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FPCC Receives Tribal Practices Award

Fort Peck Community College was recently awarded the Tribal Practices for Wellness in Indian Country Grant from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. FPCC is one of 30 AI/ AN community serving organizations from across the nation to receive this competitive award. Tribal Practices for Wellness in Indian Country is a cooperative agreement Notice of Funding Opportunity supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for five years, with an annual project budget of $150,000.

FPCC’s project is titled Tending to Land-Based, Intergenerational Whole Health Practices for Wellness at Fort Peck. The project started June 30 with an anticipated end date of June 29, 2027.

The overall goals of the project is to increase resilience and use of cultural practices to reduce diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer, as well increased sense of mental and emotional wellbeing among community members. To reach this fiveyear goal, FPCC’s proposed project activities each aim to increase the number of people participating in opportunities for cultural teachings and practices that promote health and wellness. The project will do this through three distinct strategies which include developing an annual community calendar of seasonal cultural and traditional events, celebrations and activities that support and reinforce healthy practices. The project will emulate intergenerational transmission of knowledge and language through field trips themed by cyclical, seasonally appropriate hunting, gathering, harvesting and preservation methods of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes community. Project staff will conduct weekly field trips themed on planning, observing, hunting, harvesting, planting or crafting.

Weekly activities will be based on cycles of seasons and the appropriate times of the year for each activity. The project will survey the landscape for plants and medicines and collect information on traditional language and annual cycles to assemble a seasonal, cyclical calendar of natural-world observation, plant/medicine harvesting, hunting, and preservation practices. The project will establish or strengthen opportunities for adults and elders to pass on tribal, cultural and other knowledge to children and young people and to other adults and elders within the Fort Peck Assinboine and Sioux Tribes community.

For more information about the project, email ehopkins@fpcc.edu.

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