Joe Tahdooahnippah, enrolled member of the Comanche (Numunu) Nation of Oklahoma, joined the NABS team as a Research Assistant in the spring of 2023. He began his postsecondary education at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, KS and finished his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Joe was born and raised on the traditional homelands of the Dakota and has worked within the local Indigenous communities in the Twin Cities for many years. Prior to joining NABS, he worked for a Native-led nonprofit organization out of St. Paul, MN, Ain Dah Yung Center (“our home” in Ojibwe ), helping to provide culturally responsive emergency shelter to Indigenous youth in crisis, many of whom are descendants of boarding school survivors and part of the legacy of the boarding school era and its collective and ongoing impact of intergenerational trauma. During his time as an undergraduate, he worked with The Great Lakes Intertribal Epidemiology Center (GLITEC) and Professor Ruby Nguyen with the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, to aid in the development of course material related to historical trauma and the influence it has had on commercial tobacco use/smoking among pregnant Native American women. Joe is passionate about uncovering the truth of Indian boarding schools and the devastating effects they have had on a population/community level, as well as on the individual. He approaches his research from a holistic and complex systems paradigm, and is honored to be a part of the NABS team.