Red Star is on a journey of healing and transformation of our Indigenous health systems. We look to our customary ways as inherited from our ancestors – the values and principles that govern our personal and collective relationships – to solve contemporary challenges.
All of our projects aim to prioritize local knowledge, expand mindsets, evolve practices, and realize an overall vision of health and wellness.
Learn more about our current and most recent projects:
Indigenous Leader Exchange on Water Guardianship
I Am The River and The River Is Me
All humanity stands to benefit from Indigenous approaches to water and land guardianship. In February 2020 Tribal Leaders from Arizona travelled to the Whanganui River to explore what it means to live in relationship with our rivers.
Healing Health Systems: A Transformational Journey.
Indigenous People are the original architects of systems – interconnected ways of living – that support the well-being of humanity and the environment.
For more than a decade, Red Star has worked in partnership with Tribes and Pacific Islands to strengthen their health systems to improve health. By examining our internal systems through an Indigenous worldview, we affirm cultural identity, connect people and the environment, and create alignment between our work and our values. We work with communities to take a high-level, holistic view of how various partners work together to evolve the current systems and processes to improve coordination, cooperation, and effectiveness.
ALIGNING SYSTEMS FOR HEALTH AND WELLNESS IN TRIBAL COMMUNITIES
Seven Directions and Red Star, Inc., support transformations of tribal health care, public health and social services systems with support from a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation award.
Becoming Butterfly
We work with communities to create alignment between our work and our values as part of a transformational process to strengthen Indigenous health systems.
Becoming Butterfly, is a metaphor for the transformational process of strengthening health systems. Red Star, in partnership with Seven Directions, A Center for Indigenous Public health at the University of Washington, has developed an emerging indigenous, community centered approach to strengthening tribal health systems through performance and leadership. Using the Gathering of Native Americans (GONA) model as a framework and process for facilitating community engagement in health system transformation, the Becoming Ka Ma Ma resource offers:
• Indigenous approaches to (re) imagine tribal health systems.
• An Integrated Public Health Performance Management Model.
• Strategies for strong Tribal Governance for community Health.
Cross Cultural Ocean Knowledge Network
The Te Ahu O Rehua Ocean Knowledge Network connects expertise across the fields of climate change, marine science, ocean health, voyaging and non-instrument navigation, and build capacity amongst Māori tertiary students, community members, and practitioners in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Red Star through its CEO has a supportive role to the Mātangireia Waka Canoe Trust whose mission is learn, preserve, and redistribute the practice, customs and traditions of waka (canoe), te reo Māori (language) and Māori arts.
He Huinga Waka, He Huinga Kōrero
A gathering of canoes, a gathering of conversations.
Through the leadership of Mātangireia Waka Trust and Rehua Innovations, Red Star works as a partner and support to facilitate tukuihotanga – the intergenerational transmission of the Māori language and protocol – through the expanded use of te reo Māori with kaupapa waka.
Current efforts focus on traditional voyaging and the revitalisation of mātangirua – sailing outrigger canoes.
Uniting Voices for Indigenous Public Health.
Seven Directions, A Center for Indigenous Public Health is the first public health institute (PHI) in the United States to focus solely on Indigenous health and wellness.
A desire to create greater connectivity across the many tribes, communities and organizations dedicated to the health and wellness of American Indian and Alaska Native people led to the creation of Seven Directions, A Center for Indigenous Public Health.
In 2011, Red Star led an exploration to determine the value and desirability of an Indigenous focused public health institute. Guided by a national advisory board, Tribal leaders were engaged to determine the role an Indigenous PHI could have in improving health among American Indian and Alaska Native communities.
Red Star released several reports outlining the process and outcomes:
• Tribal Public Health Institute Feasibility Project Findings Report.
• Seven Directions: A Blueprint for Advancing the Health and Wellness of Our Native Communities.
• A Unified Approach to Public Health: A Case For Tribal Public Health Institutes.
Red Star’s exploration of an Indigenous public health institute was conducted with support from grants from the Robert Wood Johnson and W.K. Kellogg Foundations