Yesterday, my housemates and I completed our Family Recovery Program with the rest of our staff at St. Francis Mission, complete with a certificate and everything. The program was designed to help us understand how in cases of alcoholism and addiction, recovery is not something only the individual suffering from these things must go through, but that the entire family must participate in. Often, family members are involved in the addiction just as much as the addict, whether it is through the restructuring of their lives to accommodate the alcoholic or addict, the resentment or damage that they have been cause in the process, or even taking up an enabling role. Overall, the program sought to show that recovery is a family process, one that the whole group of people should be committing to.
This training was a crucial part of my Orientation to the Rosebud. Alcoholism and addiction are a reality here on the Rez. It is not an easy fix, which is why this program is important. This people, and Native people across the United States (including native Alaskans), have suffered tremendously in our efforts to build America to the place it is today. The land that we currently call our own was forcibly taken from people who had been here long before us. Brutal policies were enacted in order to fulfill colonialist policies towards Native people, and the government repeatedly broke treaties, taking more and more land. Brutal, genocidal initiatives such as "Kill the Indian, Save the Man," were commonplace at the time. The boarding school experience forced upon Natives ripped young children from their families and culture and systematically sought to eliminate the language, spirituality, and family structure of this people. (A more in depth look at this can be read in the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown, and in the documentary The Canary Effect, which can be viewed in full here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD7x6jryoSA)
In other words, this is a people who have suffered unthinkable physical, emotional, spiritual, and cultural destruction throughout the last century, if not longer. This has led to vicious cycles of social ills on reservations, including alcohol abuse and addiction, abuse, neglect, violence, and early death. Young people are brought up in this environment, and it is easy to see why they might believe this is just the way life is, that there is no hope of anything better.
It is in light of this reality that I have come to be blown away by how much all of the people I have met here laugh. Constantly. Teasing one another, laughing about just about anything. During our training, people would tell stories of how they were beat as children, how they began drinking, drunk car accidents they had witnessed or participated in, deaths they had seen along the way - but throughout all of this, there was laughter, and joy. People even were able to laugh at some of the horrific things they had been through, that they shared in common with others in our group.
I asked one of the men about this, because it strikes me as being so different from my own American culture. We don't laugh about those kind of serious things in a healthy way. maybe we brush them off, or laugh it off in a way meant to minimize these serious things (at least in my experience). But when I asked about it, I was told that it's just who they are. As long as anyone can remember, Native people have been a people of laughter, of joy. "It isn't laughing in a way to minimize the problems or ignore them," I was told, "but it is how we deal with things. Our souls need laughter, especially given our environment. It's good medicine, Laughter."
How true is this? I can remember during my JVC Orientation, I had been tired after a long week. Constant presentations and reflecting takes a lot out of me. We had been discussing social justice issues all day, not the lightest of topics, and my brain and heart were on overload. I was carrying the weight of missing home, of doubting myself, of the realities and issues I was about to encounter - I was overwhelmed and weighed down. That night, however, we did contra-dancing, something I haven't done since third grade.
And it was perfect. I was sweating all over the place, out of breath, and laughing harder than I have in months. It was a release, joyful and free, uninhibited and unchecked - pure. I don't often know how to really lighten up and just enjoy myself, but it is so necessary for me to thrive as a person. In order to reflect well, to serve well, to engage with important and challenging issues, I need to be able to find release and real joy.
It is kind of ironic that the people who live in the middle of these insane conditions, who have suffered untold amounts at the hands of our government, are the ones who are teaching me how to really enjoy life.
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