Honoring Nations 2021 Semifinalists
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
Warm Springs Geo Visions, Inc., a tribally-owned enterprise of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, is a professional environmental compliance and services contractor for government, industry, and academic sectors throughout the Pacific Northwest. Geo Visions gives a voice to the people who live on these lands today, and to their ancestors, by establishing a new standard for environmental compliance that uses traditional environmental and cultural knowledge as essential components. As a business venture the enterprise also provides a diversified source of income for the Tribes and creates jobs for tribal citizens. Through its outreach efforts, Geo Visions has connected with several other tribes and seeks to lead this charge towards collaborative environmental management.