“Healing,” answered Executive Director Corrine Sanchez to the question about Tewa Women United’s foremost organizational priority. “Healing is what we need most. We want our children to have strong Native identities, awareness of Native values. This is the piece that guides our direction. The kids themselves want to know how to contribute, they want financial literacy, they want the violence in their families to end. They want to know how to sustain themselves, how not to drink, how to do their jobs. They want boundaries, and they want a voice in the policy decisions that most affect them.”

The monthly “Counter Narrative” program at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque on March 16 was billed as an opportunity to “meet the women of Tewa Women United, a nonprofit empowering indigenous women to become positive forces for social change.” The evening began with a soothing prayer around the “centering table” laden with symbolic objects such as blue corn, fetishes and seashells. It was offered up in Tewa language which, although endangered, is still spoken by an estimated one to two thousand pueblans along the Rio Grande.

The unfamiliar sounds susurrated, infusing the atmosphere in IPCC’s auditorium with spirit, with seriousness of purpose and a sense of the sacred. All 75 people in attendance stood, many with hands palm-up slightly cupped, and prayed for an end to violence against women, girls and Mother Earth; prayed for the building of beloved families and communities.

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