Healing through Culture: Restoring Balance and Wellness in Native Communities

This 2-hour virtual training explores culture as a primary medicine in Native communities and as a foundation for opioid-related prevention, treatment, and recovery support. Using the Medicine Wheel as a practical framework, it braids Indigenous ways of knowing with current neuroscience, ACEs/NEAR science, and nervous system and brain health research.

The training examines how historical and ongoing trauma have affected wellness, help-seeking, and engagement in SUD/OUD services, and how cultural strengths — kinship, ceremony, story, and connection to land — can guide more effective, less stigmatizing care with Native communities across Nevada.

Learning objectives: Participants will be able to describe at least three ways historical and intergenerational trauma have impacted behavioral health and SUD/OUD engagement in Nevada Native communities; identify at least three cultural strengths that support nervous system regulation and readiness for care; explain how a Medicine Wheel framework organizes care across emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions while respecting tribal specificity and sovereignty; and name at least two practical strategies for building therapeutic alliance with Native/tribal clients and reducing stigma and barriers to opioid-related and behavioral health services.

Intended audience: Behavioral health providers, healthcare providers, peer support specialists, community health workers, and others working with tribal communities in Nevada — with particular relevance for rural and tribal partners.

Format: Zoom meeting. Participants may use camera and audio, though neither is required.

Presenter: Casandra (Cas) Stouder, ORN Consultant, Tribal Southwest (Region 9), Diné (Navajo) & Seminole. Cas has over 24 years of experience working with Indigenous communities on trauma, addiction, recovery, and systems change. She serves as a Technical Support Specialist with the Opioid Response Network (Southwest) and has delivered over 1,000 professional trainings and supported more than 1,900 community wellness and prevention efforts. Her work integrates ACEs/NEAR science, Indigenous trauma science, Medicine Wheel-based brain frameworks, and somatic practice with traditional knowledge. She has developed programs including Sacred Path to Recovery and Medicine Wheel Wellness, and serves as an Arizona ACEs Educational Trainer and Indigenous Community Subcommittee Chair for the Arizona ACEs Consortium. She is recognized as Arizona's Preeminent Health Innovation Leader (2025) and Best Rural Women's Health Practitioner (2025).

CEUs: 2 CEUs available. This training is approved for continuing education by the boards listed on the event page.

Funding was provided in whole or in part by the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Director's Office through the Fund for a Resilient Nevada (Nevada Revised Statutes 433.712–433.744). Opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of DHHS.