Minnesota shares geography with eleven federally recognized Tribal nations, seven Anishinaabe and four Dakota, and many Native people live in the Twin Cities and other urban areas. For Dakota and Anishinaabe people, ceremony and traditional healing are connected to language, land and nationhood. For much of American history, federal policy suppressed Native religious practice. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act later declared it United States policy to protect and preserve the right of American Indians to believe, express and exercise their traditional religions, including access to sites, use of sacred objects and freedom to worship through ceremonies. Many Native households also practice Christianity, sometimes together with traditional ways. When DHS work touches Tribal nations as governments, it goes through Tribal consultation, which is government-to-government. When an individual or family names a healer or ceremony, listen and follow their lead. Do not schedule ceremony as agency programming, do not describe it in a training as a recipe, and do not treat it as a team-building activity.
Other communities have their own healing traditions, and they are not interchangeable. A Hmong family may involve a txiv neeb, a shaman, in decisions about illness or disability. A Somali family may seek ruqya, Qur'anic recitation for healing. Latino, West African and Caribbean families may draw on other practices. Grouping these together as alternative medicine erases their meaning. The question for staff is practical: is there anyone or anything the person wants to include, and how can the service plan make room for it safely and respectfully.
About three in ten Minnesota adults describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. That group includes atheists, agnostics, people who are spiritual but not religious, people who simply do not attend, and people who have left a faith, sometimes at real cost. A secular Jew, a former Muslim and an unaffiliated Black Minnesotan are not one category. Leaving a congregation is not leaving a family or people, and many households still keep holidays as kinship.
For all of these, the same boundaries apply. Do not assume that a person needs a pastor, imam, rabbi or healer, and do not assume they want none. Do not describe a lack of religion as a lack of culture or support. Ask, record what the person says, and let them decide who belongs in the room.
