Workshop Descriptions:
MANITONQUAT
(MEDICINE STORY)
RETURN TO CREATION
We can learn to heal ourselves, our communities, and the earth. We can experience
what it means to live in an unbroken circle, for the tribal way is instinctive
and natural. It calls for harmony, appreciation, and respect.
Guided by ancient wisdom and present inspiration, we will come together
and experience conscious community and the healing of our relations with
each other and the natural world. We will begin to break the barriers of
isolation that have kept us apart for too long and find a joyful closeness
with each other in acceptance and trust. We will experience our connections,
physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, to the earth and all of Creation.
We will learn how to find the visions that may guide us in achieving all
that we want from life, including the healing of the planet and the creation
of a more human society. We will find and take the next steps for each of
us in the recovery of all of our love, all of our creative intelligence,
and all of our joy and enthusiasm at every moment in our lives.
THE TRIBAL HEALING COUNCIL
This workshop is basically for people who have had other workshops with
Medicine Story. It is also open to other experienced counselors and co-counselors.
The goal of this workshop is to inspire and train people who want to be
better healers and counselors and to become teachers of counseling. The
workshop will concentrate on expanding the tools of effective counseling
with demonstrations and supervised counseling. We will examine whatever
may be getting in the way of our own natural leadership and begin to take
the steps that will restore our full power to heal ourselves and our society.
THE PATH OF THE HEART
We will explore together our emotional wilderness, becoming our own guides
on the path of the heart. We will learn techniques for dealing with fear,
anger, grief, conflict in relationship, addiction, powerlessness, and other
demons. We will learn to heal relationships with parents, children, lovers,
friends, and co-workers. We will learn how to find and build new relationships
that will support us, to create an environment of trust and openness leading
to true intimacy. We will expand and find new depth and new strength in
our love. During this workshop you will be fully appreciated and feel as
well as know how intelligent, capable and lovable you are.
YOUR LIFE AS A HEALING STORY
NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN TRADITIONS RETAIN THE ANCIENT CRAFT OF STORYTELLING
AS A SACRED AND HEALING ART. THIS ART HAS THE POWER TO TRANSFORM OUR LIVES
AND THE WORLD. In this workshop we will learn the healing power of stories,
and we will discover the healing in our own stories. We will see the role
of humor in healing, and we will have fun telling and listening to stories.
You will look at your life as a story with yourself as the central character.
You will have the opportunity to tell the story of your life and to hear
other people's stories. You will learn your own creative power as the author
of your story and plan how it will go in the future.
THE CREATIVE VISION
Through games and mental play we will uncover our unique and bountiful natural
creativity and apply it to specific areas of our interests, including the
creation of artistic expression and creating our lives as we wish them to
be.Each of us will create a personal vision for our lives as well as a vision
for the future of the earth, and we will learn how to put our dreams to
work to manifest these visions.
JOYOUS CHILDRAISING
Being a parent doesn't have to be a drag, a chore, or a nervous breakdown.
We can learn to reduce conflict, find no-one-loses solutions to problems
and increase creativity. We will discuss traditional Native American childraising
attitudes which parallel contemporary work in this field. We will explore
how our experiences as children affect our parenting. We will learn how
best to support our children in their growth as loving, intelligent, creative
beings. We will learn how to communicate in a way that children will hear
and listen in a way that children will communicate. We will learn how to
treat the emotional needs of our children and ourselves in a healing way.
We will discuss ways to liberate ourselves as parents from the pervading
social oppression. We will come to appreciate how well we have done as parents
and allies of children in the face of the most difficult conditions. We
will discover how to empower our children, how to have more fun with them,
and we will consider the tool of humor in teaching and keeping ourselves
and our relationships with children healthy and joyous.
* * * *
Manitonquat (Medicine Story)
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Medicine Story (Manitonquat) is a storyteller and a keeper of the lore of
the Wampanoag Nation of Massachusetts, and the ceremonial medicine man of
the Assonet Band. A former writer and poetry editor with the internationally
acclaimed journal Akwesasne Notes, he has been part of the North
American Indian Spiritual Unity Movement and a co-founder of the Tribal
Healing Council and a member of the Association for Humanistic Psychology.
A teacher of Re-evaluation Counseling, he is also the Liberation Reference
Person for Native People of Eastern North America and editor of Heritage,
the liberation journal of Re-evaluation Counseling, and writes articles
for the Mettanokit newsletter, the Talking Stick.
He has published tow books, Return to Creation, a Survival
Manual for Native and Natural People (Bear Tribe
1991), and The Children of the Morning Light
(Macmillan 1994) and is currently at work on three more. He collects
stories from all over the world that illuminate common human values, believing
that stories can be a great force for individual, community and planetary
healing.
Medicine Story is now going to six state prisons
where he leads open councils for native men
and their allies, sweat lodges, and teaches co-counseling.
He is also developing, with his Swedish partner,
Ellika Linden, an International Children's Peace Theatre.
Medicine Story lives in a little house in New Hampshire surrounded by pine,
birch and ash groves where he gathers with people who want to learn to retribalize
and to live in a circle. He says his most important accomplishment is being
the father of two wonderful boys.