Category: 2018

“On an autumn day in 1808, elders of the Osage Nation gathered at Fort Clark, a new outpost overlooking the Missouri River near what is now Sibley, Missouri. The council assembled to consider a treaty with the young American republic, a treaty requiring them to give up over 52 million acres of Osage land east […]

Alexandria Niksik has been in and out of prison for seven years. Her most recent return home only lasted 16 days. But what might look like failure from the outside is actually a key step toward success and recovery from alcohol misuse. Read Article

Therapist-patient profile matching for more effective treatment of substance use disorders (SUDs) is especially important to address the current opioid crisis, according to the author of a recent study on the issue from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “The results from this study have important application to performance-based practice,” said the […]

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are, unfortunately, familiar in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities, where factors such as poverty, unemployment, chronic stress and intergenerational trauma contribute to ACEs and their resulting detrimental effects (Warne et al., 2017). Recognizing that AI/AN populations are disproportionately impacted by trauma requires translating research into appropriate interventions. The Indian […]

October 8 looms. In South Dakota, it’s Native American Day. In 2016, Vermont’s governor proclaimed it Indigenous People’s Day. Oregon avoided Columbus Day altogether until last year, when it made Indigenous People’s Day official. A long list of cities have done the same. Here in St. Louis, the bronze Christopher Columbus in Tower Grove Park […]

The National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development (the National Center) is pleased to announced its 2018 class of “Native American 40 Under 40” award recipients. Nominated by members of their communities, this prestigious award is bestowed to individuals under the age of 40 who have demonstrated leadership, initiative, and dedication and have made significant […]

Rather than social work practice being based solely on a therapist’s intuition and assumptions, social workers should consider a system of evaluation and measurement based on hard data, suggests a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. “Not only do current professional social work therapists not know their past performance stats, they […]

The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) has received a 5-year, $7.1 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to continue the Minority Fellowship Program (MFP). The grant includes more than $95,000 in additional funding annually compared to grants in the two previous cycles. This will enable the MFP to […]

If a “good” is held to be common, then surely that decision must come from community. Too often the community’s role is unexamined in this regard, but the intentionality of one Native culture in defining and protecting the common good might serve as an example to us all. In my Alutiiq language, the word for […]

When people are treated for medical conditions, their physician usually monitors the treatment and recovery process based on some type of performance metrics, informed by hard data. However, in clinical programs treating substance use disorders or psychiatric disorders, the treatment and recovery process is monitored exclusively on therapist’s intuition. A new suite of technology tools […]