Learn about the longterm vision for our platform.
Welcome.
ShockTalk seeks to decrease adverse mental health effects in Native American and Alaska Natives by connecting users to Native therapists trained and experienced in cultural humility through a telebehavioral and wellbeing app focused on healing unresolved historical and intergenerational trauma.
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What is ShockTalk?
Dive into the core of ShockTalk by understanding our unique need, mission, and story.
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Rapid Prototype Demo.
Check our proof of concept demo to learn more about our long term product vision.
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Rapid Prototype.
Excited by ShockTalk? Click "play" to test out a live copy of our rapid-prototype.
Need.
Decades of research demonstrate that Native American/Alaska Native (NA/AN) populations have disproportionately higher rates of mental health problems due to unresolved historical and intergenerational trauma.
Story.
Origin.
The Shakori people still recognize the Carolinas by their original Siouan name, Chicora. As co-founder Austin Serio became more active within the Chicoran Shakori Nation of South Carolina, he embarked on a collaborative historic, linguistic, and cultural revival research project. Dissatisfied with the slapdash collaboration patchwork of social media, google apps, messaging apps, and video chat apps Austin knew there had to be a better way. Having designed and coded many apps and websites since the age of 12, Austin's brain began to whirl away at dismantling barriers to research, collaboration, and social connection.
Collision.
Two weeks after graduating from NYU Gallatin in the Spring of 2019, Austin raced off to work on Wall Street. Standing on the escalator, he watched as financiers scuttled out of Bowling Green Station. It didn't seem likely they knew they were on the land of an ancient Lenape village in Mannahatta. Exiting Bowling Green Station, Austin bumped into a member of the Tuscarora Nation who also identifies as Sissipahaw and Tslagi.
From Austin's interaction, it is now known some Sissipahaw remained on the Haw and Neuse Rivers alongside the Tuscarora before their migration. Had there been a platform which was built to connect peoples, nations, and land, such an interaction would have happened long ago.
Spark.
Our team is currently in the process of designing a series of focus-group trials to enable safe beta testing of ShockTalk as a telemental health platform. Since beta software is understood to sometimes include bugs, closed focus groups will be the safest way to operationalize ShockTalk's initial platform. Additional information on the beta process is available below.
Disruption.
Conversations like the ones between Austin, Sutton, and other Urban Natives harken back to an older tradition shared across Indian Country, the tradition of oral storytelling. Like many other nations who have faced the challenges of Settler Colonialism and land theft, the Shakori Nation and all of its respective bands have been pronounced as "extinct", a convenient conclusion by groups whose power appears threatened by an Indigenous presence. It is within the interest of the powerful to maintain the current social structures, which are intentionally designed to prohibit the conversations that can strengthen, heal, and grow Indigenous Nations.
True disruption isn't forcibly changing the lives of workers. True disruption is the upending of oppression.
