NAFPS Forum

I run Native Medicine Wheel Ceremonies for our youth, mentors, and have done them for other organizations.

It would be much more healing for these kids to be connected to their own ancestors and cultures in each unique case.

Glenn Schiffman has lived around or with American Indians all of his life. He has Vision-Fasted 12 times, participated in numerous traditional healing ceremonies, been a fire keeper at 15 Sun Dances and danced in 8 others. Since 2010 he's been a Pipe-Keeper of a traditional Sun Dance on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Glenn has built more than 100 sweat lodges in all regions of the US and has personally conducted over 1000 Inipi ("sweat lodge") ceremonies. He has been interviewed by news organizations including CNN, and appeared in TV docu-dramas about Native American lore. He also served as the Go-Between on a documentary about the dance by Arapaho to celebrate the 1994 release of wolves into Yellowstone National Park.

“The Way I Was Taught” is a coming-of-age story set in rural 1950’s America in which a white, ten-year old, preacher’s son, dealing with a severe emotional trauma, follows a path to recovery and “Well-Being” given him by the traditional teachings of neighboring American Indian Elders. It dramatizes the contrast, through the eyes this boy, between Christian ways and traditional Seneca ways.

Halfway through his "eleventh walk around the sun,” Hunter Koenig was nearly killed by a bull which caused his mother to have a miscarriage. As she spent a year recovering, in Hunter’s mind the accident was his fault, as was his parents' subsequent divorce. His custody was granted to his father, a chaplain on an Indian Reservation in Upstate New York.

Hunter was sent to live at the reservation orphanage where he was ridiculed and called a coward. Orphanage cook Minnie One Knife took him home to live with her father and grandsons. Over the next two years, the love and teachings Hunt received from Gramma Minnie and Great-Grampa Haksot, along with some profound dreams which bonded him even more closelyl with the Indians, restored him to “wellness.” He was ultimately sent back to live with his mother after being "doctored" by a medicine man and shown his "reason for being": to be a bridge between the world of his family and the Native American "Earth People."

I'm not finding anything yet myself reading through the memoir. It seems likely though considering he mentions indian school and orphanage. I cant imagine there were many other than Thomas Indian school. Reading more about it here...

https://jfepublications.org/article/the-thomas-indian-school/

Glenn received Frequent Flyer coupons from Joel to go to a Conference of "Peace Elders" at the Seneca reservation in Brandt, New York.

Raised in a border town of the Cattauraugus Seneca Indian Reservation where his father was chaplain at the Indian school, Glenn Schiffman has lived around American Indians all of his life. He has Vision-Fasted 12 times, sat in on numerous traditional healing ceremonies, has been a fire keeper at 15 Sun Dances and danced in 8 others. Since 2010 he's been a Pipe-Keeper of a traditional Sun Dance on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Glenn was a co-founder of Western Gate Roots and Wings Foundation, a non-profit which counsels youth, uninitiated adult men and returning veterans in collaboration with Native Elders and counselors at Home Boys Industries. His academic degrees include a BA in History from Knox College, an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State, and a Masters in Spiritual Counseling from the University of Santa Monica.