Our Vision
About Us
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Our Mission
Mending Wings exists to empower and heal Native youth through leadership development, cultural retention and revitalization programs, spirituality and our ways of life.
Our Vision
History
It was another hot, August day 2005 in Albuquerque, New Mexico as I searched frantically for an air-conditioned building where I could find some solace from the heat and humidity. The week-long Native youth conference at Menaul School had just ended, the students were in their buses and vans heading back to wherever home might be, and I just wanted to find a place where I could lay my head down and cool off.
That which I sought came in the form of a library. It would be another day before I left New Mexico, so I figured that I would have plenty of time to rest and recuperate. But as I lay my head down on the only couch in the building, I found that, although my body was weary and longed for rest, my mind and spirit had other ideas.
Reluctantly, I dragged my body off of the couch and began to pace the library floor. I was so frustrated at the end of this conference because the only thing that made it a Native youth conference was that there were Native youth there. But it looked, sounded, smelt and felt like any other Euro-centric youth conference in Anywhere, USA.
I wanted to be a part of something where our Native identities were accepted, and even celebrated. Particularly in the Church. This conference was the proverbial “Icing On The Cake” for me. I felt like I was done with ministry because all I had ever known in ministry was that we had to hang our cultures up at the door of a church building like an unwanted coat and we could pick it back up on the way out.
But we could never be who Creator made us to be within a church or ministry setting. And this particular conference was where all the frustration spilled over for me. But, as I passed the same bookshelf for the fifteenth time, Creator’s Spirit quietly and methodically spoke to me. I began to speak out loud that which I heard very quietly inside…
My people were here long before
the others cast their sails to the wind
Before the tears of innocence
like a heartbreak would descend
My people spread like eagle’s wings
across the mountains and the plains
Now our feathers have been broken,
but the eagle still remains
As this Bill Miller prose played over and over in my heart, Creator softly told me that this was what I was to be in the habit of doing — mending wings. Mending the wings of our people so that we can fly again. With that, Mending Wings was born.
Now, Gina and I stand amazed and humbled by the goodness of the Creator when we see all that Mending Wings has become, and is becoming, since our humble beginnings in 2006. We are experiencing a move of Creator in our hearts, and in our organization, and we are excited to see where He will take us in the future.