SongsForGrownups

-Beverly Pigman, Chair, Navajo Institutional Review Board

Up until a few decades ago,  Maternal Child Health research in Indian country was conducted almost exclusively by white men.  Ironic, but of course that was true of pretty much all epidemiological research.  My wife Leslie was one of a generation of Indian women to begin making changes in the complexion of the field.  She is back in Rapid City, South Dakota this week, presenting at the annual Indian Health Service/Native Research Network conference in the city where she was co-principal investigator for the Aberdeen Area Infant Mortality Study, initiated almost twenty years ago.  (Leslie is also a founding member of the NRN.)  I have been a witness to the resistance she and her Native colleagues encountered when they presented and advocated for new, more culturally appropriate and sensitive methods of public health research, outreach and education in Indian Country.

Some resistance to new ideas and new players is to be expected, especially at the beginning of changing times.  Entrenched old-boy networks are threatened by new ideas and those who have them.  This has always been the way.  But it’s really a shame that individuals who claim to share the goal of improving the health of the people can’t just carry on and recognize that there is enough space in the field for other ideas, and get out of the way.  Of course, that would presume that these people are not also in it to be The Leaders.  It’s also a shame that after decades, some of these white men are still unwilling to relinquish their ascendancy in the face of another approach.  –How dare these natives assume they know how to study their population better than I, with my superior education and intellect?– Do people still think this way?  I am forced to believe they do.

But ‘We’re on the same team’ seems to be a difficult concept for some younger researchers, too.  Now that more Natives and more women are represented in the work, some of the new generation of researchers feel the need to supplant those who were the pioneers in Native epidemiological research, rather than work beside them or blaze their own trail.  This year Leslie and a young man from an eastern tribe were elected co-chairs of the Native Research Network.  There might be a message.  We’re well into a new century.  Welcome.  Perhaps it’s time to break old repeating cycles, and just get the work done, together.

About the deer. Well, on the way home from
Portland 2 weeks ago, I was driving my old
pickup and hit a deer on the highway between
Tri-cities and Waitsburg. The radiator was
destroyed. Thank heavens I had towing on the
insurance and got towed into Dayton (closest
town with a mechanic in the phone book) and then
spent Monday finding a radiator I could make fit,
new belts, and hoses I could adapt. I got back
home Monday night, and had to order a new water
pump because the impact had apparently damaged
the bushing and it howled all the way home. Our
dear friends Greg and Bahi Hansen had loaned us
a little Geo Metro for Cal to use, and since it gets 40 mpg I have been
driving it mostly.

So, I'm driving the Geo to PDX Friday night with the 3 dogs, Evan, and
a nephew of Leslie's who needed a ride to Troutdale, and just outside
Pomeroy I hit another deer, this time a big buck. Fortunately, the car
was so low to the ground and the deer was so big that it bounced off the
hood (taking a mirror, the left-turn signal light and a wiper with it and
cracking but not breaking the windshield, not to mention crumpling some
sheet metal), mortally wounding the buck but leaving the inner workings
of the car absolutely intact. The sheriff's deputy said I should be a
hunter.  Unfortunately, we don't get to take road kill home. Oh well.

The reason we were going to Portland in the first place was to celebrate
my 57th birthday with the family.  Ed and Munir took us to Pok Pok, on
Division between 32nd and 33rd, which serves Thai street cuisine.  This
was outrageously delicious. It was a lovely birthday celebration.  And
Justin, a friend of Calvin's who was also at his funeral, works there.
Another connection.  Cal would have loved the place and the evening.
Perhaps he did.

Evan, the dogs and I got home late Sunday night, exhausted but safe
and sound.  No more deer.  For the moment.  We left Leslie in
Portland one more time.  She's been keeping vigil for her sister Sue,
who has been in hospital with pneumonia for three weeks.  She misses
home.  We miss her.  It looks like Sue is finally improving.  Her
color is good; she is better able to communicate; she has the
energy to fret and worry and be scared.  Maybe now Leslie can
come home and feel OK about it.

Maybe soon things will begin to turn around.  Maybe they are already
beginning to.  I sometimes look up and think something like, 'Cal,
here's to you. To life. L'chaim.'  Something like that.  Or, 'Hey.
What ya think? OK?'  Or something like that.

Continue reading

I’d way rather eat an avocado than a tarantula.

Leslie L. Randall

A few weeks ago my son-in-law Neisan Massarrat posted a comment on Facebook wondering if thinking would ever come into fashion. I’m sure it was a passing (and mostly humorous) thought, probably the result of some friend’s (possibly) fashionable but (undoubtedly) thoughtless words or behavior. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Here’s what I think: I hope not. The thing about fashion is that it’s ephemeral. Planned obsolescence. And anything really worth worrying about has to be independent of something so fleeting. It occurs to me that the coolest people I’ve known have either been casually stylish without making much of it, or just oblivious to the whole idea. The first person who comes to mind is my brother Geoff. He’s one of my favorite people in the universe, and (after a good many years of hard work) entirely his own man. He’s one of those people who, as soon as you’re introduced, makes you feel completely welcome, at ease, loved. My wife once joked that if he wasn’t gay, she’d have gone for him instead of me. It’s probably true. It’s also fine with me, because I love him that much. What he thinks matters. The gifts he gives (and he loves to give really cool, interesting, thoughtful gifts) matter. They are emphatically never fashionable.

So, Neisan: keep thinking, and pray that it never goes into, and therefore never goes out of, style.