Synopsis

What’s in the Heart is an hour-long documentary, which opens in the high desert of Oregon in late spring. Set against the backdrop of colorful hills and mountains, intense blue sky and sun, we are gathered with members of the Wellbriety Movement at the Chemawa Boarding School for The Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness. This is the beginning of a 3500-mile road trip to 23 different Indian communities that are home to government run boarding schools. Through on-the-spot interviews and cinema verite footage, we learn that this road trip will be an odyssey of healing for not only these tribal members, but for untold numbers of Native people nationwide.

Opening titles for the film play and a few select interview clips impart the main theme of the documentary. We learn that there are great physical and mental health disparities in Indian Country and that many experts believe that this is rooted in what has been termed “historical trauma”, a multi-faceted and destructive condition caused by centuries of assimilation, genocide and broken promises between Native cultures and the dominant mainstream American government and society. From these few succinct and striking clips we learn that Native people and programs from all corners of the nation are striving to address and heal this trauma, in the hopes of improving life for Native Americans.

We cut back to the Wellbriety Journey for Forgiveness where members who are now ready to hit the road in what will be an extremely emotional and liberating journey. From Oregon to Washington D.C., the Elders will lead the youth to the sites of Indian boarding schools, some of which are now defunct and others still operational. We will accompany them to a few select sites, where they will gather with local tribal people and perform ceremonies to forgive the unforgiveable things done to Indian children while at these boarding schools – such as physical, verbal and sexual abuse - and the many, many ways that children were forced to suppress their cultural heritage. The Elders from White Bison have developed a program that they call The Wellbriety Movement, and they will share their teachings which link health and healing to a return to tradition and a cultural identity, as well as involvement in some more modern modalities of healing such as the 12-step program.

Throughout the film, we will learn more about the correlation between ill health and past trauma, and about other programs that are addressing the need for deep healing and a road to a healthier future. The “Journey of Forgiveness” will be a main thread throughout the film and will act as a device to lead us around the country to look at other successful programs and to speak with experts about the enormous health disparities between Native Americans and the general American public. The journey will also lead us into the hearts and minds of the Native people we meet, as we see first hand the need and impact of programs such as these. A key interview with Don Warne, MD, MPH, Oglala Lakota will be woven through the film to give pertinent medical statistics and information. Additionally, interviews with a select group of experts will explain the special historical circumstances that helped to create today’s health crises for American Indians. Experts such as Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart, Oglala and Hunkpapa Lakota, renowned authority on historical trauma and intergenerational grief, will provide this historical context as the modern-day stories unfold. When appropriate, archival stills, graphics and art will be used to illustrate the past.

From Oregon, we will travel to South Dakota. Here, the road leads us through stunning landscapes such as the Badlands and the Black Hills to the Northern Plains Healthy Start Program on the Flandreau Santee Reservation. We take leave from the “Journey of Forgiveness” to visit this program, which addresses the high infant mortality rate among Native Americans, the highest in the nation. With verite footage, we see how personal relationships and traditional values create an environment that supports infant and family health. We see how new mothers and their babies are surrounded by daily support and education of healthier lifestyles and traditional values. We learn that infant mortality rates are sharply lowered for infants involved in Healthy Start.

Nearby, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, we will visit with a program aimed at Native teens who reportedly have the highest suicide rate in the nation. Revered traditional leader Birgil Kills Straight tells us about a program that he helped establish as the result of an inspiring dream. Future Generations Ride is a horseback ride across the Pine Ridge reservation, where young people see the natural beauty that exists on their land and, through rituals and reflections, regain a sense of hope and identity as Lakota people. The Ride has the power to turn around the lives of young people otherwise at high risk of suffering from a sense of hopelessness stemming from substance abuse, violence, depression, illiteracy and poverty. As we go along with the Ride for a short way, we see reservation kids, many of whom have never journeyed outside of government cluster housing areas, on horseback, traveling through the magnificent landscape which has informed their culture for generations.

The film visits other programs, such as the National Indian Youth Leadership Project (NIYLP) at their summer camp on Mt. Taylor in New Mexico – a mountain considered sacred to the Navajo, Zuni, Acoma and Laguna Indians. NIYLP is a highly successful, evidence-based program. Here, we find Indian boys and girls, many of whom have experienced harsh circumstances, having fun, building trust, improving self-esteem and discovering healthy life options. Under the brilliance and clarity of the New Mexican summer sun, surrounded by Ponderosa pines, we see youth meeting challenges such as the rope course and team activities, using critical thinking, collaboration and their bodies. Founder Mac Hall says “stretching beyond self-imposed boundaries and seeing what you’re capable of” is the hallmark of NIYLP and it’s just that the activities of the camp will provide. But the glue that holds his program together comes from “the values that held Native communities together,” Hall says – service, generosity, respect for self, for others, for all of creation. And Elders are on hand to share stories and teachings that emphasize these values – around campfires under clear mountain summer skies where the sense of community is palpable and is capable of lingering for a lifetime.

The film concludes with the end of the Journey for Forgiveness’ 45-day journey - a final forgiveness ceremony at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. The group will bequeath to the Museum a 40-foot long totem pole, which has been carved with the intention of Forgiveness. Participants along with a group of Elders who have long informed Wellbriety will gather at the Museum where the opportunity to hear from them regarding the significance of this journey.

Why I Want To Create The Film

As a young girl, I was traveling with my family on vacation in southern New Mexico, when we stopped along the road beside an elderly Mescalero Apache man wearing a full Plains Indian feather headdress.  He was offering himself as a photo-opportunity to tourists, gesturing out with his hand for payment. My parents, thinking they were doing a good thing, stopped, and my brother and I stood with him and had our photograph taken. I was far too young and far too uninformed to understand what was wrong with this picture.

I keep that photograph on my desk; but now I see it as a painful reminder of the ignorance that shaped my education and my cultural experience. Forty years later, I understand why American Indians have lower living standards, lower life expectancy and higher suicide rates than their Anglo European neighbors. That elderly gentleman in full headdress on the side of the road of my childhood was not there for my entertainment; he was trying to keep his family fed after every aspect of his and his tribe’s way of life had been severely changed since the time of the European colonization. I have since learned that American Indians lost not only most of their land but also many of their languages. Their children were removed from their family homes and sent to brutal and demoralizing boarding schools. In effect, American Indians were denied the most basic right to a dignified life.  Forty years later, very little has changed. American Indians have a life expectancy between twenty and twenty-five years less than the rest of us.

I have spent many years re-educating myself about this country’s history and the ways in which America has betrayed the original inhabitants of the land we call home. I have become painfully aware of the nearly 500 treaties that have consistently been broken as regards the taking of their land in exchange for health, education and housing. This promise was included in the United States Constitution, and we are not living up to this trust responsibility. 

We are in times of painfully ironic circumstances: We desperately need the wisdom of the indigenous philosophies that at one time the US government actually outlawed, if we are to survive as a species on this planet. Yet we have done everything imaginable to destroy the future of the very people who can help bring balance to our out-of-control consumption and destruction.

Polls say that between seventy-six and eight-one percent of Americans are deeply concerned about the direction our country is headed—and I am one of those people. We know there is something wrong but we do not understand exactly what; consequently we do not know how to fix it. Healing ourselves and our history means waking up to, and understanding, the ways in which our past has been whitewashed and propagandized. It means waking up to, and understanding, the ways in which our Native American heritage holds the promise of healing through its profound respect for the interrelationship between the natural and the human world. Until this is uncovered and understood, our country will be unable to self-correct its unrelenting course of destruction of human and environmental integrity.