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Journey to Wellness // Monday 8:00amA 10-minute bi-weekly program on Native American Community Health in MN and around the country in partnership with the University of Minnesota Medical School- Duluth Campus, Center of American Indian and Minority Health. The program will feature interviews with medical and health researchers, professors, and doctors plus native people active in Native American health today. Journey to Wellness on The North 103.3 is made possible by Ampers and the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Journey to Wellness: health care disparities aren't the issue; health care equity is

Native American Community Clinic

Around the middle of May, an article came out in Indian Country Todaywarning that, even though Native Americans in Minnesota have largely escaped the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, a quote - dire forecast for June  has housing, health care and homelessness advocates bracing for the worst - unquote.

At the time, they were talking about easing of stay-at-home restrictions, and concerns about what that could mean in Minneapolis for one of the largest populations of urban Natives in the country in general - and - at Little Earth housing - perhaps the densest Native living situation in the country.

All that was before May 25 and the death of George Floyd.

In the expressions of anger, rage and grief that followed Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, some protests flamed into rioting and arson, and a number of small businesses and non-profits, including many that serve communities of color, were damaged or destroyed, including an American Indian nonprofit youth center called Migizi.

Not far from the heart of that neighborhood at Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue, just blocks away onFranklin Avenue, is the Native American Community Clinic.

CEO Dr. Antony Stately grew up near Migizi, a place that he credits as one of the foundations of the man he is today.

The killing of George Floyd and the events that have followed have touched him, his clinic, and his community in ways that he's still processing.

But for now, he says, all he can do is, with his staff, double down as an organization on what he and is staff can do at this specific space and place.  The Native American Community Clinic, called NACC for short, is working hard partner with city, state, and sister organizations to expand their COVID-19 testing, as he says there hasn't been significant investment yet in testing Native communities.
Even so, the issues of police brutality and racial injustice are familiar and painful ones to the Native community in Minneapolis, even as they're grieving the losses of places and spaces they called home or depended on.  Next time, we'll continue our conversation with Dr. Antony Stately as he struggles with the complicated grief of identifying with the Black community and at the same time, mourning the loss of a part of his childhood.

 

Lisa Johnson started her broadcast career anchoring the television news at her high school and spinning country music at KWWK/KOLM Radio in Rochester, Minnesota. She was a reporter and news anchor at KTHI in Fargo, ND (not to mention the host of a children's program called "Lisa's Lane") and a radio reporter and anchor in Moorhead, Bismarck, Wahpeton and Fergus Falls.Since 1991, she has hosted Northland Morning on KUMD. One of the best parts of her job includes "paying it forward" by mentoring upcoming journalists and broadcasters on the student news team that helps produce Northland Morning. She also loves introducing the different people she meets in her job to one another, helping to forge new "community connections" and partnerships.Lisa has amassed a book collection weighing over two tons, and she enjoys reading, photography, volunteering with Animal Allies Humane Society and fantasizing about farmland. She goes to bed at 8pm, long before her daughter, two cats, or three dogs.
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