Rooted in Relationships: Capturing Spring & Summer 2025 Through Photos, Stories, and Collective Healing

Spring and Summer 2025: Photos of places, people, and experiences that will transform how we live and work.

Spring and Summer have been wild, hectic, and transformative. Words would never capture what we have been up to, who we have met, what we felt, and what we will do now because of it. Photos might. Our work to elevate photography as a research method is not new. In 2022, we collaborated with our brother, Marcus Red Thunder, to explore the role and use of photography as a research method. We continue to use photos to document our journeys with communities, people, and places that remind us we are rooted in relationships first. 

We are researchers, storytellers, aunties, cousins, grandmothers, elders, daughters, and spirits living in a big and beautiful world, doing work that only we can do. Our work centers on relationships over transactions, people over power, and collective healing over individual egos. These photos and stories are evidence of meaning and memories at AKA. 

April 2025

We attended the INIHKD RIEL Conference, Reclaiming Indigenous Ecologies of Love, April 28-May 2, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort and Spa on the ancestral homelands of the Santa Ana Pueblo in New Mexico. We helped launch the Indigenous Peer Support Specialist Train-the-Trainer Manual, a resource for generational healing, in collaboration with our longtime partners at the University of New Mexico Center for Native American Health. We connected with old friends and met new ones, even spending quality time at a laundry mat, where we ate fries and drank iced tea from a nearby fast food chain. 

May 2025

Learning is a lifelong journey that never really ends. We celebrated the graduation of three MPH AKA graduate interns, Curtis Hartley, Yolanda Ikazoboh, and Kesiena Abeke. As they go out into the world as public health professionals, we know they will practice public health rooted in community, love, and connection. 

Our partners at Fort Peck Tribal Health invited us to Deadwood, South Dakota, to facilitate an intentional strategic planning retreat. Over the course of three days, we met, watched, laughed, and planned for the future. We left the retreat and developed a formal plan for Fort Peck Tribal Health to utilize in implementing various public health programs and services. As one elder reminded us, “We are all our grandfathers' grandchildren.” This sentiment is at the core of being a good relative, practicing reciprocity and generosity for the benefit of future generations. 

June 2025

The California Rural Indian Health Board (CRIHB) 42^nd Annual Traditional Indian Health Gathering reminded us of the power of community, plants, people, and reflection as people came together to celebrate and learn all the good practices from our ancestors. Associate Kelley Milligan attended with her two young children, sharing and reflecting on the importance of these connections in healing and restoring what has been lost.  

The Boys and Girls Club of the Northern Cheyenne Nation holds a special place in our hearts and minds. It is the connection with elders, the teaching and humility of basic practices to live by, and love that we always remember. Wanda Small, a grant writer for the Club is my mentor and elder friend. She’s  always up for a phone call and a cup of black coffee, at any time of day. In June, AKA Associate Bethany Fatupaito and I visited the Club to discuss its programming and evaluation needs. Funding, programming, and policies often shift, but our steadfast support of the Club’s mission to serve young people on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation will never go away. 

The Northern Cheyenne Trial Courts are a new partner  — well, new but old. We’ve been aware of their work for several decades and are supporting the implementation of a restorative justice program that will connect individuals to resources, education, jobs, and transformative practices that will heal them and heal the community. People like Sven Limpy and Bobbi Limberhand supporting these programs remind us of the importance of relationships, respect, responsibility, repair, and reintegrating. 

Our friends at the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB) lead public health and Native-led programming like nobody else on the planet. It’s been nearly a decade since we started attending the annual June THRIVE conference, and in the last several years, we facilitated the evaluation of the NW NARCH. AKA Associate Eleni Haloftis led a powerful discussion on research and evaluation in Indigenous contexts. We know deep in our souls that this time, these connections with high school students, and all of this work, matter. 

We met up with our friends from Spotted Bull Recovery Resource Center in Portland to tour the Japanese Gardens and have some unusual tasting tea. We sat on benches and stared at the sand, rocks, and plants, taking it all in while sharing stories about our lives, the tales youth told, and the experiences that students would carry with them from the THRIVE conference in Portland, Summer 2025. I know heroes and legends now. They are not on TV, and they are not famous. My heroes are people like Carrie Manning and Tatum Evenson from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, who work with Native youth every day to strengthen their cultural resilience and positive memories that will help them endure difficult times. 

July 2025

Our relatives at Doya Natsu Healing Center make sobriety possible for everyone. Traveling through Jackson and seeing the Tetons, making medicine with Delane Tizdump while elder Curtis Barney watches and tells us stories. We made medicines using willow bark, dandelion roots, and other traditional plants. Later, I am listening to visiting NIH researchers talk shop about what constitutes chronic pain, wondering about the soul wound, the pain that is never quenched by opioids or complementary alternative medicine, or over-the-counter fixes …I say nothing and just listen. Later, we gather the community research review committee while eating frybread, stew, and salad, prepared by DNHC staff and caretakers of the world, Phil Steven and Percille McLeod. Falling asleep one evening, listening to rez dogs barking and the owls crying are sounds that will not leave my memory. Waking up in a teepee at the base of the Wind River Mountains is a gift that not everyone gets to receive. A morning hike to greet the sun and catch the falls at Sinks Canyon, followed by coffee and scones from the best bakery on earth, being at Doya Natsu Healing Center is medicine for the soul. Smiles, laughing, Sadie Posey in the house… this trip will stay with me for a long time. 

August 2025

We land in Reno and head to Lake Tahoe for a 3-day intentional strategic planning retreat with the CRIHB CTEC Team. Twenty-plus people and some family members attended, taking in the mountain's beautiful landscape and Lake Tahoe, which seemed unreal. Through connections and relations, we ask Melanie Smokey, a Washoe Tribal Member, to welcome CTEC staff to the region. She shares creation stories and medicine stories, reminding staff about the sacredness of life and the importance of working in Tribal communities. Melanie’s son accompanies her and supports this work. We plan for several days and celebrate CTEC staff with an awards ceremony. We end with a living strategic plan, led by AKA Associate Kelley Milligan and supported by the entire CTEC team. 

A writing workshop. Really? This is what I thought about when the opportunity came to me. Over three days, I worked with four authors to build their confidence, craft their stories, and complete puzzles that remind us not to litter. The ego was in a jar. The words were written on post-it notes, and the spirit of writing was in that room. When asked how to write an academic paper, I thought about it for a while. When asked how one becomes a writing coach, I thought even more. Then I looked at my life and myself and realized this was what I was, without actually knowing it. I wrote a book, Write Well Live Well: Tips from a writing coach on academic publishing. I shared this and audio recordings with my students. We laughed, we created blind cameos, and I wrote poems about what this experience meant. This landing page has everything we did, and more. Join us in writing, living, creating art, and doing puzzles, to live well. 

Our last big trip of the summer was the RMTLC Annual Health Conference in Billings, Montana. We hosted a few open houses and met people we didn't know, as well as many we did. We had so much fun that it didn't feel like work. How is this possible? We kept things simple… and just enjoyed everyone’s presence. Our friends from Montana State University We Are Here Now showed up to have food and tell us about their plans for the future. AKA Elder Dee BigFoot graced us with her presence and told us so many stories, reminding us and the youth from Fort Peck Tribes, that we are star people, we are sacred, and that we come from the stars. Our relatives from Native PRIDE and SBRRC were in Billings to host the annual Youth Leadership gathering. AKA Associate Jay Aguilar took so many photos of this time and work that we will never forget this summer event. We met up with AKA Social Media and Communications Lead Jordan Denny Suddeth. AKA Associate Emily Beamon flew all the way from North Carolina to spend time with us, meet our relatives, and learn more about work that pushes the limits of what is comfortable and known. Having four of legends in Billings felt so good... Clayton Small, Kellie Webb, Ernie Big Horn and Dee Big Foot... you mean so much to me and the world.

Most memorable, though, was the elder panel to launch the Healing with Grief Toolkit. Designed by AKA Illustrator and Graphic Designer, Jeanne Bowman, with assistance from Macrina Singleton and Diane Spotted Elk, this toolkit and elder stories left us without words and so much to think about as we walk humbly to heal from our own grief and losses and endure well. There were so many messages from our elders. Pray. Connect. Send people on their journeys. Find your family of support and love. Create a grief group. Support one another. Visit the elders. In your grief, reach out. Forgive. Talk to God. Love Jesus. Sobriety. Marcus Red Thunder helped us again to package these stories on Buzz Sprout, so that everyone may live with good words, connections, and restored hearts that heal grief and losses that inevitably come with living this mortal life on earth. Having four of legends in the same room felt so good... Clayton Small, Kellie Webb, Ernie Big Horn and Dee Big Foot... you mean so much to me and the world.

Work that changes and transforms us is not really work. It is part of a predetermined plan for our lives that we cannot run from, no matter how fast we try, and no matter what fires may come. What I know from this summer and these photos is that I am not the same person today that I was yesterday, or two months ago, or more than two years ago. That is my prayer for all of our relations throughout this beautiful Turtle Island. To find meaning, purpose, connection, and peace, to live well.

We (all of us at AKA) offer endless thanks to our partners, clients, colleagues, students, and relatives who teach us about what it means to live well. 

Peace and blessings as we look forward to another chapter at AKA and beyond. 

AK