Latest / Upcoming Trial of Nathan Chasing Horse April 14, 2025 / Misunderstanding the Phenomenon of Nathan Chasing Horse
Transcript
- Marina Crane: Well, good afternoon. It's April 20th. I tried to record on Sunday and uploaded. I had technical difficulty. So I'm going to attempt the recording I tried to record. it was, ⁓ again, I'm not a therapist or by any means do I acknowledge any kind of ⁓ clientele or anything like that. I just I'm talking from my own lived experience. And so within this hour, I'm going to talk briefly about ⁓ how salient works. Now, I'm not too sure if I'm even saying it right, but it's S-A-L-I-N-E-N-C-E like silence, but only thing it's salience. ⁓ ⁓ abrient silence and psychosis, delusions and their formation, the importance of early treatment and ⁓ experience psychotic psychosis, a hidden reality. So ⁓ also understanding the experience of psychosis. abriate salad silence hypothesis breakdown of filtering and meaning meaning making delusions and their impact. Now, the reason I'm covering these topics has to do with healthy human sexuality as well, because we're talking about ⁓ conditions that stemmed from early childhood trauma. But it also created ⁓ a sort of a fixation or the nervous system adapting to different stimuli. ⁓ So again, significance of early treatment, ⁓ building empathy. ⁓ You know, when I talk about empathy, I also say like there's compassion as well. So it's the holistic collective approach to to empathy and compassion, which I believe is is within our Indigenous framework and has always been there. So I'm trying to empower myself as well as other Indigenous people and for those who are non-Indigenous to give them some sort of cross-cultural reference as to ⁓ why their way might not always be the right way. It might always be like some coming from a place of privilege. or that, what's that called? My parents, people use my parents so well. ⁓ What do they call it now when non-Indigenous people come and tell people that, you know, like they're there to help and that Indigenous people have the answer? Like, it's grooming, I know, but there's more to this whole ⁓ reality of privilege. Especially when ⁓ the person who believes they're privileged don't even have the slightest notion of what it's like to be Indigenous. Okay, so ⁓ like I said, I'm going to cover the topics of silence in psychosis and also understanding psychosis. and ⁓ also understanding borderline personality disorder. So I'm going to start off with the psychosis because I truly believe it has something to do with just the whole cult manufacturing or the experience entering into a weepy ceremony and just the impact it has on people who have childhood trauma because there's a certain ⁓ a certain reality that you give up once you go into the ceremony because it's all contained in a dark room. So everything is dark. You don't see nothing. And it's that whole psychological experience. I'll use a metaphor or an analogy. Imagine you're a teenager going on your first night clubbing or disco back in the day or even in the 70s when you had the hippie movement and Woodstock and all this freedom. you go into, again, this is not in darkness, but like again, when you go night clubbing, it's in the most night clubs are lowly dimmed lights. They have a certain environment and rightfully so because we're triggered by it as human beings. There's something about being in the dark that scares the bejesus out of us. ⁓ Okay, so what I've done is I've ⁓ listen to, ⁓ a professional. I've taken some critical notes and so it'll, it'll seem like I'm reading, which I actually am, but I'm going to be reading and also applying my own personal experience in, in the psychosis or the salient, the salient or the abor- understanding the ab- aberrant salis- salence in psychosis. I know it's such a big honking word, I can't even pronounce it. But anyway, ⁓ silence is an unconscious process in the brain that continually filters out what is important and what is not. ⁓ you have to sort of think and reflect back in your own experiences of like, what does it actually feel to be psychotic? Now, ⁓ When I worked at the state hospital, was a, I think she was 10 years old. We had teenagers from 13 to 18 or 17. And the reason she came from the children's ward to our ward is because she had a psychotic episode with her mother. And both of them, ⁓ like with the mother's guidance, of course, because the mother ⁓ knows about consent, whereas this child doesn't. Actually, I think she was 12. ⁓ So they had a psychotic episode and ⁓ they were instructed by some force we'll call their definition of what God is, and were guided by this entity to kill the grandmother. ⁓ So again, I'm trying to have a conversation in a social construct ⁓ of when people go into certain, we'll say Sunday school, Sunday church, anything that's organized. So when I talk about the Wawipi, this is a ceremony that was discontinued and sort of and was kind of revitalized in the late 1800s. Because understand, a lot of non-Indigenous people thought ⁓ our ceremonies were witchcraft and again this is the definition of Europeans okay and so a lot of what I'm reading is academic but it's also I'm trying to break it down so that you understand the behavior because ⁓ like a lot of times I think even professionals could go through their whole lifetime without ever experiencing anybody ⁓ or understanding what a person actually what what psycho what what it is to have a psychotic episode and like ⁓ so even within the wu'ipi ceremony and the behavior i saw within people that i grew up with that made me wanted to understand, you know, what is it that they were experiencing in the ceremony? Because it was so, it was a phenomenon. I had been writing something and Nathan Chasing Horse came up to me, says, what are you writing? I said, well, haven't seen my people in my community behave this way and I want to document it. Now that was just, you know, like I was just. ⁓ note-taking because I have a bit of autism and for me to, ⁓ this was like over 30 years ago, or actually 20 years ago. So, and even before that, when I went to school, I always journal. It helps me focus and gives me clarity on things that I need to remember. ⁓ Because again, when they talk about neurodivergence and how the brain and central nervous system adapts. That's why I encourage people to really have the courage to understand how you learn and construct it in a way that is understandable and easier for you, the individual who's learning. Like I said, people can look at me and wonder, like, how does she operate? you know, it takes a lot. It takes a lot because I have to focus. Most of my strengths when I first went to university was in the sciences, like physics. But then I regress, I changed my ⁓ path to ⁓ fine arts again because I was in denial that I was gifted. Okay, so I regress. ⁓ So I'm going to walk you through what this professional has said about ⁓ what happens during an episode psychosis episode. Most frequent concepts encountered ⁓ have been researched. ⁓ so aberrant salience hypothesis of schizophrenia. Now, ⁓ in my community, there are there are some families who have a history of schizophrenia, or bipolar, but it you know, it's, it's a mental health. ⁓ It's mental health, but ⁓ how we perceive it and how we understand within our neighborhood. or just the acceptance is just like it is, that's what it is. It's an acceptance. ⁓ Let's see. So ⁓ he says the essence of the idea is critical in understanding the experience. So ⁓ it's complex, he says, but he has to break it down with the notion of aberrant salience, which is believed as the heart of the matter. So it's the aberrant salience. ⁓ Often ⁓ he says when he's doing lectures to illustrate the unconscious process. Okay, so I'm going to explain how he's explaining it now. I'll explain from my point of view when somebody enters the WIPI ceremony. So he says he has his medical students describe his bell buckle, which has been visible during his whole lecture. And without exception, none of them can recall the details on his belt buckle. And when asked, it was in their field of vision, they all confirmed, yes, they could see his belt buckle. The reason they cannot describe it is because the brain filters out the information that's unimportant. So when you go into the ceremony, everybody's sitting around and they're on sort of a raised platform or sitting on blankets. The people who are hosting the OEP will sit there and all the other supporters will sit around a circle and inside the circle there'll be the individual who's going to get wrapped up in the blanket and tied. Like it's almost ⁓ like somebody who's died and they're getting their body ready to burial. They put them in a blanket and tie them up. This is before there was such things as funeral homes and ⁓ So anyway, ⁓ reason, like when you go into a wake or anything where there's somebody that appears to be dead, your brain is filtering out things. ⁓ Especially like in our indigenous communities where some bombarded with death. Like two months ago, we were having a death every week. So of course, when you go into a weepy ceremony and you get triggered and your brain filters out just the like it, it doesn't focus on the unimportant items. So your human brain will disregard unnecessary sensations. ⁓ So for him, he says, such as feelings of your shirt against your skin, shadows at the edge of your vision or the sounds of an air conditioner. So he's talking about how it works. Now, in the aberrant silence and psychosis, he asks you now as the audience to imagine perhaps even if the filtering process fails and suddenly everything was assigned with equal high levels of importance. So understand this when you go into the... Well, we peep everything that you can see people and how people are all lined up and they have people who are singing and you have the individual who was wrapped up and they lay him down in the middle in a shroud. Now they shut off the lights. So it's at that moment where they shut off the lights where the everything, the process has failed because you can't see anything. And so everything is highly leveled, everything has the same importance. The brain is designed to make out, out of the stimuli. So when you're ⁓ coming into that darkness, or even like when you go into a nightclub, you you're trying to make some meaning out of the stimuli, like flashing lights, strobe lights, whatever. But in this case, it's all dark, and then the ceremony starts, and it's starting to... connecting to unrelated events. like, so like when they're, they're talking, like the person who's hosting it is talking about what, what they're, you know, the prayers that they need and the ⁓ people in the audience, they're listening. So they're, connecting to the relevant events. So he uses the example of say a shadow crossings, the corner of your eye might become significant because it coincides with you see the number six printed on the wall. Or like say, ⁓ you might have a flash of light, like from the fact that everything's dark now and you're looking for some clue, like if you can see your neighbor or see anything. And so you might have moments of ⁓ glimpses of flashing of light wanting to see through the darkness. The mind could connect these occurrences, perhaps interpreting for him when he says that in the corner of the eye he sees significant shadow and then you see the number six which for example people would equate with the number of the devil beginning constructing so the brain is constructing ⁓ elaborate connections so when you're in the wuwipe ceremony and it's dark and you're trying to make that your brain is trying to construct elaborate connections with what you're trying to see through that darkness. So it's the illusion and their formation. So delusions in psychosis are fixed false belief that cannot be argued away because the brain believes it is woven together highly salient facts into a convincing coherent narrative. So the brain believes that these facts, these salient facts ⁓ Like it they're convincing and coherent narrative so that's why I'm saying when when it comes to healing and even like with my blog or podcast or reading a novel like the narrative like you're trying to make some sense out of it and and you're trying to weave together like the plot and the day new ma and whatever happens within that narrative as ⁓ So within the ceremony as the people are talking and people are getting an understanding of why this host wanted to have the wuipi and even like ⁓ repeatedly ⁓ saying, okay, we're going to, they do some chanting. system, systemized delusions start to interact, reinforcing and justifying one another. So the more the singing and the more the drumming and the more prayers, like, because you can hear the hum of people praying. And this interplay contributes to the persistence and strengthening of the delusional thinking. So some of the times when after the ceremonies, because I helped as a technician to get ⁓ to get people to ⁓ understand. Basically, it's like dancing. The music gets more and more intense, and you're jumping around and really getting into it. So within the ceremony, or any ceremony, it's justifying the behavior and like the persistence and strengthening of the delusional thinking. So I don't know what other analogy I could have in terms of like, you know, it's a fixed false belief that cannot be argued away. So when people would say, did you hear those little voices? Or did you see those lights? Or did you feel that eagle feather come by your head? Or did you hear that rattle that hits your head? Like those are just the individual experience. Now, in the whole process of this, Nathan Chasing-Lorris would hit ⁓ children, especially girls on the head to scare them. And ⁓ again, that's a fixed false belief that there's some spirit there. you know, trying to scare them. And again, you know, it cannot be argued away because it's the child's mind. But again, too, when you're an adult and you hear, say, the bellowing of an animal within the presence of the room, and you're thinking, well, what's going on? A lot of times when people ask me about the Wawipi ceremony and their experience with Nathan Chasing Horse, the followers had said that he had drugged like a... sweetgrass and sage, they smell more like cannabis or hashish. So even, you know, burning that, like burning that, like, and having people get high on that in the ceremony without them knowing they're being drugged. Because when I sat there, like I sat in the back, and it seemed like the people who are closest to the smudge bowl and where the hosts were, had experienced more ⁓ hallucinations than say the people participating in the back where they didn't have access to all that breathing. So again, each time they go in and they get scared, I think that was the addiction or the thrill of Nathan Chasing Horse because I know after each ceremony the sexual energy was so high, the potency was so high. And much of my understanding with the Wipi ceremony in terms of community, ⁓ holistic collective healing was that when couples or people went into the ceremony, there were elders there and people who knew who you related to. So if there was any ⁓ belief that you were sexually attracted to someone, the person there would step in and say, you can't go home with that person. because you're related to them. It's like going to a nightclub and having community members come up to you while you're dancing and say, you can't dance with that person because you're related to them. So I'm only using that as an analogy of the reality of what Boipi ceremony is, because some people think there's some magic or a magic wand or something. Like again, this is that, that's the delusion, the false belief, and it's really difficult. It's like, like I said, it's everything, everything has come together and there, there's just the interpretation of what they believe. Cause you can't shake it. Cause it's, it's how their own belief system. I mean, if you believe in, in, ⁓ certain things like what he said, the number 666, meaning the devil, then you're going to apply that to the episode that you're experiencing. So the duration of untreated psychosis is one of the most significant negative prognosticating factors in why people do not seek help. Early intervention offers the best case for recovery, underscoring the importance in recognizing and address the psychosis as soon as possible. So for me, I've grown up with a lot of ⁓ mental health issues in terms of persistence in ⁓ challenging what is a delusional thinking, especially when people are desperate to heal when they have no medicine, they have no painkillers, nothing. I always talk about how my grandmother died from cancer and just the ceremonies they went through. So for me, a lot of ⁓ miracles that do happen happen when people truly believe and ⁓ have some trust in their own feeling, their own relationship with the Creator. And most of time that's supposed to be very private between you and Creator. And so in the ceremonies for me, when I started hearing people talk, about their experience, I thought, no, that's not how it's supposed to work. This is supposed to be a very private process that you're dealing with. And I think that was the con or the manipulation part in terms of Nathan chasing horse and his followers in recognizing and addressing when people who are participating in the ceremony were becoming psychotic. And again, predators will do that. you know, people who do victimize, they will target certain people with certain behavior. Okay, so again, experience psychosis, the hidden reality. This ⁓ instructor is talking about it remains one of the most misunderstood conditions in society. Outside of the psychiatric practice, ⁓ Many people may go their entire lives without ever encountering someone with psychosis, yet it is actually far more common than most people realize. And again, I say this because, you know, ⁓ people will always look at... Like when I've been growing up, they'll always look at something like this, if I'm like, there's something curious about how I see the world, because again, I'm not of their culture. Like I wish I could go up to them and say, shake, shake them and saying, look, how I interpret things and how you interpret things are two different realities here, but we still live in the world and we still eat and drink and sleep. And, and you know, the perspective on, ⁓ from what they perceive as reality provokes questions that an underlying process that shapes a unique way of seeing and interpreting the world. So when people do not understand Indigenous culture and they romanticize it, or they become the savior complex because they're trying to understand the psychosis, when it's really like just a process of coming from a point of view of an experience and and bringing it back to reality. Without them understanding the process, critical in even trying to... They want to dissect the narrative, is what I'm trying to say. Rather than having a group collective and a holistic approach to the process... They want to dissect it and confront you with like, okay, is early childhood trauma? Is this what happened? And yet if the shoe were on the other foot and you confronted them, they go, ⁓ no, no, no, I'm not racist. ⁓ no, no, no, no, I can hold space for you. When, know, typically even with white men who are married to non- white people will say you really have to take into consideration when you're around white people because even after the honeymoon stage they will still after a year they will ⁓ they will still come back and blame you for something they did and that's what i'm talking about this ⁓ process of of this hidden reality that ⁓ like non-therapists or non-Indigenous therapists want to incorporate. I find that too in the same with Indigenous people, especially when it comes to ⁓ trauma or you even talking about healthy human sexuality. ⁓ I know I made a comment about it yesterday when I first started talking about it and I was talking with my cousin and ⁓ She was trying to make a comment about, Marina, you've been traumatized as a child, right? And I'm going, what are you talking about? See, this is my cousin who got married at 18, ⁓ divorced her husband, ⁓ had ⁓ over a decade relationship with a married man, got her degree, got a high paying level job. still supports her adult children, you know, trying to minimize my work. And I said to her, I had to explain consent from under the age of 10 or from child development from 10 to 15, and then again, another stage of life from 18 to 25. And I said to her, I already knew what consent was when I was sexually assaulted. I was 19. And I said to her, ⁓ you know, if you're trying to say that that experience really traumatized me, I told her I was I was compliant. I knew if I didn't do what they asked me to do, they could kill me. So I said, so I obeyed them. I said, but it was after when ⁓ one of the perpetrators again, these were serial. You know, they were serial and they had already attacked over 10 women before me and I was the youngest. But I'm explaining to my cousin, I to him, you thought I enjoyed what you did to me, you gotta be kidding. Because he wanted me to go upstairs and continue to have sex with me. And when I confronted him like that, he was so enraged. The first punch he hit me on the head, I was out. I told her I was unconscious when he beat me to a pulp. I have no memory of him beating me. When you're talking about trauma, I said, and you're thinking that I was awake when all this violence happened to me. ⁓ I said, no, I wasn't. said, besides that, I was in the age of consent. I said, a lot of the childhood trauma and the things that I'm dealing with had to do with me witnessing my father beat up my mother. All this ⁓ trauma or limerence or the need to get approval or going after some unobtainable love object. I told her that had nothing to do with me being sexually assaulted. It has everything to do with childhood trauma of me witnessing violence. And then there was this ha ha moment where she said, everybody our age has experienced that. But I'm trying to educate people in the. the reality of what is happening to our Indigenous children and what has been happening, say, from 500 years ago. You know, even when I talk to, like, my cardiologist, I said, you know, 500 years ago, you know, for the first 100 years, they killed five generations of our children. 125 million children they killed. Today, they take our children away from the mums. if the mother dies, put them in foster homes in the cities. They don't put, you know, we have foster homes in our communities, but they're not run by our nations. They're run by the province and the federal government. So we have no sovereignty over that. And because of that, ⁓ a lot of times our children ⁓ are raised in non-Indigenous households. So... That's why I talk about child foster care system and just how the need for people to understand that these things that were happening to our children. so many years ago are still happening. And the importance of talking about it and having a narrative about it, because for me as an elder, reflecting back on my own ⁓ traumas, I have to define it because people want to put me in a box. They want to ⁓ say this is where it all happened. I'm going, no, you don't get it. I chose not to be in any kind of violent relationship. And a lot of people, you know, like again, this is my own personal journey. There's a lot of other technical stuff that I've had to deal with ⁓ throughout my life ⁓ that would provoke somebody, you know, to really question the choices I made in my life. But these choices I've made in my life have given me a unique opportunity to ⁓ do some cross-cultural education in terms of what it is and why it is that I do what I do. Because my parents and thousands of Indigenous kids were raised by non-Indigenous people, were not given the love and affection. If these children had trauma, and of course they did, and they developed into psychosis, and it developed into borderline personality disorders, and nobody cared, then what the hell's going on today? We have social media, we have all this stuff happening to our young people, high suicide rates, and there's a reason for it. And the more we have a discussion about it, the better off we are to help. So... whatever I tried to do in terms of educating people, like I said, a lot of people want to project false beliefs onto me and I'm going, no, ⁓ don't do that. I'm not a savage. If you're trying to project a belief that I'm a savage, who told you that? So even growing up in school where people just thought that, I already knew because my parents had seen Machu Picchu and had been to India and you know I knew whatever these non-Indigenous kids were trying to fill me with this disillusional thinking of what they thought was Indigenous to me I'm going no and and even so the like it's the brain like again when you're a child and you don't understand consent and your brain has woven together these factors to make a coherent narrative. Without any adult or anybody just being there to listen to you, the process keeps on being repeated and the system systemized delusions interact and reinforce each other. So a lot of this shame and guilt or the fear factor of being alone and that nobody's going to come and rescue you. is consistent with what happens with children. So when I'm talking about any kind of trauma I have, I have to make it a clearly distinct with my own people, with my own indigenous relatives and say, no, I didn't experience that. Whatever you perceive me to be because of the way the life I've chosen to live has nothing to do with that. My whole premise is to have people understand exactly what happened in those Indian residential schools and what's happening in the foster care systems with our Indigenous children. Thousands go into the city and the average age to be ⁓ trafficked out of these foster homes, group homes, shelters, is 14 years old. This genocide of our children is still happening. It's just got a different group of people feeding into that psychosis, like mass psychosis. You know, if we had our inherent rights and sovereignty, we would have our own money to establish group homes and foster homes and shelters ⁓ for children whose parents have died, so that they remain in our communities and are raised within our culture and the safety of extended family. So ⁓ that's why I'm saying it's important to strengthen and be persistent in challenging the delusional thinking of greater society. So it's the duration of untreated psychosis is one of the most significant negative prognosticating factors. So that's why ⁓ it's important to have a narrative and be supportive and empathetic. Because during these episodes, individuals cannot distinguish what is real and what is not. So throughout my mom's life, would have, like when I was living, when taking care of her, she'd ask me, why is the sky blue? Or like if the TV, a character is happening, where did that character go? I mean, it might seem like she's going through a psychotic episode. But it was important that she had someone who could distinguish between what is real and what is not. And she could not, and she was so afraid of white people. So this process of argumentation in their minds does not function as expected. Everything is equally important and convincing. So a lot of the, we'll say conflict, or a lot of the, ⁓ mediation and negotiating with my mother was to make sure she understood that this is what is real and this is what is not real. And she was in denial of Indian Residential School because she was groomed to forgive the unforgivable. And that was the hardest thing for me in helping her distinguish between what somebody does that's unforgivable because of this religious notion, this psychotic process that non-Indigenous people fed into her because they were doing it to them and they didn't care if children were abusing other children. Although this cannot, again, I'm reading from the book, although this cannot seem strange from the outside, understanding the process behind psychosis can foster empathy. So that's why when I talk about empathy and compassion and understanding that it takes a hell of a lot of trust for people to talk and have a narrative about what they see is real and what they see is not. So when people went into the Wubipi ceremony and they were talking about things that were not real, the debriefing or the deconstruction of the psychosis, there was no support there. Whereas in reality, like years before when the medicine was good, they had elders and trusted people who would be overseeing everything in the Wubipi ceremony. And there'd be people there to guide them back into reality after they've experienced this process. Because it's human. It's a human thing to go through psychosis or trauma or have these ⁓ personality disorders. And believe me, I try and explain to people, each diagnosis or each book of revelation of mental health An individual has studied that to earn a PhD. The only analogy I can say is when I was studying mathematics and I realized like, okay, I'm putting too much time into one equation. It didn't occur to me that once you get your masters and then work your PhD, you publish your paper on a PhD to take an equation and you shorten it. So an equation that might have 50 numbers in it, you work on your equation to to ⁓ narrow it down so that you're only using, 10 numbers, and you explain the process. Well, that's the same thing in terms of mental health, understanding the process behind psychosis and to ⁓ exercise empathy. Because ⁓ if you're not there for that individual throughout their whole life, they can be just living something that's not real. And I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people out there, especially women, who stay in their homes looking after their children, being abused. Like I didn't understand gender psychology in the sense that like even in the 70s, the 60s, the 80s, like women couldn't own a credit card or a home. their husbands could sexually assault them, ⁓ no repercussions. And the more, as women, we do not hold space for ourselves, each other, or even help guide, like, ⁓ because if you're escaping in that trauma, like even if this trauma you experienced when you're an adult, like I said, ⁓ My trauma traumatic experience happened when I was 19. There are a lot of non-Indigenous people who have experienced childhood trauma when they were under the age of 10 or between 10 and 15 under the age of 18. So however people struggle today in society, it's important to remember that that person with psychosis still is a person and that recovery is possible. So when I talk about recovery and when I talk to young people because it seems hopeless to them that like why like as if as if ⁓ something something ⁓ like who's there to help like it's very personal because they it's self-defeating it's a self-defeating behavior so so I call any kind of personality disorder a self-defeating behavior And I didn't truly understand it until I was going to university and ⁓ I couldn't understand why I didn't understand the thinking and where I created this negative self-talk. And again, it stemmed from me being like the sexual assault, ⁓ but it had its beginnings, like I said, being a voyeur, watching the violence. ⁓ So again, ⁓ usually a person who develops borderline personality disorder will, you know, there's what happens, it's a very, we've been raised in a very challenging environment in early years. So that's why I'm identifying my challenging environment. It was watching. It wasn't, nobody beat me up. I never got hit. ⁓ Nobody sexually assaulted me. Now when I say sexually assaulted me, that means that somebody's fondling me and I can't escape. Yes, I had two incidences where men fondled me, but I'm going, what are they doing? And I pushed their hands away and they didn't come back or touch me or force me to do anything. So most of my challenging environment, like I said, was just watching my mother escape with us so we'd have a safe place to sleep at night. ⁓ Like early life difficulties are patterned by inconsistency. So both of my parents went to Indian Residential School and my father's father died when he was a child. World War II broke out when he was 14 and he joined the army in to 44 days, four years later. again, if my parents weren't there emotionally, it was not their fault. And if it became difficult for them to support any emotions, to validate what I was feeling, they themselves had been numbed. Like I mentioned, My father, when he ran away from Indian Residential School, his punishment was to sleep in the attic in the residential school, which was very cold. ⁓ And that's where they kept the, that was their morgue for children. So he had to sleep with the bodies of dead children as punishment. And for my mother, just the inconsistency of non-Indigenous men. She repressed an experience. She said he was a fat teacher sitting next to me. And she remembers herself as being a small child. And the rest she doesn't remember. See, even though I talk about having been sexually assaulted in that first punch I was out, that's an analogy of what happened to a lot of people. Children. not just Indigenous children, but just children where they've suppressed ⁓ what happened to them. it's ⁓ early life difficulties is patterned with inconsistencies. So even when I looked after ⁓ children in kindergarten, it was important to be there every day to be consistent. And a lot of times too, when children don't feel safe and going home, a large percentage of the children will disclose to teachers about sexual assault. And the reality of it is like there's at least 70 % of teachers who do not know what to do or how to handle the situation. So they're not validating the child, they're invalidating the child. So all the more reason why to talk about like, how do we help secure a safe place, a safe environment? ⁓ So children will become hyper validated, very hard to ⁓ get them oriented to an environment where they will respond. They'll just shut down and not say anything. And so a lot of the reasons why ⁓ it's important to train young people, their peers to be youth elders, is to to have that ⁓ orientation not with adults but with youth the same age as them or close to their age so that they can disclose what makes them feel uncomfortable and validate them. Sometimes the caregiving is quite inconsistent and that's the whole point. If the child is going home and the parents are both drugging and drinking or something else is happening within the home. ⁓ Once it's presented and that's if like he's saying if you can imagine They're trying to say there's a fire and nobody listens say there's a fire and nobody listens so they literally they get a bit louder and There's a fire and they're talking about it and the candle the candles flame or something and yet nobody listens They scream at the top of their voice the entire house is on fire. Everything is terrible they're all gonna die. And finally the caregiver system turns towards and says, okay. So I use that analogy too because even when my niece disclosed what Nathan Chasing Horse had done to her, I had said my story to the moms and it was like my saying, you know, there's a fire. They didn't listen. I kept on repeating this for six months and nobody listened. So again, the inconsistencies, the inability to validate even from parents. So you can imagine, yes, they were having problems with their daughters, but what kind of skill set did the parents have? A lot of times when I talk about Nathan Chasinghorson, people say, well, the mums gave their daughters up to him. Well, that's what I'm talking about. Even when you're telling their moms that he's a pedophile, they don't hear you. And even if they do hear you, by that time, their daughter's already married to him. Because the individual who's giving the alarmist suffered enough. That's why I started writing my blog. It's an extreme metaphor, but if you could imagine ⁓ what would happen over time if the pattern was reinforced. So with Nathan Chasing Horse, the whole notion that I was not to be believed. that nobody should listen to my blog was consistently reinforced for decades. I heard that from the survivors when I met them on March 11th. Unless you are on fire, literally about to die, so later on in life, injurious behavior at times of crisis often repeats suicidal behavior that puts... them at a very high risk. So ⁓ the reality was when I was looking after high risk suicide girls in the state hospital in Utah, they were put there in the state hospital because of their behavior. It was critical. They had tried to commit suicide so many times and either the courts put them in there or their parents ⁓ because like nobody it seemed like again the notion that nobody was paying them attention either because they were just the parents were so busy just trying to go to work and pay the bills and something happened and you know there wasn't that invalidation or that hyper hyper ⁓ invalidation so ⁓ this person says he says the real tragedy tragic tragic part, imagine if you were a child and you couldn't get those emotional needs consistently met at some level, you would internalize a sense of powerlessness or learned helplessness or self-defeating behavior, is what I call personality disorder. Now, for me, I met I met quite a few, I've had instructors with PhDs in psychology at my university programs and there was one lady, I was enrolled in eliminating self-defeating behavior and she was a victim of incest. She had her PhD and she said, because of my childhood I can't ⁓ be a therapist to ⁓ incest victims. She says, so what I do is I practice eliminating self, I practice like through narrative and guided imagery and just talk within the classroom in a safe place on how to eliminate a self-defeating behavior. So there are reasons why people do different therapeutic works in taking care of people with borderline personality disorders. And sometimes that powerlessness can be very difficult because you want to help and you want to change things for your... like your family member or your friend, but you can't propose that in those situations. The providers are feeling the patient's powerlessness and the ability to feel you're capable of affecting change you want to and people you care about. And a lot of times that's also a false narrative for someone who's portraying that they can help when they really don't have the skill set to do that. So much of the time, like I do tarot card reading, and ⁓ quite a few of my clients will come to me with self-defeating behavior. And we'll talk about situations where they felt powerlessness. And I will say to them, you need to go to therapy. I'll tell them, I can see this energy and I can understand it. I can relate to it. But if I can do that, so can a predator. And that's the analogy of Nathan Chasing Horse. He knew how to read people's energies who had personality disorders, who felt learned helplessness or had self-defeating behavior because he could play into that and get them to believe that everything was fine. So ⁓ the individual who has this condition, ⁓ you have the story to help and understand these people just to do their best in what they were given. And it helps. Like my friend Barbie, she's passed away. When we were talking about just having a narrative, talking about yourself, she said, Marina, some of my clients, they just feel so helpless and worthless. They find nothing in their life as being gifted. Yet, supposedly, we're supposed to be all gifted. See, Barbie knew I was gifted in the fine arts. I knew that from... the age of five. But it was a shock to have a discussion with her that a lot of children grow up unvalidated who don't feel like they have anything to offer the world. And it's difficult to coax them to tell their story. So in consistencies and solidarity is important to provide therapy for people who struggle with this learned helplessness. And it's important, like I said, all these things are possible. All these things are possible for change. And that's why as an elder, when I talk about my life and I self-reflect what I was doing when I was five, yeah. I would get up and help my father collect rabbits and we'd cook them for the meal for the whole day. Or even when I would chop wood and haul water and dig up plants from the garden. It was all very earth connected. And then all of a sudden I was shipped into the city schools being with non-Indigenous people. Like I try and say, I think I saw my first white person when I was five. Okay, so understand that. I'm in North America. I'm in Alberta. I live by a city of a million people today. I've lived in another country. I have my green card in the United States. Like I have lived my life. At 15, I went to Indian Residential School in Portage-le-Prairie, stayed there for two years. I was a hell on wheels. They tried to tame me. They tried to keep my mouth shut. Like I already was integrated. I already had fought with non-Indigenous kids or white boys who had a crush on me and didn't know how to express themselves. I had already gone through all that. Our schools had running water. Some of the schools in Manitoba still used outhouses. So, pardon me, excuse me, but when people tried to belittle me or tell me that I'm something, I'm not one of the administrators at the residential school. in terms of punishment yelled at me and he says, of all people you're doing this, especially who your parents are. Like they had done the research from my parents and my grandparents. They knew my parents had traveled to South America and India. My grandparents had traveled around the world. I mean, that was the main reason they had us come, my brother and my sister. It was for the prestige of the name because my grandmother had attended that same residential school. Like they were pushing. that what the government was doing in educating Indigenous people was intergenerational success. ⁓ come on, get off your high horse, get off the cross. I need that wood for my sweat tonight. As the fry bread burns, I came back ⁓ and was going back to high school. ⁓ My parents got back together because they separated when I was 15. My father had been in the military, appeared on radio and had done some work with the ⁓ Education, Calgary Board of Education, with the City of Calgary Mayor. ⁓ You know, just ⁓ like my grandfather, he's a trail is named after him in Calgary, Crow Child Trail. You know, I've grown up my whole life ⁓ protected. And a lot of the people in my community just thought I was so privileged. ⁓ But I wasn't. My father got loans and paid for it. He put in his own plumbing, his own electricity. Not that his electricity, but he put in his own plumbing, central heating. Yeah, central heating and plumbing. Making a loan and people ⁓ like his best friend, his best man, his cousin also did the same thing with my dad's help. And people were jealous. Like to this day. People still say that my cousins still get money from the band, and yet one of my third cousins, he's a millionaire. So hard work does pay off. I'm just saying that there's this mentality of psychosis and self-defeating behavior that still permeates and is persistent within the constructs of mental health issues. And unless you have a good support system or unless you actually leave the community and ⁓ bear witness to your own inadequacies like I did, I ran away when I was 19 to Vancouver, came home, was sexually assaulted, struggled to go to university, did not graduate from high school, but I did move to Utah, managed to get my high school equivalency. attended Brigham Young University in 1976. Ta-da! Didn't succeed because I, again, I have some autism and some learning disabilities who would have thought that on top of, you know, learned helplessness and self-defeating behavior. So it took a hell of a lot of ⁓ self-discovery, ⁓ narratives, trusting people. I always call that invisible helping hands. And that's what my ⁓ instructor had said throughout your life, you will meet people, invisible helping hands that will help you and guide you through the healing process. And so that's why when I ⁓ look at my community and I say, know, we have done so much, but it's the validation of that action that we tend to not celebrate. So. ⁓ You know, just taking courses. I had studied ⁓ algebra and physics and then I got a scholarship, came home. By that time I didn't even know I had a scholarship because the mail didn't follow me and then I decided, went back to Utah, decided, okay, enough is enough. You paid this much, move back home, ⁓ switch your major to fine arts. did that, did a lot of volunteer work for Native Awareness Week, for the Native Women's Shelter, anything and everything I could do to volunteer. Because volunteerism, you learn a lot. ⁓ just ⁓ understanding women, I think that's the hardest for an elder, for myself, is to realize there's been so much damage done to Indigenous women. that we have to try and educate our young women. I'll use an analogy like 20 years ago when I was the technician of organizing all these Will Weeby ceremonies for Nathan Chasing Horse. There were a group of young women whose fathers had passed away. a lot of what... Now I'm not too sure if I've got this. Oh yeah, so a lot of... A lot of these girls when Nathan Chasing Horse came into the community with bury my heart it wounded knee that was in the fall of 2006. Stayed around until November. Then I did some technical stuff like would we be ceremony before then he came back in March. So altogether like six ceremonies that's like 5000 6000 each. But by that time in the. In the spring, he'd already made political connections. And so when he took two of the girls who were like, he met them at 14 and 15. He'd already creeped his way into children's lives here, including my niece, my two nieces. Mind you, he was grooming the other one, the youngest one who was 10, who was eight. In the fall, he brought a 10-year-old or an eight-year-old to Sutina with her mother. Anyway, that's another story that ⁓ I, the point I'm making is there were over 10 young women, all the same age group, that when he took two of their friends with them, one stayed five years, the other stayed 15 years, throughout these 20 years, they've been in contact with each other. They graduated from high school. ⁓ like attended, had weddings, ⁓ births, know, separations. They're like in their 30s now, like 30, like 31, 32. And about two months ago when they, when one of the girls was called to testify or validate one of the, ⁓ the 10, the young girl that was here whose, whose, whose mother gave, gave her to Nathan. ⁓ The other girl, like these young women, their moms gave them to Nathan. But as young women, they had the courage to stand and support each other. Now, the reason I'm mentioning this is like ⁓ 11 people from my community went down to support their sister friend. And ⁓ one of the girls, ⁓ one of the victims, ⁓ told me she said she said when they came in they all were dressed in black they just walked in they were standing in their power and I wanted to I told our leadership I said we need to honor these young women I said these these women are exactly what we call youth elders they've been supporting each other as sisters belonging with an indigenous community for the past 20 years since they've been like 14 15 and 16. and look at how they're still supporting each other. So those things are positive in the sense of collective and holistic ways of healing. It's important because they've been saying their narrative, they've been there helping each other if they've gone through psychosis or if they're dealing with self-defeating behavior, that they've been there to listen and to validate and reinforce what is real. And that in itself is more than any non-Indigenous therapist will ever do or will ever see in terms of a phenomena. As the sentencing of Nathan Chasinghors happens on the 27th, I want Indigenous people whose communities he affected. I know I only talk about my community and the amount of money he took from us. the amount of coercion and manipulation he did to our leadership and the reality of how each person, each individual, both male and female have had to question the behavior of our leadership as young people. This year when we had our elections, we had six females all elected and six males and one male chief, all young people. All young people are not hiding any, ⁓ like they're healing from self-defeating behavior or even a psychosis or any kind of issue. They have the courage to do these young people. It may seem hopeless, like if you're just a teenager or stroking in high school or just college, or even if you're just a young woman 25 to 35. ⁓ just having a support system. I know it takes a lot of courage to go home to where you grew up and heal. But I realized I could have stayed in the States for the rest of my life. Like my sister, she's a year younger than me. She's lived in the United States her whole life. But for me, I felt I needed to come home and heal. I needed to see the healing properties. within my Indigenous community and understand what is my purpose in this life. What am I learning about myself that I can celebrate being Indigenous? Because we have such a huge society out there that had created a systemic racist house for us. And if we as Indigenous people cannot deconstruct and refabricate and rebuild our homes, with pride and celebration, then who's going to do it for us? The reality of it is the DNA of our ancestors is in our bloodline. I don't want to use the word resilience. I'll say prayers. The prayers of protective healing energy have been passed down from generation to generation to generation. So unique than any other place in the entire world. I know people in Europe want to equate it to what happened in World War II. What, six million? How many? 15 million? However many people died, that does not ever compare to the first 100 years of 120 million children being killed. The desecration of our population, our civilization for the sake of erasing a value and belief system. what to replace it by people who want to have control and put a price on land when that isn't even you know they say the dinosaurs lives for millions of years and as human beings if we even have a glimpse of wanting to live as long as our ancestors then then we really have to we really have to ⁓ learn how to get along and live. with each other. But at the same time, we also have to have the strength and the courage to ⁓ tell our story and share it. And hopefully, I've talked about the Wulwipi ceremony, and I talk about being Sioux, you know, I'm talking about ⁓ the history, ⁓ how my mother and my aunts tried to protect me. how my grandparents tried to protect me. All this, and even just coming together as a family. When I was a teenager, my cousin was sitting on a powwow committee as a child. at these events, you have to have a giveaway. And like we're not rich, but the Indian Day Committee adopted so many kids. to sit on the committee and it's up to the children's parents to support them. So for my cousin, we had to make at least 50 star blankets for that summer giveaway. And my aunties and my cousins and all the women, like we worked as a family to honour my cousin and our family. That type of collective holistic healing is part of who and what makes us Indigenous. And as much as I'm just one indigenous elder talking, I know through the experience of talking and having young indigenous people come up to me and say, your story is similar to my mother's. The lateral violence my mother experienced is the same similar to yours. So just understand that it takes a hell of a lot of courage to put down boundaries. to not have people ⁓ try to bait you into feeling bad about yourself. Understand, some of these people will never change. You'll come through a moment where you'll say, why was I friends with that person? And you'll be able to walk away. ⁓ I did that. The first time I walked away from someone I loved was when I was 19. And that was a lesson that I keep on learning every day in my life. Everybody that I do meet is offering me something, something new to learn about myself. and something that I need to teach somebody about, whatever they're going through. So ⁓ understand that. My relatives used ⁓ Weepie, Sweats, and Sundance to heal themselves. And they're consistently doing that. They're consistently trying to have a collective, holistic way of healing. Whether or not trial and error, they make mistakes, we're all human. It's important to understand the nature of what it is that we're doing and to understand that relationship isn't with the people, it's with Creator. That's why I never gave Nathan Chasing Horse tobacco. As a technician, I could have given him the tobacco and say, behalf of so-and-so here. No, never did that. That relationship between myself and creator, when somebody gives me tobacco, that's what I'm accountable to, creator. Not the person who gave it to me, but to creator in how I interact with that person. Because I'm to be accountable for it. My energy is that I house in my life is accountable for that. And so on the 27th, which is going to be like six days away from here, ⁓ I will bear witness to the ⁓ sentencing of Nathan Chasing Horse. ⁓ It's going to be historic. But again, he had an opportunity to to turn his life around 20 years ago. But on listening to the people who knew him a lot longer than I did, he had already developed this addiction. so long ago as a teenager. That's why when I worked with teenage girls, there was the ward across the hallway for teenage boys. High risk. And even the way boys behave in terms of girls is so totally different in self-defeating behavior. So ⁓ again, unless you're institutionalized, either by the court system or your family ⁓ wants you to get help. If you cannot face what is real and you choose to live a delusional or an illusion of life, ⁓ manipulating and hurting people without fear of any consequences, ⁓ there'll be a time like with Nathan chasing horse, even if he had never gotten caught. Because I know people in my community who were elders who did unforgivable things that died, saw justice, was never seen by their victims. But yet, have to talk about it because somewhere out there somebody is depending on us. They have thoughts of killing themselves. They have thoughts of like worthlessness or learned helplessness or that they just don't have anybody there to be supportive or listen to them. So ⁓ be mindful. Be mindful of whether or not you're able to help somebody. And if you're not able or have the capacity, then have the courage to refer them to someone who is. A lot of times our pride gets in the way and we don't, for some unforeseen reason, we want people to praise us. But there's a danger in that. And that danger is huge. So I'll sign off now, but I do hope the understanding of psychosis and borderline personality, it may be a bit abstract, but again, I'm trying to reference it in terms of cross-cultural ways of thinking, because when we have a consistent ⁓ ceremonial leadership, it's consistent and people who validate. and that we've grown up with them and we see it and we see that, yes, we're all human and that they haven't done anything that's unforgivable. Trust them. You have a definition of what's unforgivable. That's what I was trying to explain to my cousin. I was at the age of consent. ⁓ I said, dear, what you're trying to say is that I'm emotionally damaged because what? ⁓ Somebody abused me under the age of consent. I said no. I said this is the whole critical way of thinking. Is that there are our children. How can we stereotype everybody who talks about sexual assault as being a victim their entire life? That there's no ever healing. I'm going, no, there is. You just have to see it for what it is instead of trying to project your insecurities on other people because you haven't done the work yourself. So that being said, more power to all these young people who are struggling. The struggle is real, but there are so many invisible helping hands out there, and I'm hoping I'm just one of those invisible helping hands that will help you along the way. Have a good day, and I'll keep on podcasting.