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• The decomposed tissue and bones were found Nov. 2 in a rural shelterbelt on private land near Astoria, and state and local officials are investigating the case as a homicide.
• Deuel County Sheriff Dave Solem tells the Associated Press that he has no new information to share but investigators would still like to speak to anyone with information related to the discovery.
• Experts have concluded that the fetuses were about 40 weeks old and capable of living outside the uterus. The sheriff's office and the state Division of Criminal Investigation have been gathering additional information from an autopsy report and a forensic anthropological evaluation.
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Sanford to hire 2 Native American healers
KRISTI EATON,Associated Press
• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- The country's largest rural, nonprofit hospital system is hiring two traditional Native American healers to train medical staff in the Dakotas and Minnesota in an effort to better serve the American Indian patient population.
• Sanford Health is in the process of hiring a Lakota/Dakota and an Ojibwe to serve as consultants as part of a three-year $12 million Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services award, said Read Sulik, Sanford's senior vice president for Behavioral Health Services.
• "Being where we're located in South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota, we realized we serve perhaps the largest American Indian population in a health system outside of Indian Health Services of probably any other system in the country, given where we're located across the northern Plains," Sulik said, noting that Native Americans as a group have some of the biggest health disparities in the country. "Several of the things that keep rising up (are) how patients feel welcome and engaged and effectively communicated to in the health clinics settings."
• Sulik, who is based in Fargo, said the traditional healers will act as advisers to health care workers to develop training and curriculum about the American Indian culture, and will consult with medical staff on when it may be appropriate to use traditional healing techniques in conjunction with modern medicine.
• The two healers won't necessarily be performing traditional healing ceremonies, Sulik said, but advising clinics in the three states on when a ceremony may be necessary and how to use local resources to make it happen.
• Oitancan Mani Zephier, a 33-year-old Yankton Sioux tribe member from Vermillion, has seen firsthand how having a Native American by a patient's side can help psychologically. While working as an Army medic in Afghanistan in 2004-2005, he (Continued on page 21)
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