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Alaska

2017: Principal Progress

Before Deanna Beck had ever heard of the 1998 ACE study, before she became principal of Northwood ABC Elementary School in Anchorage, she was a special education teacher who saw the ways trauma scrawled through her students’ lives.

On the one-minute reading tests Beck administered, she would notice steady progress—40 words a minute, then 50—followed by dramatic drops; a child would suddenly be stumbling along at three or four words a minute.

She began to ask the kids what had happened. “My mom’s boyfriend was over last night…We had to go to the shelter…I didn’t get any sleep.” Beck started asking more questions in an effort to know her students better.

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2016: Start by Listening

Before the Alaska Resilience Initiative could push forward on any of its goals—to grow a sustainable statewide network; to educate all Alaskans on brain development, ACEs and resilience-building; and to support organizational, policy and practice change to address trauma—its leaders had to start by listening.

Specifically, they had to listen to Alaska Native people.

Alaska Native people comprise nearly one-fifth of the state’s population, but historically their voices have been largely excluded from decision-making about social services, education and behavioral health.

That’s why Laura Norton-Cruz, program director of the Alaska Resilience Initiative, partnered with First Alaskans Institute and the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council on a May 2016 gathering that put Native perspectives, customs, history and hopes at the center.

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2015: Adversity Times Three

Trevor Storrs likes to put an Alaskan spin on that oft-told allegory about the babies being swept downstream. In the story, rescuers keep pulling babies out of the current until someone finally decides to go upstream and learn why they’re being tossed in the water in the first place.

Storrs, executive director of the Alaska Children’s Trust (ACT), would go one step further: to the stream’s source, to find out why the glacier is melting and stop the flow.

In the largest state of the United States, a place where ACEs are high and population density is low, Storrs believes it’s critical to understand the historical trauma inflicted by decades of colonization, racism and efforts to erase Native languages, cultures and spiritual practices.

“Here in Alaska we talk about adversity to the child, the culture and the community,” he said.

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Alaska Resilience Initiative
Backbone Organization: 
Alaska Children's Trust
Related Links: 
Alaska Resilience Initiative Website
Alaska Resilience Initiative Facebook page
Alaska Resilience Initiative on YouTube
2017 National Summit Poster
2017 National Summit Video

Related Press:

Becoming trauma-informed: developing compassion for our neighbors and ourselves
Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, May 27, 2019
The Alaska shipyard where the 'manliest men' meditate each morning
The Guardian, March 6, 2018
Alaska Resilience Initiative to begin trauma-informed training program
State of Reform, February 21, 2018
All Related Press

Shared Learnings:

On the Path to Health Equity: When Foundations and Corporations Support Trauma-Informed, Cross-Sector Networks
Homework: Moving Toward Compassionate, Trauma-Informed Schools
Master Class: Training People to Spread Word about ACEs
Curiosity and Reciprocity: Engaging Community in the ACE and Resilience Movement
By the Numbers: Using Data to Advance the ACE and Resilience Movement
Artists in the ACE and Resilience Movement: Creative Avenues to Change
Business Leaders in the ACE and Resilience Movement: A Different Kind of Bottom Line
Using Stories to Build a Social Movement
Community News:
Guidance from Alaska Native & Native American gathering on trauma & resilience in Alaska