"Healing Our Community"<br>

Communities are comprised of a collection of families and individuals in which everyone has accepted duties and obligations, and the people/citizenry operate within this context.

Communities go through many trials and tribulations, such as what the community of Leupp has gone through recently. And we will continue to be faced with trials and tribulations. There are many challenges communities face, such as crime, poverty, roads, alcoholism, domestic violence and many other social problems, challenges that we face on a daily basis. It is how we deal with these challenges that will ensure proper survival and uphold our integrity as members of the community, as well as the integrity of the community itself.

People from the outside often assume that Indian tribes are going to disappear because they are unable to deal with issues, such as a lot of the ongoing multigenerational issues like the Boarding Syndrome, alcoholism, cultural transformation and, lately, some of the newer issues such as the escalating crime in Indian Country. But we will not disappear. We are here to stay! The challenges are surmountable and we can triumph over these challenges through good, strong teamwork, healthy partnerships, coordination and communication, which will help us prevail.

Issues, like crime, divide communities. They create fear and threaten democracy; we must take on the challenge to stop it. The democracy of our great Navajo Nation needs to be revitalized. If we don't deal with the safety and healing of our community, then debilitating hopelessness sets in. This is further erosion of what our forefathers or ancestors stood for, which is empowerment, healing and survival.

Ms. Hillary Clinton said, "It takes a village to raise a child." Just the same, it takes a village to prevent a crime or to wipe out alcoholism.

As a village or community, we must continue to search for more effective and efficient methods to identify and intervene with crime and other social problems. We need to invest in our community, in our children, in our families. Like for example, if someone is an addict and he ends up in the criminal justice system and leaves the system as an addict, then there is something wrong with our system and we are not doing our job. We need to make investments in good sound community policies, such as good community based care for the people. We have to have strong stewardship of our communities.

We will continue to have gaps in whatever we do. There are cultural gaps, communication gaps, service gaps, educational gaps, etc. Somehow, we need to bridge these gaps. We cannot afford to be a community that is divided. We should fully concentrate at all times to build one community, to build one Navajo Nation and one America. This is HEALING our community.

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