SPIRIT Program Q&A: A Global Collaboration Rooted In Indigenous Play

In December 2022, the Center was named a top international winner of the LEGO Foundation’s Build a World of Play Challenge, presenting a bold vision to  expand our Family Spirit home‑visiting program and creating Indigenous‑designed, community‑driven playspaces. What began as an idea has since grown into a five‑year, global collaboration with Indigenous partners across the United States, Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa (New Zealand), grounded in a shared understanding that play is not only joyful, but cultural, relational and deeply healing. 

As we reach the halfway point of this journey and celebrate the launch of SPIRIT’s new website, we reflect on how far we’ve come and where we’re headed. In this interview, we’re honored to share insights from SPIRIT Project Director Sophia Taula‑Lieras, whose leadership continues to guide this work with care, vision, and deep respect for Indigenous traditions. 

Q: Sophia, can you start by introducing yourself and your role in the SPIRIT program?

Sophia Taula-Lieras: I’m the Project Director for SPIRIT, and I’ve been involved since the project’s inception in 2023. My relationship with the Center for Indigenous Health goes back more than a decade, through my work as a Family Spirit home visitor, trainer, and national leader in tribal home visiting. SPIRIT brings all of those experiences together — and reflects years of relationships, conversations, and shared hopes.

This work has unfolded one relationship at a time. SPIRIT is a continuation of that — not a departure from it.

Q: How does SPIRIT reflect the Center for Indigenous Health’s vision?

Sophia: At its core, the Center believes Indigenous communities already hold the answers. SPIRIT is about creating the conditions for those solutions to grow — not imposing them. It reflects the Center’s long-standing commitment to Indigenous leadership, representation, and partnership, and it builds on everything we’ve learned through Family Spirit.

If we say Indigenous solutions come from communities, then our partnerships, funding structures, and workforce have to reflect that.

Q: Who is part of the SPIRIT collaboration?

Sophia: SPIRIT connects Indigenous-led partners across four countries. In British Columbia, we work with the First Nations Health Authority and five First Nations communities. In Australia, the work is led through the University of Queensland with community sites primarily in the Northern Territory and along the east coast. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), our lead partner is the University of Otago’s Eru Pōmare Māori Health Research Centre, alongside three community sites.

In the United States, we support seven Fellowship sites, including a demonstration site in Fort Defiance on the Navajo Nation. Across all partners, funding and decision-making are intentionally structured to support self-determination.

This isn’t one organization leading and others following. It’s many partners walking together, each grounded in their own communities.

Q: What makes SPIRIT different from aside from the international aspect?

Sophia: SPIRIT isn’t about replication — it’s about relationship. The Family Spirit home visiting model is an important foundation, but each of our partner communities adapt it in ways that reflect their values, languages, and realities. Some even choose different approaches entirely, and that flexibility is intentional.

A defining feature of SPIRIT is its focus on play. Funded through the LEGO Foundation’s Build a World of Play challenge, the project has sparked powerful conversations about Indigenous-centered play — play that reconnects children and families to land, culture, ceremony. We see play as intergenerational— it belongs to children and adults alike—and is a way of returning to how learning and healing have always happened in community, despite the deep disruptions of colonization.

Play isn’t an add-on to health. It’s part of how we heal, how we remember who we are, and how we pass culture forward.

Q: Where is SPIRIT now in its journey?

Sophia: We’re just past the halfway point. Funding began in 2023, and we’re now about two-and-a-half years into the five-year implementation phase. This is a meaningful moment — deeper collaboration, creativity, and shared momentum continue to align, grounded in the trust we’ve nurtured for the past 2.5 years.

In addition to exciting plans for community-based play spaces and local adaptations of Family Spirit, so much has emerged beyond what we originally imagined— ways of thinking about play and connection. For example, we’re publishing a storybook series and piloting PLAYkits at our US Fellowship sites that teach youth traditional Navajo string games to facilitate play at home between children, caregivers and elders.

This is the part of the work where relationships turn into something visible.

Q: Can you share the vision for the demonstration site on Navajo Nation?

Sophia: Our flagship SPIRIT location in the U.S. is in Fort Defiance, Arizona. This is where we want to show what’s possible when community leads the way. We’re designing an entirely unique play space based on more than 100 drawings submitted by community members. These drawings depict recognizable elements of Navajo life on the reservation – mountains, corn, sheep. The goal isn’t a cookie cutter playground, but a place that celebrates culture, language, and land. Construction will happen in phases, guided by a community advisory board and strong local partnerships. We’re really hoping to start building this summer or fall.

When you ask people what they want their children to grow up with, the answers are powerful — and often remarkably aligned.

Q: What impact are you seeing from this international collaboration?

Sophia: One of the most meaningful outcomes has been solidarity. Indigenous communities across the globe are facing challenges, often shaped by similar histories with national governments. Being able to show up for one another — to share kinship, resources, and encouragement — has been deeply affirming. We carry each other and through our relationships and creativity, make the space to dream.

There’s something powerful about knowing you’re not alone — that Indigenous communities across the world are dreaming, building, and healing together.

Q: What does your role in SPIRIT really look like day to day?

Sophia: A lot of tending to relationships. We’ve been amazed to have such influential Indigenous leaders join our Global Advisory Council, such as Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith from Aotearoa (New Zealand), which tells me we’re on the right track and motivates me to continue forging ahead across the many time zones. Supporting partners, creating space for collaboration, and moving at the pace of trust takes time — but it’s what allows this work to last beyond a grant cycle.

We move slower than some projects — and that’s the point. Care is part of the strategy.

Q: Looking ahead, what do you hope SPIRIT becomes?

Sophia: I hope SPIRIT continues long after this funding ends. Five years is never enough — this is generational work. I can really see what we’re building now growing — to bring in more Indigenous communities, across more regions, and deepening these connections that will matter for the generations coming next.

This work doesn’t end. It expands — through trust, through connection, and through the ways we care for one another across waters.