Are you in recovery? Would you like to share your story in 500 words or less?

By sharing your story, you can inspire hope in the lives of those still struggling with drugs, alcohol or gambling. The questions provided below are suggested only as a guide to assist you in the storytelling process and are not required to share your story.

• What was the turning point at which you chose to begin your pathway to recovery?
• How did you overcome the challenges you faced?
• What do you want to share with others about recovery?
• Describe your life now compared to your life before recovery.
• What do you want to accomplish in your recovery?

Feel free to share your story at iamrecovery.com.

(Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief of the Assembly of the First Nations, wears a traditional headdress as he attends the Pope Benedict’s general audience in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Wednesday. Photograph by: Max Rossi, Reuters)

http://www.vancouversun.com/Life/Pope+shows+sorrow+over+residential+school+abuse/1545844/story.html

By Peter O’Neil, Europe Correspondent, Canwest News Service
April 29, 2009 9:09 AM

PARIS — Pope Benedict expressed his “sorrow” Wednesday over the suffering of thousands of aboriginal Canadians in residential schools run by the Roman Catholic Church.

The statement came in a communique issued by the Vatican after the pope met with Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, the Most Reverend James Weisgerber, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, and several B.C. aboriginal leaders.

“His Holiness recalled that since the earliest days of her presence in Canada, the Church, particularly through her missionary personnel, has closely accompanied the indigenous peoples,” the statement began.

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At a recent NE2Ss meeting, it was unanimously agreed upon that NE2SS should be an Outreach Partner for the Two Spirits: Sexuality, Gender, and the Murder of Fred Martinez Film.

The Fred Martinez Project and the documentary film Two Spirits received the 2008 Monette-Horwitz Distinguished Achievement Award for outstanding activism, research, and scholarship to combat homophobia.

The U.S. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in Washington has joined the Fred Martinez Project as an outreach partner. The department will host screenings of Two Spirits around the country as a part of their ongoing national diversity programs.

For more information please visit www.twospirits.org.

Take a short survey on LGBT health and human services issues at: www.nylgbtsurvey.org.

Be a part of a historic effort to research and document the needs of LGBT New Yorkers to ensure those needs don’t go unaddressed by government and health and human service providers. The information you provide will go toward fighting for policy changes and funding to make services to LGBT people in New York equitable and LGBT-friendly.

This survey is open to all LGBT New Yorkers ages 18 and over.

Enter for a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card with your completed survey! Information provided for the raffle will be confidential and not linked to your survey responses.

For more information or to receive paper surveys, e-mail Somjen Frazer consulting@somjenfrazer.com.

This survey is a project of the Empire State Pride Agenda, the NYS LGBT Health and Human Services Network, and Somjen Frazer Consulting.

From the left, Crisosto Apache, Matthew Reed and Travis Goldtooth of the Two Spirit Society of Denver drum during a blessing Sunday at the National Conference on GLBT Equality.( Brian Brainerd, The Denver Post )

By Jessica Fender
The Denver Post

“We’ll say ‘I can’t,’ cause we can’t say ‘I do,’ ” four bouffant-clad drag queens doo-wopped to a familiar tune on stage at Denver’s Grand Hyatt. “Locked out of the chapel of love.”

A national gathering of 2,000 gay and lesbian activists wrapped on a high note Sunday with the comedic crooning of The Kinsey Sicks quartet, an appearance by U.S. Rep Jared Polis and more than one joke about disgraced spiritual leader Ted Haggard.

The lighthearted end to four days of community-outreach training provided a much-needed shot in the arm for a group that suffered ballot-initiative disappointments in California and other states, said conference organizer Sue Hyde.

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Gay and transgender Native Americans find acceptance in tradition
by John Rosengren
Utne Reader
January-February 2009

Image by Mike Dvorak

He checks his plaid skirt, stockings, and deep-cut white blouse. When another man’s eyes fall on his cleavage, Richard squeezes his breasts together and answers the silent inquiry: “They’re real!”

Beyond the bathroom doors, men and women dance around a drum in more traditional costume—feathers, fox pelts, moccasins, beads, and bells. They’re all here for the 20th annual International Two Spirit Gathering, a celebration of and for those who feel they carry both male and female spirits.

In late August 2008, some 85 Native lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people from three dozen tribes in Canada and the United States traveled to the Audubon Center of the North Woods, 90 miles north of Minneapolis.

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If you haven’t already read it, be sure to check out the latest issue of POZ Magazine. NE2SS elder Kent Lesbock(pictured above) is quoted in the article “Rest for the Weary“.

Click here to see the story on the NYTimes site

By DAN FROSCH
NYTimes
October 17, 2008

RIVERTON, Wyo. — At 69, her eyes soft and creased with age, Alvena Oldman remembers how the teachers at St. Stephens boarding school on the Wind River Reservation would strike students with rulers if they dared to talk in their native Arapaho language.

“We were afraid to speak it,” she said. “We knew we would be punished.”

More than a half-century later, only about 200 Arapaho speakers are still alive, and tribal leaders at Wind River, Wyoming’s only Indian reservation, fear their language will not survive. As part of an intensifying effort to save that language, this tribe of 8,791, known as the Northern Arapaho, recently opened a new school where students will be taught in Arapaho. Elders and educators say they hope it will create a new generation of native speakers.

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Picture: Pat Taylor, ED of Faces and Voices of Recovery (on the right), Carla Ayres, a Boardmember for Faces and Voices for Recovery (in the middle) and Harlan Pruden

On Saturday, September 27, Harlan Pruden, NE2SS councilmember, joined thousands of individuals and families in recovery, treatment partners and advocates from all fifty states to form a human chain – a living symbol of recovery - across the historic Brooklyn Bridge and marched to a rally at City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan featuring a special solo musical performance by singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright. The Recovery Rally - organized in partnership with the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc. (NCADD) – marks the launch of The Recovery Project, a wide-ranging, multi-year initiative of A&E Network, federal agencies and leading non-profit organizations designed to help raise awareness that addiction is a treatable disease and recovery is possible.

Befitting the enormous interest in the upcoming election, advocacy will be in evidence at this year’s Rally. There will be an Advocacy Tent set up to register voters as part of this year’s Recovery Voices Count Campaign and to encourage rally participants to advocate for policy change. Harlan helped with this effort to register people to vote and helped collect 100’s of names of people that endorsed the “Recovery Bill of Rights.”

Recovery Voices Count is part of a national movement spearheaded by Faces and Voices of Recovery to make it possible for even more of our friends, neighbors and family members to experience long-term recovery from addiction by building recognition of the recovery community as a constituency of consequence.

The Bay State Banner

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

There it was, the ever-so-fleeting moment during her speech at the Republican National Convention when vice presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin paid tribute to her hubby, Todd — her brief mention that he’s of Yup’ik Eskimo background. Todd Palin beamed with pride at the acknowledgement in front of the packed convention crowd and one of the largest TV audiences to ever watch a candidate’s convention speech.But the cheering convention participants and millions of viewers won’t see the same smiles on the faces of scores of other Yup’ik Eskimos. Nor on many other Native Alaskans, who make up nearly 20 percent of Alaska’s population.

A devastating report by the Alaska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 2002, “Racism’s Frontier: The Untold Story of Discrimination and Division in Alaska,” painted a picture of decades-long economic misery, discrimination, neglect and alienation for Native Alaskans in Palin’s state.

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