May 19, 2020

Media Contact:
Livia Millard, multicultural affairs coordinator, (509) 422-7814
Dr. Kestrel Smith, American Indian Indigenous Studies faculty, 509-422-7841

The Associated Students of Wenatchee Valley College at Omak (ASWVCO) Red Road Association are sponsoring an online webinar, niʕíp txət̓miʔstx (Always Take Care of Yourself, translated from Okanogan Salish): COVID-19 Through Indigenous Lens. The webinar will take place from 2-4 p.m. on Friday, June 5, using Zoom videoconferencing. This event is free and open to the public.

American Indian and Indigenous communities have endured centuries of dispossession, subjugation, endemic poverty and coercive assimilation. Now, in the time of COVID-19, they have been some of the most affected by the pandemic. Join Andy Joseph Jr (Colville), Linda Black Elk (Catawba) and Dr. Nicole Redvers (Dene) for a discussion of the impacts of COVID-19 within American Indian and Indigenous communities and how these challenges are being addressed from within.

Register in advance for the webinar: bit.ly/2zP481q.

Andy Joseph, Jr. is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. He is a U.S. Army veteran and a former chairman of the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. He has served as a member of the National Indian Health Board, on the Indian Health Service Direct Services Tribes Advisory Committee as Vice Chairman, as well as his own tribal council. Andy comes from a long line of traditional tribal chiefs.

Linda Black Elk is from the Catawba tribe and is an ethnobotanist specializing in teaching about culturally important plants and their uses as food, medicine and materials. Linda works to build hands-on curriculum and ways of thinking that will promote and protect food sovereignty, traditional plant knowledge and environmental quality. Linda takes the mantra “food is medicine” very literally, teaching classes on simple ways to incorporate “edible medicinal” into everyone’s diet. She has written for numerous publications, and is the author of “Watoto Unyutapi,” a field guide to edible wild plants of the Dakota people. Linda is the mother to three Lakota boys and serves as the Food Sovereignty Skills Instructor at United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota. 

Dr. Nicole Redvers, ND, MPHc, is an assistant professor in the Indians into Medicine (INMED) and the Department of Family & Community Medicine at the University of North Dakota’s School of Medicine & Health Sciences located in Grand Forks, North Dakota. She is an enrolled member of the Deninu K’ue First Nation Band (Dene) with continued ties to the Canadian north. She is the author of the trade paperback, The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles (North Atlantic Books, March 26, 2019) and is active in promoting Indigenous and planetary health research and practice at local, national and international scales.

###

Wenatchee Valley College enriches North Central Washington by serving educational and cultural needs of communities and residents throughout the service area. The college provides high-quality transfer, liberal arts, professional/technical, basic skills and continuing education for students of diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds. Visit our website, wvc.edu. 

Wenatchee Valley College is committed to a policy of equal opportunity in employment and student enrollment. All programs are free from discrimination and harassment against any person because of race, creed, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, the presence of any sensory, mental, or physical disability, or the use of a service animal by a person with a disability, age, parental status or families with children, marital status, religion, genetic information, honorably discharged veteran or military status or any other prohibited basis per RCW 49.60.030, 040 and other federal and state laws and regulations, or participation in the complaint process. The following persons have been designated to handle inquiries regarding the non-discrimination policies and Title IX compliance for both the Wenatchee and Omak campuses:

• To report discrimination or harassment: Title IX Coordinator, Wenatchi Hall 2322M, (509) 682-6445, title9@wvc.edu.
• To request disability accommodations: Director of Student Access, Wenatchi Hall 2133, (509) 682-6854, TTY/TTD: dial 711, sas@wvc.edu.