John Joseph

John Joseph, is with the Chinook tribe of the lower Columbia River, and a nurse practitioner in Washington State, helps Viet Nam veterans suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome, with the purification ceremony: "They have lost their spirituality, and this is a good way to help them find it. The lodge is a safe haven. No one can hurt them. Intrusive thoughts, the anxieties of the day, and the problems of living with post traumatic stress are left outside the door. They are able to speak about things that hurt them during the war and about things that hurt them when they came home. They are able to speak about the triggers that interfere with their lives today, even though it is 20 years later. They’re able to speak, cry, yell, regurgitate harmful emotions, and put them in the fire.

Joseph says that that true healing comes from being able to express oneself in a safe environment: "Everything said in the lodge remains there. Nothing is repeated outside of it. This gives a person a real opportunity to cleanse the heart, and to place things into the fire." He adds that the healing is amplified by being in the presence of the heated stones: "There is stone medicine, Inyan medicine; the sizzling and popping from the water on the stones actually gives a spirit direction. There’s wonderful healing in that."

"Many vets tell me that they feel considerably better for some period of time after they leave the lodge. Often they will come back and ask, ‘When are we going to do another lodge? I am absolutely stressed to the max.�?We do four, five, or six a year, sometimes more, depending on the number of requests.

"Once they start to get their spirituality back, their physical appearance changes. They start to keep their hair. They become neater in the way they dress. Their thought patterns become more cohesive, without constant intrusions. They can even think straight, in many cases. Sometimes children tell me that their dads sleep for two days after a sweat lodge, when they only slept two hours before. So, there’s a wonderful release, and a wonderful return of cohesiveness to their lives, after the purification lodge."

Jamie Sams

Jamie Sams is  Native American ....of Cherokee and Seneca decent, who explains that medicine has to do with anything that makes us feel whole. Indians view medicine as a person’s gifts, including their inner strengths, talents, and abilities. "When we look at the idea of medicine," Sams says, "we have to embrace the total person: the body, the heart, the mind, and the spirit. When any of these part are out of balance, then there is a need for healing."

The processes used in healing depend on the type of illness. First a person must be diagnosed to see whether their sickness is physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental. Then it is treated accordingly. When the body is sick, herbs, flowers, and other plant matter can be used to promote recovery. Mechanical help is also used, such as setting bones when broken. Spiritual illnesses are handled by medicine people who may work with a person’s dreams, or with what they experience on other dimensions that need to be healed. Some tribes also take into account the influence of past lives. Emotional healing for family upsets, a broken heart, or other problems, and psychological healing for mental illnesses are handled differently still. "Sometimes we need to heal our impatience," Sams says. "And sometimes we need to heal our frustrations. Many times we need to heal the internal criticism that our brain is constantly carrying on, which makes us feel less than. But always, we need to take a look at that which does not work in our lives, and makes our behavior out of balance towards ourselves and others." Here, Sams explains important principles of healing for specific circumstances:

Mourning

"In indigenous cultures, when someone that we care about is dying, there is a very intense need to mourn. When you don’t release the mourning, it will make you sick. Certain Anglo cultures have a different concept. If you release the mourning, you are looked at as if you lost control over your emotions. The spirit of the person who has passed away that you cared about is not then free to move on into the spirit world because the mourning was not complete. The people did not purge their bodies of this sense of grief." Sams adds that mourning to Native people is like a bow. The people moving on are the arrows. Mourning a loss allows the spirit to fly into its new non-physical life.

	"The culture, values and traditions of native people amount to more than crafts and carvings. Their respect for the wisdom of their elders, their concept of family responsibilities extending beyond the nuclear family to embrace a whole village, their respect for the environment, their willingness to share - all of these values persist within their own culture even though they have been under unremitting pressure to abandon them." Mr. Justice Thomas Berger, Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, (aka the Berger Inquiry).
	"Rather than going to church, I attend a sweat lodge; rather than accepting bread and toast [sic] from the Holy Priest, I smoke a ceremonial pipe to come into Communion with the Great Spirit; and rather than kneeling with my hands placed together in prayer, I let sweetgrass be feathered over my entire being for spiritual cleansing and allow the smoke to carry my prayers into the heavens. I am a Mi'kmaq, and this is how we pray." Noah Augustine, from his article "Grandfather was a knowing Christian," Toronto Star, Toronto ON Canada, 2000-AUG-9.
	"If you take [a copy of] the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone.  Our bible IS the wind." Statement by an anonymous Native woman.