A Work of Heart: Nurturing Your Mental Wellbeing Through Self Reflect of Spoken and Physical Language

• In Event: Indigenous Educational Leadership Through Community-Based Knowledge and Research

Abstract

“You can’t be an educator without emotion” (A. Borden, personal communication, June 28, 2022). I aspire to be a representation of hope within the Indigenous community as a transformational leader. I will embrace imperfection and strive to recognize healing as our ongoing legacy. As a part of the 1% of Indigenous scholars pursuing an education above a bachelor’s degree, it’s inevitable to experience the overwhelming amount of ethnostress in spaces that were meant to purge Indigenous ways of being from our ancestors. But in true resilience we combine our minds and hearts to mobilize the overarching goal of indigenizing the academy by exerting our own values of kinship as Indigenous peoples (Mihesuah & Wilson, 2004).

Author

• April Yazza, University of New Mexico