Center for Healthy Minds

Michelle Aihina Inkinsh Holhpokunna Johnson-Jennings (Choctaw Nation Enrolled Tribal Member) is a member of the Center for Healthy Minds Equity Advisory Council, an external body of world class scholars and practitioners who are invited to provide advice to the Center's community (leadership, researchers and staff) on all facets of work through the lens of equity, inclusion and diversity. 

Johnson-Jennings is a license eligible clinical health psychologist and serves as the Canadian Research Chair (CRC) in Indigenous Community Engaged Research and associate professor in Indigenous Studies and Associate in Community Health and Epidemiology in Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan (Canada). She further serves as an Affiliate Associate Professor with the University of Colorado and the University of Washington. Over the years, Johnson-Jennings has partnered with multiple International and nation Indigenous nations, organizations and communities to prevent both substance use and food addiction/obesity risks. To do so, she has co-developed health interventions entrenched in ancestral guidelines to encourage a renewed commitment to health and revitalization of medicine, food and land-based practices. Her research endeavors span the globe from founding and formerly directing the Research for Indigenous Community Health (RICH) Center, at the University of Minnesota to recently completing a US Fulbright Scholar award to conduct research in New Zealand.  Johnson-Jennings received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Counseling Psychology and a Master’s from Harvard University in Human Development and Psychology and Contemporary Native Issues. She has taught courses in Indigenous health, Global Indigenous health and Indigenous psychology. Johnson-Jennings’ therapeutic expertise lies in working with Indigenous communities and decolonizing healing while transforming narratives of trauma. She also serves on several international and national advisory committees, mentors students in several countries and is honored to be the mother of four amazing children.