This two-day training was open to all California Tribal Health Programs, Tribes, Tribal organizations, and Urban Indian Health Programs including subcontractors of the Good Health and Wellness in Indian Country (GHWIC), Advancing California Opportunities to Renew Native Health Systems (ACORNS)/California Indian Tobacco Education (CITE), Methamphetamine and Suicide Prevention Initiative (MSPI)/ Domestic Violence Prevention Initiative (DVPI) grantees, Tribal Medication Assisted Treatment, Project PaTHwAY, and Tribal Comprehensive Cancer Control Programs.

In total, CTEC hosted 50 representatives from 30 unique tribes or organizations.

“Using Data to Tell Your Story” was the theme for the training this year with the goal of giving participants the opportunity to participate in informative sessions on how to search and apply for grant funding, improve program sustainability, improve the quality of data being collected through primary and secondary sources, and learn innovative and culturally sensitive ways to use data to tell a story.

CTEC was honored to have expert guest speakers including keynote speakers Abigail Echo-Hawk, Director of the Urban Indian Health Institute and Chief Research Officer for the Seattle Indian Health Board and Theresa Ambo, President’s Postdoctoral Fellow from the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. These speakers shared their expertise and their stories pertaining to data, evaluation, program sustainability, and community engagement to support health promotion efforts serving American Indian/Alaska Native communities across California.

Attendee responses from post event evaluation question: “What was your greatest takeaway from this training event?”

Attendee responses from post event evaluation question: “How will you apply this training experience to your own program practices, evaluation, and/or sustainability?”

In addition to the training, the Creative Team from the Southern Plains Tribal Health Board, Alex Smith and Chris Reed, were onsite gathering footage for the “What is a Tribal Epidemiology Center?” digital storytelling project. Chris and Alex interviewed 10 TEC staff from 8 TECs, toured the ANTHC EpiCenter and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium campus, and did a fantastic job of making the interviewees feel at ease.

The finished video will communicate the role of TECs in serving Alaska Native/American Indian (AN/AI) Tribes, Tribal organizations, and Urban Indian organizations to improve health and well-being. The information will be shared with a variety of stakeholders including funders, decision makers, and community members through the TEC website (TribalEpiCenters.org), individual TEC websites, the CDC website, and TEC social media accounts.

During breaks and in the evening, TEC staff networked and learned from each other. It was a busy and productive week!

In response to this growing crisis, the Great Plains Tribal Epidemiology Center (GPTEC) hosted a self-defense training in partnership with Arming Sisters. Arming Sisters is a non-profit organization founded in 2013 by Patty Stonefish. Patty comes from a long line of matriarchs – Lakota, Russian, and Polish. She has over a decade of martial arts experience.

Patty’s day-long training covered topics of self-care, MMIWG, violence against Native American women, body language awareness, trusting intuition, vocalization, and stress responses. She also taught six self-defense moves. All these topics and moves were presented with an emphasis on healing and harnessing the power within oneself.

GPTEC received an overwhelming response to offering this training, with twenty tribal community members and GPTEC employees ultimately participating. This has garnered significant interest at the tribal level, with multiple additional trainings being planned in the future. Utilization of GPTEC funds to support implementation of this training also supported provision of the training in settings where funds are unavailable.

Sources:
1. Rosay, A. B. (2016). Violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women and men. National Institute of Justice Journal, 277.
2. Lucchesi, A., Echo-Hawk, A. (2019). Missing and murdered indigenous women & girls. Our Bodies, Our Stories.

For more about Arming Sisters, or to contact Patty: https://armingsisters.org/