{"id":5562,"date":"2015-02-13T09:19:41","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T16:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=5562"},"modified":"2015-02-13T09:19:41","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T16:19:41","slug":"tribal-leader-healer-to-receive-governors-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/02\/tribal-leader-healer-to-receive-governors-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Tribal leader, healer, to receive governor’s award"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Snell\"<\/a>

William Snell<\/p><\/div>\n

Billings resident William Snell was to be honored in Helena on Friday for his decades of work to improve the health and wellbeing of Native Americans in Montana.<\/p>\n

Snell, currently the project manager for the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leadership Council, along with six other individuals and organizations, is to receive a ServeMontana Award<\/a> at noon Friday in the old Supreme Court chambers of the state Capitol.<\/p>\n

The awards will be presented by Gov. Steve Bullock on behalf of the Governor\u2019s Office of Community Service. Terry Zee Lee , also of Billings, who nominated Snell for the award, said Snell \u201chas a long history of immersing himself in people\u2019s lives at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of his work has been done through the Pretty Shield Foundation<\/a>, which Snell founded in 1997 with his mother, Alma Snell, a widely known activist for children. Alma Snell was the granddaughter of Pretty Shield, a medicine woman and prominent member of the Crow Tribe, who died in 1944.<\/p>\n

Sherry Matteucci, a former U.S. attorney for Montana and a member of the board of directors for the Pretty Shield Foundation, said she became acquainted with Snell when she was hired more than 10 years ago to help reconstruct the Crow Tribal Court system. Snell helped her with that task and then was hired, on her recommendation, as the tribal court administrator.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have the highest respect for him,\u201d Matteucci said. \u201cHe\u2019s a truly committed individual whose entire focus is on service and projects that are done with integrity and respect for Indian culture and tradition\u2026 . He\u2019s also just a wonderful person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>As the director and co-founder of the In-Care Network, Snell, a Crow and Assiniboine\/Sioux, helped deliver foster care, addiction treatment, youth leadership and many other services to all eight American Indian tribes in Montana and Wyoming.<\/p>\n

Lee met Snell through his work with the In-Care Network and said she was \u201cvery impressed by his passion and enthusiasm for what he was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a very, very effective leader,\u201d she said. \u201cHe is demanding and wants accountability for people\u2019s actions and teaches them to be thoughtful and purposeful in what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Pretty Shield Foundation, he started cultural immersion camps, which offer American Indian youths a chance to reconnect with their tribal heritage in natural settings. These have proved to be especially powerful ways of dealing with seemingly intractable problems like alcohol and methamphetamine addictions.<\/p>\n

More recently, Snell has been working on the Dragonfly Initiative with Floating Island International<\/a>, in Shepherd. The initiative aims to restore tribal waterways through natural systems pioneered by FII founder Bruce Kania.<\/p>\n

Bruce Kania\u2019s wife, Anne, said in a letter of recommendation supporting the governor\u2019s award, that though she had known Snell for barely a year, \u201csuch is his openness\u2014and willingness to jump in with both feet\u2014that I feel he is already a firm and trusted friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to all his public good works, Snell and his wife, Karen, raised three sons and 36 other children as therapeutic foster care parents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billings resident William Snell was to be honored in Helena on Friday for his decades of work to improve the health and wellbeing of Native Americans in Montana. Snell, currently the project manager for the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leadership Council, along with six other individuals and organizations, is to receive a ServeMontana Award at noon Friday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,16],"tags":[2088,2090,2089,2091,782,1294,2087],"class_list":["post-5562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-montana","tag-alma-snell","tag-pretty-shield","tag-pretty-shield-foundation","tag-sherry-matteucci","tag-steve-bullock","tag-terry-zee-lee","tag-william-snell","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}