Amanda Young receives Cedar Award for Native American women advocacy

Amanda Young received the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 35 Section 6 Fire Keeper Cedar Award at the annual APA Convention held in Washington, D.C., recently. The award honors outstanding American Indian graduate students who perpetuate Indigenous ways of knowing, fueling the fires of scientific knowledge and weaving the threads of community together in ways that honor and sustain the Native American legacy.

Young was selected for the award for her advocacy in bringing awareness to missing, murdered, sex trafficked, and raped Native American women.

Young is a graduate assistant with the Seven Generations Center of Excellence (SGCoE) program at the Center for Rural Health at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences. She is currently a second year student in the Masters Counseling Psychology and Community Service program at UND. Young is originally from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa community, in Dunseith, N.D., but is an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation (MHA).

Young works within an Indigenous framework to promote collective and spiritual ways of thinking when interacting with clients and peers. Her advocacy and outreach efforts have brought light to Native women's exploitation and how it affects the mental health of Native women and their communities.

The Cedar award is named symbolically after the Cedar tree and its many uses in Native culture. It is awarded to graduate students who have completed research or service that focuses on the needs of Indigenous communities and has made a meaningful contribution to Native American/Indigenous psychology and/or local Indigenous community efforts.

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Marv Leier
Communication Manager
Center for Rural Health
701.777.4205
marvin.leier@UND.edu