Week 9: Prioritizing, Poster, Paper, and Elizabeth Furse

     At the beginning of the week, Karen helped me to prioritize my work. She stated that I should focus more on the simulation, which helps. I was also able to find an article that helped me with my size scaling for my simulations. For the rest of week, I had a couple more meetings with Karen, and I attended a presentation by Elizabeth Furse. In the meetings with Karen, she continued to help me focus for my paper and poster. She suggested that I should steer toward the poster since it’s due sooner. She stated that I should control the rate the cells divide, and to document to what equation we are solving. She mentioned that at each step is the Monte Carlo step and that I can read up on that so we can discuss it in our Monday meeting.
     In OHSU’s Cultural Competency Lecture Series, Elizabeth Furse’s lecture was titled ‘Tribes, Treaties and Natural Resource Management’. In her talk, Elizabeth Furse spoke about general fundamentals of Indian affairs and public policies that include treaties, land, natural resource management, and the importance to American Indian and Alaska Native communities. In the era of self-determination of Indian nations, she shared her perspective of the role of science and research, and the need for scientists as they relate to the environmental health and well-being of American Indian/Alaska Native communities towards eliminating health disparities and improving the quality of life for tribal people. Elizabeth was born a British subject in Nairobi, Kenya, and became an anti-apartheid activist, an advocate for migrant farmworkers, and Native Americans, and a founder of a peace institute. Furse directed the successful restoration of four of Oregon’s terminated tribes before claiming andelected office in 1992. Furse represented Oregon’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. Congress for three terms. She created the House Congressional Diabetes Caucus which has increased research dollars for the disease. After retiring from Congress, Furse served as the Director of the Institute for Tribal Government in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. Currently, she is a small business owner and serves on the board of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Kah-Nee-Ta Resort, Water Watch Oregon, and Tamaslikt Museum on the Umatilla Indian Reservation.