Kenneth S. Cohen - Honoring the Medicine: The Essential Guide to Native American Healing

Praise for

HONORING THE MEDICINE

Rich, provocative, and fascinating. Kenneth Cohens long awaited tome is a treasure chest of Native American healing culture.

Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine

Comprehensive and authoritative.

Booklist

Honoring the Medicine will challenge your everyday perceptions of reality and lead you to a quiet, more mindful and healthful place. Be prepared: it could transform your life.

M ARGARET C OEL , author of Eye of the Wolf

A timeless classic.

B RADFORD P. K EENEY , P H .D., editor, Profiles of Healing

[A] remarkable, penetrating work.[Cohen] has emerged as one of the great explicators of the Native American worldview.

L ARRY D OSSEY , M.D., author of Healing Beyond the Body and Reinventing Medicine

[Kenneth Cohen] inspires us to reconnect with the traditional ways for healing the earth and ourselvesa brilliant work.

S ANDRA I NGERMAN , author of Soul Retrieval and Medicine for the Earth

Ken Bear Hawk Cohen is a traditional native healer and Pipe Carrier.Written for the general reader who wishes to learn more about Native American medicine, as well as medical professionals and holistic healers, Honoring the Medicine explores the core principles of the living tradition.

Eagle Feather News

This is a book you could carry into the wilderness if you had to choose just one.

S TEPHEN L ARSON , Ph.D., author of The Shamans Doorway

Cohens book is a form of medicine in itselfmedicine for the mind. [Slowly] and carefully [Cohen] untangles the confusion that for so long has created a barrier between the western world into which he was born, and the Native one into which he was adopted.

E VAN P RITCHARD (Micmac), author of No Word for Time

Honoring the Medicine takes you on a vision quest.

T ED C. W ILLIAMS (Tuscarora), author of The Reservation

This is the best overview available of Americas original holistic medicine.

Spirituality and Health

Ken Bear Hawks message is recognized, respected, and needed. He brings new gifts and insight to Americas most ancient tradition and to the larger world.

T OM H EIDLEBAUGH (Leni-Lenape), storyteller, poet, contributor to The Great Canoes

[Honoring the Medicine] rekindles ancestral knowledge, awakens hope, and points the way that must be re-established so that we live in health and harmony.

Healthy Horizons

A magical, comprehensive integration of indigenous, western, and multicultural knowledge!

U.S. Congresswoman C LAUDINE S CHNEIDER

A remarkable book.

S TANLEY K RIPPNER , Ph.D., past president of The American Psychological Association

Also by Kenneth Cohen

The Way of Qigong: The Art and Science of Chinese Energy Healing

Copyright 2003 by Kenneth Cohen

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC, New York.

BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House, LLC

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by One World, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC, in 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cohen, Kenneth.

Honoring the medicine: the essential guide to Native American healing / Kenneth Bear Hawk Cohen.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Indians of North AmericaMedicine. 2. Indian philosophyNorth America. I. Title.

E98.M4 C64 2003

615.88208997dc21

2002034469

ISBN9780345435132

Ebook ISBN9781984800411

www.ballantinebooks.com

Book design by Susan Turner, adapted for ebook

v5.4_r2

a

To the Original People of Turtle Island

Great Mystery, I ask for your guidance. Help me to truly listen, with an open mind and a pure heart, and to speak in a way that honors the People and their teachings. May my words help to increase respect, healing, and justice for the people of Turtle Island, their children, and all of our relations.

Thank you; thank you; thank you; thank you!

The Fires kept burning are merely emblematic of the greater Fire, the greater Light, the Great Spirit. I realize now as never before it is not only for the Cherokees but for all mankind.

R EDBIRD S MITH (18501918) Cherokee spiritual leader

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my colleague and friend Joan Borysenko for her intuition and vision. After reading a very early draft of this book, she said, Youve got to publish this! Little did she or I suspect the work and graces that would follow her encouragement.

I thank my family of birth, my father, mother, and brother, for the lessons of childhood, and my adoptive Cree family, Andy, Irene, and Joseph, for lessons that have helped shape my adulthood. I thank Cree elders Albert Lightning, Glecia Bear, and John and Steve Moosomin for their wise words and encouragement, and the many other Cree healers who have accompanied me at various stages of the journey along the Red Road, including Stuart and Yvonne, and Rose and Ric.

I thank my dear friend Tom Laughing Bear Heidlebaugh (Leni-Lenape) for his depth of understanding of Native American and African spirituality. His poetry, humor, and courage in the face of cancer and unremitting painand his wifes bravery in supporting and caretaking himare an inspiration to people of all nations. The memory of my friend fills me with happy-sadness.

I thank the fine elders and healers who have been my teachers and friends: Keetoowah Christie (Cherokee), Rolling Thunder (Cherokee), War Eagle (Cherokee-Lumbee) and Helen (Comanche), Hawk Littlejohn (Cherokee), Twylah Nitsch (Seneca), Nonoy (Filipino), Fred Lee Ingwe (Zulu), and Dr. Aguomo Umunakwe (Igbo). Mahalo (Thank you) to Kahiliopua, Herb, Laheenae Gay, Abraham Piianaia, and my other Hawaiian relations for extending their hospitality and aloha. Warm gratitude to Gulli and Gudrun Bergmann for introducing me to the Land of Fire and Ice (Iceland) and the spirits who live there. I thank my extended family in the Medicine: the former residents of Meta-Tantay, treasured friends Richard and Lora Dart, and my Si.Si.Wiss brothers and sisters under the guidance of Johnny Moses Whis.tem.men.knee, Vi Taqsablu Hilbert, and other elders.

Words cannot express my gratitude to NTsukw (Innu), who has been my friend for more than twenty-five years. I will never forget our walk up the mountain as he told me the ancient history of Turtle Island; the songs and prayers, as we shared smoke from a clay pipe; the delicious meals he served when all he could afford was an onion and a loaf of bread; visiting with his mother, who at age ninety had more vitality and wit than most women half her age; and the way he stood by me during my time of hardship. I feel blessed that NTsukws good teachings became part of my life path when I was at an impressionable age.