6 minutes
Lived experience and trust · Hair and Dress Turn hair and dress, healthcare encounters into a more respectful, usable decision.
What you’ll be able to do Identify how lived experience and institutional trust may affect entry, burden, and follow-through. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What keeps the learning useful instead of turning it into a stereotype? Document a next step for Lived experience and trust · Hair and Dress: Use Hair and Dress, Healthcare Encounters as a hypothesis in one live plan; verify the relevant detail with the affected person or a named community partner, then record the change, owner, review date, and report-back. Hair and Dress Hair can be spiritual, personal, or neither. Long hair, braids, a ribbon skirt, a jingle dress, a suit in a St. Paul hearing room — all of that is this people. Do not touch. Locs, braids, or long hair are not unprofessional.
CROWN-adjacent harm still happens. Follow this person. A ribbon skirt is not a costume you request.
A lawyer in a ribbon skirt and a scientist in a lab coat are not opposites. They may be the same person on different Tuesdays.
Put hair and dress to work What you can change You control whether hair and dress is treated as a question to explore or a label placed on someone.
What to watch for Do not touch. CROWN-adjacent harm still happens. Follow this person.
Your next step Use this evidence as a hypothesis in your next plan, then confirm the relevant detail with the person or the community partner you named.
Healthcare Encounters Ask where they get care. Indian Health Service, tribal health, urban Indian health, and county clinics are not one door. Believe pain. Family and ceremony if they want them.
Refer with competence. Mandated reporting still exists. Staff are not unpaid cultural experts.
Trust Mistrust is historical and current. Help-seeking that becomes a child-welfare petition is a pattern families already know. Tuskegee is African American medical history — not this page. Do name this pattern: a county file that sounds like removal.
Gender match if they want it. Do not force a handshake. Inquiry under ICWA and MIFPA is not optional curiosity.
Put healthcare encounters to work What you can change You control whether healthcare encounters is treated as a question to explore or a label placed on someone.
What to watch for Ask where they get care. Believe pain. Family and ceremony if they want them. Refer with competence.
Your next step Use this evidence as a hypothesis in your next plan, then confirm the relevant detail with the person or the community partner you named.
Practical cards Hair and Dress
Real example: Hair can be spiritual, personal, or neither. Long hair, braids, a ribbon skirt, a jingle dress, a suit in a St. Paul hearing room — all of that is this people. Do not touch. Locs, braids, or long hair are no…
Leader action: Do not touch. CROWN-adjacent harm still happens. Follow this person.
Healthcare Encounters
Real example: Ask where they get care. Indian Health Service, tribal health, urban Indian health, and county clinics are not one door. Believe pain. Family and ceremony if they want them. Refer with competence. Mandated r…
Leader action: Ask where they get care. Believe pain. Family and ceremony if they want them. Refer with competence.
I do not need a cultural performance from a professional. I need the process to make room for my name, my people, my questions, and the way I actually need to participate.
Composite public perspective — illustrative · Eleven Tribal Nations of Minnesota · Lived experience and trust Carry this forward Hair and Dress, Healthcare Encounters provide context to test, not a label to assign.
The person, household, Nation, or named community partner remains the authority on what fits.
Ask where they get care. Believe pain. Family and ceremony if they want them. Refer with competence.
Completion is shown by a scenario decision, review of a practical artifact, and a saved one-minute commitment.
Use Hair and Dress, Healthcare Encounters as a hypothesis in one live plan; verify the relevant detail with the affected person or a named community partner, then record the change, owner, review date, and report-back.
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Reset this lesson
Previous lesson Next lesson Carry this into practice Use this material only to frame respectful questions; defer Native American and Tribal-specific content, engagement, and decisions to the Office of Indian Affairs and DHS offices that handle Tribal matters.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
