Healing organizations founded by Ada woman

A Chickasaw-Choctaw woman is helping others with emotional and physical healing through two organizations she has founded, the Oklahoma Indigenous Nurses Association and the Regalia Making Relatives Organization.

Frazier is a registered nurse with the Indian Health Service clinic in Wewoka, Oklahoma and is a resident of Ada. She said that during the Covid-19 pandemic, she and another nurse from Cherokee Nation researched to find out if there were any Indigenous nursing associations in Oklahoma and were told there were not. The two nurses decided to start one, Sonya serving as the association’s first president. The association is a chapter of the Oklahoma Nurses Association.

The Regalia Making Relatives is another organization Frazier founded that gifts regalia to others. It was founded in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic and restarted again in late 2021.

The organization, along with Johnson O’Malley, recently gifted 14 beaded graduation caps for Byng High School graduates and other high school and college students who reached out and requested beaded caps.

In talking about the organization, Frazier said, “That is an organization I created in honor of my adopted children through foster care. That’s a kinship adoption, and my mother who’s a survivor of boarding school, and my oldest sister who was a forced adoption many years ago when she was four. Because of that historical trauma, our family has some historical issues that we have to learn from and heal from, and through all of that after listening to my daughter, my adopted daughter, and my sister, they talked about their loss of their Indigenous identity. So that’s what I wanted to help with this organization is to help our young people and our elders, basically our community to get reconnected to their spirituality, not necessarily religion, but their spirituality, of their way of our ancestors.”

“We’ve done ribbon skirt making, ribbon vest making, different activities that we do to inspire our community to get more involved in making regalia. Creating something is a form of healing, and regalia-making is like an honoring. When we honor each other, we help heal each other as well,” Fraizer said.

She explained that there is a sacredness to the program that the group educates about. She gives each regalia recipient a letter explaining the unconditional love, prayer and time that goes into the gift.

“We try to explain that it’s like a spiritual ceremony because a long time ago our people used to have coming-of-age ceremonies, recognizing ceremonies, honoring ceremonies and of course through all the historical trauma all of that was removed from our communities,” said Fraizer. So, what we’re trying to do is bring that honoring system back to our young people because we want our young people to feel connected to their heritage, to their spirituality and to their community, to know that they are important to us.”

Frazier said anyone can contact the regalia making group for information.

“It’s all about spiritual healing because we’re also learning from each other,” she said.

The organization’s monthly classes have thus far been in Ada, Oklahoma, but the group is looking to expand out to other nearby communities. The group is open to all tribes.

Frazier can be contacted by messaging her on the Regalia Making Relatives Public Group page on Facebook or by calling 580-436-7883.