Center for Tribal Social Work

Dallas Pettigrew, MSW

The Director of the Center for Tribal Social Work at OU-Tulsa is Dallas W. Pettigrew. Dallas is a member of the Cherokee Nation and grew up in Stilwell, OK. Dallas earned his Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice-Law Enforcement in December 2002 from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, OK. He was fortunate to be hired at Cherokee Nation as a Child Welfare Specialist in January 2003. For the next several years he worked in Indian Child Welfare, in three different programs, Out-of-District- where his caseload of around 100 was made up of families from outside the Cherokee Nation. Next, he worked in State Court Advocacy and Permanency Service (CAPS). Both experiences helped prepare him for his next role, working in the Tribal CAPS unit. In Tribal CAPS, the children are in the custody of the Cherokee Nation and there is no state involvement at all.

Dallas earned a Bachelor of Social Work from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah in 2011, then started an 11-month march to his MSW at OU-Tulsa, in the Advanced Standing program. After graduation, Dallas joined Cherokee Nation’s Behavioral Health Division as the Manager of Administrative Operations where he was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the entire Behavioral Health program, including ensuring compliance with grant requirements, developing and monitoring policies and procedures to improve program efficiency and effectiveness, hiring new employees, and making sure all the bills were paid. During that time, he and MSW classmate and former child welfare colleague, Juli Skinner (Ponca Tribe) began working earnestly to grow a new children’s behavioral health program. Ultimately, they built the program, called The HERO Project, using grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and other funds. Today, the HERO Project has expanded beyond Tahlequah, where it started, reaching nearly all parts of the Cherokee Nation’s 14-county reservation.

After leaving Cherokee Nation in 2015, Dallas spent nearly a year with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in Cherokee, North Carolina, serving as the first Program Manager of the Family Safety Program. Dallas was homesick for Oklahoma, though and moved to Tulsa 2016. In the fall he served as an adjunct professor at OU. In January 2017, he was hired as a Clinical Assistant Professor, joining Dr. Lisa Byers (Cherokee Nation) as the only Native American faculty members in the School of Social Work at that time. Dallas taught mostly macro-level courses at OU-with topic like Human Diversity, Social Welfare Policy Practice and Advocacy, Community Organizing, and Human Service Administration. Soon, he joined forces with other Native current and former child welfare professionals to begin developing training for employees of Oklahoma Tribes’ child welfare programs. The idea was to combine the wisdom, experience, and talents of the tribes with the resources of the University to build child welfare training “for tribes, by tribes.” A pilot training program, funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, successfully trained dozens of tribal child welfare professionals in OU-Tulsa’s Simulation Center and became the launchpad for the Center for Tribal Social Work.

While Dallas’s work keeps him busy, he has a full life outside work, too. His son Cordell, 25, lives in Tahlequah. His sister, her fiancé and their three daughters also live in Tahlequah, as does his matriarch aunt, Naomi. Dallas’s parents and other relatives live in Stilwell. His mentor, the person who sent him to graduate school and encouraged him every step of the way, Norma Merriman (OU MSW, Class of 1974), lives in Raleigh, NC, where Dallas enjoys vacationing, along with his classmate and friend, Juli Skinner. He also enjoys kayaking, road-tripping, and watching Hamilton over and over and over. In 2019, the graduates of the MSW program named Dallas as the Faculty of the Year, one of the highest honors he has ever received.

Cortney Bolt, MSW

Cortney is the Program Manager for the Center for Tribal Social Work at the Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work. Cortney also serves as the CTSW's "Academic Auntie" in support of Indigenous students through the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute Workforce Excellence Initiative University Partnership (WEI-UP).

Cortney has 13 years of field and administration experience in Child Welfare. During her employment with OKDHS, she specialized in Child Protection, Kinship Foster care, Family Finding, Motivational Interviewing, ICWA, and Family Group Conference. In 2019, Cortney developed a new family finding program for child welfare called Actively Seeking Kinship Now! (ASK Now!). ASK Now! is a connection-based program that reconnects families with their estranged support systems as a vehicle for promoting child wellbeing and parental success. Today, this program is responsible for the placement of 150+ children in kinship foster homes and reconnecting families to thousands of members of their support systems.

Cortney is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and enjoys sewing, making regalia, painting, traveling, and spending time with her family & friends in her free time.

Saralyn O’Donnell, B.S.

Saralyn O’Donnell is a second-year Master of Social Work student graduating in May 2021. She was born in Houston, Texas and received her B.S. in Human Development and Family Science at Oklahoma State in May of 2019. She has previously worked as an Undergraduate Research Assistant and as an Intern for Youth Services of Tulsa. During her time at OSU, she served on the College of Human Sciences Student Council, was a member of a National Panhellenic Sorority, and was involved in Student Government. At OU-Tulsa, she served as a Voting Representative for the School of Social Work in 2019-2020 and currently serves as the OU-Tulsa Student Government Association President.

Partners and Funders

Partners and Funders

· Casey Family Programs

· Choctaw Nation

· Muscogee Creek Nation

· Capacity Building Center for Tribes

· National Child Welfare Workforce Institute

· Bureau of Indian Affairs Eastern Oklahoma Regional Office

The Center has been awarded $1.6 million since 2018 from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Capacity Building Center for Tribes, the National Child Welfare Workforce institute, and Casey Family Programs. The Center continues the work of training tribal child welfare professionals in Oklahoma and beyond. In April 2020, Cortney Bolt (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), a graduate of the School’s Master of Social Work program and 13-year child welfare professional with the State of Oklahoma, joined the Center as its Manager. In the past few years the number of tribal members enrolled in the School of Social Work has grown, and the relationships with tribes has strengthened. Perhaps the strongest are with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, with whom the Dallas and Director of MCN’s Children and Family Services Administration, Kimee Wind-Hummingbird (Muscogee Creek Nation) co-authored a large grant to pay the tuition, fees, and other expenses for BSW and MSW students who agree to work for the MCN CFSA or another tribal child welfare agency upon graduation. As of this writing, 11 students have received those scholarships with cumulative awards valued at $314,000.

The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma’s Children and Family Services division invited the Center to help develop and deliver training to their entire child welfare workforce of nearly 100. This partnership continues to grow, too. The Choctaw Nation’s Children and Family Services’ training team has participated in the training from development to delivery and have now taken over the largest part of the training with the Center for Tribal Social Work staff serving in an advising role.

What We Offer

What We Offer

Child welfare training is just the start of the possibilities of the CTSW. The list of social services provided by tribes opens many areas of training and workforce development possibilities. Child welfare is the best place to start because of the funding available and the experience of those working on this project now.

The CTSW can assist with assessing the current tribal child welfare workforce to determine training needs and wants, then finding, modifying, or developing effective training in partnership with the tribe. The Center can also help strategize for the Implementation and evaluation of services, helping tribes align with federal requirements, as needed.

Simulation-based training is used with pilots, who practice flying airplanes in flight simulators. It is also used in the training of doctors and nurses who practice their skills with realistic mannequins, or with other “simulators,” like an arm that can actually bleed when practicing the insertion of an intravenous needle. Law enforcement uses simulation for training officers on use of force, including lethal force, and attorneys often practice in “moot court.”

The Center has developed simulation-based training in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and several Oklahoma tribes. The training involves preparing workers (“learners”) for a home visit in a simulated environment at OU-Tulsa. There we have an apartment, fully furnished with working appliances and a restroom where any situation can be staged to make the experience more lifelike. The worker visits with parents (portrayed by trained actors) with specific goals for the visit. The visit is recorded with high-quality video and audio for review later. The actors give feedback to the learner immediately following the visit, then the learner participates in a larger debriefing with all the other learners from the day’s training. Additional feedback can be provided by the trainer, a supervisor, or even the learners themselves with the recording of the visit.

Covid-19 has curtailed our in-person training for the most part, so The CTSW has developed training modules which can be delivered via Zoom technology. Modules that are ready to go include:

1. Court 101: Etiquette and Qualified Expert Testimony

2. Ethics and Boundaries

3. The Strengths-Based Approach

4. Rapport Building and Interviewing Skills

5. Cultural Humility

6. Differential Response

7. Privilege and Bias

8. Home Visiting Safely

9. Imposter Syndrome

10. The Profession of Social Work

11. Trauma in Indian Country

12. Resilience in Indian Country

13. Theories and Practice

14. Working with Families Experiencing Poverty

15. Policies and Advocacy

16. What Animals Can Teach About Parenting

Additional modules are currently being developed, including:

1. The NASW Code of Ethics Applied in Indian Country

2. Writing Skills for Child Welfare Professionals

3. Communication in the Professional Workforce

Training modules are generally developed at the request of a tribal partner and usually include input from tribal child welfare leaders.

Child Welfare Appreciation Day

In September of 2020, the Center for Tribal Social Work along with the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute and the Center for Child Welfare Training and Simulation hosted the first Oklahoma Child Welfare Professional Appreciation Day. There were 6 awards given out – three working with the State of Oklahoma and three working with the Tribal Nations in Oklahoma.

Click here to view the 2020 Child Welfare Appreciation Day Award Winners

Addressing the virtual crowd this year were Chief Gary Batton of the Choctaw Nation and OKDHS Child Welfare Director Dr. Deborah Shropshire.

Watch video

WEI-UP