Decolonize for Health & Data Justice
Indigenous Matriarch-led. Intergenerational. Beyond Equity.
Photo by Jarrette Werk, Aaniiih & Nakoda
Advancing Health Justice:
Rooted in Relationship, Guided by Resurgence.
Health Equity → Health Justice
IHEI defines Health justice as the actions that restore balance to people, lands, and systems disrupted by settler colonialism. It is the reactivation of Indigenous knowledge, governance, and relationships as living systems of health: where wellness is measured by the thriving of our peoples, our lands, and our futures.
Indigenous scholar, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson teaches that data and health justice must be rooted in Indigenous values of relationality, reciprocity, and responsibility—understanding knowledge not as something to extract or measure, but as a living relationship that sustains community, land, and life.
Mission
Dedicated to advancing Health Justice using the power of Indigenous values, science, and wisdom.
Vision
Generations of thriving Indigenous peoples whose health and well-being are an expression of their culture, prosperity, and liberation.
Since 2020,
IHEI has partnered with practitioners, students, and leaders across Tribal Nations and public health institutions,
Advancing decolonial health and data justice through Indigenous-led training, research, and community partnerships.
How We Create Systems Change
To address systemic harms, IHEI transforms public health through Indigenous-led solutions that strengthen data justice, community care, and collective self-determination.
IHEI advances health justice by transforming how public health understands, measures, and practices equity and wellbeing.
Through Indigenous-led training, curriculum design, and partnership development, we build the capacity of institutions and communities to act in right relationship—guided by Indigenous values of reciprocity, resurgence, and sovereignty.
Our work supports practitioners, students, and leaders to move beyond equity talk toward decolonial action that fosters collective thriving and systemic transformation.
IHEI Programming
Decolonial Research & Data
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The Decolonizing Academy—along with technical assistance, curriculum building, and evaluation resources—serves as an IHEI hub to train a new generation of health leaders, including epidemiologists, biostatisticians, decision-makers, and community advocates. Rooted in Indigenous values and grounded in truth-telling about the impacts of settler colonialism, the Academy works to decolonize research, data, and community engagement. Together, these efforts dismantle systemic injustice and create pathways toward collective liberation and shared wellbeing.
Knowledge Sovereignty
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IHEI’s Knowledge Hub is the intersection of communications, advocacy, research, and data— driving narrative change and fueling movement building. At its core, the Hub advances Indigenous knowledge sovereignty: the inherent right of communities to define, protect, share, and sustain their own knowledge systems. By challenging colonial practices of knowledge extraction, the Hub uplifts Indigenous ways of knowing and fosters cultural, ecological, and collective well- being.
Food & Land Sovereignty
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In partnership with NW Food Sovereignty/Land Back stewards and Across the Medicine Lines, IHEI builds collective power by weaving shared visions, cultivating the foundations for community-based food– land wellness systems. Here, IHEI addresses health justice at the intersection of food-land-climate-and futures. This work heals the land and the people while propelling us toward life-affirming, generative futures.
Learning Hub
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The Learning Hub at the Indigenous Health Equity Institute (IHEI) offers free, self-guided learning modules and hosts a community-driven data platform that uplifts community-based projects and addresses the limitations of Western public health data systems. It also serves as a third space where communities and institutions come together for collective learning, engagement, and action.
IHEI is building futures
nourished by the love of our ancestors.
Our Core Truths
These are the foundations that ground our programs and interventions:
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At IHEI, we stand with a growing movement to heal and transform the oppressive, colonial foundations that continue to shape the field and practice of public health—foundations that have produced deep health inequities and contributed to Indigenous erasure. This movement calls for a collective effort to build understanding and expose the ways public health, at multiple levels, has been complicit in undermining Indigenous self-determination, sovereignty, and thriving futures. It also demands bold strategies to address these systemic limitations. For Indigenous communities in particular, the lasting impacts of settler colonialism remain profound, often invisible and unacknowledged, yet central to achieving true health justice.
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At the Indigenous Health Equity Institute (IHEI), we honor the enduring love of our ancestors and the dreams they carried for our flourishing. To rise in that love is an act of Indigenous resurgence—to reclaim our collective ability to dream, imagine, and build the conditions that nurture and sustain life.
We are guided by the wisdom of community leader Jillene Joseph, who reminds us that we exist as Indigenous peoples today because we descend from miracle survivors of genocide—those who carried forward the vitality of cultural knowledge, relationship, and connection, keeping their hearts centered on what is beautiful and possible, even within systems that sought otherwise.
These teachings fuel and inspire our movement to decolonize and Indigenize public health, strengthening our Nations and communities through what is generative, life-affirming, and bright. This orientation offers a pathway that interrupts cycles of harm caused by settler colonialism and invites all people to imagine what it means to build from love, beauty, and possibility.
Learn more about our values.
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The Indigenous Health Equity Institute (IHEI) emerged in 2020 from community need, collective advocacy, and the call for truth-telling during the COVID-19 pandemic and racial uprisings.
At that time, public health systems and data infrastructures revealed deep structural gaps. Native peoples were rendered invisible in the data landscape, leaving our communities unprotected and excluded from decision-making that affected our lives.
In collaboration with the Future Generations Collaborative, the Health Equity Task Force, and other community partners, Dr. Kelly Gonzales helped advance Oregon’s House Bill 4052, recognizing racism as a public health crisis and creating space for new decolonizing approaches.
In response, IHEI convened the Indigenous Health Equity Action Council, a statewide collective of Indigenous leaders who advocated for stronger self-determination and highlighted the limitations of existing state policies for Native Nations. These early efforts affirmed a core truth: systems must be transformed with Indigenous leadership to achieve health and data justice.
From this foundation, IHEI continues to advance a decolonized health justice framework rooted in reciprocity, relationality, and Indigenous sovereignty, ensuring our communities are not only visible, but centered in shaping the systems that impact our futures.
Through collective power building that stretches across community and public health institutions, we seek to build greater self-determined and liberated futures that are safe and healthy for all relatives.
IHEI’S Impact:
Transforming Public Health Through Indigenous Values
Across all programs, IHEI cultivates a growing network of practitioners, leaders, and institutions who are reshaping data, policy, and care through Indigenous values of reciprocity, accountability, and collective healing.
Through Indigenous-led training, research, and community partnerships, IHEI is transforming how public health systems understand and practice health justice.
Together, we are redefining what it means to care for our communities and to act in right relationship.
Voices from the Work
Land Acknowledgement
The Indigenous Health Equity Institute honors and gives thanks to the ancestral and enduring guardianship of these lands by the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, Wasco, Chinook bands, and other nations who have stewarded and cared for this territory since time immemorial. We recognize the importance of building enduring relationships and practicing reciprocity as guests on these lands. We are dedicated to forging a future deeply rooted in the principles of Indigenous sovereignty, Indigenous futurism, and LAND BACK.
