On October 18, a Seventh-day Adventist Tribal Chairman, Brian Cladoosby, of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, was elected president of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), at their 70th Annual Convention & Marketplace in Tulsa (Oklahoma/USA). Chairman Cladoosby is one of many tribal chairmen who are members of the Adventist Church.

In his first statement after being sworn in as the 21st president of the NCAI Brian Cladoosby called for reduced thresholds for federal tribal disaster assistance and challenged Congress to prioritize Native peoples in the post-shutdown legislative calendar. "Congress must act immediately to provide rapid recovery for our tribes and work to ensure that political gamesmanship and inactivity does not harm Native peoples again," Cladoosby said

On the 16th of October, the NCAI honored the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church and Robert Burnette, former director of Native Ministries for the North American Division of SDAs, director of Native Ministries for the Southern Union of SDA and former Assistant to the President for Oklahoma Conference of SDA. The NCAI, founded in 1944, is the oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization serving the broad interests of tribal governments and communities.

Throughout the conference, people stopped at the 13 booths of the Adventist Church to thank the Church for serving the Indian communities. Many noted the Adventist churches near their tribes. There is an Adventist Church within at least 25 miles of every one of the 566 federally recognized tribes in the United States. Many tribes have SDA Churches on tribal nation territory.

Native Ministries released a new publication at the NCAI Annual Convention. American Indian Living (AIL) is a magazine on health and spiritualty which is a new partnership with the NCAI. The health director, Terra Branson is an editor of AIL. AIL also has a national radio program which airs on numerous networks including National Public Radio, NV1, Konic and other American Indian and Adventist networks.

The strategic plan of Native Ministries has been to partner with the Adventist churches on or near American Indian Tribal Nations in distributing the AIL magazine.

It is hoped that church leadership would support the distribution through the Adventist churches and thereby mobilize the local congregations to embrace the tribes by sharing the health publication and helping the church be the center of health offerings to the local tribes. Native Ministries has an agreement with Flordia Hospital Creation Health and is offering training for church members to become trainers at local churches.