Meda DeWitt pictured after a ten mile hike up to Shangri La in East Glacier National Park. DeWitt was in Montana to teach Blackfoot youth how to make medicines.
As part of her project demonstrating mastery for her Master of Arts Program (MAP), Meda DeWitt is developing a potential Traditional Healing Program, comprised of university-level curriculum to identify, certify, and support traditional healers. As part of this project, Meda is considering all aspects of educational offerings, including how admissions would have to be prioritized for Tribal members and how Tribes and communitiesmight put forward recommendations. As well, she is focusing on the role of an Elder advisory group that would help to identify skills and experiences as criteria for admissions and as the focus of the program itself. Once this MAP project is completed, Meda hopes to see this proposed program implemented through the curriculum review processes at APU, and then eventually, moved forward for regional accreditationapproval to be offered at APU.
“The Alaska Native people know that our culture is a culture of wellness,” DeWitt said of her project. “Access to traditional healing and wellness activities is an integral part of becoming the healthiest people in the world.”
DeWitt’s curriculum is taking her to the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York to learn about the UN process as an apprentice with the Seventh Generation Indigenous Peoples fund.
“They are engaging me in the process so I can become familiar and learn, in the anticipation that I will continue to engage in this leadership activity and become more involved in the future,” DeWitt said.
DeWitt is also a Traditional Healer, Certified Massage Therapist, Doula in training, Ethno-herbalist, and has an Associates in Science, an Associates in Human Services, and a Bachelors in Liberal Studies: Women’s Rites of Passage.
