Indigenous Healing in Action will highlight Native artistic expression in many forms communicating the healing power of movement, art, and storytelling for this community. This event will feature University of Michigan's own Dr. Bethany Hughes's work in native performance, The Aadizookaan's Sacramento Knoxx, and Māria Apera-Jones of Wellington, New Zealand. Our hope is to gain further understanding of how indigenous peoples locally as well as abroad relate to movement and experience these artists' usage of traditional knowledge systems as a way to spread wellness to their communities and themselves.

The Aadizookaan's Sacramento Knoxx shares their perspective through creative storytelling. Aadizookaan means “the sacred spirit of the story.” They use ancestral indigenous-based knowledge systems to produce storytelling experiences via a variety of methods including music, film, and design.

Māria Apera-Jones, Pōneke Women’s Rugby and Wellington Indoor Netball U23’s Black, Drill and Field Coach is traveling from Wellington, New Zealand. She is to explain how action has been a part of her healing and survival as well as perform with The University of Michigan’s Women's Rugby Football club. Māria has been instrumental in uniting communities through physicality, Te Reo Maori, and cultural tradition. She creates a synonymous expectation that brings pakeha and Pasifika, Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples together. Her strength is a tribute to the future of a united community. She is a testament of how individuality through culture breads a greater community: whanau/family.

As we combine these acts, we can showcase indigenous art in many forms, while also highlighting how art can have a therapeutic effect on those participating in its creation and those watching and experiencing it. We want to be able to honor the struggle of native communities across the world while celebrating these communities’ strength and resilience. We also want to emphasize the commonality all communities have when it comes to the use of art and movement as a form of healing and connection to others in order to bring indigenous and non-indigenous communities together.