“It Makes My Heart Smile When I Hear Them Say, ‘Hi Grandpa, We’re Home!’”: Relationality, Alaska Native Wellbeing and Self Determination in Tribal Child Protection

Abstract

Before colonization, Indigenous child protection looked like an interdependent community. Indigenous knowledges and relational actions kept all within its fold safe and well. Colonial dispossession of land, degradation of subsistence rights, boarding schools, ongoing child removal, capitalism, and systems of oppression attempted to disconnect Indigenous peoples from their language, lands, ceremonial practices, stories, dances, songs, family, community, and themselves. However, Indigenous communities have held on, persevered, and have begun to turn the tide of intergenerational trauma through the revival of Indigenous wellness and self-determination. We believe local-based Indigenous relational knowledges can end colonial harm and promote wellbeing for all families and children. Our work builds off an Indigenous Connectedness Framework that recognizes the importance of the interrelated wellbeing of a person, family, community, ancestors/future generations, and the Earth. This framework was adapted based on community feedback to better fit the Nome Eskimo Community (NEC) and Bering Strait regional context. This paper shares results of community focus groups that led to the creation of a NEC Piaġiq (wellness) Framework, and shares intentions for pilot implementation of a wellness curriculum and pilot intervention. We will offer insights and lessons learned. We believe self-determined Indigenous wellbeing efforts can lead to improved outcomes for our sacred children and families for generations to come.

1. Introduction

1.1. Healing Intergenerational Trauma

Alaska Native health has been inextricably impacted by more than three hundred years of perpetual colonialism. Settler colonial policies, aimed at assimilation and erasure, intentionally sought to interrupt one of the great strengths of Alaska Native communities: intergenerational connectedness. These policies, including the federal Indian boarding schools (Native American Rights Fund 2019), the Allotment Act of 1906 (Black 2015), and relocation (Miller 2013) were carefully designed to separate individuals from their families, their culture, traditions and customs, their land-based connection and ways of life. The wounds resulting from such severance have been recognized as stretching across generations (Brave Heart et al. 2011; Evans-Campbell 2008; Running Bear et al. 2019), and health interventions that neglect to address these disruptions have proven largely unsuccessful (Wilbur et al. 2024). Culturally rooted interventions, often initiated by communities themselves, have achieved greater success at mitigating the harms of colonialism, often through strengthening and re-connecting people to each other, culture, community, language, spirituality and land-and-water-based ways of life (Donovan et al. 2015; Gone and Calf Looking 2015).

The need to address the harms of colonialism remains pressing around the world. Reconciliation—particularly in relation to the apprehension of Indigenous children from their families—has only just begun, and in many cases, it cannot truly occur while colonial policies of disconnection and separation persist. The child welfare system remains a primary mechanism for the continued removal of Indigenous children from their families, communities, and cultures (Fallon et al. 2021). In Canada, Indigenous children are still being taken from their caregivers at rates even higher than during the infamous Sixties Scoop, when mass apprehensions led to were part of a national assimilation policy (Sinclair 2007; Statistics Canada 2022). Today, the Millennium Scoop refers to the over 53.7% of children in government care in Canada who are Indigenous, despite Indigenous peoples comprising just 5% of the national population (Fallon et al. 2021; Statistics Canada 2022). Similar patterns are evident elsewhere. In Australia, the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children resulted from discriminatory child welfare practices (National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Australia) 1997); O’Donnell et al. 2019). In New Zealand, Māori children have also been systematically removed from their families by state agencies (Office of the Children’s Commissioner 2020). The United States has a parallel history—and ongoing reality—of Indigenous child removal (Carter 2009; Crofoot and Harris 2012; Roehrkasse 2021; Waubanascum and Sarche 2023). Across these nations, colonization has disproportionately placed Indigenous children in foster care, often based on assessments rooted in the values and norms of dominant, non-Indigenous populations (Gatwiri et al. 2019). This global overrepresentation provides critical context for research focused on reconnecting children with their families, communities, cultures, and languages. Indigenous scholars have long called for methodologies that not only highlight the strengths of Indigenous families and communities but also approach research itself as a decolonizing practice (Kovach 2021; Smith 1999; Tuck 2009; Wilson 2008). Culturally grounded interventions—and the research that supports them—are increasingly recognized as essential for intergenerational healing (Black et al. 2024; Kyoon Achan et al. 2021).

1.2. Indigenous Pedagogies (Teaching Approaches) and Evaluative Measures of Success

A similar set of dynamics have shaped the role of education within Alaska Native communities. Historically, for many Alaska Native peoples, education was grounded in and supportive of intergenerational, familial, community, and place-based connections. Education often occurred in family settings, highlighted cultural and spiritual values, and incorporated storytelling (e.g., with Elders), experiential learning (e.g., out on the land), and other culturally grounded mechanisms for teaching (Barnhardt 2001). In the 19th and 20th centuries federal education policy not only disrupted this educational orientation toward connection but used education to actively tear families and communities apart (Barnhardt 2001). Policies like the 1819 Civilization Fund Act and the 1887 Compulsory Indian Education Act had diverse colonial impacts, including in the ways they reoriented communities toward ‘civilizing’ Western values; decreased connections to land by forcing new ties to centralized community living; and paved the way for a boarding school system that separated families, exposed children to abuse and life-threatening conditions, and engaged in practices of forced assimilation (Barnhardt 2001). These traumas created a rupture in Indigenous ways of parenting (Bombay et al. 2011). While subsequent sets of policies have increased Tribal control over education, many communities still engage in Western and classroom-based forms of teaching and learning that subtly exert colonial influence (Sabzalian 2019). Curricula, teaching approaches, and even educators are often imported to Alaska Native communities in ways that downplay or entirely exclude Indigenous knowledge and language, the role of Elders in transmitting knowledge, and the importance of place-based, experiential knowledge (Williamson and Vizina 2017). These omissions led to a decline in language fluency, and reduced participation in cultural singing and dancing.

Fortunately, educational theories and pedagogical approaches are (re-)emerging from Indigenous and Alaska Native communities, which seek to reconnect these communities to historical teaching and learning practices that support healthy connections to land, family, and community. This work has drawn upon and produced a broad range of educational philosophies, including critical and anti-racist pedagogies, culture-based education, place conscious teaching, two-eyed seeing and two-worlds teaching approaches, Indigenous pedagogies, and much more (Burke et al. 2019; Jokela and Coutts 2018; Keskitalo et al. 2020; Lynch et al. 2017; Määttä and Uusiautti 2015, 2019; Salusky et al. 2022; Snow et al. 2018; Tuck and Yang 2011). At their core these approaches focus on problematizing existing power hierarchies within educational institutions, and on producing space for Indigenous epistemologies in the classroom. Indigenous pedagogies, in particular, have emphasized the importance of teaching practices that are relational, facilitated by people with lived experience, mindful of the needs of learners, engaged with storytelling practices, repetitive, mindful of spiritual and cultural points of view, and grounded in cultural activities that support connectedness (Lees and Bang 2023; Macdonald et al. 2024; Maclean and Wason-Ellam 2006; Vance et al. 2025). In addition to this advancement in Indigenous educational theory, there has been a concurrent movement to develop Indigenous teacher training programs, to ensure that communities have the capacity to effectively Indigenize their educational systems (Beaton et al. 2019; Lewthwaite and Connell 2018; Moore and Galway 2018; Tulloch and Moore 2018). While much of this work has been carried out in the context of formal education, it offers many lessons for implementing other educational interventions including those oriented toward wellness.

Indigenous scholars and practitioners have also highlighted the need to evaluate Indigenized education, and other interventions, in more appropriate ways. As an academic tradition, Indigenous evaluation first emerged in the 1960s and 1970s (Hurworth and Harvey 2012; Waapalaneexkweew and Dodge-Francis 2018). Early influences included work in culturally responsive evaluation (CRE); Tribally driven participatory research; and a diverse set of critical scholarship including critical race theory (CRT), Tribal critical theory, and Indigenous and decolonization methods (Waapalaneexkweew and Dodge-Francis 2018). This work responded to a long history of excluding Indigenous perspectives from the design and implementation, from start to finish, particularly within health interventions (Goforth et al. 2022). This not only divorces the outcomes of an intervention from community goals but also works to undermine Indigenous sovereignty and expand colonialism through interventions (Cram 2018; Goforth et al. 2022). Evaluation was seen as one—of multiple—sites within research that could be Indigenized to reassert Tribal sovereignty over research processes and outcomes (Johnston-Goodstar 2012).

To assert these changes to evaluation, Indigenous evaluators have had to grapple with tensions between the epistemological, ontological, axiological (ethical), and methodological views of Western and Indigenous perspectives on evaluation (Shepherd and Graham 2020). The result has been the growth of Indigenous evaluation frameworks that emphasize priorities including respect; relationship-building and relational accountability; the centering of community strengths, wellness, and sovereignty; the acknowledgment of the importance of place and local context; and more (Cram 2018). This work also acknowledges the importance of building the capacity of Indigenous communities to engage in and lead evaluation processes. Over the past decade the field has seen much greater attention from academia, practitioners, and policymakers (Waapalaneexkweew and Dodge-Francis 2018), yet many challenges endure. A primary challenge is that core tensions remain between Indigenous evaluation approaches and the structural requirements of many federal grant programs in the United States (Grover 2010). A majority of Indigenous health programs continue to exclude robust program evaluations, much less evaluations grounded in Indigenous perspectives, due to continued negative views of evaluation within communities and the lack of impact they have on facilitating funding opportunities (Lokuge et al. 2017). There is, therefore, considerable need for more work that explores how to develop and implement Indigenous evaluation in ways that simultaneously furthers community goals and sovereignty while appealing to funders that might support the long-term sustainability of effective programs.

1.3. Background of the Indigenous Connectedness Framework and Theory Building

In response to concerns of AN child removal and maltreatment and related factors such as alcohol misuse, Alaska Tribal leaders, Elders, and Indigenous scholars asked the first author to partner with them on a study to identify key factors and mechanisms to promote Indigenous child wellbeing. Through a literature review, “connectedness” stood out as a central construct in a unifying framework. AN community scholars and researchers defined connectedness as the interrelated wellbeing of an individual, family, community, and the Earth, and these connectedness relationships were highlighted in several other Indigenous wellbeing models (Ullrich 2019).

The Indigenous wellbeing literature review prompted the development of a draft Indigenous Connectedness (IC) Framework (Ullrich 2019). The IC Framework was then updated after qualitative interviews with 25 AN people, who we refer to as knowledge bearers, with lived experience of the Alaska state child welfare system (Ullrich 2020). The IC Framework includes cultural, spiritual, and intergenerational connectedness and depicts the influence of connectedness on a child’s relational identity. The IC Framework includes relational or cultural practices which are the mechanisms of connectedness and demonstrates what Indigenous connectedness can cultivate with respect to a child’s relational identity. Knowledge bearers stressed the importance of acknowledging multiple traumas that happened at multiple levels, so this was included in the updated IC Framework as well (Ullrich 2020). Overall, knowledge bearers shared ideas about healing, fostering connectedness relationships, and supporting children’s internal connectedness as relational human beings (Ullrich 2020). They advised that children should be provided with enough connectedness activities in their life to outweigh life’s challenges and the ongoing threats of colonialism, to promote resilience and strength, and to prevent trauma from creating a disconnection within themselves and others. Creating opportunities for children, families, and communities to develop connectedness could provide the “relational medicine” to allow people to be their authentic selves and share their gifts in mutually beneficial ways. Other studies have demonstrated that connectedness to culture is associated with decreased risk of substance use, suicide, and depression in AI/AN Peoples (Allen et al. 2018; Bogic et al. 2024; Masotti et al. 2023).

1.4. Asserting Tribal Self-Determination

The development and iterative tailoring of the Indigenous Connectedness Framework and its potential applications within community are important actions of Tribal self-determination. Self-determination is most frequently evoked in relation to Tribes and Indigenous Peoples within academic spaces in reference to the period of Federal Indian policy known as “Self-Determination”. The period extended from 1961 to 1985 and was characterized by increased acknowledgement of Tribal sovereignty and a greater emphasis on federal trust responsibilities (Deloria 1995). The period drew its name from the 1975 Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act which enabled greater control by Tribes over internal education and health programs. Today, academic work in health and health-adjacent fields primarily uses self-determination terminology in relation to health policy and formal engagement between Tribal, federal, and state governments around program and service development, implementation, and resource allocation (Prucha 1986). The form of self-determination employed by Alaska Native Peoples through the development of the Indigenous Connectedness Framework is related but distinct from that usage, in that it refers to collective, community-decision making, outside of any formal association with federal Indian policy. This form of self-determination is used most frequently internally, within community rather than government or academic spaces, and references agency in decision making, in this case around what is valued as health promoting within Alaska Native epistemologies and cultural and relational value systems. In this way, the assertion of self-determination is a form of wellness as prevention.

1.5. Rural and Urban Considerations

Rural and urban communities have similarities and significant differences to be mindful of when working with Indigenous families. Both populations face benefits and drawbacks with access to family, community, culture, services, jobs, food, land and water. Families living in rural areas have the benefit of living among family, community, and potentially hearing their Indigenous language daily. Rural community members often see their culture being celebrated in their community. Every season there are opportunities to participate in subsistence activities that have sustained rural community members for generations. Hunting, fishing, and gathering these foods are essential for maintaining culture and wellness and are positively correlated to spiritual wellbeing (Halseth 2015; Inuit Circumpolar Council-Alaska 2015; Pufall et al. 2011; Tsuji et al. 2023). Living and caring for traditional homelands and waters are also essential to wellness and something rural families can participate in regularly (Ahmed et al. 2021; Tsuji et al. 2023). These activities are much more inaccessible for families living in urban areas (Hatala et al. 2024; Josewski et al. 2023). Urban families must be more intentional and resourceful when it comes to obtaining traditional foods and living in a positive relationship with the earth. However urban living has its advantages as well, with access to healthcare, grocery stores, employment opportunities, and infrastructure such as reliable internet, utilities, and running water/sewer are all readily accessible. Families living in rural or urban areas may have different life skills and social, historical and cultural knowledge.

1.6. Positionality of Our Research Team

Author 1 is a Nome Eskimo Community (NEC) Tribal member, has a child welfare background, developed the IC Framework, and uses CBPR to delineate Indigenous values, culture and spirit, and relational worldviews to inform interventions. Author 2 is a social scientist with over 15 years of experience engaging in participatory research with Indigenous communities. Author 3 is a Tolowa and Chetco descendant and has a background in public health and human biology and has worked with Tribal communities for over a decade to conduct strength-based and community-engaged research. Author 4 has extensive experience in working with underrepresented communities to address social, societal, and structural determinants of health. Author 5 has worked for decades with Inuit in Nunavut on child welfare prevention efforts. Author 6 is an American Indian social work student who has helped this team with prior Piaġiq efforts. Author 7, Author 8 and Author 9 are NEC Tribal members and leaders at NEC Family Services. NEC leaders have over 15 years of combined child welfare experience and co-led this research project.

2. Results

2.1. Demographics

A total of five sharing knowledge circles (focus groups) were held with Elders, parent/caregivers, and community leaders who were affiliated with NEC or had a connection to NEC in the Bering Strait region of Alaska. All participants identified as Alaska Native and were over the age of 18. A total of 25 knowledge bearers (participants) attended the sharing-knowledge circles. Tribal family services staff also sat in on the circles and contributed to the discussions. Four men participated and the rest were women or did not specify their gender. Our goal was to solicit community input and feedback on the creation of a wellness and prevention curriculum based on the Indigenous Connectedness Framework for the purpose of self-determined child welfare prevention efforts. We learned from community members what needed to be taught about NEC wellbeing through a cultural lens and how to teach about NEC wellbeing.

2.2. Themes

Our qualitative findings include two global themes (Knowing Who You Are and Where You Come From, and Spirituality), four organizing themes (Family, Community, Intergenerational and Land), and eight basic themes (Values, Roles and Responsibilities, Subsistence/Food, Language, Culture, Historical Knowledge, Wellness, and Teaching Approach). The global theme of NEC wellbeing represents the importance of spirituality and knowing who you are and where you come from as a real human being who is in connection with a collective. The organizing themes represent important relationships that can support wellbeing. The basic themes represent the relational actions that can influence the wellbeing of a person, family, land, community, past/future generations and the Earth. This wholistic worldview of wellbeing led to the adaptation of the Indigenous Connectedness Framework and resulted in the NEC Piaġiq (Wellness) Framework with Inupiaq translations. Our team hopes to later translate the NEC Piaġiq Framework into Siberian Yupik and Yupik in the future because many NEC Tribal members speak these language dialects. We share components of each theme and community knowledge bearer quotes that shaped our understanding of that particular theme. The quotes are attributed to each knowledge bearer’s self-selected alternate name so they can potentially read this article and identify themselves as the contributor of that quote. Each quote was edited to take out filler words such as ‘um’, ‘like,’ or ‘ah.’

2.2.1. Global Themes: Knowing Who You Are and Where You Come from and Spirituality

Knowing Who You Are and Where You Come from

The rough translation for the words ‘Inupiaq’ and ‘Yup’ik’ is the real human being. Many community knowledge bearers expressed how important it is to know who you are and where you come from as real human beings. Inupiaq and Yup’ik people are the majority of NEC’s Tribal citizens based on the relocation of Tribes to the Nome area, and the movement of families from surrounding smaller rural villages in the area to Nome. The core of a person’s identity as a real human being is linked to the land, family, community and past and future generations.

“It was a time of connecting to what our ancestors taught us in putting away food and just being who we are meant to be- living off the land and teaching our kids.”

The land teaches a person about who they are and how to live interdependently through a subsistence lifestyle. Being aware of who you are is linked to culture and results in a sense of peace that releases shame, uncertainty and doubt.

“Being at peace with who you are and where you come from and your culture and being Native is real important, I think.”

Wellbeing efforts need to help people know the truth about who they are as a unique person who is from a family, community and a special place on the planet. Colonization may have disrupted this sense of self in relation to others, and efforts should help community members reconnect and stay centered and grounded in their ancestral birth right.

“Greatness is in each of us. We’ve never been told that.”

Re-instilling pride in who you are and where you come from can become a source of intergenerational transmission of strength, love, resilience, and connectedness while acknowledging the stress, challenges and grief of past traumatic experiences. The process of knowing who you are is an acknowledgement of personal and collective consciousness that can prevent the use of unhealthy coping mechanisms.

“I feel that there has to be a balance of understanding where we came from, understanding what historically happened…but also knowing how we got out of it, where we’re going to, [and] remembering who we come from.”

Being well is not an individual pursuit alone, it’s a commitment to being interdependent and interconnected with other people on multiple levels.

“Well-being also means being proud of who you are as [Native American identity]. When you are proud of who you are, you want to impart that knowledge to your kids and your grandkids. When you don’t know who you are and where you come from, then there are coping mechanisms that affect how you behave in the future. Meaning because you don’t know who you are and where you come from, you mask all of those bad feelings with drugs and alcohol and, you know, whatever else. Well-being is knowing who you are, where you come from, and knowing how to live and cope.”

As one person is well, they help the collective be well. The self/collective actualization of community members brings greater awareness to actions that help end the generational cycles of child protection involvement in families.

“A success would definitely be breaking the cycle. We have generational CPS families…To break the cycle of it [we need to empower] our people to be who they are and where they come from, but to do it in a way that stops any [state child protection] involvement.”

A self-determined approach to helping Tribal members be well, heal from past traumas, and reconnect with the core of their being, beyond colonial constructs and lies, could prove to be the most effective.

The global theme of knowing who you are and where you come from as a real human being encompasses all the organizing and basic themes. Being grounded in this knowing means that each person realizes and remembers they are of a family, community, intergenerational lineage, and land. And these relationships are sustained through the fulfillment of roles and responsibilities, language, cultural practices, lived values, food/subsistence, and historical knowledge. Many of these relationships and activities overlap.

Spirituality

Spirituality emerged as a critical theme among community knowledge bearers. Community members spoke about the significance of how traditional activities and communication are all integral and interconnected in supporting spiritually, healing and wellness through connections to land, earth, water, and animals. In particular, the knowledge bearers spoke about how traditional land-based activities such as hunting fostered spirituality.

“We don’t just leave the gut pile there, of a wolf or wolverine or anything that we’re not gonna eat…If we’re not gonna eat it then we don’t just bring it to the dump. We bring it someplace to where the body is away from animals…and then we put the head towards the east. That way they can always see the sun rise. The spirituality of our game is really closer than what we can imagine. That’s our way of giving thanks to the game.”

Spirituality is also strengthened through activities such as berry picking, whether it takes place in a rural or urban setting because of the respect for the source that this food comes from.

“Whether I pick the berries on the land, or I pick them out of the store, that’s a spiritual activity. It means like, everything you do is spiritual, in a sense…so people in [City], I think they feel like they’re disconnected because they’re not on the land as much anymore, removed, but I think people need to understand that it’s everywhere.”

The land and spirit are ever present in rural and urban settings. The spiritual realm was understood and navigated through ancestral connections.

“Yeah. I feel like we, our ancestors were tapped into something very amazing, in terms of that spiritual realm and just knew how to navigate that…”

Everything was spiritual. Dances, songs, ceremonies, and activities involving family or community gatherings had spirituality incorporated into it.

“Our gatherings, like we’re doing now, is just a continuation on the gatherings that our ancestors did in [Village]. It’s a real neat feeling to know that we’re continuing on what our ancestors had done by doing it here.”

The traditional spiritual practices are still practiced in many families and communities to this day. Supernatural knowledge connected with spirituality was also taught and practiced within the community.

“One thing my aunt told me also is, when people got lost…they’d find an extra pair of their mukluks and put ’em up in the corner, and they’d look up there once in a while. If they’re still moving, they know they’re alive. Once they stop moving, they know they passed away. That’s what they did back then.”

Spiritual knowledge and spiritual practices provided an intuitive knowingness, protection, guidance, relief, and sometimes answers that could not otherwise be explained.

“My grandma had put weasel skull on the door one time. Maybe even pike jaw outside on the door. She did not—I’d ask her about it—she didn’t want anything bad to happen. Any bad spirit would go into the teeth of whatever she put up there would catch it and not let it go in.”

This form of spirit and spirituality was a vital aspect of personal and collective wellbeing.

Colonization created barriers for community members to learn and celebrate their spirituality when these traditions and the languages that contained the deeper meanings were forbidden. Spiritual knowledge is still being re-learned and connected with once again.

“To me I still feel like I’m still learning. I’m in the generation where I never spoke. We never danced. We never sung. None of that was taught in our school. I see it in our region. My kids are doing it in their schools now, which I’m very thankful for. Yeah. I still have a lot to learn, that’s for sure.”

The resurgence of spiritual practices is an essential component of personal and collective wellbeing. Spirituality is foundational to people knowing who they are and where they come from.

Spirituality is central to family, community, intergenerational and land-based relationships. Encouraging connection with Elders, sharing knowledge, reconnecting with community, and learning about language and history are all spiritual activities which can assist with self-discovery and healing.

“I think spirituality’s a big one. I kinda talk to my kids about it, or even myself. It’s a big part of wellness. How you communicate. A lot of things got tripped up there, so probably doesn’t happen as often as [it] could. Just being built into the way things were done. Now, we see ourselves doing things in a way that is in opposition to that in our day to day. We process so many values every day. Maybe acknowledging that. Maybe that’s why we bury things.”

Life and wellbeing involve an interdependent, relational, and spiritual energy that undergirds everything in existence. Spirituality is the common thread the binds the themes together and it is integral to health and wellness.

2.2.2. Organizing Themes: Family, Community, Intergenerational, Land

Family

Family relationships develop through the birth of children and go beyond biological ties. The identification and creation of family is an act of self-determination within many Indigenous Tribes.

“That’s precisely why, as a Tribe, we have the authority to say this person is an extended family member and we want our children placed with that person. Even though they’re not related. Even though they’re not, you know, we can say this person will take good care of our Tribal children.”

Families develop in various ways, such as cultural adoption. People within families often referred to each other as their familial role rather than by name.

“Yesterday there was an Elder that I called auntie, and she wasn’t my biological aunt…I was adopted into that large [Tribal] family. All of [her older] siblings are my aunties and uncles. I was raised with their kids.”

Even certain generations of people, Elders, parent caregivers and children were referred to as kin even if there were not biological connections. In some contexts, all older generations were called grandma or grandpa, all middle generations were called auntie and uncle, and all younger children were called cousins. Being a relative to one another enhances the connection because of the responsibility that comes with it.

Traditionally, Elder grandparents adopted their eldest grandchild and a couple community members spoke about their experience of being adopted or adopting their grandchildren.

“I was probably one of the last in our family to be raised in that traditional way where it wasn’t just a nuclear family, mom, dad, siblings. My mom and dad had me really young…They would leave me with my grandparents a lot and then my aunt was only eight years older than me, she was like a big sister to me…It is a real big difference between if you were raised with your grandparents.”

This intergenerational connection between Elders and youth provided an opportunity for cultural knowledge sharing to happen that has been passed down to this day.

Families provide a reciprocal and generative relationship with one another. These types of familial relationships promote a sense of wellbeing.

“Yeah. Wellness for me, I’m gonna say for my grandchildren. After school they come home and walk in the door and both will sing at the same time, “Hi, grandpa.” I can tell they love being home or love me saying welcome home. I put ’em to bed early, try to feed ’em a healthy diet and share my native food with them. They’re accepting that now, so I’m makin’ a positive impact on their new lifestyle if you will. It makes my heart smile when I hear them say, “Hi, grandpa. We’re home!” I can tell by the tone of their voice and, they’re smiling inside also. That’s really touching if you will.”

Family relationships support wellbeing through the mutual feelings of love, happiness, and joy from being with one another.

Many knowledge bearers shared how much it meant to them to be recognized by others in the region and community through their kinship networks. Family can provide belongingness through historical namesake connections with each other.

“Even with my daughter’s class I can recognize whose family they come from, the way they act, and who they’re named after…I mean I can see the characteristics within their namesake. It’s really interesting how that works, but it really lets you know the child. Just from the name, at first. Now that child is treated as that person, their namesake.”

When a child is named after a loved one in the community (who may have passed), this often establishes a relational responsibility between the baby and the relative of the person the baby was named after.

“It’s really how people are related to each other from their namesake. There are certain expectations from that namesake of that child that’s working for the well-being of a person since childbirth.”

Naming ceremonies are a tradition that has maintained family and community relationships for generations and helped people form a stronger identity. Children are not raised by 1 or 2 parents alone; they were raised by an entire family and community.

“I think about we live in these nuclear households, like I live with my husband and my three kids. We struggle. Every day is hard. I always wish sometimes that we were living like we were back in the day where we would be either with my mom’s household, my brother, and then us, and maybe even my aunt and her family. We would all be living together, and it would be so much easier.”

This traditional way of raising children has been disrupted for some families by the unspoken and individualistic parenting expectations placed on nuclear family households.

Child rearing is a shared responsibility. All relatives and adopted or referred to kin were caregivers for the children and the children were taught to rely on others besides their parents for their needs.

“…Growing up we were always at my grandma’s house. Always visiting my uncle. If we were at my grandma’s, all our aunties and uncles were there. We were raised not just by my mom or by my dad, there was everybody there helping. My mom never—and I even said that to her before I had kids, I said, “I don’t ever remember you making me feel like a burden.” She was like, “Yeah. You guys were easy.” I think it was because she had so much help.”

Collaborative caregiving is a key factor in helping children and parents feel less overwhelmed by daily life stressors. Some families may struggle with shared caregiving of children because capitalistic economic structures expect adult relatives (employees) to work an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. job.

“I feel like it’s just a constant juggling act of like, wanting to spend time with my niece and nephew, wanting to get work done. Wanting to be out on the land, go kayaking, be at home and just be. I don’t know how people do it.”

It will be important to take this dynamic of work and home life balance into consideration when engaging families in wellness activities and learning.

Overall, relational actions such as togetherness, historical knowledge, fulfillment of roles and responsibilities, namesakes, laughter, love, connection and mutual support provide an important foundation for a personal and collective healing, identity and sense of wellbeing.

“I really do believe as we heal ourselves, we’re healing our parents, our grandparents, great-grandparents. That’s really vital, but it’s just finding the time and emotional bandwidth to do it.”

Strengthening family relationships is a strategic way to promote personal and collective wellbeing.

Community

Communities often consist of a broader make up of families who are in close proximity with each other. Multiple social communities can also exist within a proximal community.

“I really feel like being a family or being a parent becomes less overwhelming when you have a community structure…like a safety network of people stepping in and out.”

The interdependence of community makes life better for families because of the network of mutual care and support that is provided.

When certain families are in greater need, then the community provides that pillar of support for that child, parent, and whole family’s care.

“It takes a whole community to raise a child. Everybody looking out for each other, and when a parent becomes a single parent for whatever reason. There’s people there that should be guiding them, and helping them, and helping them raise their children. Like it used to be.”

Care and support for one another aligns with traditional values that direct community members to step in to help when needed. It takes immense effort and time investment to create a sense of community.

“Circles are so powerful…whenever I’ve been a part of those circles, how bonding that experience is, with everybody who’s a part of that circle and how that builds community as well.”

Bringing people together is one of the best ways to assist with the development of a community.

“I like the idea of having a culture-based task. I think that’s a natural way…I think building a network of families, and strengthening community structure is wellness.”

Hosting circles, engaging in specific cultural tasks and activities, and sharing food were a few of several examples that community members shared about ways to promote community connections.

The creation of community can occur on broader levels too. An expansion of community involves distinct and unique community connections, that bring people with similarities and differences together.

“…what we’re doing now has a big impact on our kids. We’re laughing, we’re talking, we’re telling stories. This is how gatherings are. We’re from different communities, yet we have similarities too. Even though we’re from different villages, different areas we’re connected as one right now.”

A unified community provides a source of strength, power, and identity. It takes each person doing their part, showing up, and being in right relationship with one another to help sustain the health of an entire community.

Intergenerational

Intergenerational relationships are key for the transmission of expert level ancestral knowledge, skills, and relational wisdom that was often embedded in the language that helped a whole collective (beyond human relatives) be healthy and well.

“You go back 500 years; our language and our people weren’t doing exactly what they did 100 years ago. Even if we take the pieces that our ancestors have lovingly guarded and held onto, and if that’s what we build from, then that’s good. Whatever comes of it is still good. We can breathe life back into that. I think that’s what our ancestors would want us to do. They’d recognize the hardships that we’re facing, but that we’re wanting to carry forward the gift that they’ve passed down for thousands of years. We’re doing our best.”

Elders have often cultivated this knowledge and skill that aligns with their own unique gifts for decades of their life and were reliant on the Elders before them to pass it on.

Part of the challenge is the disconnect and trauma that occurred between generations due to epidemics, boarding schools, and child removals. Despite these intergenerational challenges, much of the knowledge remains within the community and the process of strengthening intergenerational connections could help knowledge expand and grow once again.

“It’s really, really good to see that, and comforting knowing that what I passed onto them is now being passed on to the next generation. Now there’s three generations, myself, the nephews, and then their kids. Then my boys now too. Holdin’ it back would have really stopped them from living the lifestyle I grew up doing.”

The next generations are taken into consideration in all present-day actions.

Intergenerational connections provide resilience. It is important for community members to remember who they are from this source of life and strength.

“I think, for me, what always helped was framing it as we’re the result of the love of thousands of those before us. That’s the thread that connects us. I mean, yes, we have, like you said, we have trauma that we’ve experienced, but that doesn’t define us. That doesn’t cage us into what our future can or should be, or what we want it to be.”

Future generations need to have a balanced narrative of the truth of what has happened in the past or is happening now, that also contains messages of love and hope for current and future generations.

“We’ve been here, we’ve always been here, and we’re still here today. That’s a huge thing for our kids to learn. That we have the strength in us to continue even during hard times. Even during hard times right now we support each other, right? We have a resiliency.”

Providing knowledge about who people’s ancestors are and what they have been through to make life possible for the descendants of today is a source of power and resilience.

Intergenerational connections can be felt and sustained through multiple value driven activities that are embedded in relationships.

“Throughout Alaska, we all have our traditional values…and they were handed down from our ancestors to our grandparents, we need to teach those to our kids, our members, our families because that’s important. It helps us be a good human- If we practice them.”

The process of teaching intergenerational values and history involves an awareness and acknowledgement of the whole human being, a real human being.

“Keep it simple for the kids and teach ’em as a holistic person. Basically, Inupiaq, so we’re real people and everybody’s a real person, right…Then, if we’re gonna touch on intergenerational trauma and stuff, teach ’em the resiliency that we have. We’re strong.”

Children need to be taught intergenerational knowledge too because this helps them connect with who they are as a real person.

When a person knows who their ancestors are, who their family is, who they are named after, and what that sacred lineage has been through, it can enhance their empathy, compassion, grace and gratitude for their current experiences. Intergenerational connections can help a person know who they are and where they come from through a non-linear concept of time. The past is in the present. The past is stretching into the future through the knowledge, language, values, and love passed on for generations.

Land

The land literally provides the water, air, and foods that sustain all life. The land promotes healing and wellbeing in physical, emotional, and spiritual ways. The ancestral languages spoken are derived from the land and contain thousands of years of ecological knowledge.

“Teaching them how important the land and the animals were from the beginning of time. Teach ’em all the animals, what they do, and also the land, what it provides, and just being silent. Another big, big one is being silent. That’s what our Elders, like my dad and the rest of the village was taught was silence, and mostly in camping.”

Being out on the land provides an opportunity to practice almost a form of meditation or mindfulness that cultivates a connection between inua (spirit) and nuna (land).

The connection with the ocean, the beach, the tundra, the sand, the mountains, the marsh, the gravel roads, the rocks, the plants, and the animals is medicine. These are physical and spiritual places to slow down, have fun, enjoy life, and harvest soul nurturing foods.

“Every time I come home, I feel that re-connectedness and it’s healing, and it’s that medicine I need to survive [laughter]. It is a lot more work to be connected to land out there.”

Subsistence may be a lot of work, but it is worth the effort as it nourishes not just the body but also mind and spirit.

Reference to the land came up repeatedly in the knowledge sharing circles as the foundation for identity, subsistence, life, survival, sustenance, reciprocity, healing, spiritually, and wellbeing. Reverence for the land included rituals that were practiced and learned from generation to generation. Community members emphasized the importance of engaging people in activities on the land as an effective way to teach people about wellbeing while simultaneously helping them connect with the land.

2.2.3. Basic Themes: Values, Roles and Responsibilities, Subsistence/Food, Language, Culture, Historical Knowledge, Wellness and Teaching

Values

Family, community, land, and intergenerational relationships are built and maintained through the action of living traditional values, engaging in land-based subsistence activities, fulfilling roles and responsibilities, speaking ancestral language(s), celebrating cultural practices, learning historical knowledge and creating a sense of interdependent wellness.

“I mean my dad when I was growing up, he not only provided for us, his wife, and family of eight children. He provided for his siblings. He provided for his relatives, his friends. He was a hunter. Plus, he worked. He worked seasonally, but and then hunt whenever he was able to. He helped a lot of people.”

Values provide guidance on community relational and cultural standards that should be communicated, lived, practiced throughout the lifespan. Several values were discussed directly and indirectly. While many values can be readily identified, such as respect, sharing, love for children, care for those in need, humor, cooperation, and hard work, it is important for people feel the values from within.

“They never yelled at us, or screamed at us, or told us that’s wrong, or that’s right, or whatever. They just showed us, and without being critical. The best way that they knew how to explain things.”

Multiple values can be demonstrated at one time depending on how the relational interactions take place. Traditional values are important to teach and live as best one can because some values are in direct contrast with typical American values such as individualism, competition, and patriarchy.

“I was taught to honor all woman, all ladies. The relationship with a woman is sacred. I am to give the highest honor to all ladies no matter who they are and give the respect to the ladies. The reason why I was told that is because us men don’t know how it is to give birth to a child, so we’re gonna give that full honor to a woman, to a lady. That we’re gonna show all the respect. We’re not gonna talk down. We’re not gonna take advantage of our strength, of our voice. We’re gonna give that to the woman.”

Families within the community may need to make intentional efforts to instill traditional values within children so that they learn how to stay grounded in who they are as they exist in what can feel like two worlds.

“Being okay with being Native is important. Being okay in a non-Native environment and being Native is important. Understanding some of the cultural values and traditions that you have and being proud of that.”

The maintenance of traditional values in a society that has many contrasting values takes courage and the presence of pride may help people stay rooted in that. Values provide a way of life that sustains wellness for the collective and this is something to be proud of. Love, compassion, care and concern for oneself and everyone and everything is a key ingredient for the successful sustainment of traditional values.

“I feel like when I’m connected to my values, I feel more healthy and happy and well.”

Even if people may have differing values other people are still respected, and this maintains inner wellbeing.

“I think the most grounding value that was taught is respect. Respect for others. Respect for—goes along with everybody, right? Respect for elders. To learn to be respectful.”

Each value, each word has deeper meaning and relational actions that come with it. Core values are not about knowledge of a theory or idea, values provide a way of relating that keeps people alive and well to survive all of life’s traumas and challenges, because nobody gets through life unscathed.

“Those values [don’t] make you a good person. It makes you alive. It’s survival.”

The way to survive hardship is to get through it together. A sense of belonging to a family (nuclear and otherwise) and community helps foster a safety net where support is given to each other without hesitation.

“People always asked how did you raise this kid? My community. In English that’s a hard concept for people to understand. It’s your community. Even with your grandmother’s people…That’s how they are. It’s everybody. Always.”

Not just one person lives the values alone. A whole family and community who lives the values provides wellness to the collective.

Values are one of the key ingredients to wellbeing. Values represent a way of relating from a grounded and balanced place. When these values are instilled, and practiced, then the right actions and choices are made to maintain awareness of the wholeness of life. Values contain knowledge that Elders want to gift children with across generations. One of the most powerful ways to teach children the values is to have them experience it and feel it from within themselves. Teaching values is a process, not just a concept to be told.

Roles and Responsibility

The theme of roles and responsibility surfaced as an important component of wellbeing. This theme overlaps with traditional values and has specific instructions about who is responsible for certain functions of life within the community.

“In the conversations that I’ve had with some Native men, it’s sad to hear them say, I have no place in community, I have no purpose…But thinking of activities for men, like learning to butcher a seal [is important].”

Having a sense of responsibility is central to a more equitable division of labor and sharing one’s gifts for the benefit of children, the family, community and the Earth. This responsible connection between an individual and collective was often based on man or womanhood.

“…we have children that doubt themselves, we have children that don’t feel confident in their abilities. So for our young men, safety on the ice, knowing how to read the water, are just some ideas for how to bring our men into this conversation too… think of activities for men, that was part of the roles and responsibilities…there are very distinct roles based on gender, not exclusionary, but we do need to be mindful of that.”

When colonial values and structures were embedded within Tribal communities, this created a challenging relational dynamic that needs to be remedied, especially with regard to men’s roles in the community.

A healthy balance existed between men and women prior to colonization because of the mutual respect for each other’s contributions to the community. This balance is something that still exists and should continue among future generations.

Knowledge Bearer 1: “The other thing I learned is that it takes a community to survive these places, and there are two parallel lines. I understand the man’s role pretty well from my people. What the women do is what the women do. [Laughter]”

Knowledge Bearer 2: “They are the ones that keep order in the village. They are so valuable. Us men don’t know anything about that. We relied and depended on the women in the village to keep order, to keep everything safe, to keep the discipline. If people got outside of that in a bad way, they found out, and we never had to have police or churches or jails or lawyers or taxes. You name it. [Laughter] They had it figured out.”

Having mutual respect cultivates healthy relationships between men and women. A reliance existed between one another, and the community thrived when these roles and responsibilities were in balance.

Community members who may not associate with one of the gender binaries were loved, respected and belonged. Non-binary people were vital community members with roles and responsibilities too.

“…and she was talking about roles in a community. Everybody had a role. Everybody gave to whatever was going on. Sometimes they would carry the water, sometimes they’d cut. I just remember her saying even the men who were more feminine, the men did not make fun of them. They just embraced them and let them be where they needed to be. If it was in the kitchen, or sewing, nobody judged. They just embraced who they were and put them in whatever role they wanted…I think that’s so important to remind kids nowadays. We all have different strengths, and different skills, and we all take part in every part of the community.”

Everyone in the community was appreciated, supported and cared for. Community members discussed the shared responsibility of caring for children. Each child brings love, laughter, and joy for all involved.

“Modeling good behavior to our children as well. We really value babies. [Laughter] You know? They’re the best thing that ever happened.”

Children are seen as cherished ancestors, relatives, and contributors to the community. Sometimes children are the teachers for people older than them.

“It takes a whole community to raise a child. Everybody looking out for each other, and when a parent becomes a single parent for whatever reason, there’s people there that should be guiding them, and helping them, and helping them raise their children. Like it used to be.”

This shared responsibility facilitates child, parent, and collective wellbeing. Responsibility requires mindful actions that consider how much the children are looking up to their family and community for direction.

“…I go through difficult things, and I could turn to alcohol, but I don’t because I think about the younger children in my life, like my nieces. I have a seven-year-old stepson, and I think about how I want to make good choices for them and not myself, and that’s what keeps me well and stay healthy.”

Responsible actions shape healthy bidirectional relationships and could make all the difference to a child’s life path trajectory.

Multiple members of the community ‘co-parent’ children and all community members and relatives have this responsibility. Co-parenting is a process of providing a sense of safety for the children, looking after them, getting to know them, acknowledging their gifts, and teaching important cultural skills.

“I brought how many nephews out hunting? Their dad didn’t bring ’em out. They’d just pop up if I was gonna go set a net…I actually taught them how to fish. How to hunt. How to camp. How to get things ready…I didn’t know the impact it would have on the kids.”

If a parent could not provide something for their child, then someone else in the family or community stepped up.

“After my dad passed away, my cousin from [Town], he would quite often bring us a share of his hunt to my mom, and my mom’s kids, like me. When he would stop by, I would thank him and tell him he didn’t have to do that. He would say, ‘Oh. No. I’m only doing what your dad did.’ Because he said, ‘After my dad passed away. Your dad was always bringing my mom a share of whatever he hunted.’ Because he knew that her husband was gone. Their kids were small, and she needed that food to sustain themselves.”

The provision of caregiving support happened without any expectation for something in return. People could trust that all that was needed would be provided by something greater than themselves. Keeping multiple levels of relationships healthy and well is a very active process. It requires everyone fulfilling their role and responsibility, reaching out, sharing gifts, receiving the gifts, and showing up over and over again.

Subsistence/Food

Food is something that is often taken for granted, but subsistence foods bring forth more than physical nourishment.

“The food is a really big part of us…We don’t hunt. We don’t go catch. The game has given itself to us. I was taught [whether] it’s seal, caribou, [or] moose—if I do catch and if they give themselves up, I don’t just go over there and butcher it and just lay it aside. I say thank you for giving yourself up and please come again. I say that out loud before I butcher.”

Subsistence activities require mental and spiritual preparation, patience, mindfulness, good intentions, respect, and gratitude for the blessings received. People who subsist from the land and waters work very hard to gather enough and leave enough for mutually sustainable purposes.

“A lot of people don’t realize what it takes to live out there in the rural areas…how it is to subsist, to [live] on subsistence food, to hunt, to fish, to camp. Our people are very strong and that’s where our history comes from, is from our Elders, who were very strong in wellness. They lived it. They didn’t have anything in writing about wellness. They lived it.”

The Elders and ancestors taught how to keep the ecosystem in balance so that people, animals, plants, and the land still benefited from the subsistence activity.

Subsistence knowledge and spiritual practices have been passed down for generations.

“I grew up at fish camp. I grew up at hunting camp. I [had] a nomadic life. When I was young, we’d go to [camp] to get fish…We went around our region growing up, and that allowed me to know our ancestors. Also, it helped me become who I am today.”

The hunters and gatherers who go out on the land today to subsist are traversing the same lands and waters that their ancestors did, which helps future generations build and strengthen their connection with past generations.

“…Because [subsistence] was a time of connecting to what our ancestors taught us in putting away food and being who we are meant to be- living off the land and teaching our kids.”

Subsistence activities foster multiple connections at the same time, especially with the land, ancestors, and within one’s spirit. Subsistence foods bring people together and help maintain healthy relationships.

“One of the greatest things we do as a family is to gather up all our [Tribe] foods, have a feast and invite all our family and friends to it because that’s the best way to enjoy it- Is being with family and friends and eating together and laughing and telling stories. That’s the best fun.”

Sharing food is a continuation of subsistence because once food is gathered, it is important to feed others and share the bounty of the catch with good spirit.

“I feel like the way we learned about history, or the way I did growing up. We would be gathered at my grandmother’s house right down the street over here…Especially when people came over from [Town]. They were always going to her house. We’d have a meal together…our parents would bring us kids, and we would sit there quietly, and listen to them talking.”

This sharing of food often involved storytelling that was spoken in the Inupiaq or Yup’ik language and was rich with knowledge about history, the land, and lessons learned.

The engagement in subsistence activities can offer a sense of peace that cannot be replaced.

“I quit going to [AA] meetings years ago and someone asked me a few years ago, let’s go to a meeting. I said, no, my meetings are the nearest fishin’ hole. I find my peace out when I’m fishing, out hunting.”

This sense of peace can be difficult to replenish when people work 8 h per day, 5 days per week.

“… I work seven days a week. I work two jobs. I mean I feel like I’m just pulled everywhere. Yeah, I do need to make time to actually go out and pick berries and cut fish. I used to.”

The work–life balance can be especially trying during the summer months and will need to be taken into consideration for planned wellness gatherings and activities.

Engaging in subsistence activities was often a multi-family or community experience that supported comradery, cooperation, and fostered interdependence.

“Even camping at Fort Davis was our summer home. We had meals together with our neighbors…We would all eat together, and do stuff together, take care of the catch together, go picking together, go fishing together, whatever it was.”

This togetherness during subsistence seasons gave an opportunity for the application of traditional values as families worked together to put away food to last throughout the winter.

Participation in subsistence activities is vital to wellbeing. A significant overlap exists between subsistence and spirituality, as was mentioned in the spirituality section of this paper. Many community members spoke about the importance of incorporating subsistence activities into whatever gets taught to families about wellness because subsistence and food are the source of life and a way of connecting to everyone and everything.

Language

Knowledge bearers discussed the ways in which language connected them to one another, their ancestors, and their culture. The Inupiaq language can describe a way of life in a manner that English cannot.

“That’s when it hit me that, oh my goodness. English doesn’t allow for how our people lived. Because they didn’t speak in English. They spoke in our languages. Our language sets our lifestyle. It sets how you relate to other people. Our language gives us that identity.”

The language acts as a thread that connects them to their ancestors and past ways of life, and how expression in Inupiaq allows community members to draw on that connection to establish a lifestyle grounded in relationships and culture. Language becomes a fundamental part of their identity.

Knowledge bearers also described how Inupiaq words have a depth of meaning that allows them to express themselves more fully that is not attainable in English. Language contains meanings that may escape the understandings of people that do not live within their community.

“I think there are people that are not from our places that may not understand how deep how deep each of those terms can go.”

Another knowledge bearer describes how Inupiaq supports joy and social connection through comedy and argues that translation into English can undermine these same things.

“My uncle, my great-uncle [Name], I don’t know if you all know him. He could have been a comedian. Honest to goodness. Every story he told we laughed and laughed and laughed. When he translated the story to English it kind of lost its humor, or something.”

Sometimes the process of translation can limit the meaning and outcome of what was shared. This is why it is so important for the Inupiaq, Yup’ik and Siberian Yupik languages to be learned and spoken.

For others, the language transcends meaning itself and instead provides a way to relate to and perform core Inupiaq values. One knowledge bearer, for instance, describes how it is not sufficient to tell people to ‘be respectful’, but to instead use the language and one’s actions to perform respect in ways that can be modeled by others—including youth. This action of lived values cannot be easily or fully translated into English.

“We do have a different form of respect in our language. That doesn’t translate in English. We can’t tell people ‘be respectful,’ like that…We have to act it. We have to be on it, and not telling people because they, especially little kids, have to see it. They have to see it. Because kids learn.”

These quotes demonstrate how language supports connections to culture, community, values, and identity.

Ultimately, participants argued that these connections—made through language—are both powerful and healing. While colonialism has done a lot to undermine the Inupiaq and Yupik languages, active steps are happening to sustain and speak the language in everyday activities.

“I love that we brought up language…one of the things I think brings healing in my family is our everyday focus on Inupiaq. I read to my children in Inupiaq, almost every day, I speak to them every day. And maybe one of the focuses could be a mini lesson in Inupiaq.”

This creates an opportunity to include Inupiaq lessons within the NEC curriculum, so that all participants are able to better access the healing powers of the language.

Historical Knowledge

History contains stories and insights into the perseverance, strength, endurance, persistence and resilience of those who lived before the present day. The study of history can shed light on the various forms of colonial or intergenerational trauma that were experienced by ancestors, Elders, families and whole communities.

“I think we really need to teach our history of how it was, and why we changed. Because once I understood why we changed, more of my pride came back of who I was. There wasn’t so much shame. I also had to work on shame in itself on what I lived through…It really, really pisses me off that we have to fight so hard to be well. ’Cause there are people who don’t fight like that…History needs to be made known. What came from history. Because I think when I saw that [history], it opened up conversations between me and my father about boarding school [and] understanding that we did the best we [could] with where we were at because that’s what we were taught. Ultimately, putting the historical shame back in its place, and teaching our children what we come from.”

It is important to have inclusive historical stories and piece back together ancestral knowledges so the next generations can learn the truth about their family, community and who they are as an Indigenous person.

Many community members shared how much historical knowledge is lacking within the public education system and how families do their best to share stories, but more effort is needed to talk about local histories in a way that increases compassion, empathy and understanding that releases colonial shame and replaces it with Indigenous pride.

“There’s a way of doing it too that’s safe. Instead of just bombarding with all this information. At the same time, allowing space for discussion about what they know, and about what they’re feeling, legit feelings. Even if it’s just anger and just having that space to express that anger. Because I really do feel, even the bad parts, we need to know.”

Teaching historical knowledge has to take into consideration the depths of emotions, potential anger, and grief that could come up and everyone processes these feelings in their own way. One knowledge bearer shared how talking circles could be an avenue of letting people talk and share what they feel. It is also important to not overwhelm people by trying to do too much at once and to have the right person(s) facilitate the conversation.

Historical knowledge is also embedded in stories, songs, dances, language, ceremonies and relationships.

“…keeping and maintaining the knowledge through the songs, and dances, and language, and all those practices.”

This form of historical knowledge contains the wisdom of generations that kept a collective healthy and well. While some of the historical knowledge may have become dormant or disconnected from being common knowledge among community members, colonization could not permanently erase these practices.

Teaching the strengths and love embedded in the stories and songs while acknowledging historical or intergenerational trauma may be an essential approach.

“I feel that there has to be a balance of understanding where we come from [and] understanding what historically happened. Not necessarily pointing fingers, but knowing how we got out of it, where we’re going to, remembering who we come from.”

Historical knowledge is a core component of healing and wellbeing that needs to be incorporated into wellness activities.

“I really need to understand my own trauma so that I don’t impact my children. I think what has been really helpful for me as a parent is having access to research about intergenerational trauma, and how you release that, and being able to identify ways to work through it. Whether it’s meditation, preparing healing food, or having a sound bath…”

The truth can help people connect with who they are, break relational patterns of trauma, and come back to balance for a better future.

Historical knowledge shapes how people see themselves within a bigger picture view. When historical knowledge is absent, or when people are not allowed to talk or feel anything about that history, or if people are told historical lies, this can warp their beliefs about who they, their families or their communities are. This separation from truth could have far-reaching implications for the way a person shows up in the world. Learning historical knowledge has the potential to reset the path moving forward in a direction of wellness for all involved.

Culture

Culture is a way of life, generational wealth, knowledge, relational actions, lived values, and a source of wellness. Culture is ever present and celebrated in a multitude of ways. Culture is embedded in stories, art, songs, books, clothing, names, and ways of relating. Exposure to the daily communal experience of culture can be limited when families move farther away from their cultural and regional context.

“I do worry about my nieces and nephews that live down in the States. They don’t have that access to cultural knowledge, and they don’t hear it. Me and my husband, we’re super intentional about any birthdays or Christmas, we always send them Alaska Native books and Alaska Native language things. Or even Alaska Native toys. Just so they always remember their cultural identity. Then we always try to, even though they’re so far away, we try to connect them with their Tribe, or even their native corporation.”

Despite these distances, culture can be lived and sustained when it is intentionally celebrated and shared with people who may be different.

“There is a cultural values poster that comes from all the different cultures of Alaska. I think that would be appropriate to use because we have a lot of families who are married into different cultures.”

An Elder in the knowledge sharing circle spoke to the importance of acknowledging how many Alaska Native children are multi-cultural human beings that need all aspects of them honored and respected.

Gathering people together to engage in cultural practices can fill a hole that colonization made through removal, separation and disconnect. Within cultural reconnection efforts, it’s important to have grace because cultural knowledge bearers are doing their best to teach what they can.

“They’d recognize the hardships that we’re facing, but that we’re wanting to carry forward, the gift that they’ve passed down for thousands of years. We’re doing our best.”

Today’s expression of cultural knowledge may not be exactly the same as it used to be, and that is okay because culture and present-day life are dynamic and ever evolving.

“For me, going forward is our culture and our language gonna look exactly how it did in the past? No. That means it’s alive. It’s never looked exactly the same.”

The hope is for learners to use, practice and share cultural knowledge so that future generations benefit from what is carried forward.

Wellness

The concept of wellness and wellbeing translates to “piaġiq” in the Inupiaq language. What it means to be well is both a personal and collective endeavor.

“The well-being of our people I feel comes from ourselves, of course, our family, the community, friends, and, also, to include men’s wellness, woman’s wellness, child wellness. Even friend wellness, who you grew up with as a child.”

Humans are social beings. Survival would not be possible without socialization. It is through mutual support that personal and collective wellbeing is possible. Traditional values prevented people from feeling stigmatized if they needed help because it was a natural assumption of responsibility by the broader family and community to provide extra support to single parents, widows, Elders, and children.

“Look at her grandma raising all the kids and reaching out for help when you need help. That’s part of wellness too. Instead of stuffing it and denying it. You have to reach out.”

Efforts are needed to strengthen communal wellbeing, and a sign of this positive shift would be for community members to reach out and ask for help more often.

When families can gather, learn new skills, share stories, gain cultural knowledge, and provide each other the gift of presence, this can benefit multiple levels of wellbeing.

“My son goes to Cook Inlet Headstart. And I recently participated in a weaving class. A Tsimshian Weaver brought parents and children together to learn weaving, and it was really healing to do a meditative practice, but also we’re informally gathering together. It was a natural way to build community. And so I like the idea of having a task, like a culture-based task. I think that’s a natural way…I think building a network of families, and strengthening this community structure is wellness.”

This approach to promoting multiple levels of wellbeing could be more effective because wellness is reciprocated and sustained across all relationships.

Being well does not mean that all challenges in life cease. Despite all efforts to prevent all forms of trauma, grief, pain, and hardship, these experiences may still occur. The hope is that healthy connections within oneself and others will buffer the heart of the person and soul of the community.

“Yeah. Wellness to me would be being well within your mind, body and spirit. It’s just a peaceful feeling when you finally come to peace with things, like the trauma and stuff. Accepting all the stuff that’s happened but walking through it knowing that you’re building yourself up every day, getting stronger, [with] lessons learned.”

When every person feels at peace, that they can be themselves, they belong, they are welcome, they are safe, and can be trusting/trustworthy, this has a ripple effect of wellbeing out to the collective. When communities create a space for everyone to be themselves, foster belonging, welcome beautiful diversity, provide a sense of safety, and demonstrate trust and respect, then this has a ripple effect within individuals. This relational way of understanding wellbeing needs to be learned AND experienced. To this end, our team received pedagogical (teaching) guidance on how to facilitate experiential learning.

Teaching Approach

Knowledge bearers gave a plethora of advice for ways to facilitate learning and growth among community members. Ancestral wisdom is rich with purpose and meaning so the process of teaching and learning depends on the developmental level of the person, the complexity of the skill or task, and amount of time people have together. One knowledge bearer spoke about their grandmother teaching them how to sew from a very young age.

“I think about how my grandma would trust us at a younger age. I remember I would watch her, and she would be sewing, and I would wanna try it…she would just give me a needle thread and say, “Go ahead. Go sew your toy.” I think nowadays if you give a four-year-old a needle—kids are a little—parents and adults are more like, ‘Eee (scary), no. She’s too little.’ My grandma was like, ‘She wants to learn. Here you go.’”

This shows how important it is to still have children amongst activities that might be deemed to be too hard for them to do. Young children often learn from exposure and observation to everyday activities.

Many knowledge bearers spoke about learning from Elders because Elders have an incredible depth of wholistic knowledge from life experience. This knowledge bearer spoke about learning from their grandmother in an urban setting.

“…growing up in [City], I don’t get to see the beauty of living in the village and things like that. My grandma’s taking me out fishing every summer. We do things together. It’s still part of the culture. I’m still able to be a part of it. It’s a very, very healing, holistic way of living.”

Elders should be incorporated into any teaching activities that involve ancestral and cultural knowledge.

Learning by doing is essential. The process of active teaching and learning was enveloped with love, respect and patience.

“I heard that we really grabbed each other’s hands and said follow me. Let’s go and do this. That’s how we taught. We never say that’s wrong, but we showed by showing them. That’s where it goes back to respect is showing them how to do it.”

This approach to teaching would encourage new learners to put in the work it takes to master a skill. New skills had to be practiced and repeatedly practiced over and over again.

“Just because I did it once, that didn’t mean I knew how. I had to learn the whole summer to cut it right again and again.”

The repetitive nature of learning takes time and practice. Repetition in learning is in contrast to some educational processes that move through material too quickly.

“Our world is not like a math book. One chapter. Move on, move on, move on. We still hear some of the things that we have heard from our grandparents…That’s part of our [Indigenous] world is to continuously hear it over and over, to remind us of who we are, who we should behave as…Repetitiveness in our world is okay.”

From this repetition, learners start to get it right and become more confident in their abilities. The generative nature of education can become a catalyst for further learning where the students become the teachers.

“A measure of success to me is that someone else will pick it up and teach this. Like the people that attend it will become the teachers, so we’re just planting seeds and we’re spreading it. We’re helping all of us bloom again.”

The goal is for everyone to become teachers and learners and for the benefit of the collective. One idea that was shared was to intentionally build within the NEC wellness intervention a process for participants to eventually become the ones who co-facilitate and teach.

“Growing knowledge holders and [developing] a mentorship or apprenticeship program for youth that are eager to learn…would be really cool…Like [an] Indigenous wellness apprenticeship.”

Building sustainable approaches like this could help restore traditional modes of education that last across generations.

Storytelling teaches history, relationality, values, culture, language, and skills. Storytelling can happen in many different ways, and the format of the stories depends on what information is being conveyed.

“Just a thought, maybe incorporating stories? Whether it’s creation stories or…archival recordings of Elders and bringing that into the curriculum. Maybe emphasizing that connection to past generations. Also, what our origins are from me reading people of [town] was really grounding.”

Listening to stories can promote the storyteller’s and the listener’s wellbeing at the same time.

“What really helped me was being back home and just visiting the Elders that we have…I think one of the most valuable things is getting to listen to other people’s stories [and] find out more about them.”

Storytelling provides an opportunity to connect and build a relationship with one another. This one form of knowledge sharing can have multiple benefits to all involved.

The content of what is taught to community members about wellness should be reflective of the local history, and social context. In mainstream public schools, this information is often left out of the curriculum, which is problematic because then it means that the children are not receiving information that helps them learn about their own people, ways of life, values, and community.

“This discussion is making is making me think of the point that there are so many things in the formal schooling system that are lacking that need [transformation] to be effective. And in a curriculum for Alaska Native students, they should be able to learn about local heroes. I mean, our region has so many local heroes like I was starting to write them down [numerous local heroes named] …and those are just the ones that I thought of.”

When children learn about their own local heroes that they are descendants of, it could help them feel pride, respect, and a greater sense of belonging. These feelings can help a young person develop healthy connectedness relationships that create a positive feedback loop within themselves, their family and community.

Relational reconnection is something that knowledge bearers hoped would be an outcome of NEC’s piaġiq (wellness) intervention. Helping people reconnect with truth and knowledge is part of that process.

“I feel like you need to understand relationships…I think this is really important ’cause we don’t understand these things. Like for me, once I learned about historic and intergenerational trauma it all clicked for me. I was like, oh, this is why my family has been the way that they have been.”

When people connect the dots and understand why there may be struggles and disconnect at the root of challenges within families and communities, it can help release shame, blame, and liberate community members from internalized oppression.

Talking about the truth of what has historically happened within families and communities can be potentially triggering for community members. The process of teaching needs to be wellness and healing centered in the approach.

“One thing that I’m trying to do more is meditate. Be mindful of how I am feeling, breathing exercises. I never realized how much breathing can impact you. Those are things that I’ve been thinking—if I teach history of colonization again that I would probably incorporate.”

Ensuring that people have tangible tools to get through difficult conversations is a way to prevent further harm. The other suggestion was to engage in this content in a developmentally appropriate way and to talk about these layers of material one piece at a time.

“I like the idea of the levels because some of [these are] more difficult conversations, or more challenging to get through. How you mentioned building those relationships in a safe space first is a good approach when they do that.”

Building trust and co-creating a safe space was recommended before engagement. Sharing values and setting group norms is another strategy for welcoming all viewpoints and experiences into the learning space.

2.3. The NEC Piaġiq Framework

From what was learned from all 25 knowledge bearers, NEC FS leaders, and the identified themes, our collaborative team drafted the following NEC Piaġiq (Wellness) Framework (Figure 1). The outer circle includes salient family, community, land, and intergenerational relationships. The inner blue circle identifies specific elements that bolster core relationships. The inner green is central to a person’s wellbeing related to knowing who you are and where you come from. The 4 intersecting lines of the circle represent the foundation of spirituality that makes life and connection possible. The Inupiaq word translations were provided by Elder Tatauq Josie Bourdon. Our team plans on working with Yup’ik and Siberian Yupik Elders to help with providing additional translations for NEC members who have connections with these languages. The NEC Piaġiq Framework will guide all aspects of the wellness curriculum and prevention intervention that will be developed.

3. Discussion

Tribal community self-determination has made all the difference to this effort. The Alaska Native community knowledge bearers who generously shared their thoughts and ideas helped our team create a community-relevant NEC wellness framework and we shifted our initial approach to the wellness curriculum and prevention intervention based on what was learned. Instead of hosting a series of gatherings and delivering PowerPoint presentations to parents to share the framework, our team will invite whole families to weekend long gatherings that center on seasonal subsistence activities and apply the framework in real time. Feedback on the importance of engaging families in active learning with Elders’ guidance was heard loud and clear. Knowledge bearers wanted participants to feel and experience the knowledge, values, spirit, relational and land-based connections, not just hear about it. It is through active doing that people meaningfully connect on multiple levels. This knowledge should be facilitated by Elders, Tribal leaders, and community members themselves because everyone has something they can share. Knowledge is not contained solely in books and PowerPoints but rests within community member’s language, stories, subsistence practices, ceremony and lived values.

Our team also received crucial feedback on the inclusion of traditional values, roles and responsibility, historical knowledge, and subsistence/food in wellness activities, which is why these items were identified in the NEC Piaġiq Framework. Having a specific framework that is filled with community values, wisdom, knowledge, rituals, and customs is vital to the potential success of this work. While our team initially called this a curriculum development project for a future pilot wellness intervention, we were reminded during the consultation process that what we were trying to do was different from that. The community already has the answers and solutions, thus there is nothing to ‘develop.’ Our research team was reminded that our role and responsibility was to host families and trust the process, allow for the community wisdom to surface through their active engagement and interactions with each other, and to create space for these connections and activities to take place.

Instead of working exclusively with parents, we shifted our approach to include Elders, children, and extended family members like Aunts and Uncles to be inclusive of whole families as a way to strengthen people’s sense of community and promote personal and collective wellbeing. While some of the children may be too young to fully participate in the wellness activities, they can still meaningfully engage through active listening and observation. Children go with their families on outings and engage in subsistence activities from infancy. Elders have had much practice with mastering skills, living the values, and obtaining their own groundedness in who they are and where they come from that can help others learn. Within colonial child protection, the focus has been on the parent(s), the child, and sometimes the nuclear family without broader consideration of the whole family and community. This could be where many interventions and curriculum designs have fallen short as it disregards more complex conceptions of connectedness as a key factor in healing and wellbeing. Relationships need strengthening and wellness in order for children, families, communities, and generations after to be healthy. An Indigenous relational approach to healing and wellbeing may be more successful in preventing unhealthy coping strategies for people who have experienced trauma. It was important to community knowledge bearers that this project get at the root of healing and preventing historical, intergenerational, and interpersonal trauma, which requires the participation of everyone, not just separate co-existing individuals. To align the approach with NEC knowledge and practices is an action of Tribal self-determination in real time.

The primary challenge to this work is the reality of living within a system in which most aspects of daily life—especially within more remote regions—are structured in accordance with Euro-colonial expectations. Thus, activities intended to promote connectedness for Alaska Native families and children occur within an environment of imposed religion, beliefs, and ways of life that are often nonsequitous with traditional values and relationships with the organizing themes of family, community, land, and the intergenerational transfer of knowledge. The decline in language fluency is particularly concerning considering how often language was brought up as a pillar of wellbeing by knowledge bearers. A growing body of literature that documents associations between various historical trauma events and outcomes of health and wellbeing for Indigenous Peoples, including within child welfare spaces (Aguiar and Halseth 2015; Joo-Castro and Emerson 2021; Gone et al. 2019; Halseth and Greenwood 2019). Initially, there was enthusiasm for the concept of historical trauma among many Indigenous people, as it emphasized structural inequity and historical harm rather than false biological inadequacies. However, as with any approach that emphasizes deficit—structural or otherwise—there is the risk of contributing to feelings of inevitability and despair. Instead, there is a more recent push within Indigenous health spaces and by Indigenous communities to employ strengths-or-desire-based approaches (Tuck 2009). Such approaches acknowledge the role that colonialism and associated historical traumas have played in the lived realities and opportunities of Alaska Native people today, while simultaneously celebrating the practices, beliefs, and values that have enabled our people to survive and continue to thrive as was shared several times in our results section. Thus, the NEC Piaġiq Framework visually demonstrates how an Indigenous Connectedness Framework can be adapted to better fit a distinct Tribe or Tribal region. The NEC Piaġiq Framework highlights numerous interrelated and interdependent forms of child and family strengths such that they can withstand and successfully navigate the harms of the past and celebrate the opportunity for wellness within the present day.

3.1. Limitations

The outcomes of this study are not generalizable to the broader population, but many of the central concepts to wellness may resonate with other Indigenous communities. The goal was never to create a ‘one size fits all’ framework or curriculum. Our hope is that some of what was shared in these research findings can spur others to engage in similar community conversations and have responsive actions that follow the advice of all community knowledge bearers who are willing to share.

Lack of researcher objectivity may have influenced what was identified as wellness factors in the data analysis process. The communication and collaborative relationship between Tribal leaders and researchers were designed to maintain perspective. Our team debriefed after every focus group workshop and those discussions had a positive influence on how the NEC Piaġiq Framework was crafted, and what changes would be made to the pilot wellness intervention. Tribal leaders also reviewed all our work, assisted with edits, and this may have improved the validity of the findings so that what was generated from this research is useful knowledge.

Ideally, we would have had a more balanced number of men and women participate in the sharing knowledge circles. Our team plans to take more action in recruiting an increased number of men in future studies because their input and participate is equally valuable. We appreciate the invaluable insights shared from the men and women who did contribute to this study. We also would like to receive input from youth moving forward, especially since the direction and guidance we received was to include whole families in wellness activities. Given these limitations, we believe the results of this study will still lead to positive outcomes for families and communities.

3.2. Recommendations for Future Research

After developing the conceptual framework, we know that future research should test and examine whether the identified domains and constructs function together as expected. We recommend engaging in community-based participatory research to examine developed or adapted frameworks and possibly conduct a mixed method study. This may mean that new measures that better match the community’s framework emerge and must be piloted. We believe that qualitative feedback is crucial for the assessment process because a story can have deeper meaning than a number on a Likert scale.

As pilot wellness interventions are implemented, we recommend research processes that follow a family from beginning to end of the research grant period. This longitudinal approach can strengthen the rigor and validity of research findings by recording their progress, challenges and successes, which could enable the wellness intervention to become an evidence-based practice. More self-determined, evidence-based practices that are based on the community’s standards are needed within child protection.

4. Materials and Methods

This paper is based on an initial phase of research within a larger project focused on developing culturally grounded approaches to support Alaska Native wellness in the community of Nome, Alaska. This larger project broadly adopts a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach (Wallerstein et al. 2017) and assets-based (Kennedy et al. 2022; Morgan and Ziglio 2007) approach to supporting community health, and draws extensively on principles and practices from Indigenous methods (Crowe et al. 2024; Kennedy et al. 2022; Williams and Shipley 2023) and knowledge translation approaches to health research (Nguyen et al. 2020). As such, the project centers the leadership of Indigenous leaders and knowledge holders; emphasizes the importance of Indigenous knowledge, practices, and values; celebrates community strengths and addresses community needs; and prioritizes the relational aspects of the research process. The project itself was initiated by Nome Eskimo Community (NEC). NEC wanted to develop more culturally responsive interventions to respond to their concerns about child removal within the community and approached Ullrich to partner with them to develop a curriculum responsive to the issue. A first step in this work was to draw on an existing framework, the Indigenous Connectedness Framework (Ullrich 2019, 2020), to develop curricula that can be used with effective and sustainable programs to support relationship-centered actions that promote wellbeing. The project later expanded to include researchers from University of Washington, Washington State University, University of Calgary and University of Toronto. While the long-term goal of the project is to implement and assess the curriculum as a potential evidence-based practice for broadly supporting wellness within Alaska Native communities, this paper focuses on an initial co-design phase of the curriculum and intervention development.

During this initial phase, a draft version of the wellness curriculum was shared with community knowledge holders and stakeholders across three sets of workshops, so that these participants could share feedback and engage in co-design of the final curriculum. Prior to engaging in these workshops, the research approach was co-developed with NEC Family Services and approved by necessary university Institutional Review Boards and the Alaska Area Institutional Review Board. The project team then developed and implemented three different workshops: one in a more rural setting, Nome, Alaska; one in Anchorage, Alaska an urban setting, with members of the Nome Eskimo community currently living in the city; and one in a virtual setting (Zoom), for members of the NEC or Bering Strait region that could not attend the prior, in-person workshops. These workshops occurred in 2023 and 2024. Knowledge bearers were identified through purposive sampling, with the goal of recruiting key knowledge holders with perspectives on Inupiaq knowledge, language, and values; wellness within [community name, removed for peer review]; and issues related to family services and the foster system in Alaska. Knowledge bearers were recruited by NEC and Ullrich. The project team kicked off each workshop with a prior and informed consent process, followed by introductions to one another. Participants and researchers were seated in a circle with one another, in a knowledge sharing circle format. The time was structured for knowledge bearers to have food and visit before starting the workshop as a part of relationship building. The workshop itself then included a combination of (1) presentations of existing wellbeing curricular materials and (2) questions and discussion with the knowledge bearers. The questions posed to the knowledge bearers followed a semi-structured format that elicited opinions on what it means to be well and how to support wellness through curricular interventions. Knowledge bearers were also asked to respond directly to the curriculum presented at the workshop. The conversations were audio recorded and then transcribed for analysis.

Data Analysis

Audio recordings from sharing knowledge circles were transcribed by a professional transcription company and uploaded into Dedoose (SocioCultural Research Consultants LLC n.d.), an online encrypted qualitative software analysis program. Researchers engaged in a process of inductive and deductive thematic network analysis of the data and discussed preliminary findings with NEC Family Services leaders to validate results. Hypothesis codes were created based on the Indigenous Connectedness Framework, and inductive codes were created based on what was learned from knowledge bearers. Thematic network analysis involves three stages (reduction in the text, exploration of the text, and integration) in the identification of three levels of themes including: basic (simple description of the data), organizing (grouped basic themes to capture abstract principles) and global themes (overarching themes encompassing key metaphors in the data) (Attride-Stirling 2001). Five members of the research team reviewed the transcripts first individually, then engaged in coding transcripts in dyads to review each other’s codes and convene in a larger team discussion to come to consensus on the basic, organizing, and global themes. The research team spent extensive time in discussions around themes in order to synthesize the global themes. To increase rigor, data triangulation among the research team was conducted and member-checking with NEC Family Services leaders was also completed. This data analysis process was iterative depending on participant feedback. Data analysis was subsequently used to shape the re-design of the curriculum and intervention development, which was later piloted within the community. The results of those pilots will be the focus of future work.

5. Conclusions

The goal of this work is to promote multi-level healing and wellbeing for children, families, communities, the earth, and multiple generations in a way that is congruent with Tribal self-determination. Our measure of success is dependent on the mindful and respectful relational processes in all future collaborations, will involve sharing knowledge and results back with community for the benefit of community, include an acknowledgement of where the knowledge came from (the community), and hopefully leads to the continuation of learned and lived wellbeing within a healthy community.

Since developing the NEC Piaġiq Framework, the authors have worked with NEC Family Services to design a multi-day Piaġiq Workshop that draws on the framework to support intergenerational healing. The workshop was designed to guide participants through conversations and activities that engage with the elements and relationships depicted within the framework. An initial iteration of the workshop was piloted in both Nome and Anchorage in 2024, and a second iteration was piloted in Anchorage in June 2025. A second pilot will also be carried out in Nome in August 2025. These pilots are being used to examine the acceptability and feasibility of the intervention, and to begin assessing whether exposure to the workshops leads to an increased sense of connectedness and wellbeing. The curriculum underpinning the workshops has been iteratively improved after each pilot, and future papers will share the results of these efforts and highlight how the NEC Piaġiq Framework has been applied in practice. Next steps include exploring how the Framework might be used to develop and evaluate curriculum to support other formats of intervention—including a short, ‘in-office’ weeknight version; to expand the interventions to other Anchorage-based Tribes; and to further evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum so that it can be established as an evidence-based practice accessible broadly to Alaska Native communities. We hope to share lessons learned as we progress through our study so that we can break down silos and help promote wellbeing in other Indigenous communities as well. It takes all of us doing our part to learn and share for the benefit of the collective. We aim to foster cross collaborations in hopes that it leads to exponential outcomes. Prevention as wellbeing is about putting relational knowledge into action in multiple systems for the benefit of all children.