Who we Are
The Good Mind Initiative works alongside Indigenous communities across North Carolina and South Carolina to promote harm reduction, healing, and cultural revitalization.
We believe that reclaiming identity, restoring connection, and embracing culture are powerful tools in addressing substance use and supporting community wellness. For us, harm reduction means meeting people where they are—with compassion, dignity, and cultural respect.
We offer programs rooted in Indigenous knowledge, including language learning, traditional crafts, Elder teachings, and community care. By centering culture in our work, we help individuals and families reconnect with who they are and where they come from.
Our vision is a world where Indigenous people have access to the tools, spaces, and support they need to heal from the impacts of colonization, systemic trauma, and substance use—on their own terms and in their own ways.
Culture is harm reduction. Culture is medicine.
Culture is Medicine
The United Katehnuaka Longhouse Good Mind Initiative as a Model of Indigenous Harm Reduction in Practice February 2026 Report
prepared by the United Katehnuaka Longhouse and Vital Strategies
Key Points
• The United Katehnuaka Longhouse Good Mind Initiative addresses the overdose crisis in Native communities in North and South Carolina through culture-based Indigenous harm reduction services including talking circles, culture classes, and community socials. Good Mind Initiative programming reaches about 1,000 people across multiple Native nations and communities.
• The Good Mind Initiative believes that culture is medicine. By strengthening cultural identity and self-worth, Indigenous communities can heal from the historical, intergenerational, and lifetime traumas that are often at the root of drug use among Indigenous people.
• One of the biggest challenges in doing this work is funding: there are very few overdose prevention and harm reduction funding opportunities that allow for Indigenous culture-based harm reduction services, even though Native people experience the highest rates of fatal overdose nationally, and despite evidence that Indigenous harm reduction is effective at reducing harm and saving lives.
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