Land Acknowledgement

This land, now Oklahoma, once served as a hunting ground, trade point, and migration route for the Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, and Osage nations. Due to settler colonial policies, 39 tribal nations reside in Oklahoma today. Mend respects the Indigenous peoples and their connection to this land and supports the sovereign rights of Oklahoma’s tribal nations.

Mend Core Values

1. Truth-Telling & Restorative Justice: We believe repair is impossible without truth. We name harm, listen deeply, and walk toward justice—not to punish, but to restore wholeness.

2. Mutual Flourishing: We seek not domination but liberation for all. Mutual flourishing means rejecting hierarchies and co-creating spaces where everyone has what they need to thrive.

3. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: We honor differences as sacred. We actively dismantle systems of oppression and nurture environments where all identities are valued, affirmed, and protected.

4. Belonging over Performance: We do not have to earn our place here. We belong. We cultivate spaces where authenticity is welcomed, and rest is honored. We care for the work as a gardener cares for the garden, not by being perfect but by loving the soil, seed, and each plant.

5. Embodied Peacemaking: Our peace is not the absence of conflict—it is the presence of justice. It is not the quiet of fear or forced silence but the harmony of mutual flourishing. We reject the false peace of military might or performative unity. Instead, we practice a positive peace rooted in truth, repair, and community. Peacemaking is not passive but embodied, brave, and rooted in love.

6. Creativity & Sacred Imagination: We believe in the prophetic power of rest, the arts, imagination, and dreaming. Our work is not only administrative—it is liminal. We make room for wonder, play, beauty, and mystery.

7. Eden vs. Empire: At MEND, we recognize the tension between Eden versus Empire. Empire thrives on domination, extraction, exploitation, exhaustion, and fear. Eden, by contrast, invites us into sacred rest, embodied wisdom, interconnectedness, restorative justice, and liberation.