Voices of the 7th Generation
Deloria Many Grey Horses
Deloria Many Grey Horses' projects give voice to at-risk Indigenous youth. Many Grey Horses draws out the youths' perspectives and cultural understandings from their stories. As one of the main youth leaders in a documentary, A Place at the Table, she helped to spread awareness on what it means to live in mainstream culture while holding on to your roots. Many Grey Horses worked in Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, on behalf of the Four Worlds International Institute, with the Canadian Government funded SEARCH Project. This initiative worked with Regional Southeast Asia Partners for Advancing Human Rights, Gender Issues, Child Protection, Ethnic Minorities and Indigenous Peoples.
This initiative focused on curriculum development and facilitating training programs for co-creating community-based social media, improving digital literacy and strengthening digital technology capacities for regional, national and local NGO’s. Many Grey Horses' work has a special emphasis on ethnic minority and Indigenous young peoples and their communities. Her recent work as project manager of the Manual of Aboriginal Best Practices in Sports and Wellbeing is aimed at a young audience. The manual helps young Indigenous people deal with cultural identity loss and emotional disconnection amidst other social and economic pressures. An Aboriginal engagement consultant at the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate in Alberta, Many Grey Horses’ work addresses the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health of Indigenous youth. She notes that 68% of young people in care in Alberta are Indigenous and in Edmonton, the percentage of Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system hovers around 80%. In this role, she is dedicated to creating a strong relationship between Indigenous communities and government, provide cultural awareness training for youth serving agencies and provide rights based training to youth in care and in the criminal justice system. From the Kainai Nation, Many Grey Horses uses storytelling as a vehicle to deliver each person’s message. She gives Indigenous young people personal freedom to express themselves.