Latest news with #Seawright
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Two parents put a face on the impact of potential Medicaid cuts
From left, parents Jessica Seawright and Brooke Wampole talk with Sen. Tammy Baldwin about their concerns over the impact of Medicaid cuts on families with children such as theirs who have disabilities. (Screenshot/Zoom) As members of Congress continue to debate the Republican budget reconciliation bill that includes hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, Jessica Seawright ponders what that could mean for her young son. Seawright is a social worker in Southeast Wisconsin. She's also the mother of a 9-year-old boy with complex medical needs resulting from a genetic condition. She and her husband — a college professor — have medical coverage through work, but with her son's condition, which includes cerebral palsy, their health plans could never cover the degree of care he requires. Medicaid has made the difference, Seawright said Wednesday. It's helped through the Katie Beckett program, which enables children with disabilities to have Medicaid coverage while living at home instead of being in an institution; the Medicaid children's long-term support coverage; and Medicaid support that public schools receive to cover certain services that students with disabilities require. Her son has been able to thrive living with her and her husband, Seawright said — but worry clouds the future. 'We look toward his adulthood, knowing that disability and aging programs that would support him staying in the community — where we, our family and our community, know he belongs — are being dismantled and defunded,' Seawright said. 'Forcing us and others like us into medical bankruptcy is not a solution.' Seawright was one of two parents who said Wednesday that their lives and their children's lives could be profoundly upended by the Medicaid reductions that are included in the budget reconciliation proposal. They spoke during a webinar conducted by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), who has been an outspoken critic of the budget bill's Medicaid cuts. 'Our neighbors, our friends and our colleagues at work who rely on Medicaid and are scared, really scared,' Baldwin said. She cited estimates produced by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee that with cuts to Medicaid as well as to the Affordable Care Act, the legislation could reduce health care for nearly 14 million Americans, including almost 230,000 Wisconsin residents. The money saved, she added, would be used to extend and expand tax cuts enacted in 2017, during the first Trump administration. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has said the tax cuts primarily favor the wealthy and corporations. 'It's giveaways for their wealthy friends at the cost of Americans' health and lives,' Baldwin said. 'That's the deal.' Baldwin said the choice that U.S. House Republicans made to advance the bill in committee in the early hours of Wednesday morning was a sign that 'Republicans know what they're doing is deeply unpopular.' She dismissed claims that the objective of the bill's authors was to address waste, fraud or abuse in Medicaid and other safety net programs. 'I would be happy to come to the table to write a bill that truly gets at fraud and abuse,' Baldwin said. 'We want that out of Medicaid. We want that out of Medicare. But that is not what this bill does. This bill terminates health care for Wisconsin families.' Besides being a mother of a child who has been helped by Medicaid's programs, Seawright has experienced Medicaid through two other lenses. When she and her sister were growing up, their mother was relying on Medicaid for the family's health care. That helped give the family stability so that her mom could go to community college, become a medical assistant and get full-time work in health care with insurance through her employer, Seawright said. In her own job as a social worker, she added, some of the clients she works with have Medicaid. Both her childhood experience and her role as a mental health provider have made her critical of proposals to cut Medicaid, Seawright said — especially one to add work requirements as a condition for adults considered 'able-bodied' to enroll in Medicaid. 'Creating more barriers for people to access the care they need … individuals losing their primary care providers and their specialists, from my perspective, is just a cruel response that is steeped in distrust of those of us who are doing the work day to day,' Seawright said. Also on the webinar was Brooke Wampole, who lives in northern Wisconsin. She and her husband have a 4-year-old son who was found to have long delays in his development. About two years ago he was screened and qualified for services and therapies covered by Medicaid programs for children with disabilities, and over time, his clinicians helped him first to 'exist, to self-regulate, to see the world around him and not find it to be a threat,' Wampole said. The family's regular health insurance 'could never cover the cost' those treatments required. ' Medicaid programs 'have been absolutely instrumental in our lives.' In the last year, her son has begun speaking one-syllable words. 'My favorites or Mommy and Dada,' Wampole said, then added with a smile, 'however, he is pretty partial to talking about trapezoids. And raisins.' The thought of losing Medicaid coverage 'is terrifying,' Wampole said — both because of the loss of services for her son, but also because of its impact on other families. 'I worry what our world looks like without Medicaid,' Wampole said. 'Other families, they could be way worse off … and cutting Medicaid could hurt them even more than my family. I don't want to be part of a system that contributes to that.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Native American women are bringing back facial tattoos: ‘We're a living culture'
Receiving her inchunwa was not something Faithlyn Taloa Seawright did lightly, but when the moment 'just felt right', she knew it was time. Seawright, who was the 2024 Miss Indian Oklahoma and a previous Chickasaw Princess, had long studied the tradition that she inherited from her ancestors. In Choctaw and Chickasaw languages, inchunwa means 'to be marked, branded or tattooed'. So receiving inchunwa, or traditional Indigenous tattoos, is something that must be done with reverence, Seawright said. The practice was once common among the south-eastern Indigenous nations (Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee and others), but after colonization the tradition faded away for many. Now, through efforts like those from the Inchunwa Project, a community-rooted collective that is working to revitalize the tattoos, south-eastern Indigenous people across the country are breathing new life into the practice. Last year, the Inchunwa Project, which began in 2017, hosted its first retreat, which included traditional tattoo artists, people entering tattoo apprenticeships and south-eastern tribal folks who were interested in learning about tattoo revitalization. Those gathered played games, wrote poetry, ate traditional foods and talked about the research they'd found. The retreat was a time for fellowship, but it was also one for action, in which people could share their research into the ancient practice and decide what they were going to do with it. 'We met to talk about how and why we got involved with tattoo revitalization, where we want to see this project going, what would our full vision be and how are we going to get there,' said Seawright, who is a Chickasaw citizen. Some artists brought their supplies to the event, which led to a few tattooing sessions where people received their finger inchunwa, or tattoos, that have different meanings. Seawright, who had already received six lines on her fingers years prior, received her first facial tattoos at the event. Her latest inchunwa consists of two lines on either side of her mouth. One line represents the fact that Seawright has entered adulthood and the other signifies that she is a young adult without children. If she has children, she will have three lines. Once she is an elder or has grandchildren, she will have four. The facial inchunwa is intended to grow with her throughout life. Seawright said that the inchunwa session had been full of encouragement, with people gathering to witness it. 'That's really what help[ed] us to have that traditional aspect, to have support there, those that are there to give guidance: 'Remember to breathe', 'it's OK to cry if you need to', 'you need water', 'maybe it's time for a break'.' For Seawright, receiving her inchunwa reflected her commitment to her community and to setting the groundwork for being a good ancestor. The six lines on her fingers represent a personal promise to better herself, an homage to her siblings who are not with her in the physical world and the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women. 'I prayed on it and I waited for years for that moment to come,' she said of her finger tattoos. 'The only way I can describe that decision of knowing when to get it is you just feel that pull, that emotion, and you just know that's the time.' In 2017, about 30 Choctaw women and two-spirit people planned to walk the Trail of Tears and receive their inchunwa at the end to commemorate the action, their friendship and their commitment to community. The group approached a wall of logistical questions: who would tattoo them? What designs would they receive? What did those designs mean? They decided to pause the walk and instead research and learn more, meeting online from 2018 to 2021 to discuss their findings. The Inchunwa Project was born from this research and collaboration. While they initially considered compiling all of the information into a book, they realized a podcast would be a better way to reach people. 'Since so many of us were Washington-based at that time, we would travel back to Oklahoma or to the south-east specifically for cultural gatherings,' said Lisa Fruichantie, the executive director of the Inchunwa Project. 'It was a way for us to connect no matter where we were.' In receiving and promoting inchunwa today, south-eastern Indigenous people are continuing a millennia-old tradition. 'Tattooing is a really ancient art form,' said Mairin Odle, an associate professor in the department of American studies at the University of Alabama. 'If you're looking at south-eastern communities, there's an almost thousand-year artistic tradition that you can look to for examples and for proof of it.' Images and descriptions of south-east Indigenous people during the early years of European contact, such as a 1732 image of a Choctaw warrior with a painted face and tattooed neck and torso, and an 1834 image of two Choctaw women with facial tattoos, refer to or depict tattoos. Three Cherokee men, known as the 'three kings', who traveled to England in 1762 to meet King George III, were all heavily tattooed across their faces and bodies. People who receive inchunwa today can draw from their ancestors, using pottery, shell carvings and other artisan works from pre-contract, during the Mississippian Era, as inspiration for designs. They can also use modern works, from south-eastern basket weavers or stick makers, to create new meanings. 'We can't say for sure that that is what it meant to the ancestors,' Fruichantie said. 'But we can say that this is what has come to us, and what [it might mean] for the future.' There are key differences between traditional Indigenous tattooing and western tattooing. In the latter, it is common to use stencils, a tattoo gun and brightly colored ink. For many Indigenous tattoos, however, hand poke, in which artists make the images without a stencil as a guide, is more common. As such, receiving the inchunwa may take longer. 'It's a more intimate process between the person getting the tattoo and those that are giving the tattoo,' Seawright said. Though older Indigenous methods included using garfish teeth or deer bones, modern practitioners caution against the potential of blood-borne pathogens and for ensuring a sterile environment. The decision on the type of method used – tattoo gun or hand poke – is ultimately left to the personal preference of the person receiving the tattoo. Seawright's face and hand tattoos were both done with tattoo guns, but, she said, 'it doesn't make them any less traditional compared to someone else that did hand poke tattoos'. The Inchunwa Project's work in promoting traditional tattoos has brought deeper understanding to south-eastern communities. It is part of a larger effort around revitalizing traditions after the colonial era and centuries of forced assimilation. 'I was raised up to believe that nothing was extinct. Nothing dies. We call it going to sleep,' Seawright said. 'My father was a part of our Chickasaw revitalization of stomp dancing and that's what he taught me. He's like: 'There's a time we stopped doing these; these dances went to sleep. But with the help of our fellow tribes, like the Muscogee and Seminole, we were able to bring this back.' And so, I never thought of it as them being gone, they just went to sleep and somebody had to have that vision and bring it back and bring it back to the people.' The Inchunwa Project and the community that has developed around it have connected the group 'very deeply', Fruichantie said. Last year, when the group had a table at the Indigenous tattoo music festival, a woman approached them and specifically referenced an episode of the podcast with Julie Cordero-Lamb, an ethnobotanist and member of the Chumash Nation who teaches traditional regenerative horticulture. 'She said that [the episode] inspired such a sense of pride within her community,' Fruichantie said. 'And that there are about 20 different women that have now received their facial inchunwa, which is really big because it's such a big commitment.' Revitalizing the traditional practice has an impact both on the person who decides to receive their inchunwa and the community at large. 'I'm old enough to have had the conversations with my parents that a lot of people have had where it's like: 'Don't get tattoos, don't get your hair dyed, because that's going to be a job killer',' Fruichantie said. 'It's a big deal for people to get their hands tattooed, but even bigger on the face. I think that shows such a big commitment to their culture. We often say it's a responsibility to my people and to my culture that I literally wear on my face,' she said. Similarly, what's most important for Seawright is the impact her tattoos have on the future generations. 'We believe that our culture is a living culture,' she said. 'Unlike what western society puts in the history books, we're not a past people. We are a continuation. And I think a lot of our listeners really resonate with that.' Seeing her two-year-old niece for the first time after receiving her facial inchunwa showed Seawright how important it was for her to pick up the banner of tattoo revitalization. 'She ran up to me and she put her hand on my face, just lightly touching it and smiling,' Seawright said. 'It was that little acknowledgement. It's something that's so spiritually moving. We're bringing these back not only for our elders, but we're making these new pathways for our future generations to have that be a common sight. For my niece to just do that simple move, it helped bring it all together. This is who it's for.'
