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Learn the Wisdom of Native Traditions through story telling · Authentic Living

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Hi, everyone.
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It's, Roxanne.
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Thanks yet again for, tuning in to authentic living with Roxanne.
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So today I have a special guest.
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Her name is Lynn Sherry.
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Hi, Lynn.
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How are you today?
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Hello.
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How are you?
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Good.
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Good.
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So Lynn, is a author, and, of a two book series.
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She's just, put out the first one with a bit of a updated, version of it just recently out into
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the market.
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So Lynn's, Lynn has a very, very interesting background and something that I've always been
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fascinated in.
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And, I'll read a little bit about Lynn's background.
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She's a band member of 6 nations of the Grand River territory.
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With bloodlines to the Aldeville First Nations and Mississauga of the new credits.
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Being an explorer, teacher, and helper by nature, She finds expression and the
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opportunity to offer the healing properties of traditional knowledge through her work as a
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writer, poets, and workshop facilitator.
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What form whatever form her art takes, it is the seeking spirit and a deep reference,
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reference for nature, that are the ever present entities.
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That sounds lovely.
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Lynn, is there anything that I miss that you think, you should share with the listeners?
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When we speak of a deep reverence for nature, that's just something basically I was born
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with.
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And and it's evident.
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I think it's evident.
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It's more than just in my upbringing.
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I think it's in our blood as well because I have for siblings, and we're all the same way
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in that regard.
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We will it's I'll call it my church for lack of a better word.
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It's just where I have always repowered or healed and just about anything I've ever
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written has some has nature or our organic world as the backdrop or threaded throughout it
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a whole lot of work that's never been published has been has been has had its birthplace from
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being in outside.
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I'll call it outside.
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Okay.
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So which which really speaks to a lot when we talk about getting reconnected on the Western
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world.
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Right?
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But Yes.
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These traditions that you're talking about are, I mean, centuries old.
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So I I would like you to tell the listeners a little bit about who you are, what what puts
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you on this path.
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It sounds like you've been exposed from birth to tradition.
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Which is kind of informed of what you do today.
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And also this this brilliant book, which is called where Mary went, which I would love to
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get into.
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But first of all, just tell us a little bit about you and, your path a bit about your
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upbringing and, kind of bring us up to speed about you, the, the artists, the poets, and the
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helper today.
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Okay.
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I'll do this.
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It's, I'm the oldest of 5 children.
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And so I like capture what you said about being exposed to tradition from her from birth.
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It's I have to say that not out loud.
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However, organically, it's all a part of how you're brought up.
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It's with our values are what our values are because and and nobody said to me, oh, you're
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native, so you do this, or we native, because really basically my father was cut off.
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And my mother was completely cut off from it.
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Had no knowledge of it whatsoever.
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But my father was he was raised with within a native sort of like environment, both his
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parents were native, but nobody ever talked about it.
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Nobody ever said, or even spoke native words, though they were still in our upbringing.
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Nobody said that's a native word.
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There were so many words that we were so many words in our household that nobody knew they
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were actually native till I went out and pursued a formal knowledge of our language and
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our traditions.
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I spent probably 30 years with my grandmother as my mentor and best friend.
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I got 30 years on this earth with her.
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And even she she would say all any that's like you know, maybe, you know, the Indian way, but
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really that's about it.
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Nobody really I never got the benefit of a old grandfather wise teaching type thing that you
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listen to, the, you know, the the sort of typical way of presenting it.
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But yet, it was there.
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It was everywhere.
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Was where when we went camping, when we were being taught a lesson, it was all in there, but
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not identified as well.
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That's what we do as Mohawk people.
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Or, oh, that's what we do as an ish Nabeck people because I have the same both in me.
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So then when I decided to purposefully seek it, There it was, and I'm oh my god, that's and I
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began to bring my siblings in it.
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We met somebody.
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Our family met somebody that sort of got us out of the closet, and I really love using that
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term because all along throughout a first marriage, I never even mentioned being native
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to my children, but yet when I grieve, I I did I went off by myself and did, like, what would
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have been blood memory things, to heal myself even though nobody told me.
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Even though nobody nobody formally said, oh, you smudge or you do this.
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I always had this knowledge because it was I suppose in my blood, but also in my family
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without being identified.
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Does that make sense to you?
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No.
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I'm I'm curious because I I think I know what you mean by the the term blood memory, but I'm
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gonna ask you what you mean.
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And two things I wanna ask you about First of all, I want you to go back to you said both my
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mom and dad were cut off.
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So I'd like to understand what that what that means.
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Okay.
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And that your grandma became your mentor and you said, like, when you grieve, you go off and
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you have blood memory.
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So those are a couple things that I'm I'm wanting to know more.
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So I'm gonna assume, the listeners might want to know more too.
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So first to explain what blood memory is, it's a term.
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It actually crosses into both worlds.
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Western world and native world.
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Blood memory is you just remember something because you don't know why.
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It didn't really happen to you in life.
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It happened to your ancestors.
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You may have a problem in life with grief or anxiety or unexplained sense of abandonment or
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anger, and it might have actually happened to your mother or your father or your grandparents
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So that's pretty easy to imagine that impact in the world or any any race that's been really,
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abused or or or pressed.
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But allow us to talk about Western world, they are now discovering that, memories are passed
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down through DNA.
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Mhmm.
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Mhmm.
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They had to wait for science
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to prove it.
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Right?
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But it is exactly the same thing.
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Mhmm.
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It's just not It's just something uh-uh an oral teaching that got passed down through the ages
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and that term got passed down.
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It's like all you know, maybe something happened to your grandparents, and that's why
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you're like that.
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And you are going to continue the healing, or you may remember somebody and have a strong
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feeling for them.
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As a blood member.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Probably what we think of, in scientific terms today about, I'm sure you've heard about
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epigenetics.
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Where they talk epigenetics is, is a part of science that's talking about being able to pass
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your DNA on, right, through the lineage, but in fact, what they're finding is which makes sense
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with, a lot of the the developments in neuroscience, then in fact, you can then change
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it based on the things that you can be done, which we know, of course, with you, probably
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being trauma informed you know, with the exposure that you've had, the work that you do
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in the present, you can actually, change the lineage or the, you know, blood memory for the
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next generation.
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So it sounds like, again, this is something Yes.
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That has been known by the native tradition for a long time.
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Yes.
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Mhmm.
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Yes.
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I like that.
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Yes.
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And then I'll let you ask me about my parents, being cut off.
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Well, my father was definitely he he actually a lot of my own family history is threaded into
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that book, but it's also just about anybody else's family history.
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Because it's common history.
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Just about most of the 1st nations people that, are from around this area in niagra, Brantford,
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all of them.
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Their their parents and grandparents and aunties and uncles went to the, Mohawk
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Institute.
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You know, they they would have been through.
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I you would be hard pressed to find a family that hasn't been impacted by the Mohawk Indian
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Institute or the Mashhall.
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So In this case, Mary gets put in there.
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She's in there till she's grown up.
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She grows up in there.
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And, so her children, she loses her language.
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She loses her preditions.
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She's also, if if she remembers them at all, she'll speak of them because they're dirty and
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shameful.
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And she wants to make it in the world.
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If she wants to make it at all, she can't walk like that.
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She's gotta walk like her person in mainstream.
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So That's in my family just like it's in just about any family around here.
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So I'll speak personally about my father He you would never mistake him for not being a native
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person in either his demeanor or his look or or or the way he talks.
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But yet, he wouldn't he really would never teach it.
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He would never really pass it on.
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And I think some of it is because he doesn't want you to suffer the way he suffer, and I
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know I did that with my children.
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And as far as my mother goes, my mother's, great would be her great grandmother.
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Her would be not her mother would be her grandmother, was native.
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But married a a European culture.
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I won't say, you know, I think he's French and Scottish.
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But that was it.
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You stopped being an Indian, but you just and I I can stay Indian.
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We can say Indian amongst each other as it did.
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Not really improper, or you stop being native.
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You don't speak your language.
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You don't raise my kids like that, and so it really got I'll call that mission accomplished.
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Really got filtered out through the generations and and I will go back to blessed memory
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because my mother does not look native yeah, I probably got more teachings from her verbally
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purposefully than my father and that was a bad memory because she was definitely not brought
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up way.
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That would have been she is the one who really purposefully taught me about the medicines, in
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the herbs, and the ethics.
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And yet she would never identify herself as native.
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So, So then it gets cut off with us, us 5, but it took one of us to start to seek it in our
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community.
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So in our community, they healing comes because everybody's at different rates of trying to
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seek it and currently that's where we are.
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That brings us to today.
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We're currently, we're sharing our arts, knowledge, and beauty with clumsy, and messy,
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and bloody, because on field and field people are when they're together.
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I hope I'm not offending anybody.
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I I'm a social worker too and I think that like myself, I'm a social worker along with being a
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writer, and it's just not always pretty when everybody is on a healing path.
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But it's also very, very beautiful as it moves along.
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Does that
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make sense to you?
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Oh, absolutely.
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So what you're saying is that, of course, like, I mean, the native peoples have been through
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unspeakable things.
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Like, I mean, in my my tenure as a therapist, I have you know, I used to go to the 40 or 80
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native center.
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I think I mentioned that to you.
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You
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know, and, you know, just recently speaking at, big events, for school counselors that that are
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of native background to go into the schools.
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And then, you know, just hearing the the things that people had been go gone through.
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Like, I mean, I I'm a I've had a specialty in trauma for a lot of years, but then when you
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hear the levels and the levels of, you know, I'm gonna, you know, the generational levels
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that kept happening over and over again.
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Is it any wonder that people wanted to to walk away from things?
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Yes.
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As of the pain, like, you know, naturally as human beings, as you know, as a social worker
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and me as a psychotherapist, people don't wanna feel pain.
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But when it's an entire, you know, nation, I'm gonna say, or people that are trying to be, you
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know, that are basically been obliterated or tried to be obliterated.
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And you see the impact.
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So it's it's it's so nice to hear that now as you go out into the, you know, the different
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parts of the community that people are embracing things and recognizing it and wanting
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to heal.
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What do you think has made the change or the shift that people started to, you know, want to
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understand and connect again.
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I can answer that question so quickly.
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And with a lot of heart, it's the will to survive.
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We as a people have such a strong will to survive, and it shows up in our stories in
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which is why I wrote one of the main reasons I wrote Mary where Mary went in the format that I
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did because when you listen to old people tell their stories and And, anybody who's been
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traumatized by residential school, which is almost anybody, who is native, you know, they
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they focus and rightly saw on the pain and the trauma and the grief and the abandonment and
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the fear.
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I have that.
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Of course, that's in my book too.
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But I had a relation.
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The women in my family are fierce.
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Like like, not fierce aggressive fears, but fierce survivors and that comes directly from
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my DNA.
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That my, the person I spent the most time with is just would not accept the place we were put
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in trying that people society was trying to put us in, and I refused to accept the place.
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And now I don't really have to.
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Now so much progress has been made by my generation, and the next generation is is,
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benefiting and taking further through higher education.
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But, my parents and my grandparents survived, and that was enough.
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We're here and we serve I I really think it's a sense of survival that and a a sense of
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community, which is what was attacked more than anything was our sense of community.
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If you ask anybody what they value most and they can't have anything else.
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You think it's their wedding ring or their jewels, or I know you know better.
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It's or their their fancy house It's their family.
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So if you take somebody's family away from them and I can choke up over this because I know
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it's the truth.
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If you take their family away from them, you can do all what you can make them into what you
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want.
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You're more or less you'll probably screw them up more than anything.
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But some of us, you know, went along and played our part in bop property and worked in the
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mainstream world, which is what my father did and what I did.
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But that blood memory never stopped digging at me even through a marriage to a non native
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person even through in laws, that old in laws that were, made things harder and you know, you
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I still kept it alive inside.
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It's like probably like my grandparents and my parents did.
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I kept something alive alive so that when I could, I couldn't bring it out.
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And I bring it out through my art.
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I bring it out through my writing and my poetry and and my my fellow community members are
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bringing it out through what they do, what their medicine is.
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We call it our medicine.
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So my writing is my medicine.
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For the world.
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And what a and what a nice way to put it to my medicine for the world.
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So you're a band member of 6 nations and So tell me, like, what I hear is pure strength,
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right, because my, you know, my, my, brand is connection and the importance, the vitalness of
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the better connected we are to ourselves is the best inoculation you can give yourself.
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Yes.
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In the world within yourself.
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It's almost like I I always call it.
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It's like contentrics, circles of intimacy around you.
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Right?
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So I I connect to who I am truly.
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Yes.
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And I I like, you know, having my background in my book, I talk a little bit about some of the
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trauma that I went through.
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You know, I've seen through violence as a child and how that kind of informed me, but
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culturally even coming from the Caribbean, there is this normative element around in
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fidelity and violence that kind of got accepted and kind of permeated.
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And I said, no.
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No.
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No.
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Not me.
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No.
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And then spoke a little bit about some of the replication or the reenactment that I did in
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my, long term, significant relationship and kinda how it hits you in the head.
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You know, it hits you in the head and it says, okay.
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You're not listening to me, so you're gonna kinda start to wake up.
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So it's interesting when I hear the strength regardless that you you picked up from your mom
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that never spoke of it.
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From your grandma, it sounds like it came more directly.
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Those directions.
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Oh, my father bought all three of them, but the women in my family are very strong.
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Sorry.
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I just interrupted.
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Yeah.
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No.
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No.
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No.
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That's amazing.
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So it's interesting.
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Right?
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Like kind of you're going through your life and you're, like you said, you're doing your thing,
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and then you get these I I call them guide posts that kind of redirects your back.
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It may not seem like the best thing at the time, but then you look back and you think, oh,
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what?
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I keeps hitting the same guidepost that's trying to get me to go left, but I keep going
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right.
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Yes.
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Would you say that some of your path or some of the, first nations path.
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That's what's happened to the present generation that makes them want to kind of
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relish, I'm gonna say, and stand up and say, this is who we are.
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This is what we're about.
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These are our traditions.
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This is inherent in me.
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Well, they just have a better self esteem than we had.
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We had to drag ours up out of the ground.
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We had to
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nobody was telling us, geez, you're doing great.
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You know, in a normal family, I'm in a household right now where it's a non native
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family, and it's a a no.
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I wouldn't call it traditional European culture, but families been remained intact
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throughout the generations.
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And I see things.
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My eyes just widened because I have no problem with journeying somewhere else for my lessons.
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And, you know, they encourage each other in the smallest of ways that we didn't get because we
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were denied I have no idea what it's like to be in a traditional native family and most of us
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don't.
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But you know, our family, it was more like they were afraid we wouldn't survive and these were
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people that been traumatized.
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So, basically, you, weatherproof them through methods that really make you afraid to be out
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there in the world.
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So, you know, someone who's been traumatized, basically may try to weather proof the next
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generation by, you know, oh, well, you'll learn, put your mitts on type thing.
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I'm using a very mild example, but could it kick it quite worse than that.
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But the next generation was just treated better.
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They were just treated better overall.
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I'm hot saying all of them, we still have a lot of youth who are highly represented in
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Correctional Institutes.
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Mhmm.
21:10
Mhmm.
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But they are still getting have much better exposure to treatment than we had.
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We just drank ourselves or whatever we did, right?
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Whatever.
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If those of us that fell down and never got back up again, That's what happened.
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So my children, I have 3 children.
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My two girls, well, my son is, was also educated in the native community.
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Through average Aboriginal nursing but my two girls, they're they continue their life's work
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is, adding to the medicine.
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And because all my kids are sort of artsy, their their medicine is is in that like
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artistic.
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And language and culture.
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But some of my other peers in the community, their kids are getting university edge
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education and teaching and dealing with the politics and the treaties, and we're gaining
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political power through education and through unity.
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Well, that's not happening.
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Like, we did the grunt work, like, generators before us.
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They just had to survive.
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Right.
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Right.
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They just had to survive it.
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And and then my generation, we had to pull our it almost appeared with my generation.
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It almost did not come back.
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And so we some heard we did we went through all of the social ails and then we just did a
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better job with our kids overall, I'm going to say.
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And then I'm not trying to say that we are by any means at the end of our journey.
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That's amazing, right?
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Because it's oftentimes, you know, I often say when I see trauma clients, it's hard to get
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back up sometimes if you're gonna kinda get knocked back down.
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Right?
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So it takes that strength
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to
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be able to, like you said, to to change the story to recognize what was taken away, how to
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how to listen to intuitively what's in you.
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Like you said, you go out We talk about getting kids out in in nature and things like that, but
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but what I hear clearly, it's it's even it's so much more in the native traditions Yes.
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It is embedded into it.
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It's embedded.
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So tell me a little bit about that because, and I then I wanna talk a little bit about the
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actual book so you can kind of give their listeners, a sense of why they should all go up
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and get where Mary went you know, and where they can get it, but tell me a little bit about
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the elements of and I like I like, I like that word of medicine.
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I've
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never heard it used in that context, right?
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But how does nature from the native tradition frame that for someone that's non native and
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help help me understand in my, you know, humble understandings what nature is in native
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tradition.
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I can give you an example.
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Now I've worked in mainstream my whole life.
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That's how I pay my mortgage.
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You know how I raise my kids.
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I believe we all have medicine.
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It's not a unique thing.
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Medicine is just a word that we use as native pea native people.
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Other cultures might call it your purpose.
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What you're here to offer the world in a mutual healing, you know, just different philosities
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and world views.
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So I'm gonna take it down to I work in a social work environment.
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I always have.
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I I hear a lot of stories, and I I'm Kenny I'm just I don't think I have to explain it to you
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but for the listeners people who are at the just the drag of their life.
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They're on the sidewalk.
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They're one second from being on the sidewalk or they're, you know, it's a it's a financial
24:54
need, but The financial need was a is a symptom of of something else, of something that's wrong
25:01
with them.
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They come in, they cry, they laugh, they lie, they They tell stories, they whatever.
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I love my experience with that job.
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So here, because how nature and medicine go together.
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I like Roxanne, and almost everybody likes Roxanne.
25:20
Stones, Roxanne, because there's something about it in you that knows there's there's just
25:25
something about Roxanne.
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So when I'm using something small like this for on purpose, so I always have rocks on my desk,
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different rocks I've liked and picked up, and they're always on my desk, and it started one
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day.
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I just have them there.
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One day years ago, this young man comes in and he's just a mess, just a non native man, just a
25:48
mess, and he would be one of thousands I've met.
25:52
In the same circumstance, but he's sitting there and he is just chest belly sobbing and
25:58
can't focus and I'm no psychologist, but I do know how to reach in with people and comfort
26:08
them.
26:08
I can reach rate in and I can and I have no words for what it is I can do.
26:12
I can know I can do
26:13
it just because I've done it so often.
26:15
And so he's sobbing and crying and and I said, here.
26:19
And here, take this rock.
26:21
Well, if you want this rock, I just said to him, is if you would give somebody something to
26:25
get them to stop crime.
26:26
He instantly stopped crying.
26:28
He's looking at the rock.
26:30
He says he loves the Roxanne now this might sound funny to you and it is I have smoke on my
26:35
voice because I in my profession, I try to stay on the surface of it and not, like, get in all
26:41
the time, you know?
26:42
And, so he's looking at it and he says, I keep this rock?
26:45
And I said, you'll keep that rock and he held on that rock and he got focused.
26:50
Now, back then, I didn't even know something that I actually formally taught later.
26:57
A rock, many people there's a grief teaching, a rock, grief tea as as it pertains to grief.
27:03
When you just cannot process your grief, you should go look for a rock.
27:12
Just just go looking for it, pick it up a rock that appeals to you.
27:16
You for us native people, you offer it a little gratitude.
27:21
For us native people be in the form of tobacco, but you offer it a little you ask it.
27:26
You know, would it help you?
27:27
Would it take your grief?
27:29
And then you just keep keep that rock handy in your pocket.
27:33
I don't know how big it is by your bedside.
27:35
You can paint rock.
27:36
You can dress that rock.
27:37
You can just hold on to that rock.
27:38
That's that rock is gonna keep you company through this grief.
27:42
And a rock is an old thing.
27:46
It's very dense.
27:47
It pulls energy into it.
27:49
There's probably some science to that too, but this is you know, it can hold your grief, what
27:54
you cannot hold because we're not as dense and we're more organic and we need it to go through
27:59
us, not stay in us.
28:00
So Iraq can hold that.
28:01
So that makes sense to people.
28:04
But I didn't know it when I gave it to the boy.
28:07
And so when you're done, when you feel like you can let your grief go now, it's all in this
28:15
rock.
28:17
Offer the rock a little tobacco or gratitude.
28:20
Bring it to the water and throw it into the water.
28:24
Because the water is stronger than the Roxanne the water can can cleanse the rock of its of
28:34
the grief that you've put in it and now your grief is not in your body anymore.
28:38
So I did not know that teaching.
28:40
I was taught that by an elder later on in life.
28:43
And since so since then, I have very consciously given that teaching to hundreds of
28:49
people who come into my office.
28:51
It may or may not cool to give native teachings.
28:53
I don't I don't address it.
28:55
I don't say, oh, this isn't holding you.
28:57
You should whatever.
28:58
I I be a very adept at, I very adept at at tailoring it to who the listener is.
29:07
If that makes sense to you.
29:09
But people do it.
29:10
It resonates.
29:11
And why?
29:11
Cause it's been you and you know it's a truth.
29:14
Well, what what a what
29:15
a beautiful thing.
29:16
Right?
29:16
You're putting I mean, I can do the western scientific part to it, but symbolically,
29:22
Whatever it you're saying is it's taking it within nature, working with nature, carrying
29:27
with you the assumption is that, the your emotions absorb into the rock, which probably,
29:34
you know what?
29:35
Who knows?
29:36
And then you put it you let it go, and and it gets taken off wherever it needs to because,
29:41
really, what that's what refiz because, you know, honoring it, bearing it, and letting it
29:49
go.
29:49
Yeah.
29:50
So really, I'm I'm sure.
29:52
And like I said, I have had little I've been, I've had little exposure, but I've had some
29:57
because I've gone up, to a to a sweat lodge at the, 6 Nations.
30:02
I've been invited a couple times.
30:04
And I don't even know what to experience, to explain to anybody that has not been.
30:09
And I probably, my experience, I don't know that what it was supposed to be, but I just
30:13
remember like crying and crying.
30:18
You know, nobody talked to any, you know, you just and it was It was an experience that it's
30:24
it's hard, and I felt privileged that I was invited not knowing a lot of things.
30:29
So just because of one of the social workers that I met, that was associated with, she's one
30:34
of the elders at, 16 days.
30:36
And I it was just I felt I didn't even know what I was feeling other than I knew I feeling
30:41
a lot and whatever I was purging, I was purging major, but I didn't know what I was purging.
30:45
That was perfect.
30:46
Other than I was, you know, just couldn't stop.
30:49
Just couldn't stop releasing whatever, you know, was happening.
30:53
And, it was, it was an amazing, amazing experience.
30:57
So the tradition sound, how old is it?
31:01
Like, a lot of these, these teachings, like, that you would have been exposed to in your
31:06
path?
31:08
Well, there's they're they're passed down orally.
31:10
Now we write them down.
31:11
Because now we can, but they were passed down orally.
31:14
And, sweat lodge, period.
31:17
I I that experience you just described you taught me a lot by telling me a story, right?
31:23
Yeah.
31:23
A lot about you.
31:25
Sweat law should give me a lot of things that would caused me to go out and ask other
31:29
questions if I had never been exposed to sweat lodge.
31:32
This is what I try to do in my book and I actually have a sweat lodge seen in life.
31:39
Okay.
31:39
Okay.
31:40
So if you ever read the book, you're going to see yourself.
31:43
I I am going to read the book because now I'm I'm intrigued because, you know, like, again,
31:48
like I said, I've had exposure as a as a therapist.
31:51
I've done speaking.
31:52
I've done training.
31:53
I've gone, you know, and and felt humbled.
31:56
And I had an experience, where there was a concern, and I, and I asked the elder to she
32:05
wanted to help me with it.
32:07
She
32:07
agreed with the elders, told me exactly what it was, and said prayers, and I don't even know
32:13
how that works.
32:14
You probably could help me more.
32:16
They prayed on it, found what happened, and then gave a solution and it changed.
32:23
Yes.
32:24
And I'm like, okay.
32:26
What happened here?
32:27
The logical brain just kicked in.
32:28
Right?
32:29
And she said, we know exactly what happened.
32:32
It was just a concern that was happening in my family.
32:36
And she said, we have set of prayers.
32:38
Me and the elders.
32:40
Do not worry about anything, and I'm going to tell you Yes.
32:44
After they did that, that's why I I'm intrigued and I'd love to get together to with you to
32:49
talk more because I'm very, very I would love to learn more.
32:54
The concern
32:56
shifted completely.
32:59
Yes.
33:00
Yes.
33:00
And now Can we just crystallize that moment for a second?
33:04
And you said these beautiful old, how old are these teachings?
33:08
I would not be doing right by my ancestors if I did not mention the fact that we almost didn't
33:14
get them.
33:15
Because there was a long time that sweat lodge was illegal and like right up to the forties
33:22
and anybody can Google this sweatlodge, the gathering of native people was was against the
33:27
law and so sweatlodge was illegal drumming and all was illegal, any kind of like ceremony
33:36
sundance, no matter where on this land, the nations would try to gather, So, old guys and
33:45
old women generations back hid in the bush and kept those traditions alive.
33:50
And that's the truth.
33:51
And that's the only reason we got them because, you know, it was it was contraband, basically.
33:57
Indian culture was contraband.
34:01
I'd say around the time that Canada was forming as a country, and I'm talking about Canadian
34:07
laws, although I know it was the same in the America.
34:09
My knowledge for Canada is greater than my knowledge for America.
34:14
So for example, sir John a McDonald was the perpetrator of those laws was it was made them
34:21
formally into laws with the Indian act and how how the non native community approach the
34:28
native community.
34:29
So the colonizing community approach the, the, the native community.
34:34
So so that beautiful tradition of Sweat Lodge which I keep alive in both my books, is only
34:42
possible because someone sneaked out
34:43
in the bush and went against the law and risked being put in jail, killed, picked their land
34:49
taken away, whatever, to keep that alive because they had vision.
34:54
Amazing.
34:55
Well, like, I'm I'm telling you, like, that just my experience.
34:58
And, and it I kept running into this elder.
35:02
That's the funny thing.
35:03
It's almost like this was going on in my life.
35:06
And I kept running into her, and I'm I kept thinking why am I I'm running into her
35:11
everywhere.
35:11
You know?
35:12
And that's And then I said something, you know, I said, I I had to tell her this what was going
35:17
on.
35:18
I don't know why.
35:18
I had something because of me said, Tell her what's going on.
35:22
And I did.
35:23
And then she said, okay.
35:25
I've pecked.
35:25
She's her words were.
35:27
I've packed my medicine.
35:28
Please don't say any names.
35:31
And I said, what?
35:32
She goes, I don't have if you say the names of someone or some Sound went off.
35:42
Are you not hearing me?
35:50
Can you hear me now?
35:51
Yes.
35:52
I can.
35:52
Okay.
35:52
So she, you know, she had said
35:55
as once they if there's something that's not good and you call someone's name, you release
35:59
it into the universe.
36:00
Don't say it, and she there was nothing she could do at that time.
36:03
So I'm like, what?
36:06
And and then after that, we got I spoke and then, you know, she helped me through.
36:10
So to me, you know, whatever was done was it was amazing.
36:15
It was bigger than me.
36:16
It was, it was you know, it made a big difference in my life.
36:20
And, you know, hence, I wanted to learn.
36:23
I'm, you know, don't know
36:24
a lot more, but I've tried to to attend, couple things, since actually after that.
36:30
So Nice.
36:32
Beautiful.
36:33
It's true.
36:36
And and, you know, that prompts me to and I think I I, I use storytelling to teach these
36:44
little, all these these, I thread them into a story, but to pass on these bits of knowledge.
36:50
But your story reminds me, I'm not sure if the person that you're referring to is ceased or
36:55
not.
36:55
So I'm familiar with the teaching that if they're deceased, don't mention their name
36:59
because just leave them on their path.
37:03
That's a teaching in all the different nations.
37:06
But as far as healing goes beyond form and life on earth.
37:14
The medicine and what I say is only things that I've been taught.
37:18
It doesn't make it true or not true.
37:21
So what I've heard consistently and learned from elders is that there's we aren't we aren't
37:27
alone here on our ancestors, which are aren't in body anymore, autonomous.
37:35
Anar walk around the medicine wheel through life, the medicine wheel is like our our
37:39
different stages in life.
37:41
There's also 2 cross, like, a cross shape between, be across the wheel.
37:47
Those are our spiritual ancestors wanting us to move the healing forward.
37:53
Because we have hands, and we have eyes, and we have feet.
37:56
And we can do things on Earth here, and they are constantly trying to communicate with and
38:02
no, a lot of people believe that if you learn your language, they'll understand you better.
38:09
So what you said prompted me to
38:12
Wow.
38:12
That's that's that's fascinating.
38:14
That's fascinating, right, because it's about getting connected at a high level.
38:20
So and and clearing your mind, Yeah.
38:23
To listen in whatever language, like you said, to to get the messages, which we, you know, we
38:28
talk so much about with Eastern philosophy, but of course, it sounds like that with the native
38:34
traditions, it's the same kind of thing, knowing that you're consistently surrounded by
38:39
you know, the answers are there, which, you know, but it's it's like, you know, you're
38:44
listening in the, you know, on the wrong channel, to put up monthly and you need you
38:49
need to shift it.
38:50
So tell us a little bit about the book and where Mary went, where where they people can
39:00
buy the book, what your website is.
39:02
If people are, wanting to learn more I don't know what services you offer.
39:09
Lynn, tell them where they can, where they can get ahold of you.
39:13
Okay.
39:14
So, where Mary went is basically I take the residential school era it takes place between
39:23
very, very late 1800s and, World War 2.
39:28
Era.
39:29
So I use the Mary was a real character, but Mary is also very much like most of of our
39:36
other grandmothers and grandfathers who had to go through residential school.
39:42
This is focuses on not just her experience before, so I have to focus on I have to include
39:49
a part of what it was like before residential school to really understand what was lost.
39:55
And then the experience through residential school, the will to survive it and then after
40:02
how being stripped, being whitewashed, basically whitewashed, Mary goes through
40:08
society.
40:09
But Mary has relationships with other people in the world, native and non native.
40:13
And so through those relationships, I also teach what was lost and what was kept.
40:18
But it's just a story.
40:19
It just means like a story, and it, but it's true.
40:25
So then the book was originally, much bigger than it is now, but I had a small publisher, a
40:32
wonderful publisher, but they I had to take it apart.
40:35
So I I kept Mary's story intact and I took her husband's story out of it and it became its own
40:42
companion book.
40:44
It is not published yet, but it's done.
40:47
It's not released yet.
40:49
Mary, where Mary went is written so that it's accessible when native people this is one of
40:56
the main reasons I wrote it was when native people open it up You're reading you're reading
41:01
about your culture.
41:02
You're you're at home.
41:03
You're at home when you're reading this book.
41:06
And when non native people read it, they're Wow.
41:10
Did that really happen?
41:12
And I think I have successfully done that from the feedback I've got.
41:18
So, where it's available, my my website is lynmarichsherry.com.
41:25
And, right now, the book is I'm selling the book myself because I just finished buying my
41:31
rights off my, It was sold through it was published by Tatus Books.
41:35
But I just finished as a business deal buying my rights back off them.
41:40
So the book is available through me.
41:43
On my website at this time.
41:44
I have some book distributors, good minds dot com.
41:47
Players is a good book distributor that can access the book.
41:51
They are key I'm I I think I'm going to, choose them as my, main distributor.
41:57
Okay.
41:58
So and it's Linus.
41:59
It's l y n n e.
42:02
Marie--yep.--.sherry.com.
42:06
Right?
42:06
Yep.
42:07
Just Lynn Marie, Sherry, all one word, with Lynn with an e, dotcom.
42:12
Okay.
42:13
Perfect.
42:14
So this has been, what, powerful?
42:18
Like, what what, I'm so I feel privileged to have met you, and I know a colleague of yours
42:23
connected you with me.
42:24
And I I know you're here in the region, so we will definitely have to get together and and
42:29
sure.
42:30
I would love to hear more about your wisdom.
42:33
And, you know, My whole thing about getting connected, it sounds like the native traditions
42:41
is all about connection.
42:43
And we have all we have everything around us, which really truly, if you think about it, it's
42:48
about us slowing, absorbing, and connecting and being grateful and gracious for everything
42:54
around us.
42:55
Yes.
42:56
You know?
42:57
Yes.
42:59
I am at an event on Thanksgiving weekend, October.
43:03
Is it 6 and 7 or 5 and 6?
43:05
I'm not sure.
43:06
I'm not sure.
43:07
October.
43:08
The Nagar Regional Native Center is having a powwow, which if you want to be immersed
43:13
yourself in native culture is a lovely powwow in what's that park called in, that main park
43:22
in St.
43:22
Catherine's.
43:23
Oh, I want that flight in Montebello Park.
43:26
Thank you.
43:27
Montebello Park you for being part of my brain and so it's a big pile on Thanksgiving weekend.
43:33
I'm there all weekend if somebody would like to come and meet me and buy the book.
43:37
Awesome.
43:38
Well, I I will try to come up there so I can meet you then and and, get exposed to a powwow
43:42
because I don't I've never been exposed to something like that.
43:46
So thanks again.
43:49
Lynn, I hope that, or a path's not hope.
43:51
I know our paths will cross again.
43:53
And I'm sure my listeners have enjoyed just the wisdom that you've brought to us today, about
44:00
connection and nature and our medicine, like what is our medicine?
44:05
That's so, so very important to you about your medicine, being your writing.
44:10
And and and I about now, you're making me think about what is my medicine, and my medicine, I
44:15
think, is probably more orating some writing, but definitely or rating.
44:21
So I feel grateful that you've, you know, had me think about that or for others listening
44:25
that they can think about what is your medicine?
44:27
What is your purpose and meaning in the world.
44:30
What is your imprint that you're going to leave behind?
44:34
Because we all have something that we want to be remembered for.
44:38
So today, I I I suggest that you've, you know, stop, reflect, get out in nature, go for a
44:44
walk, and think about it and think about how is it that you want to be remembered in the world.
44:50
So, we'll chat again with you next week if you're wanting any further information on me
44:55
you can go to roxanderhodge.comforward/blueprint, where you
45:00
get, my free course.
45:02
So take care.
45:03
Thanks a lot again, Lynn, and we'll talk to you soon.
45:06
Thank you.