Two scenes from a past White Bison Conference.  Left, the Sacred 100 Eagle Feather Hoop, a sacred element present at all White Bison events.  Right, Participants visit with a Presenter and each other after one of the morning keynote presentations.

The Story of the Three Sisters

A story told by Don Coyhis, Mohican Nation, Founder and President of White Bison

Three Indian sisters were walking down a path talking amongst themselves and they came to a river. As they were talking they heard a noise. They looked in the water and they saw babies coming down the river in the water. Some were struggling and some had already passed away. The first woman said O Great Spirit! and ran into the river clothes and all. She started grabbing the babies and passed them up on shore to the other sisters. Her thoughts were, “I’ve got to rescue them.” There were so many coming down the river that she turned to her sister and said, “Come in here and help.” So the next sister ran in with her clothes on. As the sister came into the water she thought, “I could save more if I could train them.” So she picked a baby up and gently placed the baby back into the water while she moved the baby’s arms back and forth. Then she put that baby on the shore and she picked up another one and repeated the process. She was teaching them how to swim. So the first sister was rescuing the babies and the second sister was training them. But they still couldn’t keep up. They both asked the third sister to come into the water and help. But the third sister stood there for a long time and her thoughts were running to, “How come these babies are coming into the river in the first place?" When she had that thought she took off running upriver to see what was going on there. Her thoughts were different. She went upriver to see if she could prevent the babies from entering the river and then washing down. The three thoughts of this story are: we still have to rescue, we still have to train, but if we don’t go upriver and do something through prevention to break that cycle of alcohol and other drug abuse, we’ll still lose too many. It’s not just breaking the cycle individually, but the community has to break the cycle at the community level. It’s a community effort that’s needed.

So what does it mean to go upriver in the prevention of alcohol abuse in our communities? Well, take for example, the new Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, which just opened in Washington, DC in September of 2004. There is a system in place that allows alcohol to be sold at the Museum. I can’t think of any way to change that policy because there is a wall of protection guarding that system. You can’t change it with letter writing. Our communities have been harmed by alcohol throughout the whole period portrayed by the Museum. So when our children come to the Museum they see the very thing that has hurt us being served in the restaurants. All the many sacred artifacts and elements of our people that are housed in the museum are right next to alcohol. We have to take a stand on this and other issues by going upriver to break the cycle at the community level.

The 2005 Wellbriety Conference is On Its Way!

This year’s White Bison Wellbriety Conference is about hearing from grassroots communities across the nation. It’s about keeping the babies from being thrown in the river of alcohol, drugs, and family violence in the first place. It means picking up and holding those babies before they even get close to the river. Who would let an infant get close to a river without the presence of an adult or an older child anyway? In this year’s conference we are finally working our way up river to where some of the sources for community unhappiness lie. We are ready to place some safety nets at the community level more than ever before. The Three Sisters story is an inspiration for the Fifth Annual White Bison Wellbriety Conference to be held in Denver, Colorado from April 21-24, 2005.

From the first White Bison Conference in Colorado Springs in 1999, these Wellbriety gatherings have been times of healing, learning, inspiration, visiting and just plain fun. This year’s Conference will be no different. We at White Bison are always grateful for the funding support of SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services. This year we are also fortunate to be supported by a grant from CSAT, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, in the SAMHSA family. Thanks once again CSAT! There are always multiple learning and participation tracks taking place at White Bison Wellbriety Conferences. Here is what you can expect this year:

• Hoop Ceremonies
• Veteran’s Color Guard-grand entry every day
• Presenters and Presentations on two separate mornings
• Elders and an Elder’s Panel participation
• Youth Activities from the Wellbriety for Youth Program
• Learning and Discovery Circles on two separate afternoons
• Introducing the new Warrior Down Program
• Introducing the new Warriors for Children of Alcoholics Program
• Introducing the new Project Venture
• 12 Step meetings to start the day
• Vendors to share Native art, craft and innovation
• Resource tables for take-home information
• One or more Wellbriety Drums
• A Wellbriety powwow
• An Awards banquet, with entertainment
• And the memorable all-conference Sunday morning closing Talking Circle

Want to know more right now?

First, download the Conference Brochure by going to the White Bison Website www.whitebison.org and click on the Conference link on the home page.
Or receive a brochure by calling White Bison toll free at 1-877-871-1495 or 719-548-1000

Second, stay tuned to Wellbriety! Online Magazine through February, March and April, 2005 for interviews with some of the presenters and updates about what you’ll find at the conference.

This year’s conference will feature all-conference learning and discovery circles to take place on the afternoons of Friday, April 22 and Saturday, April 23. These sharing circles are the place for you the grassroots community participant, to stand up and present what’s working in health and healing in your community. They are also the opportunity for you, the Native American and Alaskan Native communities of Turtle Island to tell White Bison what you think White Bison should be focusing on to provide resources to Native communities in the coming years.

Want to know more about this right now? Read the next article by Don Coyhis in this issue of Wellbriety! Magazine.

See you in Denver in April!

Richard Simonelli
Editor, Wellbriety! Magazine

Wellbriety 2003, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Wellbriety ’05-The Grassroots Speaks

Don Coyhis, Founder and President of White Bison, Inc., talks about some of what will happen at the 5th Annual White Bison Wellbriety Conference from April 21-24, 2005 in Denver, Colorado.

From Remarks by Don Coyhis

Don Coyhis

If the community is to heal, it must heal itself. The community knows what’s broken and knows how to fix it. Instead of having a conference where we only come and say to the people what the issues are, we want to hear from the grassroots what THEY say are the issues. We want to know from them because they are living in them. The Discovery circles and the What is Working circles to be held at the Conference are a way to make sure we are working on what the community says is broken. Not what we think is broken. Those circles will take place on Friday and Saturday during the conference. What we are trying to do is to attract programs that people are using in their communities to address various issues that have community-wide approval in the sense that the community agrees, “this is what needs to be done.”

When the communities themselves come forward and talk about what they see that needs to happen, it doesn’t only tell White Bison what to work on. There will be a number of other agencies and groups at the Conference that will benefit from what they say. We would like to take that data and make it available on our website so others can see, “This is what the grassroots is saying.” We plan to produce a Red Paper from the grassroots community sharing that takes place during the Discovery circles on Friday and Saturday of the Conference. You know that “white papers” are written by organizations to present their viewpoints. Well, ours will be called Red Papers.

We hope to also talk about the rebirth of NANACOA at the conference. Its new name will be Warriors for Children of Alcoholics. We will be letting the old NANACOA go but re-visioning it for this new century and for the Wellbriety Movement. In choosing a new name that includes Warriors, it means that the warriors have to go fight for the children of alcoholics. It’s a more active idea than just being a “National association.” So we’ll leave that old name behind and go forward into new century thinking. The new Warriors for Children of Alcoholics will still function in the tradition of NANACOA.

At this year’s conference we will have keynote speakers and presenters in the mornings, and we will have the grassroots circles in the afternoons. In the morning they will tell us what the issues are, and in the afternoon the people will tell us what the solutions are. It’s a Step 1 –– Step 2 process. This two-step approach helps us increase our odds of finding the truth about what we really need to work on and not to depend on statistics, data, and numbers that may not come from our community. We use data to make decisions, but nobody asks the people what we should be working on. All of the White Bison programs, like Sons of Tradition, Daughters of Tradition and others, are not our ideas. They are what the people told us we needed to do next. Once again, we have to come back to the people so that the Wellbriety Movement is doing what the people want it to do.

It’s possible to drift away and work on the wrong things if the people don’t tell us what they need. So many organizations make decisions about what to work on depending on whatever is being funded by grants. Organizations, including White Bison, change and modify what we are working on based on what the government wants. Our Sons and Daughters of Tradition program are in high demand in Indian country but none has been approved and funded. But we did get a call from one of the government committees to send all of our products, curriculums and workbooks to see if they would be funded. So we did it backwards. Instead of getting funding or approvals first, we just went ahead and did it. Now they are asking us to send in something that they never would have approved before. That’s the power of the grassroots.

As this new time comes upon us, White Bison wants to do what the Movement is asking us to do. It’s not a White Bison thing, it’s a Movement thing. We are asking for a large representation from people of many different tribes to come to the Conference and tell us what the Wellbriety Movement needs to work on in the next 5 to 10 years. This is White Bison’s commitment: If you come to the conference and tell us what is broken in your community, we will listen. If you tell us, “This is what you need to work on,” we will hear you. From this, our future conferences in the next four years will be based on what the grassroots tells us in April, 2005.

This year’s conference in April will send a few strong messages for the people to take home to their communities. The first is that the community has the power to recover and to thrive. Recovery is not only possible, but is a reality. People in recovery do incredible things once they hitch into recovery. The second message is that our Indian culture itself is Prevention. If you implement the principles, laws and values of your culture you have a Prevention program.

From Past White Bison Wellbriety Conferences

	Ceremony
	Presenters

Elders	Community Groups
Vendors
Resources	Youth
Wellbriety Powwow	Traditional Dance
Wellbriety Drum	Honoring