By Corinna Littlewolf, Salish Kootenai College Psychology Department Faculty
2024-2025 Indigenous Visionaries Fellow
Dr. Michael Munson is an outgoing Interim President at Salish Kootenai College (SKC) on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Pablo, Montana. She moved to a different job and is currently transitioning out. Dr. Munson made the time to meet with me for an interview and I couldn’t have imagined the timing of this interview. She is the first person I thought of when I saw interviewing an Indigenous woman from your community was an option for the Indigenous Visionaries: Women’s Leadership Program. I am grateful to Dr. Munson for spending a few minutes on this interview during her incredibly busy day. She was a prominent person in my decision to apply for the Indigenous Visionaries program and she provided support throughout the process. Thank you, Dr. Munson!
In what ways do you see yourself as a leader, especially as an Indigenous woman leader?
“My daughter is a little leader too. She’s not apologetic, I’m pretty apologetic. A leader is someone who steps up when asked and does what is necessary to the best of their ability, with solid ethics, and based in values, especially based in our cultural ways of being, and I do my best to do these things.”
As an exercise during one of our Indigenous Visionaries virtual gatherings, our facilitator asked us what our medicine was, in other words, what do we bring when we bring ourselves? An example I shared was that I bring time and space for myself and others. Michael, how would you describe your medicine?
“Safety of being yourself. I try to be loved, I pretty much love everyone, well, not everybody. I suggest maybe, love for everyone. One of my other medicines is I make space for others to not be perfect, we’re human, we don’t always understand them.”
In times of uncertainty, what are some ways that you care for yourself?
“I rely on people, prayer, being with my daughter and when I can really spend time with my daughter and being able to let go enough to let things happen sometimes. Other things I do for myself is accept my ADHD and make space accommodations for that.”
Interim President Dr. Michael Munson and her daughter at Salish Kootenai College.
What do you/did you hope to achieve as a leader during your time as SKC’s Interim President?
“Prioritize safety and bringing people together. Hopefully, people have felt safe enough to come together. I hadn’t achieved everything that I wanted to achieve. Time to look deeply at what are our goals as a campus, where is our community asking us to go, where are contributions on campus wanting us to go and areas that we need to rethink. One of my goals was I had the opportunity to do that, you can see it, in a way that’s immediate, but I hoping it’ll continue.”
Dr. Munson worked hard to plant seeds during her interim presidency, and she hopes that these will continue to grow even after she has transitioned out of this position.
I have so much honor and respect for Dr. Munson, and I know as faculty, I will miss her presence on SKC’s campus. I want to thank Dr. Munson for everything that she has done, and I will always be grateful to her for taking on a huge role at a tribal college. She provided a safety net for me that allowed and encouraged me to take steps to further my progress in teaching at SKC and with my personal career goals. I love teaching in the Psychology Department at SKC. Teaching was never on my list of goals and ambitions but, when the opportunity presented itself, I was brave and courageous enough to apply for it, and I was grateful when I received the faculty position in March of 2021.
