Miss CCT
Joy (sənma̍lqs) Abrahamson Miss CCT 2023-2024
Meet Our 2023 Miss CCT
By: Joy Abrahamson, Miss CCT
My name is Beverlee Joy Abrahamson, I am 22 years old and a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes. I also descend from the Spokane and Chippewa Cree (also known as Rocky Boy) tribes. I currently reside in Disautel, WA with my maternal grandparents Beverly and Allen Abrahamson.
I graduated from Omak High School in 2019 then immediately became a student at Eastern Washington University. I am excited to be majoring in Education and minoring in American Indian Studies.
My younger brother and I were raised in a traditional family, and since we lived outside of town we learned how to respect the earth and live off the land. I am grateful for my traditional native upbringing. We have learned to gather the traditional foods during the appropriate season and show the utmost respect to mother nature because it's our way of life. I look forward to sharing this love of the earth and hopefully inspiring others to be Stewards of the communities.
As Miss CCT, my main goal is to follow my platform and raise awareness of domestic violence. There’s a lot that goes into domestic abuse in our communities. However I want to have a positive approach to this negative impact and help families, survivors, and victims cope with these tragedies by cleaning up our traditional homelands. Our environments have a large effect on our wellbeing and if we start by cleaning up the land then I believe the land will repay us. With the recent effects of colonization, we haven't been putting mother earth first. She has also been put through a lot of abuse and it's time we start to see what she has to offer when she's clean and healthy. My goal is to bring my culturally appropriate coping mechanisms in hopes to start cleaning up the reservation. There's a lot of generational gaps in our communities so my goal is to start out with the community as a whole instead of having one target market. I believe we need to come together as one, with one heart to start healing our communities.
Finally, I am also the Co-Founder and Executive Director of a local nonprofit organization. Our journey began in the spring of 2020 as an attempt to engage with youth and bring awareness to the stolen lands and culture on the local reservation. In our mission we hope to help change the stigma associated with trauma, mental health, and other issues within our indigenous communities by working across boundaries to create a culture of respect and understanding toward the role our earth and ecological efforts play in healing. It has been a long, hard, and difficult journey to gain footing as a young group of leaders but it's inspiring to know I have even more support being crowned Miss CCT. Please visit our social media pages or website as www.aboriginaloutfitters.org
