Alma Knows His Gun McCormick

 

Alma Knows His Gun McCormick, a member of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Tribe and fluent speaker of its language, has for decades been a leader and community activist for improving health and wellness across Montana, with a special focus on women’s health. McCormick has worked across all of Montana’s reservations and urban Indian clinics, providing culturally sensitive health education and encouraging women to pursue preventative cancer screenings. She helped found the nonprofit Messengers for Health, which has shifted health patterns on the Crow Reservation and is seen as one of the best community-based research programs in the country. For more than 25 years, she has been a community research partner with MSU faculty, and through those experiences she has mentored, supported and inspired dozens of MSU students, most of them Indigenous women. McCormick was awarded the 2017 Local Impact Award by the National Indian Health Board, the 2019 Bette Bohlinger Leadership Award from the Montana Cancer Coalition, and the Dr. Frank Newman Rural Health Leadership Award from the Montana Office of Rural Health & Area Health Education Center. She has a bachelor’s degree in health and wellness from MSU Billings. McCormick has been the co-author of numerous publications, has spoken to audiences across the nation about her work and sits on several national boards, providing the perspective of a community member working in tandem with an academic institution. 

“Messengers for Health has been a fundamentally important program in terms of education of the Crow people.”