Jaime Pinkham, Staff
Jaime Pinkham, Native nations vice president, presented a keynote speech at the November Co-Management Symposium in Fairbanks, Alaska. He shared with the group, made up of state, tribal and federal wildlife managers, examples of successful projects where tribes and governments worked together.
As an elected official of the Nez Perce Tribal Council, Pinkham and the tribe worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service to run a salmon hatchery, secured bison meat for citizens while helping a governor avoid a contentious battle and changed state water standards by sharing the tribe's own scientific research.
Megan Laudenschlager, ND
Megan Laudenschlager, 2014 Bush Fellow, reflected on the first year of her Fellowship in a Learning Log.
"My perspective has shifted from an external goal to an internal goal: Who can I become through this fellowship?" She realized she needed to think bigger about her impact on the region.
Throughout her career with the Minot Area Community Foundation she witnessed how much work nonprofits were attempting to accomplish with few resources, “They are doing it totally because that’s who they are. To be surrounded by people who are like that is incredibly humbling and makes me want to be a better person,” Megan explained in her “Prairie Profile” in the Minot Daily News.
She recently formed Strengthen ND to help fill the void she witnessed by providing organizational training, capacity-building opportunities, advancement of regional issues and facilitation of community solutions to nonprofits in western North Dakota.
Richard Iron Cloud, SD
Richard Iron Cloud, Native Nation Rebuilder cohort 1, focused his 2014 Bush Fellowship on building his capacity in peace-making. But it was his symbolic war party to fight diabetes in 2003 that started an annual event focused on promoting healthy lifestyles among Native Americans.
Participants in PATHSTAR Alcatraz Swim Week, now in its 13th year, cross the same one and a half mile waterway from Alcatraz to San Francisco that Richard swam over a decade ago. A feat that initially seems impossible becomes a path to a new outlook on health, life and community for many of the participants.