Spirit of the Sun’s Native and Indigenous Youth Mentorship Program holds bi-monthly group mentorship activities and events for Indigenous youth in the Denver-Metro area and beyond. 

By connecting our youth with Native/Indigenous mentors who share our vision of empowering native communities through the unification and empowerment of the younger generations, we make space for our youth to build healthy, positive relationships based in trust and reciprocity while also doing fun activities such as group hikes, craft work, and team sports.

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Our vision is that the Native/Indigenous youth of today become the next generation of Native/Indigenous leaders that are committed to the advancement of themselves, their communities, their environments, and the world abroad. Our goal is to create a healing environment for youth where they can show up wholly and express their thoughts and feelings honestly knowing that they will be supported and strengthened by their community. We hope that this space will allow our youth and mentors to understand that healing is reciprocal therefore individual healing simultaneously heals the communities which we belong to.

The Spirit of the Sun team is committed to pairing youth with Native/Indigenous mentors because we know that an understanding of significant culture and history is vital to creating mentoring relationships that are informed by the world in which the youth are walking in.

 

We want our youth and mentors to build pride in and strengthen their cultural connections to their First Nations and communities by reawakening their ancestral memories that preserve our cultural lifeways and teachings. We hope that creating space for these relationships to form, grounded in healing and cultural resilience, will also nurture the unwavering commitment that is needed to build upon the immense strength, power and love each mentee, mentor, the program, and our communities already have within us. We extend our commitment to our community by empowering our youth to step into their leadership by becoming mentors for the future generations of mentees. Not only does this fuel the continuity of the program, ensure that it remains Native/Indigenous led/focused, but also encourages the youth to see themselves as role models and path makers for the next 7 generations.

 

If you know any Native youth who are interested in joining our program, please email chenoa@spiritofthesun.org. We are happy to accept new youth into this program on a rolling basis.