Richard Katz - Indigenous Healing Psychology: Honoring the Wisdom of the First Peoples

To the Indigenous elders and healers who entrust me with the responsibility of offering their teachings asa path toward healing psychology; and to those who, in reading this book, will hopefully feela healing psychology in their lives.

INDIGENOUS
HEALING
PSYCHOLOGY

A remarkable culmination of Katzs invaluable life-long work with Indigenous healers, Indigenous Healing Psychology is a brilliant, groundbreaking work connecting psychology to its roots so it can more truly become a force for healing and social change. A genuine invitation to a breathtaking journey that is a rare treasure. Just what psychology so desperately needs.

JOAN BORYSENKO, PH.D., NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MINDING THE BODY, MENDING THE MIND

A deeply honest book showing the greatest respect for Indigenous knowledge. You can see how our traditional Anishnabe teachings can offer a path to healing psychology. Indigenous Healing Psychology shows how psychology can finally begin to heal our people.

DANNY MUSQUA, ANISHNABE ELDER, KEESEEKOOSE FIRST NATION

Katz shares his extraordinary journey through world cultures and methods for inner and community work. Psychology will only be the better for encompassing such powerful Indigenous wisdom. This book is a mind-expanding gift to the reader, a well-researched offering to psychology, and a force for good.

DANIEL GOLEMAN, PH.D., AUTHOR OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Katz convincingly argues that the inclusion of Indigenous spiritual worldviews in mental health intervention and treatment will produce better client outcomes and better relationships among people no matter where they live. He offers the reader a profound challenge that is supported with Indigenous ways of knowing and living. His long-awaited book is beautifully crafted, clearly written, convincing, and logically organizedcomplete with a wealth of thought-provoking material written in a confident, authoritative voice. Anyone who carefully and thoughtfully studies these pages will come out a richer, well-informed person who will view spirit, the sacred, place, and connectedness through a discerning lens.

JOSEPH E. TRIMBLE, PH.D., DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AT WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Indigenous Healing Psychology presents a powerful and inspirational pedagogy into Western and Indigenous healing traditions; it offers valuable guideposts to ways we can all transform ourselves to meet the challenges of our fast-changing world.

HARVEY KNIGHT, INDIGENOUS CULTURAL ADVISOR TO THE REGIONAL PSYCHIATRIC CENTRE, SASKATOON

Katz journeys into the heart of what psychology is and what it can be. He exposes the Western myopia that limits the espoused goal of psychology, i.e. understanding the human experience of mind, body, and our relationship to the world. His personal experiences of navigating formal psychology and his subsequent lessons learned from traditional healers point to the ignored facets of spirituality, humanism, culture, and community that cannot be separated from a truly holistic human psychology and healing.

DENNIS NORMAN, ED.D., ABPP, FACULTY CHAIR OF THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY NATIVE AMERICAN PROGRAM AND SENIOR PSYCHOLOGIST AT MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL

This book is a must-read for all students of indigenous psychology. It teaches all the essentials. Consistent with the experiential focus of the wisdom tradition, Katz does not preach; he tells what he knows experientially. The reader is invited to join him on a personal journey that took him from the lecture halls of Harvard to paths in search of the healing wisdom of the Indigenous peoples. This account of Katz is testimonial to the possibility that doing research in Indigenous psychology is a spiritual journey that can be profoundly fulfilling and transformative for the reader as well.

LOUISE SUNDARARAJAN, PH.D., ED.D., FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, FOUNDER AND CHAIR OF THE TASK FORCE ON INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY

In this engaging and excellent book, Katz gives the reader a foundation for understanding the quality and depth of Indigenous healing. He has learned from the elders to do it in the best possible way: by telling stories that illuminate complex concepts and make them relatable and usable.

MELINDA A. GARCA, PH.D., AUTHOR OF SOCIETY OF INDIAN PSYCHOLOGISTS COMMENTARY ON THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION CODE OF ETHICS

Indigenous Healing Psychology is a powerful, provocative, and enlivening book that, through Katzs expansive and inspiring voice, offers psychology just what it needs to hear in order to fulfill its promise to be truly healing and equitable. I know from my own work as a psychologist and counselor that people are searching for precisely what Indigenous Healing Psychology offers. Celebrating diversity in all its myriad manifestations, this is a bold and exhilarating book.

NITI SETH, ED.D., ACADEMIC COUNSELOR AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY BUREAU OF STUDY COUNSEL AND DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY AND COUNSELING AT CAMBRIDGE COLLEGE

Indigenous Healing Psychology is a fascinating look at the world of psychology as a discipline in need of healing. Katz traces the evolution of his encounters with some of the giants of psychology at Harvard as well as honored Indigenous healers in other cultures. This book is a major contribution to revisioning mainstream psychology by returning it to its fundamental commitments to diversity, cultural meanings, human potential, and social justice.

STEPHEN MURPHY-SHIGEMATSU, COFOUNDER OF THE LIFEWORKS PROGRAM OF INTEGRATIVE LEARNING AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the many, many people whove contributed to making this book happen. But I know I cant possibly get it totally rightthere will be both omissions and inaccurate characterizations. So first I ask forgiveness if I offend anyone: those omissions and inaccuracies are my responsibility and not meant as a sign of disrespect.

The inspiration as well as the foundation for this book takes shape well before its particular birth. Beginning in 1968, there are several Indigenous communities where I live and work; thats where the seed for this book is planted and its growth nourished. Im taught by elders and healers about spiritual health and social justice and charged by them with the task of trying to bring a healing influence to psychology and thereby increase that fields service to all. Through years of clinical work and community consultations, teaching, and writingculminating in Indigenous Healing PsychologyIm attempting to fulfill that responsibility.

There are so many wonderful, caring, and helpful people in the villages where I live and work, people who bring my family and me home, so many that I cant mention all of their individual names. This is not a sign of disrespect but of pragmatics, for it is those people who feed and nurture this book. To them a warm and grateful thanks. When I do name a few of them, such as those with the most explicit responsibility for teaching me, perhaps they can help represent the many.