Everyone's mental health is shaped by colonization and white supremacy culture. In this episode, we explore ways to decolonize mental health care with Melody Li. We also explore how historical trauma impacted Ralph Sara and how he's helping people heal through his podcast The Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast. Find more resources on all of these issues at our website.
Everyone's mental health is shaped by colonization and white supremacy culture. In this episode, we explore ways to decolonize mental health care with Melody Li. We also explore how historical trauma impacted Ralph Sara and how he's helping people heal through his podcast The Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast. Find more resources on all of these issues at our website.
Decolonization
[00:00:00] Anne: Welcome to Mental Health Mosaics, an exploration of mental health from Out North, which is located on the unceded traditional lands of the Dena'ina People in Anchorage, Alaska. I'm Anne Hillman.
On the last episode of Mental Health Mosaics we spoke about colonization, historical trauma, the intentional and ongoing destruction of Indigenous culture and identity, and how all of that relates to mental health. Yeah, it was a lot, and it was really only a fraction of all of the community-wide things we need to consider when talking about mental health.
And though we talked about the traumas that have long-term effects on communities, we also talked about the strengths and we touched very, very briefly on healing. -- Thanks, Meda! -- Never fear -- every episode of Mental Health Mosaics will also highlight ways to heal or move forward. Maybe that's in part because I'm annoyingly an eternal optimist and I'm the producer of this show, but mostly it's because there really are people who are striving to make the world better -- meaning more equitable -- for everyone.
In this episode I want to introduce you to two of those people. First is Melody Li.
[00:01:17] Melody: Hi everyone. My name is Melody Li and I use pronouns car in Cantonese and any in English. And I am a colony-born migrant, and a diasporic settler here on Turtle Island. I am a queer therapist of color. And also a mental health, um, liberation activist through our work in community at Inclusive Therapists.
[00:01:49] Anne: Melody is from Hong Kong and currently lives in Austin, Texas. I came across her work when I was trying to understand how mental health treatment is shaped by white supremacy culture. I know that some of you just flinched when I said those words. It's still something I'm getting used to saying in this context as well, and it’s a term that’s hotly debated. Is it useful? Divisive? Definitely a point of debate. Melody doesn’t actually use it in this conversation. She uses Eurocentric domination.
When I say white supremacy, I'm not talking about hate groups. Right now I’m not even talking about structural racism -- we’ll get to that in other episodes. I'm talking about how white ideas of what is right dominate our culture. These ideas are well laid out by Tem-uh O-kun in a whole website on white supremacy culture.
Think about the values that we often don’t even question, like individualism, perfectionism, and objectivity. This culture is why we primarily value knowledge when it comes with a degree or a published work, usually from a white-led institution. Many of us define success by gaining power and resources -- progress means getting bigger. White supremacist culture also defines professionalism by white standards and falls back on white-determined qualifications when promoting people in organizations. And it simplifies issues into either/or binaries -- you’re good or bad, that’s right or wrong. It doesn’t allow for nuances.
These ideas reign supreme and we all have them ingrained in us whether we want them to be or not. They originate in the creation of the United States which said white people should dominate all others, and they permeate well beyond our borders. There are links to many articles discussing these ideas on the Mental Health Mosaics website. Please check them out -- my explanation is limited because I’m still learning and I definitely welcome feedback. And I give many thanks to the folks at Native Movement who offer training that helped me start to notice this culture in ways I hadn’t before.
But back to Melody -- I sought them out because I wanted to learn from someone who is actively examining how white ideals shape what mental health treatment looks like and is advocating for change. They want to decolonize mental health, which means looking both at what happens in a therapy session and beyond. This is Melody:
[00:02:57] Melody: So we as a mental health field, um, dominate -- have a Eurocentric domination of what we consider to be valid. What we consider to be true knowledge or valid knowledge. And we gatekeep that through institutions of school, of our trainings of who gets to be licensed, who doesn't and which often not only neglects, but attempts to erase the lived experiences of Black Indigenous and people of color. And so it's a very limited knowledge base, but we try to pretend that these, this knowledge is universal because of colonial ideology.
Um, Another way that, um, coloniality shows up through the mental health field is the monopolizing of power through Eurocentric or American centric ontology, or how do we conceptualize what is reality? What is beinghood? What is personhood? What is humanity?
Anne: So I think I need a little bit more on that. Like... absolutely um, so one thing that we see often is, um, again for marginalized communities that may believe that one's being-hood is an interconnection with land, with non-humans, with animals, with plants, with water. These are our relatives. These are Indigenous practices here on Turtle Island, but also Indigenous, um, practices, um, across the globe.
And that our beinghood is also in interconnection with the spiritual, with the cosmos. Um, but, but when that is deemed um, not true through Eurocentric ontology, then we become quickly pathologized again. "Oh, this person, um, is dissociating." "This person doesn't have self-esteem or self-concept."
[00:05:11] Anne: Okay.
[00:05:12] Melody: Or when our reality is also, um, being questioned, um, there are folks that for example, may see visions or may hear, um, voices in interconnection with other beings. And when we are limited by Eurocentric ontology, then again, we pathologize and say, this person is. Um, we say all types of horrible, stigmatizing things, as opposed to saying, wow, there are actually different realities and different ways of being, and that is also a way that Eurocentric, um, psychology is very harmful.
[00:05:52] Anne: And so, seeing things just through a medicalized, Westernized system says things are wrong when really they're just not how other people experience life.
[00:06:04] Melody: Yes. Not how we experience and understand life. And so when I hear about stigma towards mental illness, how this is often used as blame on marginalized communities, especially, you know, Black, Indigenous, POC communities. We’re often blamed for not seeking mental health care. And we're often blamed to say, well, we, the people of color, stigmatize mental health and therapy, that's why they don't pursue it.
I always push back and I ask who stigmatized whom. That if we know that our ways of being and our realities and our understanding of personhood is not going to be honored and will be pathologized, that is a very risky situation to enter into.
And I can list so many examples. I come from a relatively collectivist culture, but when there's a Eurocentric lens that's put on our family models, our family systems, for example, we're often told that we are enmeshed. There's too much enmeshment. T here needs to be more individualism, um, self, self-concept, right? And this is actually really common and we're trained to look at what is wrong as opposed to valuing our ways of being. And this conceptualization is also very much interconnected with all the, what we call so-called phobias and isms, you know, gender binary, heteronormativity, um, fatphobia, classism, ableism. Christian centrism and all of this is embedded in the mental health field and we, we need to have a really honest and brave look at the ways that we are upholding this and are perpetuating harm through what we are selling as treatment or healing.
[00:08:31] Anne: You have used terms like decolonizing mental health. What does that mean?
[00:08:39] Melody: So Bhatia shares. It is about reclaiming water, land, territory, and language.
Decolonization means restoring what was lost.
That's where we start, because it's the water, land, language, culture, our ways of being that we're, that we're severed from that is the root of mental distress. So we're not starting with the symptoms. It's looking at what was lost and what is our role in the restoration. Um, restoration there is reparation.
Um, and, and for, for folks that have experienced colonization, this process is different from people that have inherited privilege through colonialism. Um, so for example, you know, in addition to land back, water back, that is always at the root, for, for simplicity’s sake, I'm going to say BIPOC or folks of color, for us it's all also about reclaiming our, our ways of being in our healing practices.
For folks that for example, may be descendants of colonial settlers, white colonial settlers, their work looks different. It means returning. Giving back. It means reparations. It means reorganizing, so now that we know that these hegemonic, you know, dominant, systemic, structures are in place. Those need to be dismantled.
And so there's, there are multiple processes, um, that happen simultaneously. Um, but if I were to simplify it, I would say, let's start with, um, focusing on, and this I'm learning from Indigenous communities, land back, Indigenous sovereignty and Black liberation. If the work that we do is not grounded in that, then there, we are always at risk of practicing in an exploitative manner, like something that is exploitive to communities of colors and Indigenous communities.
Um, and, and so in terms of the, how -- we got to do it in community. Because it's not something that can again be individualized. It's not a person saying, okay, I'm going to restructure my therapy practice and I'm going to read books because colonialism and coloniality. It's unfortunately embodied and also integrated in our mindsets.
And there, oftentimes we may not be aware of the ways that we can be oppressive, that we can be violent. And so being in community means that we, um, learn from one another, but also we, um, have systems of accountability that we talk about what rupture and repair means, that we look around corners from one another. We correct one another. And so I believe that decolonizing mental health care has to happen in community. And it's also a relational process between humans, but certainly. Non-humans and more than humans as well.
[00:12:31] Anne: And so and please, correct me if I'm wrong. I hear what you're saying in what you're saying, but it's not like we can just say, okay, let's do X, Y, or Z to mental health. To fix the mental healthcare system, we have to do it in concert with fixing all of these others systems. And that we need to do it while listening and making amends and accepting that that's going to look really different for everybody.
[00:13:02] Melody: Yes. It's going to look different depending on, gonna use that word, positionality, which means that we are made up of different social identities.
And some of our social identities hold more power. Some of our social identities may be marginalized and each of us have a unique combination or makeup of that. But when we look at our positionality, for example, some of my parts are, um, I have. Uh, skin color privilege. Um, I have non-disabled privilege. I have education and class background privilege.
However, there are other parts of me as I shared, um, my queerness, um, being a colony born person, being an immigrant. These are parts that are marginalized. I have to bring -- I'm bringing all of these parts in the work that I do in community. I bring all these parts also in the therapeutic setting. So I need to be mindful of not only my positionality, how I show up in relationships with others, but also in relations to this land. My position on this land is yes, I'm a diasporadic settler, but I'm a settler. This is not my land, so what is my responsibility as I'm on this land as a visitor, as a migrant, as a person seeking refuge?
That is different from someone with a different set of social identities that have a different relationship with this land. And, um, so, so that's why it's not really, um, possible to have an ABC because it requires us to bring our full beings in here, and these interactions are relational. At the same time, there are practical things we can do such as, um, learning, learning from Indigenous communities and writers and activists following their lead, following the lead of Black activists.
Um, and there's so much learning that we can do. And also I think an important part is healing. That if we're injured, if we have, um, injured through racialized trauma, or we have been, um, yeah, that even for white folks, when white folks were not always white folks. White folks belong somewhere, but when they are either displaced, um, or when they had to, um, not have to some chose to move away from their place of origin and give up their cultural identities, um, to trade in for power that, that there are ruptures there that happen as well. And that require healing because if we don't also, as practitioners focus on our healing, then we are more at risk of perpetuating, hurt, and harm and injuries on to others.
[00:16:27] Anne: So in this world where you're balancing these two things like your livelihood and seeing individual patients, as well as creating new structures, how do you bring this greater systemic work and this greater dismantling work into that individual practice? Like how are you trying to transition this Western model of sitting down one-on-one and talking to people into something that really is more inclusive and also more acknowledging just the reality of, of our intersectional identities in of our positionality.
[00:17:10] Melody: Um, the first thing that came to mind, I love this question is. I'm realizing that this is not on me, that my offerings are, are just, limited to what I, as one person can offer. So part of my work is to learn about, to connect with folks with different, um, ways of healing, different wellness practices, and being well resourced so that when a service user, you know, meets with me, I understand my limitations.
And this is something that we, as a field are, is not good at. That we, because in order to maintain power, we sell this image that we know at all, that we have all the answers, but actually what we need to know is our limitations. That my limitations are limited to my lived experiences, to my ancestral practices that may or may not be helpful for somebody else.
However, um, there are, I, I can hold space for someone I can, um, guide them to also look at their intergenerational lineage traumas. I can hold space for conversation about how oppression and a racialized violence impact them and their psyche and their relationships. So I can hold space for a lot of these relationships, these conversations, those dialogue, but I also need to be aware of different healing modalities that exist that can be helpful for them.
So that is one way. Another way is that, um, also creating these new systems of collective care that is not necessarily dependent on systems like insurance panels or, um, you know, capitalistic systems that are community funded. So that's something that our communities work really hard on. How do we extend care in a way um, honors the service users. And, um, and their needs, especially financial needs, but it's also, um, it's also sustaining to healers and therapists. So the work that I do, um, in the therapy room per se, it looks different during COVID is yes, we absolutely have one-on-one time. There is space for one-on-one time, but I am mindful that this, this 50 minutes I'm spending with this person once a week or every other week is only a slice of the possibilities of healing.
And can I offer them more? Um, and at the same time, am I also advocating for them outside of the therapy room?
[00:20:34] Anne: And it really highlights something that I feel like people are more and more realizing. Most people I've been speaking with are more and more realizing that like therapy in these conventional group therapy, individual therapy, these conventional ways that we've all been taught to seek help aren't the only ways. And seeking help by being part of a community garden, seeking help by just listening to people, seeking help through, you know, offering, offering food at a community fridge are always to also heal and be part of things.
[00:21:15] Melody: Yes, those are really the ways that, um, that get me excited that, um, because this mutual aid, um, is restorative to entire communities, not just the folks that are hurting. It's for all of us.
And so, so much more to this, and also reminding us that Mother Earth is so good to us, that there's so much healing that exists, that, you know, they so lovingly and generously offer us. But that we are not good stewards of,That through capitalism, we have disconnected from our, even are destroying. So part of our healing is also asking how do we return to a relationship, a respectful, loving, reciprocal relationship with Mother Earth. If the land is not well, if the water is not well, how can we possibly be mentally well?
[00:22:35] Anne: you say like we have this duty to the land around us, to the water around us. What sort of duty or obligation do we have as community members to the people around us? Um, in the context that we've been talking about in context of mental wellness and community mental wellness,
In your opinion, I realized that you are one person.
[00:22:57] Melody: I am one person.
I don't know if this is too big, but if we truly believe that we are interconnected, that we're relatives, then let's examine how we treat one another. How do we share? What happens when we get into conflict, which is inevitable? How do we, do we tend to our Elders?
How do we tend to those that are sick? How do we tend to our children? Do we feel a sense of duty, um, to uplift one another? Or do we have this mindset of as long as I can take care of mine? I'm good.
I have a lot of learning to do there, um, because I internalize these colonial ideals that, um, and part of that is, um, immigrant trauma as well. This idea of scarcity, because we folks that have been displaced experience a lot of scarcity. And so there's a hoarding or saying what's mine is mine. What's yours is mine too, you know?
Um, That is trauma that requires healing, but how do we find healing in community when we start to practice differently, even if it's uncomfortable, even if, um, in that moment, it, um, doesn't seem to make sense in this capitalistic world.
I like to go into the place of reimagination. Of what do we imagine moving forward when as we, more and more of us join in to decolonize mental health care, what are the possibilities? And again, I'm just one person, so I can offer my slice of the pie, but it's a very, very, very, very big pie with many, many, many slices and flavors.
I'm imagining care that is integrated with our ways of being in our ways of living, that mental health care or mental health is not isolated to certain hours, like 50 minutes a week. That it is not isolated within the therapy room, that it is an integrative practice in how we, um, take care of our bodies, of our spirits, of the land, how we take care of one another.
I'm imagining that not only are we destigmatizing conversations about mental health, that we're celebrating conversations about mental health. That it, it's going beyond normalizing, but to uplift and to celebrate one another. Um, I'm imagining that, you know, each of us learn to feel a sense of duty and responsibility for one another's mental wellbeing. That this isn't something to just leave for the therapist. That your wellbeing is my responsibility as mine is to you
[00:26:26] Anne: that's a really great thought to end this on, actually, and I liked the idea of ending this with a bit of hope and possibility.
[00:26:38] Melody: Well, my name is Yang Hay, which means full of hope in Cantonese. Yup. So that is from my ancestors and I am gonna do my best to bring that into my relationships as well.
[00:26:56] Anne: You can follow Melody on Instagram at melody hope li, spelled L-I, and look for their work on Inclusive Therapists dot Com.
Just as Melody tries to bring hope to conversations around mental wellness and explore many different ways of healing, so does Ralph Sara through his podcast, The Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast. His life was shaped in part by colonization and historical trauma, but he's actively working to help himself and others heal from that past.Ralph: My name is Ralph Sara. I was born and raised in Bethel, Alaska. Um, I am Yup’ik. I am Saami uh, you know, I'm a father, I'm a grandfather. I am, yeah, I'm a brother. I'm an uncle. So, um, that's who I am. I am a dental assistant by day, which means I have a full-time job, I work, you know, nine to five usually. And then I do my podcast.
Anne: So tell me a little bit about your podcast, the Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast.
Ralph: Well, um, the reason that happened was I'm not too far out of treatment. It's been less than two years that I've been out of treatment. And while I was in treatment, I had a vision board that was in my room.
And, um, on that vision board was pictures of my family, of course, because that's what I wanted to get back was my children, uh, relationships with my children, relationships with my family. I also had material things like a house, you know, uh, a motorcycle and I had a cover of a book and the book was entitled “The Anonymous Eskimo.”
I was thinking to myself, you know, uh, books have a really big thing to do, you know, it would be awesome and it would be totally cool. But then as treatment went on, I was thinking other avenues, maybe I could do this, m I could do that, and a podcast, came up. So I Googled podcast after I got out, or not podcasts. I Googled Indigneous treatment, Indigneous recovery podcast. And there was zero out there. I could not find one. You find episodes, but not like a, a podcast totally for that. You know? And my podcast is not totally Indigneous, right. But I have like a soft focus on that. I tried to get as. Indigneous people on to share their stories, you know, for hope.
Anne: Tell me more about that. Like, why focus on Indigneous recovery? How is that different?
Ralph: Because I'm, you know, I'm Yup’ik? So, um, and the title of my podcast is Anonymous Eskimo, and that's my humor because, you know, nowadays Eskimo is a bad word, you know, it's frowned upon to say that, but when I was growing up, Eskimo was how I identified was Yup’ik Eskimo.
And, um, it wasn't a bad thing to be, Yup’ik Eskimo. I was proud of, you know, being a Yup’ik Eskimo. Um, but at the same time nowadays, it's kind of like, uh, oh, don't say that.
Being Native, I think, and having this podcast gives other people, other Native people, Indigneous people, kind of a voice that they'd never had before, because it was so frowned upon to talk about what you are going through. Talk about your traumas, talk about, you know, all the mental health things that happened to you before. You can't cry if you're a Native man, you know, you can't talk about things that are bothering you or hurting you. You have to be the strong stoic person, right?
That's how I was growing up. You know, it was, it was instilled upon you, you know, not in a way of schooling or anything. It was just like how you were brought up, you know, it was expected, I guess you could say.
The only thing I would witness was people getting drunk and then crying about it, crying about things that happen because that's the time that they, their emotions come out, you know?
And that's ultimately what, what became of me was that's how I learned how to deal with my pain and stuff like that. It was to get fricking plastered and then start crying about it, you know, or, you know, being angry and yelling about it, but you'd have to get drunk first, you know, to let it all out.
There's no healthy way of doing it. I was never taught that. I was only taught to hold it in. And, uh, and, and it was, it was okay to drink and let it out. Oh, he's just drunk, you know, he’s crying, letting out saying things that happened, whatever. Oh, he's drunk. So that's okay. Which unfortunately became normal, you know, Yeah.
That was a way of dealing with things. Unfortunately, when I was growing up
Anne: as an adult, have you kind of dug more into Yup'ik culture to figure out what used to be the ways
Ralph: Harold Napoleon wrote a great book about that. And, um, I, I've tried many times to get Harold Napoleon on my podcast and, um, having generational traumas and how that plays into that kind of the same thing, you know, you don't want to talk about that kind of stuff.
Um, you just hold it in, of all the things that happen before our generation, you know, all the deaths of, you know, the, the, the smallpox, you know, epidemic, whatever. Dealing with that, not being able to, uh, do your cultural activities, cultural dancing, and everything like that. Telling, um, either the Moravians or the Catholics or, you know, the Quakers, whichever part of Alaska that they divvied out to you to them or whatever, because we were, we were, um, Moravian in our area and, um, you know, they're telling you, you can't dance because it's demonic or whatever, you know, you can't have your, your, your t{I don’t understand what word he uses here}or markings or anything like that because that's, you know, they called us the heathens of the north.
So you're dealing with all of that generational trauma, and then you're adding all the, um, trauma that you've went through and you're still holding all of that in. You're going to let it out when you're drinking. Or that's the only way that you know, of letting it out, where you have to learn how to do it healthy in a, in a healthier way, which is so hard for people still.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anne: It's hard to disassociate the history.
Ralph: And the stigma there's, there's no, you know, I think, I think there's always, always going to be that stigma of, you know, recovery,y being in recovery is a bad thing or, you know, the break, the stigma of the drunk Native, or, you know, or the drunk Indian, how they were portrayed and in movies and everything, or the drunk homeless guy that’s sitting out here on Spenard, you know, a lot of them are Native people,
So people have that stigma on there and that site in their mind. You know, those people they're experiencing their own trauma. They don't know how to deal with it.
Anne: Ralph said it took him a long time to deal with his own trauma. He went to treatment multiple times and even had long periods of sobriety. But it never really worked because he was doing it for someone else, like his family, and not for himself. That was until his most recent time in treatment when he was doing it because he wanted something different from his life.
Ralph: And so when I was in treatment, um, of course they have counselors there and this last time I was in treatment, you know, I, I decided to, you know, try to give it a try.
And I had a really great person. Her name was Bex Jacobs, shout out to her, but she got me to open up about things that I was so ashamed of and things that, um, I kept in and I didn't want to tell anybody, you know, I didn't want to tell my, my brother or my sisters or the closest people in my life, you know, I was so ashamed of doing all those things, uh, being a certain way, thinking a certain way, you know, it can eat at you. And that's a lot of the reason why people numb themselves with alcohol and drug addiction is, you know, they don't want to deal with that. They didn't want to think about it once you take that first drink or that, you know, hit of whatever, all that goes away, you're left with a numb feeling that, it feels awesome.
You know, so, yeah.
And I think a lot of it was, she got me to realize that past traumas or past things that I've, I've went through or things that I keep to myself, are a reason why I am redoing this over and over again. You know, I'm not done with drinking because I want to, every time I start to feel something, I want to numb that pain.
And if I don't deal with it in a healthy way, like talking to a clinician or using the tools that she has given me to kind of walk through this maze of emotions, I'll definitely fall back into that.
Getting out into nature is a big, you know, adventure therapy, she taught me
Anne: what's adventure therapy?
Ralph: Oh man. She had this adventure therapy class where we would go and hike or, you know, cross country ski one day a week at the treatment center where you go out there and we would talk during that, you know. She'd have her little sessions with people on the, on the hike trail or something like that, you know?
And then you get to be out there and just beautiful wilderness where some people, um, didn't think they'd be able to hike up a mountain and they did it. And they were like, oh my God, you know, look what I did, you know, and just being out there in Alaska’s beautiful country is just so it fills you with so, so much.
It gives you a time out there in the wilderness to be quiet and think about things too, you know, things that maybe happen during the week or, or during your lifetime, shoot, you know, it gives you time to process, which is, which is good.
Anne: It's very good.
Ralph: And, uh, and, and dealing with mental health, um, you have to have those avenues of, of releasing, you know, creative outlets, you know, be it music, you know, a hike on a mountain, writing down your thoughts, keeping a journal, whatever. Yeah. You know, let it out somehow; talking with a clinician.
Anne: For Ralph, his current primary outlet is his podcast, which helps many more people than just himself.
And that's another thing that's so needed is to have, have an outlet so other people know that they're not alone. You know, their, the way that they're thinking is they're so lonely, you know, because I don't know, being addicted to something or an alcoholic or whatever, it's just a lonely place to be. And having this podcast that I do shows other people that they're not alone, you know, there's so many different ways of people, um, achieving sobriety or recovery or, or even a better life, yknow. If they're doing something less than what they were doing before, like let's say somebody who's a heroin addict and now they're taking Suboxone or something, which is, you know, um, what do they call that? Harm reduction, harm reduction, you know, or, or like somebody who's an alcoholic, but they now, now they smoke a little weed or something like that, you know?
I think that's okay. You know, the way that you do. Is your way, you know, everybody is different, so everybody's gonna deal with their problem, different there's all these avenues that you can pick from. Yeah. Just like I was totally gung ho AA at first. And then I found my own way, you know, maybe helping people
Anne: Through the podcast instead of going to meetings?
Ralph: Through the podcast, you get to listen, listen to all these great people on here.
Courageous people, telling all their, you know, dark stories and funny stories and uplifting stories, you know? Um, a lot of it's sad and a lot of it's hurt and, but a lot of it's people rising up from the ashes of what they used to be to become these awesome people, you know,
Anne: Do you feel like that describes you, too?
Ralph: Um, you know, I've had periods of sobriety, right?
I've. I've fallen off the wagon so many times. I've had so many relapses. I've had long, long lengthy amounts of sobriety. I mean, months, years here and there, but I've always fell off. But I've never actually tried to help other people, you know, so maybe this is my way of having some kind of substance or just helping other people makes me feel good, you know, and just showing other people that it's not, it's not a, you can't be ashamed all the time, you know, don't be ashamed all the time. You've been through it, but you're not there anymore. And if you're going through it, yeah. There's ways to, to, to become a better person or have a better life, you know?
Anne: In Ralph's podcast, people share their own personal journeys and strategies for becoming better people. Many of the stories focus on Indigneous healing, such as this clip of Ralph's interview with Don Barnaby, a First Nations dancer from Quebec. He's telling the story of his first time dancing at a Pow Wow after becoming sober.
Don Barnaby: And I know that there was no wrong way to dance and that there is no right way to dance because, um, it's just a spirit that's out there dancing. No, our body is just a vessel that carries our spirit and that spirit was sober and alive and well, and it wanted to dance. So who was I tended to deny it, you know, and I went into that circle and I began to dance.
I don't know how I was dancing. Didn't matter. I just saw it was my spirit that was carrying me and it was. And then all of a sudden it started to pour and pour rain. You know when it started to rain everybody ran out of that circle, you know, and I kept on dancing. You know, and when the song was over, I came out of that circle, you know, and the drum was under the Arbor, so they were all safe and dry, you know?
So they, they started to sing again, you know. The rain had stopped when I left that circle. So when they came again and they started to sing another song, I turned around and I went back into that circle and started to dance. And once again, the rain came. And the rain came hard and it was just soaking me down to the bone, but I wasn't feeling it because, you know, like I said, it was, I was just a vessel that was carrying my spirit, you know?
And so after the song was over, I went to leave the circle and then they began another song, you know, and the rain had stopped and so I was like, oh, so I turned around again. And I went into that circle and it started to rain again. And then I began to realize that, you know, the Creator was, uh, washing away all my past and letting me know that, you know, I was being cleansed and it was okay.
And that from here on out that I could let my spirit free and just let it dance. And that it was a way like he was like forgiving me, you know, for everything that I'd done in the past. And then I realized, you know, all that medicine that I'd been looking for, I been searching for, I've been looking for in a bottle, looking for in a drug.
None of that medicine was good medicine for me, so it didn't allow me to heal. It was only mind altering, it wasn't spirit altering. So when I went into that circle and I heard that drum and I began to dance, that was the medicine that I was looking for my whole entire life.
Anne: In that clip, Don talked about dancing and healing. For Ralph, his podcast is a major part of his healing journey.
[00:16:10] Ralph: At this point in time in my life, um, I, I, I, I think I get more with doing this podcast and listening to other people's stories and how they did it and how they maintain their sobriety, you know, and what they, what they would say to other people still struggling. You know,
[00:16:34] Anne: It's almost like you've got a private AA group, uh, from around the world.
[00:16:38] Ralph: I've kind of thought I've kind of thought that before, like, Hey, you know, I know, you know, people are coming to me to, to tell their stories, which is totally awesome. Totally cool. And, uh, I, I'm just so thankful that I've been able to do this so far.
[00:16:54] Anne: Ralph Sara is the host of the Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast. He's also one of the recipients of the Rasmusen 2021 Individual Artist Awards. He'll use the project funds to create an audiobook and music about his recovery journey. You can subscribe to his podcast pretty much anywhere. And you definitely should.
(music break)
During this episode we talked about a few ways to counteract the effects of colonization and white supremacy culture. We didn't even touch structural racism within psychiatry and how that leads to overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis of people of color or how other examples of systemic racism and discrimination affect mental health. We'll get there soon, I promise.
In the meantime, I want to keep this focus on hope. That’s what Melody left us with and what Ralph is doing with his podcast. Ralph said we need many different outlets for our thoughts and emotions.
I’d like to ask you to please take a moment to think about your outlets and ways you can help effect positive, equitable change. Maybe you could share your story, as Ralph does, or maybe you can consider ways you perpetuate white supremacy culture. If you’re in a safe space to do so, take a few breaths to ground yourself. Then grab a pencil and draw or write what your reimagined world looks like and how you can participate in bringing that to reality. Let it be a reminder that we all contribute to each other’s mental wellbeing.
This episode was edited by Susy Buchanan, produced by me, and includes theme music by Aria Philips. Our funding comes from the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism, the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, and the Alaska State Council of the Arts.
You can find more resources and other episodes at mentalhealthmosaics. org. Subscribe to this podcast and rate it on any podcast platform to help others find it. Thanks for listening and let’s stay hopeful.