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In California’s backwoods, far from the clamors for social justice in America’s streets, longstanding cultural unrest is bringing change to the landscape. Native Americans are quietly repossessing their ancestral lands. Sacred peaks overlooking the Pacific, boulder-strewn salmon streams and lush alpine meadows are returning to the people who have always claimed them. In the last year six different tribal groups have negotiated six separate transactions transferring a combined total of 56,453...

Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic: One-Pager

By Katelyn Reinhart, Cronkite News Arizona PBS, August 3, 2020 From a traditional hogan in a remote area on the Utah-Arizona line, Cynthia Wilson spent much of her spring sourcing drought-resistant seeds, packing them in small manila envelopes and labeling them to ship to families across the Four Corners. Seeds for corn – white, blue and yellow. For squash. For melons. For many of the foods that long sustained her Navajo ancestors, before their land was carved into a reservation and the...

Welcome to Native Land. This is a resource for North Americans (and others) to find out more about local Indigenous territories and languages. https://native-land.ca/ = native-land.ca

By KIEM TV, July 27, 2020. LOLETA, Calif. (KIEM) — The Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria receives over $2 million in funding that will go towards a new affordable housing project. The funding comes from the Housing and Urban Development and Indian Housing Block Competitive Grants and comes out to a total of $2,234,619. The money will pay for the construction of 4 four-plex multifamily low-moderate income housing structures with a total of 16 rental units for tribal family members.

July 15, 2020 Margarita Alegría, Ph.D. Chief, Disparities Research Unit, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Mongan Institute Professor, Departments of Medicine & Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School There has been tremendous attention brought to mental health as part of the coronavirus pandemic. The good news is that there is now almost universal recognition that when our mental health is precarious, costs are immeasurable. What has become more apparent is how this...

July 22, 2020 American Indian/Alaska Native Mental Health: Our Voices, Traditions and Values to Strengthen our Collective Wellness Victoria M. O’Keefe, Ph.D. (Cherokee/Seminole Nations of Oklahoma) Mathuram Santosham Endowed Chair in Native American Health, Assistant Professor, Licensed Clinical Psychologist Associate Director, Center for American Indian Health Department of International Health, Social & Behavioral Interventions Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health My late...

New benefits as of July 2020 Partnership is working to ensure that our members get effective and appropriate behavioral health care services ( mental health and substance use treatment services ) in all 14 counties we serve. Expansion of Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Services PHC’s 14 counties have long supported SUD treatment services through the Drug Medi-Cal program. Now, these services are greatly expanded in seven of our counties through our new Wellness and Recovery Program. Wellness...

Alongside two elders and a colleague, we arrived at the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health in Toronto, Canada. Our intention was to facilitate the first Canadian/American collaboration to heal Historical Trauma. I vacillated between feeling immensely excited and powerfully emotional; what an honor to be a black woman surrounded by First Nation relatives on Native land. Our first great work was to enter the sacred ceremonial space for prayer and cleansing. As a tribal African woman, I...

By Ana Sandoiu, July 6, 2020, Medical News Today. In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting Indigenous communities to a disproportionate degree. In this Special Feature, we bring into focus some of the mental health effects and challenges that Indigenous people face as a result of the pandemic. Since the pandemic started, it has become increasingly clear that COVID-19 affects certain communities to a disproportionate degree. Race , biological sex , age , and socioeconomic...

Fact Sheet from the Urban Indian Health Institute shares ways to support communities experiencing multiple trauma during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. How can organizations... Be more transparent about COVID-19? Emotionally support the people they serve through telehealth services? Support staff in caring for themselves and their communities? Support communities in handling their emotions? Work together to heal their communities? To download the fact sheet and/or view other COVID-19...

By Adriana Gallardo, June 27, 2020, Pro Publica. She was still small enough to climb on her mother’s back, too little to step from the family boat without help, when the violations began. “Touching games” led by older men with big smiles at her family’s fish camp, across the water from Kotzebue, a regional hub of 3,000 people known as the “gateway to the Arctic.” From those early years into her adulthood in distant Anchorage, Tia Wakolee, 46, says she was molested, raped or stalked nearly 30...