Two Feathers Native American Family Services sits in Humboldt County, where Native suicide rates are over twice the state average.
Virgil Moorehead grew up on Big Lagoon Rancheria, one of eight federally recognized tribes in Humboldt County, and by high school he figured he’d become a probation officer. But at UC Davis, studying sociology with a focus on juvenile delinquency, he was drawn to understanding why people end up in justice systems at all.
After a therapy master’s from CSU Sacramento, he got a clinical psychology doctorate and a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford where, in an office seeing graduate business students, he felt out of place.
“I really liked when I worked in deep East Oakland and in Richmond with young African American boys facing a lot of struggles, or up in Hoopa on the reservation,” said Moorehead, who is Yurok and Tolowa. “I’ve always resonated with that. In high school, I was doing college prep, AP, but all my friends were listening to gangster rap and getting kicked out of school. I like being in the community with not so much the folks of privilege, but I also like being able to navigate both of those worlds.”
Two Feathers Executive Director Virgil Moorehead and Amy Mathieson, Two Feathers’ youth leadership director discuss their work with youth in Humboldt County.
Around 2017, Moorehead moved back to teach child development at Cal Poly Humboldt, and to join Two Feathers as behavioral health director. Since 2019, he’s been the executive director of the organization, which just won a $350,000 grant as part of this year’s James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award.
Two Feathers, overseen by Big Lagoon Rancheria and based in McKinleyville, serves Native youth across Humboldt County, where these youth have high rates of substance use, mental health challenges and barriers to care compounded by high poverty, geographic isolation and institutional mistrust.
From 2005 to 2021, the American Indian suicide rate in Humboldt County was 28.2 per 100,000 people; the overall California suicide rate is roughly 9.6.
Humboldt is one of two counties where 30.8% of residents have Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) — like emotional, physical or substance abuse — compared to 16.7% statewide.
In response, Moorehead and Amy Mathieson, Two Feathers’ youth leadership director, have built a model joining mental health care with cultural practice and paid employment, growing the nonprofit from a single-therapist operation to one delivering nearly 7,900 counseling sessions annually to 280 youth across 12 school districts.
Mathieson, who grew up in small-town Montana before her family moved to Humboldt County when she was 16, came to Two Feathers as a clinician in 2020 after nearly two years doing Indian Child Welfare Act case investigations on local reservations.
“I learned my clinical skills at Two feathers, which is very relational, very much about being in the community,” she said. “Our clinicians are not in an office where you have your client come to you. I was going out to Hoopa to meet with clients. We would go on walks, get food if needed, go down to the river on a nice day.”
Two Feathers youth and staff share traditional Native American clothing in a cultural workshop. (Courtesy of Two Feathers)
The center of the model is the Youth Ambassador Program, combining paid employment with mental health support for youth aged 16 to 22. Ambassadors — about 50 are currently employed — cater community events, run craft workshops, work administration in the Two Feathers office, mentor youth in need of increased mental health support and lead cultural camps for younger kids.
Last Sunday, 30 to 40 ambassadors led such a camp including nature hikes, traditional cooking and a workshop teaching younger kids about the cultural significance of redwood trees, then painting medallions with them.
“They participated in that camp last summer and learned those skills throughout the year,” Mathieson said. “Now they’re leading it.”
“Programs can help change people, but even more, people change people,” Moorehead added, describing their clinical and youth leadership hiring process. “No matter what model, what approach, the ones performing the best depend on the right dynamic, the right personality, the right energy between everyone. The flexibility to create that is crucial to everything we do … Kids want to engage a lot more with a theme park than a social services office, and to make a great theme park, you need the right people.”
Success is measured both in small wins and long-term data. Day to day: Are youth showing up to work? Are they choosing on their own to reduce substance use because it conflicts with their goals?
Alumni one year after the program consistently report substance use reductions, stable long-term housing, sustained employment and enrollment in college or a trade path.
Scaling the model to support these results across 12 school districts has required patience.
Two Feathers’ strongest partner is the Klamath-Trinity Joint School District in Hoopa, where the nonprofit sends 12 or 13 staff who are given curricular flexibility to work with students directly. But some other districts have presented high turnover at the superintendent and principal levels, and staff scarcity so severe that districts are struggling to find teachers, let alone sustain mental health support.
A Two Feathers staff member prepares salmon skewers to be roasted. (Courtesy of Two Feathers)
“We attempted to do a lot of system work, but it’s hard to manage other people’s staff with that turnover, so we’ve kind of just gone towards doing it our way,” said Moorehead. “We go to schools where there’s the most need, and where they let us … When we’ve created the programs ourselves and they’ve allowed us to do it, we’ve been successful.”
In McKinleyville, a town he describes as historically among the more conservative in Humboldt County, Two Feathers has spent years building trust by opening its cultural programs to non-Native youth as well.
“If we have a cultural group, we bring pizza and invite everybody,” said Moorehead. “If they don’t ask for help, it’s hard to provide help, but it’s up to us to show that, hey, we’re good people too. Hey, we could be friends too.”
Last March marked the second time in three years that Two Feathers has been named nonprofit of the year by the McKinleyville Chamber of Commerce.
A 1,000-person Easter egg hunt Two Feathers hosted recently drew a roughly 80% non-Native crowd.
“I’m not saying we just want to make the white people happy; we invite the whole town,” said Moorehead. “It helps people understand what it means to be Native, and it helps our Native kids too, seeing their community recognized.”
Local community members attend a Native American demonstration held by Two Feathers. (Courtesy of Two Feathers)
The Irvine grant comes at a precarious moment.
Around half of Two Feathers’ funding is federal, “and it’s just totally paused, and we’ve even lost some 40 or so staff,” said Moorehead, referring to youth ambassadors, “but we’ve been trying to put the brakes on hiring overall if we’re losing people … given that we’re normally above-average on retention.”
He and Mathieson plan to use a significant part of the $350,000 to build the infrastructure that their programs sometimes outrun: long-term sustainability planning, accounting systems, scenario budgeting and leadership coaching for directors.
“What is the linchpin to all this, what’s the key?” she said. “It’s having caring, supportive adults in these young people’s lives — a mentor, a clinician, a job supervisor — that you have so many people who care about them, wrapping around them.”
“What works is that you can engage in a cultural class, have a job, and see a clinician all in the same organization,” she continued, “and know that every single one of those people cares about you and will show up for you.”
More information about the James Irvine Awards is available here.
This year’s other five grantees are Celina Alvarez of Housing Works of California; Chris Chatmon of Kingmakers of Oakland; Lian Cheun of Khmer Girls in Action; Darla M. Cooper of the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges; Adrianne Hillman and Erin Garner-Ford of Salt + Light.