As a member of the NE2SS’s Leadership Council and a someone with over 20 years of sobriety, Harlan Pruden participated on the special population panel as a representative of the Native American and the two-spirit community at “Aligning Concepts, Aligning Practice, Aligning Contexts – Building a Blueprint for Action,” this May 1-2 in Philadelphia sponsored by the Institute for Research, Education, and Training in Addictions (IRETA). It was a valuable opportunity to share his experience in recovery with nationally recognized recovery leaders and offer his input to bring about necessary change for the recovery community.

For both those who attended and those who missed it, the resources and presentations are now available online at IRETA’s website. You can also view a copy of Harlan Pruden’s PowerPoint presentation, Recovery Oriented Systems of Care from a Two-Spirit Perspective.

You can also watch the video taped presentations by visiting the IRETA homepage and clicking on the link to the Recovery Symposium under the “In the Spotlight” section. Please feel free to share this exciting resource with your colleagues.

On November 15th, the NorthEast Two-Spirit Society hosted a community forum titled, “Gender, Sexuality and Our Elders” to mark National Native American Heritage month.

We thank Kevin Van Wanseele for recording, editing and posting it to YouTube to share with you.

For more background information on this event, click more below.

(more…)

AIDS to Native Eyes was a big success for the NorthEast Two Spirit Society. We honored our ancestors, laughed with our friends and organized for future generations of Native people. The documentary you are about to watch covers parts of the last 25 years of the fight against AIDS in New York City, to Native Eyes. (The video is hosted by YouTube and is shown in two parts. Click “Read the rest of entry” for part 2.)

(more…)

Last November, the NorthEast Two-Spirit Society hosted a panel discussion with the Two-Spirit community. It received much media coverage, notably three different cameras. We gathered much of that footage, edited it together, and created NE2SS TV’s first program, "Beyond Beads and Feathers."

Here’s the preview. Enjoy the entire program coming in the next few days. (There’s still a few kinks to work out with the video uploading process with YouTube.com.) Featured on the panel were Melissa Hoskins (Talehquah Cherokee), Nick Billey (Oklahoma), Ben Geboe (Yankton Sioux), Kent Lebsock (Lakota), Kevin VanWanseele (Kumeyaay) and Karen Vigneault (Kumeyaay). The panel was moderated by Richard Hake (The Advocate Newsmagazine on Logo) with an historic introduction by Harlan Pruden (Cree).