Chatting About Change with Dr. Jim Maddox - Voices of America’s First People, Surviving and Thriving Amidst Change: A conversation with Will Peters, a professional musician, high school teacher, community activist, and advocate for Native American youth.

Voices of America’s First People, Surviving and Thriving Amidst Change: A conversation with Will Peters, a professional musician, high school teacher, community activist, and advocate for Native American youth.

09/13/22 • 59 min

Chatting About Change with Dr. Jim Maddox

My guest this episode is Will Peters, a professional musician, high school teacher, community activist, and advocate for Native American youth. Will, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, teaches and lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Will shares his stories of the struggles and triumphs of life on the reservation and shares passionately about his work with the young people, who are struggling with generational trauma, and efforts to combat the suicide epidemic affecting the native youth on Pine Ridge. I first met will about 10 years ago while volunteering with the organization Re-Member. Re-Member is an independent, non-profit organization working with the Oglala Lakota Nation on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota https://www.re-member.org/
Will speaks from the heart and his stories are powerful, challenging, and full of hope.

Previous Episode

Organization Development in action at a small for-profit organization: Building engagement and leadership from the ground-up.

My guest this episode is Kayshia Kruger, who is the organization development director for a small organization in North Carolina. She shares how she has created, from the ground up, the organization development function in her organization of about 300 employees. We discuss some of the interesting projects she is engaged in currently such as employee engagement, learning & development, leadership development, and change management. A fascinating aspect of her role is how progressive her organization has been in terms of leveraging Organization Development. She also shares how the Organization Development function is a completely separate function and is not part of the Human Resource department, which is somewhat unique, especially for a smaller organization.

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undefined - Re-Member: “To put back together that which has been broken” – a conversation with Kristin and Ted Skantze, who share their experiences working and living among the Oglala Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Re-Member: “To put back together that which has been broken” – a conversation with Kristin and Ted Skantze, who share their experiences working and living among the Oglala Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

My guests for this episode are Kristin and Ted Skantze, joining me from shores of Lake Michigan. Ted is the former director of the non-profit organization Re-Member and former director of their board, and Kristin is a Nurse Practitioner who has worked for the past 20 years with Pine Ridge Indian Health Service on the Pine Ridge Reservation, in South Dakota. They share their personal story of their involvement on the reservation, and discuss the impact around cultural understanding, and the importance of listening in helping to heal broken relationships and build connections and bring to attention to the truly resilient spirit of the indigenous people. The term, Re-Member, refers to the idea of putting back together that which is broken, to re-member. What has been broken is a trust, and the treatment and relationship with the Oglala Lakota people. Through the work of Re-Member, volunteers have the opportunity to learn, and listen, and offer hope to those who have been marginalized, through relationship building and cultural understanding. Rather than attempting to fix or change what those from outside the culture perceive needs to be changed, the focus is on understanding and appreciating the diversity of cultures. I am reminded of the work of Edgar Schein, who developed the concept of Process Consultancy, which is built upon the foundation that assumes that “one can only help a human system to help itself”. To learn more about volunteer opportunities with Re-Member, check out this link: https://www.re-member.org/volunteering