Latest / Community Champion of the Week / Alisha Danielson, Founder of Whispers Between The Braids

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Alisha Danielson, Founder of Whispers Between The Braids · Community Champion of the Week

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Windspeaker Radio Networks, community champion of the week.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Alicia Danielson, and I am the founder of Whispers Between the Braids.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us a little more about Whispers Between the Braids.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: What's it all about?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're making such an impact with the youth.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: So Whispers and the Braids is an advocacy platform I established on Instagram and it's also found on Google now.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's all about Indigenous youth empowerment.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: So for myself, I really struggled with cultural identity and really who I am as a person and navigating both my Indigenous culture, but also walking in the Western world.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I really knew I wasn't the only Indigenous youth facing this.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's really where Whispers and the Braids came from and really encouraging confidence and that self-esteem with Indigenous youth.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us a little more about the initiative.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: What made you want to start it?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why why do you think there was a need for it?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Elaborate a little more.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was more about my own struggles.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I really felt alone in my identity.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: My mother's a 60 scoop survivor.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I never got to experience my culture in the ways that I really thought I could have experienced it.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: My mother doesn't know how to beat and things like that.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I've picked up those things trying to understand my culture even more.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just this feeling I had inside of just like, I know I could do more, and I know that I'm not the only one feeling like this.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little more.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: What have you personally or professionally learned from helping others?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's honestly the self-gratitude of knowing that what I am doing doesn't just only benefit me, but it benefits the others around me.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I've been able to travel Canada and provide Indigenous youth empowerment workshops.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've traveled to British Columbia, Alberta, Northwest Territories, Yukon, going to those small, remote towns because I grew up in Stewart, British Columbia.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a town of 300 people.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I really knew what it was like to not really have everybody come into this town that looked like me or even like was that public figure.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: So me being able to be that public figure and go into these small towns and tell these youth, yeah, like I came from a small town too, and I have all this background and I have these stories that are so similar to you, and that you can do the exact same thing as me.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: So since I've won Miss Queen Canada, I have a whole brain plan that I'm following with my reign, and it has a lot to do with Whisper's in the braids.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of them that I'm coming up with that I really want to do is a back to school supplies drive.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know that it's super hard to get school supplies if you're um low income and if especially with Jordan's principal, not there's not a lot of funding with that.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen that from working in the not-for-profit centers that we would go through that funding or wouldn't get really any at all.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So being able to give back to my community that way with school supplies and making sure that youth have all the supplies that they need, and especially with winter coming around the corner, that means um snow pants, winter jackets, all of those.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen it done in the past where it's super helpful, especially for our unhoused community.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So knowing that can be also helpful, helpful for our youth, but our unhoused community as well.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: This has been the Windspeaker Radio Network Community Champion of the Week.