Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness
Phoenix Indian School
Phoenix, AZ, May 27, 2009
Entering a Prayer Space During the Phoenix, Arizona Visit
A view of participants
at the Phoenix gathering. “I’m always amazed how much people open their hearts at these events,” Jeff Woolley reflected a few days after the Forgiveness Journey event in Phoenix. “We had so many people giving testimony,” he said. “You could really feel the pain coming out and being released. There is such comfort and love present after that release. And to have the Hoop there at the end of the day, to put the finishing touches with a healing ceremony, was a beautiful way to end it.”
Jeff is a therapist at the Wassaja mental health clinic at Ft. Mc. Dowell Indian Reservation on the outskirts of Phoenix. Perhaps he saw something new enter an Indian counselor’s toolbox that day as people were empowered and encouraged to remember and to talk about their boarding school experience. “I feel the emphasis on historic and intergenerational trauma is a missing link, a missing piece that Don and White Bison are bringing out in the open. I’m in total agreement with his healing model and what he’s doing,” he concludes.
Nimrod Thomas, Sr. carries
the Staff in Phoenix. The Phoenix Indian School began its 99 year history in 1891 and finally threw in the towel in 1990, not all that long ago. Its span covered the very hurtful times to about 1970 or so, and then improved until disbanding. An early slogan of the school was, “Be a Phoenix Indian, not a reservation bum.” A careful look at a 1930’s photograph of the dining hall reveals another slogan: “There is no excellence without great labor.” If you think about it in the light of using education to destroy culture, it is a scary motto disguised as something visionary.
Each visit on the Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness naturally unfolds following the principles of what is sometimes called a shamanic journey. Each event day is actually a sacred healing ceremony when taken as a whole––a medicine journey. In a journey like this, a person goes down into the deepest reaches of him or herself, touches the necessary grief, and then comes back up. In Phoenix that day, some 320 participants came in out of 100+ degree Phoenix springtime heat to journey down to where the grief work could be done, and then back up into daylight.
Bernadine Burnnette delivers a keynote. The journey day began with grand entry of the Sacred Hoop, the Wellbriety Forgiveness Staff, and the Red Silhouette of Brandy Jo. The Fort McDowell Wellbriety Drum of the Yavapai Nation offered the heartbeat to take participants down into the earth for the grief work to come. The Hoop Carriers were, Larry Robinson, James Butler, Sabrina Chester, and Ruth Lopez. Nimrod Thomas, Sr. carried the Staff and James Butler’s daughter brought in Brandi Jo. An Opening Prayer was offered by Wayne Juste of the Salt River/Gila River community. Rory Majenty MC’d the day to make sure that what was supposed to happen did take place.
Our medicine journey unfolded as Bernadine Burnette, Vice President of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, keynoted a lively session in which she shared some of her own boarding school background and growing up. She feels that the teachings of the boarding schools were there for a reason. She never forgot where she came from or who she was. She said the boarding school taught her discipline that has been useful in later life.
The real heart work of the day began with the panel discussion and continued with sharing among community members at an open mic. We began to walk down into the mother earth –– the mother who can accept all stories.
Panel member Corey Hayes
shares at the event. Corey Hayes of the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community has been a good friend of the White Bison work since the late 1980’s. Corey was five years old when he first attended boarding school at the Stewart Indian School in Nevada. Coming from Arizona, his first shock was experiencing snow. He was confused at being there all alone. The students beat him up all the time in the dorms because he was different. He reports that he was kicked around by steel toes and got very angry. While he attended Stewart, he started using inhalants and drinking to get drunk. Instead of being a normal kid, he went the other direction. He later was thrown out of the boarding school, and achieved a “bad boy” status. Corey became addicted to alcohol but did the work of recovery. With Creator’s help, he is now clean. “You gotta heal yourself, gotta take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else,” Corey said.
Hedy Emery shares from the panel. Hedy Emery put her experience away and never spoke of it. She grew up Navajo. Her mother was Catholic and her father grew up in Apache Country. Ms. Emery brought up the issue of boarding school names. She says that children who went to boarding schools took on the teachers’ and principals’ names. Her father became Henry Green because Green was the principal at the school he attended. That’s why some Indian names sound anglicized, and last names sometimes sound like anglo first names. Ms. Emery entered boarding school in the second grade and continued through high school. She learned how to suppress her feelings and make them go away. She recalls having to kneel, getting her hair pulled, and having soap in her mouth. She grew up to be angry.
Fern shares during the open mic session. During the afternoon there was an open mic so that anyone at all could share. The kind of stories of the people who shared from the audience were similar to those of the morning panel.
Fern recalls running away from boarding school when she was five. She hated it. She recalls being yelled at and spanked all the time. Spankings became a ritual. The kids would get spanked for laughing because the teachers thought the kids were laughing at them. The teachers brought much shame on the children. They would tell her that she was filthy and smelled. There were many obstacles for Fern throughout her life because of this kind of shaming. Fern asked her children to forgive her. She explained that she didn’t have parents. Her parents were her boarding school teachers. They made her ashamed of her language. She always wished she didn’t have to ever attend school. When Fern shared with us it was a very emotionally engulfing experience. Fern was speaking from her heart––it was the beginning of healing for her.
The Closing Healing Ceremony at the Hoop. The day was drawing to a close, the medicine story of the entire gathering coming to its conclusion. What kind of an experience was it? Did it have an overall balance? We asked Jeff Woolley about this. “I thought it was balanced,” he said. “In these events, implicit in the way Don does them and the way we work with it, is a kind of prayer space. Even though people spend a lot of time talking about trauma, and that is intense, to me it was healing the whole time. The last hour or hour-and-a-half is the healing ceremony at the Hoop. A participant ends the day in personal silence at the Hoop with the Wellbriety Drum playing all the time.”
~ Forgiveness Journey Team
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