Ways
of Knowing™ Symposium: Exploring Cultural Based Healing Traditions & Practices
Panel: Integrating Cultural Based Healing Traditions
and Practices with Conventional Care
Moderators Dr.Marilyn Schlitz and Dr. Stanley
Krippner
Members Paul Schultz, Ojibeway, White Earth Carson
Gardner, M.D., White Earth PHC
Sharon
Day, Exec. Director, Indigenous
Peoples Task Force Sandra Dliason, Center for Cross-Cultural Health
Carson Gardner, MD
Carson shared with us his own story: He came
home late one summer evening from his rural family practice, and
was late and in low spirits. He parked and got out in the
driveway, astonished to see a full grown Blue Heron standing on
the front steps. He didn’t know what to do, so he sat
down in the drive and stared at the Heron for 2-3 minutes, until
it took off and flew to the edge of the woods. He ran over
there immediately, but it was nowhere to be found. Feeling
like this was a sign, he then went out and bought a lottery ticket,
but it didn’t hit. The next morning at 6am, his Great
Dane barked alerting him to the Heron’s return. It
was back on the front stoop once again. It flew off again,
disappearing into the woods where he couldn’t find it. This
time he listened to the message that some kind of change was called
for, and he quit his job and took a position on White Earth. He
stated he “was looking for healing.” He
had had no preparation to join the community, but he invited himself
to Paul’s sweat lodge. Carson closed by saying “I
am a patient of Paul’s. I found healing there.”
Paul Schultz, Ojibeway,
White Earth
Paul spoke about the importance of us allowing alternative ways
of knowing and practicing to integrate the way it was always
meant to do in human health care. In
his tradition, individualization of care has gone on for thousands of years. When
the Indian Health Services came into the reservations to provide medical care,
they treated the native people like children and devalued their practices. So
the challenge now—“How to impact the clinics and physicians working
there to create change?” In the southwest, traditional healers began
to join teams of health care providers for Indian Health, e.g. in the care of
veterans dealing with PTSD. On White Earth Reservation, here in MN, change
began when the local physician reached out to ask to join Paul in ceremony. That
one gesture by that one doctor began to change everything. They are newly
defining mutual respect in the relationship. They find that praying and
cleansing (with sage) over the medications increases the effectiveness of medical
interventions. The indigenious healer is recognized as just as important
and effective as the medical doctor. This kind of respectful relationship
can be built anywhere, and these inroads to integration can be replicated!
Sharon Day
Sharon presented a brief power point show on the
20 year history of the community-based non-profit venture, Indigenous
Peoples Task Force, with the goal of increasing the health and
well-being of native peoples. In MN there are 11 reservations
(7 Ojibwe, 4 Dakota.) One program of which she spoke
is the Woybinagay Smoking Cessation research project for native
women. It is culturally-based, provides a circle within a
circle of support for women, evaluates the effects of cultural
practices, and works to build trust within and between communities. Assessment,
education, ceremony, meditation, making of medicine pouches, acupuncture
and massage are all parts of this program. Tobacco was these peoples’ first
medicine, and when the pipe ceremonies were banned, smoking cigarettes
became a historical protest behavior. This quitting program
needed to acknowledge all of these past and current issues, and
create a new relationship for them with tobacco.
Sandra Eliason, MD
Through 20 years in Family Practice, Sandra saw a lot of changes
and increasing frustration in both the patients and the practitioners. She
wanted to know how to have an intra-cultural model in medicine,
and did a Bush fellowship to create such a model. The Center
for Cross-Cultural Health arose from these efforts. She
raised the issues about our language, about our intentionality. She
emphasized the importance of learning to take time to listen,
and HEAR what are the true needs and wants of the patient.
In closing comments, Dr. Krippner suggested that
perhaps instead of seeking a “melting pot” approach
to integration, we needed to shift our imagery and intention to
creating a mosaic, with the honoring of all components.
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Moderators 
