Tribal Nations Research Group
Report date
March 2019
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
TNRG became a partner with the North Dakota State University Extension Office on a grant program through the Centers for Disease Control High Obesity Program Promoting Healthy Outcomes through Indigenous Food Systems. The Promoting Healthy Outcomes through Indigenous Food Systems approaches obesity prevention through the context that indigenous people experience health disparities related, in part, to nontraditional ways of food production, consumption and inactivity. In response to higher rates of obesity and chronic disease, tribal nations are creating more healthful communities through the reclamation of food systems and health promotion based on their many cultural traditions. This project seeks to build on work completed with the food sovereignty assessment and the development phase of a coordinated agriculture plan for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa led by TNRG. This project is important to our community, as we will be supporting efforts within our community to develop food sustainability programs and healthy activities that will better the health outcomes of our people.
TNRG is working with the TMBCI Tribal Health Department to develop a Community Health Improvement Plan. This is a comprehensive plan that established nine goals with objectives and strategies to address the health disparities discovered in the Community Health Assessment TNRG conducted in 2017. The planning process is being led by the Tribal Health Department with TNRG staffs involved to help the Community Health Committee with data related conversations, and organizing the final strategies and report. TNRG is also offering support through the Promoting Healthy Outcomes through Indigenous Food Systems to conduct a biannual community health assessment. This work is the first project of TNRG and it provides a proven process of collecting data to inform decision-making. We are teaching our leaders to create data, testing strategies and implementing possible solutions to the identified areas of concern.
TNRG staff have been working with the TMBCI Tribal Council on developing economic development strategies and strategic planning. Recently TNRG worked with Chairman Azure to develop an Economic Plan focused around the SkyDancer Casino and Resort. Efforts are now pushing forward to engineering work and funding strategies. This is the first time in recent history the TMBCI unveiled a plan of type to the community. This project is important to our work because it 1) shows how two different organizations can work together to develop a project that can be very beneficial to our community, 2) Provides a learning experience for leaders on planning and development. TNRG is training community leaders to use data available to find what the best strategies is moving forward.
Key lessons learned
One key lesson we learned this year is that the work we do takes a lot of community education and community engagement work. The majority of our time this year involved coordinating meetings, and organizing training sessions with key stakeholders. These meetings including tribal leaders, program managers, community members, and youth. The community engagement work involved building trust throughout the community. Building trust and community education are two ongoing activities that TNRG needs to do in order to build our capacity of our organization and our community. This is definitely not a failure but an obstacle in our work as we lack the human resources to meet the needs of our community. It is hard to choose what projects to focus our work when we are needed in so many areas to help educate our community.
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
Each of the elements have been important in our work and to the innovation process. This grant period the collaborative element has been most important to making progress in our work. We found that by including many people who represent programs and organizations throughout our community is extremely important. These individuals drive the work we do. This is not always easy but it has been helpful in making progress. We are now seeing a small breakthrough in removing the silos and groups are working together a bit more, which increases communication across the community. Because of this breakthrough in communication, we are now seeing greater progress in the area of planning and data driven decision-making. For the first time in recent history our Tribal Government has establish economic strategies around the Skydancer Casino and Resort, the Tribal Health Department is developing a plan to address health disparities, and we are leading the community through a collaborative food sovereignty plan.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
Community engagement is very important to our work. Our annual Data Matters Conference is an important part of our efforts to show community members how important it is to work together to solve problems. Community engagement is also important in developing our collaborations. When people see our great work and know TNRG will get the job done these individuals are willing to use their expertise by serving on a board or commission for the organization. This is very important to this work because as a small organization the volunteers are a major key to our success.
Understanding the problem
Throughout our work, TNRG has focused on data management and data development. Our organization has worked hard to position TNRG as a go to organization for data development, management and dissemination. Through our work over the last year, we are finding that there is a lack of knowledge in understanding how to use data for various reasons. As a result, TNRG is now focusing on developing various community reports or white papers that we feel would be useful for the community. We are reporting the data for our community to use. This strategy takes a lot of human resources so now we need to figure out how to change course financially to cover the cost of additional resource needs.
If you could do it all over again...
Patience, we need to be patient in our work. So many people are busy and have mounds of work that our process takes longer than we plan. I know this was a concern in the past but we still need to work on letting things happen at its own pace. To be inclusive and collaborative we need to work at the pace of the community with small nudges to move forward by our organization.
One last thought
TNRG is working hard to move forward with our innovation project. Often our community takes a quick turn into a different direction and sometimes we need to follow them. This is all part of our role in supporting community innovation.