Shelley Means

Infusing Collaboration in Work Structure and Health Systems

Today, we are talking with Shelley Means (Ojibwe/Lakota) about nonprofit leadership from a cultural perspective. We hear how Shelley incorporates her values into the structure and implementation of her work, important work that strives to improve infant health outcomes based in Native wisdom. We are so grateful to Shelley for sharing her powerful stories.

TRANSCRIPT

Leah Lemm:
I'm Leah Lemm, citizen of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

Daniel Lemm:
Hau Mitakuyapi, I'm Daniel Lemm, citizen of Lower Sioux Dakota Oyate.

Leah Lemm:
And this is Wisdom Continuum. We are bringing you conversations from awesome Native books to celebrate Native wisdom for a healthier, thoughtful, or just future. And today we're talking with Shelley Means, great person, about nonprofit leadership from a cultural perspective. And Daniel, I know you've known her for several years, right?

Daniel Lemm:
Yeah. I would even say many years.

Leah Lemm:
Several to many, or more?

Daniel Lemm:
That's right. Yeah, I've known Shelley for a long time and have always enjoyed the time that I spend with her. She's been a Native American community consultant for nearly 20 years. She's got a wealth of wisdom to share from her experiences working as a community consultant.

Leah Lemm:
Great. Well, she is actually already in the waiting room. She's got a clipboard in hand, I'm sure, filled out all the forms. No, I'm just kidding. But she is here. So are we ready to rock and roll?

Daniel Lemm:
Let's do this.

Leah Lemm:
Okay.

Shelley Means:
Hello.

Daniel Lemm:
Hey Shelley.

Leah Lemm:
Hi.

Shelley Means:
This is so cool. Oh my God, I don't even want to think how many years. Facebook jus warps all time.

Daniel Lemm:
It's been a few. It's been a few. I want to say 2015 even. I want to say it was at a NAP conference. That was the last one that I went to, Native Americans in Philanthropy. I think it's been that long, Shelley, but I always see on social media, yeah that's how I keep up a little bit with what you're up to these days.

Shelley Means:
And you're in your beautiful house somewhere up north.

Leah Lemm:
Yes.

Shelley Means:
So whereabouts are you?

Leah Lemm:
We're up in Grand Rapids.

Shelley Means:
Grand Rapids, okay. Very cool.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah. And whereabouts are you?

Shelley Means:
I am on Vashon Island in Washington, which is in the Puget Sound between Seattle and Tacoma.

Leah Lemm:
Okay. Wow.

Shelley Means:
So I'm on an island, but I'm not on the beach. I'm up on this Hilltop. But if I were to go a mile to the east and look out, I'm looking exactly at SeaTac across the water. Anyway, if that orients you at all?

Leah Lemm:
It doesn't but for somebody, it might.

Daniel Lemm:
It does me. I've been in that area.

Shelley Means:
Yeah.

Daniel Lemm:
And Shelley, you have to take a ferry to get from the island to the mainland, right?

Shelley Means:
I do, exactly. Yeah, some of the islands around here, more populated ones actually have a bridge over to the mainland, but we don't. It's a hundred percent ferry service and it's got its good sides and it's got its bad sides.

Daniel Lemm:
So you just got to be organized and be on a schedule to make sure you get can get to and from home?

Shelley Means:
Yeah. And you also have to let it go if something doesn't work out. You just got to go with it because you don't really have a choice. I see so many people who only last here a couple of years because they're like, "I just can't stand to work with a very schedule and the very system is bailing." Or you love where you live, which I do and you put up with it, you just make the best of it.

And then there's a lot of farmers. Since we've moved here 27 years ago, we've seen a definite surge in people coming here to just do their little family farms or farm stands, commercial farms and, but nothing huge scale. There's not enough water for development, like drinking water for development to go crazy. And we don't have a huge mountain range, like the cascades to generate the snow pack to build reservoirs and increase our water supply. It's just what it is. And so we're basically pretty rural. Two post offices and one is about to close because the postal service is failing.

Leah Lemm:
All right, Shelley, can you please introduce yourself for me, for us?

Shelley Means:
Boozhoo. Yes, I'm Shelley Means and I am Ojibwe on my mother's side. I am Lakota on my father's side and they met out in Seattle. And so this is where I was born, and I still live in the area.

Daniel Lemm:
What would you say is the through line to your work and community and how you spend time there? Certainly when it comes to talking about nonprofit leadership from a cultural perspective but really just tell us more about your work as a community consultant.

Shelley Means:
Sure. So it's interesting when you say through line, I can give it to you as my why I work in my community and specifically why I focus on social justice and health equity, that sort of thing. So I'm a surviving twin. And my mother experienced Western medicine at its worst, in its most, I think most racist kind of way. And when I heard this story 20 years later, when my mom told me this story, I just said, "My family needs to heal from this and Western medicine shouldn't be treating brown Indigenous women the way Western medicine does." And I just began to learn what does that mean? What can a person in community do to change these systems that are not treating our people well? And it became this journey into community organizing, the nonprofit sector. I definitely did not want to go into the corporate world. I did not want to be in government. I needed to work in community.

Shelley Means:
Part of my through line is also the separation of my family from their homelands. The fact that we're urban Indians and several generations separate from culture and traditional teachings and our ancestors. So that also became a part of my journey, was to bring that quest, I think I would call it, to find family and to find stories and surround myself with people who were teachers and who also shared this vision of wanting to change the world for our people.

Leah Lemm:
Great. Is there an aspect of that work that you'd like to highlight and really get into?

Shelley Means:
I would. Nothing's linear with me. I'll say it that way. So I got a degree in journalism because it was the easy exit for me. I like to write, I had the credits lined up, so I just went for that when I had to declare my major. And then I said, "And now what do I want to do?" I tried working at Microsoft. I was a liaison with the City of Seattle, a tribal liaison, so between the tribes who had treaty rights connected to the rivers that provide the drinking water for the City of Seattle. And that's where I took the deep dive into learning about salmon and tribal sovereignty and culture, leading with culture. I got to experience tribal people leading with culture and not staying locked into the world of the legal systems and the corporate structures. And that was very eyeopening and transformed my way of seeing the world.

Shelley Means:
And I didn't want to stay working in government though because I was more on the side. As a liaison I couldn't be on one side or the other. I needed to be in this central neutral place to be a good liaison. And where I really wanted to be was in the tribal community, in the Native community. And that's when I began finding the urban Indian community here in Seattle. And there's such rich history, dating back into this 60s, 1960s. There's the personal part of the journey, but then the work part is, so what do I have that I can offer my community professionally? And I just tried to find my way. I've worked on community organizing with sacred sites. So working with the Snoqualmie Indian tribe on a sacred land protection project. Another huge deep dive into, the tribe was not federally recognized at the time. And these levels of inter-tribal relationships were really interesting. I just learned a lot about the leaders who center themselves in culture and whatever level of cultural tradition that they grew up with, but you can still center yourself on the values, Indigenous values.

Shelley Means:
You can center yourself on love for community, respect for your ancestors, accountability to your ancestors, and being there for people when they ask for help, being there to guide people, even if they don't know yet that they need some help.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah.

Shelley Means:
Definitely part of that journey.

Leah Lemm:
Do you have maybe a favorite memory or example that really helped to spark that love for or even noticing how important that was to the community? Any concrete example?

Shelley Means:
Yeah. I don't know. When you first asked that the thing that popped into my mind was this moment of being up at the border between Canada and the US with a group of runners who were traveling from Chickaloon Village, Alaska, down to Teotihuacán, near Mexico city, The Temple of The Sun. And they were doing this relay that was first done in 1992 to commemorate Columbus, the 500 year commemoration of Columbus landing on the shores that he landed on. And so it was called the Peace And Dignity Journeys. And I remember this elder from the Lummi Nation addressing this group of mostly young people and saying, "If there's one thing you do in your life, know who you are." And that really sparked something for me, which was like, I can read about tribal history, I can ask my parents questions, but they didn't really know a whole lot about culture.

Shelley Means:
Or I can really go deep into this work of understanding who I am and what I have to offer to my community. I don't know if there was a different sort of example you were thinking of.

Leah Lemm:
I think that advice is great. Yeah, just even having that example of leadership that this person was showing. And you mentioned perhaps even actions by organizations or government that you saw that was not embracing a colonial system, but instead their own values. Was there something that you were inspired by an example there?

Shelley Means:
So from an early on example, with the Snoqualmie Falls preservation project, I'm thinking of this one instance where there was a public hearing, it was in a federal relicensing a dam kind of meeting. And all of these federal agencies and consultants were coming to do this public meeting. And the tribal community was amazing. Our allies that came from the environmental community and from... We were working with some church related groups that saw this as a religious... Understood sacred site protection to be connected to religious freedom. And different allies along those lines. And these allies were wanting us to behave a certain way. Let's do the demonstration. Let's show them how angry we are that they want to develop this dam. And then here's the federal agency people, it's like, "Well, you have to sign up 15 minutes in advance and you get five minutes to speak." And they had their way of leading this.

Shelley Means:
And instead of just complying with all of that or reacting to any of that, I watched these tribal leaders really lead us into this spirit of, this is the Indigenous way. So we show up at this school auditorium for this public hearing and prepared a feast and brought in traditional foods, and invited everybody who had showed up for the public hearing to come. And they enjoyed a blessing together and we had the meal. And then more than 300 people came to this public hearing and we ran out of time going into the evening. And the federal officials were, "Just submit it all in writing. Let's get the business done." And we just said, "No, we have to do this in a way that, because we come from an oral tradition, Indigenous people are not as trained as you all are in writing what we need to express. So we're going to do it our way."

Shelley Means:
And so we ended up doing some follow up hearings so that people could say what was in their hearts and what they needed to say in response to this question about whether this dam should be relicensed or not. It was so powerful. And I'm sure I can come up with some modern day examples as well, some more recent ones.

Leah Lemm:
Well, we can come into more recent times. Perhaps we can talk a bit more about your work and how you see your values or your community values playing out in the work that you do? And if you could tell us about maybe the sector, the status quo, maybe a little bit? And then how you make those adjustments that you see necessary?

Shelley Means:
Sure. So for about 20 years now, I've been part of a collective, we're very careful not to say a nonprofit because we work with a fiscal sponsor, but we rejected this idea that we have to be an IRS shaped, top down leadership kind of organization. So we operate as a collective addressing infant mortality. So infant and maternal health is the more positive spin on that. We're a collective of people who serve moms and babies and families in our community who really want to make a difference when it comes to infant mortality and maternal mortality rates.

Shelley Means:
So I guess the status quo approach to that and the nonprofit also is government grants that shape who you can conserve and what you can spend money on, what resources you can direct towards a problem? And the programs that serve our people are so limited by those structures. They're so limited. They don't allow us to provide the abundance to our community members who are having family, are raising the babies. So we've figured out a way across the years through organizations like Native Americans and Philanthropy, how to step out of that game. We've never worked with government grants. And we've learned so much about finding funders who will invest resources without trying to control what we do and how we do it. So our group basically, it's a lot of direct service providers. So people like Doulas or home visitors or community organizers, aunties, grandmas who just really want to learn the ways we can go back to our cultural teachings as a way to move this needle, to improve the birth outcomes in our community.

Shelley Means:
So in the course of all of that work over the 20 years, our basic function is basically, bring people together. Because I think the Western systems are really designed to silo us so that we have to become such experts in one thing that we disregard or begin losing respect for all of the other things, the interconnectedness that is really the important part. That's the cultural value, the relationships, we have to be in relationship with each other if we're serving the same people in this huge city, in this huge very densely populated county and we're only 10% of the population and our people get lost in the whole structure of the city. So what we do at these monthly meetings is just figure out what is our priority? What can we do next? Who can bring which skill to this role? How do we bring the right people to this circle to do this next thing?

Shelley Means:
And so the three basic functions that we do are to bring people, to educate each other and ourselves about what is happening in the community. And who's serving in which ways? And what resources do we need to support one another? Where do we go to advocate for those resources collectively? And then we make infant cradle boards. We teach women how to come together. It's a day long class, but it's for expectant mamas to meet one another outside of a clinical setting, outside of a program setting. It's like, just come and feel the love, feel the support of the grandmas and the aunties and the community, and have a day where you're not taking care of everything around you, that you can just come and reconnect or connect for the first time to a cultural practice that is the reminder that we've always known how to have healthy births. We've always known how to take care of each other. Let's go back to those ways in a meaningful way.

Daniel Lemm:
Shelley, this sounds like a really cool collective that you say has been going on for a couple of decades now. And how might somebody who isn't part of this collective, but interested in getting one going where they are, how would they go about finding other people, not forming a collective under the IRS form, as you mentioned? Can you talk about how this came to be and how others may do something similar if they're interested?

Shelley Means:
Absolutely. The data over the years, the public health authorities here in King County and everywhere, keep an eye on the birth and death data. And so this infant mortality data comes out. And we had a community health partner who had been tracking over the years, and it was always the African American and Native American infant mortality rates, that all the other communities were doing better. More babies were surviving and our babies were no. It just was not changing. Three to four times higher than the rest of the population, that's the rate that we were losing babies. And so the first step was that the county pulled together some of our community leaders, women from our community specifically, and explained the data and said, "How can we support your community?"

Shelley Means:
So that's the right question. Find the allies in your public health setting who can step back and let you offer up the solutions and bring you the resources to find those solutions. So we were fortunate because we had that partner in King County. She was a Latina woman who was very supportive until she retired maybe five years ago. And then it was just a matter, I think in a very cultural way, of those women in that original circle reached out to the next group of women that they could think of who they wanted to call in and say, "What are the solutions? Who else needs to be a part of this?" And so it was just a series of meetings. And I don't want to say that's all it's ever been because you can see we've been showing up at different forums with the state department of health.

Shelley Means:
There's a governor's agency of... What is it? Governor's council on health disparities. So it's really about finding the relationships with the people who are in the different silos. Help them understand what the issues on the ground are for your women and babies having just have what their lived experiences are. And you just keep telling the story and you keep telling the story. And I won't say that it's been an easy road because we very often have people who maybe think a little bit more in a colonized way about wanting to be the one in charge and making decisions. We don't have one person in charge.

Shelley Means:
I've been fortunate to be a co-coordinator with a Nez Perce, I call her my [inaudible 00:26:58] sister friend, who was actually the first coordinator. But then when the work grew, we needed more coordinators. And we're mostly volunteer. We didn't go into it thinking, "Well, we have to form a corporate body." Our fiscal sponsor takes care of processing our grant money that we bring in to buy the materials and to pay a teacher to do the cradle board classes. And I love that you asked this question, Dan, because we've actually just begun working at more of a national level to figure out what would be the priorities at a national level? And to share this model, to share this story of this importance of coming together and I guess in this non-Western way. That collective, just having women come together, there's always power that grows, in my perspective.

Daniel Lemm:
Right. And his is something that, as long as I've known you, you've been working with this collective. I don't know if grassroots is the right way of describing it, maybe not after 20 years. And at the same time, it's a model that is certainly working, it's effective. And just like not adopting a corporate structure, there's not only one way of doing something. So I think it's a really cool example of how people can come together and have impact while also being true to their culture and to their identities in the way that they do things and not the way somebody else does things, to put it maybe simply.

Shelley Means:
It's like when we come together and share stories, we did prioritize for our community at one point about seven years ago, we were talking about how there's one hospital system here in town that is known as the baby hospital. And of course babies were born everywhere, but this one hospital is the one that our local health board, Seattle Indian Health Board has a residency partnership with. And we know so many stories of how the system at that hospital treats our women badly and just assumes we're all addicts, assumes we're all poor. They just make all these bad assumptions and treat us accordingly. And we respect so much the work that Seattle Indian Health Board does in that hospital system because they bring traditional Indian medicine into the center of all of the work they do as an organization. And they're a member of our collective.

Leah Lemm:
Wow.

Shelley Means:
So everybody from their WIC program, the coordinator all the way through to their chief health officer who delivers babies, they're all very attuned to this importance of culture. So you're right that it's not just a grassroots organization. It's so much more than that. And so we listen to everything. We don't all want to become a clinic in our various organizations that are at our table. We all want to support each other to do better and to do more for the moms and babies in our community. And I want to say that one of the great cultural things that has come up over the last, I think we started this about four years ago, five years ago, is that every year at our citywide summer Powwow, which is out at Daybreak Star with United Indians of All Tribes, we started the practice of honoring new babies.

Shelley Means:
And so we do a giveaway and we have an honor song and just celebrate the new babies that are now members of our community. And of course, with the pandemic, we couldn't do that, we didn't have Powwows. We couldn't be in person together and so we got back together this year, just last month and did this honoring. And it was just beautiful. It wasn't just the baby's born in the last year, it was the baby's born since the last honoring that we did. So lots of little toddlers, lots of little ribbon skirts, and it was so beautiful.

Leah Lemm:
Why is there nothing cuter than a little baby in a ribbon skirt? That is just peak cute.

Shelley Means:
Maybe some little beaded moccasins with it. There's my future right there. There's what hope looks like.

Leah Lemm:
Yes, absolutely. So we have applying or embracing Indigenous knowledge when it comes to organization structure or collective structure, but also the work that you're doing as you've just highlighted, and the collective, is doing is also grounded in wisdom around new parenting and babies coming into this realm, and I have a couple questions, a little more specifically towards babies, if that's okay for me to ask? You mentioned doing the cradle boards. Is there a health benefit to cradle boards? Can you talk a bit about the wisdom of the cradle board? Maybe just what you can share?

Shelley Means:
Yes, absolutely. I wish I had one here to show you. No, cradle boards are, there's not one universal model across all tribes and not every tribal culture used cradle boards. The one that we use is a Plains Indian style, and we don't do the bead work or anything like that. They're just very basic cloth and leather and wood, but it's essentially a way of swaddling a baby into a baby carrier. It's got a bow that goes across the top where the baby's face is. I don't know how to describe that. But I think of it as a roller bar, a roller bar so that if the board gets off balance or whatever, that there's some protection for the baby's head. But essentially, it's like you swaddle the baby and the baby can go wherever you are safely and watch and observe, and use all of their senses to take in the world around them.

Shelley Means:
And they're hearing people's voices, they're watching people doing what they do in their various roles and ages and they're safe. And I know there are some tribal practices where people don't sleep their baby in a cradle board, but for the ones who do, I've just heard these beautiful stories of little ones getting to be three years old and wanting progressively larger boards, because that's the only way they would sleep soundly through the night, was to be swaddled up and safe in their cradle board. And I think my favorite was a three year old who would just go pull her biggest cradle board off the wall and bring it down and unlace it and start wrapping, and then just ask somebody to come over and lace them up and get them into their cradle board so they could take a nap. And how often did your little one ever ask to have a nap?

Leah Lemm:
Well, our kid at three would probably need a twin size bed, cradle board, because he is so big.

Shelley Means:
Yeah. I love that. I've got one of those healthy guys too.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah, healthy. Where was I? I think it was Portland where there was an adult size cradle board.

Shelley Means:
Yes. In Portland at NAYA.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah. That you step in it and just...

Shelley Means:
Yes. And I think it was part of a parenting project. They were working with parents to reconnect them to culture. And I don't really know the full story, but I've seen pictures of it.

Leah Lemm:
They're onto something here.

Shelley Means:
Well, and you see that over the years, we've learned lots of things about cradle boards. Our original teacher was woman from Port Gamble, S'Klallam Tribe, who her mother-in-law was Dakota, I think. Actually, I'm not sure. Lakota, one of the Sioux tribes. And she had taught her the Plains style board. And so that was, my coordinator Lee, had this idea that this is a way we could connect culture to the message of safe sleep. It is definitely, when you ask about what kind of safety aspects there might be to a cradle board, it's definitely what we know as much as we know now about reducing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome is to make sure there's not soft padding around a baby and that their temperature is the right temperature and that they're not overheating and that sort of thing. But keeping them safely spot so that they can't roll over is a pretty huge risk reduction when it comes to SIDS.

Shelley Means:
I don't know that there's science, Western science that says that yet. In fact, we've been able to work with some researchers to see what kind of research has been done on cradle boards as a safety factor. And of course, there's none. And if there's been any mention, it's been by non-Native researchers. And so we're working to change that. I think there's been some research over the last 20 years that connects culture to health education. Prevention messages are much more better received if there's a cultural message to it. But we've not seen that research specific to cradle boards. And so people in our circle are trying to work on that as well.

Leah Lemm:
I look forward to seeing Indigenous knowledge being verified.

Shelley Means:
Right. By Indigenous researchers.

Leah Lemm:
Exactly. It's like, "Yeah, we knew this." But also now we know, know it.

Shelley Means:
Yeah.

Leah Lemm:
I also had another question. You mentioned siloing and siloing of roles. I had a conversation with a Native Doula in the Twin Cities here. And we were chatting, we were just like, "What was the traditional role in her culture?" And I don't know for Ojibwe either, but I'm wondering if you do know maybe perhaps specific to one tribe or another, a midwife role in a tribe in the past or present? Or was it a community, auntie responsibility, if there is a role?

Shelley Means:
There is absolutely a role. And I think that just varied family by family. I've heard of some traditions where two spirit people were always part of being close to a birth process.

Leah Lemm:
Okay.

Shelley Means:
But this isn't firsthand knowledge. It's things I've heard. And when I think of a Doula, I think it is a relational thing where a Doula in the Western sense right now is a person who works with you so that you're supported emotionally and you've got a plan for how you want your birth to go. It's such an important function so that you're focusing on the birth giver, not the baby, because the people who are focusing on the baby don't often have time to focus as well on the person giving birth. And I personally just think that it comes down to, or would have come down traditionally, to whatever relationships are held by the person giving birth. So it might be a sister, it might be an auntie, it might be there's one grandmother that is the most knowledgeable and so is present at every birth to make sure the baby enters this place in a good way.

Shelley Means:
But I think it's never been just a one-on-one relationship, a birth giver and a medicine person. I think it is a collective of support with everybody having a different role for helping with this birth. And you're making me think of this story of a woman who gave birth during the Standing Rock. I was almost at occupation. That's not really the right word. But anyway, she gave birth in the traditional way in a Teepee surrounded by her family while they slept. And she delivered her own baby. And then the people around her that realized it was happening were able to come and support her by virtue of the fact that they were there in the Teepee with her. And that's a modern day experience of that story. It's not, "Well, I've got my cell phone with all the right numbers to call the moment that I'm sure I'm having this baby." It's just this much different, very traditional, beautiful, beautiful way to come into the world.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah, thanks for that. I figured it, it can be different everywhere as a lot of things are, but yeah, we were trying to think of, was there a word even in one tribe or another for that role of midwife or whatever it might be. And we were like, "We should ask people who know more than us."

Shelley Means:
Yeah. Well, from what we understand, even the word Doula is not very old. It's from the 70s.

Leah Lemm:
Sure.

Shelley Means:
And that role goes back to the beginning of time. So it's really interesting question.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah. Great, thank you.

Shelley Means:
I know when you think about silos, I still shake my head a little bit and go, "Because this is my birth experience." When my mom went into the hospital, her regular doctor wasn't there so she had this on call doctor. It was an army hospital, white male doctor back in the mid 60s, mid 1960s. And the nurse was an older Black woman, lots of experience. And as she's preparing my mom, admitting my mom into the hospital, she listens and she hears two heartbeats. And the doctor wouldn't believe her. And the doctor looked at the charts and said, "Oh no, if she were carrying twins, it would say in her charts." And so he didn't treat the birth like anything different. He just treated it like, "Come on, let's get down to business, get this over with."

Shelley Means:
And my mom almost died. I was born first and then my twin lived for only 40 minutes. And my parents were very young in a big city, far, far, far from home. And they were overwhelmed and it was evening time. It was back in the days when hospitals didn't allow visitors for God's sake after a certain hour. And so my mom had to spend the whole night wondering what she did wrong. That's how she tells this story. And I tie it back to that practice of Western medicine where you isolate people.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah.

Shelley Means:
And you don't value the wisdom that's in the room, that nurse that heard two heartbeats. And that silo thing is what's broken in Western medicine and Western healthcare. Traditional Indian medicine in the center of that story might not have changed the experience of my twin. She may still have died, that might have just been what... But instead it was just this whole awful experience. And I think having that Indigenous knowledge in the center of every Native American doctor who's working at Seattle Indian Health Board, delivering babies in this white, racist system hospital, but having them trained to understand traditional Indian medicine at the center of their work is a gift to them in the role that they play in Western medicine. And we hear them say that after they've finished four years of residency with Seattle Indian Health Board, they are practicing their medicine in a way that's different than they'd ever been trained in Western medical school.

Leah Lemm:
Well, thank you for sharing. That is so powerful. And then I see Indigenous knowledge in this care setting as necessary, or should be standard of practice because it's a default, just more encompassing way of addressing people's health needs.

Shelley Means:
We're whole people. So consider our wholeness when you're healing us.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah.

Shelley Means:
And let me share that through the 20 years of this collective, there's this one woman in our community who took up the charge along with people she was working with directly to design Indigenous Doula program and train Doulas. And so during the pandemic, I should say towards the end of this last round of the pandemic, she basically brought in a family who... So there was a member of this family who had a baby and was living in Seattle, working on her PhD in education. And her family wanted her to have a cradle board, but because they were still back in South Dakota, they asked the Doulas if they would make this cradle board for her. And it's this incredible, really traditional Lakota beaded, just beautiful cradle board.

Shelley Means:
And so Cammy and her Doulas got together and learned how to do it. And they created this beautiful thing, gifted it to the family in a ceremony. And an uncle came out, by then the lockdown was loosening up a little bit, and so a traditional healer came out from her family, came to Seattle and did a welcoming baby ceremony for a whole circle of families who'd been served by this team of Doulas. And I'm practically wanting to cry right now thinking about it because they invited me and a couple of other elders to come in to be a part of it. And it was such an honor to see this ceremony and to be a part of it. And that's something that 20 years ago, I don't think any of us would imagine would happen in this city. It's super powerful. And it's possible everywhere. And it's happening in other places. I don't want it ever to sound like Seattle's the only one doing this.

Leah Lemm:
It can happen anywhere and for anyone too, imagine that.

Shelley Means:
Absolutely.

Leah Lemm:
Daniel, I'm like really pleased and I want to make sure we're cognizant of our guest's time, so do you have any kind of wrap up questions or anything like that you want to make sure that we get to?

Daniel Lemm:
I can ask the general question. And that is, Shelley, when we started the conversation, one of the first things we tried to do is date the last time that we saw each other and talked and however long that has actually been, I think we could agree it's been too long. And one of the things that I've appreciated in this conversation is that it's like we can just pick up and start talking again, even though it's been so long. And I think that's a testament to the way you build relationships and how you hold those. So that when we do get back together, we can pick up conversations and move forward within them. So the question that I'd ask you here, Shelley, is there anything we haven't talked about or additional thoughts that you would want to share given the conversation that we just had?

Shelley Means:
The one part of my work that I haven't really lifted up, that I want to take a second to do, because it is connected to how I even know you, Daniel, is with Native Voices Rising, it's one of my little connections still to philanthropy. I think when I first met you with Native Americans in Philanthropy, I went into it thinking I want to learn more about how to be in relationship with money and funders and that sort of thing, and I learned so much. And this Native Voices Rising is the place where I took this sharp right from thinking, "Maybe I want to work in a foundation?" And really, I don't want to work in a foundation because I feel like that's another Western structure that is all about silos and corporate, et cetera, and it's not my style.

Shelley Means:
But Native Voices Rising, it's participatory grant making, it's Native people reviewing the stories of Native organizations doing work in their communities. And yeah, we're in the middle of our current cycle pulling together these groups of people, and you know a lot of them Daniel, who are going to be reviewing. Social change happens when we get to be ourselves, when we get to bring our wisdom into things like grant making, into things like Western medicine. And the groups that we see coming through, it's not all the same groups all the time. We just got something like 120 applications from groups who've not been funded by Native Voices Rising since 2013, over the history of that project.

Shelley Means:
And to me, it just means there's a lot of visionary work being done on the ground all across Indian country. And I'm just excited about it. I'm not sure what else I want to say about it, but it's a piece of a bit of work, a lot of work that I'm just so excited to still be a part of lifting up communities, people doing work in their communities from this place of Indigenous knowledge.

Daniel Lemm:
Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, Shelley. I know Native Voices Rising was just coming into being as I was transitioning to work at another organization from Native Americans in Philanthropy. So really, I'm excited that the work continues and it continues to grow. That's Nativevoicesrising.org is the website. And we'll make sure we put the link in this show notes.

Shelley Means:
Nice.

Leah Lemm:
Absolutely. Well, great, Shelley. This was really beautiful and thank you for sharing so much. I think it is a really special conversation.

Shelley Means:
It was fun. I appreciate it so much. I still am feeling a little awkward about talking about myself because it's really that work is really, it's so much knowledge out there that I've gotten to be in contact with and got to learn from across my lifetime. And I want you two to come visit me in Seattle.

Leah Lemm:
Okay.

Shelley Means:
Open invitation.

Leah Lemm:
All right.

Shelley Means:
Because you said 2015?

Daniel Lemm:
Yeah.

Shelley Means:
Wow. So let's not wait seven years.

Daniel Lemm:
Right. We'll check out the ferry schedule. And it has been, I think about even that long since I've been in Seattle and going Tulalip. I know I spent quite a bit of time up in that area too. So I love the Pacific Northwest. It's one of the three places where, if we didn't live in Minnesota, I could see the Pacific Northwest certainly being a place. It's so beautiful there. Yeah. That sounds good, Shelley, to get together again soon

Leah Lemm:
We can take the train out there.

Daniel Lemm:
That's right.

Shelley Means:
Right.

Leah Lemm:
[inaudible 00:56:33] about it already.

Daniel Lemm:
The Empire Builder.

Shelley Means:
Yeah. There you go. The Empire Builder. Change the name first.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah.

Daniel Lemm:
Well, we are going to take you up on that, Shelley. And thank you very much for your time and your wisdom and your stories. It's so very appreciated.

Shelley Means:
Well, it's so good to see you both. This is great. So I'll look forward to listening to the podcast.

Leah Lemm:
Absolutely. Okay take care.

Daniel Lemm:
Okay. Thanks.

Leah Lemm:
Shelley Means, community consultant, two decades, part of a collaborative focusing on improving infant mortality rates. Incredible. I love the work and I love how she integrates Indigenous values, both in the collective organizational style of her work, and also the work itself.

Daniel Lemm:
Yeah. And how she talked about what drives her. Treatment of Native people by medical professionals, or maybe mistreatment of Native people by medical professionals. Separation of people from the land. Just having that as a basis for the work that she does. I think that's part of what, coming into this conversation, I learned so much. I learn so much from Shelley every time that we talk, so I just appreciate what she shared with us and the work that she does to improve infant and maternal health. And we definitely have to go see her.

Leah Lemm:
Yeah, that's our reason to go to Seattle.

Daniel Lemm:
We are talking with so many great people. We want to say that your input matters too. Do you know someone who's working on systems change or centering Indigenous values, or do you have a topic or interview suggestion? If so, then email wisdomcontinuum@gmail.com.

Leah Lemm:
Find Wisdom Continuum online wisdomcontinuum.com. Thank you to Wisdom Continuum's consulting producer, Multitude and miigwech to Manda Lillie for the production help. I'm Leah.

Daniel Lemm:
I'm Daniel. This is Wisdom Continuum.