Healing from Broken Promises.

We’re writing this while on the Hopi & Navajo reservations, where volunteers are working alongside tribal members as part of our 9th service trip to the area.The history of this place, and indeed all reservations, is fraught with broken promises. These promises - given by soldiers, settlers, boarding schools and the US government - are far too common in the Native lived experience. The volunteers walking alongside us here this week have taken that lesson seriously.

​Washington D.C.’s National Community Church (NCC) was the first organization to send volunteers with us to the Hopi & Navajo Reservations in August 2022. NCC made it possible for transformative service to take place here in the tribal communities of the Southwest. Three years later, they have joined FOUR service trips and are fulfilling their promise to the Hopi and Diné communities with whom they have engaged in literally thousands of hours of service. It is beautiful to witness as they greet our local Hopi and Diné partners as longtime friends.

Other volunteers who joined us this week from Colorado, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also embody what it means to keep one's promise. 

Duane Mullner, The Tipi Raiser's board president has worked and played alongside us for over a decade. This week, he lifted walls with Diné elders, split firewood for Native families, and built lasting connections with local tribal members. Last night, he shared with us: “For me, my choice to participate in a volunteer trip deepens my experience as a Tipi Raisers Board Member; it deepens my purpose, value and offers much guidance in my role to carry out our Mission!"

Another volunteer is logging his 5th service trip with us to the Hopi & Navajo Nations, and continues to build homes and bridges with tribal members - whom he now calls dear friends.

A young family flew across the country for their third Tipi Raisers trip, incorporating service and cross-cultural connection into the lives of their kind, leadership-oriented, and hardworking teenage children.

Broken promises are a central element of Native & non-Native relations, but what if the story is changing? What if promises fulfilled can heal old betrayals. And, despite everything, our shared future can be one of reconciliation, of abundance, of love?

This week, volunteers have split firewood, painted a community center on the Navajo Nation, continued constructing a tiny home for a Diné elder, spent time visiting with an Indigenous grandmother and artist, and are helping to remove a collapsed roof at 13th century Walpi Village alongside Hopi tribal members.
We are enjoying another day of meaningful work and play with local families today as we close the trip out.
-- Mackenzie & The Tipi Raisers Team