Storytelling and Movement Building with Protect the Sacred

In many places around the world, the effects of the social disconnection during COVID lockdowns are still echoing. But in one community, COVID also sparked a movement of reconnection and empowerment. 

Allie Redhorse Young, a Diné woman who had interned with Indian Health Service in northern New Mexico before heading to college, found herself back home on the Navajo Nation years later at the onset of the pandemic. The virus was infecting more people per capita there than in any other state in the country. 

“Our elders were the most at risk and we were losing them at much higher rates than ever before in modern history,” Young says. And with those elders, her community was also losing the language, history and culture of her people.

Young, who had been working in the nonprofit world, began organizing young people, urging them to step into leadership to protect their elders who held ancestral knowledge and passed down languages, traditional practices and ceremonies. She began using the hashtag #ProtecttheSacred and working on messaging for emergency protocols. Five years later, the effects of the movement have gone far beyond handwashing and social distancing, and have created a rally cry to mobilize the people of the region to show up and vote.

Photo credit @Protect The Sacred

“It was a time that we were all coming together,” Young says. “Many of our households across Indian Country are multi-generational households, so I was also calling on them to use this time at home to reconnect with their elders, learn their languages, learn parts of our culture, and then the hashtag just took off.” 

Young says, with the presidential election and census also that year, she wanted to continue to help her community connect the dots about advocacy, representation and funding. 

Youth leadership is the big picture

As founder and executive director of Protect the Sacred, Young feels that Native youth are at the heart of her mission, focusing on storytelling, grassroots organizing, advocacy and civic engagement. Her motivation to work with Native young people comes from a deeply personal place.

“My younger brother took his own life when he was 17 years old, 17 years ago actually this year,” she says. “He was systems-impacted and I wanted to dedicate my life to creating programs for young people like him to hopefully offer a better path, or just hope.”

The organization itself is small, just Young and two younger Native women are staff members. But they’re already seeing the fruits of their work multiplying. In fact, one of those two younger women began her own leadership journey at Protect the Sacred’s biennial Native Youth Summit. 

“She didn't really know anything about organizing and advocacy work until she came to our summit,” Young says. “We had panels on the Native American boarding school system, the Indian Child Welfare Act and how it was being challenged in the Supreme Court at that time. And she said, I had no idea that was happening. It made her want to get involved and learn about these issues that impact our Tribal communities.”

For Young, focusing on empowering youth in leadership is the big picture. 

“We're taught to think about how these decisions we make today will impact the next seven generations. And so that is a Native cultural teaching and value. That's why you often hear of Native communities talking about lifting up our young people and supporting them because what we're doing today will impact the next seven generations, and we have to be thinking that far ahead.”

Stories build movements

“Native communities are the original storytellers of this land,” Young says. “That is how our community, our languages and our traditional practices were passed down—orally, and through storytelling and our creation stories. It is an ancestral practice. It is very easy for the Native community to communicate through stories.”

As a writer herself—Young previously worked in Hollywood—she’s passionate about how different mediums like TV and film speak about people, society and communities. Thinking critically about messaging was what led to their Ride to the Polls voter education campaign.

“Traditional voting messaging wasn't working with our Native young people, and they were asking questions like, ‘why are you encouraging us to participate in a system that was not designed for us and has never worked for us?’” she says. 

It was a valid criticism, and Young had to agree. So she started looking for a way to create messaging that would resonate with them. Looking at the cultural renaissance that’s been happening in the last 10 years since the Standing Rock movement, she thought: “What I know about Native youth is the reverence we hold for our elders, our languages, our culture and our ancestors.”

The Ride to the Polls activation was born, mobilizing Native voters with horseback rides to polling places across the Navajo Nation. By reconnecting with stories of ancestors and elders who fought to exercise their rights, and those who didn’t have cars but still rode for hours on horseback to vote, the campaign urged young people to walk in their elders’ footsteps and make their voices heard. 

“It was a symbol of continuing that legacy of survival,” Young says. “And you can tap into creativity in many different ways, many different forms, many different mediums.”

The message resonated, and creative storytelling continues to be at the heart of Young’s work with Native youth. 

Building in community and celebration

As Protect the Sacred continues to build up youth leaders, Young says it’s the very community itself that keeps them afloat and grounded. 

“I surround myself with family and community,” she says. “And when I feel like I need to take a moment, I take that moment. If I need to reconnect to ceremony or my culture, I'll do that.”

As an organization, Protect the Sacred is also very intentional about creating space for young leaders to find community in the work they do so that it's not always heavy, she says. That includes celebration, music and community dinners with traditional foods. 

“We want to bring in that celebratory piece because while we're often talking about heavy issues, we also want to remind our young people that we have a lot to celebrate and to be proud of as a culture,” Young says.

Listening for hope

As so many other things feel dark or unsure in the world, Young says she turns to the youth for hope. At the Native Youth Summit, the youth are encouraged to share their thoughts and experiences. 

“And wow, that gets me every time,” Young says. “What they have to say about it and their vision for the future when they share those things, it's really powerful. The youngest ones are 15 years old, and what they have to say is profound.”

For more info, follow along at @protectsacred.

Photo credit @Protect The Sacred

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