SEARHC - What's New - New WISEFAMILIES programs already having an impact

New WISEFAMILIES programs already having an impact

In May, Kake elder Ruth Demmert was teaching three generations of Kake residents how to butcher a seal and render the fat into oil when she said, "Yéi Naa Teech (It doesn't get any better)."

"Yéi Naa Teech" became the slogan for the WISEFAMILIES Through Customary and Traditional Knowledge program, which launched earlier this year in Kake and Wrangell.

"We are having fun, and we’re hoping our group gets bigger," said Community Wellness Advocate Georgie Davis-Gastelum, who leads the Kake program. Tammi Meissner leads the Wrangell program.

The new WISEFAMILIES programs are funded through a five-year grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They are modeled after a similar and highly successful WISEFAMILIES program in Klukwan funded by the Indian Health Service. Participants in all three programs learn to harvest and preserve traditional foods, and they learn Tlingít language, story-telling and other traditional skills such as carving and weaving. These traditional activities improve overall health and wellness, and research shows that a diet full of traditional foods can be a good way to prevent many chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Despite being new, the Kake and Wrangell WISEFAMILIES programs have been busy. Both programs have gone hooligan fishing, hosted Tlingít storyteller Gene Tagaban, gathered edible and medicinal plants, dug clams, hosted salmon camps and completed other subsistence activities. In Kake, they butchered and cooked a seal for the Honoring Our Elders dinner, and in Wrangell, they butchered a deer.

The Kake program partners with the Organized Village of Kake and the OVK Healing Heart Council program, the Kake Senior Center, the SEARHC Across Ages and Diabetes programs. The Wrangell program partners with Alaska Native Sisterhood Camp No. 1, the Johnson-O'Malley program, the Indian Education Act and the Healthy Wrangell Coalition.

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