 Native Americans have a tradition of traveling by walking that dates back thousands of years until the arrival of the Europeans and their horses, walking and, of course, the canoe, were the primary means of transportation that was there. Now, with the changing environments Native Americans and Alaska Natives face, walking has become more hazardous than ever. We all know our communities face many challenges, but pedestrian safety is a public health issue that affects all of us, and particularly our younger generation. Too many of our children are being injured or even killed by situations which can be addressed and changed. We're here today to help your community create pedestrian safety, a new tradition. In most Native American tribes, protecting the community, caring for the community and making the community safe has traditionally been a warrior's responsibility. But since a disproportionate number of pedestrian accidents happen on Native American and Alaska Native lands, we must all become warriors to protect our communities and our children. Well, think back to what the tradition has been throughout Indian Country. Hasn't the tradition always been to allow for and make provision for walking? And that is the norm. And in fact throughout the nation and throughout the world, communities are finding that allowing for pedestrian movement easily. There's a direct benefit both in terms of people's health as well as their safety. So making provision for those pedestrian facilities is vital for communities to maintain a healthy environment. Because diabetes and drug abuse, alcohol abuse is an area of concern in the Native American community, I believe that we need to put every effort possible into addressing pedestrian safety just because it does involve children. I also believe that as tribal leaders, community leaders and parents, that we need to put the effort into protecting our children in every possible way. Walking is good exercise. It's especially good for our children, particularly because we are indeed facing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. But pedestrian routes are often lacking. The routes that do exist are not often safe and poor driver behavior contributes to the problem. Poor pedestrian behavior is also a factor. The statistics reflect that Native American communities and Native American children have a high fatality and accident rate among pedestrians. And that's something that tribal nations and governments all across the country need to address. In most small communities, the center of focus is the school. And you're going to have a lot more activities going on centered around the school and there's going to be pedestrians. And although the traffic isn't that big of an issue here in the rural community, it is still that we have to have those places where they can go and walk. And I think if those places are made available, then we can help the people to see that activity actually sustains life. One of the most effective things we can do is to raise awareness of pedestrian safety in our communities. One aspect that's very important to us as administrators of a school is the ways that children get to school, the sidewalks across from the school or at the school, the roadways and how cars enter into the buildings and things like that. So it's important to us to go to city leaders, city council meetings and express our concerns so that they know the areas that need improvement because they might not be there to see those on a day-to-day basis where we see those daily with our students and how it affects how they get to school. One way to make walking safer is to make safer and better places for people to walk. We need to understand how to get walking paths built. This is often a simple matter of community will and of course funding. When you think about transportation improvement, we think about automobiles and we think about our roadways and our local streets and our community but I think we need to think out of the box and think further than that. We need to think about the walkways between school and home, between home and our friend's house for our children. We need to think beyond that and think about the sidewalks and bike paths and walkways that our children walk on frequently. One of the things that's been critical to us is we're in an economic expansion and have been for several years in Cherokee and of course one of the issues that we felt should be a priority during our expansion is to make sure that we do have sidewalks in strategic areas. We've put a significant amount of resources into the sidewalks and along with that we feel that we not only want to create sidewalks but we've also focused on greenways that accompany the sidewalks. We also need to look at ways to redesign our roadways to make them safer for pedestrians. Engineering methods such as traffic calming and raising the visibility of crosswalks and intersections can greatly contribute to reducing the problem. Building new medians, speed humps and curb extensions can also help by slowing traffic to acceptable speeds. A couple of examples for protecting pedestrians from cars the most obvious perhaps is a sidewalk, a raised elevated sidewalk that's concrete typically is what we think of but there are other things you can do that are less expensive a separate gravel asphalt walkway adjacent to the roadway that's separate from the travel lane will do a great deal to physically protect those pedestrians. You can also retrofit some existing intersections for example you can install a roundabout that brings the traffic speeds down to about 20 miles an hour makes special provision for pedestrians to get across the roadway and especially for the young and the elderly it's vital that they be able to see cars coming, react appropriately and have some refuge while they're crossing the roadway. We've spent approximately $450,000 on about seven miles of sidewalks and obviously we've got a long way to go we have a lot of streets and roadways here in our town but we'll continue to grow not only the financial resources but also the mileage that we implement here over the next several years it's very important. Some of these solutions don't necessarily require large expenditures posting signs for instance, retiming traffic lights or repainting crosswalks and bike lanes will make a considerable difference a third way to make our community safer for walkers is to make sure that any hazardous areas are reported to your tribal council or other authorities. For the average tribal member or person living on the reservation if they want to let their community know about issues that they may not be aware of conforming their tribal council by the best place to start all of those things convey to the tribal leadership will eventually get filtered down back to the professionals who are charged with creating designs on roadways that will make it safer. Education is an extremely powerful tool programs in your community can raise pedestrian bicyclists and motorists awareness about their responsibilities while still promoting healthy walking and biking developing safety campaigns that promote safe driving can truly make a difference. Grant funding for community improvement projects is available through various federal agencies for more information please refer to the Toolkit Materials accompanying this program With the Osage Tribe right now we have a grants management office and they are the experts that know how to find the monies available we just have to recognize the need and the constituents need to recognize the need and then after that's been done and the monies have been found if there's law or policy that needs to be addressed and that comes through the Congress or the tribal leaders. Community awareness is not the only solution however education is key. I would tell parents in the Native American communities that it's very important that you make your students aware of how they get to school, how they get to school safely what areas of danger that they might cross. Most of my experience was in first grade and it was a part of my program I mean it was part of what I taught every day to my students when we go out on a little field trip around town I mean we always stop looking and listen before you cross the street use your eyes and your ears then use your feet so I made it, it was something that I incorporated in every day. Often the safest way to and from school is on the school bus encourage your children to ride the bus even if they have an older sibling to drive them if they do ride with teen drivers those older siblings should be reminded that they have a special responsibility to their younger brothers and sisters they should set good examples by driving responsibly and using their seat belts pedestrian safety is everyone's responsibility it's a problem that can only be solved by the community as a whole our new tradition will be that Native American communities can be safe, healthy places for people to walk don't let this public health issue go unexamined we must do more to help our children to be safe in and around our communities contact your local leaders and ask how you can help thank you for listening