Two Feathers Native American Family Services

Goal 1:
Through Two Feathers' programming, help 300+ Native young people progress toward greater resiliency, cultural connection, and self determination. Train 30 Native leaders and 25 allies. Reach 1,000 local community members.

Goal 2:
Capture, evaluate, and share Two Feathers' lessons in order to influence mental health and social services practices, investment, and more.

Goal 3:
Strengthen staff training, support, and accountability, drawing from sector-wide best practices and from trauma-informed client service provision.

Goal 4:
Develop scalable and sustainable organizational infrastructure, including financial and operational systems, structures, and practices to support successful programming.

How we do our work: Two Feathers leaders and staff are determined to pursue our mission of building healthy American Indian communities in Humboldt County and we know this mission will take the testing of a number of different strategies to see what will propel us closer to our goal. In a broad view, we know that we must offer a continuum of services and empowering activities that are individualized to the needs of the youth and families we aim to serve, which are those experiencing the most unnecessary suffering and therefore often the hardest to reach. Because of this focus, Two Feathers is constantly assessing our community landscape, identifying gaps in services and how we can meet community needs, which is one of our primary organizational values. All strategies for our work come from the question: How we can best meet community need? Our current primary strategies include:
1. Engagement with the hardest to reach youth and families: All of Two Feathers programs are currently at capacity or maintaining a waiting list. Given the aversion to behavioral health services due to stigma and historically oppressive practices in tribal communities, this level of engagement is unusual, and yet, is the key to the success of all of Two Feathers programs. We have found that this engagement requires finding and meeting the unmet needs of the youth and families in our community. Because of the expansive rural nature of our tribal communities, many youth and families do not have access to services because they lack transportation. Two Feathers has prioritized offering transportation to all youth to engage in prosocial community activities, to get to necessary appointments to meet basic needs, and to get to Two Feathers therapeutic services.
Additionally, the neediest youth and families in our community often lack access to healthy nutrition and fun community activities. Two Feathers staff are so committed to engaging youth and meeting their needs, that they use their personal vehicles to transport youth and families and provide incentives like fun outings as well as lunch and snack items out of their own personal funds. We have identified these three strategies; transportation, food and fun incentive outings as the primary reasons we have more youth and family engagement than any other organization in our community. Underlying these three strategies is the importance of building authentic relationships that takes time spent together.

Two Feathers is known as a safe place to seek assistance for various youth and family needs including substance abuse treatment, individual and group counseling, intensive case management, crisis intervention and victim advocacy. Throughout its 20-year history, Two Feathers has offered culturally based wellness programming for youth including, regalia making, language classes, drumming, basket weaving, mentorship activities and other culturally based activities.

In 2022, the agency grew to a staff size of 32 employees with 15 who are mental health clinicians, 9 who are in prevention/advocate roles providing direct services, and 8 who are in administrative or management roles. Our team is diverse with the majority (60%) of our employees identifying as Native American (including Alaska and Hawaiian Native).

Counseling Services in 2022
* 255 new referrals
* 244 new clients assigned
* 270 youth engaged in counseling services
* 3,719 total individual counseling services

2S/LGBTQIA+ Pride in Hoopa
Two Feathers hosts a weekly 2SLGBTQIA+ Rainbow club on campus at Hoopa Valley High School during lunch where students gather to support one another. With the club over a year old now, up to 27 students attend each week. In addition to the weekly club, Two Feathers hosted the second annual “Rainbow Extravaganza” on June 25 at Pookey’s Park in Hoopa. This event was the second Pride event hosted by Two Feathers NAFS with collaboration from Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified School District teachers Katie Hodges and Tina West. The event was attended by approximately 50 participants and provided a wide array of resources and education. Space was created to build knowledge and community for our Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual (2SLGBTQIA+) community members.

Cultural Programming
In 2022, we organized five workshops that were facilitated by partners from various Tribes and hosted in various places. The workshops are driven by cultural values and ceremonial teachings such as language, regalia, singing, ceremony protocols, etc. while also having a huge physical and nutritional component that highlighted traditional foods throughout the five days!

As part of the ACORN Youth Wellness Program, we also hosted two-day Stick Camp and Flower Dance workshops. Both of these program components allow us to meet with smaller groups of youth and their families to help them integrate what they are learning in the program into their homes and communities.

Captain John Continuation High School Groups
In 2022, Two Feathers began a weekly culturally based substance use prevention group at Captain John High School in Hoopa. Twenty-seven youth attended this group. The talking circles focused on building relationships, promoting hope, and increasing self-esteem. Two Feathers also began two additional weekly, culturally-based prevention groups at Captain John. One group was for five girls focused on traditional practices of weaving bear grass, and the other group was for four boys focused on traditional drum making. These small groups focused on intentional relationship building with elders and increasing the youths’ sense of belonging and worth.

Youth Work Pods - Youth Ambassadors
In 2022, Two Feathers employed 67 youth (total of 5,566 hours worked, 83 hrs on average per youth). Of the 67 youth, 20 worked more than 100 hrs, 21 worked more than 50 to 100 hrs, and 20 worked between 10 and 50 hrs throughout the year. Twenty four Ambassadors participated in Two Feathers' first youth leadership conference. The summit's theme was "Empowering Youth on the Move." They spent the day building relationships with peers, increasing leadership skills, and learning how they can empower themselves and their communities.