The Native American Healing Experience

Abstract

Recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs is taking place with the assistance of culture-specific methods in American Indian and Alaska Native communities in North America. These communities utilize many of the recovery approaches that make up today's best practices, but they also use their own cultural and ethnic strengths as an important part of their addictions recovery. The Wellbriety Movement among Native people is one such expression of culture-specific healing for North Americans having the heritage of indigenous peoples. The rallying call, “Our culture is prevention,” expresses an approach unique in addictions recovery processes anywhere.

Keywords:

• healing
• natural law
• recovery
• Wellbriety
• wellness
• culture
• spirituality
• intergenerational trauma
• historical trauma

Notes

¹ ïTreatment can be briefly and usefully defined as a planned, goal-directed change process, which is bounded (culture, place, time, etc.) and can be categorized into professional-based, tradition-based, mutual help-based (AA, NA, etc.), and self-help (“natural recovery”) models. There are no unique models or techniques used with substance users—of whatever types—which aren't also used with nonsubstance users. In the West, with the relatively new ideology of “harm reduction” and the even newer Quality of Life (QOL) treatment-driven model, there is now a new set of goals in addition to those derived from/associated with the older tradition of abstinence-driven models. Editor's note.

² ïThe journal's style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note.

³ ïUntil July 1, 1953, it was against U.S. federal law to knowingly sell an alcoholic beverage to an American Indian or Alaska Native individual. Legislation by the Eisenhower Administration ended this precedent that extended over one hundred years of the historical period in the United States.

⁴ ïThe Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 (ICRA, 1968) guarantees members of recognized Indian tribes many of the civil rights that the U.S. Constitution had affirmed for American citizens starting in 1776. These rights are affirmed for tribal members subject to tribal governments exercising powers of self-governance. These include the free exercise of religion, speech, assembly, and the freedom to petition for redress of grievances. There are a total of eleven constitutional rights listed in Articles 1302 and 1303 of ICRA, 1968. This guarantees tribal members' rights against abuse by their own tribal government; and for the first time in U.S. history affirms individuals' rights specifically as American Indians or Alaska Natives.

⁵ ïThe American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 with its Peyote Amendment of 1994 (AIRFA, 1978) goes even further than ICRA, 1968 in the guarantee of religious freedom to Native Americans. It states, “On and after August 11, 1978, it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.” The Peyote Amendment in 1994 specifically included the use of the natural peyote cactus as one of the elements of traditional religions.