING SENTIMENTS ABOUT SHARED ISSUES AND NEEDS

We have a dream to lead, provide and advocate for our people on our own terms. We canvass to educate and inform our people about their voting rights and how present day governance systems, propositions, bills and elected officials affect our everyday lives. We canvass also to collect both qualitative and quantitative data relative to voting patterns on and around Dinétah. Canvassing the Wingbeat 88 way is defined less by Westernized systematic approaches for continued assimilation and more by what it means to create internal community trust and reliance among Diné relatives.

We imagine first, growing Indigenous representation within present civic engagement systems to bolster advocacy, awareness, outreach, and training of critical Indigenous issues. The lack of Indigenous representation in these systems, from the time they were coerced on our people, continues to negatively impact our quality of life. We envision and pray for leadership that does not replicate colonial systems of oppression. These systems, which were strategically and deliberately built without respect to our traditional and ancestral leadership methods, will never allow us to genuinely support one another in living to our greatest potential as Indigenous people. 

So, we begin changing how we lead and care for our people, first, by increasing Indigenous representation through participation in voting and election-day events. As we simultaneously organize through our original kinship systems, we’ll naturally begin to implement and stabilize traditional methods of problem-solving and leadership. Finally, as Indigenous people, we’ll be in alignment less with the negative impacts of colonial systems and more with the teachings and survival strategies that bring us together harmoniously.