#honoringnations

Agua Caliente People Curriculum | Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians

As with many checkerboard reservations, Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and the city of Palm Springs share boundaries, public resources, and urban development. In spite of these many intersections, for decades the only lessons about the Agua Caliente in public schools were given without consultation with the Band, furthering misinformation and stereotypes. The tribe collaborated with the Palm Springs school district and the district’s philanthropic foundation to address this disconnect by creating and mandating an elementary-level Native American Studies curriculum. The program fosters greater community understanding by teaching the history and culture of the Agua Caliente people through their own words.

Cherokee Nation Hepatitis C Elimination Program | Cherokee Nation

Native communities face much higher rates of Hepatitis C (HCV) than the general US population, as well as some of the highest rates of HCV-induced mortality. In 2015, Cherokee Nation Health Services partnered with the Centers for Disease Control to pioneer the first HCV elimination program of its kind. They developed unique and effective screening processes that have linked patients to critical services and trained new health care providers. The Program improves health outcomes for citizens living with HCV and serves all the Nation’s citizens with robust HCV diagnosis and treatment infrastructure. 

Cherokee Nation ONE FIRE | Cherokee Nation

Facing similar epidemics of domestic violence and sexual abuse as many other tribal nations, the Cherokee Nation established ONE FIRE Victim Services, which stands for Our Nation Ending Fear, Intimidation, Rape, and Endangerment. ONE FIRE has created a streamlined, “one-stop” program, to provide wrap-around services to survivors of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and dating violence in the tribe’s 14-county jurisdiction, whether they be women or men, Native or not. Using a trauma-informed care model, ONE FIRE meets the immediate needs of those in crisis in the short-term while supporting the healing of survivors and their families and addressing the root causes of domestic violence and sexual assault in the long-term to create a safer community.

Chickasaw Nation Medical Family Therapy | Chickasaw Nation

The separation of physical health and behavioral health treatment often means that many people are not able to access the mental health care and social support they need to heal. To address  this, in 2014, the Chickasaw Nation reconfigured its health service delivery to include behavioral health consultants into every patient’s care team, regardless of the presenting issue, throughout the Nation’s health system. Patients now receive their care in a coordinated and holistic way, improving their overall quality of life.

Chickasaw Nation Productions | Chickasaw Nation

Chickasaw Nation Productions creates feature-length films that preserve and revitalize the traditional and contemporary stories of the Chickasaw Nation and its people. Along with producing positive representations, the program provides educational opportunities for Oklahoma public school students to meaningfully engage with Chickasaw history and for tribal members to participate in every aspect of media production. Through empowered storytelling, each new film and documentary serves to keep the Nation’s stories, language, and traditions alive and relevant.

D3WXbi Palil | Squaxin Island Tribe

The Squaxin Island Tribe’s Northwest Indian Treatment Center (NWITC) is a residential chemical dependency treatment facility that serves American Indians with chronic substance abuse and relapse patterns related to unresolved grief and trauma. Using culturally adapted best practices, the NWITC provides clinical, cultural, and support services to clients during a 45-day treatment program. A support team remains in contact with program alumni and helps to build additional supportive networks. The NWITC has been given the spiritual name “D3WXbi Palil,” meaning “Returning from the Dark, Deep Waters to the Light,” and it is helping people to remember, relearn, and return to their true identities.

didgwálic Wellness Center | Swinomish Indian Tribal Community

The opioid epidemic has had devastating effects on Native and non-Native populations across the country. In response to a concerning rate of overdose deaths in their community, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Senate established the didgwálic Wellness Center as a holistic wellness program that improves health and social outcomes by removing barriers to treatment. Focusing on a “whole-person” service delivery model, the Center provides comprehensive, culturally relevant, and personalized care for each patient to sustain a life of recovery and healing with their broader community.

Energy Lifeline Sector Resilience: Low-carbon Microgrids | Blue Lake Rancheria

The Blue Lake Rancheria is located in a rural, geographically isolated region of northwestern California where power outages are common and increasing in frequency due to the climate crisis. To develop energy sovereignty, the tribe’s Energy Lifeline Sector Resilience: Low-carbon Microgrids program installed two climate-smart electric microgrids, with a third in design. The microgrids have increased self-sufficiency, succeeded as economy-enabling investments, and provided tribal members with resilient power that emits less carbon. During emergencies, the tribe has operated its microgrids independently, providing reliable power to significantly improve the energy stability of the larger region.

Family Safety Program | Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians holds tribal trust lands in five different North Carolina counties. In 2015, the Tribe launched its own Family Safety Program to offer child and adult protective services and foster care services to children and families throughout the Cherokee community. The program consolidated existing tribal programs and expanded tribally-provided services using an integrated child welfare model that designates a team of professionals for each family in order to deliver wrap around services and 24/7 support. The Family Safety Program works to support the tribal community’s goal of healthy and intact families for all Cherokee children.

Hopi Veterans Services | The Hopi Tribe

To honor the sacrifices of thousands of Hopi tribal members who have served in all branches of the US armed forces, Hopi Veterans Services was established in 1990 to help Veterans with health, compensation and pension benefits, transportation to VA medical appointments, and funerary services and final honors. Serving a rural community hundreds of miles from the nearest VA facilities, the Hopi Veterans Services acts as the main point of contact for Veterans by merging partnerships on local, tribal, state, and federal levels. In addition to providing quality services for their Veterans, the program also advocates for much needed structural support and Veteran benefits locally and nationally.

Managed Aquifer Recharge site 5 | Gila River Indian Community

The Keli Akimel (Gila River) has represented the center of social, economic, cultural, and spiritual life for the Gila River Indian Community throughout their peoples’ history. Following a near century long battle for their water rights after upstream diversions cut off the flow of the Gila River, the Community secured a water settlement in 2004 and proceeded to devise ways to ensure water access and sustainable agriculture for future generations. By developing Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) sites, the Community is able to provide for the long-term viability of water resources on-reservation by storing water underground for use during surface water shortages. This ensures a sustainable safe yield of its groundwater supply to support its historic agricultural economy. 

Minnesota Tribal-State Relations Training | Intertribal

Since its inception in 2011, the Minnesota Tribal-State Relations Training program has educated key state agency staff about tribal governments, histories, cultures, and traditions so that state and Native nations can more effectively collaborate to resolve shared policy challenges and objectives. All 11 tribal nations in Minnesota collectively implement the training and share their individual stories in order to promote authentic and respectful relationships between state agencies and tribal nations. These relationships have led to greater funding for transportation and other infrastructure projects, the completion of a river restoration project, and timely consultation on a range of matters of mutual interest.

Native American Heritage Fund | Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi Tribe

The Native American Heritage Fund (NAHF) was formed in 2016 by the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi Tribe to provide grants for initiatives and programs which promote positive relationships between public and private K-12 schools, colleges/universities, and local governments. The NAHF provides resources to update educational curricula, replace Native American mascots in K-12 schools, and assist municipal governments to replace monuments, seals, and murals that depict inaccurate accounts of Native history and disparaging images with more accurate and authentic portrayals. Numerous grants awarded by the NAHF have served to improve the representation of Native American people, history, and culture throughout Michigan.

Pe Sla | Intertribal

Preserving traditional homelands and sacred sites is a challenge shared across Indian Country. The option to purchase land and place it into trust is a difficult and costly process that a tribe often cannot afford. In 2012, the eight Tribes of the Great Sioux Nation joined efforts to purchase 2,000 acres of sacred land back. Tucked away in the heart of the Black Hills, a site known to the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Oyate as Pe Sla was successfully put into trust and back in the care of the tribes. This intertribal collaboration has led to a restoration of native buffalo, grasses, flora, and fauna as well as land preservation for traditional ceremonies and cultural programming in perpetuity. 

Sitka Tribe of Alaska Environmental Lab | Sitka Tribe of Alaska

Changing ocean conditions brought about by climate change have put the future of marine subsistence resources at risk. To address these risks, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska took the lead in forming the Southeast Alaska Tribal Oceans Research (SEATOR) group, a regional conglomerate of 16 tribes in Southeast Alaska. Supporting the SEATOR partnership, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska Environmental Research Lab provides real time testing of marine subsistence resources to ensure safe consumption and monitors of harmful algal blooms and ocean acidification. The Research Lab’s biotoxin testing has given Southeast Alaskan tribes the capacity to provide safe access for their tribal citizens to healthy shellfish populations within their traditional territories.

Swinomish Dental Therapy Implementation Initiative | Swinomish Indian Tribal Community

In order to address the oral health crisis facing their community, in 2017, the Swinomish tribal leaders exercised their tribal sovereignty and created the legal infrastructure to license and employ dental therapists in their own community. Recognized by the State of Washington, the Dental Therapy Initiative lays the foundation for the growth of oral health programs that increase access to high quality, culturally competent, primary oral health care that fit their needs, while also creating jobs for tribal members to become dental providers in their communities.

Swinomish Tax Authority | Swinomish Indian Tribal Community

After a Ninth Circuit Court ruling in 2014 declared state and local property taxes could not be imposed on permanent improvements on trust land, the Swinomish Tax Authority was created to assess and collect the Swinomish Trust Improvement Use & Occupancy Tax. This decision allowed the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community to determine both the manner in which permanent improvements on trust land would be taxed and the use of the tax revenue generated by those improvements. The program expands the exercise of the Tribe’s sovereignty and creates an additional revenue stream to help fund essential government services as well as voluntary contributions to local non-tribal entities, including the local school, fire, and library districts, thus strengthening important intergovernmental relationships.

Warm Springs Geo Visions, Inc. | Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon

As we head into winter, there’s always the question of how bad it will be. It used to be that “bad” meant a few extra storms that reached into April, but now we know the reality is much worse. Over the last ten years, weather patterns have grown increasingly difficult to predict. However, our elders remember, and they tell us with no uncertainty that our land is changing, not for the better. Milder temperatures across the country and extreme climate events have precipitated significant ice melts and a devastating fire season that consumed more than 5 million acres in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Indigenous communities are some of the most vulnerable when it comes to the immediate and long-term effects of climate change. Statistically under or unrepresented -- “something else” most recently -- in national data, Native nations are developing their own climate risk assessment plans and taking action. The Washington Post recently highlighted the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community (2014 Honoree), frontrunners in climate adaptation, and it’s a must-read. Their 2007 Climate Proclamation and subsequent 2010 Climate Adaptation Action Plan have become models not only for other tribal nations but also for non-native jurisdictions. The Swinomish have created six Indigenous Health Indicators (IHIs): cultural use, community connection, self-determination, resiliency, education (intergenerational knowledge transfer), and natural resource security. These traditional, these Swinomish markers are the basis of a world-class, scientific study led by tribal citizens on their homelands.

Across North America, more and more Indigenous communities are answering Swinomish’s call to action, and we need more to follow. The Lummi Nation’s Wetland and Habitat Mitigation Bank was a fellow 2014 Honoree. Their work to address land scarcity with innovative mitigation credits is helping to protect nearly 2,000 acres of wetland resources.

https://www.swinomish-climate.com/

250 days have passed since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic. According to the U.S. News and World Report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that “American Indian and Alaska Native people are 5.3 times more likely than white people to be hospitalized due to COVID-19, the largest disparity for any racial or ethnic group.” Without a vaccine and no signs of a slow to the spread, the coronavirus continues to disproportionately devastate tribal communities and their economies. And so, as we have since March, we turn to the helpers and the bedrock organizations who have worked tirelessly to ensure we do not lose another relative for guidance. We look for those who will see us through the pandemic. They are the ones who will keep watch over our physical health and fight for our lives. Once this coronavirus is contained, and we do believe it will be, there are other programs that will step forward to nurse back our spiritual, emotional, and psychological health. We need them both, and luckily we know where to find them.

As COVID-19 numbers spike in Alaska, every health care worker is a lifeline, and two Honoring Nations programs are helping to meet the demands. With roots that reach back to the 1960s, Health Aide Training Programs, a 2018 Honoring Nations Awardee, are a large-scale investment in professional development and job creation in isolated villages. In many instances, health aides are the sole full-time health practitioners in rural Alaska. The training program provides students with the knowledge and experience necessary to offer health services in their home villages. Once certified, health aides can bill third party insurance which keeps important health care dollars in the community. Learn more about Health Aides Training Programs, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium here.

Seven months into the pandemic, and we understand more than ever the interconnectedness of the world around us and how important, fragile even, our collective health can be. In March, homes ceased to be afterthoughts as they quickly became offices, schools and playgrounds, gyms and restaurants, and places where e v e r y s i n g l e b r e a t h was lived. People began to take stock of what they have and what they needed. Long forgotten corners were cleaned to make room for a makeshift desk and obstacle courses for the kids. People fixed what was broken and began tending to what still worked. Now, as everyone begins to venture out more, they have an eye to look after their homelands, too. We want to help.

Since 1987 and 1998 respectively, the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and Honoring Nations have created space for tribal nations to share their housekeeping success stories. Last week we revisited 2002 Honoring Nation award winner, the Iroquois Nationals. Today, we want to share with you Blue Lake Rancheria, 2020 Honoring Nation semifinalist, who addresses climate change while supporting their community’s needs and building energy independence; they think of it as creating an island in the woods, and we love it.

Blue Lake Rancheria is located in rural Northern California, where wildfires, earthquakes, and climate change can regularly disrupt electricity. In 2009, the Tribe created a Strategic Energy Plan to achieve zero net greenhouse has emissions by 2030. They partnered with Siemens to build microgrid infrastructures that provide reliable and resilient energy and reduces its carbon footprint. During regional power outages, the Tribe now disconnects fromPacific Gas an dElectric system and operates in island mode, where they use tribal generation to provide electricity to their reservation, which serves as an American Red Cross shelter and an alternative emergency command center. When you can, take a look at Blue Lake Rancheria and see the amazing work they are doing. There are resources to be shared and learned.

It has been called the Creator’s Game or the Little Brother of War, and it has been around for centuries. Lacrosse, as it is popularly known, is a field game of finesse and endurance. Ask citizens of a Haudenosaunee or Ojibwe nation their thoughts on lacrosse, however, they will tell you its place and importance run much deeper; it is a sacred game that carries medicine and transformation.

The Iroquois Nationals (IN) Lacrosse Team are an Honoring Nations 2002 awardee, and like the game, their role and importance in nation building are bigger than their success on the field. It would be enough to acknowledge that they are the only Native national sports team in international competition. However, to leave it at that would dismiss their tireless work to raise awareness of and support for tribal sovereignty. The IN pushed the International Lacrosse Federation to recognize their legitimate bid for membership as a sovereign nation in 1987; sovereignty that has been reinforced by international team travel with Haudenosaunee issued passports.

Since 2002, the Iroquois Nationals have continued their fight. In the Fall of 2019, the team learned they were not one of eight teams selected to compete in the World Games despite a third-place finish in the qualifying games. According to an article published by the CBC, the IN were deemed ineligible by the International World Games Association (IWGA) as they did not “meet criteria as a nation-state to be included in the Olympics,” a decision that sparked confusion and public outcry. Aidan Fearn, a lacrosse player from Glooscap First Nation in Nova Scotia and a player on the IN’s Under-20 team, started a petition to boycott the 2022 World Games that garnered over 50,000 signatures. Conversations between the Iroquois Nationals, World Lacrosse, and World Games reversed the ineligibility decision but did not create an actual place for the IN to compete until Ireland’s National Lacrosse team voluntarily gave up their spot.

The generosity of Ireland Lacrosse will not be forgotten. It’s easy to believe that when the Iroquois Nationals take the field for the World Games they’ll be playing for both nations. The Iroquois Nationals’ place in the lineup, however, should have been allowed by their inherent sovereignty and team’s performance, rather than by the selfless sacrifice of another qualifying team.

References:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.5664460/iroquois-nationals-barred-from-world-games-say-their-people-gave-gift-of-lacrosse-to-the-world-1.5664618

Congratulations to the Yurok Tribe’s Wellness Programming, one of this year’s six Honoring Nations Award finalists. Grounded in Yurok village values of reciprocal responsibility, the Yurok tribal court’s Wellness Programming is reclaiming its people - and its future. Operating in a PL-280 state, the court practices concurrent jurisdiction with the state of California and infuses traditional tribal values into contemporary jurisprudence to serve tribal citizens in culturally appropriate ways. We enjoyed hearing more from the Wellness Programming leaders and all our the 2018 finalists at the Honoring Nations Awards at National Congress of American Indians on Thursday, October 25th!

Stay tuned for more Honoring Nations Award highlights and information by visiting our website at https://hpaied.org/honoring-n…/awards-ceremony-and-symposium for more information about the 2018 Honoring Nations Awards.

We send our congratulations to the Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s Sitka ICWA Partnership, a finalist for the Honoring Nations Awards. Rooted in respect, communication, and an abiding commitment to the health and safety of children, the Sitka Tribe and the state of Alaska have reimagined conventional approaches to ICWA implementation through proactive engagement. Through systematic cross-pollination and joint case management, the Tribe and the State work together to heal and empower families. We enjoyed learning more about the Sitka ICWA Partnership when they shared their work on October 25th at the NCAI in Denver, CO for the 2018 Honoring Nations Awards.

Stay tuned for more Honoring Nations Award highlights and information by visiting our website at https://hpaied.org/honoring-n…/awards-ceremony-and-symposium for more information about the 2018 Honoring Nations Awards.

Thank you to everyone who has helped get the word out about our series of incredible 2018 Honoring Nations Finalists! Today, we highlight the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma’s Quapaw Tribe Agricultural Programs, one of our six Honoring Nations Award finalists. The Agricultural Programs are a farm-to-table initiative that houses the first USDA-certified meat processing plant in Indian Country. Promoting healthy diets and job creation, the Agricultural Programs focus on sustainable and humane methods of breeding, raising, and processing livestock as well as planting and harvesting crops for the community. The Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma shared their work on October 25th at the National Congress of American Indians in Denver, CO for the 2018 Honoring Nations Awards.

Stay tuned for more Honoring Nations Award highlights and information by visiting our website at https://hpaied.org/honoring-n…/awards-ceremony-and-symposium for more information about the 2018 Honoring Nations Awards.