Jan 9, 20232 min read

A Healthy, Indigenous Approach to Your New Year’s Resolution

By: Autumn Drags Wolf

A common practice for many, including Indigenous people, is to create a New Year’s resolution each year in January. Setting achievable goals, or ‘resolutions’, can improve your productivity and create a sense of accomplishment when achieved. This year, try setting a resolution that is sustainable and focused on your wellness by following these strategies:

Indigenous people have historically had our own ways of identifying cycles of renewal, like phases of the moon (months) and even years (winters). And varying from tribe to tribe, there are countless ways that we have honored a new year or a new cycle of seasons. Furthermore, there is a heightened development of Indigenous people who are on a course of decolonization where we seek deeper and more culturally appropriate meanings beyond the colonial constructs that have forever changed our lives and harmed our Nations.

For my New Year’s resolutions, I direct my energy and focus on both tangible and spiritual goals, and I allow myself to be as optimistic as I want to be in my visions for the year ahead. My resolutions range from the decolonial to stereotypical. Like, I want to have a healthier body and mind, so that I can show up for life and for my loved ones authentically.

I am also setting cultural and spiritual intentions, such as harvesting traditional foods and medicines. I also want to learn more of our history and be more courageous in my use of my Lakota, Hidatsa, and Arikara language. I want to visit relatives who I haven’t seen in years, and I want to spend more time outdoors with family, reconnecting to Uŋčí Makȟá (Mother Earth), who has nourished and rooted generations of ancestors to health and wellbeing.

Remarking on the many ways that we can better nourish our spirits and minds, heal our hearts, and strengthen ourselves, our families, and communities these are more than just resolutions. These are also daily prayers for many of us- prayers that come into focus through ceremony, through our own cultural new year celebrations.

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