- [Rita] On this edition of native report.

We visit the indigenous first gift shop in Duluth Minnesota, that provides native artists opportunities, to have their work on public display.

Especially during these pandemic times.

- [Ernie] We traveled to the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northern Wisconsin.

We would learn about their Red Cliff Fishing Company.

- And we'll check in with the perspective medical student, Zhaazhaa Greensky, and we meet second year student, Jenny Mario.

We also learn what we can do to lead healthier lives, and hear from our elders on this edition of Native Report.

- [Narrator] Production funding, for Native Report, is provided and part by, the Blandin Foundation.

(gentle music) - welcome to Native Report, and thanks for tuning in.

I'm Ernie Stevens.

- Thanks Ernie, I'm Rita Aspinwall.

In November 2020, the Red cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, opened a fish company, to further sovereignty efforts, and benefit the community.

With the goals of this new venture in mind, the manager of the company, Daisy Perez-Defoe, relates to how they're providing tribal fishermen, fair pay for their catches, something she says they don't always get.

(gentle music) (singing in foreign language) - You guys ready?

- One two three.

(crowed cheering) - [Man] It's open.

(singing in foreign language) - We can trace our catch to a single fishermen, or multiple fishermen, and that's not something that's common and the fish market industry.

(speaking in foreign language) - That song was made by one of the fishermen a long time ago.

So, that is from Red Cliff.

So it was a really good, nice personal touch.

- Red Cliff is always, strive for food sovereignty, and this is gonna be a huge step in allowing that to happen.

(singing in foreign language) - I don't think there's not one family here, who has not participated in harvesting (speaking foreign language) (singing in a foreign language) - Fishermen that board on the waters, they're hard workers, they're braving every that they go out.

They're getting up in the middle of the morning, four or five o'clock and they're out there all day long, then they come back and they do it all over again.

So again, you have the commercial fishermen, you have the small boat fishermen.

And then you have individuals that go out there and set nets.

And that's called home use.

So they're out there setting their nets to feed their families.

So, to be able to do that, is priceless here as initial hobby, exercising their treaty rights, in a way of life.

There's a lot of our tribal members that go out there.

They pray, put on their tobacco every morning, as initial hobby people, we have to offer our tobacco, to the creator, for gifting us, a bundle of fish or even a couple of fish to feed our families.

Food sovereignty is being sustainable with the natural resources that we have here, and one of the main things that we have is our fresh fish.

So again, for thousands of years our ancestors harvested fish.

It's kinda like a bloodline tool, the economy for our people.

Commercial fishermen, they depend on that, to sell their fish, to the outside, and we can meet that conduit that can make that happen.

We've been setting nets, we've been harvesting fish out of these waters for years.

(singing in a foreign language) - So we're here for the fishermen.

And we're hoping that our partnership with them, can bring them the respect honor and pride in their catch that they have long been waiting for.

People have always wanted a place where the community members where the fishermen, that are part of this community can go and get a fair rate for their catch.

So, in reality it has been generations in the making.

(water splashing).

It's been widely known that fisherman haven't, the native fishermen, having had their fair pay for the catch.

So the fact that the Red Cliff Fish Company is in Red Cliff, and as for the native fishermen, because all of our fishermen are either from Red Cliff or from Bad River.

The fact that we give them a fair rate for their catch, has significantly improved, their living standards.

Now that were up and going, our competitors have matched our price, which is a great deal because not only is it benefiting the native American fishermen, it is now benefiting other standard fishermen that might not have had that quite that same prize.

But now we're actually just this little competition is making everything equal out.

And be kind of an equal playing field.

(singing in a foreign language) (indistinct) (gentle music) - Seasonal affective disorder is a type of depression that happens seasonally, usually in the winter.

Seasonal effective disorder begins and ends about the same time every year, and is recurrent.

If you're like most people with seasonal affective disorder, your symptoms start in the fall, persist through the winter months, and start to get better in the spring.

Symptoms are moodiness, lack of energy, difficulty concentrating, lack of interest in activities you normally enjoy, sleep problems, feelings of hopelessness, cravings for carbohydrates in a subsequent weight gain, thoughts of death or suicide can creep in and you should seek medical care.

Most of the time, seasonal effective disorder happens in the winter, but some people can get it in the spring and summer.

In people with bipolar disorder, spring and summer can bring on mania or a less intense form of mania called hypomania, and fall and winter can be times of the depression.

It's normal for everyone to have some days when you feel down.

But if you have extended periods of feeling down, you should be seen by your healthcare provider.

The specific causes of seasonal affective disorder are not known, but some things are associated with it.

This includes changes in your circadian rhythm or biological clock.

Decreases in sunlight can interfere with your body's clock, and cause symptoms of depression.

Decreases in sunlight, can cause decreases in serotonin levels.

And this can lead to depression.

Your body's melatonin levels can be affected by the lack of sunlight, and this can precipitate sleep and mood problems.

Seasonal effective disorder tends to happen in women more than men, and having blood relatives with seasonal effective disorder increases your risk of having it.

Having bipolar disorder, or a history of depression are also risk factors.

Living far from the equator, in the subsequent shorter winter days is an independent risk factor.

Seasonal effective disorder, should not just be chalked up to the winter blues.

It needs to be taken seriously as it can worsen and be harder to treat.

Worsening seasonal effective disorder can lead to social withdrawal, problems with work or school, interpersonal problems, anxiety, eating disorders, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts or behaviors.

Diagnosing seasonal affective disorder includes a good history and a physical exam and lab tests.

Such as the complete blood count and thyroid testing.

Filling out questionnaires or seeing a mental health professional are helpful.

Treatment may include light therapy, medications and psychotherapy.

If you have bipolar disorder make sure you let your provider know because light therapy, and antidepressant medicines could potentially trigger a manic episode.

For seasonal affective disorder light therapy as a first-line treatment.

And generally starts working within a few days to weeks and has very few side effects.

Some antidepressant medicines work well for seasonal affective disorder and your healthcare provider can help you with that.

Psychotherapy or talk therapy, is another mainstay of seasonal affective disorder treatment.

Relaxation techniques, meditation, music or art therapy and guided imagery are techniques found to be helpful.

Don't try to tough this out and suffer through.

Your health care provider, is there to help you.

And remember to call an elder.

They'd been waiting for your call.

I'm Dr. Arne Vainio, and this is health matters.

(upbeat music) - Native Report caught up with the coordinator of the indigenous first gift shop, Jasmine Wong, to learn how the pandemic has impacted the American Indian Community Housing Organizations operations, and how they've adapted.

As well as what led her to serve the community in the position she's in at the nonprofit.

(gentle music) - I'm the indigenous first arts and gift shop coordinator.

I get to work with the artist and we buy their work, I've hosted art shows with them, I've MCed art shows, and I've helped set up art shows, I helped redesign this art gallery, just last November.

I am Chinese, French, Polish, Irish native American, and German.

Half Chinese though.

So I've always identified as all of those.

All of those, make up who I am.

The American Indian community Housing Organization, is a nonprofit in Duluth Minnesota.

We are a housing organization first.

So we have a lot of women and children that are getting away from homelessness or domestic violence that live here.

So we're a safe house.

We have a cultural program, that represents indigenous arts, foods, and books.

It's the indigenous first arts and gift shop.

We really focus on our environment here and we have solar panels on the roof, we have two gardens, we have one on the roof and we have one downstairs that the kids can harvest food from.

That we usually use for cooking and the meals that before COVID, we used to serve at dinner time, and we have a kids program, really all together AICHO is a cultural program though.

I thought AICHO was like one of the only places in Duluth, with a large cultural background that I could work with people of color and not feel different or not be subjected to getting less pay because I'm a woman or any of that.

So yes, I would say the culture brought me in.

I enjoy what I do, I enjoy representing everybody and impacting Duluth positively.

And everything else I do here.

I just don't...

I work in the gift shop, but I help out in every other area where a cultural center.

So we're very used to having people in here, and it's sad that we can't allow guests to come into our art gallery, but the benefits are worth it for the safety of everybody.

I'm really lucky to work with such artistic people daily, even though we're staring COVID right now.

I still get to talk to artists daily and help represent them, and diversity in Duluth.

I also built the website indigenousfirst.org, that took about eight months prior to COVID, but we were so busy with our art shows, and our cultural programming, even though we're closed it's really amazing to still get to represent our native American artist authors and agriculturalist.

And we're, doing a great job of that online, on social media, on Facebook, on our website, even AICHO website is doing a great job of continuously representing our artists when it's hard to get representation.

It's all online.

Our artists are, losing income because these shows, the summer shows the powwows, the events where they usually make money it's canceled.

So, for us to continue to support online has been very helpful to them.

So in March, we were giving our tenants 14 day food boxes and our polo center, which is very large, turned into a food pantry.

And our, fridge was completely full of meats, we went shopping, and we also started to use foods from indigenous first and local farmers in those boxes.

And to have that security net of food was really important.

We made two different food boxes, the indigenous food box and the inter-tribal food box.

The indigenous foods box has white corn meal from Bow & Arrow, and Red Lake Nation Foods pancake mix healing tea from Sakari Farms, Spirit Lake wild rice and Spirit Lake syrup and Red Lake jam.

And the Intertribal Food Box I came up with because a lot of those foods, I had met the farmers at the Intertribal Food Summit the year previously, and we still want it even though the summit was canceled in person we still want it to represent this food vendors in some sort of way to.

Because of this food sales some of the farmers said that they once have been able to pay their employees and in March and April, had we not sold at the volume that we did.

This just has to succeed this year because the artist, they really need it.

(gentle music) - We're faced with today.

How do you blend?

How do you blend everything together?

How can you hold a eagle feather in one hand and a computer in another?

How do you blend that?

Or is it, do we just focus and we do one and then we only.

So I think we're faced today, with the blending of our traditions.

The blending of our culture.

That taken away but the blending of our culture.

And the reason why I said that too is because, I mean, if I drive a car, or I wear shoes from Walmart does that make me any less (speaking in a foreign language) Or does that make me any less of a native person.

Darwin?

No, it does.

But I believe it's very important for the survival of ushers as nations.

For our communities to not only emphasize academia, or emphasize going to school, as a survival tool for our communities.

But I believe it's to learn in our language is just as important.

For our young people and our communities to learn our ceremonies.

How do you give a (speaking in a foreign language) What do you say when that child does the first walk?

I know those are just as important for that, you know, on our traditions.

So ceremonial traditions, I guess you would say that it's very important.

(gentle music) - We first met Zhaazhaa Greensky, as she was applying to medical school at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Since that time we found out that she's been very, very busy, but not too busy to get an update about her experience to get into medical school.

We also meet second year medical student and Jenny Mario.

(gentle music) - [Ernie] It has been several months since we first met Zhaazhaa Wanong Greensky She was walking her dog, on a break from working on our application to the University Minnesota Duluth school of medicine.

There are several new developments in her quests.

But her enthusiasm remains high, and she's confident this is the right decision.

- Zhaazhaa, tell me what's been going on in your life since we last had an opportunity to chat.

- So I'm 25 weeks pregnant with twins, crazy thinking about it, but my trajectory has not changed at all.

I, one of the main reasons I want to be a physician, is to help future generations.

Give the role model and stuff like that.

Especially as an indigenous woman, cause we don't....

Growing up I didn't have a lot of role models that were in like the medical profession, or even in science, or STEM fields in general.

So I've always been really passionate about having, being a support pillar in my community once I get to the place where I'm established.

I applied to medical school, I got a secondary applications.

So like when you go through the medical school process you submit your primary, which has your transcripts and like your work experiences, and like your other experiences.

And that's a very long process.

And then you also have your test scores like your MCAT and stuff like that.

So I submitted that in November and then I was notified at the end of December I believe.

Then I got an interview.

So now I'm in that process.

So right now, because of the coronavirus, they're doing virtual interviews, and I do two of them.

The overall process while it was like extremely hard extremely isolating, extremely difficult, it was also very rewarding.

And it made me think a lot about myself.

Even though it was really isolating.

I relied a lot on my internal narrative, and in my internal beliefs on well, I think, the creator put me on this earth to help my community, and to fill this position.

- Zhaazhaas experience, maybe typical of students applying to the UMD school of medicine, during a global pandemic.

And for those already in medical school, the pandemic disrupted an already busy time.

- It was definitely a whirlwind.

I feel like I've blinked a couple times, and all of a sudden my preclinical education is almost over.

I think it was just a lot of learning to manage the material.

That was the biggest thing my first year.

And it definitely was just a good experience having the amount of native students here starting first year with me.

So we had like a really good support system, and Dr. Owen is great helping us in every way that she can.

So I would say that the adjustment went pretty well.

I think that I came into medical school with my eyes wide open.

The biggest thing was just figuring out how to strategize, and use time management.

'Cause it really honestly is so much material that if you could spend your whole life going crazy, trying to memorize every single fact, but you really have to learn how to balance just your study time, and really taking care of yourself.

Medical school was always just kind of my big goal from I dunno, I feel like as long as I can remember as a kid I just really respected doctors and wanted to be that smart I guess.

I spent some time working as a AmeriCorps service member on my reservation at the Shoshone-Bannock Community Health Center.

And just seeing how like a HRSA grant funded clinic worked.

I guess learning kind of like in real life how, different grant opportunities can create different programs, and just good things for community.

It made me really interested in kind of more administrative things, community health in general and also just learning how to write grants for those sort of programs.

My biggest goal is really just to serve Indian country the best I can.

I would love to work for one of my home communities.

It's really early for me to say if that'll be, where I end up, especially just depending on what specialty I ended up going into but that's kind of the career path that I've been shaping for myself, is to be really involved in the community and to help advocate for native health.

- [Ernie] Even though their home reservations are separated by hundreds of miles, and they will be in separate graduating classes.

The desire to work for their home communities is shared by Jenny and Zhaazhaa.

Another matter of importance is mentors.

- I think it's incredibly important, especially for professional school and getting to something that you just aren't really too familiar with.

And just having someone, honestly, that looks like you, like in the role that you want to fill is really impactful.

And another great opportunity here I've had before COVID was to mentor youth, especially through ICO here in Duluth.

We had a couple events where we were able to interact, have game nights with some of the youth.

And we also brought them here one night and just kinda showed them around and, tried to encourage them and we taught them how to take blood pressure.

So that was a really fun time.

I think my biggest advice would just be to believe in yourself and don't listen to people when they tell you no.

'Cause there's been plenty of people along the way who've maybe not intentionally, but definitely said things that were discouraging to me, on my path here.

And you just gotta follow, your dream and follow what your heart tells you to do.

And you can adjust along the way, but just keep your goals in mind.

(gentle music) - Yeah, so last night I got a phone call from UMD admissions, and they informed me is that I got accepted.

So I will be starting medical school this fall.

My dad was super excited for me.

He doesn't really understand, like he has like some college education.

He has like a mechanics certificate.

So he doesn't really understand the process of getting into med school, but he was still very excited for me.

My mom was stoked.

(laughing) She was very excited.

My significant other could hear me.

And he immediately started screaming so loud.

(giggling) He was like, like running around, getting my dogs all kinds of wild.

And I had to like remain professional on the phone.

I picked UMD very strategically because I have such a good support system in this area.

The plan is, that my mom is actually gonna move in with us, when school starts.

And then she is gonna be like the caretaker for the kids when I'm at school.

'Cause she's retired and I'm very very thankful and fortunate that she's able to do that.

And then, I'm just gonna study really hard, I guess.

(giggling) (gentle music) - [Ernie] For more information about Native Report, look for us on the web @nativereport.org on Facebook Instagram and YouTube.

- Thank you for spending this time with your friends and neighbors across Indian country.

I'm Rita Aspinwall.

- And I'm Ernie Stevens.

Join us next time for Native Report.

(gentle music)