Category: Healing
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Thoughts Concerning the Fourth of July
The Fourth of July! This is one of those holidays, along with Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, I struggle with. My father struggled with it as well, although, the truth be known, he seemed to love Thanksgiving. Indeed, many Native people have very complex, often humorous and contradictory, experiences of the holiday.
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Microaggression, Erasure, and Genocide
Perhaps the speaker himself did not notice his erasure of our collective history. After all, our national zeitgeist, like that of a trauma burdened family, is to move forward, forgetting the past as soon as possible. Microaggression is subtle, riding beneath normative cultural messages, and stealthily attacking the hearts and souls of it’s targets. Microaggressions…
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Shamanism, Psychology, and the Vastness of Human Experience
In the end, memories and experiences of trauma and vision, pain and joy must enter the everyday if there is to be deep healing. We must recognize and accept that the very experiences that set us apart, that others cannot fully know or understand, are experiences that reaffirm our humanity. Wrestling with that paradox is…
