Waylon DeCoteau is a third-year medical student at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine. His mother is a Nurse Practitioner and one of his biggest role models that has inspired and motivated him to pursue medicine. He would love to return to his community or other tribal nations as part of the direct care workforce.

“In our communities, a lot of our leaders and warriors were well respected for taking care of our people, especially the vulnerable. These leaders take on a commitment to help our people, and the selflessness and love that they have is something I strive for, and really drives me to do my best in this field of medicine.”

Waylon’s community health project will lead into suicide prevention of Native peoples, siting that in North Dakota suicide is the second-leading cause of death for the age 10-24 age group. He is interested in researching the impact of suicide prevention programs throughout Indian country.

Healers Community Circle project summary:

Waylon (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa) is a fourth-year medical student at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine. For Waylon’s project he wanted to improve the suicide prevention procedures at the IHS facility he was doing his rotation at. But he hit a roadblock as he did not have the needed support from his colleagues and staff to complete the project, so Waylon set his sights on a different project.

For his next project he prepared to harvest a deer and bring it to the local high school for a presentation on his peoples’ ways of butchering a deer, but that had to be canceled due to snow.

Pivoting yet again Waylon partnered with fellow Healer Community Cohort Tarlynn Nichole Tonepahhote and Claire Erikson to facilitate a round table discussion at the Dakota Public Health Conference. They presented their experiences in clinical and academic spaces as medical students, and their findings in a research paper; To Welcome Healing. At this conference, they discussed their path to medicine, their experiences as Native medical students, issues with training, and recommendations for improved and shared spaces amongst colleagues. The session was attended by many different healthcare professionals from administration, nursing, therapists, educators and public health workers. The intent was to share information that helped with recruiting and maintaining welcoming relationships with Native American students, staff, coworkers and community members.

Additionally Waylon continued to be active in his community in addition to being a fourth-year medical student, husband and father of two young children. He helped coordinate a community Ultimate Warrior Challenge on the MHA nation, he assisted with weekly ceremony set up and getting wood, and coached wrestling with his brother, spoke to students at the Turtle Mountain Community High School (his home community) about Waunyan (sacrifice) and helped his wife on some projects for a community based non-profit she works with Mni Wichoni Health Circle.

Waylon’s truck loaded with wood for ceremony.