Supporting Healing, Wholeness,
and Culturally Attuned Care
on Vashon Island
photograph © Ray Pfortner
News
Sept. 26, 2024: Thunderbird Treatment Center: Healing Transformed
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Sept. 25, 2024: Community Council votes to endorse Thunderbird Treatment Center
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Sept. 24, 2024: Council Honors Seattle Indian Health Board’s Esther Lucero
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Aug. 15, 2024: Complicated zoning code takes the stage in Thunderbird conversation
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July 27, 2024: A Vashon Minute: Thunderbird Treatment Center
July 25, 2024: Civic leaders and organizations take stage at Strawberry Festival
Mar. 27, 2024: Islanders learn more about Thunderbird Treatment Center
Feb. 14, 2024: Treatment center will support healing on Vashon
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Nov. 29, 2023: Health Board leaders share update on treatment center
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Nov. 21, 2023: Seattle Indian Health Board to open Native-led substance use treatment center
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Apr. 19, 2023: Time Again: Vashon’s Rehab Center’s Centennial
April 13, 2023: Seattle Indian Health Board leader outlines broad vision for new facility
Apr. 4, 2023: Storied island property has new owner
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Seattle Indian Health Board:
Video • September 26, 2024
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Thunderbird Treatment Center: Healing Transformed
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In 2025, SIHB will reopen Thunderbird Treatment Center on Vashon Island as a $36 million state-of-the-art facility. Thunderbird will offer 92 beds and high-end amenities, including luxury rooms, a cultural healing space, an outdoor traditional garden, and customized community and counseling spaces. Residents will be surrounded by and have access to the natural environment and medicines that Vashon Island has to offer.
In this video, hear from both members of the Seattle Indian Health Board and the Vashon community about why Thunderbird is so needed on Vashon.
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Vashon Beachcomber:
News • September 25, 2024
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Community Council votes to endorse Thunderbird Treatment Center
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By Alex Bruell
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Vashon’s community council officially signaled its support for the proposed Thunderbird Treatment Center during its meeting on Thursday, Sept. 19.
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The main event of the evening was a resolution for the council, a voting body that represents the interests of islanders to King County, to endorse the Seattle Indian Health Board’s efforts to bring the facility to Vashon.
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The attending public (made up of more than 60 in-person attendees and roughly 150 Zoom participants) voted nearly unanimously to decide the matter in “good faith voting” — in other words, to trust that the attending public who did vote on the motion were all members of the community council....
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King County Council Newsroom:
News • September 24, 2024
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Council Honors Seattle Indian Health Board's Esther Lucero
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The King County Council on Tuesday presented the 2024 King County Recovery Champion Award to Esther Lucero, President and CEO of the Seattle Indian Health Board.
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Lucero was recognized by the King County Council for addressing health disparities and inequities faced by American Indians and Alaska Natives. Under her leadership, Seattle Indian Health Board has led efforts to provide treatment and recovery services for both the Native community and the larger King County community.
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The organization developed one of the county's first low-barrier treatment clinics offering buprenorphine and has integrated Traditional Indian Medicine healing practices for those struggling with substance use disorder.
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Lucero is also leading efforts to combat the opioid crisis by spearheading the reopening of the Thunderbird Treatment Center on Vashon Island in 2025...​
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Vashon Beachcomber:
News • August 15, 2024
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Complicated zoning code takes the stage in Thunderbird Treatment Center conversation
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By Alex Bruell
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Two island organizations focused on the upcoming Thunderbird Treatment Center — one opposed, one in favor — have sprung up in recent months, as the Seattle Indian Health Board (SIHB) draws closer to developing the proposed facility on Vashon.
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The matter came to a head at the island’s August Community Council meeting, usually hosted at the Vashon Land Trust but moved to Vashon Center for The Arts to accommodate crowd of roughly 150 people in person and more than 260 online.
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On the docket for discussion: The county’s comprehensive plan, which includes proposals to change zoning around healthcare facilities. But that topic brought in a wide-ranging discussion including debate over the treatment center...
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Vashon Beachcomber:
News • July 25, 2024
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Civic leaders and organizations take stage at Strawberry Festival
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By Elizabeth Shepherd
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Islanders got to speak with representatives of the Seattle Indian Health Board, the health care organization which was joined this year by members of Friends of Thunderbird — a grassroots island organization formed to support the Health Board’s new residential treatment center on Vashon, now set to open in 2025...
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The center will serve patients, including pregnant and parenting people, recovering from substance abuse with comprehensive care, using traditional Indigenous medicine.
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The treatment center will be open to all, as are all other Health Board programs. While it specializes in the care of American Indians and Alaska Natives, the Health Board — as an Urban Indian Organization, Federally Qualified Health Center, and Community Health Center — serves all who seek its services...
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Vashon Beachcomber:
News • March 27, 2024
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Islanders learn more about Thunderbird Treatment Center
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By Elizabeth Shepherd
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Islanders showed up at last Thursday’s Vashon-Maury Island Community Council meeting to hear a detailed update from Esther Lucero (Diné), the president and CEO of Seattle Indian Health Board, on the Health Board’s plans to open a residential treatment center for recovery from addiction...
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Drawings showed an expansive covered entryway to the facility, leading to a two-story lobby that evoked comfort and welcome.
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“As Native people, welcoming people in a good way — with love, letting them know that they are home —is really important,” Lucero said, referring to the lobby. “…
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Other drawings and designs showed spaces for ceremony and reflection, a sweat lodge, a covered play area for children, and more...
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Vashon Beachcomber:
Opinion • February 14, 2024
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Treatment center will support healing on Vashon
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By Joseph Bogaard, Leslie Brown and Yve Susskind
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The Seattle Indian Health Board’s decision to open an inpatient treatment center on Vashon gives us an opportunity to do something profound: It enables us to become part of a regional solution to a drug crisis that is ravaging communities across the country.
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By welcoming this innovative agency to our island, we become part of a larger movement working to help people recover from trauma, rebuild their lives and rejoin their communities. It gives us an opportunity to be a place of healing at a time when healing is desperately needed.
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But we welcome a treatment center to our shores not only out of a sense of duty or obligation. We also know the agency’s approach — premised on both the latest research on addiction treatment as well as traditional Indigenous medicine and culturally attuned care — will benefit Vashon, as well...
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Vashon Beachcomber:
News • November 29, 2023
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Health Board leaders share update on treatment center
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By Elizabeth Shepherd
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At an event held in honor of Native American Heritage Month, leaders of the Seattle Indian Health Board shared updates on their plans to open a 92-bed inpatient treatment center on Vashon, saying they would increase the number of pregnant and parenting people served at the facility.
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The as-yet-unnamed facility, now slated to open in 18 months, will serve patients seeking recovery from substance abuse disorders, though not offer detox services. Like all other Health Board services, it will be open to all people, but rooted in Native cultural practices and traditional Indian medicine.
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At the event, islanders learned that the facility will have different wings and dining rooms for three distinct populations of relatives (as the Health Board refers to all its patients). These three groups will include pregnant and parenting people and their children; a general population; and a 16-bed wing that will serve those who have access to private insurance...​
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Seattle Times:
Local News • November 21, 2023
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Seattle Indian Health Board to open Native-led substance use treatment center
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By Isabella Breda
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In 18 months, the Seattle Indian Health Board plans to open what may be the state’s largest inpatient substance use disorder treatment center here, among the dense woodlands, not far from the saltwater lapping against the shore.
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The plans for the new facility were detailed at an event for the Vashon community that showcased art, some representing struggles Indigenous people have gone through for adequate care, such as an unzipped plastic ribbon dress with toe tags hanging from the sleeves recalling the federal government sending body bags instead of personal protective equipment to the Seattle Indian Health Board during the pandemic...​​
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Vashon Beachcomber:
News • April 19, 2023
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Time Again: Vashon’s Rehab Center’s Centennial
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By Bruce Haulman and Terry Donnelly
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News of the sale of the former Vashon Community Care (VCC) facility to the Seattle Indian Health Board gives islanders an opportunity to reflect on the history of the property and its century-long role as an island rehabilitation center.
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The property has gone through numerous transformations over the past nearly 100 years — beginning as a working ranch, becoming a boarding house and farm for the poor during the Great Depression, transitioning to a nursing home, and then a community-supported care center, and now to a rehabilitation center, brought to the island by a Native health care provider and rooted in Native cultural practices...​
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Vashon Beachcomber:
News • April 13, 2023
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Seattle Indian Health Board leader outlines broad vision for new facility
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By Elizabeth Shepherd
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On April 3, the Seattle Indian Health Board announced its intention to open a 92-bed inpatient treatment center on Vashon, rooted in Native cultural practices and traditional Indian medicine, for those seeking recovery from addiction.
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The facility will be housed in the former home of Vashon Community Care (VCC), a building that the Health Board purchased on March 31 for $11 million from Transforming Age, the nonprofit owner and operator of the long-term care facility from 2017 to 2021.
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The $11 million purchase of the VCC building came years after the closure, in 2019, of the Health Board’s nationally-recognized Thunderbird Treatment Center, a facility located in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle for 33 years...
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Seattle Times:
Local News • April 4, 2023
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Storied island property has new owner
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By Elizabeth Shepherd
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The Seattle Indian Health Board, a nationally recognized health organization that specializes in services for urban Native Americans, has purchased the Vashon Community Care (VCC) building for $11 million.
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According to property records, the sale closed on March 31
In a statement released on April 3, the Health Board said the purchase was the first step in establishing a 92-bed inpatient treatment center for substance abuse disorders on the VCC site — key to its longtime goal to re-open and expand its Thunderbird Treatment Center, which had closed in 2019...​
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