Tribal N.E.A.R. Science & Community Wisdom Project

Season One Podcast Hosts:

Linsey McMurrin, David Cournoyer, and Susan Beaulieu

This is the story of how our personal and collective histories as Native Americans make us what we are today. While trauma, pain and collective grief are present, these are not our only inheritances. Join us as we seek ways to reshape our story— which includes looking back to understand how we got where we are, to consider what in our culture lies dormant, sleeping… as we examine what needs to be reawakened.

Much of the emerging knowledge from Western ways of knowing has confirmed what many of our tribal communities have known since time immemorial – that our traditional ways of knowing and being hold much wisdom for all of us. Taking care of our babies has been a core lesson in traditional wisdom for us as a people.  We look to the intersections of these understandings to discover lessons on our pathway forward to a new story, that will help us to continue to overcome the current day challenges for a brighter and more hopeful future.  

The relatively new field of epigenetics provides us with a scientific point of entry to traditional systems of knowledge that can now be understood more widely. It helps us unpack first and foremost for our own communities why the experiences of our ancestors still affect us today. We delve into the intricate dance of how our DNA, our gene expression, and our experiences and environment combine to impact how we interact, perceive and respond to the world around us.  

In this episode we explore how we can apply these concepts to our local context, considering our personal, family and community experiences, and how that impacts and steers our shift toward a discussion around healing. We must explore how both our trauma informs our perspective, as well as how it plays out in the ways we seek healing, resilience, and overcoming.

Now we pivot to individual stories from our community that give us a more personal window into the practice of remembering our resilience. We join honored community elder and leader Janice Bad Moccasin as she shares her story as she shares her experiences, from ceremonies in family homes to the healing work she has done on the frontlines of Standing Rock, asserting her place as a strong indigenous woman coming alongside community to address trauma and healing.  

We continue our journey into learning from respected community members what it really means to remember our resilience. Linda EagleSpeaker helps us see how the mainstream society ideals of busyness as a mark of success contradicts our traditional values of relationship with ourselves, our children and our communities and helps us better conceptualize the ongoing dichotomy between western ways of knowing and traditional ways of healing. As Linda encourages us, sometimes it as simple as making the decision she so aptly describes: “I got up, and I learned how to breathe.”