Tribal Resources

A list of resources to help parents approach their children’s schools to advocate for a more inclusive approach to discussing Thanksgiving. These resources will also be useful for teachers wanting to alter their approach to teaching about Native peoples and Thanksgiving. The toolkit is collected by Gaelle Marcel.

The term “cultural safety” was developed in the 1980s in New Zealand in response to the indigenous Maori people’s discontent with nursing care. Maori nursing students and Maori national organizations supported the theory of “cultural safety,” which upheld political ideas of self-determination and de-colonization of Maori people. Cultural Safety focuses on teaching students about colonial history and its impact on Indigenous peoples, rather than on increasing knowledge about Indigenous customs and health beliefs.

Lynn Gehl has created an Ally Bill of Responsibilities beginning with the two points; 1. Do not act out of guilt, but rather out of a genuine interest in challenging the larger oppressive power structures; 2. Understand that they are secondary to the Indigenous people that they are working with and that they seek to serve. They and their needs must take a back seat;

Sexual assault has been identified as a public health crisis. Native American women in the United States who live on federal Native American reservations are disproportionately more likely to be victims of sexual violence than other groups living in the United States. Like many victims of sexual violence, often Native women deal with adverse health effects. Native American women who have been sexually assaulted on a reservation are often unable to access necessary resources because of a myriad of issues, such as poverty, child abuse, colonization, and complex jurisdictional issues. There must be more cultural sensitivity and increased awareness when working to address this issue. Additionally, each tribe must be approached separately because each tribe experiences sexual assault on the reservation differently. There must be understanding that generalizability of all Native American tribes and sexual assault is ineffective. Education, advocacy, and legislation are the major models for change.

“What To Do When You’re Raped” is an illustrated guide created to answer the questions women face following a sexual assault, from thinking through buying emergency contraception, to getting tested for STDS, to who to turn to for support. The ABC handbook was created as a response to the systematic sexual assault Native Women experience. Native Americans are raped at a rate nearly double that any other race annually – 34.1 percent. More than 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped in their lifetime, and three-fourths having experienced some type of sexual assault in their lives.

In this webinar, Natalie Clark examined the beginnings of a trauma practice framework that is Indigenous, intersectional and holistic and that considers how experiences of trauma and of healing are shaped by the interlocking impact of Indigeneity, age, gender, sexuality, and (dis) ability, among others. She discussed the development of Indigenous intersectional, trauma-informed and culturally safe practice approaches with people of different age groups. Ms. Clark also described how to assist Indigenous peoples in understanding and improving their coping responses to daily triggers including the impact of experiences of racism, poverty, sexism, and colonialism.