Future of Rural
Community Care
Community Care
Retreat-Style Short Course
Retreat-Style Short Course
Dates: September 26, 2026
Location: Tennessee (In Person)
Facilitators: Daniel Hull – Strong Heart Bear, Christina Ulibarri – She Stands Tall, & (Guest Educator) Ashlei Laing
Community Care
Community Care is an invitation to step away from the pace of everyday life and spend time with one another and the Land. This retreat offers space to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect with what feels most important.
Guided by the teachings and practices of Daniel Hull and Christina Ulibarri, our time together will unfold through conversation, ceremony, and quiet reflection. We’ll gather in circle, spend time outdoors, and make room for whatever each person brings with them. Rather than offering answers, this retreat invites us to notice what is asking for our attention and what we may be ready to release.
Throughout the retreat, participants will be invited into an Indigenous-led Native American Talking Circle, Prayer Tie Teaching, and Fire Ceremony. These teachings are shared with care and respect. Participation is always an invitation, and each person is encouraged to engage in the ways that feel right for them.
As we gather, we’ll be guided by a few simple community agreements. We meet one another with respect, listen without judgment, and honor the stories shared within the circle.
Who This Retreat Is For
This retreat is for anyone who feels called to spend intentional time in community and on the Land.
Whether these practices are familiar to you or entirely new, you are warmly invited to join us. Come with curiosity. Come with questions. Come exactly as you are.
During Our Time Together
We’ll explore:
- Community care as a way of being.
- Indigenous teachings shared with permission and respect.
- Ceremony as an invitation to reflection.
- The role community agreements play in creating trust.
- The relationship between our inner landscapes and the communities we cultivate.
What You’ll Carry Forward
Community care begins with how we choose to show up.
As the retreat unfolds, you’ll have opportunities to reflect on your own journey and consider what you’d like to carry into everyday life. There is no expectation that everyone will leave with the same experience. Instead, we hope you’ll leave with a deeper connection to yourself, to others, and to the places that continue to shape you.
Meet Your Facilitators
Daniel Hull – Strong Heart Bear
Daniel Hull – Strong Heart Bear is an Ojibwa Elder, ceremony holder, mentor, and community advocate whose life has been shaped by survival, ancestral reconnection, and service.
After surviving a life-changing shooting in 1987, Daniel found his way back to the traditional teachings of his people through elders, ceremony, prayer, and the medicine of the Pipe. Since then, he has devoted his life to serving others by creating spaces where healing can unfold through community.
Daniel has shared pipe ceremonies, sweat lodges, and Talking Circles in many settings. He has mentored young people, supported healing within prison communities, and carried the vision of Nanda Bisaniiwewin Niimowin—The Finding Peace in Your Heart Dance.
Now based in Tennessee, Daniel continues to serve through community education, mentorship, and ceremony. Each morning begins with a simple prayer to the Creator:
“How am I to be in service today?”
Christina Ulibarri – She Stands Tall
Christina Ulibarri, also known as She Stands Tall, is a spiritual practitioner of Lakota vision quest and forgiveness ceremony, and Ojibwa traditions connected to pipe, feathers, and Sundance.
Her practice is also guided by instinct and inner hearing. Christina describes the guiding voice of Mama Bear as something that came to her when she was young, helping her through difficult moments and continuing to guide her own ceremonial practice.
Through ceremony and circle, Christina creates spaces where people are invited to listen deeply, reconnect with themselves, and discover the wisdom already present within them.
Guest Educator – Ashlei Laing
Ashlei Laing is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Rē: The Regenerative School.
Her offerings explore how education can help us build stronger relationships with one another, with the places we call home, and with the living world.
Before co-founding Rē with Felix Bivens in 2018, Ashlei worked in regenerative farming, nature-based art, alternative education, permaculture (agroecology), and the Peace Corps in Bulgaria, where she supported teachers’ leadership and educational development. These experiences continue to shape her belief that education, grounded in ecology and collaboration, can become a catalyst for more just and regenerative futures.
During this retreat, Ashlei, alongside Daniel and Christina, will offer opportunities for reflection on community care and the relationship between our inner landscapes and the communities we can cultivate.
We Believe in Open Access Education
In the spirit of regenerative economic reciprocity, Rē is offering Fall 2026 Pilot Cohort spots at no charge. Your participation, engagement, and feedback offers our organization an opportunity to learn about the student experience, to continue developing program supports, and to further imagine what Future of Rural can become.
(Of course, as Rē is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations of any amount in support of this work are always welcome, appreciated, and thoughtfully stewarded.)