Dr. Antony Stately: Building Health Equity in Indigenous Communities

Transcript

[Music: Native Lights Theme]

Antony Stately: And I had big dreams a kid, I was going to be a writer. I was going to write the great Native American novel. So these big dreams of things I was going to do. I went into LA. I was going to be an actor or a poet or a writer. Big dreams of what I would do, none of which came to fruition. They were just big, huge dreams, but I had dreams.

Leah Lemm: Boozhoo, hello. Welcome to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. I'm your host Leah Lemm. My co-host Cole Premo is off today. But miigwech for joining us. Native Lights is more than a podcast and radio show. At its core, it's a place for Native folks to tell their stories. Every week, we have great conversations with wonderful guests from a bunch of different backgrounds, musicians, artists, doctors, educators, language warriors, you name it. Gosh, there's a bunch of passions, a mix of gifts. So we talk with our guests about those gifts and how they share them with the community, and it all centers around the big point of purpose in our lives. And it's another day, another opportunity to amplify Native Voices. And I will not banter too long here, because I'm super excited to speak with my guest today, Antony Stately. Antony Stately is a transformative leader dedicated to health equity in Indigenous communities. He's enrolled with the Oneida Nation, and he's a descendant of both the Red Lake and White Earth nations here in Minnesota, and he has two sons. He's currently the Executive Officer and President for the Native American Community Clinic in South Minneapolis, providing primary care, dental care and behavioral health services to the Native American community in the Twin Cities. So without any other delay, please welcome Dr Anthony Stately. Boozhoo, Anthony, how are you doing?

Antony Stately: Nice to see you, Leah.

Leah Lemm: Can you please introduce yourself?

Antony Stately: Sure. I'm Antony Stately. I'm a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, descendant of Red Lake and White Earth nations of Minnesota, and I'm the President and Executive Officer of the Native American community clinic in Minneapolis.

Leah Lemm: And how are you and your family doing?

Antony Stately: We're doing well. Got through the long haul of getting my kids graduated across the finish line in June, and yeah, we're doing well.

Leah Lemm: Well, how are you feeling? How are you doing?

Antony Stately: I'm doing well. Been trying to be supportive of them and help them through the things that are challenging to them, you know, relationships and all the stuff, all the things that teenagers experience, which I'm sure your son is like, hot on their footsteps, right?

Leah Lemm: Oh, my goodness, Anthony, he's twelve.

Antony Stately: Twelve going on 40.

Leah Lemm: Sometimes he's a little sassy. Yeah. Now that he's taller than mama, yeah, no, got all kinds of opinions. Yeah, I've definitely been exploring how to be a parent who still maintains boundaries, but also, you know, is kind and loving, and also, you know, like this, like, really tricky line to walk that.

Antony Stately: Boundaries, and, yeah, yep, yep, yep, yeah, they test that, that love for sure. Like, push back. And one, I feel like I always argue with them about everything. Like, he'll ask a question, and I'll say something, and then I'll ask a question. I'll ask a clarifying question, what is it that you are trying to understand here? And then that turns into, like, a big, a big mosh pit of, like, angst, like, oh, good lord.

Leah Lemm: A mosh pit. That's a really good visual.

Antony Stately: And I'm like, and of course, in my head, I'm thinking, I don't remember being like this when I was 18. And I was like, I remember being different. And I'm sure if somebody could unearth my mother from her grave, she'd say, I know you were exactly like that, but I don't want to hear it, and I don't want to believe it.

Leah Lemm: Oh, my goodness. I know parenting can be a challenge.

Antony Stately: It is the hardest job on the earth. It really is. It's really the hardest job, yeah.

Leah Lemm: Well, my co-host is not here. My sibling, Cole Premo.

Antony Stately: I can see that. We can talk about him, yeah?

Leah Lemm: Well, he's a new dad, you know.

Antony Stately: I saw that. That's awesome. And you're an auntie.

Leah Lemm: I'm so proud of him. Look at my earrings aren't quite big enough. I need to get the big auntie earrings.

Antony Stately: Yeah, I know a place where you can get those. Yeah, I bought a pair of big earrings for one of my sons.

Leah Lemm: Well, tell me, Anthony, what are you thinking about these days? Is there something you're concentrating on or geeking out about?

Antony Stately: You know, when I started at NACC in 2016—I tell people, there's not a CEO school, like somebody create a CEO school. So, like you don't, you learn to become a CEO by stepping into leadership and take on all these things, and, you know, and those, all this preparation, of course, that happens over your life and your career. And then you step into this role, and things shift and change, and they shift and change, and really, sometimes very dramatic ways, and that first year of being in that role, at the same time that President Trump was in his first administration, his first year, first term of being President, and just the, you know, the craziness that was involved with that. Remember, like the Women's March. It was like, happened in January, like a week after his first or maybe a couple weeks right after his inauguration, you know, and I got my little pink hat, like a lot of other people did, first year that I was in that role. I was like, oh my God, there's this part of me that was like, oh my god, what have I stepped into? You know, I'm responsible for this organization, this large healthcare organization that serves the Native community and people rely on me. And I got 40 some employees relying on me, and I got this foolish president who keeps like kicking the can down the road with these continuing resolutions and not extending the funding for community health centers. My first year being a CEO, I get to wade through this. And I was like, oh my god. So I had this opportunity recently to reflect on that and reflect on where it was then and where I'm at now, this new administration managing that, and how much more crazy and chaotic this particular administration was compared to the first time. The work we've been able to do as an organization over the last 10 years, to prepare ourselves to sort of meet this moment. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm profoundly proud of the work we've done, and I'm happy to say we're financially stable and we're growing. we're growing rapidly, and we broke ground on our new building in 2025. All six floors of the building are up, a brand new clinic with expanded clinic, with two floors of clinic and four floors of affordable and supportive housing above it. And it just is, like, unreal, like, I'll go to work, and I still feel like, pinch me. Somebody pinch me.

Leah Lemm: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today, I'm speaking with Antony Stately. Antony Stately is from the Oneida Nation. He's a descendant of the Red Lake and White Earth Ojibwe Nation. He's a transformative leader dedicated to health equity and Indigenous communities, and he's the Executive Officer and President for the Native American Community Clinic in South Minneapolis. Can you tell me a bit about the building.

Antony Stately: The people we're working with in partnership with our housing program, which is Wellington Management, Incorporated, they are a for-profit housing developer that has stepped into the supportive and affordable housing game about 10 years ago or so. Really lovely, family-owned institution that we worked really hard over the last several years on our partnership, and we have tremendous shared vision and trust and confidence and faith in one another, and negotiated all the hard things that we had to do to sort of make this become a reality. They're going to operate the housing above our new clinic until something changes and shifts. You know, the housing was built by tax credits, which unwind in seven to 15 years, depending on sort of agreements that we have with investors, and we'll start leasing up the housing stuff. Every time I'm out and about, I go over to All My Relations Gallery or to like, Powwow Grounds for coffee or get an Indian taco. Or, you know, at the Indian Center. Everybody stops me and tells me, you know how excited they are to see the building, lots of people are really excited about the housing and interest in the housing. So our list of people that are interested in the housing and potentially moving into the building, and people are really, really excited about it. Almost everybody I talk to from our community, the Native community, has all been very excited about it. Talk about how proud they are of the work that NACC does, which, of course, makes me really proud of my team and all the people that put their work and efforts into this project. I took a tour today, and we walked up and we looked at the third floor, which is all housing. And you know what I can't wait for is when it becomes more than that, when it becomes more than bricks and mortar and lumber and siding and things like that, when it becomes like this, we put a lot of planning into the project to make it a really beautiful place to live. We have engaged and contracted with artists from across Minnesota to do some really beautiful work, both on the inside of the building and on the outside of the building, with really deep intention and thoughtfulness about like what that art is going to look like, what it's going to represent, and the intent to put more time to accomplish that, which is making this place a space and place where Indigenous people recognize from the moment they walk into the space, maybe even perhaps before they ever walk into it, that it's a place for them and it's a place that they belong. You know, take a lot of resources to operate for the next you know, 20-25, 30-50, years or so, or more longer, we're going to be fundraising every single year for the next decade or two, at least, minimum. So we're doing a lot of that work as well. We're laying the foundation for some of those things to happen and getting prepared for, you know, the responsible stewardship. Or we've been working on that for a while now already, but there's so much that goes into it. I've been calling this like a legacy project for me. I'm in, you know, my early 60s, probably likely in five to 10 years I'll retire, and I referred to this project as my love letter to the community. It's my way of saying, you know, giving back and giving something that was really important and meaningful, but also my way of saying thank you for trusting me and investing in me and my leadership.

Leah Lemm: Would high school Antony Stately have expected you to do this sort of work?

Antony Stately: Oh, my God, no, yeah, no, no, no. High school Antony Stately would probably be a lot like my kids. No. I mean, I think I was. I was a dreamer, for sure, and I think my kids are dreamers too, but we live in a different time. Now think about like, how the world is operative. Now I don't remember like, the division and just the mistrust that people have of one another. And I have a lot of empathy and compassion for my children, because I think they just live in a time where it was, it's, you know, it's emotionally and psychologically harder, I think, to live and exist now than it was probably when I was younger. And I had big dreams as a kid. I was going to be a writer, gonna write the great Native American novel, and I was a writer in high school, and out of high school, I did some writing for, you know, I worked for The Circle newspaper for a few years. I was a reporter and also an editor, and we had a little group called the Red Word [?] song, and we go on, we'd perform, and I'd read my poetry and things like that. So these big dreams of things I was going to do. I went into LA; I was going to be an actor or a poet or a writer. Or big dreams of what I would do, none of which came to fruition. They were just big, huge dreams. But I had dreams, but this is one I would never have ever expected that I would do. I'm as surprised as everybody else, I suppose.

Leah Lemm: So you know, you've done so much stuff. I mean, I kind of get it, because I've been all over the map doing all sorts of stuff. But how about you?

Antony Stately: You were probably a lot like me, in the sense that you had parents that were really doing amazing things, and you witnessed and you saw it, and you were probably surrounded by people in that realm. And I was surrounded by those. You know, I was raised in South Minneapolis in the 60s and 70s, during the time of like, the civil rights movement and the creation of AIM. And, you know, my family was very involved. So I was raised by hell raisers and rabble rousers and activists, right? And so I think that that spirit lives in me. So the things I saw around me was a lot of people who were able to do, including my mother, a lot of people were able to do some really amazing things. And so I knew it was possible, but even at a very young age, I didn't see the pathway there. People ask me this question all the time, and I'm like, yeah, I'm just as surprised sometimes as anybody else that I am where I'm at, because there's times when I still feel like I'm just that kid from the Southside, like, you know, how did a kid from the south side of Minneapolis? A single mother, poor just, you know, how do they get to where I'm at? And I think about that a lot, of course, now towards those generative years of my life. And think about wanting to write about that and tell that story, but the short version is, is that, you know, I struggled really a lot when I was younger, and my early teens, late teens, in my early adulthood, I struggled with addiction and dropped out of college. You know, I got a great full ride at Macalester College when I was 16, and I mucked that up. You know, I was partying, probably trying to live like, you know, the Beatniks did back in the 60s, get some experience, and so I could write about that stuff, and then, then I ended up getting sober when I was 23 and I moved to the West Coast because I had this epiphany where I got an accident, wrapped my car around a light pole on 29th and Lydale, after being sober for about four weeks, I relapsed, and I got really messed up, and that night, and I got in car accident. I barely survived that accident, and I remember waking up in the, remember waking up in the hospital next morning, and I heard like a voice say something in my ear, and it sounded just like somebody was in my room, because I remember turning and looking in the direction of where the voice was coming from, and basically, like, "if you drink again, or you're struggling again, you're going to die." And I turn and look, and no one was there. And so that was like a really weird moment for me. And then a few moments after that, my mom and my sister walked through the hospital room, and my mom looked at me, and she just kind of fell to her knees and started weeping and crying. And I had this moment where I was, you know, I'd been trying to get sober since I was 17. I was 23 at the time, and it was killing me, literally, to see the impact that my addiction and my life choices were having on her. And so went back to treatment right after I finished those three days, and then, within a couple of months, moved to LA because I had this epiphany where I realized, like, if I don't change, what's going on in my life around me right now, all the people I hung with still, even when I was clean and sober, we're still drinking a lot and using drugs, and a lot of my family members were still drinking and lots of partying and all those kinds of things. I remember that voice, and I thought, if I don't leave here, I'm not going to live very long. And so, you know, I did a really crazy thing. I wouldn't recommend that anybody do it. I sold everything I had, which wasn't a whole lot, because I'd lost a whole lot of stuff in my addiction, and I bought a plane ticket to Los Angeles, and I moved there with no job, 100 bucks in my pocket and no place to live, either enough money to rent an apartment or not an apartment rent a hotel room for like, five days, while I look for work and, you know, and then I was able to sort of establish myself there and go to meetings and maintain sobriety. You know, one thing led to another. You know, I went back to school and, and someone at school said, "Have you ever thought of being a psychologist or getting a graduate degree in psychology?" And I was like, no. Never thought of that. Actually, ever.

Leah Lemm: You're listening to Native Lights where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS with support for the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today, I'm speaking with Antony Stately. Antony Stately is from the Oneida Nation. He's a descendant of the Red Lake and White Earth Ojibwe nations. He's a transformative leader dedicated to health equity and Indigenous communities, and he's the Executive Officer and President for the Native American Community Clinic in South Minneapolis. How do you get from point A to point B?

Antony Stately: Like, it coincided with some things that were happening in my life, and it was like, I let, I tell my sons this all the time, and I tell other young people: I ended up where I'm at because I listened to people that would see something in me and say, like, "Hey, you have this thing. You have this talent or this skill or this thing, have you ever thought about doing this?" And then they give me a recommendation, or they give me advice or get me to think about something. And in a lot of ways, I wasn't the most self-aware person as a young person until I was in my late 20s, later on, when I became a psychologist, and you learn about, like, the brain development. You're like, Oh, yeah. Well, people's brains don't develop fully until they're like, in they're 28 and 29 sometimes, especially for men, that's about the time I sort of kind of became a reasonable, mature human being and went back to school and got a PhD, and some of the rest is kind of history after that. And I was lucky. I went to a program where I met other Native people who were in graduate school. There was about five or six of us all in the same time. We were starting to talk at that point in time and about historical trauma. And I read, I had another epiphany, where I read Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart's seminal article on historical trauma and its impact on Native people and their families and their family systems. And I was like, oh, I could read that article, and I could see my own family and that in my own life, and see the things in my community and my family systems that I was raised in, and all the things that we struggled with. And I thought, I'm going to do this.

Leah Lemm: Yeah. Well, where do you see the future of Indigenous health care going?

Antony Stately: I think there's going to be challenges for Indigenous health care for the next, at least the next three years, because we're in an administration that doesn't really value those that is really doing things to, you know, diminish and erase science. One of the things that I did in the last couple of years as well as start this new building, is we established a research center at NACC called the Cedar Research Center. CEDAR stands for [Center for Empowering Native Communities and Reclaiming Research]. It's on our website. We established that because I recognize that first of all, one of the things we're trying to do with this new building, but also with the work we do at NACC is we're trying to address and shift and change the health disparities for the community at large. You can only do so much of that, the changing of health outcomes and health disparities for our community, by seeing the same 3000, 5000, 6000 people coming through your front door every single year for your care. And that's not to say that that's not important in the way that we deliver care. And all those things aren't important. They are meaningful and absolutely like changing and important. But the way you change the health of a community is you, you have to develop a program of research that demonstrates that the work that you're doing is important in changing health outcomes, and you also have to do some work at the structural level about changing the mechanisms that are in place that make so many of the things that are problematic for our community intractable, because they're built into the system. They're built into a system of health and healthcare that is focused on a lot of the wrong things. We created the CEDAR Research Center to evaluate some of the work we're doing that's all around our traditional healing program, and the implementation and integration of that into our into our western model of care. We created the research center to sort of like, you know, create opportunities for Indigenous people in our community and all across Turtle Island, want to come to NACC to work or to be trained or just sort of like to contribute to this thing we're doing for them to be able to develop policy papers. You know, we're developing a red paper right now on traditional healing. We're calling it red paper, not a white paper. A big piece of that is the shifting of our mission says something about just, you know, eliminating disparities. And I, with intention, shifted that into where we want to build health equity, some big questions that we're struggling with or not struggling with, that we're wrestling with and trying to figure out, like, how do we begin to sort of evaluate these and test these theories, and the implementation and integration of traditional healing into western medicine centers around things like challenging the ideology that health is the absence of disease, because I don't think that that's something that is that's a little bit of an elusive thing. It's not to say that we shouldn't be trying to eliminate disease, but there's chronic diseases in some conditions that we've had in our communities that are generations old, that are not going to shift and change anytime in the near future, and if they do, they'll shift very slowly as we develop more scientific evidence and a few other things. But we're saying that health is the presence of well-being, the presence of belongingness, all the things that we're struggling with, that and that right now, in Minneapolis, lots of other communities across Turtle Island, and the addiction, the houselessness, the scale of the things that we're challenged by, a lot of that is directly related to the effects, long term effects, of colonization and the disinvestment in our communities and disembodiment of our relationship between ourselves and the land. We're trying to address that in a much more intentional way, and at the same time evaluate what does that look like. Right after you do that, 5, 10 years, 15 years, couple of generations out. NAAC is known for, like, building the plane where we're flying it. We kind of sort of like start a thing. We see a thing, a crisis in our community. We move towards it, then we start to build the response to it as we're moving towards it. And kind of it's an iterative process. We don't do that by acting upon the community. We do that by acting with the community and having conversation and engaging and asking for input as we're an ideas and involvement and engagement when we're doing it. So community engagement is a big, huge part of our lifeblood. And so the creation of the building and the creation of this research center, and pretty much everything we do from this point forward always involve that. You know, I'm starting to do succession planning, like all the things my board wants. You know, I I've had a few relatives, actually, who, like, stayed in the executive director roles for like, 20, 25, 30 years. My responsibility now is to finish this project, get both the clinic and the research center stable, grow the talent and the leadership that will take over and take this vision and make it go farther. Right? You know, I'm not, I don't think I'm limitless in my vision. I think I have some limitations, but young people these days, they're amazing. They have really great things. They have AI, they have all kinds of really cool things that help them think about what things could possibly look like. You know, 50, 60, 100 years. I don't know that I have the vision to think that far forward, but I think about the responsibility I have now before me, which is complete this thing. Find the right people to take over when I'm ready to step down in my leadership role. Find the right person to sort of need that, and mentor them and support them. And, you know, hand off the baton, and then, I don't know, get a little cabin in Red Lake or White Earth or Leech Lake someplace that'll have me. Watch the sunsets and hopefully by that point, I'll have some grans, some grand babies, that I really, really want, wonderful. That's the imagined outcome. If that's actually what happens, I'd be a little bit surprised about that, but it's what I'm shooting for.

Leah Lemm: Well, I wish you the best of luck.

Antony Stately: It's always good to see you. Always good to see your brother. When I do see him. Give him my best and tell him congratulations on being a new daddy. I think it's the best role on the planet, actually, quite frankly.

[Music: Native Lights Theme]

Leah Lemm: Dr. Antony Stately. Just a really fun person, you know, really thoughtful, really reflective, and, gosh, he has so much experience, so many careers, locations and all that good stuff that you know, really, the conversation comes down to, you know, really, what's important. Parenting and our health. And so chi-miigwech to Dr. Antony Stately. Thank you so much. I'm Leah Lemm. Miigwech for listening. Giga-waabamin. You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.