Citizen Potawatomi Nation

It’s #EmployeeAppreciationDay, and at Citizen Potawatomi Nation, two individuals are making a big impact for over 2,100 employees. Kelley Francen and April Carter comprise the Tribe’s Employee Engagement and Advocacy Department, offering personal and professional support and spearheading numerous initiatives to celebrate and empower employees. Take a look behind the scenes: https://lnkd.in/gMNb6HBX

Tribal member and Bourassa family descendant Braden Parmer grew up in Shawnee, OK, before attending college with the help of a Tribal scholarship. Parmer's connection to his Tribe only strengthened througout college and his medical training as a family physician. In 2024, he realized his long-time goal of returning to work for CPN, and Parmer now serves as the medical director for Citizen Potawatomi Nation Health Services as well as a staff family physician at the West Clinic. Read more about Parmer's story: https://lnkd.in/gsQGgevT

Each year, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and its employees work to help make the holiday season a little better for those in need. This year, donations from various CPN events led to gifts for more than 80 children in foster care, door prizes for a party for Tribal elders, 350 families receiving food for holiday meals, and thousands of dollars in donations to different charities. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gu7pkkAw

Citizen Potawatomi Nation received a GFOA (Government Finance Officers Association) Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting recently. This is the Nation’s 36th consecutive award, the most consecutive awards for any tribal nation. Read more:

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants and member of the Vieux and Johnson families, visited the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center for a book signing event. Kimmerer spoke about relatives who preceded her and honored the “sacred storytellers who connect us to our ways.” She explained that she herself grew up outside of the community because her grandfather was sent to the Carlisle boarding school in Pennsylvania. Living in the northeast, she said it was stories that kept her connected to her Tribe. Storytelling, she said, is sacred, and stories can be oral, written, sung and even told through art. However, she said stories are also written in the land. “The story I want to tell, when people from the other side of the world ask me ‘What are the Potawatomis up to?’ I would love to be able to tell the story of how we are caring for our plant relatives,” she said. “Just as we are a leader in language revitalization, couldn’t we be a leader in plant knowledge revitalization as well?” Read more: https://lnkd.in/g7pR42Y6

Robert Collins, Citizen Potawatomi Nation employee and member of the Delonais family and Thunder Clan, grew up hearing common Bodwéwadmimwen words such as bozho (hello) or migwéch (thank you). However, he has spent the past several years fostering a deeper knowledge of the language and working to teach others, as well. “I lived a lot of lives before coming to the language more seriously, but things changed for me in 2019,” Collins said. “It was in that year that I decided to dedicate myself to learning our language. And for the last nearly half-decade, it’s been nothing short of a rewarding journey.” Collins is the Interdepartmental Potawatomi Language Lead for the Citizen Potawatomi Nation's Cultural Heritage Center. In his role, he develops and implements language-learning curricula for the Child Development Centers, online college courses and community classes. He also assists with the educational partnerships CPN has with six universities across the United States. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gdcbtamN

A recent report on health care access revealed Oklahoma’s Native American population faces significant barriers to receiving health care. However, Citizen Potawatomi Nation Health Services is working on plans to address some of those challenges. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gKmTS7Da

Somewhere in Kansas is a ghost town that was once a flourishing Potawatomi trading post and crossing for the Oregon Trail, but the location has been lost to time. Today, more than 150 years after the town ceased to be, research is underway to try to find it and a possible mass grave associated with it. The exact location of Uniontown is unknown today, but Dr. Blair Schneider, associate researcher and science outreach manager with the Kansas Geological Survey, and other researchers from the Kansas Geological Survey have spent the past several years collecting data at a cemetery in Shawnee County using magnetic and electrical methods as well as Ground Penetrating Radar. Going forward, Schneider hopes to use a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence to identify when that soil was last exposed to light. Another possibility she would like to consider is testing the soil for cholera DNA. For now, there’s still much that is unknown about Uniontown’s location and what life was like within the ghost town. Tribal member Scott Holzmeister and District 4 legislator Jon Boursaw encourage anyone who has stories or information to share with them so they can help add to the history of the place. Read more: https://lnkd.in/g-TaeUXC

Family Reunion Festival came with a special surprise this year when Tribal members were the first to be introduced to the CPN Eagle Aviary’s recently hatched golden eagle, Kishko - one of two eaglets to hatch this spring after two of the Aviary’s golden eagles paired. Now 13 weeks old, Kishko is training as the Aviary's newest resident glove bird. Read Kishko's story: https://lnkd.in/gm5Jrg8B

CPN students from throughout the United States were selected to participate in the 2024 Potawatomi Leadership Program. The six-week program brings Tribal members aged 18-20 to the Nation’s headquarters near Shawnee, Oklahoma, for an immersive experience. Meet the class of 2024: https://lnkd.in/gWWz7yny