Sharon Day
By Cynthia Zapata
“It is important that we as human beings think and feel and do things that originate from our spirituality,” says Sharon Day. “And when we do that, then the world can change.”
It is a fervent love sown early on for family and community that has molded how Sharon lives her life and shapes her incredible work within Native communities here in Minnesota. It is with this love and listening ear that Sharon — an Ojibwe activist, artist and writer — has built up the Indigenous People’s Task Force (IPTF), a nonprofit that sits in the heart of the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis.
Sharon co-founded IPTF in 1987 to deliver culturally relevant HIV education — the first organization in the country to focus on the AIDS crisis in the Native community. IPTF also launched the Ikidowin Peer Education Program and Youth Theater Acting Ensemble, and uses the arts to offer accurate, culturally relevant health information to young people.
Sharon’s work, and the work of IPTF, centers traditional Anishinaabe lifeways. This shows up in her water walks, the baby food line she started with her daughter, and the plant medicines that are grown at Indigenous People’s Task Force. These are some of the many projects that Sharon has started all with the intention of reconnecting, healing and preserving Indigenous knowledge. With culture and ceremony at the center of how Sharon builds her work, community thrives around it.
In Sharon’s office there is sweet grass, tobacco, old campaign posters encouraging Indigenous people to get tested for HIV, certificates and awards for her work spanning years of her career, and a small dog bed right by her desk.
When prompted about the dog bed, Sharon begins telling a story of her childhood dog. How one day there was a ruckus outside — a crying sister, an upset parent, her scared dog. Before anyone could act she ordered everyone inside, sister and parent alike, and took her pup on a walk to calm him down. She was afraid to come back home because she felt her demands may have come off disrespectful to her father, but later, he called her to sit on his lap and said, “I want you to know I’m so proud of you. If you don’t stand up for who you love, nobody else is going to.”
“That’s how I have tried to live my life, right?” she says now. “To stand up for those who especially can’t stand up.”
Sharon’s work is what happens when you water the kernels of tradition, it is what happens when someone grows up connected to their culture and ways of knowing. If colonization and white supremacy has led to isolation, the antidote is seeing the sacred in the soil, water, and rekindling reverence.
“What would Minneapolis look like if we all took a moment to see the sacred within ourselves?” Sharon asks. Her question is an ever urgent call for us to nurture a deeper connection to the land, water, plants, and animal relatives around us. “We are all critical in achieving a healed world.”
Donate:
Currently, the Indigenous People’s Task Force is fundraising to build a center for art and wellness named Mike-wane-dun Aud-i-soo-kon” which translates to “remember our teachings in Ojibwe. You can donate to this campaign here: