Mending Wings is a non-profit organization that seeks to empower Indigenous youth, through leadership development, spirituality and honoring Yakama culture. Dewy Bill participated in Mending Wings programs and is now one of the directors. Read his story.
Mending Wings has three programs for the youth on the Yakama Nation reservation. Our main focus is to create space and time for all of us to be together. We offer 101 life classes. Right now, we are studying a series on the life and ministry of Yeshua (Deliverer and Savior) and his disciples. We have classes in drumming, regalia-making, language and life skills.
We also offer SLAM (Students Learning about Missions) opportunities, through which we invite White youth groups, family groups and college-age groups to the Yakama Nation reservation for a week, to partner with Mending Wings. We immerse participants in our culture for a week. We go out into the community, and we service Yakama elders’ homes, by doing yard work and painting houses. We do this to build community relationships with the elders. Throughout the week, we teach participants about specific Yakama Nation virtues, of which there are 12. We talk about what these virtues look like for the church and how we could apply them in our lives. For instance, we might study honesty, respect, courage and compassion.
At the end of the week, we hope that people leave as better human beings. We flip the idea of mission as going out into the world and teaching others. We ask SLAM participants to come as learners. After they come and learn from the inhabitants of the land, then, they can go and teach with knowledge, making mission more Indigenous-friendly.
Another Mending Wings program is Dancing our Prayers. We travel across the United States to share Christ and culture. We dance, drum, and give a message for hope and reconciliation between the church and the Indigenous Peoples of America. This is one way we contextualize the gospel, by sharing with one another, learning from one another and participating in another form of worship to God. The goal is to build relationships and educate people who have no idea how Native People worship or why they worship the way they do. The dance is to pray, and to pray is to heal. That is the goal of Mending Wings: to pray, to dance and to heal.
