Nexus Community Partners releases new report on “Healing Justice”
For over three years, Nexus and its partners in the Leaders of Color Collaborative (Coalition of Asian American Leaders, Hope Community, Native American Community Development Institute and Voices for Racial Justice) have been sharing their work training leaders of color and indigenous leaders for community and systems change. As we dove deeper into our stories, we began articulating the reasons why and how leadership development looks different for communities of color and indigenous communities (POCI). There are many reasons why it looks different, but all of the partners noted how often our leaders are called to or sent into toxic spaces on behalf of community. The importance of healing for them and for our communities became a call to action. We wanted to do something about this, but were unsure where to start. So, we began by talking to elders and those already doing healing work.
We were fortunate to hire someone with a background in healing justice work, Susan Raffo, and asked her to interview POCI healers in our community about what it means to build healing work as part of our organizational infrastructure. “Healing Justice” is the result of those conversations. They represent a conversation with 23 healers representing multiple communities, generations and approaches to healing. We asked them what we need to do to support collective healing. We asked them about infrastructure. We asked them about culture. And we asked them to give us concrete steps for change.