Cloquet, MN — Rebekah Dunlap (Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior) is determined to reclaim and revitalize traditional Ojibwe practices related to parent and child health.
Pine Ridge, SD — Erik Bringswhite wants his community to raise healthy, ethical Native children. As a long-time foster parent and juvenile justice worker, he is a role model to many on the Pine Ridge Reservation and in the state of South Dakota.
Minneapolis, MN — Chef Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota Sioux, knows that food is the heart of every culture. He also understands that his fellow Native Americans were stripped of their connections to Indigenous food systems and practices.
Saint Paul, MN — Rhiana Yazzie uses storytelling to create original work that reveals the complex, beautiful reality of Native Americans. She wants to help Native people reclaim their narrative and to change the way they view themselves.
Onamia, MN — Melissa Boyd wants to help lead the movement to re-stabilize and renew the Ojibwe language in the homelands of her people, starting in the classrooms of youngest learners.
Rapid City, SD — Heather Dawn Thompson wants to engage the private sector to assist the Great Plains Tribes in their efforts to build their strength and self-sufficiency.
Brainerd, MN — Susan Beaulieu teaches about adverse childhood experiences — ACEs — in Native American communities. Defined as traumatic events, ACEs can negatively impact child health and development and have long-term effects into adulthood.
According to her friends, Eileen Briggs is a “galvanizer of people and of change.” She leads the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Ventures, a comprehensive project aimed at reducing poverty.
Mahnomen, MN — As executive director of Sacred Spirits First Nations Coalition, a program serving Native women, Lisa Brunner advocates for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and sex trafficking.
Eagle Butte, SD — Julie Garreau has been the driving force behind the Cheyenne River Youth Project (CRYP), developing it from a fledgling experiment to one of the nation’s most successful Native youth development programs.
Belcourt, ND — Psychologist Tami Jollie-Trottier knows that the arts offer a creative outlet for a young person to build self-confidence and cultural identity.
