Week 8: April 26 2021
UNMC 21-week Racial Equity Challenge
Welcome to the 21-week Racial Equity Challenge
Diversity scholar Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr. [eddiemoorejr.com] created the 21-Day Challenge concept to promote a deeper understanding of race, power, privilege, supremacy, and oppression. The UNMC Department of Medicine has modified this challenge to create a 21-week program in collaboration with the Office of Inclusion. You can subscribe to receive weekly emails with suggested articles, podcasts, and webinars that will help you raise awareness, compassion, understanding, and engagement towards racial equity. You can get a lapel pin from the Office of Inclusion that will represent your commitment towards working towards racial equity and understanding the experience of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color who are your colleagues, friends, patients, and community members Track your progress here.
Watch
The Gathering of Nations is the largest Pow-wow in the United States and Northern American held on April 23rd-24th in which over 500 tribes participate. (this year the event will be virtual). As we celebrate Native culture and heritage, we would like to recognize the injustices that Natives have experienced at the hands of the United States Government. Defend the Sacred is a documentary that showcases the solidarity of indigenous people in their fight to protect their water supply against oil contamination at Standing Rock.
Listen
Standing Rock and the History of Indigenous Resistance In the United States. Protests broke out at Standing Rock, a reservation in North and South Dakota, in 2016 against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The #noDAPL movement has gained international attention. Indigenous peoples opposed the pipeline because they violated sacred sites and threatened to contaminate their drinking water source, the Missouri River. The pipeline has been operating since 2017 and on April 9th the Biden administration announced that it will not take action to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline while the government conducts a court-ordered environmental review. In response, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Mike Faith states: “We are gravely concerned about the continued operation of this pipeline, which poses an unacceptable risk to our sovereign nation...In a meeting with members of Biden’s staff earlier this year, we were told that this new administration wanted to ‘get this right.’ Unfortunately, today’s update from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shows it has chosen to ignore our pleas and stick to the wrong path.”
Read
Racialization as a Barrier to Achieving Health Equity for Native Americans. Historically, the racialization of American Indian and American Native (AI/AN) can be traced to the colonial need to identify, dehumanize, and marginalize. Race developed into an important category for differentiating human groups within state and federal government policies. A single category of AI/AN race eliminates the important sociopolitical and historical differences between and among Native peoples. Racializing health of AI/AN populations limits the ability for healthcare providers to achieve health equity for Native persons. Accurate assessment of and optimal care for each patient requires thorough review of the social determinants of health and structural inequities on an individualized basis.