Podcast: How Culturally Specific COVID-19 Liaisons Are Reaching Communities

by Rafael Otto | Apr 27, 2020 | Podcast, Health and Development, COVID-19, SYS, Equity

In this week’s episode, host Rafael Otto talks with Regina Ingabire and Virginia Luka about their role as culturally specific COVID-19 liaisons.

Guests:

Regina Ingabire is a Community Outreach Manager at the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management (PBEM). She leads public engagement initiatives focusing on disaster risk awareness, community resilience, and household preparedness in historically underserved communities.

Virginia Luka is a Program Specialist for the Pacific Islander Community at the Multnomah County Health Department. Her research experience includes Pacific Islander culture and history, with a focus on Micronesia.

Summary:

Regina Ingabire and Virginia Luka share what it means to be a culturally specific COVID-19 liaisons and the importance of considering culturally specific needs during this time. They also discuss why accurate demographic data collection matters, and how they are focusing on building community resilience.

The Multnomah County Health Department has a dedicated COVID-19 resource and information page available here.

Children's Institute · Culturally Specific COVID-19 Liaisons: Regina Ingabire and Virginia Luka

Transcript has been edited for clarity and length

PDF Transcript

Rafael Otto: I know that you have your roles with the Portland Bureau and the Multnomah County Health Department, but you’re also serving as culturally specific COVID-19 liaisons. Can you tell me what that means? Regina, could you start for us?

Regina Ingabire: This role – culturally specific COVID-19 liaison – was created at the Multnomah County Emergency Operations Center at the beginning of March. The goal was making sure that we can be point of contact for culturally specific organizations and individuals to make sure that we are sending updated information because as you know, information was changing really fast. Those culturally specific organizations kind of surveyed back information to us, what they’re hearing from the communities, their concerns.

Rafael Otto: Virginia, what does that look like for you?

Virginia Luca: Yeah, I’m, before I share, I also want to acknowledge that Beth Poteet is the third liaison that we have. So I wanted to give a special shout out to her.

Other than checking emails and responding to folks, the biggest share that I do is the communities of color, COVID-19 partner call. That happens every Thursday in which we have about 116 folks from the community come in to share resources, catch up on what people are doing and trying to find out what is the best ways that we can help our community members. Which, of course, when we hear feedback, then we have to do something with it, right?

We have to pass it on to whoever it needs to go to. We have to find out why isn’t it being done already. Is there already a system that’s doing it? So there’s a lot of untangling that happens. There’s a lot of background information that happens and because we’re trying to do this work from our position in a larger model, always trying to understand the system and making sure that we are honoring the community voice and we’re honoring the community for what they’re needing. What can we do to uplift their voice and their needs from their standpoint.

Rafael Otto: Could you talk about key priorities, needs and challenges within communities that you’re working with? What are you seeing?

Virginia Luca: Before I was on this cultural liaison work, I was doing Pacific Islander-specific research and community engagement. I feel like I can speak pretty clearly about the Pacific Islander need in Multnomah County and Oregon. Even before COVID-19 happened, we already had our disparities. We already had lots of things in our community that they we were not having access to that were, where there were barriers. COVID-19 just made things even worse.

The way we collect data does not help everybody because we don’t disaggregate in a way that is informative for our specific communities.

It isn’t easy to just go to a website and find out how many people, Pacific Islander communities have COVID-19 and Multnomah County, Yamhill, Clackamas, Marion, because each county has its own separate way of collecting things and sharing it out.

It’s hard to tell the story of the community if we don’t have the data to back it up. And vice versa. So many times we, I’m hearing things from my community that is not being reflected in the data

It’s our responsibility to make sure that the stories are uplifted-the story and the data need to work together.

Rafael Otto: Regina, what are you seeing?

As Virginia states, it’s true, for most of these communities, the coronavirus made things worse in so many ways. People are finding hard time getting food into their homes and also there is a lack resources to help their children continue their education at home. As most of education right now is online, parents who don’t have the technological savvy to know how to support their children, and some parents cannot read or write themselves.

So now you can imagine that in the long-term, the impact it’s going to have on the children when the schools are back in the fall. We try our best to connect [communities] to existing resources and the school districts they are coming from but still there are challenges there. And the challenges we hear from the community is how to take care of someone who has COVID-19 at home. Some of these communities could be living in a small space, a small house or apartment. How do you make sure they are taking some care of someone without exposing the rest of the family members? The challenge is real. We’re doing our best.

Rafael Otto: The needs are many out there. I would also imagine that in some cases there’s, from the health perspective, there’s a language need. How are you thinking about that? Virginia, I know you touched on sort of that systems view. What does that look like?

Virginia Luka: One thing that we struggled in in the beginning was we have all of the messages usually come out in English right? Automatically. And then, you know, people deciding, well, what other languages should we advocate for this, you know, message to be translated into and having to advocate for Pacific Islander languages. People might not even realize that we have a large Chuukese population, a large Marshallese population.

Normally only people who are doing work in that community know what the language access is. And kind of showing people that when we do translations, it’s not a word for word. You can’t just give me something in English and have it translated word for word into a Palauan language – that’s, that’s my ethnic group, my mom’s from the Island of Palau.

There has to be this back and forth communication of, “What are you trying to convey? What are you actually trying to have people do?” And then from a cultural perspective of what other underlying things do I have to point out that maybe in an English form you’re kind of reading between the lines already. And having to know what culturally specific way do you need to convey this information cause it’s not just enough to tell people to wear a face mask. You know you have to also say things like, you know, it’s not a good idea to share the face mask. This is how you should take care of the face mask.

You have to be very specific and try to think of ways that our communities, our immigrants and refugees are going to take that information, even in their language, how they’re going to compute that information. At the end of the day, we want them to be safe and secure. What is it that we have to say to make sure that is understood?

For my community, the Pacific Islander community, some of these directives don’t work for multigenerational households. For example, I have a friend who lives in a house with 12 people and two bathrooms, three bedrooms. So, you can’t tell people to self-isolate, be in your own room. We are still taking care of children. We’re still taking care of our elders. My 80-year-old mother lives with me.

When I read a directive, I have to say, well, this doesn’t really work for my community. This doesn’t work for my own household. Right? You’re asking [people] to do something that I can’t even do my own home. So constantly thinking about what are ways that our messaging has to be community informed and community driven and even community created. It should start with the community because it’s for the community.

Rafael Otto: That makes a lot of sense. Regina, do you have comments on that?

Yeah, just to touch base on what Virginia said, it’s true. We try our best to translate information into different languages to make sure that I can reach the wider audience. I’ll give you a quick example. We created a poster which had information about how to stay safe and also created videos. We then translated those into 37 languages. That was a very successful project in terms of reaching out to the communities. However, as Virginia said that when you translate a message from English to a different language, there’s likely a piece that is missing. So you need to elaborate.

Information moves really fast. It’s evolving every day and sometimes no matter how much we try there is a delay because we can’t keep up with all the information coming out. New guidelines are coming back every day and we try our best. Each day we send information out to our community contacts. We have about 1,400 contacts or even more, and we ask those community members to share that messaging directly with their community members and maybe translate where it’s possible.

Rafael Otto: Have you seen the need to be addressing myths or questions around COVID-19? I know that things that have been circulating, like certain foods will prevent it or certain people are immune from it. Those kinds of things. What are you seeing along those lines and how are people, like, what’s the efficient form of communication for communities? How are they sharing that, those kinds of things?

Virginia Luka: I was on a Zoom call, I think it was two days ago, and one person said like, I heard that it’s caused by 5G.

That the 5G network is the reason why we have COVID-19. I remember saying we need to use true information, real evidence from people that we trust, people who do this for a living, you know, researchers, scientists, we need to make sure that when these things come up, that we are saying something.

I know that one way a lot of these myths are shared are through social media. I’m not huge on social media myself, but I definitely have had people tell me things like, “Oh my gosh, this, did you hear this?”

I’m like, please do not spread this information because you’re actually harming our community by, by spreading these things that are not true. Let us focus on things that are true, that are evidence-based, that are from reliable sources. I just try to tell people to question. Where did you get that? Where did you hear that? That we have this other narrative that I do believe and if you can help me spread that, that would be great.

Rafael Otto: Regina, what kind of things are you hearing?

Regina Ingabire: I heard from the East African community of immigrants and refugees a myth that this is another form of Ebola. So to be able to say that this is not Ebola, this is coronavirus, they have different symptoms. This one is actually spreading really fast. Just to make sure that we’re providing a sense of calm, really providing information that’s needed. It’s always important to debunk that myth as soon as possible because that person can influence the community too.

Rafael Otto: That can be such a tough process because those kinds of things arise really quickly. How do you stay on top of all of those different kinds of messages?

Regina Ingabire: I found out working directly with the community partners, it helps us to be able to reach out to community members and communicate information as soon as possible. Otherwise, we just rely on our other ways of disseminating information to the people, you will be too late. But these culturally specific community leaders are very key in terms of getting information out and back to us to like, this is what we’re hearing, how can we make sure that our community is getting the right information right away.

Rafael Otto: How are you thinking about building community resilience in these times?

Virginia Luka: How I see it is reminding our community of the strengths that they have. So many of us who are people of color, indigenous people, there are so many narratives that you know, a lot of us statistically shouldn’t be here. Because of institutions in place to make sure that people like us don’t survive, that there is no next generation for us.

As someone who is Pacific Islander, you know, hearing stories like my mom being born during World War II in Palau with Japanese rule, while you know, had to hide in caves while the United States was bombing the islands and having to rebuild because a lot of the bombs had torn up the taro patches, polluted the lagoons where they go fishing. We talk about the ways that we have survived and that we will continue surviving.

Yes, it’s really hard. And it’s not to downplay that this is not hard, right? Let us think about the ways that we have gone through things in the past and what are those practices that we can do right now? What is medicine in our life? Cause we don’t always practice things from a Western point of view. Making sure that my mom has enough ginger and lemon for her daily tea. That’s her medicine. Making sure she has enough Vicks and coconut oil to rub all over her body. That is medicine. So constantly thinking – what are the ways that we have thrived?

And how can we uplift that and make sure that we don’t forget who we, we don’t forget where we came from and that we are strong and resilient people.

And that’s only one way. And then you have to actually have systems in place to support.

I sit on the board of APANO, the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, and when COVID-19 was coming up, they were able to find ways to get grants from different community organizations, banks to the communities who are in need.

For example, these phone calls, these Zoom calls, right? I am not normally someone who likes to be on a digital call. I’m from a population of people that wants to be in the same room together. We want to smell the same air together. We want to touch each other and hold hands and eat. That is our medicine. That is how we connect. That is how we show we love each other and this is very hard. But that doesn’t mean we don’t meet, we still continue to meet in new ways in order for us to still be in community.

Rafael Otto: Regina, what are your thoughts on building community resilience?

What we’re planning to do and continue to do is to have that relationship with the existing community based organizations knowing that they have that strength, they know what the community needs. As government agencies, we need to listen to them and value what they say. We as key stakeholders to make sure that we work together closely, not just to meet the needs of the people, but to do our part as individuals, as community to make sure that we can survive. At the end of the day to make sure that there’s that collaboration, that acknowledgement of what everyone brings on the table.

I know the city has shared out a lot of economic relief programs so we can disperse funding back to the community based organizations. Just rethinking resources that so we make sure that no one’s left behind.

Rafael Otto: What would you say are the avenues for community voice and making sure that government or institutions or systems are actually listening to the communities? What are the best ways to make that happen? What are the avenues for which community voice can be elevated?

Regina Ingabire: I know from Multnomah County they’ve organized a press conference with Dr. [Jennifer] Vines, to listen to the community members who speak Spanish directly and ask her questions directly.

I think what that helps is a community understanding that now we have someone who is speaking to us, responding to us and she’s hearing from us direct as well. I think that builds that trust and bond knowing that the communities are not left by themselves. And I know Mayor Wheeler has also been communicating, having those press conferences on Zoom to hear from community members and the community organizations and the city. When you provide that space and time to listen to community needs, in the end, not only do you build trust, you show true leadership.

Rafael Otto: Virginia thoughts on that?

Virginia Luka: In the Pacific Islander community in Multnomah County, we have something called the Pacific Islander Coalition. It’s made up of Pacific Islander-serving organizations. And because we are a smaller community, we tend to have the same leaders show up to the same table and people in the community have some kind of personal connection with them.

I’ve been a community leader for so many years, even before I started at Multnomah County, people know my telephone number. I get personal phone calls, you know, people share my number, I get phone calls from family who are like, Oh, you know, my daughter is going to be applying to Portland State University. Can you tell her how to apply? I think it just shows how connected our community is. It really is about relationship – relationship and connections. Because of the trust building we’re going to the people right now that we trust, that we see stepping up, that we see who have been active leaders, that are the go tos. Right now in my community, that is how things are getting done.

Podcast: Native Wellness in the Time of COVID-19

by Rafael Otto | Apr 10, 2020 | Podcast, COVID-19, SYS

In this week’s episode, host Rafael Otto delves into the importance of focusing on Native American wellness and the impact of COVID-19 on Native communities.

Guests

Jillene Joseph is the executive director for the Native Wellness Institute and a partner with the Future Generations Collaborative.

Suzie Kuerschner is also a partner with the Future Generations Collaborative and serves as the education mode coordinator.

Background

The Future Generations Collaborative was formed by the Multnomah County Health Department and other community partners in 2011 to promote healthy pregnancies and cultural healing in the Native community, and to create a positive relationship between a government agency and the Native community.

The Native Wellness Institute is a nonprofit that exists because of the lasting effects of intergenerational trauma and how that contributes to the contemporary trauma that exists in Native American communities today. The institute focuses on providing opportunities for healing, growth, and development.

Transcript below has been edited for clarity and length

PDF Transcript

Rafael Otto: Welcome to the Early Link podcast. I’m your host Rafael Otto. Today we’re going to be talking about the impact of COVID-19 on native American communities, and I have the pleasure of speaking with Jillene Joseph, who is executive director for the Native Wellness Institute and a partner with the Future Generations Collaborative, and Suzie Kuerschner, who is also a partner with the Future Generations Collaborative and serves as the education mode coordinator.

Jillene and Suzie, welcome to the Early Link podcast.

Jillene Joseph: Thanks for having us!

Suzie Kuerschner: We appreciate the opportunity.

Rafael Otto: I wanted to start with the Future Generations Collaborative. If you could tell me about the work that’s happening with that group.

Suzie Kuerschner: Sure. Well, it has been my privilege for, I think. I’ve gone about 11 years now in terms of the point at which there was community and inspiration and responding thoughts about how we could kind of collaborate, come together and in particular be focused on generating, promoting, supporting the development of our families from a healthy perspective, a wellness perspective, [including recognition of] historic trauma. And that’s inclusive of boarding and residential schools and all of the things that have impacted our culture, our people, our health and welfare.

We recognized that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder… the use of substances during pregnancy—particularly alcohol, which produces the only lifelong disability from drugs and alcohol. We could look at it in a non-stigmatic way and really understand its presence. That it is an expression of the hurt and the pain and that its presence can carry with it shame, but rather an understanding of what is the opportunity, how can we address it?

In forming this, it was understood that we would not be an organization unto ourselves, but rather a collaborative and potential collective impact of everyone reciprocally, cooperatively, supportively, working together to create a non-stigmatic non-judgmental understanding of how fetal alcohol impacts all parts of life and all ages and stages.

How can we wrap around in a collaborative circle of care, a love and understanding of healing and understanding that is trauma informed, not only the environmental trauma that has happened within our indigenous community, but also the neurotrauma? That has come from that which we have needed to do, you know, to self-medicate. There is a prophecy that sort of guided us in the beginning and continues to. It was said that there was a time when there would be those who would come among us, who would be different and look different and in their differences, they would change the people. I’d really like to turn it over to Jillene to talk about how in so doing we recognized those folks who we identify as our elders and natural helpers who are really the community.

I’ve given you a bunch of gobbledygook around sort of expression of FASD. But really what’s important is … our community coming forward through groups and forums and listening sessions that guided the direction of the FGC and then carried that knowledge and continues to grow in its carrying of knowledge through our elders and natural helpers.

Rafael Otto: Well, Jilene, I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that as well, and if you could tell us more about the Native Wellness Institute.

Jillene Joseph: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Suzie. That was a great description. So the Future Generations Collaborative, we approach our work, we call it a four mode approach. We have the education mode that Suzie takes the lead on. We have an evaluation mode, we have a policy mode, and then we have a community engagement mode.

Myself and some of my colleagues at the Native Wellness Institute, we take the lead on the community engagement mode. We work with community members that we call elders and entry helpers. And they are the eyes and the ears of the community and they help us to do our engagement work by talking to people one-on-one, by helping to recruit people to attend our training and community outreach events. They help facilitate those events and community outreach. It’s a really unique, culturally specific model. We’re trying to provide services to our community members that might be impacted beyond the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder spectrum.

And then of course, we provide opportunities for healing as a way to prevent it as well. So the work that I do with my organization, the Native Wellness Institute, we’re based here in Oregon, Multnomah County, and we’re a national nonprofit. I like to say social profit because we’re benefiting society.

Rafael Otto: I like that shift.

Jillene Joseph: Yeah. This is our 20th anniversary, even though many of us that founded this organization have been doing this work for many, many decades, and we exist because of the lasting impacts of historical and intergenerational trauma and how that contributes to the contemporary trauma that we see in our communities today.

More importantly, we exist to provide opportunities for healing, and growth, and development. We provide training and technical assistance in a variety of areas. Our work has come to a screeching halt because of this pandemic. And so, like the solution-oriented people that we are, we turned it around.

We’re doing these daily, what we’re calling, Native Wellness Power Hours. Every day at noon Pacific time, we’re offering an hour of programming. Workshops, storytelling, comedy, concerts… All sorts of things. That’s been our response and contribution to the pandemic and just helping to bring uplifting messages and tools for people’s wellbeing and things like that.

Rafael Otto: What else are you hearing from communities about needs? What’s urgent right now related to COVID-19 and what’s happening across the state?

Suzie Kuerschner: A tremendous potential and opportunity… is to look at what can emerge as the strengths of nurturing families. In their bonding, their attachment… the joy of being with your child, the joy of playing and learning together.

One of the first things that we all saw as a potential takeaway was the ability to help grow that within families. But at the same time, recognize the tremendous anxiety, frustration, and just lack of, you know, predictability, etc, for families and how that can grow in a more challenging direction.

So how can we be in people’s lives, whether it’s through frequency of contact, through phone calls, but we’re all doing a lot and having some really nice responses on a daily contact base. We’ve been developing a toolkit that has activities, has specific COVID approaches, general and family supports from a developmental perspective.

Jillene Joseph: I think the Native community here, the two main Native-serving organizations, NAYA and NARA, have been outstanding in the things that they’ve done for the native community. And then within that, different programs, other agencies and the community have really stepped up to help reach the needs of the community.

So that’s just been beautiful. Online programming, culture nights, things like that. Everything went online. It has been really, really beautiful. I always say that we are trying to help our people realize that we are descendants of miracle survivors of genocide. We’ve been through pandemics before, and when we focus on and embrace that resiliency. That becomes a tool to help us get through this.

We’re an already traumatized community. And now here we are experiencing more trauma through this pandemic. So we’re very mindful of that and very mindful of just checking in on one another and providing opportunities for continued healing and continued opportunities for balance.

Beginning next week [are] some online support circles for women, for men, for two spirit, non-binary people, and for young people. This an opportunity for our community to come together online and just be together and share and offer encouragement or put a voice to what they might be experiencing.

Rafael Otto: In the collaborative. Could you say more about how widely it reaches? I know Multnomah County is involved, but how broad is the collaborative

Suzie Kuerschner: The Metro area is sort of its first circle. This wouldn’t have happened without Multnomah County Public Health department and their support in many ways, as an infrastructure.

The support that Multnomah County commissioners gave us from the beginning—we were able to develop and deliver a proclamation for the county-wide area so that it was really understood that it could, in fact, touch not only education, but housing and really importantly, justice—community justice and then justice as a whole.

We are now a presence throughout Oregon. Yesterday, I was in a long conference meeting and then call with a variety of clients in both COOs and Douglas counties and shelter homes that we’re reaching.

So it seems to be growing… Looking at the stimulus package and what might be omitted, we are looking at the federal level…[how do] we make sure that those services are not waived or eliminated.

And there’s a federal bill that we’ll be looking not only support, but really help guide it’s deliverance and presence around fetal alcohol.

We have all of these concentric circle models, but there is this core, and at the heart of that core are the values and the commitments, the beliefs, the strengths in the beauties. Of our own indigenous Portland urban population, but in their generating of their good spirit and their good strengths of resilience, as Julian was talking about, those are radiating out through service systems for our county, metropolitan state, and then federal.

Rafael Otto: I did want to go back to what you were talking about Jillene with this, you know, the role of historical trauma and historical resilience, and Suzie, you brought it up again around indigenous values. And I wonder if you could just say more about that and how those intersect at this point in time.

Jillene Joseph: So historical trauma examples, you know, the boarding school, disease, massacres, all that sort of thing. What I always make sure that people understand is, yes, we have those examples of historical trauma that contributes to the intergenerational trauma that contributes to the contemporary trauma that we see and experience in our community today.

And then we also have the good stuff that was passed down. That’s that historical wisdom piece, or the historical resiliency piece. We have the cultural values, and we have the language. We have the songs and ceremonies, even if we don’t know what tribe we are, or we think that that hasn’t been passed down in our families, like it literally is within us, and our elders will call that blood memory.

So for example, my son, he’s an avid hunter and a rifle hunter. And a couple of years ago he wanted to learn how to bow hunt. So I had a colleague, a friend of mine who is an amazing bow hunter. He got to spend a week with him. And I had another friend, a good family friend, teach him as well, how to make his own bow as well as how to bow hunt.

During this pandemic, actually, he just finished his second traditional long bow. He would also jump on YouTube and look at YouTube and learn. What I told him was, you know, just close your eyes and rely on the knowledge that’s in your DNA and help that guide you as you’re making this bow.

So he would save the sinew from his elk and he would make his own string out of the sinew. And it’s just pretty amazing. And so that’s an example of that historical resiliency that we all have. And the interesting part about it is that one of the lasting impacts of trauma is chronic negativity. One of the lasting impacts of trauma is also almost like being addicted to chaos.

And this pandemic very much like feeds into both of those, right?

Rafael Otto: Sure.

Jillene Joseph: We can go down those negative rabbit holes or we can get into chaos. And next thing we know, we think we all have the virus. So being mindful of that and when we find ourselves spinning out in that negativity or spinning out in that chaos, like to allow that to be the trigger that makes us pause and to step back into the deep breathing. Or reach out to our friend or get outside or have some movement, do something to turn that around. Through all these efforts that we’re doing with the Future Generations Collaborative, through my work at the Native Wellness Institute, we’re trying to be very mindful of that and to help our people focus on the positive and have that hope and have that sense of resiliency.

Rafael Otto: Suzie, did you have something to add to that?

Suzie Kuerschner: Well, I think that was beautifully said. We have at the core or the center of many of our traditional values, caring, sharing, and respect. And those values grow compassion and care and they are the strengths, as Jillene did so well at identifying.

Those are the things that move us forward. One of the things that I often find myself saying to people that my grandmother taught me is that when we have that actually joyous privilege of participating in people’s lives, we have the opportunity to hold up that mirror, that reflection of their beauty, because so many of our relatives, the hurt and the trauma—it maps the negative. Particularly when I work with families and with parents, you know, one of the first priority activities that I want to do is —yes, it’s good to hear what everyone’s challenges are—but let’s look at what each other’s beauties are. We need to really practice.

As any people who have had oppression or hurt need to do is—let’s look at what is right. What is that beauty? What is that goodness within ourselves that we can see? What can we tell each other? All this talking and doing community healing is… Let’s grow good gossip.

You know, we can say what we’re noticing each other doing wrong. Let’s just turn that well. Let’s particularly turn that for our children. So when we take these stories and we bring them forward, let’s hold up that mirror so that they can see their beauty. Let’s tell them in these frustrated times. And home. Let’s point out to them what they’re doing is beautiful and kind and let them see those opportunities. Whether it’s the older kids creating a poem or the younger children doing a drawing and sending it to an elder in the community that you know is lonely or a grandparent. There are so many ways that we can help our children and families really put forth those very ideals and traditions that our ancestors showed us we have. As Jillene says, those are the blocks of building those foundations that have created that resiliency.

And I think that’s really one of the great treasures to share—not only among ourselves right now—but with all peoples right now. That ability to look out and to see that beauty and to bring it in and then to give it out as a gift to others.

Rafael Otto: I agree. I agree. That’s wonderful. I wanted to ask, I don’t know if there’s something that we should be aware of in terms of the tribal response to the pandemic in the context of how states and the federal government is handling things, and what does that dynamic look like right now?

Jillene Joseph: Well, I’ve been pleased to see, at least in the Pacific Northwest tribes, like weeks ago, we’re jumping on this and we’re using their sovereignty and closing their reservation borders as an example to help address this pandemic, you know, to keep their people safe. And there was a tribe up in Washington, the Lumbee tribe, who weeks ago started their own facility to deal with tribal members that could potentially become infected if their clinic couldn’t house them all. I think that response has been very proactive and because of social media, other tribes and other areas would see how other tribes are handling this.

Coming together and cooking for elders, putting food boxes together for elders and other families and delivering them, taking toilet paper to families that need them, and really, really stepping up. It’s just been beautiful.

And that really is an extension and a modeling of our traditional values, you know, that we care for one another. The traditional value of generosity. When we pause and just look at the responses. I mean, they are really based in our culture and it’s beautiful and it’s inspiring to see there’s other tribal communities that have high numbers of this virus already.

And so there again, when we look at communities that are already traumatized, when we look at the health disparities, and when we look at public health as a whole, traumatized communities are disproportionately represented with other diseases. This particular virus has great potential to cause much death and harm in our communities. We have to be super vigilant in protecting ourselves and protecting each other. And when we have close knit communities where maybe multi-generations are living together… close knit communities that may not have access to TVs, or radios, or social media, to even understand that we’re in a pandemic. We have to work extra hard to create the awareness and then create prevention opportunities too.

Rafael Otto: I wanted to ask you if you could tell us where people can find out about the Native Wellness Power Hour. You mentioned it earlier and it’s online. Is it through Facebook? How can people tune in?

Jillene Joseph: Yes, it’s on our Facebook page, Native Wellness Institute. We go live every day. If you miss it, you can go back to our Facebook page and watch it. Or you can also go to our website, nativewellness.com and we have all of the videos on there. We also have a YouTube channel under Native Wellness Institute, and you can go there to view them as well.

Rafael Otto: Suzie, earlier you mentioned the stay-at-home toolkit that’s going to be available for people. If people are interested, how do they get that?

Suzie Kuerschner: We provide them a link that [offers] quite a packet. That sort of begins with an approach, especially from an indigenous perspective, but hopefully it will be relevant to others in terms of how are we looking at and talking with our children about this. And then we provide, as I mentioned before, developmental activities through the age range all the way through elderhood to be supportive to those multigenerational households—both activity and information based.

And hopefully it will be fun for families and children to use over time or however long we might be sequestered. And then people should feel very free with that link to make copies because we have multiple coloring books and activities, art activities, science activities, etc. that are in there.

Rafael Otto: All right. Well, thank you so much, Suzie, for joining me on the Early Link podcast today.

Suzie Kuerschner: Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.

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Dr. Carlos Crespo on COVID-19 and Community Impact

by Rafael Otto | Mar 23, 2020 | Podcast, Health and Development, Oregon Policy, COVID-19

In this week’s episode, host Rafael Otto talks with Dr. Carlos Crespo about COVID-19 and the impact on families and communities.

Note: This is a developing story and some things may have changed since the date of recording. Check the CDC’s website for updates and best practices on how to stay healthy.

Dr. Carlos Crespo is a community health professor at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. His main area of research involves the epidemiology of physical activity in the prevention of chronic diseases and research on minority health issues.

Student Success Act: A Look Ahead to 2020

by Rafael Otto | Feb 10, 2020 | Podcast, Policy Trends, Preschool, Successful Students

In this week’s episode, we discuss the Student Success Act implementation with Scott Nine from the Oregon Department of Education; Parasa Chanramy, Policy and Implementation Director at Stand for Children; and our own Dana Hepper, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Children’s Institute.

Nine, assistant superintendent at ODE’s Office of Education Innovation and Improvement, leads the stewardship of funds from the Student Investment Account (SIA) under the Student Success Act.

Chanramy shares her thoughts on the SSA in the context of another major funding win for education, passage of Measure 98 in 2016. The measure, championed by Stand for Children, has been credited for helping boost Oregon’s graduation rate to an all time high last year.

Hepper gives listeners a preview of the Early Learning Account’s impact on existing programs and program expansion.

Soobin Oh Discusses Anti-Bias Education in Early Childhood

by Rafael Otto | Jan 30, 2020 | Podcast, Professional Learning, Research and Evaluation, Equity

In this week’s episode, we speak with Soobin Oh about the importance of anti-bias education in early childhood. Soobin Oh is the senior education advisor at Children’s Institute. He is a committed social justice educator and is well-versed in anti-bias education, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and critical pedagogy. Soobin holds a master’s in early childhood inclusive curriculum and instruction from Portland State University (PSU) and is working towards his Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction at PSU with a research focus on social justice in early childhood education.

Definitions:

Institutional Bias is the tendency of institutions to advantage and favor certain groups of people while other groups are disadvantaged or devalued.

Explicit Bias is attitudes and beliefs of individuals about other people or groups of people on a conscious level.

Implicit Bias is attitudes and beliefs of individuals about other people or groups of people on an unconscious level. Implicit bias is a problem for educators because it can come into play in a classroom without intent.

A Tourist Curriculum is a superficial educational approach that does not make diversity a routine part of the ongoing, daily learning environment. Instead, it is curriculum that “drops in” on strange, exotic people to see their holidays and taste their foods, and then returns to the “real” world of “regular” life. Essentially it treats non-western cultures as “other.”