It is our great honor to nominate Iva GreyWolf, and Assiniboine and Anishinaabe psychologist, as a
candidate for the Distinguished Elder Award for the 2019 National Multicultural Conference and Summit
in Denver, CO. Dr. GreyWolf is the current President-Elect of the Society of Indian Psychologists. She
led the initiative for the founding of the Division 35, Section 6: Section on Alaska Native, American
Indian, and Indigenous Women and has been named a fellow of Division 35, one of only two indigenous
women to receive this honor.
Dr. GreyWolf has dedicated her life to making sure those with less access and resources are afforded the
same quality of mental health care as those in less remote areas of the country. She is an advocate,
mentor, teacher, and leader in her quiet, unassuming way. She was the first in her family to get a college
education and received awards from Indian Health Service for outstanding service related to her work
with child sexual abuse victims. GreyWolf was the first graduate of the American Indian Support Project
at Utah State University and an APA Minority Fellow. She served over 35 years in Alaska Native and
American Indian communities in behavioral health. When confronted with severely traumatized
children with the closest services an hour away, but refusing to take the referrals, she worked with
community allies to address the lack of legal recourse for abused children in Indian Country and testified
before Congress leading to new federal codes to address sex crimes against children. GreyWolf has
helped to bring qualified behavioral health care to remote areas of (especially southeast) Alaska by
providing supervision and training to clinicians in the remote villages and islands where weather is a
year-round challenge go getting help to these locations. Inconsistent travel, lack of hotels for itinerate
providers, and lack of technological infrastructure the challenges the heartiest of providers. Dr.
GreyWolf’s tenure as a healthy role model, supervisor, teacher, and mentor that is insistent upon
appropriate cultural components to all her work.
Now in retirement, she continues to teach “Native Ways of Knowing” for the joint University of Alaska-
Fairbanks-University of Alaska-Anchorage APA approved Clinical-Community Psychology Program where
they are leading the way in recognizing and supporting non-western approaches to psychology. She is a
mentor in the Society of Indian Psychologists mentoring program. GreyWolf is still making the
indigenous voice heard in drawing attention to the issues of missing, murdered, and trafficked
indigenous women.
She has served on the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs and as its chair, the Committee on Rural
Health, and now on the Committee for Socioeconomic Status for the American Psychological
Association. All of these committees’ work centers on her goal of addressing the needs of the culturally
diverse, rural and remote, and disadvantaged.
With her lifelong commitment to generating, strengthening, and expanding behavioral health through
cultural knowledge and diversity, the Society of Indian Psychologists would like the Awards Committee
of the 2019 National Multicultural Conference and Summit to consider the nomination of Dr. Iva
GreyWolf as a Distinguished Elder.
Respectfully,
Gayle E. Morse
Art Blume
Jacqueline Gray
SIP President 2017-2019
SIP President 2015-2017
SIP President 2011-2013
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