Thursday night concluded a week-long cultural retreat in Stebbins for a group of clinicians who were fulfilling their rural internship requirement. Led by cultural retreat facilitator Ward Walker, the interns took part in various cultural immersion activities and engaged with members of the community.
Eleven interns from different regions of Alaska, who will all be certified psychologists soon, came together in Stebbins for 5 days to experience the life of rural Alaskans who could someday be their clients and patients.
Jessica McKay, an intern from Hope Counseling in Fairbanks, says this was a short but necessary amount of time to experience rural Alaska.
“We do the vast majority of our year at our specific site, and then, we do these week long rotations at some of the other sites, like here in Stebbins, and we just get this tiny taste. And I think that’s really all you can do from these weeks is just get a taste of how do I even start to understand or make sense of this,” she said.
The week’s events included seining for fish, watching performances by the Stebbins dance group, and having group discussions about historical trauma.
Originally, Harold Napoleon, the author of Yuuyaraq: Way of the Human Being, was scheduled to discuss historical trauma and his writing with the interns; however, he was unable to attend due to personal reasons. Laurent Torgeon-Dharmoo, an intern based in Nome with Norton Sound, was looking forward to talking about themes from Napoleon’s book with the author himself.
Torgeon-Dharmoo shared, “in my experience in the internship, we are working with a culture that has an importance to the invisible, but from a system that’s really focused on the visible. If you don’t show that your interventions are evidence-based, then you don’t get funding, everything has to be proven, you need to have treatment plans and things like that, and interestingly, Harold didn’t show up, so he wasn’t visible, he wasn’t there, but I think we was very much there, because we read his book and we discussed it.”
Included in the title of Napoleon’s book is the Yupik word yuuyaraq. Stebbins clinician and community member Ward Walker used the related Yupik word yuuyarvik in the dedication of the community’s wellness center.
“Yuuyarvik is the name of our community center, and it has a lot of different meanings. It means a place of being human, a place where we learn how to be an authentic human person, a place where we turn our lives around, a place where we recover our culture. So, it is a complex meaning, and it certainly is inspired by Harold’s book,” Walker explained.
Just as the wellness center became a part of the community of Stebbins, so did the visiting eleven interns during their five-day stint. Iva Greywolf has been delivering services in rural and remote Native communities throughout her career of 40 years and has been a cultural advisor to support these interns this year. She noticed how the people of Stebbins welcomed the interns into their lives during their stay.
Greywolf observed, “the community has been exceptionally welcoming for the visitors, for the interns. Performing, doing their dance, inviting the interns to watch and to learn about it, sharing the food, the harvest…”
In Torgeon-Dharmoo’s opinion, interacting with various members of the community, old and young, on a personal level, equates to a successful cultural retreat.
Torgeon-Dharmoo stated, “my bias is that I’m a psychologist, so I don’t measure success in terms of number of positive outcomes. If I feel like I’ve met with people and there is an emotional connection there and a relational connection, then to me, that’s a success, and it’s very hard to measure that. But you measure it with the heart, and for me, it was successful because I felt good, and I feel sad to leave, so to me, that’s a sign that something happened that was meaningful.”
After a final night filled with music, dancing, and emotional speeches on Thursday, the interns returned to their home bases to continue working in their respective communities. Some went back to Nome, some to Anchorage, and others to Fairbanks. Each of them still has to complete the rest of their yearlong rotations, including a retreat with the Alaska Psychiatric Institute happening later this year.
*Special thanks to Ward Walker, Seth Green, and all the interns: Laurent Turgeon-Dharmoo, Rachel Williamson, Caroline Maykut, Jessica McKay, Lindsay Yates, Brittany Freitas-Murrell, Kasey Windnagel, Heather Robinson, Mickey Stein, Christine Collins, and Tanya Olanna from the Tribal Healers program*
