Volume 36 Number 2
Winter 1997

This story is about purpose. From a Hopi perspective it is spiritual purpose, because to be a good Hopi is to be prayerful in one's work. This is a story of how academic life is intertwined with my life as an American Indian woman. I am a Laguna-Hopi woman with shared belonging and place at Moencopi, Arizona, the home of my Hopi mother, and Paguate, New Mexico, the home of my 99-year-old Laguna grandfather. I am an Indian social worker. I am an Indian social work researcher. I am Pueblo (see Note 1).

Early in my training as a Pueblo child, I was instructed to "Look around, see what you can do to help; don't be lazy." What drives this story is what I learned before I was four. I explain this in a contextual piece I call……

Long ago, before I was four - when my family, like so many other Laguna and Acoma families of the early 50s, moved to Barstow, California so my father could work for the railroad - I learned that everything had a spirit, that everything had a place, that everything was connected.

I was surrounded by old brown grandmas, women with lights in their eyes and the world in their wrinkled hands. I remember fresh corn and melons from the fields, dried deer meat hanging on the barbed wire fences, deer stew dinners with green Jello for dessert, red chili and fresh tortillas, peaches drying in the sun, the smell of warmth coming from the old wood stove, and hot oatmeal with canned milk. I "helped" my grandpa butcher sheep and chop wood, and helped my grandma rescue brown mountain bread from the hot outdoor ovens. I remember weeds with stickers, large black ants, little snakes, homed toads, New Mexico sun and New Mexico winds. I remember the excitement of preparations for welcoming the deer that the hunters would bring; the peacefulness of my grandpa praying for the world out by the woodpile at sunrise; the sound of the village crier giving instructions and calling out news; and nights so full of stars my grandma got tired of counting them for me.

I remember the sound of bells and turtle shells on the legs of the Katsina (dancers); the smell of pine boughs and the soft trance created by many feet in Pueblo moccasins, stepping to the murmur of the Laguna language made into songs and pulled out of drums by old brown men in bright shirts, bright scarves tied around their heads. It's the way the language feels, that lowsounding comfort that evokes memories of the old road to Paguate villageway before the Anaconda uranium company gouged raw and gaping canyons in our land-coming down the hill in the pickup truck between my grandma and my grandpa.

And now, I only remember how I long to go home. And even knowing that it will never be quite the same, I carry the seeds of what it was, right here, in my spirit.

Paying attention to the messages. There was never any doubt that I would return to school and study research. There are few American Indian social work educators, and fewer American Indian researchers in the field of social work. And there is much for Native People to contribute from our cultural perspectives, not just in the classroom, but to the social work research literature, and, I am learning, to the academic environment as well.

The matter of when to return to school was without doubt. The return to school would come at the end of a 12-year career as a social worker working on Indian reservations with Indian families. I wanted to be 40 when I returned to school. By then, I would be grounded in what I knew was culturally true for me, but open to learning what would be useful, and unafraid to speak or defend my position, whether it be cultural or academic. At this age, I would be in a time of power with enough strength to integrate and enough wisdom to teach.

One way to measure this strength is how well can I "hear the messages" in a setting so far from the source of my strength - my home, my relatives, and my work with Indian people on reservations. Hearing the messages means accurate interpretation of the signs - dreams, symbols, events, thoughts - evident in the world around me. Inherent in hearing the messages, is the ability to incorporate these as part of oneself. Some would call this "finding one's path" or "being in the flow."

"Cultural loneliness." That initial separation from my source of strength was painful. As my first quarter in the doctoral program progressed, I felt an emotional pain that had no obvious etiology other than the occasional incidents of racism that starkly indicated I was no longer at home. At the University of Washington, my advisor Tony Ishisaka, a Japanese man who -recognized my spirit identified this as "cultural loneliness."

Sometimes my spirit actually ached.
I missed, not just the support,
not just the opportunity of being surrounded
by other people like me,
but I missed the shared humor,
the sounds,
the feel of
the spirits of other Indian people.
As a foster care program coordinator,
I remember being embraced
by Pima (Akimel O'odham) foster parents,
and Pima children.
At the end of a foster parent training session,
I remember the sound of seeds in
a gourd rattle as it carried prayers skyward...
Blending with memories of the song-chants of the Kachina dancers
in the plaza in the upper village at Moencopi.
And laughing with Hopi women
about plays on words
in the Hopi language,
(at a time when I could better understand those phrases).
Blending further still, with the sound of the Acoma. language
(which sounds so much like the Laguna language)
when my Acoma friend and Pueblo brother Simon Ortiz
told me Pueblo stories,
amid the brass and the ferns
in a Portland restaurant.
And brought tears to our eyes and
drew us back to the hillsides of New Mexico,
as we traveled the distance between his village and mine,
all in lonely memories
and deep, deep sighs.

Search for a dissertation topic. The second critical juncture in this academic path came when my own determination to research Indian child welfare - my last area of social work practice - met with small barriers: the long time frames for human subjects review at the Washington State Department of Human Services and the experiences of others who waited for approval for research in this system for up to nine months. The realities of research in a state agency coincided with the impact of crack cocaine and the growing numbers of addicted babies flooding the health care and child welfare systems. The latter stimulated my interest in addictions and women in 1990 when few articles on crack cocaine appeared in the professional journals. And when I came full circle in my thinking about how I could be of most use to my people, the impact of alcohol addiction on Indian child welfare systems could not be denied. The place of Indian women in this cycle was critical.

The advocacy for qualitative research methods in schools of social work appeared to be simultaneous with my interest in women and addictions. Looking back to the summer of 1992, my program of study drew on the addictions literature, including anthropological research on American Indians and alcohol. My program of independent study incorporated American Indian history and literature on women and balanced qualitative and quantitative research. The program of study coincided with the announcement of the first Magnuson Dissertation Awards in the health sciences at the University of Washington. Here was opportunity and a discipline that recognized addictions research. I would be one of six scholars that would be fully funded for the dissertation year. Can you recognize the messages?

The dissertation process. The qualitative analysis in the dissertation drew from the life histories of Indian women, and produced beginning models of their decisions to quit drinking and a beginning model of Indian women's long-term recovery. From my perspective, the use of the life history to gather data for analysis was a natural choice. From a cultural perspective, the method is empowering - to be heard, to tell one's story, particularly in hopes that it will help someone else. These stories are stories of healing. These stories are stories of Indian women. As I review the recovery model developed from the dissertation research, I acknowledge the cultural power unleashed by the social construction of meaning inherent in qualitative methods.

Many stories with the power of cultural messages emerged from the interview process. I will mention two. The first is a story told by Tillie, a 53 year-old woman, with eight years of recovery. At a point of spiritual vulnerability, Tillie made a decision to quit using drugs. Sadly, she had been given a drug mixture of an unknown origin in an Indian medicine pipe. The reaction held her prisoner in a series of hallucinations that skirted reality in her attempts to dial the phone to get help. Part of these hallucinations that she called "dreams" featured her brother and his girlfriend, both of whom had died of alcoholism sometime before. They had come for her in his maroon car. "He looked so good," Tillie remembered. The girlfriend leaned forward in the front seat and offered Tillie entry to the back seat of the car. "Come with us," they coaxed.

Now, from a Pueblo perspective, dead people who come for you present a serious message and/or choice. Tillie, a Blackfoot woman, interpreted this likewise, recognized her dilemma and told them she had to go back into the house. It was at this point she attempted to dial the phone and get help. When she woke the next morning, there was no evidence of her call for help, but she made it through the night. She decided at this point to stop using drugs.

Jackie, a 35-year-old Nez Perce woman with three years of sobriety, demonstrates the interventive power of the interview in her active analysis of her relationship with her mother. She began the first interview with a tirade about her parents, "they were just plain shitty parents." Then Jackie placed her mother historically in her mother's own time, in her own generation as a daughter, as a young woman in the socio-political throes of a turbulent time for her tribe. Jackie placed her mother in a time when white men's ways were "turning the heads of the young people" and wreaking cultural havoc; a time when Jackie's maternal grandmother, a strong and knowledgeable traditionalist, was still reeling from the changes which reverberated through her family and her tribe, and undid her world.

My mom's generation had to be even more torn by all these changes than we did, than in our generation. And the reality of my grandmother . . . her life went from being totally bound to seasons . . . to the movement of the camp back and forth and all over . . . travelling . . . in sort of a rhythmical way. In her life span, she was planted somewhere. And she couldn't move. And what kind of changes would that bring upon her and my grandfather- And then having these kids . . . influenced by all this [modern ways] and the pain it might have caused her [my grandmother] and why she might have responded to her kids in such a way that . . . I know my mom really hated my grandmother for . . . all sons of different reasons . . . but she really loved her dad. When [my mother] used drugs, she'd talk about those kinds of relationships and it made me really sad 'cause I realized that she really had a lot of pain.

As Jackie talked about her mother's role in introducing her to medicine people and ceremonies, her view of her mother began changing. In spite of her life-long alcoholism, her mother made sure that Jackie knew her relatives and the tribes to which she was connected. Before she was five, Jackie's mother exposed her to spirit-world mysteries and the gift of "talking with the spirits," a gift that Jackie now views as her mother's power-a view not consciously acknowledged before.

The Indian women in the dissertation study had been in recovery for three to 12, almost 13 years at the time of the interviews. Initially, they agreed to tell their stories as part of a research project, but then the stories took on a life of their own. And the women recognized this first.

In the summer of 1993, 1 was steeped in the interviews that would be transcribed and would amount to over 600 pages of life histories. That July, I dreamed that the women met and one of the women led a talking circle for us. I continued to be wrapped in their words and stories all summer, and fall, and into winter.

In a research study, the researcher makes an effort to maintain confidentiality and these Indian women did not know the identities of the other women in the project, although we Indians know how small even an urban Indian community can be. In December, 1993, after the interviews were completed, one woman offered to cook for those who wanted to meet. And on December 17, four of the women met and the talking circle was led by Jessie. The woman I dreamed who led the circle was May, and she's the one who invited us to meet and offered to cook.

Together, the women spoke of the power of their stories. They talked about their hope that this work would help other Indian women. They teased me, like Indian women do, about being on the Oprah show. I confessed the enormous responsibility I felt for carrying their stories. And they told me that the stories would find a way to carry themselves. The University of Wisconsin Press is currently waiting for the revisions to be completed.

The search for schools. When it was time to search for my first academic position, my own agenda of where I was going to be and what I was going to do dominated my thoughts. My goal was to return home to New Mexico, to live in the village of my grandfather, and to do research in the Pueblos forever. I started early, two years early, trying to get a head start on a position with an addiction research center in New Mexico. It looked positive to begin with, but for whatever reasons, fell flat.

I turned to Arizona, the home of my mother. Again, I interviewed early. This opportunity looked great, to begin with; but for whatever reasons, fell flat. And here, I was supposed to be such a hot market commodity-an Indian woman with a Ph.D. in social welfare research!
It was time to go out on the market. And it was true. I did have value. I investigated schools in states that had large Indian populations and selected three schools to visit. And it wasn't until I started this second process that I started paying attention to the messages again, messages I heard and felt throughout the writing of the dissertation.

The first message was the connection I felt with the four women from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. When we talked at the annual Council on Social Work Education meeting, they addressed my interests specifically. "We have a place for you in our Center for Addictions and Behavioral Health Center. Wisconsin has five Indian tribes ... Come teach with us this summer, even if you don't choose our school." When I returned to the hotel room I shared with my University of Washington classmates, I announced, "I think I'm going to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee."

The first day of the site visit at UWM, was not totally positive, and I expressed my reservations at dinner that night. On the second day, the agenda had been totally revised and I could hear the messages once more. I met two influential women from departments outside of the School of Social Welfare for morning coffee; I had lunch with three Native American faculty members from English, history, and sociology and they said, "Come be with us." When I was ready to leave, the exit interview carried a generous offer from the dean. But there was one challenge. "I'm sorry we can't have you teach this summer." My heart plunged, but could plunge no lower than my current bank account. "You'll have to do research." The decision was made! I had found a place.

A Pueblo in the classroom. The connectedness of the learning experienceone lesson building upon another-the primacy of the group and the sharing of power, and interdependent relationship building in the classroom all reflect Pueblo values. For example, undergraduates in my basic methods class observe, roleplay, and evaluate interviewing skills in groups. I share power with the students by conducting two role plays at once. They take responsibility for helping their peers, "when the peer doesn't know what to say next." I study their written work and assign them to groups for the research of social work theories. The students make group theory presentations and later rely on the written work from each group for an analysis paper which applies theories to social work assessments of families. Peer evaluations of these social work assessments prepare budding social workers with more intra-group relationship building, trust-building, skillsharing, and feedback within a social work case-transfer scenario.

I can teach a class of 60 undergraduate students using group work methods. The human behavior survey course incorporates permanent discussion groups formed on the first day of the class. Again, we start building relationships and sharing strengths, and individual members become aware of their own behavior in groups as part of the learning process. In the graduate course in qualitative research in social work settings, I share teaching power with a developmental psychologist. This course connects the school of social welfare with the Milwaukee social work community. Again, the students work in research teams. Graduate students collaborate with social work agencies to complete qualitative research projects in behalf of populations at risk. And in a spring research forum, graduate students present research reports to their community partners and the community partners respond to the work of the graduate student research teams. Everything is spiritual, everything is connected.

And, finally. Finding a place where we can contribute our work is highly significant to Pueblos. If we are admonished from childhood to make sure we contribute, to make ourselves useful, to help one another, to pay attention to the Earth, to hear her, and to pray . . . then how we integrate this philosophy with our way of life in academic institutions in the white man's world is not easy. Take for example, the academic merit review. At best, this is a hostile act. The rules are ambiguous and unwritten, but one is evaluated and measured and publicly ranked nonetheless.

If for a Hopi, work is spiritual
and spirituality is played out in one's work,
then, from a cultural perspective,
the academic merit review takes on totally different dimensions.
The first one was a like a bad car accident,
but it was only the spirit that was wounded.
I could tell, because the pain came from within
and my eyes showed it.
I called 911
the names of the three people on the committee.
And, I was told that this is the way it was.
And they dragged my body to the side of the road,
so that I would not impede the traffic.

As American Indians in academia, we often must relocate from our places of origin. There is no University of Paguate; and remember Paguate is my grandfather's village. Our family fields lie fallow; our elderly grandmas no longer keep a pot of stew on the stove waiting for our visits, and our grandpas could die anytime now, and we won't be there.

In our relocations, if we are lucky, we connect with other American Indians we find in academic settings who may have similar histories. More often than not, they too, are far from home, far from their culture, far from their language, and they too, want to get home. If we are lucky, the Indian people in our new community will see that we are useful and will welcome us into their settings. And this is very good, for this connection feeds our spirits. If we are lucky, there will be a body of Indian students in the university that we can help to nurture and in turn, help feed their spirits, for we know the challenges they will face. And if we are lucky, we will hear the messages in the voices of young Indian high school students who have already invested years in building ever-more complicated science projects and whose young eyes are already on the Ph.D. And we will understand why we are here. And if we pay attention and hear the messages, we will recognize the Great Spirit in the clouds, the blue sky, the setting sun, and we will know that we are not alone. Dawahe.

1. Now when I use the term Pueblo, I am talking about a group of non-nomadic peoples in the Southwest. The name "Pueblo" comes from the Spanish word for the adobe dwellings in which they lived, as some still do. Among these peoples are the 19 Pueblos in New Mexico including the Laguna, the Zuni, the Acoma, the Cochiti, etc. The Hopi and Tewa are the only Pueblo groups in Arizona.