Meeting Up In Memphis at AAMFT

Several of us from Teams II, III, and IV met up in Memphis, Tennessee recently at the annual conference of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. These young women and men are either graduates of the COAMFTE-approved training program in marriage and family therapy at ACU, or they hope to be come August, 2009.

The poster session, "From Therapy to Advocacy, Principles to Practice: A Story of Two Groups," is actually a work in progress of several of these social justice teams from ACU. So, within a "poster" context at AAMFT in which attendees walk past, take a look, stop to converse, and then move on to the next poster, we were able to talk to some people about the efforts that we have often talked about on these pages.

In this one, we engaged creative people, Aaron Long and Joshua Hinson of Ada, Oklahoma and the Chickasaw Nation, to help us to construct a meaningful poster that compares and contrasts narratives of African American farmers and the people of the Chickasaw Nation. While there are striking differences, there are some striking similarities, especially around devotion to the land and land loss.

Here are some of the people who helped put this together, Tim Parker, Michelle Finley, Kimberly Cherry, Rebecca Culver, Ruqayyah Samia, Ty Mansfield, and Daniel Haile. Let us know if you have questions about the poster or this event.