What is new with Thrive Unlimited?

Coming into the new year we’re able to operate as both for profit and nonprofit so we’ve got both sides of the business. With an affiliate, what we’re doing is launching a new initiative; we introduced the concept a couple of years back based off that land back movement, but it’s everything back. You can get the land, but what are you going to do when you get it? Us as people, in terms of the healing, we must learn to reconnect or reestablish natural relationships, so what we’re doing is reaching out to different communities. We’re looking at piloting programs across the country with different communities, like ‘boots on the ground’ grassroots projects that are either starting up or need support. These are culturally based; like whether they have to do with cultural preservation, language preservation, land-based learning, food sovereignty, and more. Because we now have an ability to receive nonprofit funding through this initiative, what we’re trying to do is create a broad proposal to be able to go out and seek funding. When the funding is in place, then we can redistribute to these smaller projects! I think we’ve got four current projects on our plate and they’re back home in Oklahoma. In my tribe there’s a lot going on but we’re just using that to get a feel for the needs and create a template that can translate to different communities and be able to say, “This is our world, this is how interconnected we are.” We must customize this a little bit more but being able to create it anywhere is beautiful stuff.

My friend Ronald Tome (Navajo) does prayer circles and she’s got it to the point where she can do it anywhere with any group of kids & elders, so I see what you’re saying about a universal design template that different communities can use. It’s nice to hear that you’re working on something that you can scale in many different situations.

Tell me about your organization and the services that you provide?

In the beginning we started as a consulting and training firm. We had indirect interaction & communication with the communities we worked with and all of it was based on mental, emotional, spiritual health. From the start it was it was an idea based off life experience. I and all of my colleagues, all the women that are a part of this company, are survivors of multiple traumata with domestic violence or addiction (or all different types of things), so they were able to bring in a broad perspective. In that, we were able to be a little more comprehensive than anyone else out there that was approaching these communities because all that experience was in place. People were coming to us outlining the community trauma, and we would have an ability to relate. That’s one thing I think that sets us apart – a mental health component in the space of analytical thinking, and all of it is very much culturally based.

We looked back at value systems and asked ourselves how it is that our culture functioned; what were the applications and how do we re-envision that today? How do we embody that in our modern-day spaces and lives? How do we find ways to re-implement these values systems and understandings of our relationship to the world? We are using the old thinking and values, layering them on top of new environments, new tools…so that’s what we’ve been doing with the past 2-3 years.

This company, very quickly after that first initiative, began to transform into a vehicle for advocacy and promoting dialogue. That’s what I saw happening especially with the pandemic; we moved into a virtual environment, and we couldn’t travel. We had to find a way to adapt & continue sharing all our services out and, in that, we became content creators, and the company became more like a brand where people follow it and we put out positive messaging. It helps people to learn, helps people to heal and grow just through ongoing dialogue. So, we launched our second initiative which is called My Sisters Are Warriors and that is focused on women specifically. It came out of the original first initiative that we launched – as I went around the country, most people that I worked with were women that would come to the trainings.

They were doing grassroots work in the community, seeing & hearing all the stories, and seeing that there was so much that I didn’t realize even growing up around women, being surrounded by aunties, cousins, sisters and grandmas. The struggles that they went through, I had never noticed before, and as all these women began sharing their stories, I was thinking “It’s easy to be a man, you know.” Our women fight literally tooth and nail every day to survive as indigenous women. I remember there was one day I was watching one of my sisters from Standing rock; she had a teenage boy, and they were we were attending a function at the school. I was watching them walk away to their vehicles and I was thinking “She does all this advocacy work in the community, but at the same time when she goes home, she is still finding a way to fight and raise a healthy young man.” I was sitting there thinking to myself “My sisters are warriors you know.”

I kind of sat on it for a while and these colleagues of mine explained that this is the work they would like to do. So, we launched that initiative and created it to be something that facilitates collective healing amongst indigenous women; an opportunity to come together to share space, experience, and learn from one another and thrive together. Through that initiative, we have different components: My wife started this initiative within it where we announced a period of nomination, and any woman (or man) can write in in and say this is a woman in my life that I know that could use some support and they put together these personal care boxes that are customized. They send them out free & anonymously so it’s like a gift that comes in the mail. Full of indigenous made items, whether it’s soap, self-care items, beaded earrings or whatever. It is just something to give her love, lift them up you know? Then we feature ambassadors, from artists to authors, community advocates to indigenous women, that don’t necessarily get put in the spotlight but that are doing powerful work. We can amplify their work and help them to get more support so they can continue forward. Anything that we can do we’re always looking at the next step and how can we support and create.

We think this is what we should be doing in more places and people see it – they’re inspired to follow along right in this path.

Now that we’ve hit this this new nonprofit space, we’re able to accept donations. There have been a lot of people over the past two years asking how they can support this initiative – well right now it’s open to where people can send in $10 or another small amount. Last year we launched The New Tradition podcast, taking that initial direct education training aspect and transforming it from a training environment to making information & those conversations available to everyday people who would never really have an opportunity to come to one of those trainings. Packaging it small 30–60 minute episodes that people can listen to anywhere has been key.
It’s facilitating those conversations that began to investigate trauma healing – or maybe you want to consider this has been my life experience and that’s one of the tools that we use as a company. It’s important that everything works around objective conversation, so rather than you and I picking apart your life, instead what I would say is these are my life experiences; these were the negatives these were the positives, but this is what culture taught me and this is what it should look like. That gives people an opportunity to begin to approach it in a noninvasive manner, to be able to make sense of it for themselves. It isn’t mine to define their spiritual framework, and if they haven’t done so before, begin building on that. So rather than trying to approach a collective group of people or even individuals with like a cookie cutter approach (this is what works, so this should work for you), it’s like you could be opening the door to lead them down that path and for them to be able to identify specific obstacles in their environment, learning to adapt and how to apply these different tools. It’s empowering because they do it on their own, so to speak, it’s not someone doing it from the outside.

This approach comes from my tribal story in terms of our creation. In our philosophy there’s this concept of duality, male and female, and there’s a process. In western theology, we teach that that male is first, but in our philosophy it’s the opposite because in everything that we view, the wind must be there first; there’s one storm to create the structure and another storm that brings life. What we do is create this open space for you, this is a safe space for you to return to, and it’s going to be up to you to bring life into that space moving forward. Understanding and experience is the best teacher, you know? You can read your book and you can gain knowledge someone considered important: They would tell you their experience or tell you what you should do but it’s information still, and until you go through the experience of processing through it, you don’t own it. You don’t gain the power; you don’t gain the strength. You can look at a gym and understand what everybody is doing, but until you get up and go in there and begin lifting weights and exercise yourself, you don’t have the experience. A lot of times that’s where people get stuck because we pour so much information into them, but we never show them or direct him how to go through the experience of feeling those things out, understanding them, and processing the application of those ideas.

Learn more about Thrive UNLTD –> https://thriveunltd.com/

TO BE CONTINUED!!!