On the street near St. Paul’s Lake Phalen where a driver struck an 83-year-old pedestrian and left the scene, officers found no evidence to solve the hit-and-run: No witnesses, no surveillance footage, no damaged remnants of the vehicle, no skid marks.

But there were signs of the force that took John Bidon’s life. One of his shoes was thrown off and found in a yard. One of his hearing aids was knocked out and located in the intersection. One of his sons found the remnants of his blood in the street.

A year later, Bidon’s family is still looking for answers and they’re asking anyone with clues to come forward. Police said last week that they’re taking another look at the case to see if there are any other avenues to be explored.

“It’s hard to fathom there’s just not one lead,” said son Mike Bidon. He thinks every day about memories of his dad and about what happened.

Jayne Bidon, Mike’s wife, said when they run into friends they haven’t seen for awhile, they ask, “You still haven’t heard anything?”

John Bidon (Courtesy of Mike Bidon)

“And then we talk about, ‘How is this person living with themselves?’” she said. “You know, the weight that they have on their shoulders. You’d think they would want to get that off their back, and it would help us to know what happened because there’s just so many questions.”

Bidon was one of four pedestrians killed in St. Paul last year and his is the only case that wasn’t solved. In most situations, drivers stay at the scene. There have been three fatal pedestrian crashes in the city this year and the drivers were identified in each, according to police.

“What makes it so difficult is there was no witness to it,” said Sgt. Jason Neubrand, who investigated the Bidon case. Police had no description of a suspect vehicle to go on. “A couple of neighbors heard a loud noise but didn’t see anything. … Usually with a crash, there’ll be part of a grille or part of the headlight or taillight or something left behind, and there was nothing.”

The department’s forensic services unit processed the scene. Neubrand was there the night of the crash and returned in the daytime, but no one found evidence.

It’s a residential area, and there aren’t city cameras. Surveillance cameras at one home didn’t capture the crash. Another resident had a Ring camera that wasn’t pointed toward the site of the collision, according to a police report.

Still, the case could be solved “with the smallest piece of information,” said Alyssa Arcand, a department spokeswoman. Police and the family are urging anyone with information to come forward. The family is offering a reward of $1,000 for justice in the case.

East Side staple

Bidon was struck at Arlington Avenue and McAfee Street, three blocks from his home and two blocks from Lake Phalen.

He and his wife, Josephine, moved into their Arlington Avenue home more than 58 years earlier. They were married for about 60 years when she died in 2021.

“He was old school,” Mike Bidon said of his father. “Just a hard worker — around the house, taking us kids to sports, working at 3M. He was a staple of the East Side.”

For 30 years, Bidon took daily runs around Lake Phalen. He’d stretch it out to five miles and run one of the miles backward to work other muscles.

Bidon remained mentally sharp and active.

He and friends from Mechanic Arts High School went out for “The Breakfast Club” once a month and he’d have lunch with his retired friends from 3M weekly. The year before, he took a trip to Mexico with his best friend and they were talking about going again in the spring.

What brought him out that night?

Bidon’s family doesn’t know why he was out the night of Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024, and police didn’t determine why, either.

He was struck about 7:30 p.m., after the sun had set. The weather was pleasant, with the temperature around 60 degrees.

Mike and Jayne Bidon had not heard from John that he was regularly taking walks, though an employee at his bank later said he told her he’d started going for walks again.

John Bidon loved being outside.

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“He put a ton of work” into his house, yard and garden, probably spending 80 hours a week on them in the nice weather, son Patrick Bidon said last year.

He planted flowers around the house and the garage, and was always watering his grass and mowing it. “I’m not exaggerating at all — he had the greenest grass probably in most of St. Paul for most of the years,” Patrick Bidon said.

On his last day, it appeared John Bidon had been composting his garden, said Patrick Bidon, who found a piece of tape his dad left behind. “He worked at 3M, so he’d always use tape to tie up the bags,” his son said recently.

It didn’t look like he’d rushed out of his house because the door was locked and nothing was out of place.

John Bidon’s family looked for other clues and asked the medical examiner’s office if his blood work showed he’d been having a diabetic emergency. They were told he had not been, Jayne Bidon said.

Stop signs added a block away

Traffic moves through Arlington Avenue and Clarence Street on Oct. 15, 2025, where two stop signs were installed this year. The location is a block from where John Bidon was struck on Oct. 19, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

After Bidon’s death, his family needed to go to his pharmacy and credit union to wrap up matters. At the pharmacy, employees who knew him reacted with, “No, not John!” and said they were going to miss his smile and friendliness.

At the bank, they heard John Bidon sometimes brought in his laptop for help with online banking or figuring out a laptop problem.

Friends of Mike Bidon told him, “He was the dad I never had.”

“Hearing those stories really warm our hearts,” Jayne Bidon said.

It’s not known which way John Bidon or the vehicle that struck him were traveling. His family thinks the driver was westbound on Arlington Avenue because people “pick up a lot of speed and then you go down a hill, and that’s where my dad was struck, toward the bottom of the hill” leading to Lake Phalen, Mike Bidon said.

The city has added stop signs on Arlington Avenue at Clarence Street, a block from the crash site, making it a four-way stop. Previously, there were only stop signs on Clarence Street.

St. Paul’s Public Works Department received a request for the change. It wasn’t known last week if the request was related to what happened to Bidon.

Family’s frustration

Bidon’s family saw Sgt. Neubrand on Oct. 25 to get John Bidon’s house keys, which he’d had in his pocket. Jayne Bidon said she asked him then, “When can we get this out in the media?”

Neubrand wrote in a report that he’d asked a public information officer on Oct. 24 to get out the word. The police department’s public information officers posted on Facebook on Oct. 28, nine days after the crash, asking for people to come forward with tips. There was subsequent media attention.

Jayne and Mike Bidon said they’re frustrated because they think immediate public attention could have resulted in tips. They’ve seen other hit-and-run cases in the news more quickly and they wonder why John’s case wasn’t.

The police department tries to exhaust leads before asking the public for help and looks for information that could aid in the search, such as the type or color of a suspect vehicle, said Arcand, the police spokeswoman.

Jayne Bidon last talked to the investigator in January and Mike Bidon spoke to him before that, and they said they were upset about not being kept up to date on the investigation.

After recently reading the police reports, they said they’re left feeling that more could have been done. They asked why police reports don’t indicate that officers talked to Bidon’s neighbors to try to piece together more of his night.

They also point to a request that a different officer sent to T-Mobile to preserve information from the cellphone of the “deceased male,” but it refers to Mike Bidon instead of John Bidon and lists Mike’s phone number instead of John’s.

John Bidon did not have his phone with him when he was struck. Patrick Bidon said he looked over his father’s phone and didn’t find clues about that night.

Patrick Bidon figured police had run out of leads and done all they could.

Neubrand said he was frustrated that, due to the lack of evidence, he couldn’t find the driver who struck John Bidon.

“You want to help the families as much as you can,” he said. “… You want to see an end to the case as well.”

‘We miss him dearly’

In addition to Bidon’s two sons, he is survived by three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

“We miss him dearly at all the holidays, birthday parties,” Patrick Bidon said. “My father and I teased each other every time we talked to each other. I called him Walter for Walter Matthau from ‘Grumpy Old Men,’” the 1993 movie that was filmed in St. Paul.

When it had been six months since John Bidon was killed, Mike and Jayne Bidon organized a run around Lake Phalen to get the unsolved case out in the public eye again.

They also wanted to “bring up happy memories” of their family’s time at the lake, Mike Bidon said. They asked people to wear John Bidon’s favorite colors: maroon and gold for the Gophers; purple for the Vikings.

Since John Bidon was so often in his yard, people walking to or from Lake Phalen would always chat with him.

“Neighbors still stop by and talk about him, and it’s really nice to see how many people have not forgotten him,” Patrick Bidon said.

Even if the driver doesn’t come forward, John Bidon’s family figures there’s a chance that he or she told someone what happened.

Being able to find out more “would be some closure,” Patrick Bidon said. “There’s a lot of unanswered questions.”

Street safety and how to help

Anyone with information about the John Bidon hit-and-run is asked to call St. Paul police Sgt. Jason Neubrand at 651-266-5722.

Minnesota’s Office of Traffic Safety reminds:

• Drivers must stop for pedestrians crossing the street. Treat every corner and intersection as a crosswalk, whether it’s marked or unmarked, and let pedestrians cross.

• Pedestrians must obey traffic-control devices, such as traffic lights, signs and barricades.

The state’s Department of Transportation gives these tips for drivers:

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• Look in all directions before turning.

• Watch for people walking, day or night.

• Be alert and expect to see people walking everywhere.

• Slower speeds save lives.

• Before passing stopped vehicles, check for people crossing.

And tips for pedestrians:

• Cross in well-lit areas when possible.

• Be alert and look for vehicles before crossing.

• Stand clear of parked cars and obstacles before crossing.

• Look and continue to look for vehicles in all lanes of traffic when crossing.

By Hannah Elliott, Bloomberg News

There’s something fundamentally American about the freedom to get in your car and drive.

Driving is self-determination. The liberty to set your own course. The power to move under your own willpower, whether for duty or sheer pleasure. Despite some decline among Gen Zers, plenty of teens still eagerly anticipate getting their driver’s license. In many American towns, where public transportation and walkability are scarce, driving is what empowers you to explore.

Some motoring enthusiasts worry self-driving vehicles threaten that ideal. These robot autos, run by Google and China and Elon Musk, use AI and radars to navigate without human input; they could replace our car-centric culture with faceless communal bots controlled by opaque entities. Even worse, self-driving vehicles present safety concerns and other vulnerabilities, such as being hacked or spoofed by malicious agents at home or abroad.

I’ve covered the car industry for 20 years, and I would hate to see our sports coupes and road trips disappear. The risks associated with relinquishing control over my mobility also give me pause. Or they did. I took a Waymo for the first time recently in Los Angeles and … I haven’t stopped using it since. Rather than replace our cool cars, self-driving vehicles will, I predict, become a welcome complement to modern life, first as part of ride-sharing platforms and then as privately owned transport. Why? Because they offer an excellent solution for something nobody likes: commuting.

If driving is heaven, commuting is hell. Not even the hardest-core drivers like it. So the question isn’t whether self-driving will replace our favorite cars (I think not), but rather, will it remove the burden of our most mundane trips? And could it replace other ride-sharing platforms like Uber? I certainly hope so.

Waymo LLC, the self-driving car service subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, was founded in 2009 with a mission to explore what self-driving technology could offer. It now has more than 2,000 electric vehicles operating across its markets, which include LA, Phoenix and San Francisco, plus Austin and Atlanta, where Waymo rides are hailed via Uber. In 2026, Dallas, Denver, Miami, Nashville and Washington, DC, will join the ranks with Waymos on their streets. New York City just granted the company permission to continue testing there until the end of the year, and Seattle is in the works too. Waymo provides more than 250,000 trips each week, and regulators are already adapting. A new California law will soon authorize police to issue “notices of autonomous vehicle noncompliance” when they see driverless cars breaking traffic rules.

Beyond Waymo, robo-taxis and -shuttles are also running in China, Singapore and the Middle East, and they’re being tested across Europe. The vehicles are expected to become commercially available in the U.S. at a large scale by 2030, according to the research firm McKinsey.

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But they’re a long way from being ubiquitous. A world of self-driving cars will require billions of dollars of development, improved navigation systems, increased charging infrastructures and new regulations to amend traffic laws. Ford, General Motors and Volkswagen have all canceled autonomous taxi programs they once funded by the billions. (GM is planning to renew exploring autonomous cars for personal use, rather than as a robotaxi service. Later this year, the autonomous mobility subsidiary of Volkswagen Group of America Inc. will begin testing electric autonomous ID. Buzz AD vehicles, with plans to offer rides via Uber 2026 in LA. The vehicles will use human operators during their testing and launch phases.) Tesla’s Robotaxis aren’t open to the public. Given the company’s proclivity for extensive delays, it’s unclear when they will be.

As self-driving options develop, consumer demand shouldn’t be a problem, according to experts; most people who try it like it. Waymo reports a 98% satisfaction rating among users in LA. Proponents note that more than 1.3 million deaths occur around the world annually in traffic accidents, whereas self-driving vehicles eliminate the human errors that cause more than 90% of those deaths, according to research by Global Market Insights.

Waymo uses a proprietary AI system for autonomous driving that has been installed on a fleet of Jaguar I-PACEs equipped with dozens of cameras and sensors. The technology is more robust than the hands-free driving systems we have in our own cars, combining AI learning with LiDAR, radar, cameras and high-definition maps to read and anticipate the environment.

There are still significant limitations to Waymo vehicles’ range and their ability to adapt to real-life scenarios. But after a week of Waymo rides, which I ordered easily via an app, other ride-sharing platforms seemed woefully outdated.

My first trip was not perfect. Our house in Hollywood sits outside Waymo’s range, so my gallant husband had to drive me about a mile down the hill to a cafe on Hollywood Boulevard, where I ordered the car. It took 26 (!) minutes to arrive—precious time lost because of high rider volume on a Monday morning. An Uber would have been there within a few minutes. But the vehicle showed up at exactly the time it had promised, unlike Uber, which tends to miss arrival estimates. A spokesperson from Uber did not comment.

Synched with my iPhone, the car unlocked automatically when it pulled up, waiting until I clicked my seat belt and pushed a green button on a screen in the rear to commence the journey. Icons in the app would have let me open the trunk, had I wanted, and allowed me to adjust the sound and temperature in the car.

Any drama I expected to feel from being alone in a moving vehicle just didn’t exist. No driver? No problem. I forgot about it before I even hit Santa Monica Boulevard, and my 44-minute ride to the office proved delightfully uneventful while my productivity soared: I stretched my legs; checked email; made phone calls and wrote to-do lists—all things I cannot do when driving myself to the newsroom each morning. The trip cost $23.28, almost half the price of an Uber Black ($41.25) or UberX ($42.95) at the same hour.

There were a few hiccups. The car froze momentarily behind a truck parked illegally, causing other drivers to honk erratically. More annoyingly, it didn’t drop me at the address I requested but in a hotel valet line across an intersection and down the next block. I’ve learned that Waymos often leave passengers on side streets or one block past a chosen destination, depending on how busy the drop-off point seems. (This is because the cars are programmed to prioritize safety and efficiency rather than moving swiftly in hectic traffic.) That would have been frustrating had it been raining, or an unfamiliar neighborhood, or had I been wearing heels.

There’s room for improvement in the car’s ability to take a direct route to a destination rather than zig-zagging or circling the arrival spot before stopping, as it did one evening when trying to avoid busy corners to drop me off in Hollywood. It made for a slightly longer drive than if I had done it myself. Indeed, the logistical challenges of using Waymo are its biggest problem. One night it wouldn’t let me change my destination just 15 minutes into a 55-minute journey, even though the new destination was far closer. (It would have allowed me to cancel the ride, leaving me on the street corner.)

I’m hoping all this will improve as Waymo expands its range—and incorporates highways and Interstates, which it currently does not—because the privacy, punctuality and peace inside the cabin are delightful. I found myself scheduling Waymos to take me to dinner in West Hollywood or to try on shoes at Reformation on Melrose Avenue. It was freeing not to stress about parking or bad drivers.

If more folks used self-driving cars, it would lead to more parking; reduce road rage, drunk driving and traffic accidents; and alleviate noise pollution and congestion. Waymo is a far better driver than most of the ride-sharing and taxi drivers I’ve had. It’s certainly more courteous, gliding elegantly through yellow lights, and moving up in line at stoplights if the vehicle behind it wants to turn right. The car remained smooth and predictable even in tight traffic, navigating tiny neighborhood streets with ease. I was so relaxed I started dozing.

One morning I even walked myself 20 minutes down to the Hollywood coffee shop so I could take a Waymo again to work. I didn’t love the hike, but I wanted that solitary ride. (Mornings when I needed to be in the office at a specific time, I drove myself.)

The solitude is the top benefit I hear from everyone I speak with about the service—especially women and gay and trans friends who worry about being accosted, harassed or ogled by drivers. Self-driving cars offer a way to ride alone in safety. We just need the services to be bigger and better and more flexible.

It’s encouraging to see the industry growing, with companies like Zoox, Pony Ai and WeRide working to expand the technology. In 2024 the global market for self-driving cars was valued at $1.7 trillion, according to Global Market Insights. It’s expected to hit $3.9 trillion by 2034.

As for me, I’ll plan to hold on to my cars and use Waymo for my daily commute and mundane chores. If I’m lucky, I’ll never have to take an Uber again.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The cycling industry is enjoying a recharge with e-bikes.

When Jeff Radke’s grandfather opened his bicycle shop in St. Clair Shores everyone wanted a Schwinn because they were comfortable and built to last, which is why decades later they are still around.

Now customers who walk into Macomb Bike in Warren want a bicycle they can pedal if they want but is otherwise charged up and ready to take them for a ride on Michigan’s highways, byways and trails.

“We knew early on that electric bikes would evolve further in the industry,” said Radke, whose shop carries a variety of Aventon, Trek and Electra bicycles. “We just never imagined it would be this big.”

And it’s still growing.

According to Vantage Market Research the global e-bike market is currently valued at $55.29 billion but is expected to nearly double by 2035 reaching a value of $108.4 billion, at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 6.32%.

It’s great news for the industry and even the environment as more and more people are choosing to hop on their e-bike rather than in their carbon spewing cars for local rides and even short-commuter trips.

Look at New York City.

Its urban landscape was once predominantly yellow and while taxis. Those are still around but city scenes are streaked with black e-bikes and riders delivering everything from people and pizza to commercial goods and letters.

These are all positive impacts.

But even industry professionals are concerned about the need to address the safety issues that have surfaced along with the growing popularity of e-bikes.

American safety standards

Macomb Bike has been in business for more than 50 years. Their success is largely due to customer service and the fact that they can repair just about any e-bike they sell.

“All of our e-bikes are also built to UL certified safety standards,” Radke said.

But not all bikes are created equal.

“There is an enormous range of quality, safety and compatibility. The quality and safety issues are the main drivers of legislation and change within the United States and our industry,” said Igor Shteynbuk, in his blog for Velo Orange, a company that provides parts and accessories for cycling enthusiasts. “There are numerous reports of fires that cause death, injuries and millions of dollars in damages with the prime culprit being poorly constructed e-bikes. New York City alone saw more than 200 fires caused by e-bikes, e-scooters and similar products. There’s obviously a need for something to be done with regards to safety.”

A view of some of the popular e-bikes at Macomb Bike in Warren including Trek. (Gina Joseph – The Macomb Daily)

In fact there are a variety of legislative actions being considered and enacted at the federal, state and local levels in regards to how e-bikes are made, what components are used and how they are transported.

It’s obvious America’s transit infrastructure was built for automotive vehicles but there is a push to build safer infrastructure for both cyclists and pedestrians and federal funding for communities that implement it. This alone could accelerate the planning and construction of biking and walking projects across the country.

“Sterling Heights has been very good with regards to bike paths. They’re my example for communities with energy and a progressive approach,” said Michael Radke, a Sterling Heights city councilmember who has compiled a map of multi-use paths riders can use in Macomb County including the Macomb Orchard Trail.

Michigan is among the states catering to the growing trend of e-bike riders but not alone in its endeavor to tap the market. E-riders who wish to explore other countries can also book cycling tours.

“I have one customer who did a tour of the Carolinas and if it wasn’t for the e-bike she would have never been able to do it,” Radke said of the technology that’s enabled even the eldest rider to enjoy soaring climbs and descents.

For the health of it

Riding a bicycle is a healthy pastime but with greater speeds comes greater risk of injury.

Amidst this surging popularity more than 20,000 people each year are injured while riding an e-bike, and as many as 3,000 of these require hospitalization.

These numbers prompted the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) to issue a position statement addressing critical safety concerns and the need for standardized regulations.

“Electric bicycles are an increasingly popular mode of transportation and recreation. However, their use is associated with a growing number of serious injuries, particularly among children and adolescents,” said the ACS statement. “The ACS recognizes the need to address this emerging public safety problem through evidence-based policy and injury prevention strategies.”

Key recommendations of the ACS statement include:

Categorizing e-bikes based on speed and power.
Implementing age restrictions for riders.
Mandating safety equipment, such as helmets.

Additionally, the ACS recommended each region have a mechanism to report crashes, injuries and deaths involving e-bikes including those not treated at trauma centers and trauma centers that do see high rates of e-bike injuries should consider implementation of targeted safety outreach programs.

“We are seeing an increase in e-bike injuries, the most common include head injuries and severe fractures,” said Sarah Rauner, a pediatric nurse practitioner regional manager for Advance Practice Providers, East Pediatric Emergency Centers at Corewell Health Beaumont Troy Hospital, who created and oversees a new national model of care for pediatric concussion diagnosis and management. “Concussion patients who leave our Corewell Health Emergency Centers are offered virtual concussion follow up.”

Rauner collaborated with Toyota to develop the program known as Way Forward, which has proven ideal for monitoring of new and worsening symptoms. It also removes transportation barriers ensuring that more children receive the care they need.

Rauner said e-bike riders travel at speeds significantly higher than traditional bikes leading to more forceful impacts during falls or collisions.

Since the virtual model was developed at five sites in Troy a little over a year ago, Rauner had doubled the national average of pediatric patients to receive crucial follow up care for concussions. Today there are 20 sites across the state.

Rauner offers the following tips to avoid e-bike injuries:

Always wear a helmet and be sure it’s fitted properly to significantly reduce the risk of head injuries.
Other protective gear might include gloves and knee/elbow pads to protect against abrasions and fractures in a fall. Reflective clothing will also increase a rider’s visibility for motorists, especially in low light conditions.
Always follow traffic laws. If you’re on the road observe all traffic signals and signs and use hand signals for turns. Ride with the traffic.
Practice defensive riding by being aware of your surroundings such as traffic patterns  or unusual turns in a bike path and anticipating potential hazards like cars pulling out of a parking lot. Avoid distractions and poor weather conditions.
Make sure your e-bike is properly maintained and know your specific bike’s capabilities and speed.
Don’t just hop on it and go. Take the time to learn how to ride the e-bike safely. As with a motor vehicle, practice riding in a safe area to learn to accelerate, brake, and turn effectively.
Make sure vehicles are aware of you; by using front and rear lights on your e-bike and making eye contact with drivers before crossing intersections.

By Nada Hassanein, Stateline.org

CHANDLER, Ariz. — Art Martinez has seen the power of ceremony.

Martinez, a clinical psychologist and member of the Chumash Tribe, helped run an American Indian youth ceremonial camp. Held at a sacred tribal site in Northern California, it was designed to help kids’ mental health. He remembers a 14-year-old girl who had been struggling with substance use and was on the brink of hospitalization.

On the first day of the four-day camp, Martinez recalled, she was barely able to speak. In daily ceremonies, she wept. The other kids gathered around her. “You’re not alone. We’re here for you,” they’d say.

Traditional tribal healing practices are diverse and vary widely, unique from tribe to tribe. Many include talking circles, sweat lodge ceremonies with special rituals, plant medicine and herb smudging, along with sacred ceremonies known only to the tribe.

Martinez and the girl’s counselor saw her mental health improve under a treatment plan combining tribal traditional healing and Western medicine.

“By the end of the gathering, she had broken through the isolation,” Martinez said. “Before, she would barely shake hands with kids, and she was now hugging them, they were exchanging phone numbers. Her demeanor was better, she was able to articulate.”

Art Martinez, consulting psychologist and Chumash Tribe member. (Photo courtesy of Art Martinez)

Indigenous health advocates have long known the health benefits of integrating their traditional healing practices, and studies have also shown better health outcomes.

Now, for the first time, tribal traditional healing practices are eligible for Medicaid coverage in California and three other states under a new initiative. Last October, the federal government approved Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage of traditional healing practices at tribal health facilities and urban Indian organizations in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Oregon.

These were approved under a federal program that allows states to test new pilot health programs and ways to pay for them.

Arizona’s waiver went into effect this month. While California’s waiver currently only covers patients with substance use disorder, like the girl in Martinez’s camp, any Medicaid enrollee who is American Indian or Alaska Native is eligible in the other three states. Officials have said California’s program will expand to have such coverage in the future.

Under the waivers, each tribe and facility decides which traditional healing services to offer for reimbursement. Services can also take place at sacred sites and not necessarily inside a clinic, explained Virginia Hedrick, executive director of the California Consortium for Urban Indian Health.

“If a healing intervention requires being near a water source — the ocean, creek, river — we can do that,” said Hedrick, who is of the Yurok Tribe and of Karuk descent. “It may involve gathering medicine in a specific place on the land itself.”

Tribes long had to practice out of sight. The U.S. government’s assimilation policies had targeted tribal languages, cultural and religious practices — including healing. It wasn’t until 1978, when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was enacted under President Jimmy Carter, that they regained their rights.

“It was illegal to practice our ways until 1978 … the year I was born,” said Dr. Allison Kelliher, a family and integrative medicine physician, who is Koyukon Athabascan, Dena. “Traditional healing means intergenerational knowledge that have origins in how our ancestors and people lived generationally to promote health, so it’s a holistic way of looking at well-being.”

Last month, Kelliher and hundreds of others gathered at the National Indian Health Board’s health conference on Gila River Indian Community land in Chandler, Arizona. During a panel discussion about the waivers, tribal members discussed how health centers will bill for services, ways to protect the sacredness of certain ceremonies, and how to measure and collect data around the effectiveness of the treatments, a federal requirement under the waivers.

But teasing out those new protocols didn’t dull the enthusiasm.

“This is where we really start intersecting the Western medicine as well as traditional healing, and it’s exciting,” said panelist Dr. Naomi Young, CEO of the Fort Defiance Indian Hospital Board in Arizona.

The Trump administration announced earlier this year that it doesn’t plan to renew certain other Medicaid waiver programs approved under the Biden administration. But it hasn’t announced any changes around the traditional healing waivers.

Studies have found that incorporating sweat lodge ceremonies and other cultural practices in treatments led to substance use recovery and emotional health, and better quality diets when incorporating traditional foods, according to analyses of research by the National Council of Urban Indian Health.

“When there is an opportunity to braid traditional healing with Western forms of medicine, it’s very possible, and the research is indicating, we may get better health outcomes,” Hedrick said.

Family medicine physician Dr. Allison Kelliher, right, and the late Rita Pitka Blumenstein, a traditional healer well-known in Native communities, pose for a photo together. (Photo courtesy of Allison Kelliher)

Traditional practices

Decades of historical trauma, such as displacement and forced assimilation in boarding schools — where American Indian and Alaska Native people were forbidden from speaking their languages — are behind their disproportionate rates of chronic illness and early deaths today, tribal health experts say.

Tribes have long offered traditional healing — both outside brick-and-mortar health care settings as well as within many clinics. But health centers have been paying out of pocket or budgeting for the services, said retired OB-GYN Dr. John Molina, director of the Arizona Advisory Council on Indian Health Care and member of the Pasqua Yaqui and Yavapai Apache Tribes.

Molina said the new Arizona waiver may help clinics afford to serve more patients or staff more traditional healers, and build infrastructure, including sacred spaces and sweat lodges. For other clinics, “They’ve been wanting to start, but perhaps don’t have the revenue to start it,” he said.

“I’m hoping that when people engage in traditional healing services, a lot of it is to bring balance back into the lifestyle, to give them some hope,” Molina said.

That’s the effect traditional healing practices have had on Harrison Jim, who is Diné. Now a counselor and traditional practitioner at Sage Memorial Hospital in Arizona, Jim, 70, said he remembers his own first all-night sweat lodge ceremony when he returned from a military tour.

“I [felt] relieved of everything that I was carrying, because it’s kind of like a personal journey that I went through,” he said. “Through that ceremony, I had that experience of freedom.”

Kim Russell, the hospital’s policy adviser, who also spoke on the panel about the traditional healing waivers, told Stateline her team hopes to bring on another practitioner along with Jim.

Tribal health leaders have expressed concern about people without traditional knowledge posing to offer healing services. But Navajo organizations, including Diné Hataałii Association Inc., aim to protect from such co-opting as it provides licensures for Native healers, Jim said.

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Push in Washington

Facilities covered under the new waivers include Indian Health Service facilities, tribal facilities, or urban Indian organization facilities. In Arizona, urban Indian organizations can get the benefit only if they contract with an Indian Health Service or other tribal health facility.

In Oregon, Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center spokesperson Shanna Hamilton said that while the center can’t speak on behalf of other tribes or clinics, many are still in the early stages of developing programs and protocols. She called the waivers a “meaningful step forward in honoring Indigenous knowledge and healing practices.”

Meanwhile, in neighboring Washington state, a bill that would have required the state to submit an application for a waiver by Sept. 1 died in committee.

But the state doesn’t need the legislative OK to apply. It’s still going to submit an application by the end of the year, the Washington State Health Care Authority told Stateline in a statement, emphasizing that each tribe would determine its own traditional health services available for reimbursement.

Azure Bouré, traditional food and medicine program coordinator for the Suquamish Tribe, a community along the shores of Washington’s Puget Sound, called the waivers “groundbreaking.”

“We’re proving day in and day out that Indigenous knowledge is important. It’s real, it’s worthy, and it’s real science,” Bouré said.

On a brisk summer day in 2009, Bouré recalled, she had attended a family camp hosted by Northwest Indian College. It was then she tasted the salal berry for the first time. A sweet, dark blue berry, it’s long been used by Pacific Northwest tribes medicinally, in jams, and for dyeing clothing.

“It was just that one berry, that one day, that reignited that wonderment,” Bouré said. For her, it unlocked the world of Indigenous plant medicine and food sovereignty, a people’s right to the food and food systems of their land.

She got her bachelor’s in Native American environmental science and now runs an apothecary, teaches traditional cooking classes, recommends herbs to members with ailments and processes foraged foods.

One day she could be chopping pumpkins or other gourds and the next, cleaning and peeling away the salty-sweet meat from dozens of sea cucumbers harvested by shellfish biologist divers employed by the tribe.

Bouré’s grandmother died when her mom was 12 years old. “That’s a whole generation of knowledge that she lost,” she said. One way she unearths that lost knowledge is by learning tribal medicine and teaching it, and holding on to memories like watching her great-grandmother Cecelia, who wove traditional sweetgrass dolls even when she was blind.

“I think that I come from a long line of healers,” she said.

Dr. Gary Ferguson, who is Unangax̂ (Aleut), is the director of integrative medicine at the Tulalip Health Clinic about 40 miles north of Seattle. He’s certified in naturopathic medicine in Washington and Alaska.

His health center already has a variety of integrative medicine offerings, he said, including traditional ones grounded in Coast Salish traditions of the Pacific Northwest. He said he hopes the waivers and continued support for Indigenous ways of healing will help tribes address health disparities.

“These ceremonies and ways are part of that deeper healing,” he said.

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.