Colleen Echohawk is the Executive Director of the Chief Seattle Club in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood, a non-profit dedicated to meeting the needs of homeless and low-income urban Native people in Seattle. The Chief Seattle Club provides a sacred space to nurture, affirm and renew the spirit of urban Native people. Colleen Echohawk is an enrolled member of the Kithehaki Band of the Pawnee Nation and a member of the Upper Ahtna Athabascan people of Mentasta Lake. She serves on multiple boards, including KUOW (National Public Radio member station), All Home Coordinating Board, Metropolitan Improvement District, Pioneer Square Preservation Board and is the board chair at Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth Theatre. As co-founder and principal at Headwater People Consulting Group, she is interested in working with community to create systems and structures that help facilitate wellness and encourages kindness and courage. In this episode of RePlacing Church, she joins me to discuss:
- How the Chief Seattle Club provides a sacred space to nurture, affirm and renew the spirit of urban Native people.
- How a native song transformed a dirty downtown alley into a place of remembrance and empowerment
- What the Urban Relocation Act of 1956 was and its impact on Native communities
- 3 ways non-Native people can honor the Native communities that originally inhabited the particular places where they now live
- How to create a culture of wellness in a workplace that engages significant trauma
- What organizations can do to invite different cultural perspectives
- Why our world needs to hear the Native voice right now
