A training program that empower healthcare providers to see, serve, and stand with Native patients.
Seeing Our Native Patients
Restoring Balance: Culturally Grounded Care that Fosters Safety, Healing, and Respect
For generations, Native communities have faced healthcare systems that too often misunderstand or overlook their needs. These gaps in understanding have real consequences, fueling health disparities, eroding trust, and leaving Indigenous women, girls, and 2-Spirit people especially vulnerable to violence. Yet within every Native community are the values, teachings, and relationships that have sustained wellness and healing for centuries.
To create meaningful change, healthcare providers must do more than deliver care; they must understand the histories, strengths, and lived realities of the patients they serve. Building that understanding is essential not only to prevent violence but also to improve every aspect of Native health, from maternal care to chronic disease management.
Seeing Our Native Patients (SONP) invites providers to be part of this movement toward safety, healing, and respect. Through culturally grounded, story-driven training sessions, SONP helps participants recognize the ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma, understand their role in prevention and healing, and strengthen trust between Native patients and healthcare systems. Centering Indigenous voices and community wisdom, SONP empowers providers to see, serve, and stand with Native patients, helping to build a healthier future for all our relations.
About Our Program
The Seeing Our Native Patients (SONP) training program is designed for clinical teams in tribal health centers, Indian Health Service facilities, urban clinics, and medical systems serving Native populations. Our programming includes five interactive sessions, each approximately one hour long, focusing on the practical, emotional, and cultural dimensions of patient care. Participants learn to conduct culturally informed interviews, document care with sensitivity, and connect patients to Native-run rehabilitation programs, mental health services, traditional medicine practitioners, and community-based resources. Each session can be customized to reflect the place-based history, local tribal healthcare systems, and best practices of the Native communities the client serves.
Core Sessions:
1. Intergenerational Trauma & Healthcare in AI/AN Communities
Explores how trauma is transmitted across generations and expressed through health disparities, with case-based learning on trauma-informed care strategies.
2. Pediatric Populations: Breaking the Cycle of Trauma & Disparities
Examines AI/AN child health disparities and the intergenerational effects of removal policies, boarding schools, and ICWA, emphasizing family-centered and culturally responsive pediatric care.
3. Geriatric Populations: Elders, Language Revitalization, & Multigenerational Care
Highlights the role of elders in sustaining community knowledge and language as a foundation of well-being, with case-based learning on culturally respectful end-of-life and long-term care.
4. Culture as Medicine: Integrating Traditional Healing in Harm Reduction
Connects Indigenous healing practices with harm reduction and chronic disease management, exploring the protective role of culture in addressing substance use and mental health.
5. Sexual Health, Pregnancy, & Intimate Partner Violence in AI/AN Communities
Addresses reproductive and sexual health inequities and the prevalence of gender-based violence, with exercises in trauma-informed screening and intervention.
Additional optional sessions include Death & Dying: Culturally Responsive End-of-Life Care and AI/AN Dentistry: Oral Health Disparities & Culturally Informed Dental Care.
We offer customized trainings for organizations seeking tailored learning experiences grounded in the history and resources of the communities they serve. Programs are available virtually or in-person.