The Community Powered Tribal Health Initiative marks a significant expansion of Wisconsin Humanities’ award-winning training program.
Wisconsin Humanities announces the launch of the Community Powered Tribal Health Initiative (CPTHI). The new initiative represents a collaborative partnership between a statewide nonprofit and Wisconsin tribal communities to address the tribes’ contemporary challenges and will result in culturally-relevant solutions that honor traditional wisdom and community priorities. CPTHI was recently awarded a Community Impact Grant from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP) in support of the first three years of the initiative.
CPTHI addresses the mental health epidemic in tribal communities caused by historically deep-seated and pervasive health disparities and made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. By working closely with impacted communities and local leadership, the CPTHI team will facilitate local solutions and employ local knowledge to help communities maintain, document, and share cultural knowledge to deepen a sense of community-wide belonging, well-being, and health.
Wisconsin Humanities works statewide to strengthen the roots of community life through educational and cultural programs that inspire civic participation and individual imagination. Through this initiative, Wisconsin Humanities has partnered with tribal leaders in response to expressed needs in communities that have historically faced barriers to accessing health resources. The training program made possible through CPTHI will provide tools and resources to build local skills and resilience. The initiative will train up to 32 tribal members over the next three years, providing them with specialized skills and crucial support to kickstart community projects that address mental health challenges.
A Tribal-Led Partnership
The CPTHI team includes tribal and academic partners from around the state who, together with Wisconsin Humanities staff, will spend the next three years adapting and honing Wisconsin Humanities’ existing Community Powered toolkit to be culturally responsive to a Native context and Indigenous conceptions of health.
Key CPTHI team members working with Wisconsin Humanities staff include Dr. JP Leary and others from UW-Green Bay’s Center for First Nation Education, Drs. Brian Jackson (pictured above) and Sonny Smart from the Lac du Flambeau Family Circles AODA Parenting Program, and Sapatis Menomin, who was trained in 2022 in the Community Powered methodology and founded the Forest County Potawatomi lacrosse revitalization project. Listening sessions will bring in new partners from other tribal communities as the initiative grows.
Chrissy Widmayer, the director of the Community Powered program at Wisconsin Humanities, emphasizes the importance of this initiative being tribal-led. “We see this partnership as a way for Wisconsin Humanities to listen and learn from tribal communities, and share what we know, to work toward furthering a sense of wellbeing and health for everyone in our state.”
“Our Indigenous communities all have our own stories and teachings that relate to how we should live a healthy life,” adds Menomin. “These stories are a part of our culture and history. I feel that the interdisciplinary tools of the humanities are perfectly suited to analyze the health and wellness of a community. I am hopeful that this program will make a positive impact on our Tribal communities across Wisconsin.”
Dr. Arijit Sen, professor of public history and urban studies at UW-Milwaukee, has helped to design and run Community Powered trainings and will continue to advise the new initiative.
“Community Powered is truly collaborative in nature,” Dr. Sen says. “Our process brings together different constituencies and stakeholders as equal partners and offers all of us the opportunity to experience what truly democratic and inclusive community-building could be like.”
The Community Powered program recently won the national Federation of State Humanities Council’s Schwartz Prize for Outstanding Work in the Public Humanities for work done in its pilot year. The training and methodology have resulted in teen-led initiatives in Spooner, kickstarted a series of story circles among immigrants and refugees in Appleton, and revitalized the tradition of lacrosse in the Forest County Potawatomi community.
About Wisconsin Humanities
Established in 1972 as an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Wisconsin Humanities strengthens our democracy through educational and cultural programs that build connections and understanding among people of all backgrounds and beliefs throughout the state.
About the Funding
Funding for this initiative was provided by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health from the Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP), which offers grants to support community-led partnerships that seek to improve health and advance health equity across Wisconsin. Eight other community organizations were awarded funding through WPP’s Community Impact Grant this year.
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