Out-of-the-way travel provides opportunity for growth

Maureen White Eagle was not looking for tourism, beaches and resorts when she went to Mexico last fall. She wanted to see the REAL Mexico. And she did. White Eagle, an attorney at the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center (MIWRC) in South Minneapolis, went as a volunteer with Global Citizens Network (GCN). In the remote, mountainous terrain of Veracruz, she was privileged to work side by side with Totonac women, helping build furniture for a women’s cooperative work center.

White Eagle and fellow volunteers stayed in the village of Huehuetla for 10 days. Every morning they walked up the mountain for an hour through dense foliage to get to the work site. The center, run by the dynamic women’s cooperative Xasaste Latamat, will serve women of the Totonac community, a population of about 100,000 indigenous people who’ve lived in the area since before the time of Columbus.

“We didn’t speak the same language but somehow through gestures and laughter we managed to communicate,” said White Eagle. Of course, none of the volunteers spoke the native language, but those who knew some Spanish could connect, as most Totonac people also know Spanish. One of the men had the pattern for the furniture and explained, or rather showed, what had to be done. There were no battery-operated power tools and no electricity. White Eagle laughed as she recalled how long it took to saw through a board.

White Eagle said she likes GCN because they only go where they’re invited; they do what the people ask them to. Her role was to be a helper, not an organizer, or an authority.

In a novel like “The Poisonwood Bible” or the epic two-part film “At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” the paradigm of historical colonialism is horrifyingly depicted: the missionaries and the mercenaries are uninvited, imperial know-it-alls, perfect examples of how not to relate to people whose home you are visiting. At least, that’s the way we look at it now. The Global Citizens Network has definitely been involved in the paradigm shift that has slowly been taking place over the past 30 some years.

GCN’s model is partnership. The organization was founded in 1992, at a time when fewer such organizations existed. Its five original founders, in previous international community development work, had already experienced a lack of partnership in projects with developing countries, and were determined to foster something different. Their vision was to forge relationships between cultural groups from a country like the U.S. and from developing nations in which complete, mutual respect was a given. The goal would be for members of both cultural groups to recognize their commonalities and their differences and then use that information to solve problems.

With GCN, the host community is always in charge of the project—they own it. GCN volunteers would never presume to have all the answers.

When White Eagle went to Mexico with GCN, she not only expressed her values, but also took a step forward on her personal path of self-realization, a process that had begun in a defined way when her son graduated from college seven years ago. Suddenly, with an empty nest, it had dawned on her that she was free to do whatever she wanted for the rest of her life. It was an “epiphany.” She had “a new sense of being driven to search for something new.”

They were living in Devil’s Lake, N.D., the place she had grown up with her Ojibwe father, her Norwegian/Swedish mother and a houseful of siblings, cousins and foster kids—the place she went back to after study at William Mitchell and a marriage that didn’t work out. The 17 years in Devil’s Lake had been happy and successful. There had been plenty of family support, she had finished law school at the University of N.D. and had grown a substantial law practice. But the time had come to take a new direction.

A job with American Field Service, for four years, reconnected her with her love of everything international, which had begun at age 16 when she spent a year in Brazil as a foreign exchange student. She loved her job as the regional director of the international, volunteer-based AFS, but she couldn’t use her law degree there. And in the meantime she had become keenly interested in women’s human rights.

It was time to move on. White Eagle took a job in the Phillips neighborhood at the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, where she could work with Native Americans and issues she cared about—and where she could organize a program, something she loves to do. Her program is a law clinic that deals with victims of domestic violence in the Twin Cities and on the Mille Lacs reservation. The clinic also provides civil legal services such as divorce, custody, protection orders, housing and leases and economic qualifications for services. It now has two attorneys, a sexual assault advocate and law school volunteers.

She said she believes that in the United States, the domestic violence in both Native and non-Native cultures is very violent. She doesn’t know if domestic violence is as extreme in other cultures. The trip to Mexico opened her eyes to the ways different cultures deal with domestic violence. “In the U.S. we go more for changes in the laws, restraining orders and things like that to protect women. In Mexico they focus on ways to prevent and reeducate people.” She said there is a lot of programming on the radio, for example. Also, in Mexico, the family is the major support system.

Upon White Eagle’s return, she applied for a Bush Fellowship, asking for a year of study to prepare herself for putting together an international women’s human rights organization. In early April she found out she was one of the winners.

In a quiet, contained way her excitement shone through. She will take a year off to meet with indigenous groups. In Mexico, she felt a strong connection to the Totonac women and wants to nurture connections with indigenous women wherever she can. With the Totonac women she felt “the shared history of oppression, the European aggression that wants to beat the culture out of people.” And she related to “their connection to the land,” a place they’ve lived for thousands of years.

White Eagle will spend half a year in Brazil, regaining her Portugese, visiting friends from her exchange student days, and looking at cultural issues. Somewhere she wants to arrange an internship in a women’s organization. She plans to go to Thailand for a conference on women and development, and while there hopes to do a survey of organizations working in human traffic. She especially wants to see how international human rights organizations work, structurally and financially. If possible, she will go to Africa.

There’s nothing wrong with tourism, a little R & R in a strange place. You can’t fail to learn about the world, about yourself, see something new, contribute to somebody’s economy. But if you want to grow in a more deliberate way, try a volunteer trip with Global Citizens Network. People of all ages, backgrounds, and experiences travel with GCN, even whole families. The only requirement is a desire to work cooperatively with others and a willingness to experience new cultures. For Maureen White Eagle, among other benefits, the trip turned out to be another piece of the puzzle in deciding her future. For each person the meaning is a little different.

GCN receives many invitations from groups all over the world, usually NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), cooperatives or academic institutions. Contacts are made by word of mouth, carried by travelers. GCN sends volunteer groups and board members to evaluate the sites for safety, for accessibility, for the relationship potential. It’s’ a rigorous process. The final decision is up to the inviting community.

One of the trips this year, in October, will be a first-time, evaluating expedition to a village in the Chiang Rai region of Thailand. The last leg of the journey will be a half day trek by elephant. GCN will go wherever they’re invited if all their criteria are met. (For example, if there is civil unrest, they won’t go. Just this year GCN was told not to come to Nepal again to work with Tibetan refugees because of the Maoist rebels in the area.) A trip has to be do-able on all fronts.

GCN says that “by sponsoring one- to three-week trips to 10 different indigenous communities all over the world, GCN connects volunteers with people who want to share their culture and friendship in exchange for some help and encouragement.” GCN links people to people.

The next trip to Mexico is Oct. 21 - 30. Trips to New Mexico, Washington state, Guatemala, Kenya and Tanzania are planned for July and August.
(www.globalcitizens.org, 651-644-0960 or 1-800-644-9292. The contact person is Eden Rock.