Have you ever paused to consider how your perception of Indigenous people is shaped by language and societal narratives? Our guest, Christina Love, challenges us to reevaluate these preconceptions as she candidly shares her journey. An Indigenous speaker, educator, survivor, and activist, Christina provides us with a raw account of her experiences with violence, addiction, and personal healing.
Love's personal narrative paints a vivid picture of the high rates of violence and addiction within Native American communities. She breaks down alarming statistics and the tragic history that has led to high rates of substance use disorders and trauma in tribal communities. Her insights extend to societal failures to protect victims, often leading to further victimization. We also delve into the Not Invisible Act and the missing and murdered Indigenous women's movement, revealing an urgent need for change.
As if her story isn't compelling enough, Love guides us to explore the body’s role in storing trauma, examining therapy, movement and reflection as catalysts for healing. There's emphasis on the significance of humor and parenting practices in surviving and revitalizing language. We also touch on the importance of organizations focusing on healing and the essential shift in thinking about addiction and recovery.
Have you ever paused to consider how your perception of Indigenous people is shaped by language and societal narratives? Our guest, Christina Love, challenges us to reevaluate these preconceptions as she candidly shares her journey. An Indigenous speaker, educator, survivor, and activist, Christina provides us with a raw account of her experiences with violence, addiction, and personal healing.
Love's personal narrative paints a vivid picture of the high rates of violence and addiction within Native American communities. She breaks down alarming statistics and the tragic history that has led to high rates of substance use disorders and trauma in tribal communities. Her insights extend to societal failures to protect victims, often leading to further victimization. We also delve into the Not Invisible Act and the missing and murdered Indigenous women's movement, revealing an urgent need for change.
As if her story isn't compelling enough, Love guides us to explore the body’s role in storing trauma, examining therapy, movement and reflection as catalysts for healing. There's emphasis on the significance of humor and parenting practices in surviving and revitalizing language. We also touch on the importance of organizations focusing on healing and the essential shift in thinking about addiction and recovery.
The subject matter of this podcast will address difficult topics multiple forms of violence and identity based discrimination and harassment. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and have listed specific content warnings in each episode description to help create a positive, safe experience for all listeners.
Speaker 2:In this country, 31 million crimes 31 million crimes are reported every year. That is one every second. Out of that, every 24 minutes there is a murder. Every five minutes there is a rape. Every two to five minutes there is a sexual assault. Every nine seconds in this country, a woman is assaulted by someone who told her that he loved her, by someone who told her it was her fault, by someone who tries to tell the rest of us it's none of our business and I am proud to stand here today with each of you to call that perpetrator a liar.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women. I'm Maria McMullen. Presently, there are 574 American Indian tribes and Alaska Native entities in the United States. Out of that 574, roughly 60 percent, or 230 tribes, are Alaskan. Research reveals that American Indian and Alaskan Native women are 1.7 times more likely than non-native women to have experienced violence, that about 96 percent of Native women experience sexual violence by non-native perpetrators, that approximately 89 percent of Native women have experienced stalking by a non-native offender, and that Native women face murder rates more than 10 times the national average in many counties. These statistics offer a glaring illustration of just how many Native American women are vastly victimized, which is unfortunately exacerbated by historical phenomena such as genocide, colonization and forced residency in boarding houses, to name a few. Additionally, these sobering numbers have served as an impetus to the movement of missing and murdered Indigenous women, also known as MMIW. This movement now acts as the catalyst for courageous conversations that often start with a simple question why such high numbers?
Speaker 1:Our guest for this episode, christina Love, an Indigenous speaker, educator, activist and survivor, will offer a deep dive into this intended victimization and the subsequent widespread substance use amongst Native victims and survivors, designed to challenge practitioners to reassess the intentionality of their work as it relates to tribal women. It is our hope that the talking points of this episode will also inspire those who live amongst Indigenous members to behave and respond in ways that supports recovery and enhances safety and security for Native American women and for the community as a whole. Christina Love brings her authentic voice and transformative spirit to the forefront as an internationally acclaimed speaker, educator, consultant, recovery coach and civil and human rights activist with a deep commitment to systems change and advocacy for marginalized and targeted populations. Miss Love's journey has been shaped by her own experiences as an adult and child survivor of physical and sexual abuse, a formerly incarcerated individual in long term recovery, and as a person who has experienced homelessness and disabilities. As an educator and storyteller, miss Love focuses on the intersectionality of trauma, substance use and mental health. Christina, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3:Koyana Gunas-Gish, thank you so much for having me. I'm really grateful to be here.
Speaker 1:Well, we're delighted to talk with you, and we reached out to you for insight on the pervasiveness of violence against Indigenous women and, more specifically, to explore the intersections across substance use, gender-based victimization and survivorship, and mental health and wellness within tribal communities. So let's start with an understanding of the issue. Because we introduced this episode with related statistics on gender-based violence against Indigenous people, can you offer us a little more context as to why this population is so targeted?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and I will start with a traditional introduction. So here in Alaska, this is how we introduce ourselves, yeah, and I'll go into a little bit more about how some of these Indigenous practices are really important for the future of our work. So, koyana Gunas-Gish, my name is Christina Love, my pronouns are she and her. My family is originally from Higikik village, which is located in the Bristol Bay region. I am a Lutik, so Koyak Unangan. I was raised in the village of Chitna, which is in the interior on Ahtna land, and today I live on Lincoln, which is home to the Akintaku Kwan of the Clinkett Nation, also known as Juno Alaska.
Speaker 3:This question and the language. So we introduce ourselves that way because we want people to know where we're from and we might be family, and so our brain lights up in a totally different area, if you think you're related to someone, versus some of the language that we use. And we have historically see a huge connection between language as a precursor to genocide. So the words that we call people can sometimes be a justification for harm that happens to them or the or our inability to relate to them.
Speaker 3:So we'll dive a little bit into that later with in connection to substance use and gender based violence and some of the language around that. But this question is really, really important and I think there's there's a lot of parallels between my own individual experience of violence. It was really important for me to understand that I wasn't alone in a lot of the experiences that I had. So part of part of my identity is around work. I always lead, that I am a mother first, that I am a community member, that I'm a relative and then I'm a person who has experienced great harm and who also has experienced incredible solutions. I know multiple different pathways of recovery and today, on March 3 of this year, I celebrated 10 years in active of recovery from HIV, heroin use and methamphetamine and crack and cocaine and all the other mind altering drugs.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That's amazing. Congratulations on that.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if it's so important that I, that people see how proud we are of the journey that we've made and and so I really love to, you know, lift that part of my identity that I am a person who knows recovery and has lived in all kinds of different ways, that the main point is that I survived and I know we're going to dive into those statistics you know that the likelihood of survival and and and who we are in the fullness of our identity, right, that I'm not just a survivor, I'm not just somebody who knows recovery, that I am all of these other things and, and that's really what it means to center healing in our language, that we move from being trauma informed to being trauma responsive, to centering healing in everything that we do in our language, in our meetings, in our emails, that everything that we do carries the possibility for healing in every, every single moment.
Speaker 3:So my individual experience it was, it was important for me to know that, long before I was born, that my mother had these experiences and long before she was born, our community had these experiences and and really understanding how violence to a nation impacts a community and how violence to a community impacts a family and how violence to a family impacts an individual and how we are all the culmination of our ancestors. That those things can be passed down and we call the scientific word is epigenetics, but we call that blood memory.
Speaker 1:I think I might be getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, but now let's continue, because I think blood memory is a really important context and you know, sometimes we refer to it in other conversations as like generational trauma or historical trauma, and different populations have different words for it that are meaningful to them. But I love this, this context, so please go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the blood memory right to that, that there were so many things that had happened to me that I thought were just me. I thought that it was because I didn't know, or that I was dumb, or that I was a failure or that I was broken. And it was really liberating for me to learn that these experiences were bigger than me. So, for instance, I remember being in some classes in school for, like, developmental disabilities or for children who have disabilities. My mother's first language wasn't English and a lot of people in the village also didn't speak English, so it was very common. So I remember looking around the room and only seeing kids from the village in these classes, and I had that same revelation while I was incarcerated and looking around and seeing mostly Native people that were incarcerated there. So then I started to think but if you don't have all of the pieces to the story, then it becomes confirmation bias and essentially that just means that your brain will look for the story that it's been told, and for me that story was that Native people are dumb and that we can't take care of our children, and seeing so many people in our community struggling with substances, or the stories that my mom told me was that you know, a lot of our family had passed away from alcoholism, from suicide or alcohol related deaths. But the story that she didn't like to talk about was that she went to we call it BIA school, the Bureau of Indian Affairs or boarding school, that she went to boarding school and that my grandmother and a lot of the other children from the village had to go to boarding school, or that her family made the very hard decision to send her to boarding school because she was born with disabilities and at that time it was illegal to have a mental health issue in the state of Alaska. So they were what's that Illegal? You said With illegal? Yeah, prior to the 1970s it was illegal to have a mental health issue here in Alaska. And so they rounded up everybody who did them by train, by dog sled, and they brought them to Morningside Hospital in Oregon where they were experimented on, where they were physically and sexually abused and where many of them were buried there on that land. Alaska has since made an amends. It's called the Alaska Mental Health Trust and that's a promise to the citizens of Alaska that they will never repeat that, and that's a whole other podcast. But so my family made the hard choice to send my mother to BIA school because they didn't want her to be taken away in another way.
Speaker 3:And this comes from a long line, and the historical prevalence of this is that things like this have been happening for hundreds of years. Prior to that was the missionaries. And so when we look at rates of violence right now, the Department of Justice on statistics shows that we have about a 90% chance of being physically abused or sexually abused in our lifetime. Alaska's own statistic for the entire state shows over 50% and 60% chance. This is for every female in the state of Alaska. When we dive into Native communities, some of these communities were looking at 100%, for multiple generations have experienced physical and sexual violence, but we don't often talk about the root cause of that or who is doing the harm. That's the other one. So the majority of those statistics, when we look at that 90% or sorry, I think it's 92% for women are being their perpetrators are non Native and 92 for men and boys are non Native, which is another. I feel like a huge part of the story that has been been left out. So then when we go back, so we have the making mental health illegal and then, not too many years before that we call it the Great Death, and that's where measles and chickenpox and influenza swept across the land and for some tribes it was full genocide.
Speaker 3:Iggy Gic village had one of the highest populations of orphans for the adults that were wiped out, and so in the museum that they just recently created here it's in June of the State Museum they did an exhibit on canneries. The language that they use was, they said. The children were then entrusted to look after the cannery, which is a very different thing from what happened. We're talking about child slavery and a lot of my, a lot of my family were were children that had been left orphans that went to work in the cannery. My mom also later went to work in the cannery and then we were wind back Not too far.
Speaker 3:We have World War Two, and there are parts of Alaska that played a significant part of of World War Two and again, another one of those is the Aleutian chain, where there were huge war, that was that was breaking out there. A lot of Aleutic people went to fight there and what happened was that they were relocated to internment camps and their villages were burned. So a lot of Aleutic people were brought over here to clink at land, and the word that they use in the museum is that they were gently relocated. But what we're actually talking about are concentration camps. They were physically abused, they were sexually abused, they were starved. They were brought to these moldy huts, that where the roofs were leaking in, and we've done extensive interviews with a lot of the survivors. So, again, there's this disruption to ways of life, there is this very violent way of taking land and we could continue to go back further.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean to your point, that was in the 20th century.
Speaker 3:We're not talking about ancient history here or things that happened hundreds of years ago Today, that remember those things.
Speaker 1:Well, people who are alive today that participated in those things. Yes, correct, potentially.
Speaker 3:Oh, but I think that when we see a lot of the outcome or the natural reaction to this violence and we don't have the whole story, then we put another story in there, and this has been the most important story of my lifetime, and that is to place the emphasis on the violence and to name the ways that people have survived as very natural reactions to that violence. Mental health is a very natural reaction to the violence, substance use also a very natural reaction to the violence, and we could dive into the science of that. I think there's a lot of materials out there that talk about the science of addiction, as well as starting to get people to think beyond the medical models, to think more about mental health as a sorry, more about to think of trauma as more of a wound to the body than a mental health issue. If I poke you in the eye, then your eye is going to water. If you, not only in this lifetime, but carry with you the blood memory of generations of violence, then you will also inherit some of those survival pathways.
Speaker 3:And to normalize, when we talk about substance use, we have to make services as easy to access as alcohol and heroin. What I know about people is that we will end our own pain in any way that we can, and some people do that with suicide and some people do that with drugs and alcohol. And for me, and the very long story that brings me here to today and the years of addiction and trauma that led me to a place where I could finally find recovery, the truth is is that drugs saved my life, that I eventually would have been successful in taking my own life if I didn't have something there to numb the pain, to make being homeless or surviving violence just a little bit more bearable. And then, absolutely, if anybody is questioning, there are different ways to cope, there are better ways to cope, but for the sake of this story, the whole point is to just survive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate you sharing so much of your personal story and history with us because I think it gives us just a picture of not only who we're talking to, but just the personal experience of the historical trauma and the things that have happened in just this country, in the United States. Let's talk about missing and murdered Indigenous women for a minute. So that is a movement that some of us in the field, at least, are familiar with and have talked with experts about on this show. How did that movement get started?
Speaker 3:How did it get started going into the roots? Well, there's a piece of legislature that brought together a commission called the Not Invisible Act and that's something that we will be seeing report here coming out within the next year. But really the premise of that is that a lot of the violence that has happened to Indigenous people has been invisible, even though it's been going. We just talked about the historical events that people have been missing and murdered since contact we talk about. Often in our timelines we'll talk about pre-contact and then post-contact and from contact on. Not that our communities didn't experience violence. We just didn't have violence on this scale and we know that sexual violence is one of the most effective tactics of war. So, very specifically, looking at the sexual violence that has happened in our communities, from boarding schools, from missionaries and moving forward, there's a huge connection between extractive industries and harm to the land and harm to our bodies. So that looks at canneries, that looks at fish camps, that looks at man camps, that looks at logging camps. So those high concentrations of predominantly male-populated types of employment on more near Indigenous land, on Indigenous land near Native communities. So the movement of missing and murdered Indigenous people and Indigenous relatives, what started with women, because that that was really called to, that women were being harmed at higher rates, and has since evolved to be more inclusive. So my favorite is relatives, because we get to that part of our brain gets to light up and we can say we're related to them. Right, we're connected to them. What's happening to them isn't happened to me, could happen to any of us, you know.
Speaker 3:And so what it really started? As a movement to raise awareness about what was happening and to ask for solutions. And this is based off the premise that people who are directly impacted have always had the solutions, but we have not had the resources and power to make those changes. And if we are being, you know, very, very, very honest that that a lot of the tactics of violence that we see individuals perpetrating is parallel to the types of violence that we see on systems. So if we look at the Indian removal area or if we look at some of these other sanctioned types of violence, a lot of the tactics that were used then we see happening within individuals coercion, manipulation, absolutely rooted within power and control. So it has. I am so grateful that it's been a movement that has gained a lot more attraction and a lot more attention, that people know what we're talking about when we wear red or when we put red paint across our face, and that we are known. People know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in fact, we've featured that movement at the conference on crimes against women that occurs every year in Dallas, Texas. Were you there in 2023?
Speaker 3:No, no, but I bet it was, I bet it's wonderful.
Speaker 1:It is wonderful because it's such a large gathering of professionals who are working together to try to solve this problem of gender-based violence. But, to your point, this movement has gained a lot of traction over the years and it needs a lot more exposure and to be taken very seriously across this country for the thousands I mean thousands of women, indigenous women, who are missing and or murdered right Now. In the work you do, you serve as an advocacy initiative senior consultant at the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. Tell us about that organization and what you do there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's a network, so it's comprised of 24 member programs.
Speaker 3:These are shelters and direct services across the state that serve victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, and so the network's job is to really is to bring everybody together, and in a number of different ways, they work on policy, they work on prevention, advocacy, and we also have a legal program that provides pro bono legal services for people who can't access those, and so there's lots of different things.
Speaker 3:My position with the network has primarily been working in rural communities specifically for survivors who have the dual experience of domestic violence, sexual assault, substance use and mental health, and we do that in a number of ways of raising awareness, policy work, lots and lots of training and education, but then also through creating integrated services, and that is that the goal would be that that every door is the right door, no matter where a survivor of violence enters into the system, that they would have the same access to all of the different services and a full continuum. One of the things that we see a lot of is a heavy emphasis on the forensic part of violence, without access to healing centered services or culturally responsive services. So this is really about providing lots of options and empowerment through choice and education about all of the different pathways to recovery and to healing.
Speaker 1:That's amazing work and unfortunately, it sounds like you must serve thousands of people every year in Alaska. Is that right? Yes, yeah. So let's talk about, then, substance use and gender based violence in tribal communities. You listed several examples of the history of victimization among Native American women. How does that history lead to the current epidemic of substance use disorder amongst victims and survivors and their families?
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, and even tying it back to missing and murdered. The people who are at highest risk live on the margins of multiple different identities and experiences. So it's not a coincidence that we see more women who are harmed, or that we see more Native people who are harmed or people who have disabilities. And then going further in looking at people who are experiencing homelessness or incarceration or contact with the criminal justice system, and then, further in substance use and mental health, we have several serial killers who have stated on the front page of the paper that they targeted people that no one would listen to and that no one would believe, or that no one would look for.
Speaker 1:Exactly those vulnerable populations.
Speaker 3:Yep, and so some of the worst effects of addiction or mental health come from society's reaction to what people are experiencing, and that's the isolation and that's the stigma or the separation from community and services. And there's a lot of myths about how people come to those experiences and then also how they leave, and I think the one that has the most connection and I would say that the best way to explain it is the stigma that we see on domestic violence, on mental health and substance use comes from two major thoughts. One of them is that people either believe that you did something to cause it or that people believe that you could do something to change it, and that misconception really leads a lot of people to not seek help or even when they do access services, if they don't have equitable or compassionate or equal or understanding or well informed services, because about what's happening to them. So when we look at something like trafficking or human trafficking, it might take years for somebody to be honest about those experiences or really to be able to understand what happened to them and explain it in a way that other people would understand too. So if we're just talking about substances and really understanding that substances itself, there's so many different levels to it for people who are perpetrating violence, for victims and also in the commission of the crime.
Speaker 3:So all of these things really start to overlap for domestic violence, for sexual assault and for trafficking, and it's unfortunate because we're just starting to, I feel like, understand domestic violence and sexual assault and having these experiences lead to higher rates not just of vulnerability. But we have to be careful with our language too. What I like to say is that people are targeted and that's what makes them vulnerable, and when we use language like vulnerable, that is often synonymous with weak or naive, or then that contributes to some of the story where, if you are a person who is experiencing that, like myself, I took those stories and I internalized them. I thought of myself as broken, as weak, as dumb. You know that all of those myths that people say and that also kept me from being able to access services for a long time.
Speaker 1:Well, you certainly are not broken and you certainly are not dumb, because we're learning a lot from you here in this conversation and I appreciate you sharing all of that with us. You said something a couple of minutes ago I wanted to go back to, and you said we should make recovery services as accessible as alcohol and heroin. How can we do that?
Speaker 3:By really transforming the way that we think about who people are and listening to what people need. There's a really wonderful survey from Faces and Voices of Recovery and it's one of the first surveys that I have seen that really looks at people who are in active addiction and asks them what they want. And people said that they didn't want to die and that they wanted compassion and they wanted to be reconnected with their family and they wanted housing and that they wanted options. Very, very, very on the bottom of the list did people say that they wanted abstinence-based recovery, which is what a lot of our services are. So here in Alaska and across the state I work to get people into treatment all the time and that's only one of the pathways and that's about a 60% failure rate, which is a whole other thing. That's a whole other podcast.
Speaker 3:So what can we do to make services as easy to access as alcohol and drugs? We can provide same-day services and we can listen to what people are wanting. People want options. We make people jump through so many hoops that let me simplify this we have to transform systems to fit people rather than asking people to fit trans systems, and there is a way of doing that. There are pathways, there are methodologies, there are modalities, there are equity assessments, and I could get into any one of those things, like on the technical terms, about how an agency or system would go about doing that. But essentially, on the simplest form, it's asking people what they want and then being willing to pivot and provide that, and there's so many depending on what the system is. There are so many different ways that we can do that.
Speaker 3:But first it's really opening up our minds to be able to listen to where people are, and that's something that I had to do in my own recovery journey was to acknowledge that not everybody's journey is going to look like mine and the solutions that work for me doesn't necessarily mean that it'll work for somebody else. So, meeting them where they are and having the resources and the ability, but first, before somebody will even sit and listen to you, who's in a situation it is, there's a lot of internal work that we have to do. There's so many myths, and so if you're listening, and I just want to say that everything that I thought that I knew about addiction or recovery or healing I had learned and I had to learn again, so that first thought that we have. Learning to think again is one of the most powerful things that we could do, and there's a lot of indigenous practices or spiritual practices about learning to think again, that that first thought that we have comes from maybe something unkind that somebody said to us or something that we learned in school and that a lot of. Really, if we want to meet people where they are, we have to learn to have another thought, and that's a brilliant thing to walk people through who are experiencing this, because our first thought is often how people treat us while we're in addiction.
Speaker 3:So, being with people and I think this is I want to give this to everybody that if you become so acutely aware of how you feel in people's presence, that that's one of the most powerful gifts that you really understand that the healing is in the now, the more presence that we can bring to our bodies and to the people that we're working with. Like I can tell you right now in this interview, I'm very aware of how my body feels in your presence. I feel aware and I feel not just tolerate, I feel celebrated, I feel believed, I feel seen, and that's powerful, and we want to give people that experience that, even before a conversation happens, people know how you feel about them, even when we walk in the room. Everybody knows that. That we would bring our mind to that and some of this work is in the unseen and that's where it starts.
Speaker 3:So I can say I hear you that we learn how to catch people's words and that we move those into action, or that we're honest, that I can say that sounds really hard and I don't know what to do, but I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to figure it out with you, right, that we have people on the frontline who are doing this work that can receive that information and if you ask your staff and if you ask people in the community, they already have those answers that we would be ready and willing to move it into action using our resources and our power. And that's what we do as advocates. When I make a call with somebody, I am extending to them my social capital, my resources, my privilege. So when I call someone, I say Hi, this is Christina Love and I'm working with so-and-so, and I'm essentially saying to them this person is with me and I am going to stand with them and make sure that this you know. So there's a level of accountability or responsibility or you know connection. That has to happen, what is?
Speaker 3:the average success rate for people who enter recovery services depends on which recovery services and it depends on how you define recovery and it gets a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, how would you define it within the context of this conversation?
Speaker 3:I would say that it is more of a reclamation of taking back what has been taken from you, and people can define that anyway. So I think about, like my trauma for me was that it took my identity, or that, in the larger context, it's a separation of story, of identity, from my body, from my family, from my community. So then the healing process was reclaiming my story and who I think I am and reconnecting with my family and my community and my land, as well as a power greater than myself to the divine. So, like that, the harm happened that I became disconnected from all those things. So then, healing for me was reconnecting to all of those things, and the way that I describe recovery is that we get all those things that were taken from us or, in some cases, that we thought that we gave away.
Speaker 1:So yeah, kind of, in other words, recapturing that community that was torn apart by relocation and boarding schools and in all kinds of just whitewashing of a culture that you know they were trying to make not exist, as if it had never existed it's reclaiming all of that, reclaiming that heritage and becoming a part of it again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, and for non-native people when I so a lot of the education that I do is about America's history of violence. I have so many materials on that and a wonderful presentation on that. But if you go back far enough, I really did a lot of studying about the culture that was in Europe. That was brought over here immediately from contact. But if you look at the colonization of those European tribes, that is so fascinating. There's one quote that talked about the Roman Empire that was moving through Europe and was trying to overthrow these matriarchal tribes and they said that they could not take them down, that the women were equal in size and fiercer in battle. And the strategy to take down those tribes was that they brought the men aside and they shamed them for being equal partners and lovers. And they said if the men would join the Roman Empire then they would give them higher status over women. And when the men joined they did not have a problem in. The matriarchal tribes fell.
Speaker 1:So what is the that is mind-blowing? What's the resource for that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll get it for you, please do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd like to include that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the thing is, is that America? You know, when I had such a culture shock going from? So the village that I grew up in and the village that my family's from was about 100 people and then coming to DC was one of the first. Seattle, washington and DC were the first big cities that I came to and I had such a culture shock and that's like a whole other thing. I went to live in Europe for a while but the cultural differences, what you know and what I've come to understand over time, is that it's a lack of culture, it's a homogenization of culture, that a lot of families traded their culture for power or sorry, or for safety.
Speaker 3:You know, when we look at a lot of the different people who were coming in as immigrants, you know the Irish, the Italian and the the discrimination that they received early on and then, over time, let this homogenization. You know that we call American culture like. I don't. I can't even think of one American food that wasn't taken from something else. You know, or you know how, the emphasis on white walls and white everything, you know, and I mean, yeah, those are interesting, colored, and dance and music and and I think that my healing journey, I think, and and seeing other people reconnect with their own is such a powerful thing. Immersion, the process of immersion and assimilation, I think, are also a big part why I get to be here, that I had learned to do that so many times already, that learning how to be incarcerated or learning how to be homeless, these are totally different cultures, even in my addiction in selling drugs and buying drugs. Completely different culture, completely set, a different set of rules and also totally different languages, from poverty to middle class. Totally different language, completely different and, depending on which area you're in, completely different language that I'm using right now, the words that I'm using, the emphasis on my tone, totally different than if I was back home in my rural community. And when I learned how to grow back into the community, that was a process too. I could not have gone from being homeless to living in a house on my own.
Speaker 3:I, like people, really need to understand how your body can become regulated or dysregulated to the environment that you're in. You know I almost attuned it to like when you were younger, or even today, if you go spend the night at somebody else's house, you know, and it smells different and there's different sounds, and there. Maybe there are different social cues or social contracts that you're watching and you're learning that those are things that you know, that you pick up over time. But then, on a larger scale, and we do this too with our when we start a job and we're watching the culture and we're seeing how people behave and how they do things and we know that there's going to be about a six month bumpy period where we just feel like we're not doing a great job and it takes us a while to get comfortable there on a mass scale. That happens in homelessness and and also for for growing back into the community.
Speaker 3:Like part of the thing that we don't really talk enough about and this is the science of healing really is when we understand that the heart of trauma is dysregulation and and the importance of us being human beings, so that everything about our bodies is hard wire for connection.
Speaker 3:My son right now, who I'm holding, when he was born I placed him on my chest and our heart synced and our breathing synced and our body synced, and it was important for me to know that my mother didn't have that, that she couldn't give me something she didn't have, and the only reason why I have it now is because I had people around me who gave it to me, you know, who sat with me through the dysregulation and taught me the importance of breath, or taught me that the trees, you know, take everything from us that we don't need and give us what we do need, that the land can regulate you, that your pet is a mammal and it's such a healing thing because it can regulate your nervous system when you're dysregulated and so much of what we feel is in the unseen.
Speaker 3:The opposite of dysregulation isn't regulation itself, expression that we can be really honest about what we're feeling while we search for what it is we need. So I can say so. It was important for me to say I'm confused, or I feel small, or I'm full of rage, or I'm sad and I'm scared and I feel like I'm five, you know, even though 35 at the time was, you know, or whatever it is that you know that we, we say that you know that we and that we give space for all of it.
Speaker 1:So are the programs that you offer at the domestic violence center. Are they filled with you know this type of content? Or because this is so rich and so Compelling and so uplifting as a way to explain what the trauma of gender based violence and substance use can feel like really in any context, but also the response to that and simply calling out some of the things. These things, like you know your trauma is somewhere in your body, like the body keeps. The score by Bessel Vanderkalk that that's what the whole book is about is where are you holding on to the trauma that happened to you inside of your body and how can that be released?
Speaker 1:and so there's, you know, movement therapy and somatic therapy and all kinds of other forms of or modalities of trying to get that out and heal that trauma.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ok, let me, I'm going to. My brain is like compartmentalized. I want to answer your question. I want to talk about the body keeps the score, and then I want to talk about like getting. I want to get to the healing. Ok, yeah, you know, right, like in the whole movement, I feel like we have all these emphasis on trauma, but we, you know, and such an emphasis on being trauma informed so first answer your question is an organization that was created a long time ago and I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you a story for this. Yeah, I will say yes, in part.
Speaker 3:There is a movement that I'm a part of that, with lots of other survivors, that we say thank you to these systems that have brought us this far and we say there's, there's, there's some. The healing is missing, the healing is missing from this. And the story is about a man who owns an apartment building and he says I am racist, I'm sexist, I'm ableist and people of color, indigenous people, black people are not allowed here, women are not allowed here. He probably wouldn't say that. That's what he would say. He would say you're not allowed here. And and the entire building is set up, there's signs that say that people aren't allowed there. There there aren't ramps and there aren't rails for people who have disabilities, and he passes away and his son inherits the building. The story is also about generational wealth and his son says I'm not these things and and he welcomes everybody, but the thing is that he doesn't know what changes need to be made and he doesn't make those changes. And when you have a place like that in your community that has been so unwelcoming for so long, it sends a message out that we don't even need to see those signs to know that we're not welcome there. And so we and this is about this is about these systems and agencies that we have inherited that come with policies from a long history, you know, and some of these things we're talking about this, these violent things like the criminalization of mental health prior to the 1970s, not that long ago we still have policies, we still have practices. We saw funding. That's a deeply centered around that the criminalization of substance use and mental health. You know, I think in 100 years from now we'll look back on the way that substance use has been the war on people right and we're going to think very, very differently about that. So the network is a wonderful agency that provide a type of service that a lot of other places around the nation provide our work to move from being.
Speaker 3:I want people to be trauma informed. I want you to be so informed about all the ways that I've been harmed and I want you to be responsive to that. And I want to move the needle in further, to recognize that I am more than the harm that has happened to me, that my identity is so much greater than that and I and this is where we center healing that that we recognize that I am. All those things that happened to me is in there, but all the ways that I survived is where I want people to focus. I want them to focus on the creativity of not just me but in native people, the ingenuity, the brilliance, the human. It's all of us. Every native community I've ever visited in Alaska and around the nation.
Speaker 3:We all value humor and we have such a wonderful sense of humor that doesn't make fun of other people. That is such a fun way and it's such a brilliant survival. I think we were always funny, but you know, as a way of surviving, you know that that I want people to know that you should see the art that we make and the revitalization of our languages, and I want you to know about these brilliant parenting practices. I'll just give you an example. One of them is the elders talk about that when children come into the room. It's very important that we light up so that our children will know delight in their bodies, and this is something that we practice for hundreds of years and I, the first time I heard that, I just went because I thought, well, who would I have been if, every time I worked, walked into the room, that people would light up, that I would have such a sense of confidence and empowerment that I would walk through the room, that you know.
Speaker 3:To sum this up, that this work again, it's about getting back everything that was taken that when and an addiction and substance use so much of it has thought of has been an individual issue, but it is such a reflection of what is missing from our communities.
Speaker 3:So if people really understood and this is every listener and that there's nothing wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with any person, there are only things that are missing and how you have behaved or had to act, you know when those things are missing, totally natural, totally normal. We place the emphasis on the violence or the emphasis on the community, anything that people have done out of lack, totally, totally normal. Now, for some people we think about like the most heinous crimes, those are big things that are missing or those things have been missing for a long time, and that that becomes that changes the conversation than it isn't about that person or you or me. It's about us as a community and how we can think of ourselves more as a community. That all the harm that happened to me was a reflection of the community, as well as all of the healing that happened that was also a reflection of the community.
Speaker 1:Are you able to offer our listeners some resources on this philosophy that you're talking about of you know how to understand, recognize and approach these things that are missing.
Speaker 3:I. We're working on materials, but I would just say you will know healing by the way that it feels, and your body will know it. I know that you're listening to me now, but your body feels what I'm saying and you'll know the truth by the way that it feels. And as you move through the world, bring your attention to your body and your body will tell you everything that you need to know. That when I started to really understand that my brain and my body were for me and that our brain listens to the story that it tells. So if I say from, even while violence was happening, my brain protected me. Disassociation I went up into the ceiling and disconnected. My brain was protecting, my body was protecting me. And then, when I had the things around me, those flashbacks, if my brain was saying it's time to look at this, we're going, we need to look at this, we need to look at this, and so I started to look at that.
Speaker 3:Another brilliant indigenous practices, healing outside of time, and this is I'll just give this very quick. Well, there's two things I want to. I want to say that you can go back in your mind and you can be who you are now for who you were. Then let me give you an example. So I have gone back, I have closed my eyes and while my mother, while I was in UDRL, I rubbed her belly and I told her that I was so proud of her. I whispered in her ear I love you and I know you're doing the best you can.
Speaker 3:And then I've gone back and I have held myself as a baby or as a toddler, and I've spoken to myself, or as a teenager, as an adolescent, you know, detoxing in a stray jacket, on a cement floor, you know, while incarcerated. And I'm whispering to my ear. I know this is hard, but I want you to know that you are so powerful, you have so much love and light to give, and I know it's it's hard to believe now, but one day you're going to be an incredible mom and you're going to be a great friend, or you're going to get to go into the jail and you're going to get to talk to people who have your exact same experiences and you're going to remind them of what you need to hear now, all the way up to you. Know now, not that you know there are so many things about recovery that I don't need drugs to disassociate, but I don't need things to not be present here and and that was hard, that was a really hard to learn and just allowing yourself to be as human as possible Compassion, you know, is such an understanding, or that you can be everything for yourself that you need right now.
Speaker 3:Yes, and and the right people will come along. Yes, and sometimes you are that. Sometimes, more than often, you're that person.
Speaker 1:I love that you shared with us how to talk to our past self, especially when she or he was suffering, and the beauty that they're going to experience in the future and how proud you are of them. I think it's important for people to hear that. I hope our listeners take that and internalize it and go back and practice it. If they feel compelled to because I do I do think it's. It is verifiable that that works and it heals going forward as well.
Speaker 1:I mean we cannot change the past, but we can change our perceptions of it and our perceptions of ourselves.
Speaker 3:And when we heal past generations, we heal future generations exactly.
Speaker 1:There's tons of research on that as well. I mean, we don't even need to give people the resources for that, because it's out there to find.
Speaker 3:And looking in the mirror telling yourself that you love yourself and working, and it sounds ridiculous working up to doing it naked Like that.
Speaker 1:There isn't a that does not sound ridiculous, it sounds really hard.
Speaker 3:That people know. I'm gonna give you two practices for really starting to reflection that again, that the practices for moving from being trauma-formed to being trauma responsive, to centering healing comes from awareness and reflection, that you become aware and that you have a process for Really thinking about a minute, two questions. One is who benefits from this and the second one is who's harmed by this. So the there are these narratives and these are the same narratives that have harmed indigenous people. They're the same narratives that prevent people who are struggling with substance use, with mental health or domestic violence for being able to access Services. And these are the stories that are being told that are not true. They're not true.
Speaker 3:And a way that we can start to catch those stories and learn to think again is by asking yourself who benefits from this and who's harmed by this. There is not, from the top of my head down to the hair on my toe. There has not been a part of my body that I haven't wanted to change or hate it, and I have really had to dive into who benefits from me thinking that way and who's harmed by that, and you can use that for all kinds of things and whether, if you want to know if you're, if you are spreading gossip. You can ask yourself that same question now. Or to Organizational policies, the way that you're doing things. People will say, well, we've always done it this way. Okay, that's fine, but who benefits from that or who's harmed by that? To anything, everything.
Speaker 1:No, I think those are great questions to ask and I think self-reflection is a process that is so important and More people could really benefit from, from doing and I'm not trying to be flip, I'm just saying I think in a fast-paced world and just looking at, you know just people in my, my own circle and Hoping and even talking with my own family about the need for time for self-reflection To understand your own motives, because if you can begin to understand yourself, it really does give you a better perspective on what's going on around you and it makes you want to Get to know people differently and on a different level and understand their motivations, because not all people are bad, right, no, no, we just don't always understand. I'm gonna say for misunderstood, Totally misunderstood.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and if you go back far enough, it was. It was really important for me to understand. I was 12 when my my father went to prison for sexually abusing all of his children and it was important for me to hear from him and his siblings the the abuse that he had experienced. And that isn't a way to I can hold both of those things in in my hand right that you know when we are, when we're working with people, I can. I can be present for the devastation and Be ready to laugh. In a second right it doesn't take from the other one. Then I have a fuller understanding of how we got here and it doesn't take away my pain and it doesn't justify what he did or what others have done because they've been hurt. But having that awareness Helps me to understand that that it isn't my fault. You know that I didn't do that, that this, that this is something that's been around for a lot longer than I have.
Speaker 3:The violence is a learned behavior and for native people, the people who colonized our land were our first perpetrators. You know that Really, understanding how these cycles of violence exists for three or more populations is not Start generations is, you know, is not a coincidence, and they're. And not only is that the ways that people Harm people, but also the way that we have survived. So there might be things that I mean, there are things within myself that I see my mom do. But and and just having that you know that awareness is just the first step of it. And then being open to doing things differently, then you can start retaining information. You can, you can remember the thing that you just read and you can apply it. Or you can look at your life and say these are the things that I want to keep and these are the things that I don't. So for people who haven't been able to do that and how that connects to the science of addiction is so Fascinating, is so fascinating, because addiction at progressed stage of addiction is back there In the survival part of the brain.
Speaker 3:It hijacks the brain. It starts in the prefrontal cortex, which is logic and reasoning, while we see people doing things that don't make sense, and it moves all the way to the back, to the what they call the reptilian part of the brain. And when I was in my addiction, I would tell people if I could trade oxygen for drugs, then I would have. And then later, when I learned the science, I knew how true that was, because it's right back there with it starts to supersede protecting our children, our work, food, water, all of those things. So when we see people, we think that they are making the choice. They're choosing drugs over their children, they're choosing drugs over their housing or their job. They're not. It's just, it's hijacked the brain and it becomes a disease of not choice.
Speaker 3:And for people I don't I mean, I never know where people are out of their understanding. The very, the very simplest definition is that a disease is anything that alters the function of an organ, and the disease of addiction alters the brain is the major organ. It's such a Complex thing to understand because it removes People's ability to make decisions. They don't make the same decisions that they would make. Have they not been had a progressed stage of addiction?
Speaker 1:I mean for real, it's it's life altering, it's mind altering, it's it's just, you know, complete reversal sometimes of who people really are. I hate to do this, but we're out of time and I have to let you go. I think this whole conversation has been enlightening and healing and beautiful. And, christina, love, I'm so happy I got to meet you today.
Speaker 3:You too. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe. Registration for the 2024 conference on crimes against women is now available. The 2024 conference will be held in Dallas, texas, at the Sheraton Dallas May 20th through the 23rd. Visit our website at conference Caworg To learn more and register today, and follow us on social media at national CCAW for updates about the conference, featured events, presenters and more.