Railbelt Mental Health & Addictions

Nenana Wellness CoalitionMINUTES

November 28, 20056

 The Nenana Wellness Coalition is an alliance of representatives from various organizations, government agencies, community groups and individuals that meets weekly to discuss, evaluate, coordinate, consolidate and help implement plans for improving the wellness and quality of life in Nenana Alaska.

Meeting Times: Every Tuesday at Noon at the Nenana Student Living Center

    

Meeting was attended by nine people this week: Donald Charlie, Maryellen Kanyurak, Ken Eggleston, Tim Horn, Earl Polk, Bonnie Reed, Paul Verhagen, Ray Fox and Kat McElroy. Mike Anderson popped in and out to ask about a donation to Operation Ho Ho Ho. We had bean soup and corn bread provided by Railbelt; Bonnie brought home-made brownies.

 

WELCOME & READING OF MISSION STATEMENT: By this week’s chairperson, Bonnie Reed.

 

PRAYER: lead by Paul Verhagen, followed by the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIENCE.

 

PRESENTATION OF AGENDA & CALL FOR MODIFICATIONS: Tim asked to be added to speak about the Arthritis Foundation Exercise Training if there’s time.

 

APPROVAL OF MINUTES: by voice approval. Kat submitted minutes to the WIN e-list Tuesday afternoon; there was no call for revisions.

 

INTRODUCTION OF GUESTS: There were no guests present today. We did have a lively discussion about exercise, health and fitness. Ken mentioned that he continues eating high protein/low carb, his weight has dropped to 195, and he has been working out daily, tread-milling, 30 minutes every day and then jogging for about five minutes. He said that he has installed a VCR player so he can watch taped reruns of Northern Exposure while he works-out. Paul said that he has been walking 15 minutes a day, and he admired Ken for sticking to his routine. Earl said that he uses steam house for ridding his body of toxins. He mentioned that there are youth at NSLC dealing with weight issues, borderline diabetic. He wants to build a more efficient steam “to get really hot, hot enough, like traditional steam houses.”  Kat said that she continues tread-milling 30 minutes each day. She, too, is impressed with Ken’s dedication. She said that Railbelt has purchased a load of pedometers and wants to get them into the community to encourage people to increase their activity levels. Earl would like some for NSLC students. There is a large interest in exercise and fitness in our community.

           

SPEAKERS/TOPICS

 

            Harm Reduction – Kat McElroy gave a presentation on The Politics & The Personal: Harm Reduction conference she attended in Oakland California. She said how good it was for her to be in the company of so many people who see addiction and other self-harming behaviors in a social justice context and who have dedicated their lives to working with people to alleviate the harm in any way possible. She spoke about several workshops she attended. One was a series of workshops by The Real Cost of Prisons Project. http://realcostofprisons.org/  She mentioned a series of comic books they have put out that depict the cost on humans, families and communities of the widespread incarceration currently experienced in USA. She has ordered one hundred each of these comic books to get out into our communities and hopes they will generate discussion about other ways than incarceration of dealing with self-harm. Some of the statistics she learned in these workshops: since the War on Drugs began in the 70’s our prison population has crept up from 180,000 then to over 2.2 million today—an 8-fold increase in 30 years. In comparison, at the height of the Soviet purges, Stalin only managed to incarcerate 1.7 million Russian citizens. The vast majority of these prisoners are incarcerated for drug/alcohol-related offenses. Our nation spends 53 billion dollars a year on jails and prisons. That money could be more effective if put into treatment, education, job skills and job placement programs, parenting programs, etc.

 

Discussion ensued regarding alternative sentencing and our various communities’ efforts to intervene in these dynamics. Paul asked, “What alternatives do we have, really?” He said that he feels shackled. “We have very little wiggle room.” He spoke of his efforts to make changes. “We need to be thinking of other things. Most of all, the whole community has to come together in the same direction. We can’t have one group saying and feeling one way and another group maybe paying lip service to the idea but then enabling the bad behaviors, maybe because it’s an issue they deal with themselves.”

 

Earl said “Traditionally we had a three-tiered system in place to deal with problem behaviors. First, a talk by one of your close relatives. If that didn’t work, a community council would come together, with the Elders especially, speaking directly to the person. If that didn’t work, banishment. Which results in the loss forever of all your relationships. That’s a big deal. Usually it wouldn’t have to come to that, because the first two interventions would cause you to stop and think and change the behavior.” Earl spoke of  Judge Cummings, in Bethel, who brought Western Best Practices and Traditional understandings and beliefs together into a program that translated into English as New Beginnings which has been successful. He said it is something the kids can relate to because it is done in their own homes, on-site, outreach. Earl said one of the methods they use is story-telling. “It opens doors.” Discussion ensued regarding the varying different attitudes people have about alcohol and drug use.

 

Paul said that the presiding judge in Fairbanks loves the NSLC and has had several conversations with the chief judge about our successes there, who will be touring NSLC this Spring, in March or April.  He said, “There is no way that I can experiment outside the parameters of our judicial system. But if there is anyway that we can work together, let’s use that gate.”

 

Donald talked about having to go to court in Old Minto, when he was eight years old. “For shooting a bird with a sling shot. The whole town was there, all the Elders, my parents, neighbors. Just like Earl says. I never shot another bird, that’s for sure.”

 

Kat went on to speak about the Housing First workshop that she attended highlighting demonstration projects in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington that are having good success working with homeless chronic inebriates, addicts and chronically mentally ill people. They are seeing a dramatic increase in health and safety, increases in attendance and participation in medical, mental health and substance abuse treatment service appointments, a decrease in crime, decrease in alcohol/drug use—just by providing safe stable housing. This fits what Kat has seen professionally, that housing is a number one priority need for people struggling with addiction issues.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

            Health Fair Surveys – We did not have time to talk about this so will defer it to next week. Tim Horn will also then speak about the Arthritis Foundation Exercise Training      

 

WELLNESS THOUGHT

Everywhere you go, there you are.
–Anonymous       

UPDATES/ANNOUNCEMENTS: None, no time.

 

OPEN FLOOR FOR COMMENTS/QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION: None.

 

ADJOURNMENT: About 2:10 P.M.

Nenana Wellness Coalition

Minutes

November 21, 2006

 The Nenana Wellness Coalition is an alliance of representatives from various organizations, government agencies, community groups and individuals that meets weekly to discuss, evaluate, coordinate, consolidate and help implement plans for improving the wellness and quality of life in Nenana Alaska.

Meeting Times: Every Tuesday at Noon at the Nenana Student Living Center

    

There were 13 people in attendance for meeting this week including: Kat McElroy, Ray Fox, Rachel Phillips, Kris Capps, Maryellen Kanayurak, Miles Martin, Mike Anderson, Rob Thomason, Earl Polk, April Mudge and three students from UAF who came to speak to students at NSLC about their experiences going to college. The only name I caught was Joel Forbes. We had turkey soup and turkey sandwiches for lunch.

 

WELCOME and READING OF MISSION STATEMENT by this week’s chairperson, Kat McElroy.

 

PRAYER was led by Rob Thomason followed by the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIENCE

 

There was no call for modifications to the agenda and the minutes were approved per electronic submission.

 INTRODUCTION OF GUESTS—Rachel Phillips introduced Kris Capps from Healy 

SPEAKERS/TOPICS

Happenings in Healy—Kris Capps wears many hats in Healy. She is a writer for the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer and has a regular column highlighting the happenings in the Denali Borough and works for the Denali School District in their Service Learning program. She explained that picking up litter would be community service but picking up litter and deciding how to organize a recycling effort would be service learning. She came specifically today to speak about various Wellness efforts in her area. She has written a grant to get funding for a part-time (10 hour per week) wellness coordinator position in Healy to run from January to June, 2007. Her vision is that this will morph into a fulltime position. It will consist primarily of building a web-site, doing monthly newsletters and organizing one or two wellness activities in each community in the borough. She shared many ideas she has for promoting wellness and safety and discussed ways that our various communities, business and service agencies could partner. Partnering doesn’t mean Doing It For Free, she emphasized, but rather building on one another’s strengths.

Kris also gave a slide show depicting local wellness efforts. She talked about the success they’ve experienced with the Kids Don’t Float at Otto Lake and described the process she experienced creating and implementing water safety programs. She got funding for training of high school students around water safety issues and then helped the HS students teach junior high students who in turn taught elementary students, utilizing strategies like Water Safety Bingo and Self-Rescue skill-building. She was able to get a US Olympic Gold Medal winner and coach to come to Healy to teach kayaking and to do community presentations. She expects to be able to fuind funding to bring them back again next year. She said that she had sponsors chasing her, “Because it got to be such a community event.” Discussion ensued regarding ways to create that kind of community-wide excitement and buy-in for wellness activities. She described the river festival last summer including down river races, wild-water rodeo and slalom races in a rooster tail rapids. Next year, Denali Outdoor Center (one of their local commercial sponsors) will have space at Otto Lake for youth from all over to stay during the events.

Cantwell and Healy want to get Ski Programs going for their communities. It was also noted that people want avalanche safety, snow safety and snow-machine safety. Miles was interested to know how this could be tied into tourism. Discussion ensued regarding the highway Companions meeting slated fro Nenana Tripod Days weekend. He and Kris brainstormed various speakers that might be appropriate for that venue, tying economic development, tourism, wellness and outdoor adventure together.  Harm Reduction Conference—Report from Oakland conference, Kat McElroy passed out some literature she brought back regarding the prison industry and the ineffectiveness of the “War On Drugs” so far as stopping drug use or making safer communities. We were short of time so she will make her formal presentation later. 

Health Fair Surveys—Tally of the surveys from NCPS, WIN, Dancing in the Streets, Seniors and the general community indicate that the top issues across all domains in our community seem to be: stress management, depression, weight control, fitness/exercise, alcohol/drug abuse, and suicide. Again, for lack of time, we will need to discuss this at a later date.

 The students from UAF will be speaking this afternoon to students at the Nenana Student Living Center. April did an interview-style panel discussion with them, exploring what motivates them to pursue higher education, what’s hard about college life, what’s fun or good about it and what their areas of study are.  They talked about learning their Native language, about music classes, and about student life. April disclosed that she is currently enrolled in classes at UAF and talked a little bit about what it is like to be a returning student after staying at home to be a mother to her two children.  

ADJOURNMENT was at 2:00 PM.

Nenana Wellness Coalition

Minutes

November 14, 2006

 The Nenana Wellness Coalition is an alliance of representatives from various organizations, government agencies, community groups and individuals that meets weekly to discuss, evaluate, coordinate, consolidate and help implement plans for improving the wellness and quality of life in Nenana Alaska. 

There were 9 people in attendance today including Bonnie Reed, Tim Horn, Carl Horn, Laura Vance, Mike Anderson, Earl Polk, Miles Martin, Paul Verhagen and Donald Charlie.

 

We had a salmon and cheese casserole for lunch, cooked by Kat.

 

Paul Verhagen chaired the meeting.

 

PRAYER lead by Paul Verhagen and was followed by the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIENCE

 

There was no formal agenda presented. Paul called for agenda modifications and Health Fair, Arthritis Foundation, and Operation Ho, Ho, Ho was added to agenda

 

INTRODUCTION OF GUESTS: There were no guests, no special visitors this week.

 

           

SPEAKERS/TOPICS

           

Health Fair – Tim Horn gave an update on how the Health Fair is going. She collected surveys from the community and school and mentioned that Kat volunteered to compile the data. She noted that she kept surveys collected from community and students separate so we could see the results from the different populations of the community. Tim informed that there will be a training on January 24-26^th on Anchorage for anyone who wants to learn how to put on a health fair. She said it was the same training Karen Lord, Teresa Mayrand, and Rhonda Coghill were scheduled to attend last year, but had to cancel due to weather conditions. She mentioned that there was a sponsorship available that covered room and board but not the cost of the training, and also mentioned that a stipulation of the sponsorship was for whoever received it to put on a health fair within the year after the training or they would have to pay back the money. Tim discussed the possibility of people able to attend the training. She mentioned that she would be willing to go, or that maybe Robin Coghill would be a good candidate if she was interested and that the Native Council might sponsor her. Don Charlie mentioned that he would look at his schedule to see it would be possible for him to attend. Tim also wondered if the health fair was something wellness was still interested in pursuing at this time and the overall feeling of the group was that it was. There was discussion on when it should be held. Tim gave the idea of sometime in spring. Paul suggested setting a tentative date in February. There was discussion on where to hold fair, possibly the school or civic center. Carl gave the idea of hosting it during Tri-pod days in order to insure good attendance. The initial thought was Tri-pod days would be too busy but after some discussion it might be possible depending on room in the building. Miles suggested talking to Cherrie Forness about civic center during Tri-pod days. Tim mentioned tabling discussion until Rob Tomlinson was in attendance to put school input in. Tim was asked to give an overview of health fair again, she told us out of the 5 displays we pick, they will provide three from our list and that they would help us coordinate the fair, and then other entities would bring their booths and information to the health fair as well. Following this there was some discussion on other displays that might be at fair, and how much room would be needed in case having it during tri-pod days was possible. It was pointed out that the civic center would not be an option to hold health fair during end of March and through April due to Nenana Ice-Classic ticket counting and sorting.  

 

Arthritis Foundation – Report by Tim Horn. Last week, John Martie with the Tanana Chiefs came to Nenana and gave training on an exercise program for people with arthritis or for anyone with joint pain or in need of low impact exercise. Tim shared that the training lasted from about 9am-1pm and that 5 people attended, and that those who attended are now trained to be exercise leaders. Tim has put up flyers around town to see what kind of community interest there is. The exercise program is set up to run twice a week for eight weeks, but Bonnie mentioned that it could be longer if the interest were there. Tim said they’re hoping to start sometime after Thanksgiving. The five that were trained are Bonnie Reed, Tim Horn, Carol Hallow, Vicki, and Traci Wiggins.

 

Operation HO,HO,HO – Report by Laura Vance. Operation Ho, Ho, Ho is a community outreach project that Railbelt does every Christmas which brings food boxes and toys to families in need around the community of Nenana. Laura mentioned that she has started working on this year’s Christmas box list and that if anyone knows of a family that might need to be added to the list to let her know. She also mentioned that she’s hoping to have the list of children who will be receiving presents done by the end of the week in order to give it to the Student Council of Nenana High School so that they could get started on the Angel Tree. Laura explained that the Angel Tree was a Christmas Tree in the Nenana High School that had pieces of paper containing the age and gender of a child on it. The community could then go take one of these papers off the tree and buy a gift for that child. The gifts are then brought to Railbelt and passed out with the Christmas boxes. Mike Anderson said he would be available to help pass out Christmas boxes again this year. Paul said his family is also available to help again this year.

 

Nenana Student Living Center –Earl Polk mentioned that there would be about 20 students staying at the living center over the Thanksgiving holiday. He said Virginia Young was going to try to put on a holiday dinner for them, and was wondering if anyone else had ideas for a holiday dinner for the students or might want to help Virginia with this task. He reported that there is a big flu outbreak at the NSLC at the moment, and they’re doing their best to stay steam bathed and healthy. Earl also spoke more on the idea of a student exchange program in Nenana, and is looking into what possibilities there are around the state for this type of program. The idea is for students to experience different backgrounds, culture, and information sharing. The students would be ambassadors in a way, building bridges between not only different cultures and towns around the state, but the different cultures we have here in Nenana. With the idea to start local, having NSLC students stay with families located in Nenana.  Paul mentioned that it was more of a student experience exchange. Earl shared that there was a women (Susan P.) in Fairbanks who has a local language program (Athabascan) who might be able to help as well, in an attempt to preserve the local language around Nenana and other parts of the interior that is being lost. Miles asked if there was any meetings going on at the moment in regards to student exchange and Earl mentioned that it was still in the early planning stages. Miles discussed the idea of taking the program a step further and have students learn a trade by working with local artists and craftsmen.

 

           

OLD BUSINESS—Tim mentioned that the Sobriety Potlatch was great, and Bonnie said that Orie did a wonderful job speaking. Don mentioned that he was happy to hear this because he had been working around Orie’s schedule for a couple months to make sure he could come and speak. It was good to hear that he was an enjoyable speaker.

   

NEW BUSINESS—Paul shared that he received an invitation from the bar association to see what communities would be interested in doing mock trails. He mentioned that it’s usually kids from larger towns who participate and that this is an attempt to include students from areas that have been unrepresented in the past. They are looking into training kids in our local areas interested in the law field and then have them compete in Anchorage. There was discussion on the demographic of student that would be interested in this type of training. Earl mentioned that this might be good for those students interested in speech and debate, but also pointed out that because of some student’s culture it might be hard to participate in something like this. Mike agreed and also brought up the question of funding. Would there be funding for them to stay in Anchorage, or what kind of funding would be available. Paul asked the group to get back to him with ideas or if there seemed to be interest.

     

UPDATES/ANNOUNCEMENTS—Tim asked if the community dinner was tonight and Mike said that it was. He was making rice with hamburger.

 

OPEN FLOOR FOR COMMENTS/QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION— Paul shared that the court house clerk, Julie Kratzer, got trampled while feeding reindeer. She was pretty banged up, but at home and doing alright.

 

ADJOURNMENT at 1:45 PM.