Cancer Prevention in the Crow Nation and the Rights of Mother Earth Part 2

American Indian Airwaves

Part 1: According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “American Indian and Alaska Native people were more likely to get liver, stomach, kidney, lung, colorectal, and female breast cancers than White people in most regions. In fact, compared to White women, Native American women had higher rates of getting liver, stomach, kidney, colorectal, and cervical cancer.” Today’s guest tirelessly works at the community level within the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation to provide medical and health outreach regarding cancer prevention methods, cancer awareness, and appropriate treatment methods for all Apsáalooke citizens. Turn in for more information regarding our guest works, allies and supporter’s assistance, and collective efforts of the Messengers for Health, an Indigenous 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located on the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation in Montana. Our mission is to improve the health of individuals on the Crow Indian Reservation and outlying areas through community-based projects designed to strengthen the capacity of communities and empower them to assess and address their own unique health-related problems. Guest: Alma Knows His Gun-McCormick (Apsáalooke Nation), “is a member of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation and fluently speaks her language. Her compassion for working with cancer stems from her personal experience of losing her daughter to cancer. From 1996-2000 she was the Outreach Coordinator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Montana Breast and Cervical Health Program. She first conducted outreach education with Apsáalooke Indian women, feeling a breakthrough about the awareness of the importance of the Pap test and mammograms. Later, she provided culturally sensitive education to all Indian women on the seven reservations and in urban Indian clinics in Montana. Alma’s focus has been on health education with the dream of continuing her work with women and men on the Crow reservation. She has fulfilled that dream by being the Executive Director for the Messengers for Health Program. She is a single mother with two sons, one daughter, and five grandchildren.” Part 2: Indigenous peoples and their respective First Nations are on the frontlines of Mother Earth struggling and resisting against violent forms of colonialism including nefarious manifestations of ecocides, democides, genocides, and the full dominant spectrum of “cides”. Today’s guest was the keynote speaker on April 19th, 2021 at the Strengthening the Circle: A Native Non-profit Leadership Program which thematically focused on the Rights of Mother Earth. The event organizers are Generation Indigenous Ways, Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Inc., Artemisia Associates, Wolfstar Productions, and Hopa Mountain. Turn in for Part Two of a two-part keynote speech on “The Rights of Mother Earth” by a preeminent Indigenous elder, scholar, activist and more on American Indian Airwaves. Guest: Dr. Henrietta Mann (Tsetsehestaestse [Cheyenne] Nation), elder, activist, scholar, founder of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College, Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Montana State University, and current Board Chair of the Board of Directors for the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Inc.