A women’s conference focusing on healing is coming to the Flying Dust First Nation this month.
The conference, named “Arise and Shine, My Sisters are Coming,” will feature multiple speakers who will tell their stories and discuss women’s issues and different forms of healing. The organizer of the event, Patricia Main, said that the conference’s main focus will be on healing and restoration.
“It’s really all about healing and restoration because I believe as women, we are very key because we are nurturers, we are mothers, and we bring life. And I believe that many times, because of life’s situations, things have hurt us, but I believe that we are in a season of healing and restoration. We also see that there is a healing movement and an awakening among our Indigenous people,” said Main. “I think that each and every one of us has a story, so as the ladies come, they’re going to relate to somebody sharing their story, whether it be being a young teenage mom and raising kids, being a single parent, talking about the abuse that they may have gone through or the shame that they have gone through, and walking through that journey of healing to say that this is how my healing began, and life happens to everybody, but as we begin to take inventory and we begin to say okay what needs to be changed.”
The event can also act as a way to reconnect people after the COVID-19 pandemic. “Even just with COVID, we have been isolated for 2-3 years, and coming out of it and bringing the people together, we can begin to connect again because it’s also about kinship and connecting with one another and beginning to revisit those conversations or begin to have those kinships again in connecting with people so then we can begin to walk together as one,” Main said.
The women’s conference will be held in the Flying Dust Community Gym, April 21 and 22, with the first event starting on Friday at 7 p.m. and then moving into Saturday with events scheduled for 10 a.m., 2 p.m., and 7 p.m.