Indigenous Veterans Talking Circle Garden

American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIANs) are less likely to have known mental health diagnoses, even though they have the highest rates of suicide compared to all other Veteran groups. Native Veterans have been historically underserved and lack access to both the VA and Native specific mental-health resources on the Reservation. Over 67% of AIANVs do not use VA mental health services for many reasons, and feel like they are not fully understood due to cultural and language differences. Navajo view trauma as a consequence of community-level factors instead of individual ones. Native Veterans prefer holistic approaches over Western healthcare and view suicide as a consequence of community-level factors instead of individual ones. 

The ground-reality with technological solutions is that there are massive infrastructure challenges with respect to internet access & digital-literacy. Over 40% of Navajo homes don't have access to electricity let alone broadband, and water shortages still persist in 2023.

Despite the best efforts of the local community, areas in Indian Country are often isolated and unkempt which can lead to a psychologically depressing terrain. Gardens are not a radical concept in healthcare; there is ample literature on the therapeutic benefits of horticulture. However, gardens are underutilized in treatment adoption and outreach strategies. We believe that for our target population (and their profound connection with Nature), landscape design could make substantial progress in capacity building. Our garden is unique in that its design is catered to accommodate the cultural preferences of the AIAN population, while incorporating the use of a digital health app to share mental health resources.

Honoring the traditions of Native American cultures, this speculative project incorporates key indigenous symbolism via an immersive sensory experience. This therapeutic garden is a culturally-competent way to help build trust, share resources, break bread, and dispel stigma around “taboo” subjects such as psychological ailments. Veterans maintain the garden and run period talking-circle sessions around key community issues (suicide, addiction, HIV, etc.). The members will also have access to digital-literacy & tele-care resources for remote access.

The garden will feature a wandering outer trail (dreamcatcher pathways) with appropriate directionality that leads through a medicine-wheel designed flower bed (emblem of wellness) with symbolic color palette. The plants increase in height to preserve the auditory and visual privacy of the inner-sanctum: the Talking Circle. Inside the seating area, there are accessible seating rocks. In the center of the circle is a Sundial (solar totem) reminding us of the sanctity of the space.

Our web application will have further digitized resources available for on-demand access. Members have the option to access care resources remotely and participate in Televeda’s native led programming virtually for ongoing engagement. Most importantly we can track resource utilization and access. Stakeholders can measure attendance, retention and specifically veteran enrollment figures during the pilot. We will provide community stakeholders with tablet devices for check-ins & uploading resources for digitization. 

The project will measure our success through a combination of the following metrics: 1) number of participants recruited; 2) attendance to track retention and engagement; 3) tracking access to Veteran resources used by users through our application; 4) measure up-stream factors (e.g., loneliness, depression, mood), including working with clinics for suicide-screenings before and after the implementation of the project.

Our priority populations are American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) veterans, who tend to be older adults. This demographic has the highest economic, social and healthcare disparity in the country compared to any other group. This strategy can also extend to the general population in underserved rural communities. We propose a culturally symbolic garden that provides a space for AIAN veterans to share stories, build community, and access valuable mental health resources.

Research on horticulture therapy shows how accessible it is across cultures & generations, from school children to older adults with dementia. There is no cost to participate and requires nothing more than presence. 

The project will be veteran led and run. Veterans will be involved in planning and design, gardening, maintenance tasks, supporting outreach & collaboration, and hosting the educational workshops and events. This includes working with CBOs and trusted-messengers (Veterans, Elders) to facilitate appropriate programs. Community stakeholders such as healthcare professionals will be involved in sharing resources and providing education within the talking-circle format, ensuring each member gets to share their voice.

Any innovation (medical or otherwise) needs to be accepted, endorsed, and disseminated by highly respected members of the Native community, namely Elders & Veterans. Thus, we adopt an upstream approach that addresses known issues: isolation, lacking purpose within the Community, and access to traditional mental wellbeing resources. 

Televeda will ensure that our solution will be well-received and meet the needs of AIANVs. First, we will pilot our Virtual Talking Circle within the Navajo- the largest Tribe in the US. Once we have validated the design, refined the Playbook, and developed a directory of relevant resources, we will scale our solution to neighboring Tribes who have already expressed interest. Because AIAN are diverse in language, culture, and traditions, the Playbook will be modified to identify their specific Tribal needs. This staggered implementation roll-out will also appropriately evaluate our impact.

We plan to seek continuous feedback from our collaborators to guide our solution to ensure it remains culturally appropriate and impactful. Given that there is an acute shortage of therapists and social care workers in the US, the project scales peer-support access and empowers local community based organizations with“3rd spaces” to serve more people in hard-to-reach communities across the country.

We would like to disseminate our learnings and make it accessible. It would encompass a low-tech high-trust framework that can be implemented with any tribe on any reservation. Our long-term goal is to provide our culturally-relevant solution to Veterans within the ~9 million AIANs in the US. Further, such a culturally-appropriate model can also extend to Pacific Islanders, Filipinos, Hispanics, and even the general population in rural areas.Televeda will ensure that our solution will be well-received and meet the needs of AIANVs.

Organizations struggle with outreach efforts for various reasons (funding, cultural competence, rural access). There have been community gardens that have seen success, but they adopt Western landscaping designs in urban settings. There has been nothing comparable for Indigenous communities. In the AIAN tradition, stories are medicine. "Historical Trauma" is not indexed in the DSM-5, despite being a major contributing factor for suicide in this population. We aim to develop Talking Circles where NVs come together to share their stories and heal as a community, while gaining access to important resources.

Televeda is a social-venture focused on social isolation that has closely been working with AIAN populations for two years, specifically on suicide-prevention, HIV stigma & Tribal connectivity programs. We believe our project will be effective based on studies demonstrating that increasing community involvement helps decrease suicides. Our project demonstrates a commitment to meet individuals where they're at with culturally-specific solutions.

Televeda has experience setting up Tribal Advisory Councils of AIAN veterans, and working with community liaisons. For this project we are working with local veteran service organizations & chapter houses for recruitment and outreach. Co-Founder Mayank Mishra was selected into Harvard’s Design Discovery program specializing in Landscape Architecture, where he developed prototypes of this speculative garden concept. We presented our Garden proposal to the Navajo Veterans Administration for approval and collaboration and have a launch day set for Monday, May 27, 2024.

We conducted onsite interviews with the Navajo Veterans (NV). From our focus group: “We have no in-person support group spaces”. Several NVs expressed a strong desire to interact with fellow Native Veterans but did not have a way to connect with each other. Technology is low-trust, expensive & quickly outdated. Nature in contrast has great longevity. We want to build a space for veterans to sit, eat and listen to each other's stories to develop trust. To date tribal populations continue to be wary of outsiders, building a garden on the Reservation is a more thoughtful gesture than trying to push tech tools or new treatments. It is also much less capital intensive than any other kind of physical infrastructure.

The Navajo Nation Veterans Administration in Window Rock, Arizona has approved our garden proposal and set a launch day for Monday, May 27, 2024 (Memorial Day). We have coordinated with several Navajo Veterans groups and mental health clinicians to establish a series of monthly talking circles (held in-person at the VA office in Window Rock) leading up to this day.

Once the garden officially launches on May 27, Televeda and the VA office in Window Rock will host its first talking circle within the garden itself, surrounded by newly brought in native plants. We will introduce to attendees the long-term plan to make the garden sustainable, future dates for garden talking circles, lead veterans through a series of planting workshops hosted by horticulture experts, and launch Televeda's new Hero's Story application which will be used to monitor behavioral health baselines and improvements over time across the veterans group. 

We are hoping to build our network across the mental health landscape and learn from other sustainability initiatives. We would also like to gain more knowledge on best practices for developing sustainable infrastructure across desert landscapes.

Death and psychological ailments are still a taboo subject for AIANs. Navajo view trauma as a consequence of community-level factors instead of individual ones. Native Veterans prefer holistic approaches over Western healthcare and view suicide as a consequence of community-level factors instead of individual ones. Thus, individual
psychotherapy is not culturally-responsive nor sought out.

Our project is a non-technical, non-pharmacological intervention to help build trust with AIAN populations. Developing gardens on the reservation would be a positive contribution to the community, and have more longevity than any technical solution. We would like to disseminate our learnings and make it accessible. It would encompass a low-tech high-trust framework that can be implemented with any tribe on any reservation. Our long-term goal is to provide our culturally-relevant solution to Veterans within the ~9 million AIANs in the US. Further, such a culturally-appropriate model can also extend to Pacific Islanders, Filipinos, Hispanics, and is  even applicable to the general population in rural areas.

Any innovation (medical or otherwise) needs to be accepted, endorsed, and disseminated by highly respected members of the Native community, namely Elders &Veterans. Thus, we adopt an upstream approach that addresses known issues: isolation, lacking purpose within the Community, and access to traditional mental wellbeing resources. 

Technology is low-trust, expensive & quickly outdated. Nature in contrast has great longevity. We want to build a space for veterans to sit, eat and listen to each other's stories to develop trust. To date tribal populations continue to be wary of outsiders, building a garden on the Reservation is a more thoughtful gesture than trying to push tech tools or new treatments. It is also much less capital intensive than any other kind of physical infrastructure.

Research on horticulture therapy shows how accessible it is across cultures & generations, from school children to older adults with dementia. There is no cost to participate and requires nothing more than presence. 

The project will measure our success through a combination of the following metrics: 1) number of participants recruited; 2) attendance to track retention and engagement; 3) tracking access to Veteran resources used by users through our application; 4) measure up-stream factors (e.g., loneliness, depression, mood), including working with clinics for suicide-screenings before and after the implementation of the project.

The core of our solution has 2 parts: the community therapeutic garden itself is the main solution, but it is supplemented by the application Televeda has created to monitor behavioral health improvements over time across the Native Veterans group. Televeda is launching the first indigenous, community-based platform to facilitate a trusted network of culturally-appropriate interventions & resources that support mental health. The design and implementation of the the Hero’s Story App has been and will continue to be deeply informed by members of tribal nations including Navajo, Lakota, and O’odham.

During and after the Storytelling sessions (talking circles), the crux of our solution provides resources Native Veterans can trust and feel safe utilizing. Native Veteran Association can record their attendance via tablets before the session. The community healthcare professional participates in the story theme and hears from everyone in the circle. After the session, there is food and informational material available.Televeda offers digital-literacy services to those who need it with tablet-loan programs for members to remotely access resources & relevant treatment options.

Post-session access to print & digital resources would keep the process of capacity building ongoing. We plan to launch the pilot with the Navajo Veterans administration, so the success metrics will be on veteran benefits enrollment. Depending on our success, the approach can be modified to include other types of organizations and resources around “story themes”.

15 people.

Televeda has been working on this particular solution for 2 years, but has been active as an organization since 2018.

Televeda is a group of people working to reduce social isolation and loneliness for those who face challenges connecting. Members of the Televeda team include first-generation and 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th- generation immigrants. We are Indigenous peoples, Arizonans, New Yorkers, Africans, Guatemalans, New Mexicans, and Indians. We are varied genders and sexual orientations, we are multi-generational, and we are all passionate about making human connections.
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We have deep and powerful partnerships in the communities we support, including Navajo Nation, Hopi, Lakota, Pascua Yaqui, Tohono O’odham, and more. Our work is community-led and always community first.

Televeda has a solid track record with experiential service design, events management and community development for underserved populations. Some of our notable event designs include: (a) Setting a Guinness World Record for Bingo live streaming (connected over 125 senior centers); (b) delivering a wind-quartet series live from the Chandler Symphony Orchestra during the pandemic; (c) Designed the "Connected Kansas" initiative to cross-pollinate resources from various community-based organizations to their rural populations.

Our team consists of Indigenous scientists and researchers with a real commitment to AIAN population health, in addition to employing various tribal liaisons who work with several Native community organizations across tribes. Some of our relevant AIAN projects include:

1. Televeda was awarded the first-place Mission Daybreak prize by the VA to develop the first Indigenous mental health application.
2. Awarded prize by the HHS for Rural HIV Stigma prevention.
3. We are working with state organizations (AZ Department of Veteran Services & AZ Department of Health Services) on tribal connectivity and digital literacy projects for the 22 tribes in Arizona.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has named Televeda as a winner in Mission Daybreak grand challenge — a $20 million challenge designed to help VA develop new suicide prevention strategies for Veterans. As a first place winner, Televeda received $3 million to specifically fund projects like this. In addition to the Mission Daybreak prize, Televeda has been awarded several other grants, and receives additional revenue via partnerships and collaborations with local governments, community centers, and health plans.