Under the Husk empowers youth seeking holistic development, and the program accomplishes this by engaging their mental, physical, emotional and spiritual selves.

“This rites of passage ceremony is rooted in youth wellness, founded in land based learning, and motivated by ancestral knowledge,” says founder Clan Mother Wakerahkates:teh Louise Herne. “It gives them voice to use their experience, abilities, talents and motivations to identify how they can become skilled at who they want to become.”

In Oklahoma, Running Strong supports the Yuchi Language Program which is down to its last native fluent Yuchi speaker. The mission of the Yuchi Language Project is “to keep alive the rich heritage of the Yuchi people by creating new young speakers of the unique language through breath-to-breath immersion methods with fluent elders and children.”

While all Native languages should be preserved, Yuchi is an incredibly unique language. Linguistic experts consider it to be an “isolate” language, meaning that it did not derive from any other language or cultural group.

“For more than 100 years, under immense oppression, our Yuchi people have been counting down the number of Yuchi speakers with fewer speakers each year,” said project administrator Halay Turning Heart. “The decline of the language has been from about 24 native speakers 20 years ago, to 6 speakers five years ago, to now only 1 fully fluent elder speaker.