Listening to the Birds: A Nez Perce Woman's Journey of Self-Discovery and Healing - Paperback
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"Later in the night, I felt another stirring inside me. Something I had buried and denied for over twenty years began to make itself heard. I cried out, 'Who am I? Am I Indian--or am I white?' I heard a voice, and it told me, 'Go home.'"--Dr. Roberta Tawlikitsanmay' Paul
Severe emotional pain set Dr. Roberta "Robbie" Paul, Tawlikitsanmay (Woman of the Forest) on a fresh path of discovery. Repeatedly encountering birds, she sensed her ancestors and began listening to their messages. Then, with help from her relatives, she uncovered five generations of her family's stories. They start with a Nez Perce chief who met Lewis and Clark in Idaho, continue to a warrior who died fighting alongside Chief Joseph in the War of 1877 followed by three generations attending government boarding schools, and end with a sixteen-year-old Irish American girl who defied her parents and decided to marry a handsome young Indian boy. Listening to the Birds is one family's saga--told with the intimacy of a memoir, the heart of a warrior, and the intensity of a woman on a mission to heal the soul of her people.
An enrolled tribal member of the Nez Perce tribe, Roberta Tawlikitsanmay' Paul, Ph.D., was born and raised on the reservation. She now gives presentations for survivors of intergenerational trauma, where she teaches that sharing stories is a Native way to heal wounds--but, she says, "If you don't know the story, you can't heal." Unearthing that past became her own first step toward healing wounds of racism, relocation, and assimilation. In addition, she teaches workshops on healing historical trauma using a ten-step model she developed--one she describes in Listening to the Birds.
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