Braiding the Threads of Healing: What Western Psychology can Relearn from Indigenous Wisdom

Jul 21 / Dr Aaron Frost
With special thanks to the Australian Indigenous Psychologists Association, and Mary Goslett, and of course Dr Mark Standing Eagle Baez for making this opportunity possible. Dr Mark Standing Eagle Baez is a citizen of the Coahuiltecan Tribe with Mohawk, Pawnee, and Mexican heritage. He is a psychologist, President of the Society of Indian Psychologists, and Associate Professor of Clinical and Counseling Psychology. 
Last week, I had the privilege of attending a workshop led by Dr. Mark Standing Eagle Baez on the Sweetgrass Method for developing cultural responsiveness with Indigenous communities around the world. In light of the new competencies for psychologists, I knew the training would be valuable, but I was surprised by both how much more and how much less I took away.

He introduced us to the Sweetgrass Method, a method he developed to share Cultural Wisdom with non-Indigenous allies. This method has three strands woven together:
  • Introspection: The continuous, internal work of examining our own biases, worldviews, and the systems we serve in the therapeutic space.
  • Communication: The practice of authentic, deep, and culturally humble dialogue that centers the client's voice and experience.
  • Continuance: The understanding that this is not a one-off checklist, but an ongoing, lifelong commitment to growth, relationship, and connection. But also sticking around long enough to do what you say you will do.
That’s it, that’s all our indigenous clients are asking for. We aren't talking about dismantling the foundations of empirical reality here, we are just talking about trying harder to genuinely understand and connect with another human whose life experience may have been profoundly different to our own.

As Dr. Baez developed these concepts, through illustrations of his work with the Native populations he has worked with, I was impressed with the simplicity and clarity with which he spoke. I was also impressed by something else;
  • Everyone deserves to have a psychologist who genuinely listens
  • Everyone deserves to have a psychologist who looks for their strengths and not just what is wrong with them
  • Everyone deserves to have a psychologist who considers that their history may be part of why they are the way they are
  • Everyone deserves to have a psychologist who looks inward, knowing that sometimes what they believe is a product of their own biases
  • Everyone deserves to have a psychologist who might still be in the same job a year from now,
  • Everyone deserves to have a psychologist who they connect with as a human being.

A childish thought popped up for me; “why do Indigenous people get all the good stuff when it comes to therapy?”. Of course, that thought is quick to dismiss as it's very clear that when it comes to interactions with the health system, Indigenous people certainly do not get the “good stuff”.

But in defining what the “good stuff” is for Indigenous people, Dr Baez very clearly articulated what the good stuff is for all of us.

We now have more than 50 years of turning our wheels, stuck in the mud of protocol based r therapies. Outcomes are improving and no therapy is any better than any other, pretty much all we can say with any certainty is that relationship, authenticity, and hope are the critical ingredients in change.

While, downward arrows, mindfulness, behavioural activation, dream interpretation and genograms all have their place, none of them work with a client who doesn't want to be in the room. The only way for people to want to be in the room is to connect with them like human beings.

I have made an entire career out of studying excellence in psychotherapy. Often people mistake this to mean excellence at the techniques of psychotherapy. Actually in many cases, mastering the techniques of psychotherapy just serves as a barrier to the relationship, and therefore impedes excellence in psychotherapy.

I say all of this not in any way to minimise the messages delivered last week, but rather to profoundly underline them. We often see cultural “ways of knowing” and “evidence based practice” as set up in some kind of dichotomy against each other.  

Perhaps if cultural wisdom is telling us that it's all about relationship, and evidence based practice is telling us it's all about relationships, maybe it's all about relationship.

With that in mind, maybe it's the pursuit of some “evidence based” technique that can be rigidly delivered en masse that is actually out of step with “evidence base”.