Practitioner’s Corner

By Dr. Arthur Blue, via Wes Darou

“Many years ago, my newly won Master’s degree in hand, my internship at a southern Idaho mental hospital initiated me into the art of patient contact and the practice of psychology. Many of the outpatients here came in from the nearby reservation; there also resided a medicine man known to me since my childhood simply as Hosie. I was soon to learn another lesson from this respected elder.

Half a century later, I can still see him when he visited me a few weeks into my internship. He knocked politely on my door, then entered my office and sat his bulky framed opposite me. Roughly cut shoulder length gray hair framed his ruddy, aging but chubby face. He did not speak nor even look at me, just sat completely at one with the silence in the room.

I had been seeing people with the usual range of diagnoses: Conduct Disorder, Depression, and Alcohol Abuse to name a few. Very often, I found, a client would refer to his relationships within his extended family as part or all of the problem. Since to me it seemed obvious and appropriate that this sort of difficulty lay in the domain of the Medicine Man, I suggested that these people gather a piece of cloth, some tobacco and sage as a gift and in the evening visit my friend Hosie. Hosie now came to visit me.

I was pleasantly surprised to see him, and thought, Gee, this is the way that professionals work – good referrals, then case conferences.”

Though I expected a case conference, I received a lesson instead. After thirty minutes of emptying, relaxing silence, Hosie spoke.

“I come to talk to you about all those people you bin sendin’ me”. He paused. I was expectant, thinking of diagnoses and treatments. Then he phrased the lesson as follows: “I can no longer handle all the people that you are sendin’ me. Perhaps you should start dealin’ with the problems that you are trained to work with and I will work with the spiritual problems that the people have. I can’t do my work and your work too, not enough time to do both.”

As we continued to talk, it became obvious that I was interpreting all problems as spiritual. To become an effective member of a treatment team, I needed to accept responsibility for the psychological aspects of the problems that patients presented and to aptly distinguish those from the truly spiritual. My work with Medicine people has continued through the years and those many years ago Hosie expanded my awareness, increased my knowledge and effectiveness. He enabled me to be more comfortable in my work and good at what I did. I think it is important for therapists to know that their job is different from the medicine man’s.”

Dr. Blue is a retired Department Chair from Brandon University, the First Canadian First Nations person to receive a PhD in psychology, a Sun Dancer and a member of the Eagle society. Art is a Dene elder.

Wes Darou is co–authoring a chapter for a multi–cultural counselling course.