Youth GONA

This Youth GONA is a culture-based planning process where youth will gather to address community-identified issues. It uses an interactive approach that empowers and supports AI/AN tribes. The GONA approach reflects AI/AN cultural values, traditions, and spiritual practices. The GONA focuses on the following four themes:

• Belonging—the GONA ensures that everyone feels
welcomed in an inclusive, open, safe, and trusting
environment.

• Mastery—the GONA allows participants to take stock of
how historical trauma impacts their communities and
what fosters their resilience and holds them together.

• Interdependence—the GONA initiates the planning
process to assess resources and relationships, and to
experience and strengthen interconnectedness.

• Generosity—the GONA exercise of creating gifts to share
with other participants symbolizes each participant’s
larger gift to their families and communities in helping to
address and prevent mental and substance use disorders,
prevent suicide, and promote mental health.