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California parks authorities voted Thursday to rename a popular park in Northern California to include its traditional Yurok name after a request from the state’s largest tribe. The state Parks and Recreation Commission voted unanimously to change the name from Patrick’s Point State Park to Sue-meg State Park after hearing testimony from tribal leaders about the cultural importance of the site. Until the pandemic struck, Yurok families held brush dances at Sue-meg Village, a site within the...

The pandemic has had a lasting effect on youth mental health. Moved by a desire to reduce youth’s toxic stress and increase their resilience, The Dibble Institute, in partnership with a team of students and alumni from ArtCenter College of Design and author Carolyn Curtis, PhD, is releasing Me & My Emotions —a new, free adaptation of our beloved Mind Matters Curriculum. The mobile-friendly Me & My Emotions website features engaging graphics and bite-sized lessons teens can access and...

By Beth Warren, Yahoo! News, September 23, 2021 A bashful Native American who thwarted death twice summoned his inner warrior during a summer powwow, dressed in purple regalia and long feathers. Jasten "Jazz" Bears Tail, 36, immersed himself in the movement, a style called fancy dancing, at the event in the North Dakota town of Parshall on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. He stomped and twirled in sync with the pounding of the drums, symbolizing the heartbeat of his ancestors. On the...

Becky Antle, Ph.D., Professor of Social Work and esteemed University Scholar at the University of Louisville, won The Dibble Institute’s national competition to evaluate Mind Matters: Overcoming Adversity and Building Resilience in 2019. As a result, Dr. Antle and her colleagues have conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine the impact of Mind Matters on a host of outcomes related to trauma symptoms, emotional regulation, coping and resiliency, and interpersonal skills for at-risk...

The National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives is soliciting factsheets addressing the challenges of American Indians. Somewhat similar to our just released structural racism booklet , the purpose of each factsheet is to describe the unique challenges of these tribal communities, the prevailing needs, and potential policy solutions. Dimensions of the issues to be covered might include discrimination and prejudicial practices, acculturation/assimilation challenges, risk for mental...

English: The California Department of Public Health, Injury and Prevention Branch (CDPH/IVPB) and the California Department of Social Service, Office of Child Abuse Prevention’s (CDSS/OCAP) , Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative , ACEs Connection , and the Yolo County Children’s Alliance co-created “Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic” in both English and Spanish. This material is intended for Californian families experiencing the severe economic consequences resulting from...

Indigenous land-based education has implications for science, culture, politics, language, environmental stewardship, land rights, reconciliation - and the future of this planet. For anyone who seeks an understanding of what Indigenous land-based education is, it may be instructive to begin by grasping what it is not. If your mind went straight to “taking the classroom outside” or “outdoor education,” bingo: that’s what it’s not . Or at least, that’s not all it is—not by far. A multi-faceted...

Some months ago, I was catching up with my dear friend and board member, Roberto Rivera . As an entrepreneur and community organizer with a doctorate and Lin-Manuel-Miranda-level freestyle abilities, he is a teacher to me in many ways. I was sharing with him that for a long time, I’ve struggled with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs . The traditional interpretation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is that humans need to fulfill their needs at one level before we can advance to higher levels. As...

Prior to European colonization of North America, millions of bison roamed the Great Plains. By the turn of the 20th century, those numbers had dropped to less than 1,000. The deliberate decimation of buffalo herds was a direct attack on the Native American people, who colonizers saw as an obstacle to their "Manifest Destiny, " and who the U.S. government engaged in a systematic attempt to eliminate or force into docile submission. For thousands of years, bison were a sacred, inseparable part...

Food sovereignty has been important to tribal communities like the Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, but the pandemic amplified the need for it. “With the COVID-19, we saw a renewed interest in returning to holistic ways and traditional ways of living and being and part of that is food,” said Lori Nelson, director of agriculture and land grants at NHS College. And in early February, the college received a two-year $100,000 grant to carry out a...

Tribes in Arizona will get another $88 million in housing grants – the most of any state – from the $450 million in tribal housing assistance released Thursday by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The national funding, which was included in the American Rescue Plan, will come in addition to the $651 million that tribes across the country were already scheduled to get in fiscal 2021 under the annual Indian Housing Block Grant. Arizona tribes’ share of the grant rose from the...