MixedBloodMetis in Action
I resign in protest, from the Native american veteran council at american lake hospital.
As of August 15th, 2025 I was the longest serving member of the NAVC (Native American Veteran Council) at the VA Hospital, American Lake. As a 70 year old Metis Elder I help to provide healing ceremony for Veterans and their families who found themselves in need or in crisis. In September 2008, I was asked to gather Willows by a Seneca Elder (representing JAVAC), to help establish a new healing Sweatlodge on the American Lake Hospital campus. For over ten years I served in a supporting role with the Seneca Elder and a Blackfeet Ceremonial Elder in charge of our traditional protocols and practices. In my supporting role I was often asked to pour water (leading the Sweatlodge) and facilitate talking circle ceremonies. Over that ten year period of time, we tended to the needs of well over 3,600 Veterans. The positive outcomes were profound and recognized as a significant contribution to Veteran health by the VA administration at American Lake Hospital.
After the Seneca Elder's move to Mexico and the Blackfeet Elder's decision to resign as Ceremonial Elder a new council was formed and eventually named NAVC (Native American Veteran Council). I continued in my supporting role and was instrumental in nominating both a Male and Female as co-chairs to lead the new council with a gender balanced sensitivity, cooperation and perspective.
Robert's Rules of Order was adopted to help us organizing council meetings protocols and priorities...
"Robert's Rules of Order is a manual of parliamentary procedure used to conduct meetings and make decisions in an organized and fair manner. It provides a framework for deliberation, debate, and voting, ensuring that all members have an opportunity to participate and that decisions are made with a majority vote." - Google search
At first the Robert's system of order seemed positive and fair. In hind sight however, it's use tended to support a ruling Patriarchol mindset that recognizes, prioritizes and supports the dominant cultural model that has historically censored, subdued and extinguished indigenous ways of thinking, participating and contributing. The end result, in practical terms, was that the NAVC council became another example of heavy handed colonial over reach and Native American in name only.
One of the many positive teachings that was shared by the Blackfeet Elder Ceremonial Elder (I am paraphrasing here) was the need for every council member to be vigilant with their tendency to think and act in a "white" or Eurocentric way. I understood this to mean that our modern cultural thinking and biases can obscure the nature based and intuitive flow of Indigenous thought that struggles to survive, to be expressed and become manifest. I believe he was reminding us to be attentive and challenge the thinking that can subtly but profoundly influence the way each person purposes themselves in ceremony as well as council participation.
It's difficult to give specific examples of what I speak but suffice it to say that language used by ceremonial leaders can either be support of directive. Both have a role in leadership...
?that is laden with religious axioms can influence
?be used to manipulative or influence tends to take a person deeper into rehursed or ridgid pactices
