Aaniiih woman among first to graduate from UND's new Indigenous health program

When Amy Stiffarm was a graduate student at University of Montana, she learned that Native American women have low rates of breastfeeding. But she didn't understand why.

"Until one day, I came across (reports) about how historical trauma and boarding school trauma took away our parenting knowledge and knowledge around how to feed your babies," said Stiffarm, who is Aaniiih and a descendent of the Chippewa Cree and Blackfeet tribes. "I had never seen that before - something that was talking about the root causes. It was novel to me, it made sense, but why was no one talking about it?"

Stiffarm,...