Eileen Hudon - This Is My Activism
Eileen Hudon, Native woman from White Earth Band of Ojibwe, shares her years of experience being an activist for the the short video series This is My Activism.
Eileen Hudon is a longtime advocate working to end violence against Native women. She is a co-founder and organizer of the Elder’s Lodge Sexual Assault Council and has helped found organizations including Mending the Women of Nations, the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, and Mending the Sacred Hoop. Her work spans shelter and advocacy programs, court advocacy across criminal, civil, juvenile, and tribal systems, and landmark research as a consultant and co-author of Garden of Truth, one of the first U.S. studies addressing the prostitution and trafficking of Native women.
Read More From Eileen Hudon
Eileen Hudon is a co-author of Garden of Truth, the landmark Minnesota study documenting the realities of prostitution and trafficking of Native women and offering community-informed recommendations for safety, healing, and justice
READ GARDEN OF TRUTHThis Is My Activism with Eileen Hudon
I would read The Circle and I’d read The Alley and I’d go to any community meeting there was. I didn’t care what the topic was. It was to get myself out of the house. [I] needed to be out there interacting with the community.
Definition of Activism
In a way, it’s like a feast. you do all these things to prepare a feast and everyone contributes and then everyone benefits from that. So, in a simple way it’s like that but in a complex way it’s the knowledge and understanding that our people have and sometimes don’t recognize because of oppression.
So, a part of activism is bringing out that recognition that each one of us has [and] that knowledge that that each one of us has, and then utilizing that knowledge for a purpose.
And that’s utilizing the knowledge of many, many people and utilizing that to bring about change in our community.
Highlights of Your Activism
One of the highlights was being one of the co-founders of Mending the Sacred Hoop and Mending the Sacred Hoop becoming a technical assistance provider to tribal grantees. after the Violence Against Women Act was passed.
Challenges Faced
One of the big challenges of facilitating that change is how to keep those background issues in the background and focus and try to get the whole group focus on the intent of coming together in the first place.
What Drives Your Activism
Initially, I want to make a difference for my children because they didn’t have a choice about the violence and you know it’s like they didn’t have a choice. So, I wanted to help to make a difference for other families [and] for other children.
Changes in Your Activism
Well, I think what’s changed for me is that there’s some skill there right. And that comes from a lot of failures. So, skill doesn’t come so much from success as it does from failures and really looking at all those lessons that I’ve learned and then being able to draw on the knowledge of the people around me.
Personal Struggles
I want to have action happen all the time and not everybody’s like that… So, I actually do have quite a few different networks of people.
So, that impatience that I have about change I can actually, you know I can move over here and become a part of this and be tolerant of that change that’s being integrated into the community over here. I don’t have to try to push on to the next thing because there’s always something to be done.
Impact You Wish to See
I would really like to see our families be able to be activists on their own behalf.
