Audience: This presentation will be most relevant to tribal and non-tribal health educators, youth commercial tobacco prevention coordinators, and program managers.

Key Points: Indigenous Peoples Task Force is building a Tribal Support Center for Comprehensive Tobacco Control and Prevention that will build capacity among Minnesota tribal reservations and urban communities to carry out education, trainings and programs designed to prevent and reduce the use of commercial tobacco and promote the use of tobacco as a sacred medicine.

Attendees will be able to identify and understand how commercial tobacco prevention and education can be accomplished within a cultural environment that honors the use of tobacco as a medicine by examining this case study that describes specific program experiences and lessons learned from an indigenous community based organization in a state that has battled preemption.

Learning Objectives: An interactive format will encourage participants to explore, first hand, some of the strategies that have been employed thus far in the development process. This presentation will include a short video introducing some of the sacred traditional teachings about tobacco, participatory elements from the tribal support center tobacco resource toolkit, and some discussion about development of the youth focused communication systems. Finally, there will be some illustrations of the sacred tobacco gardening projects that form the roots of this program.

Benefits: The audience will leave with the knowledge and examples of how our agency is meeting the objectives of implementing a tobacco tribal support center.