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Join us for a Research Fridays event with Lindsey Johnson, Chickahominy Tribal Citizen and Community Liaison Specialist for the Virginia Center on Aging and the VCU Office of Health Initiatives, Patricia Slattum, a pharmacist and core faculty at the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program, Virginia Geriatric Education Center, Virginia Center on Aging at VCU, and Dr. Sarah Montoya, Co-director of the Indigenous Humanities Lab to discuss tribal engagement best practices. 

Description 

Speakers will share best practices for developing meaningful relationships with tribes across a range of contexts, from collaborating with Virginia tribes to support age-friendly care to creating Indigenous-centered projects within the National Park Service.

Dr. Patricia Slattum and Lindsey Johnson will discuss their experiences co-creating and disseminating resources with the Chickahominy Indian Tribe through two collaborative projects: the “Weaving Cultures of Care: Stories from Chickahominy Elders” video and curriculum, and the GWEP Coordinating Center case study and podcast, “Partnering with the Chickahominy Indian Tribe to Promote Age-Friendly Care.”

Dr. Sarah Montoya will share her experience conducting outreach and building relationships with tribal communities during her tenure as a Mellon Fellow on the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail in the National Park Service. The 1,200-mile historic corridor crosses the homelands of more than 80 tribal communities, requiring sustained relationship-building and engagement across a broad region.

Together, the speakers will address the practical and relational dimensions of working with tribes, including the logistics of collaboration, the importance of Indigenous data sovereignty, and approaches to decision-making with tribal leadership.

About the Speakers

Lindsey Johnson, MS, CPC, THRP, is a Chickahominy Tribal Citizen and currently works as the Community Liaison Specialist for both the Virginia Center on Aging (VCoA) at VCU and the VCU Office of Health Initiatives. She previously served as Deputy Tribal Administrator for the Chickahominy Indian Tribe. Her professional career includes nonprofit community health, tribal government, and academia. Lindsey holds a B.S. in Human Services and M.S. in Nonprofit Administration, as well as certifications as both a Professional Medical Coder and Tribal Human Resources Professional. She is also the owner and CEO of Lunah Consulting Solutions, LLC. Lindsey currently serves as the vice-chair of the SPAN Center Advisory Council (the Capital Area Agency on Aging).

Patricia Slattum, PharmD, PhD is a pharmacist and core faculty at the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program, Virginia Geriatric Education Center, Virginia Center on Aging at VCU.  She develops curriculum for interprofessional geriatrics training and has more than twenty years of experience establishing pharmacy and interprofessional practice models serving older adults. In her current role, she is partnering with tribal communities in Virginia to facilitate age-friendly care for tribal elders.  Her strength is in applying team science principles to interdisciplinary community-engaged collaborative projects to facilitate project success. She also serves as a Visiting Scholar at the Gerontological Society of America and as Co-Editor in Chief of The Senior Care Pharmacist.

Sarah Montoya, PhD, is a queer Mexican American settler working at the intersection of Settler Colonial Studies, Critical Infrastructure and Information Studies, and Feminist Technology Studies. She earned a PhD in Gender Studies from UCLA where she also worked as a curator, researcher, site designer, and programmer on digital projects exploring race, space, and the law. From 2023-2025, Sarah served as a Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow on the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail where she created training materials for tribal outreach and directed material resources towards tribal educational and cultural programming. This talk draws on her experience working with tribes at UCLA, in the National Park Service, and in her capacity as the co-director of the Indigenous Humanities Lab at VCU.