Location
Founders' Room,  McConnell Center, Pitzer College.

Time
11:00 AM to 1:00 PM

Tom Ball, Ph.D.

Could Healers and Doctors Work Together to Heal American Indian Historical Trauma?

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Historical Trauma, has been described as the distress and suffering resulting from numerous compounding historically traumatic events experienced by a community over several generations (Yellow Horse Brave Heart, 1996b).  These historical traumas have enduring consequences.  Many First Nations people are now using the term “soul wound” or “wounded spirit” to describe the mental, physical and spiritual consequences the cumulative effect of 500 years of colonialism, genocide and oppression has had on our people. Can Native Healers and Western Doctors work together to heal AIAN peoples collective soul wound?  This presentation will surface some of the issues that this question raises.

Tom Ball, Modoc/Klamath is an enrolled member of the Klamath Tribes.  He received his B.S. in Education from Oregon State University in 1977, and his Ph.D. in Special Education and Rehabilitation from the University of Oregon in 1998.  Dr. Ball has taught school and served as Indian Education Coordinator for the Siletz Tribes; worked for the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board in various capacities for 10 years; the Klamath Tribes for 8 years as health researcher and planner; and served two terms on the Klamath Executive Committee and one as Tribal Chairman.  Dr. Ball is an adjunct faculty at Portland State University, teaching in the First American Education Series.  Dr. Ball is currently an associate researcher at the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, Oregon, serving as Co-Investigator on the Indian Family Wellness Project, Conference Coordinator for the annual Healing Our Wounded Spirits Conference, Principal Investigator on the Intergenerational Grief and Unresolved Trauma project, and Director of the Native American Research Center for Health.  Research interests include studying the effects of post colonial stress and historical trauma in Indian communities, and developing research capabilities at the tribal/community level. 

Tyler Barlowe, M.S.

Native American Spiritual Practice in a State Prison System

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

In 2003, almost 1000 different Oregon State prison inmates exercised their constitutional right to express and practice their faith by attending Native American ceremonies. Tyler has been actively involved in opening doors to help this movement grow as well as providing traditional ceremonies inside prisons. Tyler will share his experiences with this process as well his research into spiritual development. He will present his current work on historical trauma within the Klamath community in partnership with the Klamath Tribes Behavioral Health Clinic. Based on work by Eduardo Duran and Tom Ball, Tyler is developing a holistic model, a vision for offenders to reduce recidivism as well as regain family and community trust. Tyler will address his belief in the need for future research, describing his work in progress with the Behavioral Health Clinic.

Tyler Barlowe is a Native American of Modoc descent and an enrolled tribal member of the Klamath Tribes.  The Klamath Tribes have acknowledged Tyler as a spiritual advisor and support his work with incarcerated Native peoples. For approximately the past twelve years Tyler has been a volunteer with the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) Religious Service section. As a volunteer, his primary duties were to facilitate Native American ceremonies. He has built and blessed sacred sweat lodges in Oregon prisons and regularly leads sweat lodge ceremonies, talking circles, and pipe ceremonies for both male and female prisoners.  In 2003, the ODOC hired Tyler as a Chaplain to work alongside a team of 20 Chaplains in the prison system. He also works as a member of the Klamath Tribes Behavioral Health Clinic integrating traditional and western healing. Through the clinic, Tyler is working on a prison reentry model for Klamath Tribal members returning to the Klamath community. 

Tyler obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Applied Psychology from the Oregon Institute of Technology and a Master of Science Degree in Psychology from the University of Oregon.  He is a past delegate from the International Indian Treaty Council to various United Nations functions in, Holland, Switzerland, and Nicaragua. 

Jeffrey Henderson, M.D., M.P.H. 

Utilization of Traditional Healers
 by American Indians

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Dr. Jeffrey Henderson will present his research on factors influencing traditional healer utilization among American Indians and Alaska Natives. He will present a cross-sectional analysis of data collected in 1987 from over 2,000 American Indian and Alaska Native households, including descriptive analyses examining the use of traditional healers according to demographic, clinical, and cultural factors. English as a second language, a proxy for a complex set of cultural factors, was strongly associated with traditional healer use, and advanced education, cultural participation, comorbidity, and disability bed-days predicted traditional healer use.

Dr. Henderson is a Lakota and enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. He obtained his Bachelor's (1985) and Medical (1989) degrees from UC San Diego. He completed a 3-year residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, before he moved to Eagle Butte, South Dakota in 1992, where he became the Clinical Director of the Indian Health Service hospital for two years. He returned to UW in 1994, where he completed his Master's in Public Health. Dr. Henderson then moved to Black Hills, SD and worked for two more years at the Sioux San IHS hospital before joining the Strong Heart Study in 1998. In 1998 Dr. Henderson founded the Black Hills Center for American Indian Health, a community-based, non-profit organization whose mission is to enhance the wellness of American Indians living on the Northern Plains through research, service, education, and philanthropy. The Center has met stunning success, garnering over $7.5 million through five NIH health research grants. When not working, Dr. Henderson can be found spending time with his beautiful wife, 2 1/2-year old daughter and 6-month old son, dancing and singing at pow-wows, riding his bicycle, golfing, and hiking throughout the Black Hills.

References:

1. Buchwald D, Beals J, Manson SM. Use of traditional health practices among Native Americans in a primary care setting. Med Care. 2000;38(12):1191-1199. For a copy click HERE

2. Kim C, Kwok YS. Navajo use of native healers. Arch Intern Med. 1998;158(20):2245-2249.  For a copy click HERE

Mario Incayawar, M.D., M.Sc., D.E.S.S.

The Yachactaita (Inca Healers) Contribution to Mental Health in the Andes

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Indigenous Peoples are poor, dispossessed, and powerless throughout the Americas.  Mental disorders and psychological suffering are widespread but receive little or no attention by their respective governments.  The scarcity of mental health programs serving the Indigenous Peoples is alarming in Latin America. This presentation describes an innovative mental health service program developed by the Quichuas of Otavalo, Ecuador. The Quichua proposal promotes the collaboration of healers and doctors as a key element for building culturally appropriate services for Amerindian communities. This experience could be a good mental health care strategy for Amerindians living in poor countries in the Americas, where mental health services and resources are almost nonexistent.

Professor Mario Incayawar is a Quichua (Inca) physician, educator, and researcher interested in the health and traditional medicine of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. He is the first Quichua physician to graduate from an Ecuadorian medical school. His areas of expertise include transcultural psychiatry, Indigenous medical systems, culturally adapted medical systems, Indigenous knowledge, pain & ethnicity, and the neuroscience of the healing process.

He is currently the Henry R. Luce Professor in Brain, Mind, and Medicine: Cross-Cultural Perspectives at Pitzer, Claremont McKenna and Harvey Mudd Colleges in Claremont, California, and Director of Runajambi (Institute for the Study of Quichua Culture and Health) in Otavalo, Ecuador.  He has authored 50 papers in medical education and delivered scholarly presentations in Canada, USA, Ecuador, Europe, and Japan.  For five years, he was a scientific consultant and in charge of the Transcultural Medicine Section of L'Omnipraticien medical magazine.  Recently he has completed studies on Llaqui (depression-anxiety), and pain experiences among the Quichua in the Andes.  He is currently engaged in a research project entitled “Screening Clinically Promising Healing Practices Among Native Americans of California,” a study supported by a Faculty Fellowship from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.

References: