BLACK BEAR

John LeKay: Can you please tell me about your cultural background and how you became interested in studying human behavior?

Self and Culture:

Black Bear: For me, this is a complicated question and is a journey in itself.  I didn't begin to understand "culture" until I sobered up in ‘78.  When we look at "culture", we think of indigenous culture, Native American culture, African culture, Chinese culture, etc., but we don't really understand what that means--there are many indigenous tribes all over the world, many Native American tribes, many tribes of Africa and South America and many Chinese tribal communities--each with their own languages, kinship systems, style of dress, arts and architecture.  Also, street gangs have their own culture.  But, what does that mean?  The same kinds of issues arise when we use the word "religions".

I have developed my own definition of culture since ‘78 through formal study in sociology, psychology, anthropology, Native American studies, and death and bereavement, and, finally through my own life experiences and journey toward finding  "self".  Culture evolves out of landscape and environment (both physical and social).  It is reflected in language, oral histories, architecture, arts  (which include music, dance, theatre, and the visual arts) clothing, and spiritual traditions and rites of passage, which invoke all of the above. For me, these last two are the most important.  They guide me in how I live my life.

I grew up in the early 40's on the Blackfeet reservation in northern Montana, on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains next to Glacier National Park.   At that time, there was still a strong and viable Blackfeet language and "traditional" way of life.  However, this was at the beginning of WWII and many young men were going away to war.  As the war went on, many other men and women left the "rez" for the urban areas of the west coast to work in the shipyards.  This was a beginning of an outward migration, which would be driven later by federal relocation projects.  In addition, speaking the language and following the Blackfeet spiritual traditions was suppressed.

My mother and father split up after one year. There was much drinking and partying, and multiple relationships followed.  My "culture" was one of alcoholism, fighting, and being shuffled around for care.  I did NOT learn my traditional ways.  Even to this day, I do not know what my own parents knew or did not know about Blackfeet traditions. From there I ended up in foster homes and boarding schools (Native American and non-NA).I also developed a bone disease in the hip that required hospitalization and lengthy times on crutches and leg braces for about five years beginning at age six.  At one time, I spent nearly a year in the hospital.  Since I could not put weight on my hip, I was strapped to a canvas-covered metal frame and could not move around. I do NOT remember my father visiting me at all.  My mother only visited a few times. Since there was no TV, only radio, or a Victrola, I had to go “inside” to entertain myself. Prisoners of war frequently talk about using this same technique for “survival of the soul”.  I also read a lot.  The following year I was in a foster home, still on the frame.

 

Now, to understand my perspective on "culture" and human behavior (psychology), one must know that children need love, nurturing and direction from their parents (not just in words, ie. you can’t tell them that you love them, and then beat them up and/or abandon them), a safe environment, and a supportive community.  This is essential for a "normal" development and is critical later in life for that person then, in turn, to provide good parenting to their children.

I did not feel I had the love, the nurturing, or the safe environment.  I did not feel wanted or worthy.  It took some time for me to sort out the issues and to understand what was going on with my family and tribe over those years and to be able to see what my parents had gone through and the kinds of choices they made.  Some choices they had no control over, for others I still hold them accountable, just as I hold myself accountable for not being there for my own children.

JL: So how did you first become interested in sociology and psychology, particularity death and bereavement? Was it something in your childhood that you wanted to understand, about your self, your upbringing, death in your family, or about others?

Black Bear: We all have experiences in our lives, good and bad, that profoundly affect us, but at the time we can’t put these in a context of sociology, psychology or any “ology”.

Haskell Indian Institute and The University of Kansas .

I left the Blackfeet reservation in ‘57 to attend Haskell Institute (a federal Indian boarding school in Lawrence, KS, now Haskell Indian University).  This turned out to be a major social change for me, a much-needed one that would serve me well in late years.  I was there for three years (as a junior and senior in high school and a boarder while attending the University of Kansas), which provided the stability of boundaries and three square meals a day.  In addition, there were over a thousand Native American students at Haskell each year from all over the U.S. and Canada.  This gave me quite a cross-cultural exposure to many different tribal languages and spiritual traditions.

 When I graduated, my father, who had been sober for a year, drove down to my graduation from Montana.  He got drunk and was thrown in jail.  For me, it was an old pattern and although it hurt, I blocked it out.  I went home to Montana with no real expectations of going to college.  No one in my family had ever graduated before.  At the end of the summer, I was notified that I had been awarded a National Merit Scholarship to Kansas University.  I chose to study at the William Allen White School of Journalism.  I had developed an interest in writing while being the sports editor for our high school paper.

Soon I began hanging out in the Student Union, where I worked part-time in the bowling alley.  I learned how to shoot a good game of pool.  When I was growing up, my father would take me to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and we bonded while shooting pool.  I began to go out, drinking more and going to class less.  I probably would have flunked out due to my partying had I not run out of money in the second semester of my junior year.

 

A girl that I had been dating and I became pregnant shortly thereafter, and I had to look for a job to support us.  We went to nearby Kansas City and I worked odd jobs until I found permanent employment working for the railroad.  I worked hard for them, speaking in terms such as, “We do this, we do that”.  After five years, I resigned to return to KU.  Although I had wanted to return to work for “my company” after graduation, I did not even receive a letter thanking me for my service.  That was my first lesson about “working for the man”.  This time, I majored in accounting and graduated in 1969.  Accounting paid well but did not feed my soul.

 

Holy Dog (traditional materials and techniques) -- 13"X11

 

Becoming a Federal bureaucrat and Alcoholic

In late 1970, I was selected as a Health, Education and Welfare Fellow and assigned to the Assistant Secretary Comptroller.  I spent a year in this position and learned much about federal programs and policies from a Cabinet level.   At the end of the fellowship, I was appointed to the Indian Health Service.

After three years, a divorce and another marriage, I went to the University of Oklahoma to pursue my Master’s of Public Health in Hospital and Health Administration, and again returned to IHS in Washington, D.C.  One major problem is that I was drinking more and more.

Crownpoint – Service Unit Director

I transferred to Crownpoint, New Mexico on the Navajo reservation in ‘76 as a Service Unit Director (Hospital Administrator).  This was a life-changing experience for me.  Yes, I was still drinking, but I also truly cared about good health care delivery.  I was responsible for health services to 14,000 Navajo people over a 44,000 square mile very rural area.  My forte was that I thought like a community health planner.  I looked at the way people inter-acted.

One of my critiques of IHS is that the health care system is hospital-based, and that people in need of health care have to come to the hospital for services.  There is one problem here.  The Navajo seemed to see the hospital as a place to die, not to heal.  That appeared to come out of cultural taboos about death and dying.  If someone died in a hogan (their traditional dwelling) they would burn the hogan--for sure, they would not re-enter that space.  They saw too many people dying in the hospitals.

I believed that service providers needed to be proactive, and to take the services to the people.  Winters in these very rural areas make transportation, even for basic subsistence needs, very difficult.

Recovering Alcoholic, Post-Indian Health Service, and Involvement in Community

When I sobered up, I was working in Research and Analysis in Tucson, AZ.  I began to be more aware of life and living in communities, not just seeing them as “systems” or statistics.  I found that I didn’t like myself, my friends, or my job.  I did not want to live and die a governmental bureaucrat.  So, I quit my job, and moved to New Mexico.  I applied for graduate school at the University of New Mexico.  I wanted to study Psychology, but I was told I had no grounding in the social sciences.  Anthropology also turned me down.  Sociology took me in.

I also married a Santa Clara Pueblo woman and lived in the pueblo, north of Santa Fe.  It was there that I began learning about a “specific” indigenous culture and primarily through observing their ceremonial cycles and their art. As an “outsider”, I could not participate, but, I was required to follow their social norms.

It was here that I began to learn how to be a potter.  The discipline of creating beautiful forms from clay that I have personally dug from our mother, the earth, helped me to “center myself”.  Using traditional materials and techniques, as opposed to buying pre-made or mixed materials, is hard work.  My Gia (mother in the Tewa language) taught me to pray and give thanks when digging the clay, and to think good thoughts when creating.  The “clay mother” would help me to sustain myself.  These lessons still help guide me in all that I do today.  www.blackbear-pottery.com

 

While working on my doctorate in Sociology, I was also learning more about the local tribes and their cultures.  I was involved in Indian education issues.  I helped organize a major protest when the Federal government tried to close the Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque.  This protest lasted over two years.  The energy and involvement of gathering individual and community support was incredible.  We had relay runs in each of the four directions and ran through the individual villages--Navajo, Pueblo, Zuni and Hopi.  We ran from Albuquerque to Taos to the north and from Albuquerque to Hopi to the west.  In the end, we were successful and SIPI is still open today.

I personally learned many lessons from my involvement with the protest, far more than with my study of Sociology.  As an “older” student, I found that the younger students looked to me as a leader and role model.  I had to be responsible.  This, in some ways, was new to me and having to be responsible for others was scary.  Protest energy, in some ways, is like an addiction--one gets all geared up for the fight--when it’s over, one is looking for another one.  You cannot wind up young people and then run them into walls.

After learning that the federal government was going to keep SIPI open, we planned a celebratory 10K run.  It was the morning after my written and oral exams.  That night, a young Pima girl committed suicide.  Needless to say, we were devastated.  We helped out with the mourning ceremonies and counseling.

The next week, five of us from UNM sat down and talked about the need to get more involved in the things that were affecting our young people, such as the suicides, alcoholism, violence in the family and communities, sexual abuse, and abandonment, not just the exciting and “popular” things.

 

 

Research in Suicide Prevention Among Native American Youth

Up until this point my research in sociology had focused on the use of symbols and images of indigenous peoples, cross-culturally, for design application with my pottery.

I began doing research on suicide, suicides among Native American youth, death and bereavement.  It took all the energy out of me.    One night I sat by a campfire with a Navajo elder friend, who happened to be a “roadman” in the Native American Church.  At that time there had been 13 suicides in a three-month period on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.  It was difficult to comprehend.  So I asked “Che” (grandpa, in Navajo), about why these young people were committing suicide.  He simply said, “We don’t talk about death.”  At that moment I thought, how can you not talk about death with all these young people taking their lives?  I knew enough not to question him more.  I had to figure out what he meant myself.

There were many other  “lessons” in the years following this conversation.  I found that communities too often looked outside for someone else to solve their problems.  For Indian people, this usually meant the Federal government in the form of services, programs, community centers, etc.

I know now that we have to address the problems ourselves.  They are our children.  If we take the time to listen, the young people will tell us what is the matter--alcoholic parents, family violence, abandonment, sexual abuse, and incest, to name a few.  So, who has to change?  “We,” the parents, have to change and to make different lifestyle choices.  We are role models for our youth.  We have to teach them how to have good parenting skills.

Also, we cannot tell them how dangerous the use of alcohol or drugs is and then “use” ourselves.  When I am asked by a community “in crisis” about what they can do to stop the suicides, I tell them that there is one thing that would reduce the incidence nearly 50%, or higher.  They want to know, of course, and I say, “Stop drinking!”  Each individual can exercise that choice.  They act as if that is not a choice.

On Healing and My Personal Journey Toward Healing

After my years of formal research on suicide, death and dying, and bereavement, I realized how little I knew of my own tribal spiritual traditions.  I knew a little of this and a little of that about many different tribal “healing” traditions, but nothing about my own!  In the late 80’s I committed to returning to the Blackfeet reservation.  I had grown up there and still knew many individuals and families.  I talked with some friends that I knew who still carried on the spiritual ceremonies and sought out elders, including George and Molly Kicking Woman and Buster Yellow Kidney.  I approached Buster with an offering and when he asked, “What is it that you want?”, I responded, “I am ignorant but want to learn”.

I spent much of the next two years working with Buster and his sons, helping out with sweatlodges, preparing each year for the annual Sundance, and doing whatever else was needed.  Some of the “elders” were as many as fifteen years younger than I was!  Each year is a cycle of preparation for ceremony, for self and for the community – that is what tradition is about.  I also danced.  I had come home!

 

 

JL: What are the signs or clues prevention for suicidal behavior that parents or anyone else needs to look out for?

Black Bear: Here, I suggest that you look at my website, under the Suicide Prevention link, and Warning Signs.  Basically, they say, PAY ATTENTION to your children.  You can tell when they are hurting.

JL: Psychiatrists have one of the highest suicide rates. Why do you think this is?

Black Bear: I am sure that most psychiatrists understand the need to protect themselves from the pain they take on from their patients, and the necessity to “cleanse themselves”. In my humble opinion, I think those that do not are themselves at high risk for suicidal ideations.

Another possibility is that many people  who work in the counseling field, and have become psychologists and psychiatrists, become interested in that field of study because they themselves are "in need"
 

JL: What are your thoughts on some of these depression medications that may have been the cause for suicides in teens?

Black Bear: Our whole society over-medicates itself.  It helps some, and it is used to numb others.

JL: What is the difference between a cry for help and a legitimate attempt at someone killing themselves?  Is it in the method or technique they use?

Black Bear: We must take all suicide gestures seriously!  But, generally, one can assume, the more lethal the method, the more serious the attempt. Sometimes, the attempt is more of a cry for help, "I am hurting, listen to me!"  And, if we are lucky, we get another chance to reach out to them.

JL: There seems to be an abnormal suicide rate amongst teens in many of the poor reservations across the US. Why do you think this is and have you worked with any of these kids?

Black Bear: First let me say that suicide comes out of “the human condition” and it is not a specific Native American problem.  We all suffer the emotional pain of loss of loved ones, broken relationships, and low self-esteem.  Then we add other factors, such as abandonment, sexual abuse, economic deprivation, historical trauma (effects of genocide and colonialism), alcoholism, drug addictions and drinking and drug use among young people, and we can easily see why it is so high.

Again, we know this is going on in our families and our communities, but we continue to look to the federal government (Indian Health Service and their mental health programs) or someone else to take care of our problems.  Unless we, ourselves, truly address these problems, the suicide rates among Native American peoples, will continue to be higher. 

 

Life, Art and Healing, and Ceremony

Once again, I quote from my website:

“Death is a very powerful symbol and we cannot talk about it in an idle, or casual way, as it will bring "bad energy" around and people will become ill.  In our Native ways, we are provided guidelines for dealing with death and loss--IN CEREMONY!  We are told that when the ceremony is completed, that we must "let go" so that the spirit can cross over. If we hold on too hard, or too long, we prevent the spirit from going to the "spirit world".  It will hang around and may make us, or someone else in our family or community, sick.”

This was the revelation from the Navajo/Dine’ elder, who said, “We don’t talk about death”.  It took me some time to understand what he was saying, or, what I think he was saying.

We have to let go and focus on life and living.  I am more concerned about those who are still here!  How do we help them heal from such a psychic trauma?  How do we intervene with those who are at high risk?

This same principle is central to healing from all psychic traumas.  We cannot suppress, we must process, and “let go”.  If we stay “in our heads”, then that negative /dark energy will get stronger.  And, if we are “in ceremony”, and the purpose is to have the personification of the illness/dis-ease removed from us, we are told we cannot revisit it, and we must let it go.  The lesson is that if we start thinking about it again, the illness/disease will come back.

We cannot just be “cured”!  To heal we must also be involved--to give of ourselves, to prepare--that is the journey, that is the process.  Ceremony initiates the transformation and “celebration”.

Here again, there are insights into ceremony as “therapy” that come through understanding how psychology works.  Our ancestors/elders knew this when they sought people who had “healed” from tragic losses, or had suffered through severe illnesses/diseases.   Frequently, the traditional “healer”/shaman was required to have been “struck by lightning” or had some other near-death experience.  Those who have experienced such a transformation, can never go back, because now they have “the knowledge”, the understanding, and hopefully, the wisdom to help others.

Some tasks that must be addressed are, to acknowledge that we are powerless to help ourselves, to process and “face” or “see” the psychic trauma that has made us sick, to let go, and then to get on with living life the best we can.  It does not mean that the events did not happen, or that we will ever be able to forget them, it simply means that we have “healed”, or, are “in healing”.

One additional task that must be done is to recognize that there is so much power and energy consumed in holding onto (suppressing) that negative and psychic “hurt” that when it is “let go” or removed, we must replace that dark energy with something positive.

 

Black Bear pots (photo by Wes Allen)

 

Art and the Healing Process

In order to understand the relationship between art and the healing process, we must understand how we respond to symbols and images used in the arts.  This requires us to look at how cells communicate, because this is key to comprehending our emotional and psychic  psychic response to symbols such as a Christian cross, or, an image depicting the devil.

Cell communication -- Cells have memory. They communicate (send signals) to each other by a bio-chemical process involving the production of hormones to stimulate cellular “action”.  Cells receive these “signals” through receptors.  These in turn communicate with other cells, resulting in systemic responses of the immune, nervous, circulatory, digestive systems, etc.

These signals are triggered by outside stimuli. Fear and anger can affect our immune and digestive systems, leaving us open to infection and inflammation.  Fear and doubt can impact the effectiveness of medications or other treatments given to us.  Positive expectations can facilitate healing and let medications do what they were intended to do, even when the “medication” is a placebo.  Suppression of shame and guilt can also create the conditions for various illnesses, including depression, cancers, and eating disorders.

It stands to reason that if we can effect change by using the stimuli of symbols and images that create “positive”, “warm”, “healing” responses, as opposed to those that are “negative”, “cold”, or “dis-ease”, then we should explore ways to do this.  Yet, therapies involving meditation, spiritual grounding, and understanding of self, often seem to be relegated to “folklore” and myth, and are thereby deemed something “lesser”.  Perhaps they are less profitable than the surgery and drugs favored by today’s “science” and health care systems?

Our bodies receive stimuli through our senses. There are five—smell, touch, sight, hearing, and taste, although some include “intuition” as a sixth sense.  Like all life forms around us, our survival is/was dependent upon the acuteness of our senses and paying attention to what they are telling us.

When my grandfather would take me out in the high meadows of Heart Butte Mountain, on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, he would tell me to “still myself” and I would “see” or “hear”.  I found that when we focus on looking at a particular object, all the other visuals would become blurred – much like the focus of a camera.  Or, if we try to hear one particular sound, we don’t hear the other sounds -- they become “noise”.  By “stilling myself” and not focusing on any one particular thing, I would begin to see a movement in the trees, or a color or the form of a deer standing there, or the “chatter” of the birds or squirrels would tell me about the presence of a bear, or something/someone else.  So, too, each animal has its own particular smell and those smells become stronger when it has fear or is aggressive.   

Unfortunately, along with “progress” and our advanced perception of “civilization”, comes an almost complete loss of the use of these senses. Reliance on technologies such as cell phones, iPods, sound systems, TV’s, etc., as well as noise from autos and other machinery, has destroyed our ability to “hear”.  We are also a society of fast food eaters who demand high amounts of sodium, sugar, and fat, which has affected our senses of smell and taste.  We hardly know what our vegetables taste like anymore.  Add in our desire not to smell like who we are.  We use incredible amounts of deodorants, mouthwashes, perfumes, etc.  And, sight?  A cacophony of visuals!!  You get the idea--our powerful senses are hopelessly dulled.

On the other hand, whenever I smell fresh coffee and the wood-smoke of my woodstove, it brings back memories of waking up in my grandfather’s mountain cabin and smelling his woodstove and the boiling coffee – what a wonderful memory!

Here we turn to tribal spiritual ways, which provide us guidance and grounding in using symbols and images to heal traumas and instill well- being. Ceremony is ultimate theatre, as it makes use of all the senses.  Regardless of the spiritual tradition/religion, cleansing of sacred space is necessary, and the smells of incense, copal, sage or cedar do this.  When we hear the sounds of bells, chants, song, or drum, we “enter” the sacred space.  Visually, we see the icons and murals of the great cathedrals, or experience the “womb of our mother earth” (sweatlodge).

Likewise, arts and healing techniques use symbols and images to stimulate our senses and, in turn, our minds and bodies.  One objective is to enable an individual, group, or whole community to “see”, to “hear”, and to “feel” things that they have long suppressed, or chosen to avoid, in a controlled and healing environment--they must feel safe.  Fearful images can then be replaced with hopeful, nurturing ones.  There is a distinct difference in my mind between  “arts and healing” and art therapy, however.  Contemporary art therapy focuses on diagnostics, while arts and healing is primarily concerned with “processing” trauma with the emphasis on helping the person heal.

 

Black Bear and Joy Bear in Meersburg, Germany, with the Kentucky Institute for
International Studies program

 

Some Examples of Arts and Healing

The prevalence of alcoholism in families and communities is devastating.  Today, rampant drug use magnifies the violence, sexual abuse, alcoholism, and abandonment, deepening the feelings of hopelessness.  Young people have difficulty in speaking out about this to their parents (often the ones who are using and abusing) and those in authority.  They do talk to other young people, and those other young people are more aware of what is going on with them.

Theatre becomes a wonderful way for them to “tell their stories”.  For example, the young people work with a playwright and drama coach in writing the script.  They can describe their memories and feelings they have of growing up in an alcoholic environment, either in their family or immediate community.  The “characters” are their parents, friends or other relatives, and frequently include tribal council members and other “leaders” in their community.

Parents and community are invited to the performance.  Acting out the “story” in front of this inclusive audience is a very powerful tool.  The youth get to “express” their psychic trauma, and frequently those who have perpetrated the wrongdoing see the result of their actions.  It is suppressed no more!

My wife, Joy (an art historian who has a history of Crohn’s, an auto-immune disease) and I used to conduct “art and the healing process” workshops at the Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico.  A week’s time to work with young people or elders provided us the opportunity to get to know them some, and to be able to build trust.  They need to feel safe.

We begin workshops with an opening prayer ceremony around a campfire.  We are all a part of the circle.  During the week, we talk about the psychology of psychic trauma and the need for processing it.  We do exercises using various media (colored pencils or markers, collages, etc).  Each participant is asked to keep a journal.  Writing poems or letters is another way of helping people express themselves.  During the week we ask participants to write a poem or letter to “someone” they feel has wronged them.  Many times the person has died, years before.  They are told they do not have to read what they have written aloud or share it. They are given the option to share if they want to, however, and that is why feeling safe is important.  It helps that none of us know who they are or their histories.

A final fire circle ceremony closes the week.  It is always emotional.  After a prayer and smudging with sage, a volunteer begins and shares their story.  A poem, letter or objects made during the week can then be read or explained, or, not.  They can choose to keep these, or, offer them to the “spirits”, and most do.  This is one way of “letting go”.  They have “expressed” their feelings of anger or fear or resentment, and in this way exposed and diffused them.  Now they are given the opportunity to see them burn and go up in smoke to the Creator.

A third example utilizes a slightly different approach, and is a little more visual. We use one part of this exercise as a “getting acquainted” activity. We begin by having participants close their eyes and “still themselves”, then take an inward “journey” back in time to a period when they were 6-12 years old and were really, really happy.  They must “visualize”, using all their senses.  What do you see?  Where were you?  Who was there with you?  What time of the year was it?  What are the colors?  What are the smells?  The question we are asking is, “What was it that made you feel really, really happy?

It is amazing that over the many years that I’ve been working at this, I have found that there is almost never a mention of “material things” (money, toys, electronics, etc.).  They speak of feeling “safe” and enjoying playing outside (largely in parks, in the trees, along streams or lakes, “in the country”).  For me, the Rocky Mountains were always a presence to the immediate west--that was “home”!  The participants also talk of friends and/or family members being there.  The bottom line is that they felt loved and nurtured in a safe environment!

 Next, each participant traces the profile of their body on butcher paper.  The reluctance to draw (many do not feel they are artists or can draw) is overcome by combining drawing with collage.  We provide magazines and ask that they look at these very quickly and tear out images that catch their eye.  It is critical that they don’t “think” about why they are choosing those particular images--just tear them out.

We then ask them to tell their story, using the images they have torn from the magazines. They place the images on their profile, and can supplement them with drawings, poetry, etc.

Each participant may share their response to the images chosen and what they mean to them within the context of their life story.  Usually, there is a mixture of good and positive images.  Many images trigger responses to life experiences that were traumatic.  These experiences caused them to move away from that time when they were “really happy”.  We have to be careful here to watch for emotional reactions to psychic “hurts”/trauma.

Building on the full-body profile, we move to a more healing and rebuilding step in the last exercise.  We ask them to reflect on the week and discussions/sharing and to add to their profile images that illustrate what is missing in their lives and what they would like their life to be like.  When they look at their past in images, do they have a better understanding of how their life’s traumas have affected them and what direction they want for their future?  Can they create that future in symbols and images?

I once asked my tribal elder about whether I was “permitted” to conduct sweatlodges.  I have sat in the lodge and frequently been a helper for over forty years.  He asked me, “If someone dies in your lodge, can you bring them back to life?”  It was another one of those “pray on it, and the answer will come to you” moments.  I remembered something I had learned from my research on healers/shaman of long ago, when I was doing my research on suicide, death, dying, and bereavement.  The old-time healer/shaman would “know” if a person had suffered serious psychic trauma--so terrible that they could not “face” the pain.  A primary concern was that if they were to “see” that what had injured them (the assault, the event, the terrible loss, etc.), that they would go “mad”, and that they would be lost forever!  Instead, in a curing ceremony, usually with supporting family and sometimes community present, the healer/shaman would “make the journey” for them--to “seek the face” of the psychic trauma, and to “bring back the soul of the one who had been injured”.

While there are many well-meaning individuals who have “prepared” and given “the right” to conduct ceremonies, there are also many who abuse that “right”.  There are many many more who do ceremony without proper instruction, preparation, and have not been given “the right” to conduct them.  I am still careful whom I sit in the sweatlodge with.

When approaching the use of symbols and images in the arts or in arts and healing workshops, the same care must be exercised.  I tell my students in art classes that symbols and images are powerful. And, we as artists have the power to express ourselves, using those symbols and images.  Therefore, we have a responsibility to use that power wisely-- we may injure people and that is not our purpose.

 

Black Bear and Joy Bear with Dia del Muerte (Day of the Dead) installation on
"Memories of Those Lost to Suicide"

 

In closing, and, yes, there has to be some sort of closing, no?  I guess, I have the liberty of sharing some advice on life and living, being blessed with surviving more than a few trials in that journey.

We are human beings and must never forget that we share this earth with many other species of two-leggeds, four-leggeds, the birds, the plants, and those that fly above, crawl upon and beneath this earth.  We are no better.  We are all truly related.

Yet, we have the quality of being able to “think” and justify doing what we want to do.  Ultimately, we have to be held responsible for our actions.  We are role models for our children and grandchildren.  And, as the elders say, we have to plan for the seventh generation, yet to come.  So, we must choose to examine ourselves, our life-styles, and make responsible choices.

All my relatives,

Black Bear