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| 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.
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| 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.
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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
