This space is co-created by:

Dawn A. Yazzie

Dawn is from the navajo nation. Maternal clan: ye’ii dine’e tachii’nii born for: kiiya’aanii (paternal clan) she comes from a lineage of resilient survivors of western colonization and the navajo long walk of hwéeldí. Dawn worked as an infant & early childhood mental health consultant (iecmhc) on the navajo nation for 8 years. She currently does consulting for early childhood agencies in states and tribal communities around infant mental health and iecmhc. She also has experience working as a national technical assistance specialist for georgetown university, and is the founding director of dził nitsaa consulting and services, l.l.c. she brings this experience and cultural perspectives to support in the collective, intergenerational healing that indigenous peoples are moving toward for future generations.

Eva Marie Shivers

Dr. Eva Marie Shivers, J.D., Ph.D. is the founding executive director of Indigo Cultural Center, a 17-year-old national non-profit action research firm. Dr. Shivers grew up in the 70’s in Tempe, Arizona (unceded lands of Hohokam and Tohono O’odham) and identifies as an African American, able-bodied, cis-gendered woman. She is a researcher and evaluator working at the crossroads of Infant Mental Health and early care and education. She also sees herself as an equity harmonizer and healer, and her professional work facilitating conversations about racial equity and social justice is closely aligned with her spiritual life and deeply held convictions about humanity. She is the mother of a beautiful African American, 13-year-old boy who is on the autism spectrum. She is a dancer and a yoga practitioner – and currently practices embodied and ancestral healing. What brings her joy? Roller skating, singing musical theater songs while cooking, and playing Star Wars with her son!

Nat Nadha Vikitsreth 

Nat is a dot connector, norm agitator, and lover of liberation who supports social justice curious families in their efforts to practice social justice in their parenting while re-parenting their inner child. Nat works as a nationally award-winning decolonized therapist and facilitator, a trans rights activist, and a host of the Come Back to Care Podcast. She founded Come Back to Care for anyone who loves and raises children to heal as we get free. She believes that when parents heal their inner child and internalized oppression wounds in a community, they put fragmented pieces of themselves together to show up to both parenting and community organizing with their whole selves. Then, parents can dismantle systemic oppression and rebuild a culture that’s rooted in liberation for their future generations.

Natasha Pérez Byars

Natasha is the Director of Equity Consultation and Training at Indigo Cultural Center and is a licensed independent clinical social worker.  She is a Black and Mexican-American woman, with family lineage coming out of Monterrey, Mexico through the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, as well as the cotton fields and red clay dirt surrounding Colony, Alabama which her great, great grandparents helped establish as a home for freed Black people. Natasha loves poetry, storytelling, trees, the ocean, and connection, and is trying to be a good neighbor.  She holds the principles of liberation, inclusion, and honoring families and lived expertise as central to her work.

Krystle Canare

Krystle (she/her) is a proud Filipina American, the eldest daughter of first generation immigrant parents, the descendent of Filipino farmers, fisherman, and warriors, and carries both their generational wounds and legacy as a person with lived mental health experience and as a Deputy Director of NAAPIMHA, the National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association, and program manager with Indigo Cultural Center. Krystle enjoys living as a digital nomad and way finder traveling the country, reconnecting with the land, and living full-time in her RV with her partner and puppy, Evie.