October 12, 8:30am-11am
Oklahoma State Capitol (4th Floor Rotunda) 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd. Oklahoma City, OK
Sandra White Hawk, Founder and Director of First Nations Repatriation Institute, Director of Healing Programs, National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
Prof. Sabine Andresen, Head of the Educational Science Department at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main
We are incredibly fortunate to have Sandra White Hawk and Sabine Andresen join us for the 2023 Melton Visiting Professor events. Both have led national efforts to address and facilitate justice and healing for survivors of childhood trauma. Sandra White Hawk is a Sicangu Lakota adoptee from the Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota. Abused in her adoptive home, Sandra White Hawk has been a national leader in organizing Truth Healing Reconciliation Community Forums to help First Nations people impacted by foster care or adoption return home, reconnect, and reclaim their identity. Professor Andresen led a similar effort in her home country of Germany, but with a different structure. She co-founded German’s Independent Commission for Child Sexual Abuse Issues from a roundtable created after numerous children came forward with horrifying accounts of childhood sexual abuse by trusted adults and institutions. Professor Andresen is now the head of the Educational Science Department at Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main. A report in English on the German inquiry can be found here.