Mairead Widby: New tribalconnections.org Editor

By Mairead Widby

(Photo courtesy of Roy Sahali)

My first memory of my Native American roots was an old clay water jug that my grandmother displayed proudly as evidence of her roots in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. Far from elegant, its cracked painting designs and misshapen handles seemed out of place in urban, crowded Southern California, yet Grandmother's stories of how her mother dug it out of the earth, the same earth where our ancestors settled after the Trail of Tears, gave the vessel new life and meaning.

I have been thinking a lot about that water jug lately as my grandmother slips from this earth and my family readjusts our thinking to include new stories, some of them now streaming from Seattle, Washington. And, after completing my education with an NYU Publishing Degree, a background in publishing, and, most importantly, a love of writing, I come to Tribal Connections with a desire to continue storytelling, this time about how health and indigenous people connect, how we are all tied together in a quest to share well-being.

I ask for your help in carrying forward a vision of Tribal Connections as a portal for information to be shared. If you know of any tribal health issues or programs, please let me know how we might tell that story. And if you know of any writers or photographers who might be interested in helping, especially those with ancestry or other ties to Native American and Alaska Native issues, please let me know.

Tribal Connections will continue to be a valuable database for health related resources, an important outreach tool, and a source for news articles and features about health and wellness issues. We will also seek to include more native voices, including news briefs, recent articles, and trends in health and health communication. I am honored to continue in the tradition of former editor Miles White and under the leadership of Roy Sahali in this project, and hope to hear more from you about how we might best approach storytelling while embracing a healthy, fulfilling life.

To health and stories,

Mairead