B6 - The Advice that Diné Families Share

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Full Description: Navajo Family Voices is the Family Voices affiliate and F2FHIC on the New Mexico "big reservation" portion of the Navajo Nation, serving families of children with extra healthcare needs. Our family mentors and advocates have lived for generations on the Navajo Nation and navigate limited healthcare resources and services to address extra health needs of their own families. The population is rural, largely off-grid, and 95% indigenous Diné in 20 named communities and their "behind" communities. Our program focus is Áłchíní hózhóójí bá Nahat'á – Planning for Our Kids in a Blessing Manner. The family foundation is built on the matriarchal decisionmakers who are invisible in Anglo notions of family, and on matriarchal supports who take on roles that include childcare.

During the large COVID surges of 2020 that decimated Diné families, our activities centered on both empowering and stabilizing families with health safety, resource and benefits information, essential supplies, individual family wellness checks and a failed attempt to connect 120 school district CYSHCN families to streaming DSL internet. Through our wellness checks, we knew that tribal families with young children rely on family members for childcare; and that the Diné “nuclear” (matriarchal) family was under stress, with tribal family-building unsupported. We began looking for ways for families without streaming internet to feel seen and heard and provide their coping stories and advice to one another. In winter 2020, we began this project, asking for written or verbal bilingual family-to-family advice and anticipating 55 - 70 responses. We were, instead, flooded with 378 responses within 2 weeks, all giving advice while also going into detail describing their families and how the pandemic was affecting them. The advice very often went to the heart of Diné matriarchal family, which is the renewal of life—iina hoth’leth. There has been severe stresses and profound covid losses.

We have posted many responses with family identifiers redacted, and otherwise protected all responses. Feedback from families show how meaningful the chance to share and teach was, especially simply to voice. Also important is how the information was sought, which was considered culturally appropriate and sensitive, after having built up trust over time, and having widening community profile especially during COVID, with daily curfews since March 2020 and 57-hour weekend lockdowns for most weeks going into winter 2020. Often isolated and the most in need of family building and parenting support, families wanted to caution each other and by advising others, empower themselves. They did not want to be surveyed or given handouts. They want to be seen, heard and known. We learned that families are ready decisionmakers, by no means timid. Families are ready to partner, the challenge is how to establish the partnerships.

Abbreviated Description: During the height of the 2020 pandemic surge on the Navajo Nation, our program asked reservation families with small children and CYSHCN to advise one another on how they were coping especially for their children. We received almost 400 written and verbal bilingual essays within two weeks, describing pandemic and other challenges they face as reservation families. The advice very often went to the heart of Diné matriarchal family, which is the renewal of life—iina hoth’leth. Feedback from families show how meaningful the chance to share and teach was, especially simply to voice. Also important is how the information was sought, which was considered culturally appropriate and sensitive, after having built up trust over time. We learned how partnerships with Diné families can be pursued.