{"id":2152,"date":"2009-06-11T09:24:13","date_gmt":"2009-06-11T17:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=2152"},"modified":"2009-06-11T09:59:56","modified_gmt":"2009-06-11T17:59:56","slug":"home-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/home-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Home again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back on my home island from a short trip down to the Warm Springs reservation in central Oregon visting with the staff of radio station KWSO<\/a> and the community members that rely on the station. \u00a0This was the second site vist for a project I am doing with Native Public Media<\/a> and Public Radio Capital<\/a> looking at how to measure the impact of Native community radio stations in the US.<\/p>\n

Really struck with the role the station plays in the community. \u00a0Most radio stations, at least mainstream commercial and public radio concern themselves a lot \u00a0with reach – are we getting enough listeners. \u00a0With Native community radio that isn’t the problem at all – in Warm Springs it seems like they reach 100% of the people quickly either directly or through word of mouth. \u00a0When there is an emergency or a school closure, everyone knows about it right away. \u00a0The luxurious problem these stations have is how to use that influence to actually help the community maintain wellness and health.<\/p>\n

In Warm Springs, the KWSO do this by focusing on health, education and culture. \u00a0They produce PSAs and short documentary or news programs that focus on important issues like diabetes prevention or language retention or repeating stories that help ground ceremony and history. \u00a0One of the key impacts the station is having is in the area of education. \u00a0The bording school experience in the States, like the residential school experience in Canada, left many Native families with intergenerational trauma and a deep distrust of institutional learning. \u00a0(I share that mistrust in general, and we homeschool our own kids, but for families where that isn’t possible a decent educational experience is important). \u00a0In Warm Springs, the radio station and the school work together to create a climate of positivity around learning. \u00a0This has paid off in a couple of ways. \u00a0First there is a culture of positivity at the school that carries over into behaviours. \u00a0There have been a total of four suspensions in five years at the school. \u00a0Kids get along really well there, and the radio station continues to support this positive climate by focusing on learning, by playing good music during the school bus rides that helps the kids stay relaxed on the trip into town and by encouraging parents and kids to be active in the life of the school. \u00a0There are very few formal parent-teacher interviews, but all of the teachers reported that they have a hard time getting the parents OUT of the school, so involved is the community.<\/p>\n

On the diabetes front we learned that the Warm Springs community has a diabetes rate five points lower than that national Native average in the US. \u00a0There is extensive public health information broadcast all day on KWSO from announcements about classes and workshops to recipes and nutriotion tips. \u00a0I have a sneaking suspicion that if we look across the country, the reservations with community radio stations will have a lower diabetes average than others.<\/p>\n

It’s a fun project, and now with two site visits under our belts, it’s time to write up the findings and see what loacl media really means.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back on my home island from a short trip down to the Warm Springs reservation in central Oregon visting with the staff of radio station KWSO and the community members that rely on the station. \u00a0This was the second site vist for a project I am doing with Native Public Media and Public Radio Capital looking at how to measure the impact of Native community radio stations in the US. Really struck with the role the station plays in the community. \u00a0Most radio stations, at least mainstream commercial and public radio concern themselves a lot \u00a0with reach – are we …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-nations"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-yI","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2152"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2154,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions\/2154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}