Aboriginal Healing,
Sharing Culture |
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Non-Native recovery approaches often look at addiction as an individual disease, ignoring the social, political, or economic roots of addiction. The indigenous experience adds a dimension of acknowledging sociopolitical causes without removing an individual’s need to do the hard work it takes to heal. This is new, culturally specific thinking that can also add to the field of mainstream recovery knowledge." Don Coyhis and Richard Simonelli
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Native Americans and Addiction"It is almost an urban legend to say that American Indians and Alaska Natives are predisposed to alcohol addiction and have been so since first European contact in 1492. It is something most people know about because that kind of information is “in the air,” imposing hearsay and stigma on Native Americans.
But what we perhaps do not know is that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the notion that the indigenous people of North America are biologically and racially prone to alcoholism (Coyhis and White, 2006, pp. 47–55). Most of us are also unaware of the fact that efforts to resist and recover from the effects of alcohol on Native communities have been alive among Native Americans for over 250 years and continue to this day (Coyhis and White, 2006, pp. 229–230). A look at the Indian experience since World War II reveals that a recovery, healing, and Wellbriety movement based in a return to the principles, laws, and values of traditional Native culture is vibrantly alive in Native communities today." Don Coyhis and Richard Simonelli Wellbriety
"What is this new term, “Wellbriety”? It means to be both sober and well. It is a translation into English of a word from the language of the Passamaquoddy nation of Maine given by an Elder in the mid-1990s (Simonelli, Summer 1995).
It means achieving sobriety and abstinence from substance abuse and misuse without stopping there. It means going beyond “clean and sober” by entering a journey of healing and balance - mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. For many Native Americans, it also means recovering culturally. Return to the culture is a vision embraced by many American Indians as integral with addictions recovery (Coyhis, 2000), (Tundra Drums, 2007). It signifies a desire to live through the best attributes of traditional Native cultures, while standing firmly on the ground of contemporary life. Non-Native recovery approaches often look at addiction as an individual disease, ignoring the social, political, or economic roots of addiction. The indigenous experience adds a dimension of acknowledging sociopolitical causes without removing an individual’s need to do the hard work it takes to heal. This is new, culturally specific thinking that can also add to the field of mainstream recovery knowledge." Don Coyhis and Richard Simonelli The Role of Culture in Recovery and Healing for Native Americans
"The Wellbriety Movement offers an ensemble of interconnected teachings that most tribal people worldwide recognise because of their own local traditions are also rooted in holistic ways of life...
Each Wellbriety event taking place today sees in attendance participants from many of the over 550 state and federally-recognized tribes... Each of these tribes groups has its own cultural ways but responds positively to the framework of the Wellbriety teachings." You can take a brief tour through the logical flow of some of the culture-based approach of the Wellbriety teachings in the paper by Don Coyhis and Richard Simonelli. One aspect is described in the right column. |
The Four Laws of Change"We received The Four Laws of Change from an Elder in New Mexico in the mid 1980s. They are some of the deepest roots of the Wellbriety Movement. The Four Laws of Change state:
Meaningful change comes from inside us. It cannot be forced from outside the individual or be foreign to the community if it is to have a positive and lasting effect. All permanent and lasting change starts on the inside and works its way out. In order for development to occur it must be preceded by a vision means that an individual, family, or community must actively discover and share the thoughts, feelings, and images that can take them forward into a healthy future. If there is no vision, there is no development. It must answer the question, “What would our lives, our community, or our nation look like if it were working in a good way?” Starting from this outcome-based approach, the Wellbriety Movement helps each person take the steps to create a better life for self, family, and community. The law of vision ensures that the community’s future will not be an accident. Once the community vision is developed, the spiritual world will then provide a plan of action and guide activities to move toward the vision just created. A great learning must take place means that everyone needs to be part of the change in order for positive and lasting change to occur. It means that all parts of the cycle of life - baby, youth, adult, and elder - within a community must participate in simultaneous learning experiences (in their own ways) in order for thew community to recover from the effects of alcohol, drugs and intergenerational trauma. The great learning includes the cultivation includes the cultivation of personal healing and ongoing self and community knowledge, as well as the education needed in contemporary life. The great learning law must include the individual, the family, the community, and the nation acting as an integrated whole. You must create a healing forest sums up the Four Laws of Change. It is the basis of the Healing Forest Model of positive community change and is expressed by the healing forest story (Simonelli, Spring, 1993) (White Bison, 2002). Suppose you have a hundred-acre first and in that forest there is disease or sickness. All the trees are sick. It is a sick forest. Suppose, then, you go to the forest one day and you take one of those sick trees and temporarily uproot it and put it under your arm. You walk down a road and you put it in a nursery where there is good soil. Or, you take a young person. You take them out of the community and you put them in treatment. So now you have this tree in good soil, and it gets healthy because it is getting sun and rain. It is getting well. It is turning green. You get this tree to be well and you take this well tree back to the sick forest. What happens if we take a well tree back to a sick forest? It gets sick again. It means that we must actively heal the community and its institutions at the same time an individual works on his or her own healing from alcohol or drugs or other unwell behaviours. The individual affects the community and the community affects the individual. They are inseparable from the point of view of addiction recovery. Everything must be in the healing process simultaneously." Don Coyhis and Richard Simonelli |
Don Coyhis describes Native Indian culture and communities before the issues that arose from intergenerational trauma. This trauma arose partly through the government-led introduction of boarding schools cross America to to which Indian children were sent.
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Don summarises the development of inter-generational trauma and how it developed. He describes methods for healing this inter-generational trauma and restore old cultural and spiritual practices.
> Bill White Interviews Don Coyhis |