Bobbi Lynn Frederick provided the attendees with a wonderful presentation while we enjoyed lunch. She spoke passionately about her journey as a fancy shawl dancer and artist.

Ms. Frederick is a Haskell Indian Nations University alumnus and works at the Turtle Mountain Community College, teaching a course in beadwork. She has been a fancy shawl dancer, which is a style of dancing, since she was very young. She also credited the drum groups that she's heard and how they've inspired her dancing. Bobbi gave some great history about pow wows that I was not aware of; for example, the structure of pow wows was influenced by rodeos and has evolved to include a grand entry where all the flags and dancers enter at once. If you haven't seen a pow wow grand entry before, it is a beautiful amalgam of dancers, young and old. Additionally, pow wows have competitions for various age groups and style of dance, and Bobbi gave a great overview of how pow wows and the dancing has evolved over time to become the pow wow many of us are familiar with today. She has participated in many different kinds of competitions, including endurance contests, which she described as "dancing marathons," with songs played back-to-back until there is one dancer left. One interesting point she made about pow wow competitions was how different they are than other types of competition because they all see each other as family, encouraging and supporting each other with no ill-feelings toward one another's success.

She has traveled far and wide to participate in pow wows, do special performances, and has joined a dance troupe (Dakota Ojibwe Dance Troupe). I really enjoyed Bobbi's perspective on why she dances and the work she takes to incorporate culture into her work and one of her reasons for doing what she does is because it is the best way she knows to preserve the culture. Bobbi became emotional when talking about the important work that many in the community are taking to promote health. Something that I really resonated with was when she spoke candidly about being scared of offending someone or getting something wrong in the work she's doing. I think many of us are afraid of that when we go about our work but Bobbi pointed out that all of us are just doing the best that we can in trying to improve the lives of our people. Bobbi is a very humble young woman filling a space in her community that is vitally needed and her passion was inspiring to all in attendance.

If you are not at the conference, you will be missing Bobbi's special dance presentation that she is doing for the lucky attendees of the conference later this evening!

Jennifer Parisien, MS, Director of Resource Development, Native American Finance Officers Association, spoke about financial data and she did it in a way that WASN'T BORING! At the heart of it, data is about the life of the people, if we know more about the people we can make more data-informed decisions. The program that Jennifer works for aims to help tribes grow their economies and strengthen tribal finances, and financial data can help with decisions for tribal-state relations and policy-making. Tribal members have purchasing power and will go off the reservation many times for goods or services not available in their communities. Data on this purchasing power can be used in state-tribal relations to show the impact that spending done by tribal members have on economies.

The examples Jennifer spoke about illustrated that tribes put more money back into the community than non-tribal members, which should get the attention of every policymaker ever. Knowing data such as this can help show how important tribes can be to communities, which can ultimately inform policy. Jennifer used data via real-time surveys with audience members to show the importance of obtaining local data. If tribal governments know what their community values and prioritizes, it can help with determining the yearly budget, this method is called priority based budgeting. Hearing Jennifer talk about this type of budgeting was very encouraging and eye-opening because it has so many benefits; with priority based budgeting, tribal governments can do important things well, spend within means, provide transparency, and demand accountability.

Ms. Parisien stressed that at the end of the day, the money belongs to the people, and good governance should be a data priority; it's important to invest in tribal employees and programs and keep them in the loop about what is going on within the tribal government. That being said, data is only as good as it's understood by the people the data is relevant to, so when thinking of using data, it's vital to think about how the information is being communicated. This means when data is reported to tribal members, it must be done in a simple, effective way so that they can fully understand what is being reported.

Jennifer gave some great examples of how data can be used externally in policy making and advocacy. Tribal data has, in fact, informed federal policy and the implementation of laws (HR 228). Unfortunately, though, policy makers are making laws that impact tribes in negative ways because they don't understand tribal communities and governments. She also did an amazing job at explaining Tribal governments and how different they are from state and local governments. State and local governments get revenue from sales tax and property tax but Tribal governments are unable to collect property taxes. Additionally, sales taxes imply that there is an underlying economy, which is not true for every tribal community. Tribes rely on funding from other sources, like for-profit enterprises and federal funding, and often have more hurdles to jump over than state and local governments. Tribal government accounting can be incredibly complicated and there are now "how-to" manuals on how to manage tribal government finances. The complicated nature of tribal governments may be a reason that tribes are unable to effectively communicate financial data back to their community.  

I'm wholly impressed with Jennifer's work and passion for finances and I may or may not be starting a Jennifer Parisien fan club. 

By Michaela Seiber, MPH

The ever-passionate Anita Fredrick, president of Tribal Nations Research Group (TNRG) and CRCAIH Tribal Partner, gave a thoughtful presentation on why data is necessary to build stronger tribal communities. Research generally results in data that has the potential be used to inform tribal programs, health policy, grants, or future research endeavors. TNRG has worked for more than three years to achieve data sovereignty, and they have been working tirelessly in different ways to ensure that they have ownership of data produced from research projects so that they can manage and disseminate these results in culturally-relevant ways.

Anita has always enjoyed looking at data and spoke passionately about all tribal nations working to achieve data sovereignty because they have the right to own data relevant to them and apply it meaningful ways. Owning and understanding data means there will be an improved understanding of tribal resources and a more thorough look at the community to determine what is needed within the community. Data can also be used to evaluate tribal programs effectively and make necessary adjustments to the programs. Anita also spoke about the importance of tribal programs using their data and communicating this data with other programs to cooridante services. One of the most meaningful things Anita brought up was the fact that sometimes researchers use internet data to inform their research ideas or projects but this data often doesn't provide a full, accurate picture about tribal communities. A great example for this comes from Census data; this data does not fully capture the tribal communities that it measures. To combat these issues, tribes must know how to obtain and use their own data to improve their community. 

Anita spoke to my heart a few different times. She discussed instances when someone claims something but she is skeptical of the claim without having actual facts or data to support their claim. I hear you on this, Anita! It can be frustrating when community perception can alter one's reality of what's actually happening. Inaccuracies like this can happen when tribal communities are unable to have a seat at the data table. It was hard not to jump up and cheer Anita on because she was speaking on things that are so important but not talked about enough, especially in tribal communities. 

Stay tuned for more great discussion!

By Michaela Seiber, MPH

After going back-and-forth about the blog topic for this week, I finally decided to take a break from writing about conferences (let it be known, though: I'm SO EXCITED about all of the conferences coming up) to discuss Indigenous languages, especially the efforts being implemented to re-vitalize or "modernize" these languages and even incorporate these languages into health research and tribal health education. I am going to focus on the Dakota language, because that is what I grew up hearing and learning, but know that there are approximately 175 different Indigenous languages spoken in the United States today. Despite the vast number, indigenous languages have at least one thing in common: they're all beautiful. When you start to examine what the words mean, and you hear them spoken, you realize just how complex and majestic language can be. Often, a word translated from English to Dakota is given a new, richer meaning. For example, when I talk about my sister in English, you may be left wondering if my sister is older or younger than me. In Dakota, I would refer to her as mitaŋka (my younger sister). I can talk about my uŋci (mom's mom) or my kuŋsi (dad's mom) and you would know exactly whom I'm talking about.

There are several organizations laboring tirelessly to preserve the Indigenous languages. The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate (SWO) Dakotah Language Institute is the one I am most familiar with, because I stop by their offices to browse and buy cards every time I'm home. There are also schools developing Dakota or Lakota immersion programs, and they incorporate these languages into school murals, lessons, hallways, memes, and community settings.

The work that these organizations are doing is important on many levels. When I left the rez (Lake Traverse Indian Reservation) to attend college, my new friends didn't understand what I meant when I said, "Ayes!" or "Ennit?" or told them they were acting "bucky." Abigail Echo-Hawk (she's speaking at the Population Health Research Summit!!!) has referred to this as "talking Indian," and prior to hearing Abigail talk about it, I was embarrassed to say these words around my non-Native friends. Yet, it's important that we give ourselves permission to use these words, regardless of the audience, and to embrace our "Indian talk." We can't forget where we came from; our home, our people, the land, and our culture all need us to relish in and preserve these things that are inherently who we are. Remembering this can help us remain focused on the difficult work of celebrating and preserving our indigenous languages.

In the world of Native research, connection is important. We need to build relationships with tribal communities and show them that we aren't just helicopter researchers interested in completing our project or degree. Incorporating and promoting the use of the Dakota language (or the language of whatever group we are working with) into our research projects and health promotion endeavors is one way to do this. This doesn't mean that you have to start throwing "pidamaya (thank you)" on everything you send out; but it does mean regularly engaging with tribal stakeholders and giving them room to interject with suggestions that improve the cultural relevance of what is being done. Melissa Buffalo and I are working on some really exciting projects that are doing just this. We are working hand-in-hand with tribal community members to develop research result dissemination and health education materials that are culturally relevant, and the results have been absolutely amazing. Does this intrigue you? Come to the Summit and check out our poster!

Coming up next: We will talk about Tribal IRBs and how important they are! I will have a sidekick (one of the CRCAIH tribal partners) help me with this important, complex topic.

Pidamaya!

I will be your fearless blog leader and sincerely look forward to feedback, questions, suggestions for topics, cat pictures, and anyone interested in possibly being a guest writer.

Reach me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.