Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness: Lisa Sockabasin

And there are many ways in which this is manifest. Today I'm speaking with Lisa Sockabasin and she's the CEO of Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness. So great to have you in here today, I'm really happy to be here. I feel like I've been hearing your name for so many years because you've been really active in so many aspects of health and wellness in a much broader sense than just physical health and wellness in Maine, but it's really amazing what you've managed to accomplish professionally in your life. Well thats a huge compliment, so thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And likewise, I've been hearing about your work for a very long time too. So the gratitude I think goes both ways. Having this conversation now, I would say my whole life has been about wellness. When I think about growing up in Maine and being Passamaquoddy, a tribal citizen here, it's all about being well, being well with our relationships, with ourselves, with our land. So wellness is really always been a part when it comes to healing and providing opportunities for healing. That came a little later, and our journeys are always, well, they're always an opportunity to learn and make mistakes, and I've had plenty of those. And I think when you lean into those, you often are able to build maybe a little bit quicker. Yeah, that's really true. But not always easy when you lean into things that you're not entirely familiar with. Sometimes it creates some internal, well, at the very least internal dialogue, let's say that. Yes, I think a lot of internal dialogue and also external dialogue with those people you trust. And I think not I, I know I come from a culture where we are constantly learning, and what we're taught is that you're learning from every generation that's around you, your elders, the young ones, your peers. So really that sense of leaning in and learning from all of those folks that are around you and you need to make mistakes. I mean, that's just a part of growing up and leaning into those areas where you need to learn more. A lot has been accomplished, but there's been a lot of people around me too. I was really interested to see the org chart. Oh, good. I'm glad you saw that. Yes. It is not a traditional hierarchical org chart in any stretch of the imagination. It is actually circular. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a piece of art. And so hopefully that gets your listeners curious to go take a look, right? Yes, exactly. And make sure we provide it. It's beautiful. It is about relationships and traditional org charts are about relationships too. And those are relationships often of hierarchy. And what we like to look at is relationships out of role and purpose and how we can support each other. And I think the circle is just a much better way of depicting that relationship rather than one that's traditional hierarchy. This is the first time I've ever had an org chart like that. I mean, I've always been that traditional org chart person. It's so clean and it tells you everything that who you talk to and report to. And I've learned over time that it also depletes relationships and doesn't give us an opportunity to look beyond sometimes those traditional roles. So yeah, we lean into different ways of leading at Wabanaki Public Health and wellness for sure. You've been educated in Maine. You have a long history of working in Maine, and also you spend a lot of time, particularly recently outside of the state of Maine, connecting with others who are doing intersecting and probably parallel work in some ways. Yes. That's right. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about the kind of compare and contrast of your experiences here and away. Yeah, no doubt. Maine's provided so much opportunity. Probably many people can agree to that. And one of the opportunities in Maine is based on relationships because we are a small state in terms of numbers, and that's been wonderful to be able to build on those relationships. And then I think about my role as an indigenous woman, as an indigenous leader, and that role is about providing others the opportunity to learn about what we're doing too. Because we have done some pretty amazing things here at Wabanaki. We've been able to build an organization from seven people to 250 people today, and that's within five, six years. And so we're 70% indigenous. So when you think about what we've been able to do here, it is unique and we need to be able to share, well, both our successes, but where have we fallen and what do we need to remember and what do we want to share with others? And so that travel that I'm often tied to is all about sharing, all about sharing what we've done, partnering hopefully across indigenous communities and also universities. We are approached a lot from. So really it's about, yes, we've had our success and we continue to need to share what we've learned and we're still learning. I mean, we're not done. Yes, we've built really quickly. And how do we sustain that over time for seven generations, for those generations that will be here when I'm gone? How do I leave them with that gift and not a burden? I mean, I think we all think about that, and that's just seven generational thinking, that's thinking that all of us as Wabanaki people are continuously being responsible too. Lisa, for people who are not as familiar with the Wabanaki people, could you give us a little bit of historical and cultural context? Yes. One of my favorite things to do is to describe who we are, and so Wabanaki, the people of the first light, the people who greet the rays that touch us first and pray for all those people across Turtle Island and indigenous people for sure. So Wabanaki people made up of four tribal nations, the Micmac, Maliseet, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy. I am from the Passamaquoddy Nation. The Passamaquoddy Nation has two different reservation communities, and then the Micmac, Maliseet and Penobscot also have their communities. We're all different in terms of our language that are spoken. We've been connected to this territory for well over 12,000 years. Our language is still vibrant, yet at risk because of policies that really tried to completely destroy us and our culture. So we're resilient, yet hold a lot of trauma that was resulting from, well, our government not wanting us here. Also, I would say with Wabanaki people, we are so connected to this territory. Our territory extends beyond the border. Many of us have sister tribes across the border and during COVID, you can imagine that disconnection was very difficult. It was for lots of folks that experience that disconnection. And what I would say is our culture is extremely vibrant, so connected to this land that we were the protectors and first welcomers, and we're also people in the state of Maine, unfortunately the only state that does not hold our sovereignty intact. And that has had devastating impacts on health and economic drivers within our communities and beyond. So lots of things to learn about when you think about Wabanaki, people in Maine, both contemporary and also historically I would say after contact, we lost 90% of our people and that being intentional loss. So we hold a lot of responsibility to our ancestors and all of those people who had different challenges to face. And so they provided ease for me. And even though it's been hard, I need to provide that ease for the future generations to be well into the future for their seven generations. You and I share a clinical background and a public health background. You have a nursing degree and also an epidemiology degree. And then you worked for a long time for the state of Maine. And as I've come to understand medicine more over the course of the time I've been practicing it, this idea of epigenetics and this idea of the trauma isn't just trauma perpetrated on the living organism at the time. It actually is passed down genetically to the next generation. So when you talk about seven generations, I mean, this is a very physical thing that actually happens to people's bodies And epigenetics, you tell me in medicine it's fairly new. But it's something indigenous people of health for a very long time. We know we live those stories of our ancestors and those stories are here to teach us and to provide ease. However, yes, you carry them quite literally. And so when it comes to wellness and healing, you can understand why it's so important to then center all of those things that have been taken, like our culture and our language as important, if not the most important indicator of how well we'll be in the future. And so a lot of the work we do at Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness is centering culture, centering language. So in our work in substance use disorder and you come to see us for medication assisted withdrawal, we are going to first treat you with love and care, and we serve both indigenous and non in that particular service. That's one of the services. And everyone receives that care. And we also make sure that you're connected to traditional medicines that can be sweetgrass, sage, that could be smudging outside. And we don't lose our people like we did in the traditional medication assisted withdrawal programs or what was called detox programs. And that's why we built that program was that we were sending our people into those traditional programs and our people didn't stay. And we knew that if we centered our culture first and that program as well as all the programs that we offer, that there's more likelihood that our people are going to stay or at least come back to us. And that's what we're seeing is that yes, that's a hard place to capture people anyway, that is when people are really struggling and they're also so courageous because they're asking for that help at that time. And so we believe in centering that culture, centering what they need in terms of that cultural connection. And if they don't stay, we often will see them back because they know what we'll offer them with non-judgment, with love, with all those cultural Wabanaki values. That is so important and important for all of us to see when we are entering a really vulnerable service. I think about the choice that I made to go into family medicine and the idea of going into a specialty medically myself that is all about relationships, the relationships of the family, the grandparents, the parents, the children, the larger community, which sounds like mirrors or is similar kind of frame as what you're describing. Absolutely the same. And I also hear the pain that you're alluding to in the way that we are traditionally in your traditional is traditional, really traditional rather than what we're calling traditional western medicine. And by being as reductive as we have, by extracting the person from the circumstance and saying, oh, well, I'm just going to give you a medicine, then you'll get better and see you later. That's not a way to heal people because you are so interwoven with the fabric of your existence. And it sounds like what you're doing is acknowledging that centering that you're describing, and it's a really critical element of healing. Absolutely. And as you described family medicine, so that intention that you described, it looks different when you put that intention in a system that doesn't hold the same values you do as a person. And that is hard. And when I was working in the traditional systems, the Western Eye systems, I should say, it was hard. It didn't value, "I want to know your story." That was looked at more often as boundaries, having boundaries. And I often looked at that as, oh no, that's where we get to the healing. That's where we get to "Now, you trust me with my recommendation. That we have that relationship that you don't want to let me down either we're in this together. You don't get there from the traditional westernized system. You don't. You get other things. And that's the great thing about how we look to building our own systems at Wabanaki is that it's the two I'd seeing approach. There's some good things there, and I was in that system, I saw the good things, but I also was harmed by the bad, and so were the patients that I encountered. Then it's taking the cultural approaches too, and how do we marry the two and sometimes heavier cultural weight. And then sometimes, yes, it's in times of crisis, oftentimes I think it may be a more westernized weight. It all depends on the situation, but it's really that two wide seeing approach because that westernized system, what we all know now is that it's not working for any of us. And so let's not just dream of something new, let's actually build it. And that's why we've grown so fast is because we believe in actually building it. We know we're here for a short time. We are done with the studies. We know from our own experiences what works. We also know the values that heal. Let's create systems based on that and not throw things away, but really start to innovate and create systems that heal. You can decide whether you'd like to answer this or not, but I want to pull back a little bit from your professional life and ask you about Lisa as the growing up child and the journey that you took to get to a place where you've become a leader in this work. Because I'm certain that this was not an easy journey and the decisions that you made were very considered, let's say. So when you were growing up, describe to me what it was that caused you to feel like this was the path you needed to take. I think the creator creates the path and all along the creator is creating these classrooms, and it's our job to either step in that classroom and learn the lesson or keep walking and learn it another time. And there were some classrooms I stepped right in, and then there were some classrooms that, boy, they kept creating them for me, right? And I'll tell you which ones those were, but the quick classrooms was the healing classroom. I always knew I wanted to be involved with healing and growing up, that was a doctor really, or a nurse. I didn't see in the westernized sort of culture anything really. And so I always knew I wanted to be in that field. I didn't quite know what that would look like. And so I had many different places along the way. One of my first parts of my journey was Harvard Medical School where we had a program for Native American students. It still exists. It's the Four Directions Summer Research Program. And that program has been extremely successful seeing indigenous students from all over Indian territory coming and learning those skills. And so that was a part of my journey helping those students through that program. I did that for close to 20 years, so I saw a lot of native students wanting to become healers and doctors and lots of other things too. And so my career really took many different turns, but I always knew it was preparing me for something even when I didn't really like being there. I'm not talking about that particular job, but there were plenty that I was in that I was like, I know I'm here because I'm learning something. And usually when that is, is that it's a struggle. It's a struggle to be there, and I know that there's something there to teach me, and that has never failed me. I look back at some of those really difficult places where I chose to be, and I chose to be there for quite some time, and it was all about the lessons that I was receiving. And so that was just to me, almost something that was just fed to me from my parents and also my culture, that each of these stops along the way. There's profound lessons to be learned, and when the lessons are really hard, you better dive right in, dive right in with grace, with open ears, less talking and more listening. And so I always knew that because that was just the values in which I grew up in. So yeah, healing was always it. I would say I grew up with an indigenous father who was very culturally, traditionally based Passamaquoddy, his first language and fluent in that language and taught it to many people. And he was a former tribal chief, so he was a leader. And then my mom was non-native. She was from Newark, New Jersey, so she's white. And I saw at a very young age how my life was different when I was with either one of them. It was apparent and it was also apparent how I was treated when people knew I was native because I'm what you call white passing. And so that journey was a difficult one. How do you reconcile? How do you navigate that world and try to teach with grace along the way? And it's that grace lesson that I kept walking into those classrooms because sometimes you teach in a way that is hard to hear, people can't take it in. And then sometimes you teach where people are out like, wow, that's a different perspective. So you learn from those different ways of teaching. And so I stepped into all those classrooms. How do we be here together as indigenous and non-indigenous people? I mean, I clearly have to be, I am both right? I mean, I am an indigenous woman and that's how I identify, but very much proud of my mom and my mom's side of the family too, and identity. And so with that said, it was a constant learning of okay, the creator put us here together. It was intentional. I don't believe the creator made mistakes. So what are we supposed to be learning together? What are we supposed to be building together? How are we supposed to be learning from each perspective and thinking differently? So that was the only place to lean into what other choice do we have? And I also believe in, yes, horrible things have happened to my people. It has devastated us, and we're living with those devastations now. And that power of forgiveness and going to a place of reconciliation where that's a bilateral relationship where we do things differently because of how we did things in the past, things are going to look differently so that we don't make those mistakes again. I believe that's why we're here. I believe I'm here too for a different purpose, but I believe we as in together, I believe that's why we're here is to love, is to forgive, is to never make those mistakes again. And the unfortunate part is we do make those mistakes and we're continuing to, and I'm still here for it. And I also know that love heals. I also, the truth heals and we can do both at the same time. And yeah, that's a little bit about my story, but I wasn't here even 10 years ago. I was still in that place of, well, I don't know where I was, but I wasn't here. That's what I'll say. What I'm enjoying about our conversation in part is the word "And" I assume that there's some intentionality around that, but also something that not everybody is aware of this additive property of communication. And that you're right, that there does tend to be kind of an othering that consistently happens. We are this or we are that. And you've said you yourself, you are both, so you can't be anything other than an "and" just as a person. But what I often hear is people looking to find ways that we are different from one another rather than ways that we are similar, which that in itself is harmful and also harmful to suggest that we are so similar that we can assume that we understand where other people are coming from. So it's all of the things, All of that, all of that, and being able to make mistakes and that too, and learn from each other with a lack of shame. We're in this society of calling out and not just calling out, but calling it out and then destroying, and wow, that's the complete opposite effect that we want and calling people in. And yes, being able to name the pain and also the wrong, but calling them in because there are some places of similarity and the sameness, like you said, but this big place of difference, we can either heal that or create more harm with that. And I just am at a place where I want us to heal and call people in a little bit more, also hold people accountable. But trying to do that without the shame, it's not easy, boy. And are we tested and provided classrooms to step into probably on a daily. I'm just choosing to step in them more often and really try to work through how to move forward that's going to be healing for all of us. Yeah, it's hard. And then to build an organization along with my friends, my family, my colleagues, with those same values. Well, that's the fascinating thing because I think that a lot of times you have people who are very good at vision and you have people who are very good at operations, and you need people who can actually create structures to bring a vision into being. So as the CEO of this organization, there's a balance point that you're probably always on. There is. And let me just correct, I'm the co-My CO is Rebecca Petri, Dr. Rebecca Petri, non-native. She actually helped me pass college calculus many, many decades ago. Well, then she deserves to be your CO CEO because I can relate to that need. And I will say she had her own career path here, there, and everywhere. We reconnected back in state government, and I could not have done this without her operationally with infrastructure, we both have that skill and that's what we're doing together. Because you can imagine doubling, tripling in size almost every year. Your infrastructure doesn't grow along with that. Not at that piece. It just does not. And so we are catching up. However, yes, I believe in co-leadership. I believe that from an indigenous perspective, I believe that from a westernized perspective, and whoa, yes, this journey would not have been possible without Rebecca Petri and everything that she's given. And as a non-native person, not being from community, but that invested because let me tell you, this is not a 40, 60 hour week job. It just isn't. And this is an all encompassing endeavor that we were both, well, we were both here to create. And she feels that as deeply as I feel that. So wanting to state that, but you're right operationally and also with those values. So you're trying to operate in a indigenous valued mindset in a very colonized world with a history whose government tried to destroy you. You can only imagine the complexities of that. And yeah, we deal with all those complexities. And the beauty of it is that we talk about all those complexities we share about that because that's our responsibility too. I was glad to hear that you are collectively going in a direction of sharing story and that you recently began doing your own podcast and this idea of bringing forward people's experiences because I think obviously we're here, so I believe in this very strongly, and I think there's so much richness there. Talk to me about that decision to go in that direction. So when you look at our org chart, you're going to see that our community really drives and holds a lot of the work and vision for the work. And this was a vision from our young people, as many visions are, we're building an afterschool youth program, beautiful downtown Bangor, that was their vision too. And a cultural center that's going to be open to the public. That was the vision of our young people. So the podcast was young people that were involved with a summer internship program, and they were like, you guys really need to do a podcast and celebrate all the work and all the things going on in our communities. And like we said before, there is a lot of calling out culture, and we wanted to call people in a little bit. We want to call indigenous people, non-indigenous people to have conversations, but the things that people sometimes don't have conversations about other than in your living rooms or maybe over dinner at a restaurant. And so we're inviting lots of people in. We had our Secretary of State recently, which will air next Monday before election day, talking about the importance of having your voice heard. And that's what the podcast was about too, is visibility. There's so many ways that indigenous people, they have tried to erase us from every place in society. And this was about visibility and hearing our voices and also hearing some real at times vulnerable conversations about what it is like to have grown up indigenous in Maine and what it continues to be like. And we invite, like I said, non-indigenous people to be a part of those conversations oftentimes. So yeah, Aunties on Air and Some Uncles Too can be found anywhere, but yeah, be forgiving. We're learning as we're going. And that's another thing is we knew we wouldn't know it all when we dove in. And a lot of this work we do, whether it's building recovery programs or public health programs for access to clean drinking water, because one of our communities has had dirty drinking water for over 40 years, whatever it is that we're doing, we're constantly focused on both that visibility being community driven. And many of those conversations, like I said, can be found on Aunties on Air, but we also dive in before we have everything figured out. So you'll see that too on the podcast. I respect that. That is an approach that I think is really valuable because if you wait until everything is perfect, you may never actually start anything at all. We hear that a lot. Where's your plan? Where's your plan? Well, our plan is we need to test it. That's our plan because we believe in this because the people are telling us they need this or this hasn't been provided in the past, so our plan has been our stories, and now we need to get out and just do it. And then we learn from it. And we've learned from, I think about our Wabanaki mobile food pantry, which is a beloved program at Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness. We needed to change the narrative of food distribution. We have a long history in our communities of commodity foods and food distribution, and it was shameful aim, and we wanted it to be a celebration. We also wanted it to be fresh grown foods, local foods, indigenous foods, and we wanted to celebrate when we came in community. And now that's exactly what it is. You go in community on distribution day, it's a celebration, and people are messaging you. If they can't get there on time or "Oh, no, I'm going to miss" it is something that's on social media. People are not shamed. And it is a totally a different experience that no, we have programs that are all about the celebration of our foods and we want you to celebrate with us. And so really thinking about, we didn't know how to do that in the beginning. It didn't look like a beautiful mobile food pantry. It looks now it was our vehicles, but we knew if we just started that we would get there. And that's my biggest, when I'm asked for young people, what's your biggest piece? Do you have a piece of advice? I'm like, don't fall into the perfection piece. Right? Just make sure that you're always focused on just jump in and try it. If you know this is going to serve, heal, provide, jump in and try it. You're going to learn from that. So that's just the big way. Wabanaki, public Health and Wellness does their work, and we've certainly learned, and we certainly make mistakes and we continue to try. Well, it's been a pleasure to talk with you today. I feel like there's so much that there's so much richness in what you've brought to the conversation, but we've only just begun to, I guess, scratch the surface. Where can people learn more about your work? Yeah, great question. So of course we have a website at Wabanakiphw.org, and that website, again, is a work in progress, but has so much information. Also, if you go to YouTube and you just search Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness, we are there. We don't have a channel, but there have been several movies and films that are short, 10 minutes, 12 minutes, even shorter, about different areas and aspects of our work. And I encourage people to go there too. Of course, Aunties on Air is a good place to listen to stories and what we're diving into, and we often bring in our work there. So all of those places are good places to go, and I will have to provide this for you after, but just a list of our services and that org chart is probably something that I encourage people to look at because we want people to take that and learn from it and consider that for your own organizations and places where you work. And so, yeah, I would say those other places as well as I'll provide you some resources and you can connect them to the show, that would be great. We will absolutely do that. Thank you. It has been my pleasure to speak with Lisa Sockabasin, who is the Co-CEO of Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness. I encourage you to go learn more about the work that she and her colleagues are doing to bring wellness to Maine and probably honestly, a big part of the rest of the world. Thank you so much.