Latest / Upcoming Trial of Nathan Chasing Horse April 14, 2025 / Healing, Identity, and Intimacy: An Indigenous Woman’s Journey Reflections on Trauma
Transcript
- Marina Crane: ⁓ good afternoon. It's Marina Crane from Soutina. As the fry bread burns, I've had such a difficult time trying to upload my podcast. you know, again, technology wise. I'm learning and again, you know, I sometimes I hope that when I do do my podcasts that they become a little bit more sophisticated. I mean to really honor the people that I'm interviewing because I feel like, my goodness, I should do something that looks professional. But that being said. Most of what I'm trying to do is through narrative because I've been told I'm a good storyteller. So about 30 years ago when my niece, she's my like my daughter, was born. I had gone to court and after you know 20 years of not reporting being sexually assaulted and six years of RCP investigation, the fellow was found guilty and he served time. Now my niece was born on the day that he was sentenced. Now, why is it so significant? Well, on April 27th, 2026, I'm heading down to Las Vegas, Nevada to see the sentencing of Nathan Chasing Horse. Now, I went on March 11th and they delayed it until like because Nathan Chasing Horse's lawyer is such an idiot. ⁓ Again, lawyers have to make money. Bless his... I have blank heart. Okay, enough being said about this poor lawyer. He's not poor. I just find him repulsive in the fact that what he tries to build a defense against Indigenous girls is to me is, well, it's continuous. It's nothing new. But the reason I'm ⁓ mentioning these things is because a lot of times, when I was dealing or not dealing with my own trauma. And again, trauma for me is like ⁓ sexually assaulted when I was 19. It was a brutal rape, not in the sense that like during the actual rape itself, it was afterwards when one of the perpetrators kept me back. and and continually wanted to assault me and I had confronted him and I said if you thought I enjoyed it you've got to be kidding me. Now for years I just thought I had confronted him that ⁓ his his partner and his partner's sister whose husband was also part of this I shouldn't say conspiracy but they these two men were serial rapists. ⁓ Anyway I digress. The whole point isn't to talk about the actual court case. However, it has to do with trauma, and it has to do with just the reasoning behind why it's so difficult for Indigenous women to heal. Because I always thought talking about it, yes, it's important. But I'd always assume that just because I go to conferences, or I've been in therapy, or that I have friends that I can disclose or, you know, have intimate conversations with just people in general, that that was enough. And again, I did not understand what performative narrative was, or even that I was participating in it. And I'm not making any excuses for my own behavior. I am who I am as a result of everything that I've learned. Even when I was a teenager, I didn't know that I had manipulative behavior. ⁓ It wasn't until I was like, I think in my late 20s that I understood what appropriate behavior was. Now, that being said, I'm not making excuses for my behavior. I'm just ⁓ relaying this story as I'm pretty sure there are lot of Indigenous women out there, both young, middle-aged and older, who have gone blindly into society feeling like ⁓ something's not right or that, you know, what's happening to me. And again, I'm not making excuses, but there are such things as being raised in a culture where You have to get permission to even talk about ⁓ healthy human sexuality. And even if you do talk about sexuality, you're taught to not talk about it. And as a result, I think a lot of people have ⁓ certain issues about identity as well as self-expression. So part of one of the reasons, and I've gone throughout my life ⁓ trying to ⁓ understand how to help help women. I always had a curiosity of why my mother and my my female relatives stayed with like my abusive father or my abusive uncles or just abusive men who who love to have violence against their their women. And that being said, I know I have a reputation in my community. I was I used to go out night clubbing. ⁓ not drinking or drugging, I mean, again, addiction has nothing to do with alcohol or drugs. And I believe from my understanding, it to do with intimacy or the lack of intimacy. ⁓ part of the reason I'm talking about ⁓ self-defeating behavior is I didn't understand it. A lot of times I struggled with just feeling, having some self-esteem. Even ⁓ my education, I felt like I was limited. And again, this is a self-perception, self-defeating perception because, you know, I hardly ever read. And when I did read, it was academic. It wasn't until like years later when I picked up a book to read for pleasure that I finished it in one day and I was shocked that I could do that. And sometimes too when I hear myself talk or when people ⁓ listen to me in my prayer circles that I ⁓ sometime have been asked to participate in, it's the reception that I get afterwards that is very moving for me. This is why I like I do my podcast so that there are people out there who may be in search of some resolution or some ⁓ catalysts would get them motivated to either go to therapy, ⁓ create a support group, ⁓ even support like their children or grandchildren, or even to step back and really self-evaluate. And it's really difficult. ⁓ Like I said, I'm an elder and I try not to make it sound so difficult, but I started this journey a long time ago. like almost 50 years ago. ⁓ And it had to do with Puritan culture as well. ⁓ fear-based, loneliness, isolation, anger, we can go on and on. But I want to talk about this particular story because it has meaning to it because it was a moment of discovery. Because I just assume that women, Indigenous women, and I'm not just focusing on Indigenous women, but I'm saying Indigenous women because that's what and who I am, that a lot of times we get involved in organizations and in process of thinking we're helping. And yes, we do have to do something because if we don't do anything, then it just becomes like that nobody... Nobody knows about it. Nobody wants to get educated about it. So there has to be a catalyst. And no matter how ⁓ unwell you may be, it's still a process of having a narrative. I mean, ⁓ people are going to criticize you no matter what. And that's just the nature of being human being and the way our brains function. So I digress. Again, 30 years ago. ⁓ on the day that my niece was born, this man was sentenced. But at the same time, too, the reason I'm mentioning this is because there are moments in our history that we have, you know, extreme memory, just like it happened yesterday. Those aha moments of like, ⁓ my goodness, that just, I can't believe that happened. But at that time, I was volunteering at the Native Women's Shelter, too. And around that same time, before I took this person to court, ⁓ I did a lot of volunteer work and I still do. I still do a lot of volunteer work, but as an elder now, I get paid big plus. ⁓ So I appreciate that. But at the same time, too, I realize as an Indigenous elder, and I think I've repeated this before, that when somebody offers me tobacco to come in and do a prayer circle, I really realize that I have to negotiate. have to, the people who invite me, I have to really talk to them about misogyny and lateral violence and that my perception of it as an Indigenous woman, I do not believe Indigenous men face it as much as in elder Indigenous women in prayer circles. That there are a lot of our own people who are misogynistic towards elderly women and that when I do go into these circles I expect the person who's invited me to protect me. And what does that have to do with all this? unless you're consciously aware of lateral violence and you know that somebody's going, possibility of somebody just hating you, not even knowing who you are, but just hating you because you're indigenous. It's a really difficult thing because it can come from young people. I find it more so... ⁓ with people my own age, but I do think there is hope out there for people who generally want to understand why ⁓ there's a ⁓ stigma attached to growing old. I know we talk about elder abuse. But I do think as women, we are more hateful to each other at any age level. And I think it's systemic, but I think we have to talk about it. So here's the example. I'm glad you've listened so far, but ⁓ I'm hoping I can finish this podcast and still have some clarity on the message that I want to get across to you, my viewing audience. It's as if we're having a cup of coffee together and... you're listening to me talk about this encounter that I had as a board member for the Native Women's Shelter. And, ⁓ you know, it was focused on women's wellness because there was this whole wellness ⁓ phenomena happening. And there was various organizations throughout the United States and Canada that were having workshops. And at the time, I was director of education as well. I flew down to Oklahoma. I think it was Oklahoma or someplace for a workshop. And there was ⁓ that on women's wellness. And I happened to listen to a fellow from Oklahoma whose first name was Billy. And I thought, OK, I'd studied enough psychology to understand what he was talking about. And I thought, there's just this attraction about him, like his energy. A charismatic, well-known Kiowa man who delivered excellent presentations on healthy human sexuality. And again, I'm thinking, OK. I've abstained from sexuality all these years. I have a firm grasp on healthy human sexuality. Again, naivete as I am, I did not. I invited him to Canada to conduct workshops with a youth camp. And again, that was an eye-opener because... And my whole interest has always been with youth since I worked with high risk suicide girls in the state of Nevada, state of Utah. I'm sorry. I go on. It's my aging brain. Part of the reasons why I do these podcasts is so that I keep active and I try to keep myself alert. So anyway, ⁓ I started organizing and having ⁓ like I had support group within my own home and I had a forensic nurse who became a friend of mine, ⁓ volunteer to sit in as a resource person in a support group in my home. And again, I had support groups. I asked her to help me in organizing ⁓ support groups for conferences. ⁓ since I had already... I invited Billy up to to suit in and he had worked with youth for like a weekend camp. ⁓ I also knew he could work with women. ⁓ So anyway. ⁓ I already knew of a lady that I knew since I was a teenager for musketeers. And ⁓ she had she was working in social development and she had the resources, the money. to finance a wellness women's conference. And since I sat on the board for the Native Women's Shelter, I had access to recruiting women to attend these workshops in Sampson. So we designed a workshop and invited various resource people and they came and we had the workshops that they took place and I invited Billy because I wanted him to be introduced to ⁓ this lady from Muscogee's as well as ⁓ introduce him to some of the board members for the Native Women's Shelter. And so it was through this collaboration that ⁓ I started ⁓ know, wondering about ⁓ just what it is that I was doing to help, like, be an activist in getting involved in, like, murdered and missing Indigenous women or just ⁓ violence against Indigenous women. And so that was the ⁓ very mark of the workshop. My friend from Muscogee had been sexually assaulted as a teenager. And her story was that years later she ⁓ reported the charges against her relative. And through the help of the RCMP and a lengthy pursuit in getting him charged, he was charged and served time. I'm not going to go into the details of her own personal life. I could, but what purpose would it serve? The reality was that ⁓ I believe as Indigenous women when we have a roadblock or somehow we're triggered, we get combat fatigue. And in order to get out of that loop, we have to be activists and we have to get involved. So... ⁓ Because of my relationship with this lady from Muscat, I knew her when I was a teenager and she told me that ⁓ she, what she was doing. And again, I think you have to be open about what it, like you can't turn off that libido. Okay, so that was the lesson I was naive about again to. I don't think I'm the only one. I think even women who've been in long-term relationships have a difficult time of understanding ⁓ intimacy. Okay, so I regress again. I invited Billy from the States to come to this conference. And one of the prominent board members was Blackfoot. And his presence just drew a lot of attention. Like I felt that when I saw him in the States and that was the reason I invited him. And during the times that I did invite him up to Canada, I did talk to him. I had, you know, I recognized my own feelings of infatuation, where at that time I didn't understand the word limerence because it's a deep infatuation based on childhood trauma. He was very open and, you know, was attentive and held space for me. I didn't understand that whole concept. I still I think part of my podcast is to educate women out there, like what it means to hold space for another individual, because that's what intimacy is. And just for him holding space, I was able to, you know, to to express like I've had this previous experience with a football player when I lived in Utah. and I had to talk to him as well. So a lot of times when I talk about female feelings towards men, because they seem to be unobtainable or they seem to be healthy, that you have to openly discuss your feelings because that's an illusion or a delusion that you have to acknowledge that it's not love. It's not intimacy. I mean, it's a form of intimacy, it's an in-reactive state requiring processing of one's emotion. So limerence can stay for weeks, months, years, decades, and until you actually ⁓ start being open and understanding within your own wheelhouse or your own process of how you deal with your emotions, ⁓ you'll find yourself ⁓ getting yourself into some trouble. Like I said, the lady from Muscogee's, rather than dealing with her childhood trauma, yes, it was important she took her perpetrator to the court, but there was still stuff she had to deconstruct in self-defeating behavior. And because she didn't have that support, she ended up having a... ⁓ an affair with the RCMP officer who had helped her. And a lot of times when it came to her relationships with her previous partners, even though she's educated, it was still difficult for her to try and ⁓ be brave enough to venture out to find somebody who's healthy. That's why for me, when ⁓ people saw me associated with Billy at the workshop, A lot of women, including the woman from Muscogee and this Blackfoot woman, just his presence drew attention that they're looking at me going, ⁓ she... she's with, he's friends with her. If she's friends with Marina, then there's a possibility he'll be friends with me. Like again, these women not realizing that the conversations that I had with him before in private about infatuation, about my dealing with these feelings that I know weren't real, and that I hoped he would help me through this process. And again, I had to trust him. just like I had to trust that football player in Utah. So a lot of this stuff of dealing with limerence and even going into therapy, doing all this coursework on eliminating self-defeating behavior, I spent years doing all this prior to even sitting on the board. So, and without even openly discussing it with other indigenous women, I was doing this work personally just for my own, my own. growth and the fact that Billy was acknowledging that it was not love and that, you know, he was helping me process my feelings, knowing that this is an infatuation. Now, I understand this too. He was in a position where he was ⁓ very open and understanding. However, at the same time, too, he knew the power or the influence he had in order to gain more. ⁓ what do call it, consultation, making money out of what he was promoting, healthy human sexuality amongst Indigenous women. ⁓ Again, and that's a form of like, okay, yes, he's doing this for his own good. But at least I had the conversation and I was starting ⁓ talking about my feelings. ⁓ So. At the time, like I said, it requires a lot of courage and self-awareness to even, and even having trust. So, ⁓ again, if I knew all this, I would have had a resource person at the workshop talking about limerence. I would have had some structure to educate Indigenous women about what limerence is and that it's a deep... deep attachment to infatuation and the history of it, the history of why it became so public with even the fact that ⁓ years ago when women would marry men, again men could be promiscuous but women, you know, they'd either be sexually assaulted on their honeymoon without even knowing what human sexuality was all about or they'd catch a venereal disease because they were keeping themselves pure. or the fact that they couldn't understand why their partners were addicted to alcohol and drugs. So like with AA or any kind of support group, Elanon, these women came together because they already had children. And again, that's part of the whole workshop is to have women come together and support each other. But like I said, in hindsight, if I'd known about the self-defeating borderline personality disorder called limerence, would have had resource people to talk about it and how to deconstruct it and the timeline that it takes to eliminate such a ⁓ personality disorder. But that being said, I didn't. I was unaware of it. I didn't even know I was practicing eliminating that self-defeating behavior. However, because I had already been intimately talking to these men that I had been infatuated with, I did know the process and I did know the illusion or delusion that it would create if I did not ⁓ openly discuss it. So it was during this conference that there was this unintended, just unintended interpersonal tension between the woman, the women that I was associated with in organizing this workshop. And it all stemmed around Billy. These two women who were helping me organize had had some deep infatuation with him. ⁓ I don't... I, at the time, I thought like each one of them had their own families, their own, like their own happiness. I did not think that they were sad, lonely women, especially the woman from Blackfoot. She was in a relationship. And the fact too, like after the workshop, the lady from Samson had approached me and said, I've invited Billy to a banquet. I hope you don't mind. And I said, He's an acquaintance. There's no emotional, sexual, physical attachment to this man. Why are you even telling me? This isn't my business. If you want to invite him, that's your two adults. That's not for me to determine. ⁓ so having conversations with women about Billy that way, especially the one. Now, I thought, okay, I'm dealing with her, spoke to her about, you know, what, like I didn't say to her, yeah, I know what you're feeling, that infatuation, I've experienced that with him. I did not say that. I just said, I'm not, there's nothing between Billy and me. That way she would know that. There was no, I wasn't infatuated. I had no ulterior motives to be friends with him. I didn't, wasn't thinking of him being a significant partner. There was no, there was no issue with that. I just, like I said, I had to explain that to her and I just found it really interesting that I had to go that far. Now, even that, I had my friend who was a forensic nurse who had accompanied me. And she was sort of like a therapist for me, but she was there supporting me even when I reported my sexual assault. She was the one who had listened to my narrative and said, does that the rapist know he hurt you? So that was the catalyst. And then when I met the lady from Sampson, who said there was no statute of limitations, all this sort of snowballed in for me to take issue and charge this man. So that's the history of it. Now, the thing about it is the lady from Siksika, like I said, she had a partner and we sat on the board together and I had a signing authority and so I had organized a huge bus with the help of these two women to organize women to go down to Phoenix for this wellness. That's a bus trip there and back. And of course they had to fundraise from their own communities to go. And ⁓ again, ⁓ my reasoning for going, even if it was obsessive or compulsive in some sort of sense of like, Billy's going to be there. The reality was I had already known there was nothing there for like me and him. but I still had to struggle with that emotion, because I told them that this is a feeling I have to process. Eliminating a self-defeating behavior doesn't take overnight, and there'll always be relapse and recovery when it comes to that. So ⁓ the week before we were going to catch the bus, ⁓ the lady had to sign some checks. And she said to me, she says, I told my partner that I'm going down to this wellness conference and that by Thursday I would call him and that there was a likelihood that he would, I would find the love of my life and that he would pack up all my stuff and send it to Phoenix. Okay, and I'm going, why is she telling me this? What miracle does she hope to find in Phoenix at this wellness conference? This is really high, high, unobtainable goals. Even for, like again, you had to be a Barbie or some supermodel to think that somebody was going to be throwing themselves at the very feet you walk on. But again, I didn't understand traumatic bonds and I didn't understand the traumatic bond she obviously had with her partner that she had been talking to. about this obsessive compulsive behavior or limerence that she had towards Billy. So the reality of it is like once we got on the bus, she wanted to ⁓ be my roommate in the hotel and I said, I can't, I have my own delegation from my community that I'm sharing the room with. ⁓ I said, you have your friend. ⁓ I have to look after my delegation. I have to look after the women on the bus. I can't be catering to just accommodate you. Now on the way back from the conference in Idaho, she started yelling and screaming at me from the back of the bus in front of everybody and I couldn't understand why. It was so heartbreaking how she was calling me down and I can't remember exactly what she said. But the ladies from Sutina, they heard that, they said, Marina, you don't need to take that kind of behavior from her. So I stepped down from being a board member from the Native Women's Shelter. And I realized that this woman had, ⁓ like her illusion or delusion of, or even her lack of self-awareness. in terms of the potential or the lack of potential that this man who had a partner was never going to ever see her as a potential mate. Now I couldn't tell her that she was older than me but it was the reality that I was around women who were like me who were trying to help other women that had issues of limerence. So that's the cautionary tale when it comes to being a survivor of traumatic ⁓ lateral violence or trauma for Indigenous people, especially not just Indigenous women, but all human beings. So ⁓ that's part of one of the reasons I talk about limerence. And even though people say, ⁓ well, it's such a funny thing to talk about. Yeah, but I could be clinical and talk about borderline personality disorders or narcissistic Machiavellian disorders, you know, whatever the label is. And those are really scary titles, really scary diagnosis. And why should ⁓ I be using terminology like that? That's not, I'm not a professional. I'm not... ⁓ one, to use those words because, ⁓ you know, like I said, you can't shut off the libido. It's there right until we're six feet underground. So, ⁓ and again, if I hadn't experienced all this, I don't know. ⁓ if I would have ever gotten to the point when I did meet Nathan Chasing Horse that I understood what limerence was, saw the signs of it because I, like I said, ⁓ a decade, 15 years before Nathan Chasing Horse came into Soutenna, I had already dealt with experiences of limerence from women who were supposedly there supporting other women. ⁓ Like the thing about it too is what I try to express too is that when I talk about Indian residential school and I talk about parents and how our parents were raised, ⁓ the thing about it is like there's a large danger inherited in religious sexual repression. I think all of the Indian residential schools had that religious overtone in them, particularly with Catholicism, ⁓ Anglicanism, Mormonism, whatever religious ism is there, there is a religious sexual repression. And the abuse against children is horrific. And the tragedy is generational based on infantileized lack, the lack of ability to protect oneself as a child, their sexuality as a child, or even to speak as an adult with self-awareness and identity. Now this, as an adult, I could see that with my own parents. Even though my parents had eight children, this lack of ⁓ self-awareness and identity was so triggering. for both my parents, because my late mother would say, I didn't realize the, she didn't use the word repercussions of Indian residential school, but as the trauma perpetuated, passed down from her, like from my grandparents to my parents, it's like through intergenerational when children grow up, I'm unable to talk about sexuality, self-awareness or identity. So for me as an elder, when I talk about, my sexuality and I say I haven't been sexually active in 49 years. All the 10 years, every 10 years it seems like I've evolved into understanding my self-awareness. Every 10 years there's a protective, reflective, healing energy about around my identity and also letting go of self-defeating behavioral thoughts. that had been like that I adapted and adopted to within my own other relationships with, you know, core groups helping indigenous women and the fallacies or the lack of boundaries that I didn't really understand. And again, until you actually, think, and I'm trying to be realistic about this. I'm trying to let my audience understand this. Do not punish yourself. for not knowing the terminology or the fact that you've been involved with self-defeating behavior. There are thousands and thousands of people who go to universities and study. You know, they study and they produce books on all this stuff. And the thing about it is like, even knowing it, even knowing it, it doesn't... Like you can have all the structure, you can have the outline, ⁓ you can say, okay, I understand this, and yet it's not something that... that you can learn overnight. It's not something, it's not some, it's taken me decades. So even like understanding how people get involved in cults. And I'm saying this not just for cults, I'm saying this in terms of indigenous people who get involved with violence, why a person stays in a violent relationship and why it's so difficult to leave. Understand this in the city of Calgary there is there is a shelter for a woman any women The thing about it is when you go into this you don't have any contact with your family and They they treat the psychological condition for months and once you once they feel that you're ready to to leave they'll let you leave, but it's a program that you voluntarily go into consenting to not have any contact with anybody. Like that's how sophisticated things are now in deprogramming victims of violence. So understand, if you're involved in any kind of victim of violence, or if you feel like you've been involved in a cult, or somehow your family is just unable to function. Be gentle with yourself. These sophisticated names that people have given like cognitive dissonance, what the hell is that? You know, like that again, there's also ⁓ fallacy. what fallacy means something that isn't true, it's the reality. you know, why do you not want to live in reality? And then there's identity fusion. why would somebody, why would you give up your life to have somebody tell you who you are and how you should behave? ⁓ Like, the, somebody robbing you of your identity. And again, even social isolation. Social isolation, you see it a lot of times when people don't want the person they're controlling to have any say or to go and be around the people they love or even that they've grown up with. And then there's the loyalty loop of the person who's doing the abuse. I have an older niece who has been involved in this cult and repeatedly the cult leader would completely abuse her. abuse her financially, emotionally, and wouldn't even visit her in hospital, just wouldn't pay for her bills even after she spent thousands and thousands of dollars supporting his cause. The inability for her to leave, her loyalty is so looped in, it's a cycle that she has a problem even to leave. Understand this, this isn't just female too. One of these followers of Nathan Chasing Horse, like whatever extreme narrative Nathan has given him to manipulate him is so extreme. Like saying to him, no sex with your partner for a whole year, no masturbation for a whole year, because if you do, you're going to develop cancer of the pancreas, the, what do call, prostate. ⁓ instilling fear in a man. And it goes deeper than that. There's a deeper psychological reasoning for that. And that's that individual person who needs to heal. But again, too, like I said, this whole loyalty loop, even his wife divorcing him, never changed his mind. You know, he's ⁓ basically ⁓ supporting Nathan Chasing Horse's parents while Nathan's in jail. I can go on and on about a lot of the cult, his followers still being having this loyalty loop associated with him. Like I said, these things are not easy to eliminate. And I'll say them again, cognitive dissidence, fallacy, identity fusion, social isolation, and loyalty loop. All those five categories are specialized in psychology. So I say don't be hard on yourself. It's taken years of academic study for people to even have a narrative on what it is and how to heal from this and what they see and how they study it. It's just like, look, 20 years, 20 years it's taken. for Nathan Chasingworth to be caught, found guilty, and for him to be sentenced. Now there's also a part too associated with ⁓ cults and the inability to be afraid to heal, because you you grew up with people, and in our communities we deal with a lot of grief and loss. So of course this problem of escaping ⁓ a cult has to do with grieving and like ⁓ how do you support a loved ⁓ one who's involved in a cult? And I said, it's just like the same thing in abusive relationship where a woman has a difficult time leaving her abusive partner. How do you help them exit their problem? Because again, there's other categories called ambiguous loss. that's losing someone, even though it's not through death, it's just you've known them your whole life and all of a sudden, for some aha moment, you're going, ⁓ my goodness, this person is no good for me. This person is a narcissistic Machiavellian. They are more of a danger to their children and their grandchildren. They do not care if they hurt you. And stepping away from that because of the existence of that personality. And again, Personality disorders can be eliminated, they can be healed, but you need to have hard, you need to have courage and you need to have an effort. The effort has to be made consciously to do the work, because it has to do with your mental state and how you communicate and how you talk about your feelings. ⁓ again, when our parents and our grandparents went into these Indian residential schools, even the whole science of what a control system looks like in itself is another study in psychology. again, I say, you know, if you're listening to my podcast, Don't be hard on yourself if these terminologies are new to you or you know them, but yet you don't know the whole extent of it because you see it or you're enmeshed in it so much. So even, like I said, distinguishing ethics from control mechanisms, like, again, like I said, there's so many ⁓ things that people have ⁓ tried to study or study just to help people who have ⁓ lived and supported a cults for years and decades. that's why I say be gentle with yourself. It's not an easy thing to try and ⁓ break free from someone's influence. So, ⁓ like I said, there differences between religious sexual ethics and purity culture. Religious sexual ethics are community standards around sexuality voluntarily held and discussed openly. Purity culture, by contrast, uses shame, surveillance and purity culture. Religious sexual ethics are community standards, like I said. There is a difference between purity culture that uses shame and social compliance to regulate behavior, particularly or primarily around young women as a mechanism for institutional or patriarchal control. And see, this is the whole thing that was so diabolical. when Nathan Chasing Horse is coming on as a patriarchal control, when all the practices of the Sioux people is matriarchal. So, you know, unless you know your Sioux culture and what matriarchy is and what it looks like, then you're going to be colonized in patriarchal control and the impact of purity and social compliance to regulated behavior, primarily among young women. Like I said, this impacts The impact of purity culture is a psychological harm, not just theological conformity. It employs object lessons, such as taking a piece of tape and passing it around the classroom, or removing petals from the rose, or chewing up gum, to instill shame amongst young people. Shame or guilt, distinguished. Distinct emotions, shame produces, hiding and silencing while guilt can motivate change. See, this whole period, like I said, this compliance and patriarchy around shame and guilt. The research consistently shows that shame-based sexual conditioning does not reduce sexual activity, but it drives it underground. Okay, let shame based sexual conditioning does not reduce the sexual activity, but it drives it underground. So when Nathan Chasing Horse recruited a lot of teenagers, the sexual activity didn't die down, it just became underground. Increased secrecy and risk. ⁓ young girls secretly hiding that he had told them that they were going to be his wife and that he would like that or else they were holy children are going to be holy women. ⁓ Many women raised in purity culture report physical symptoms such as nausea, panic attacks, ⁓ involuntary response to sexual underground, sexuality underground, increased secrecy at risk. ⁓ These are unintended side effects. They're evidence of systems functioning as designed. Long-term psychological impacts are ⁓ lasting impacts of religious sexual shame on adult relationships and physical responses. Years of conditioning equate sexuality with danger and contamination. leading to anxiety, disassociation, and involuntary shutdown. Okay, so when I say I haven't been sexually active in 49 years, you can understand that the beginning of my journey had been associated with all that. And even like, however I would have disassociated, especially when you're being physically attacked and your mind wants to go someplace else, well, the horrific thing, the horrific act is being imposed on you. And, you know, I used to always wonder, oh, what impact did my me seeing and witness violence with my father beating up my mother have on the long-term effect? Well, I would voluntarily shut down. because I didn't want to see my mother hurt. But even though I was there physically, I disassociated. And that in itself. is the foundation of learned helplessness or ⁓ intergenerational trauma or again, limerence, looking for love that's unobtainable because why would my father beat up my mother? Maybe my mother was unlovable and if she's unlovable then I don't want to be unlovable. I don't want to be like her. So, know, the whole reality of ⁓ the shutdown of the self. or the missing, the spiritual missing of the self, or the self being stolen by someone who's manipulating you. You get yourself in a vulnerable state associated with someone who's a sociopath, ⁓ and it becomes a horrific nightmare for decades. This intersection of religious trauma syndrome, a cluster of symptoms including difficulties in decision making, critical thinking, sexual dysfunction, and the ability to trust personnel. So that's why when I talk about the fact that it took me 20 years to even report my sexual assault, that in itself Even going to school, going through therapy, deconstructing and trying to eliminate the self-defeating behavior, those were steps in me developing critical thinking skills, me deciding what, like how do I make decisions? How do I make decisions? And the majority of time when I talk to people, especially other indigenous women, I say, I've never had a partner. I had to make my money, I've had to pay for my education, I've had to do all this, I lived in another country. Decision making for me was decision making just for me. And the critical thinking part of it too was to get educated and to ⁓ say critique in my artwork. What am I doing in terms of empowering or using my art as a voice to talk about? trauma or even my identity as an Indigenous person. The sexual dysfunction of that, inability to trust people is personal instincts. See, and all that, if I go into any further details about that, you'll laugh. But the reality of it is like I constantly have been learning. And I've been learning from a lot of young people. about ⁓ sexual dysfunction and even talking to people who appear to be functional but aren't. Again, I think in the sense that because I've lived such a long life and I've ⁓ had to have the ability to trust people, I've had to trust my instinct and my guts. So like I said, it's not easy if all you've ever known is violence or you lived a high-risk lifestyle. And for me, I think maybe I lived a high-risk lifestyle for two or three years in my whole life. Purity culture does not just shame the body. I'm reading this. It undermines trust in one's own instincts. making it impossible to recognize and report harm. Understand this. It makes it impossible to recognize or report harm. See, purity culture, in what Nathan Chasing Horse groomed and those older adults groomed those girls, was to believe in purity culture, especially when they're getting ready for Sundance. And as a child, you've got to be pure. And again, this is colonial way of thinking. you know, his conditioning was persistent. ⁓ even after intellectual deconstruction of theology, the body keeps the score as confirmed by neuroscience. See, so all this whole purity culture and the inability to recognize or report harm, becomes so systemic, so normalized, that even when you're trying to get somebody to leave a cult, or even if you're trying to have somebody leave an abusive relationship, or even if you're trying to let somebody know that they're in limerence and that they're chasing after somebody who's unobtainable, even when you're trying to say to them, you're going to get hurt, how do you get through to them? See, that was the burning question I had for decades. And so my understanding, my own life, my specific vulnerabilities to ⁓ like how I could have been exploited by an abuser, I noticed that with most of my friends who I helped bury. They were part of murdered and missing Indigenous women. And ⁓ if I hadn't lived ⁓ abstaining. and not being in a violent partnership, I too would have succumbed to the violence. But that's the same as systemic racism. So even when I talk about trusting white men, or even ⁓ like what it is to be an ally or cohort, even white men will say, don't trust us. We'll go through a honeymoon stage for a whole year, and afterwards, I'll blame you for something that I've done. This is coming from a white man. Now that's again a systemic racism and it's important for people to understand. Like I said, Malcolm X said, quote unquote, and I'm not, I shouldn't say quote unquote, but I'm paraphrasing, that until minority people ⁓ do not depend on cohorts and allies, we still will not have freedom. So as much as we believe we are free, we aren't. So we've got to explore and highlight and understand the psychological consequences of purity culture. And I truly believe that because we constantly recreated to try and believe that we're safe when we're really not is to understand what systemic racism is. to understand what purity culture is. And I know a lot of people keep on, for a while, like decades, they were saying rape culture. Like I said, all these forms and all these debriefs and everything, again, don't be hard on yourself. You know, we're all paraprofessionals. We're all seeking to heal ourselves. And again, I will go through... ⁓ the stages, ⁓ cognitive dissidence. Fallacy, identity fusion, social isolation, and the loyalty loop. And those who have a problem exiting, like the loyalty loop, exiting that, you're dealing with ambiguous loss and conditions to exit. So self-care and boundaries, those things are important. for a person to deal with before they even try exiting from lateral violence or from a cult, from that self-defeating behavior. My late mother used to say, love yourself. ⁓ She says, don't trust anybody. There's so many things I've learned and I understand, but at the same time too, I used to say to my mother, a person does not have to be hurt to learn. We can learn and understand these things before we even step into something where we could physically and emotionally hurt ourselves. So that's why it's important to be open about your sexuality. And my hats off to all those young people who are two-spirited, who use pronouns like he, she, them, they. I realized just doing that is affirming that life is difficult out there. Our young people know that. But for some reason, reasoning, again, I understand it's because ⁓ we didn't have the education that our young people have today. And we didn't have social media as our young people have today. I truly believe as an elder, When I talk about my sexuality, how long I've abstained, it's talking to men about my sexuality openly. And if other women say, well, Marina, you're saying too much. Well, again, why is it too much is because you're thinking that that person I'm disclosing to is going to use this information, this intimate information against me. So in order to be intimate and to trust people, There is, you have to have that courage to identify. And because life is too short. Life is too short to not be happy. And if you choose not to ever get married or ever get over, never have children, that's your choice. And most women today that are older who had children or whose husbands have died or they're divorced, choose not to be in relationships. And again, It's important for young people, especially our Indigenous youth, to realize you have a choice. You don't have to get married. You don't have to have children. You can get an education. You can live on your own. You can find networks and support systems to help you navigate your life through right until you become elderly. That's why as an elder, I say to young people, look at what I've had to overcome. I've gone to residential school, I've been in day home, I've been to Indian hospitals, you even being sexually assaulted. I've grown up seeing family violence. I live in my Indigenous community. I have networks of us, ⁓ holistic and community support, a whole concept of healing. that's there, even though it might seem very fragile, the catalyst that we have as Indigenous people is so marvelous that other people look at us and wonder, how did we survive? How did we survive 500 years of genocide? The first 100 years, they killed five generations of our children. five generations, that's 125 million children were murdered and killed, not including like the potential for mums to be raised. And even the whole point for me being a Sioux woman, that the fact that those people hunted my ancestors down, especially the women who were pregnant, so that they would gut them and take their baby, baby scalp and the woman's scalp. They created a town in South Dakota just for that. all this horror that was created with minority women, especially black women, whose bodies were used for scientific experimentation on female sexuality. So that gynecology today could be what it is. And yet the amount of black women who die in childbirth is outrageous. So for me, being a woman of colour, being Indigenous, it is important. It is important to have a narrative and to have the reality of what it is to be ⁓ wearing our skin in a community that supposedly is supposed to be safe for us. So I'm hoping and I really appreciate the fact that I've been able to ⁓ upload this. ⁓ Like I said, ⁓ I'm trying to do as much as I can before. April 27th. I'm going down to Las Vegas. I will do some interviews with some of the women that I met on April 11th, wait, March 11th, sorry. And hopefully the podcast will be a little bit