Entering into a Community-University Collaboration

Reflections from Blue Mountain Associates

Abstract

First paragraphs:

If I can do something to help my people, and to help other people understand Indian people better and to appreciate our culture, then I have done what my father asked me to do in 1969 when he asked me to come home to the reservation and help my people in whatever way I could. In the last 50 or 60 years of my life, with the assistance of other people, I have been able to make some changes.

When my son, Jim Sutter, and I came back home to Wind River Indian Reservation, we knew our people needed health and human services, not just more clinical services. We thought we espe­cially needed to help people with food and nutri­tion. More generally, I thought that other people—researchers, academics, historians—need a better picture of what we Indians are all about in ways that neither glorify us nor demean us. Too often we are portrayed only on one side or the other....

See the press release for this article.