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 Feather Down by
Sam English
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The
dark universe has images of various figures of animals
and humans, sometimes used in our clan systems. Sometimes
we pray to them, as to the eagle, who takes our prayers
up into the sky and releases those prayers to the creator
or spiritual figure. The feather down figure
is simply seeking consolation from the creator to account
for his suicide. The dancers
at the bottom surrounding the feather down depict how
we honor the passing of one who makes his or her journey
to the spirit world. We humans are
not judges, we are a people of spirituality, we believe
that our ceremonies, prayers and sacrifices for death
are a good way to grieve and honor the passing of a
spirit.
––Sam
English |
| Feather Down, a painting by Ojibwe artist
Sam English done to inaugurate the No More Fallen
Feathers Youth Suicide Prevention Program to be introduced at
the 6th Annual White Bison Wellbriety Movement conference
to be held in Denver, CO, October 27-29, 2006 |
What’s the vision behind White Bison’s
6th Annual Wellbriety Movement conference coming just two
months from now to Denver in late October? In a word, protective
factors, and to be even more precise, cultural
protective factors.
We talked with Don Coyhis, founder and
president of White Bison, Inc. to learn how cultural protective
factors can help youth and families stay clear of risky
behavior that might lead to suicide. Here’s what
he said:
“At the conference we will make participants aware
of what protective factors are, and what culturally-based
protective factors are. Sometimes we call these prevention
factors. In the Discovery Circles we will have participants
identify what their cultural protective factors are. As a
person grows, what you see is what you get. You could look
at yourself as just being bad and all screwed up. But if
someone starts to tell you you’re not all screwed up,
that there are many good things about you, then there’s
a way to go forward. Until somebody shifts your awareness
and you start to realize there’s been good there all
along, you might be at risk for hurtful behaviors, even suicide.
But if we realize we have a lot of strengths in our community
already, and if we focus on those strengths instead of focusing
on the fear factors, then risks can be reduced. What we want
to show in this conference is that prevention of suicide
for us as Native people is going to come from focusing on
the strengths that we already have and to develop some of
them a little bit further. It’s going to come when
we start producing knowledge about what enhances protective
factors for individuals before they are at-risk.”
Cultural Protective Factors
Protective factors often begin with family and community
role models in the earliest years of growing up. Don goes
on to say, “In the family some come from the mom,
some come from the dad, some come from the relatives. And
some come from the community. You are a product of you’re
environment in a way. We always hear, ‘I had this
Auntie…’ or ‘I had this grandpa…’ or ‘I
had this teacher…’ or ‘I had this person
who believed in me…’ Prevention of suicide
can come from the extended family.”
Cultural prevention factors can come from a community that
is in touch with and practicing its tribal culture. They
come from Elders who talk to the children long before they
might get in trouble. They can come from a community school
system that teaches language and culture from the earliest
grades, right alongside the skills children need when they
interact with the wider society. Prevention factors include
educational opportunities as well as the community economic
opportunities that lend stability to the community in the
first place.
Brief Interventions are a new kind of
protective factor that will be presented at the conference.
Brief interventions are a kind of short-term counseling
that can help youth get back on the right road if they
are starting to get lost. “If
you do an intervention early enough, the odds are very good
that you’ll stop or turn around drug use,” says
White Bison’s founder. “If you are able to recognize
suicidal thoughts, recognize depression and depressive behavior,
you can actually do an intervention there and stop that kid
from continuing the thinking that produces suicide.” It
will be up to the grassroots community to create cultural
Brief Interventions that fit the needs of each and every
tribal culture. Please see the page on Brief
Interventions in this issue for an introduction.
Preventing Suicide
Don makes a distinction between suicide prevention and prevention
of suicide. Suicide prevention refers to helping youth
who are already at risk for suicide. They may be expressing
suicidal thoughts and feelings, or acting out in ways that
say, “please help me now.” The community needs
to have people and programs in place to intervene right
away with a youth who is showing suicidal tendencies. It
is the community that puts into place a Brief Interventions
counselor for suicide prevention.
The prevention of suicide is more like
creating a healthy climate in the family and the community
so that youth never become risks for suicide in the first
place. Prevention of suicide is primarily the family’s task. Prevention
of suicide watches the thinking of children as they grow
up and makes changes right in early childhood and in the
pre-teen years if necessary. The prevention of suicide requires
that moms and dads, aunties and uncles, grandpas and grandmas
all be walking their own Red Road healing journey. That’s
the way to help the kids.
This conference will demonstrate how
the Healing Forest Model of the Wellbriety Movement works.
Through the many different keynotes, workshop presentations
and grassroots Discovery Circles, the gathering will show
just how it takes an entire community in healing to give
individuals a chance. One of those keynotes will be a presentation
by Don Coyhis on the Healing Forest Model. Prevention of
suicide is a multifaceted approach. If you just work with
the little youth trees to help them stay healthy, without
community cooperation you won’t be as successful
as when the community is in healing, too. But how can we
know if a community is ready to enter its own healing journey?
One way is through the Community Readiness Model.
There will be a Keynote address by Pamela
Jumper-Thurman a co-creator of the Community Readiness
Model. This measurement method assesses a community’s readiness to make changes
in any number of ways. It could be readiness to enter recovery
from drugs and alcohol. It could also be readiness to take
on its educational and economic development issues, so very
vital to long-term community healing. The community readiness
model can be applied to many different community issues.
To get a glimpse of what it’s about, please see the
page on the Community Readiness Model in this issue. To take
it back to your community and use it for healing, come to
the conference and learn from one of its designers.
This year’s conference will introduce a new White
Bison program that’s aimed directly at youth suicide
prevention. No More Fallen Feathers refers to the fact that
when an eagle feather is accidentally dropped during a ceremony
it’s a cause for alarm––but not for panic.
It’s important to pick that feather back up and to
do whatever it takes to see that there will be no more fallen
feathers. A warrior lost to suicide is like a fallen eagle
feather. Youth suicide is especially sad and that’s
what the No More Fallen Feathers youth suicide prevention
program is about. This new program is another protective
factor to debut at the conference.
Other Prevention Factors
The prevention of underage drinking and drugging is still
another protective factor participants will learn about
at the conference. What does it take in the family, in
the community, and at the level of tribal government to
protect our youth from access to drugs and alcohol, or
even the desire or perceived need to drink or drug? This
prevention factor will be the focus of the Youth Track
at the conference.
The October, 2006 conference will follow the effective and
very popular format of the April, 2006 Wellbriety Movement
meth conference (please see Wellbriety!
Magazine, Volume 7, #3). In particular, many of the White Bison programs and
other programs like Brief Interventions will be covered in
a series of nine concurrent tracks that take place on both
Friday morning and Friday afternoon. Then, on Saturday morning
there will be five grassroots Discovery Circles at which
you, the conference participants, are the experts. The Discovery
Circle topics during this conference are: Focusing on culture
as prevention of suicide.
The five circles will concentrate on 1) Individuals, 2)
Peers, 3) Family, 4) School, and 5) Community. The work of
the Discovery Circles on Saturday morning takes place in
group discussion, which is then summarized in mind maps and
special lists and tables. Each of the five Discovery Circles
presents its findings to an exciting all-conference session
on Saturday afternoon.
This is really just a quick look at some of
what will happen at the conference. For more detailed information
download the Conference
Agenda and the Conference
Promotional documents
from the White Bison website at www.whitebison.org.
A Positive Cultural Gauntlet
Life in our communities these days is difficult––especially
for the youth. Now both youth and adults must run a gauntlet
of so many different challenges. Imagine a traditional gauntlet
consisting of two lines of people holding staffs and whips
and other instruments of torture all aimed at the individuals
who must pass through this line to receive the punishment.
The instruments in this modern gauntlet are alcohol, many
different kinds of drugs, domestic violence, gangs, guns,
and other actual harming factors. The gauntlet also consists
of less obvious challenges such as internalized oppression,
low self-esteem, children of alcoholics (COA) behaviors,
negative media messages, lack of educational and economic
opportunities, and more. These are the fear factors and risk
factors that are all around us.
But what if there were a different kind
of gauntlet for ourselves and for the youth to run? A gauntlet
made up of protective and prevention factors, supporting
us rather than threatening and harming us? What if there
were a positive cultural gauntlet in our communities and
in our lives? Can we turn the image of the gauntlet around
to provide a vision for healing? This is Don Coyhis’s vision for Wellbriety
in today’s communities. He says, “Instead of
hitting them and wounding them, they won’t be able
to turn around without seeing supportive information. Take
a step and they’ll find the Medicine wheel and the
12 Steps. Take another step and the Warrior Down program
appears. Still another, and Sons and Daughters of Tradition
are right there. The further a person runs down the Gauntlet,
the more healing reinforcement will be available. This is
a positive cultural gauntlet that we can make happen for
our people. The schools will do it, the parents will be doing
it, the community will do it, and Native leadership will
offer these cultural protective factors to those who pick
up the challenge of a cultural healing gauntlet.”
Why
come to the 6th annual White Bison Wellbriety Movement
conference in Denver, Colorado from October 27-29 this year?
Here is what Larry Stillday of the Red Lake Nation said of
the last White Bison Conference, the conference on meth that
took place in Denver in April of 2006.
“All of us had that excitement and anticipation
of coming here. I did,” he said. “And I felt
that excitement, that joy, during the last two days. This
is a place where I get rejuvenated. Where I get validated.
It doesn’t have to be spoken in words. You just feel
it. I get embraced when I come here.”
Visit the White Bison website www.whitebison.org to get
more details about the conference. See you in Denver!
Richard Simonelli
Editor, Wellbriety! Magazine
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