Slideshow of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming

Helen reads a passage from Two Toms: Lessons from a Shoshone Doctor, available at most online booksellers.

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Two Talks about Two Toms

Tom at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois last Wednesday

 Last week, we packed up the Jeep and headed out to:

1.  Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.  The snow line was about 50 miles north of Madison, Wisconsin.  On the Augustana campus, the daffodils and magnolias bloomed, the birds sang, and a soft breeze blew. 
Quad-Cities Online has a nice write-up here of our visit. BTW, if you're a fan of Southwest Indian art, Augustana is home to the breathtaking Olson-Brandelle Collection.

2. The University of Iowa, host of this year's meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society, was even more Spring-y. Our Wisconsin clothes were too heavy for the 80-degree weather.
We were part of a session on "Innovative Ethnographies".  Our talk was about a favorite chapter from Two Toms:  Lessons from a Shoshone Doctor.  The chapter details a peyote ceremony at the Shoshone-Bannock Reservation in Idaho.  As with all peyote meetings, this one dealt with the immediate concerns of the community.  In 1969 this centered around the Vietnam War and its effect on the family of a Shoshone draftee. 


It was fun to connect with an audience of many levels of interest in Native American culture and difficult to put back on the heavy clothes, get back in the Jeep to head back north.

Tom and Helen Speak! (With coffee in hand)

Tom warming up with coffee before the presentation

Talk about a nice audience - I didn't even know there were people who stayed after a 90-minute presentation to ask questions and chat!

Yesterday we gave our first talk about Two Toms.  Both of us have a lifetime of public speaking experience but you never know how the first run-through is going to go.

 We got to the auditorium at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point early enough to grab a cup of coffee and check out the a/v equipment.  It was a beautiful theater  - yay.  The day was cold, even for February in Wisconsin.  Thanks to everyone who braved the Arctic blasts of wind to come out.

It was such a pleasure to introduce the audience to Tom Wesaw,  the Shoshone doctor ("medicine man" or "shaman" in non-Indian speak).  Tom first met him in the mid-1960's at a Sundance  to protest the Viet Nam war.  Three years later, the doctor invited him to live with him and learn from him.

Newly-constructed theater, seats filled with interested people, big projection screen - what's not to love?

Their first house call together was to a young woman suffering from recurring nightmares.  It is one of my favorite passages in Two Toms and my pleasure to read it to the audience.

Tom talked about how strongly-held Native beliefs and practices can help bring about change.  These practices are vital to each indigenous community and were often suppressed in the past with the intention of weakening resistance to what the colonial authorities wanted - total obliteration of the old culture and an embrace of the conqueror's ways and beliefs.  Another way of characterizing what the Shoshone are going through today is the term resistance to acculturation.  They resist what is foreign and foisted on them by another culture in order to regain the pride in who they are today.

Okay, it's Tom's birthday today and I have a dinner to make so I'm going to get going.  Can I just say, though, that  we couldn't have asked for a nicer audience than yesterday's for our first presentation on this book.

-Helen