New program goal: Explore healing practices and other approaches practiced in indigenous communities around the world.
Julie Smith Iliniemi (left), assistant professor of Indigenous health and director of community-based research at UND’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, explores the beauty of New Zealand with young Māori guides who share her powerful stories and spirit. Explore the beauty. land. Photo courtesy of UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Written by Brian James Schill
Julie Smith-Iriniemi, a Maori from New Zealand, explained: “We’re immersing ourselves, staying on the ancestral lands of our different communities.” “The aim is to explore cultural perspectives on healing practices, mental health and recovery, and medicine as practiced in various indigenous communities around the world.”
Smith Iliniemi, assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous Health at UND’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, points to her team’s new Global Indigenous Health Perspectives Program.
Professor Smith-Iliniemi will take a group of UND students to New Zealand this academic year to study the health and health care of the country’s indigenous Maori people, and they will be part of UND’s travel cohort.
Smith-Iliniemi, who has spent years working on suicide prevention with her community, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, is an expert on incorporating Indigenous healing practices into evidence-based models of trauma treatment around the world. While presenting, he met with Māori community members and researchers.
Cultural connections across the ocean
“One of the things I remember about New Zealand is walking into the local convenience store and thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, this is like a lot of the convenience stores I’ve been to in the US reservations community.’ Smith-Iriniemi recalled that when she walked into a Māori community center and saw elders cooking traditional food and making medicine from local plants, she thought, “This is home. ” he added.
“It was also essentially a food desert, where elders used ancestral knowledge and traditional medicine to work to heal the effects of colonization on their communities.”
Experiences like this have led UND faculty to understand how the effects of government food systems on formerly colonized peoples thousands of miles from the American Midwest actually impact indigenous peoples closer to home. I was able to understand what was being reflected.
“These programs often lead to obesity because people are not getting the nutrients they need,” she says.
Inspired by her own cultural immersion experiences in New Zealand, Smith-Iliniemi began developing a study abroad course in the island nation more than a year ago. Smith-Iliniemi developed the course in collaboration with UND’s Office of Study Abroad, which manages short-term and long-term travel courses that function similarly to on-campus UND courses in terms of tuition and fees, and said UND’s 2025 The course was built around the spring break week of March.
The researchers, who recently reunited with Māori friends at the World Indigenous Suicide Prevention Conference in Niagara Falls, and colleagues overseas have finalized details for a course focused on the health of New Zealand’s Indigenous peoples.
That’s what David Wilson, professor and chair of the School of Indigenous Health and UND’s associate director for health research, added. Now you can.
“Our department believes that these international collaboration opportunities are highly enriching educational experiences that can lead to the sharing of Indigenous knowledge and help improve the health outcomes of tribal communities in the United States and abroad. ,” Wilson said. “Similar to the social determinants of health paradigm, it is the combined influence of multiple factors that contribute to an individual’s health status. We need shared knowledge from our community.”
Coming soon: Overseas study courses in Ghana
Smith-Iliniemi’s course is not the only opportunity her department offers students to travel. Grace Karikari, assistant professor of indigenous health, is in the midst of developing Ghana-based courses to be offered in the future.
“Although the focus is on the health of indigenous peoples around the world, we are also thinking about the concept of ‘indigenous peoples’ outside of the United States,” added Karikari, who is originally from Ghana. “We start by having students do research abroad and think about indigenous Ghanaians and Native Americans, social determinants of health, and resilience models.”
Broadly speaking, Crunchy Hope asks students to think about how improving the health and well-being of people in the United States differs from improving health in Ghana, and how the history of each place influences well-being today. The goal is to help students understand how they are having an impact.
“Of course, this course deals with equity,” Karikari said, referring to the UND LEADS strategic plan, which focuses on leadership, equity, affinity, discovery, and service. The potential for collaborative scholarship across institutions and continents. ”
Karikari said she hopes to travel with up to 10 students at a time (possibly from programs across the university) and wants to give more study abroad opportunities to students of all backgrounds.
“That’s why we step into the realm of overseas research,” she said. “We’re looking beyond public health and Indigenous health. We hope the health sciences will also be interested in this.”
For more information, visit UND’s Indigenous Health Graduate Program webpage.
brian james sill
About the author:
Brian James Schill is the director of alumni and community relations at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
