Time to
Dream
By Dave Graber, revised, written
originally for “Spirit and Dust” blog 2015.
Too
many of our students are suffering. Many of us know the suffering of our own
past. Some of us have found a healing path. Those of us walking this way are
here because we were gifted with someone who stood by us while we looked for
our way. So today we choose to bring our students onto that healing path. Some
of us through our life time, I’m 73, have seen an increase in children’s
suffering. Let’s dream of building resilience with all of us who have suffered
childhood adversity, so that our families, schools, religious centers, justice
systems and workplace become sanctuaries for healing and learning.
Bringing that dream into reality, by Creator God’s help, is the most
important reason for us to be alive today.
Across
this nation an amazing movement is igniting in communities where people thought
such change was impossible. Minds are changing. Hope is growing. More
people are daring to dream that real change is possible. In two states,
Washington and Massachusetts, Parents and children coming to a health center
for care are almost as likely to have a five-minute Adverse Childhood
Experience assessment as blood pressure and weight. Young people caught up in
the juvenile justice system are given tools that allow them responsibility for
their own healing. Behavioral health professionals, handling dysfunction,
addictions, and gutter thinking now have backup systems and tools in wrap
around care that really give traumatized people hope. Educators trying to
facilitate learning with the growing numbers of troubled, disruptive or violent
children in schools across our nation, are now being trained in giving tools of
responsibility to troubled children.
It’s
about Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs. New evidence says that a whole
package of dysfunction, addictions, health problems, and early deaths is
predictable, that much of it originates in childhood trauma, and is therefore
preventable.
I learned from Oliver and Elizabeth Risingsun, who told me in the old days Cheyenne children were never spanked. And from Lee and Gladys old mouse, who told me not to raise my voice against a child. And John Killsontop and Ernest King, and laura Rockroads, who sang songs and told stories. These were the stories they said children should be learning from their elders instead of watching Gunsmoke or Hee Haw or other stories on TV. And I did this because teaching EE II EE II YO songs to my students at Busby School and Lame Deer didn’t connect like the Plains Indian heya heya songs. It took me a long time to learn this. I had to get desperate for help.
And I dreamed if–onlies. If only my students’ parents would prepare them emotionally for school. Three decades later, In China, I dreamed if only Chairman Mao’s evil would have been stopped before 10’s of millions died, then our Chinese student’s parents would have parented better. (We’re are flying back to China for a three weeks visit next week!, if only there are always two pilots in the cockpit), Just four years ago, I left teaching at Crow School. I was then still thinking, if only we could get these parents to care properly for their children. I’m still thinking, if only our criminal justice system would work better for restorative justice—the kind of ancient systems in place among the Cheyenne (See the book Cheyenne Legal Jurisprudence).
My impossible dream
Until 2014 about this time I was pulling back from such an impossible dream. five years ago I had retreated back into my childhood, starting to farm again, after leaving my home in Iowa to go to college. I began writing a column for the Big Horn County News five years ago, trying to get my history, my head and my heart together with my if-only experiences in Big Horn and Rosebud Counties. see my blog greenwoodback40. So now we have a small farm with heritage turkeys and organic heritage corn and hay. At least my own grandchildren can do stuff with their hands, dirty stuff, that helps them, the plants, and the critters grow. It was a distraction from my disappointments that this dream seems so impossible. But I still had hope.
in late 2014 it came together. It took me 45 years in Montana to finally come around to reality. Earlier that spring I attended the first ACE Adverse Childhood Experiences summit in Billings along with some 300 folks across Montana. It was time to dream again.
I realized the power in understanding two simple things: 1) the power of the predictable becoming preventable. I learned that adverse experiences in childhood predict outcomes. The suffering and dysfunction in later years, including caregiver child abuse and neglect, clearly often does have an origin in adverse childhood experiences. 2) I learned that the power of self-healing is still carried forward in the heritage, language, songs, dances, games and family life of Cheyenne and Plains Indian traditions especially in mother, baby and child care, and also compassionate tough care for plants and animals and others of our species, human beings, the earth and the whole universe.
And I remembered my desperate search for Indian songs to teach. I didn’t care what tribe. I ordered an Indian Songs collection of LP platters recorded by Lewis Ballard in the late 60's to play on my school turntable stereo. I started teaching an Eskimo Ice Cream song, celebrating Ice Cream made with whale blubber and snow. The women elders in the kitchen heard me singing from the kitchen. In the lunch line Gladys and Ernestine Two Moons asked me “Where did you get that song you’re teaching?... That’s not a Cheyenne song!” “Why aren’t you teaching our Cheyenne children Cheyenne songs in Cheyenne?” My classroom was not private. I kept my door open. They heard me. They said, “Quit teaching our kids other tribes songs. Teach them Cheyenne songs.”
But I had them Aha!. I said, teach me some and I’ll teach your grandkids. They said, "Go find the old people. They know the songs and have time. We work." The first person I went to was Coco. Coconého’éhohe. The late Corlette Teeth. He was young as me then. He often came to my classroom to help me with drumming and singing. He was lead singer of the "White Buffalo Singers" in Busby. I showed him a book I found in the library, “The Indians’ Book.” It had some 20 Cheyenne songs. I tried reading the songs in that book Natalie Curtis wrote down in the 1910’s. She went from nation to nation convinced these people would cease to exist soon, and she should, in the name of basic human decency, help preserve a few of the awesome songs, stories, and dances in case some might survive the pressure to turn European. I tried singing some of the songs written. Coco said “Quit trying to sing in Cheyenne. I can’t understand a thing. Use your flute.” I performed several, and came upon one on page 180, titled “Swinging song” written as sung by Three Fingers. I was amazed Coco knew it. He corrected my pronunciation and helped me learn it. The kitchen crew of course heard this, and said it was an OK song.
Then they helped me find Ernest King, John Killsontop, Laura Rockroads, Teddy Risingsun, and others. A variety of people sang other songs for me. I gave children gestures to choreograph the meanings of songs. One song, Vohkoheso, Rabbit. Became my my first Cheyenne name. I’m glad I wasn’t named Matahetane.
Teddy’s story
But I remembered this song, because I sang it and asked people what it meant. Matahetaneo’o Enestonevaotsemeno. Ernest King sang it for me, after I tried. He told me the woodsmen coming were really “wood rats.” He said the children were expected to dance and sing in the tall grass to matt it down for the tipis, and the wood rats, what we know today as pack rats, would come out of the grass. The children and the dogs could then catch them. They made delicious food. And the children were safe from predators as they were occupied with matting down tipi sites and hunting meat instead of wandering from the encampment. They had a job to do, as their parents and elders hunted for game for food and the women set up the camp. That’s the right story, I thought.
Then one day I was driving Ted Risingsun and Stamper White to Lame Deer. I sang that song again and started telling Ernest King’s story. Teddy stopped me. Here’s his story as I remember it.
"My brother and I were playing in the dust by the house. Nearby my grandpa and grandma were cutting meat to dry. They told us to stop raising the dust. We didn’t quit. They didn’t tell us again. After a time my grandpa disappeared. He came back with a drum and began singing and drumming. He told us to dance. We didn’t want to. He said danger was coming. We needed to dance to keep out of danger. And we need to do it RIGHT AWAY. Then he said “Ohtah! Look out behind you!” There was the most fearsome monster we had seen. It’s huge head and jaws with sharp teeth were set on a furry body.
"We were both panicked and started to run, but he grabbed us. Grandpa said we had to dance so the monster would not catch and eat us. We danced, and the monster danced too. We danced a long time. Every time we stopped the monster would growl and Grandpa would say dance more. So we kept on dancing and got tired. Gradually the monster’s voice turned less fearsome. I don’t remember how Teddy said they learned it was their uncle. They did, I think by recognizing his voice. By that time our sisters and aunties were out of the house, and everyone laughed. We learned that day, something more valuable than we could learn in school."
I was also visiting Wesley Whiteman for songs and stories. I sang this for him. He told me a very different story. If you pay me 50 bucks I’ll tell you that story too, you know stories don’t come cheap. Just kidding, I'm a white man and get a lot for free here. But I don’t want to take more time.
Recently Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician in California, has produced a TED talk on this subject, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ovIJ3dsNk . The following is an adaptation from her talk on this subject.
Adverse Childhood Experiences study confirms that trauma that’s really serious, repeated without processing with trusted adults, or continuing too long, does actual damage to brain development. This is at the heart of the training I began last spring with Elevate Montana, in the Center for Disease Control study called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. It’s something that everybody needs to know about. It’s also something that needs all of us together to solve. The first ACEs study was done by Dr. Vince Felitti at Kaiser and Dr. Bob Anda at the CDC, beginning in the early 90’s. Together, they asked 17,500 adults about their history of exposure to what they called "adverse childhood experiences," or ACEs. Those include physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; physical or emotional neglect; parental mental illness, substance dependence, incarceration; parental separation or divorce; or domestic violence, but not dressing up to scare little kids.
For every yes, you would get a point on your ACE score. And then what they did was, they correlated these ACE scores against health outcomes. What they found was striking. Two things: Number one, ACEs are incredibly common. Sixty-seven percent of the population of those 17,000 mostly white, middle class, successful people had at least one ACE, and 12.6 percent, one in eight, had four or more ACEs. The second thing that they found was that there was a dose-response relationship between ACEs and health outcomes: the higher your ACE score, the worse your health outcomes. For a person with an ACE score of four or more, their relative risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was two and a half times that of someone with an ACE score of zero. For hepatitis, it was also two and a half times. For depression, it was four and a half times. For suicide attempts or reality, it was 12 times. A person with an ACE score of seven or more had triple the lifetime risk of lung cancer and three and a half times the risk of ischemic heart disease, the number one killer in the United States of America.
Well, of course this makes sense. Some people looked at this data and they said, "Come on. You have a rough childhood, you're more likely to drink and smoke and do all these things that are going to ruin your health. This isn't science. This is just bad behavior and common sense."
It turns out this is exactly where the science comes in. We now understand better than we ever have before how exposure to early adversity affects the developing brains and bodies of children. It affects areas like the pleasure and reward centers of the brain. It’s been implicated in substance abuse and dependence. It inhibits the brain’s capacity for putting the brakes on impulses. If developed properly, it controls our executive function, a critical area for learning and for planning and decision making. And on MRI scans, we see measurable differences in the brain's fear response center. So there are real neurological, or brain formation, reasons why folks exposed to high doses of adversity are more likely to engage in high-risk behavior.
Now that's important to know, and understanding heritage and language strategies deep in the fabric of Cheyenne culture remembered by trusted elders is a huge healing resource to defuse with humor or other strategies the panic of a traumatic event. That’s what makes for strong children with grit and courage and determination. And we thought it was important that we protect children from all trauma and stress. No; it's actually damaging to withdraw from engaging with them with unconditional love when they encounter life's inevitable stresses or even trauma. Much more important is what we adults do with our children when they are traumatized, frozen, or fighting, or attempting to flee, from danger.
But it turns out that even if you don't engage in any high-risk behavior, you're still more likely to develop heart disease or cancer. The reason for this has to do with the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, the brain's and body's stress response system that governs our fight-or-flight response. (This is explained by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. Find her on "youtube" or "ted talks.") Sometimes it’s called the limbic system. How does it work? Well, imagine you're walking in the forest and you see a bear. Immediately, your hypothalamus sends a signal to your pituitary, which sends a signal to your adrenal gland that says, "Release stress hormones! Adrenaline! Cortisol!" Your heart starts to pound, Your pupils dilate, your airways open up, and you are ready to either fight that bear or run from the bear. And that is wonderful if you're in a forest and there's a bear. (Laughter). If the bear attacks and we can’t get away, our brain’s alarm systems are often activated at the highest level.
But the problem is what happens when the bear comes home every night, and this system is activated over and over and over again, and it goes from being adaptive, or life-saving, to health-damaging, and confusion and chaos. Children are especially sensitive to this repeated stress activation, the younger the more, because their brains and bodies are just developing. High doses of repeated adversity or severe trauma have a toxic affect on brain cells. This is especially true for children when trusted adults cannot or will not physically and emotionally comfort the child. This is what damages brain structure and function, and can also affect the developing immune system, the developing hormonal systems, and right down to every cell in the body in the way our DNA is read and transcribed into our personality.
Two epidemiologists, doctors Felitti and Anda at Kaiser and the CDC, first studied in depth the whole spectrum of ten Adverse Childhood Experiences of those first 17,000. They then calculated an attributable risk factor for each of the outcomes of those experiences together. They found adverse childhood experiences, often those the body remembers best, decades later may become behavior problems, health problems, and even violence problems, altogether some twenty outcomes.
Being predictable, it’s preventable. This is huge, and important for us here, because virtually all of the caring professions are just beginning to make assessments and diagnoses in the light of origins in Adverse Childhood Experiences that go back to birth, or even before. Many in our caring community nationwide yet to this day are driven toward quick answers in drugs or remedial therapy, and locked in the European systems that say people do right because of fear of punishment. Yet many in the caring profession right here in Big Horn and Rosebud Counties have already been trained in the use of ACEs strategies for helping people toward their own self healing capacity.
Most important, they already know real healing in this community depends on all of us. The evidence I have barely begun understanding needs to be delivered in a training. Bethany, the official with Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders, has been my co –trainer, we are two of 22 trained to deliver this evidence in Montana. Not to give you a program or method. Not to bring in experts to train you in how to do anything. Only to give you the evidence and share with you what is happening in states like Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and at least 18 more. She is already assigned to work on ACEs information delivery in Lame Deer and some other selected rural towns of Eastern Montana under her organization. You can ask her to help organize a training here.
We could do like the one planned at Ft Peck the end of May, and invite one of the CDC original trainers and researchers. I personally know Dr. Anda, because he was our main instructor in the two day training in Helena last October with the 22 of us who are to spreading this evidence around Montana. Or we can have smaller training sessions at schools, churches, health centers, or incarceration centers. I won’t do this planning for folks here, but I will support any attempt. If I am requested to do the training, I will get free opi continuing ed credit for educators, and free Montana continuing ed certification credit for counselors. I will also see to it anyone of our team who comes to Lame Deer will do the same. We need at least two weeks commitment of location, time, and numbers of participants who want credit.
Last month NPR broadcast a series of four “focus on health” specials on ACEs. Lots of child abuse connection to ACE studies. This information is finally being noticed by national media. Email me and I’ll send you links to these four 15 min segments from National Public Radio. I can also send you links on upcoming training events and online information and news via ACE connect. graberdb@gmail.com
Hey, it’s time to dream the dream God places in our hearts and minds! Pray God’s blessing on his timely direction of these two doctors’ instincts for truth and compassion for children, and for the psychiatrists, teachers, care givers, therapists, judges and jailers who encounter children or their parents that self healing will become reality in our counties of southern Montana.
