Abstract:
In 2001, while teaching at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, a former student – having taken my Native American Religious traditions course - sought me; he complained of soul sickness after experimenting with an opiod. Receiving him within the context of my indigenous medicine ritual practice, I telescoped his soul to diagnois the illiness,, and in doing so I determined he had the soul sickness of addiction and prepared to treat him with my indigenous traditional medicine power for soul revivification. The paper will present a shamanic insight to addiction and illustrate indigenous treatment for restoring balance in such cases.
Biography:
Jay Hansford C. Vest PhD. is an enrolled member of the federally recognized Monacan Indian Nation, a and he is a direct descendent of the seventeenth century Pamunkey chief Opechancanough who arrested Captain John Smith as a murder suspect during British Colonilization of Tsenacomoco (Powhatan Virginia) in 1607, and he is an honorary Pikuni (Blackfeet) in ceremonial adoption (June 1989). Dr. Vest is a full professor in the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He is author of Will-of-the-Land: A Philosophy of Wilderness Praxis (2010), Native American Oralcy: Interpretations of Indigenous Thought (2014), Beyond the Ram’s Horn Tree: Studies in Salish Sacred Geography: Lolo Peak to Waterton-Glacer Park (foin press) and Packs-Pulled-Up Pass: Studies of Kootenai Sacred Geography: Waterton –Glacier Pass (in Press), and Thunder at the Backbone of the World: Waterton- Glacier Park – Badger Two Medicine Wildlands (forthcoming) and The Bobtail Stories: Growing Up Monacan (forthcoming), as well as more than two hundred fifty scholarly journal articles, chapters in books and other published writings.
