When he befriended Ed Skinner, a 71-year-old tribesman four years ago, Sean Patrick realized the importance of caring for elders.
“I had just lost my mother and my brother,” Patrick said of his encounter with the homeopathic doctor and Vietnam veteran. “There was one day that everything was hitting me a little hard, and I walked from school to his place and just started telling him about it, and he just started to laugh – I was a bit offended. Then he said, ‘You know, you take yourself too seriously.’”
Patrick, the co-chair of the North American Indigenous Student Organization, said he learned from experiences with Skinner, one of his Lakota elders in Lenawee County, Mich., who seemed to demonstrate the legacy elders hold and their need to be cared for — specifically regarding health care.
But when accessibility to health education and resources on indigenous lands runs short, he said it is the community’s responsibility to care of their elders and he is happy MSU is helping fill the gap.
“A big misconception is that this is just how they are, or this is just their lifestyle,” Patrick said. “But more than anything, it’s a lack of sufficient health care.”
The Geriatric Education Center of Michigan, or GECM, housed in the MSU College of Human Medicine, is working in highly-populated indigenous communities to educate professionals on how to best help elderly patients, said Jan Yonker, the GECM deputy director. The program has four locations in the state.
Emily Proctor, a GECM tribal extension educator located in Harbor Springs, Mich., said she has been working with a team in the area for more than four years to address the needs of the tribal communities.
Proctor, who is affiliated with the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, said she helps educate health professionals about treating dementia and diabetes — diseases prevalent in the indigenous community.
Her team works with the Odawa people, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.
Kathryn Fort, a staff attorney and adjunct professor of indigenous law at the MSU College of Law said it is part of indigenous law to care for elders.
According to the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians constitution, a direct principle is to “promote with special care the health, educational and economic interests of all the people, especially our children and elders.”
“We don’t have that in our state constitution,” she said. “If you’re trying to draw analogies on elders from their community, it is an easy example to know that this is a constant priority for them.”
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