Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #107841

Jeffrey A. Henderson, MD, MPH, Black Hills Center for American Indian Health, 701 St. Joseph St., Suite 204, Rapid City, SD 57701, (605) 348-6100, jhenderson@bhcaih.org, Johnnye L. Lewis, PhD, DABT, Community Environmental Health Program, University of New Mexico, 2701 Frontier Place NE, Surge Bldg, Rm 140, MSC 10 5550, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001, and David Nelson, Environmental Protections Department, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, S. Willow & Airport Road, P.O. Box 590, Eagle Butte, SD 57625.

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has endured greater than a century's worth of environmental injustices, from the effects of nearby heap-leach gold mining, to use of a portion of the reservation for an aerial gunnery range, to the purposeful flooding of over 100,000 acres of prime reservation land, including over 80,000 acres of productive river bottom lands. The results of these activities include mercury contamination in surface waters throughout tribal lands, as well as a host of other contaminants of concern for the health of tribal members. The Tribe and its partners have recently secured an environmental justice grant from NIEHS/NIH to foster among Cheyenne River Sioux tribal members an awareness and appreciation of prominent environmental health issues sufficient to drive an organized agenda of environmental health activities, planning, and policy, for the betterment of tribal members' health and the ecology of the reservation. This goal will be accomplished using both qualitative and quantitative methods, and by assisting the Tribe to create a quasi-independent Environmental Health Advisory Board with both regulatory and enforcement authority. The presentation will discuss methods for selecting appropriate partners to complement tribal skills, methods used to assess tribal awareness of issues and potential exposures, and the model for developing tribal capacity through comprehensive educational initiatives and enhancement of existing tribal programs. The goals are to not only inform the community and build capacity, but to involve and inform decision-makers to ensure consideration of environmental health impacts in future decision-making.

Learning Objectives: