♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker: Today, I am thinking about tradition.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker: I'm actually doing corn husk dolls.

I learned with my mother.

White corn was one of the main staples in our food sources, so of course, we're gonna have a lot of white corn husks also.

speaker: Our native population in America has kept their culture alive through a rich history of tradition in the form of art, songs, dance, celebrations, and keeping the language alive.

Sandra Jimerson-Dowdy: [speaking in Seneca] I just told you my Seneca name, my clan name, I'm Hawk clan, and my clan name is Gajehsoh, and my borrowed name, my English name is Sandra, and I said that I live on the Allegany Reservation in Cold Spring, New York.

When my father did ceremonies, I went along, and so by doing that, I was able to learn about the ceremonies, and I was too young to be a part of it, but I was included in all of it, and all of the elders knew that I go with my dad everywhere, so funerals to wakes to private ceremony, and that's how I learned, and they made sure that I was well taken care of, and I grew up as an only child.

Our traditions are being passed on through our social events by them having that self-esteem of knowing who they are, educating them with their history to continue to keep our songs and our dances and our language and our culture.

In schools, they are using the Seneca language to give thanks every day.

When I was teaching school, we couldn't do that, and I think that we've seen a lot of growth in those areas, so that's working.

The keeping the tradition and the language is all working.

That's what helps the children as they get older.

Kari Kennedy: I'm Kari Kennedy.

I live on the Seneca nation, Allegany territory in Salamanca, New York.

These are my children, or two thirds of them.

The Senecas were known for their flat style of beadwork, so it's just Haudenos.

Well, we know the word is Haudenosaunee, so--and that means the Iroquois, or the people of the long house.

Like, what we would decorate our outfits, our clothing with would be moose hair, embroidery, quill work, basically anything that could be used in nature.

We didn't start using beads until we were able to trade with early settlers like the Dutch and the French.

Hunter Skye: It wasn't just like, one, like, sit down to like learn how to bead, it was like just every so often, like, hey, what are you doing?

What are--how could I make this too?

And so, it was sort of like this similar thing where it's like, she taught me, but then I also had a teacher in my high school teach me, Rachel Wolf, how to bead, do this sort of beading, and she taught me how to do the dream catchers because she does teach us stuff, and like, as she's making it, or includes us when she can, or when we want to.

Peter Jones: My name is Peter Jones.

I'm Onondaga Seneca, grew up on the Cattaraugus reservation here, and spent mostly up until 11th grade in the school system here starting with the boarding school, the Thomas Indian School, but I want the pottery tradition to carry on.

It was something that we lost in the 1500s with the new Europeans coming over, bringing their new stuff, and pottery is a constant.

The way you make them and the way that they were made back then teaches you patience, teaches you a lot of things about how to--acceptance if you break a piece in the fire or the kiln, you know, and things like that, which eventually got me through the COVID period.

Bill Crouse: [speaking in Seneca] I greeted you in the Seneca language, and I said that my name is Above the Forest.

I'm a member of the Hawk clan of the Seneca people, and I reside on the Allegany Reservation in New York state.

My name is Bill Crouse.

My mom is a great person.

She taught Seneca language in the Salamanca High School for a number of years, and she wasn't happy with the retention of Seneca language proficiency in the Salamanca school district, and she thought to herself, you know, kids need to learn faster, and need to learn more, and there needs to be more focus on our language in order for it to survive.

So she left a tenured teaching position to open and start her own school to focus on teaching Seneca language in an immersion setting for preschool and elementary school students, and that was over 20 years ago, and this Faithkeepers School exists even today, and is expanding.

So that's something that my community is very proud of, and something that's very needed.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker: Yoedzade', the Earth gives us all we need.

Yoedzade' just means Earth, [speaking in Seneca] just means all the people.

speaker: All the people, okay.

O:negano:h is water.

Water is life, that... speaker: What do you have in the water there?

speaker: Lizard, hawk, a guy, a deer, and then another guy.

Sandra: In the 30 years that I've taught the language to all the different levels, I was never able to produce a fluent speaker.

And so six years ago, I was approached by a program that was starting here.

They were interested in adopting the Mohawk immersion system, the root system of teaching language.

When they approached me and asked me if I would do that, and I said, hm, teach language, change the curriculum into Seneca, and teach it, and use it, and teach fluent people to be fluent in eight months, yeah.

And so, it was very successful.

After two months, there was no English allowed, and in eight months, I never thought that I would be speaking to young people about anything and be able to have a conversation, and for them to be able to speak to me so that I could understand them, and it was just, it's a--it was just a miracle.

Hunter: When I moved to North Carolina for a couple of years, and I made more of an effort to make sure I knew how to make a dream catcher by myself around that time as well just so that I have some sort of artistic way to keep in touch with my heritage even though I was 600 miles away.

It's interesting to be somewhere where there's so many people.

Where I lived was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and there's, like, you know, 100,000 people there, but yet everyone, you can kind of tell like something, that you're just different from everybody else, so it's kind of important to like find--to keep in touch with your heritage, to like kind of remember who you are, and not lose yourself in the crowd of people, because it's been so many times like I've been walking around, and I've noticed people like staring at me because I look different from everybody else, so it's like having like no one, no family, no mountain friends, it was just like, I need something to keep in touch with who I am.

Audrey Hager: I'm Audrey Hager, and I teach and do research in physiological psychology and biopsychology.

Different arts activities, like painting and drawing, and even playing music, when you're doing that art or playing that instrument, you have to be in the present moment.

Darryl Tonemah: My name is Darryl Tonemah.

I am a psychologist, I am Kiowa, Comanche, and Tuscarora, and I live here in Lewiston, New York.

Even small things that I talk with the kids about, that who we are is Haudenosaunee or Kiowa or Comanche people is health and wellness and making sure we take care of that which takes care of us, and actually, the Haudenosaunee people, the Tuscarora people are historically runners, and I think it's important to understand in your daily life, what are you doing that is fostering, that is part of your identity?

I think identity development is a very individual journey.

Like, I was raised, born here, and then we--my father worked for the Indian Health Service, so we moved around quite a bit into different communities both on on and off res, and so I identify a lot with the Midwest, with the--I was raised on the Standing Rock res in North Dakota, as well as in Oklahoma, and went to school in Nebraska, and so when you talk about identity, it's something that carries with me wherever I go, and thankfully, blessedly, we were raised in all these different locations because I can take the pieces with me wherever I go and understand the value of this.

My tribe here is very different than my wife's tribe from the--from, who's Navajo from Arizona.

You said not everyone has--are tied into their cultural identity, or maybe they're tied in in ways they're not really aware of, because there's things, there's behaviors and beliefs that just epigenetically that are in me, that are of me, that have bloomed, that I just call it my quirk or my personality or my trait or my temperament, but who's to say that that's not part of a historical cultural identity?

Mike Jones: I grew up here in Cattaraugus too, same house pretty much that he grew up in, grew up making pottery since probably four or five years old when we moved here from Oklahoma.

I was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, moved here when I was four.

I used to always make pots alongside him, but yeah, there was a lot of talk of art growing up.

You know, a lot of discussions, because he went to the Institute of American Indian Arts in the '60s during that whole explosion of Native American art.

He was right in the middle of all of that, and knows all of those people like T.C.

Cannon and Earl Biss and Allan Houser and all these people, and so I would always be listening, you know, again because there wasn't much on TV, so it was like the more interesting things, or whatever they were talking about, which was art and poetry and music and social dilemmas and the Vietnam War, and you know, those kind of things are what I was like kind of steeped in.

We didn't have a car a lot of times, so that was what we did.

We did pottery and cut wood, and so that was my play time was making pots, so understanding that the pottery died out that long ago, and there wasn't anybody doing it at that time except for my dad, you know, and maybe a couple other people in different capacities, but not hand-built stuff.

You know, I was really, really aware of that as a young person, and just the amount of responsibility that went on my shoulders at that age was heavy because I understood all of that.

speaker: Trauma is a sudden, potentially deadly experience, often leaving lasting, troubling memories.

It is a shock to a person's emotional, intellectual, physical, or spiritual integrity.

Audrey: There can be different types of trauma.

When people think about trauma, they usually think about car accident, sexual abuse, childhood trauma.

However, the brain and the body only knows stress and fight or flight and survival.

The situation could be a poor family environment and parental abuse, and this could just be emotional, verbal abuse, physical abuse, or it could be a war-torn environment.

speaker: Coming at us from all directions throughout history, trauma is pervasive as time itself.

Large scale events such as the Vietnam War leave lasting impact to this day.

Peter: Vietnam War was in your living room.

It was the first war that was fought in your living room.

It was all about--Vietnam is like watching a serial.

When I got drafted, I didn't believe in the war, I didn't believe in any of that, and they put me in infantry, which you know, wasn't the best place to be, but eventually left on my own accord.

I didn't want to be part of it anymore, so--but still left a mark on my head.

speaker: Like tradition, trauma presents itself in many forms.

Physical abuse, even a spanking, can permanently alter their brains.

Trauma can be the result of hatred and prejudice, institutionalized and personal racism.

The effects it carries ripples throughout history.

♪♪♪ ♪ This is a prayer for the not here ♪ ♪ Not forgotten, not gone ♪ ♪ A prayer that finds you draws you near ♪ ♪ And you never felt alone ♪ Bill: One of the events that happened in our history that changed it forever is referred to as the boarding school era.

My mom grew up in this area.

She grew up on the Cattaraugus Reservation, and as a kindergartner went to the Thomas Indian School, also referred to as Salem in the community.

When she went there, she only spoke Seneca, so she had to learn English.

She was punished for speaking Seneca.

When she went home, her parents didn't want to hear her speaking English.

When we were coming up, my mom taught us English first because she didn't want us to be subjected to that kind of trauma.

Sandra: I was kind of excited to go to school.

I mean, I only spoke Seneca.

I knew very little English, and that would--might be a problem.

I was punished many times for speaking language, and frustrated teachers with--even some of them were Seneca teachers.

They had been to college and had teaching degrees, and came to Thomas Indian School to teach the poor kids, and that couldn't speak English.

I spent many times in the lavatory by the teacher saying, "You stay in there until you understand."

It didn't make a lot of sense.

I used to be excited to come home and be talking English, and my father was very strict, and he says, "We speak only Seneca in this house."

Peter: When I went to the state closed Thomas Indian school, and we went to Gowanda Public School, it was like coming out of a cave and going into a bright light, you know?

And they treated us like that.

We were dirty Indians, you know, and I remember being on the school bus, and you could tell what kind of heating fuel every family used because the kid would get on the bus, and he'd smell like kerosene.

Get on the bus, he'd smell like smoke.

Sandra: I started kindergarten at the Thomas Indian School in 1952, and at that time, it was being turned into a state school.

They sent all of the orphans home, and those that didn't have homes, they didn't get on the bus, and they stayed there, and they were Christian children, and they were church children, and we were longhouse people.

But it was kind of like making sense of why I was treated the way I was because the whole thing was all about assimilating.

Peter: We finally got accepted when some of the classmates started doing sports, and the Gowanda school started winning some games, so it was a lot of changes going on.

Sandra: Finally, there was no more Thomas Indian School, closed completely.

The people that came from there that spent their whole lives there, after they left there, they were old enough to go into the service.

That generation didn't learn how to parent because they didn't have their parents.

That generation didn't hug their kids, didn't say "I love you" every minute.

They didn't know how, they didn't learn that, and so because that they were never treated that way.

Bill: The Seneca nation was fighting with the United States government, and the Corps of Engineers were preparing to build the Kinzua Dam on the Allegany River here in our community, and the reservation is situated on a mile roughly on each side of the river.

Now, this Kinzua Dam project came and relocated the majority of people living on the Allegany territory, and in doing so, caused great trauma to our families and to our communities.

It was sad because in some cases the grandma and grandpa were moved to one part of the reservation, and the younger families and their kids were moved to another part of the reservation, and it's interesting because the relocation areas are situated roughly 10 to 15 miles apart.

When that happened, I was one year old, and of course I don't remember it, but I've asked a lot of questions about that time, and it's sad because they say that the ceremony for funeral services went almost house to house in that new relocation area, and that there was a lot of elders that were just passing away heartbroken.

It happened that even the fire, the ceremonial fire at our cold spring longhouse which was situated on the banks of the tank area of the Kinzua Dam, that spiritual fire had to be physically moved from the old longhouse to a new longhouse that was reconstructed, and it's interesting that when this new longhouse started, there were some of our people that saw to it that regardless of what we were going through, that the main ceremonies of our community were carried on.

There's certain ceremonies that we do in the spring and in the fall to cleanse a person's house, and this society would go house to house and cleanse people's houses, and with this new community, that ceremony stopped because some people said, "Those aren't our houses."

Some of the elders even said, "This isn't my home, I'm just visiting here now."

With the whole boarding school era thing also at our backs, you know, it seemed like we're a bit broken, and it didn't always seem to be a proud thing to be native.

Darryl: There was a beautiful season of peace and value and connectedness, and that got interrupted with a lot of hurt and a lot of emasculation and murders and disease, and that, we're experiencing the trickle down of that today with disparate rates in our native communities of anything from the social diseases, from drinking, smoking, hitting, using, death by accident, early death, death by suicide, to what happens physiologically, the despair rates of diabetes and cancers and heart disease and autoimmune problems.

That just didn't fall out of the sky and land on this community and not this community.

It's not accidental.

Peter: I think I should mention that I've been an alcoholic since 1970.

I quit in 1985, and Mike was my only child at that time, and so he was raised in a whole different atmosphere and situation than my next daughter who was born in 1991.

After I quit drinking, she's never seen me drink, so the difference between the two of them is really stark, and he survived it.

He is a survivor of that, and we kind of got through it together, you know?

Mike: I think we have normalized a lot of the trauma.

Peter: These days, I think life is a trauma because of so much happening.

We're so much closer to the world because of television, media.

Kari: I would say probably like the most traumatic thing that she's had happen in her life would be like COVID.

In quarantine, she couldn't really spend time with her friends, and that's really important for kids, especially her age, to be sociable.

So there were times that I've had to hold her, and she's crying because she misses her friends, and she felt wounded, and we also lost three family members during COVID times too.

Like, he was still in North Carolina.

Hunter: So it was double isolation being 600 miles away, then also not being able to freely travel back and forth.

It's, yeah, I was very much stuck there.

I probably would have lost my job if I came back up here for all three funerals.

♪♪♪ The great grandma and then her two daughters, so my great aunts that we lost, so it was, yeah, there's definitely like a noticeable fracture now in our family because of it, and it's, yeah, it was a lot to kind of like deal with, especially so far away.

Like, I don't think I really got to deal with it.

I don't think it was until I came home permanently that I had to truly deal with it.

Kari: So when that was going on with the funerals and my family passing, my aunts and my grandmother passing, I also had this grad stole order, so I had 60 to make at this time, and that actually saved me from experiencing--like, I still have an insane amount of grief, but it really helped me focus on one thing so I wasn't, you know, like the world was uncertain at the time too because we're still quarantined, we're still in this COVID thing, and then now my family, three members of my family have all passed from COVID, and having those grad stoles kind of kept me grounded.

For me, I have to make something, I have to keep my hands busy.

If I don't, I kind of feel like depressed, but I've had childhood trauma as well, and so like, being able to express myself through art and through beadwork, through, you know, sewing has been a lifesaver for me.

Audrey: Now, one way to think about the brain is as the earth itself.

So if the earth is the brain, the earth and the brain have these hills and valleys, and generally the land mass is pretty stable, but the earth encounters all these different types of environmental conditions and weather and rain and snow.

You can almost think of rain as stress.

A little bit of rain the earth can handle fine, but if you have a large amount of rain over long periods of time, a large amount of stress, then that can create these large rivers, and even the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls.

So just as a large amount of stress can affect the earth, a large amount of stress can affect the brain itself, and we have this scene, neurons that fire together, wire together, which means the more you use a certain neural pathway, the stronger those connections become.

Darryl: I'm really fascinated with stress and trauma, but not just the behaviors of it.

The behaviors we see are probably the tenth thing that has happened physiologically, the person having an anxiety attack in my office or the student kicking and screaming on the floor, and the most simple thing people say is they just want attention.

Ooh, don't say that, because the question is, why?

Do you think that's their only tool?

Do you think that's their best tool, is to get detention for attention, whereas if you go upriver a little further, you'll see that there's things that have occurred, the what happened to you, where it changes the limbic system and the amygdala, and it's really the stress centers of the brain shift.

Some parts swell, some parts shrink, so we really lose capacity to stay present and grounded in these moments where the amygdala has just taken a snapshot of something that's happened a long time ago, or could be something prenatal, or could be something epigenetic, but either way, it's showing up right now, so the body gets on survival mode, and the survival mode looks like screaming on the floor.

Audrey: There can be different types of traumas people can experience, so big traumas might include a car accident or a death in the family, but there can also be little traumas, and little traumas can build up and pile up and pile up onto each other.

So if a child has a parent who is verbally abusive or emotionally abusive and constantly is saying things like, "You're not good enough, you're unimportant," or even culturally, if people have the view that they're unimportant or not worthy, then that affects their thinking.

And so these little traumas, little stresses pile on and pile on, and over the long term, that can affect these synaptic connections and neural networks.

It is important to keep in mind that the brain itself can change.

This is this process of neuroplasticity.

If you think about plastics, plastic material is malleable, and we can mold it in different ways.

The same is true for the brain, in order to promote neuroplasticity, it takes time, and what a person may need to do is first recognize that they have a certain pattern of thinking, and then we humans have the capability to consciously recognize it and then make a different decision.

Instead of reacting in a fight or flight, we can respond in such a way to step back and look at a situation, and realize that we're not in immediate danger, and that moment of instead of reacting, responding to an environmental situation is key in this kind of healing process.

Generational trauma, trauma that has occurred over multiple generations can affect neural development, and you're essentially worsening the problem.

So neuroplasticity is really exciting because it allows us to understand that we can rewire the brain, and even if in the past there have been trauma, or even generations ago there has been trauma, we can stop that kind of cycle.

Darryl: Trauma has affected the meaning of things.

Students that have had a lot of traumas and things, they get a lot--in a lot of trouble in gym class because in gym class, it's hot.

Their heart's beating fast, and that's the same sensation base as when they were being abused, and so that that disconnect just says, well, this is this, and this is how we respond to this, but what if we use those senses to grow, to become empowered?

Audrey: If we want to promote higher level learning, children learning in school, then we should aim to promote an environment that promotes curiosity and safety and and nurturing.

If you have punishment in a classroom situation, the child or the animal will just learn this is a non-safe environment because there's fear and hurt and pain there.

The environment safe, is the environment not safe, and the main job of the brain is to survive.

Children, if they realize just based on their own environment that they're not safe, their brain is wiring to prepare to live in that environment.

Mike: Anything to do with physically, you know, playing music, anything to do with your body, I think, you know, from what I understand of like PTSD or C-PTSD, you know, complex PTSD, your body is, like, it's storing trauma, right, so it can store it, so you have to expel that in some way, and the quickest way is through exercise, or you know, different types of things with your body, but also, you know, throwing a pot, you know, playing guitar, anything like that, you can kind of change it, and I think I intrinsically kind of knew that.

It was a blessing to be able to do that, to still do that.

I had the trauma, but then I had the solution to the trauma, so I had had both of them.

So I had things that were happening, you know, that I couldn't control, and then I had art to be able to combat it.

And so, that's how I got better and better at it because it was a survival technique.

Peter: For both of us, art was the way out of it.

That's really the only thing I had to pass along.

My life was a trauma, but clay is what got me through.

speaker: Tender words and actions connect us with each other and our children.

We express our feelings of love and care through games we play, gentle jokes we tell, meals we make, art, music, and traditions we share.

The tenderness we offer our children can rid the world of trauma and abuse.

Darryl: So traditions, trauma, and tenderness, they go--they're interrelated.

So learning how to make a shawl from an aunt who has healed, and there's connectedness.

They're learning how to fish or hunt from a dad or an uncle, that there's safety and connectedness, learning the ceremony from people in the community that bring you along that are safe and connected.

Tradition and culture are great, but it's gotta be 360 degrees of it.

It can't be just the behavior of it.

The number one thing that starts turning that tide is a sense of safety, is the ability to have the limbic system, my vagus nerve, my stress responses take a breather, and know that this person, this adult, if it's a child, is a safe person, and I don't have to be on defense mode constantly.

And once there's safety, and the adult has the capacity that they've done their work to loan out some of that safety, if they've taken care of themselves, they have a full cup, and they can offer that cup to a younger generation.

Younger generation drinks of that cup, and a sense of safety and kindness and tenderness maybe for the first time, and their body and mind then respond appropriately.

And it doesn't happen by one person, it's gotta be ongoing generationally, and it's gotta be community minded from home to leadership.

I really stress community, that you don't have to go through it alone.

Create a community of healing.

Sandra: Parents have learned how to parent again.

They have programs and they have counselors.

Things like that are helping parents become better parents, you know, to be real parents, you know, and take care of your kids, and you know, hug them and and love them and give them space, and that's how our children learn best, and so that has to do with respect of the child.

Once they learn how to do something, then they can do it themselves, and it helps them to be independent.

Parents are learning how to not just boss their kids around and tell them what to do, but you teach them first.

You show them first.

Rhylee Hoag: Can you help me?

I kind of messed up.

I kind of messed up.

Kari: I don't think so... So I started doing bead work when I was about 12.

There was a beading class after school, and I got addicted to it.

I just, I love, I absolutely fell in love with bead work, and I also was taking culture classes with Bill Crouse.

He was a teacher at the time, and fell in love with dancing.

I lived down the road from Myrtle Peterson also, and I would visit her, and she had like a collection.

She had a little store, even though she wasn't really open to the public, but she would just go traveling around to places and buying things, and then had them to either sell or just display in her trailer.

So I would go in there, and I would look at all the things, and the dream catcher stood out, and it was a beaded one like this, and with beaded feathers, and I asked to borrow it, and she said, "Yeah, you can borrow it."

And I borrowed it, and I studied it, and I made one.

And then I gave it back, and I'm like, okay, I figured it out, you know, and it was just--that was really unique and amazing.

Like, now that I think about it, like, all these people just kind of like, I guess that that was my path in life, that they were there to teach me these things, and I've been doing it ever since.

Audrey: So what we can do through meditation, mindfulness, arts, music therapy is help a person to ground them in the present moment, and not worry about the past so much or not worry about the future so much.

Music, playing an instrument on your own is good, but if you can play an instrument with other people in a whole group in a social setting, that's even better because humans are very much social animals.

There's a group of neurons in the brain called mirror neurons.

It's thought that these mirror neurons are really important to develop a sense of empathy because it's as if I'm putting myself in that other person's shoes.

So let's say once a week you have a nice family get together.

That's a nice nurturing environment.

The neurons are encoding those memories and experiences.

Those will be longer lasting memories.

Really promoting frequent activities, cultural family traditions can really be important to encode those memories and experiences.

Kari: It's very therapeutic and relaxing, and it just brings us together, I think even closer too, because when we're doing this, we can sit and we can talk.

Bill: You know, I consider myself very fortunate because all of my kids are dancers and singers, and all of my grandkids are as well, and it's something that we enjoy.

It's something that binds us together as a family.

One of my tools for survival has been my family and my community.

When times are tough, even in my personal life, I always have this overlying responsibility that I feel to be a part of and conduct ceremonies at their appropriate time.

Darryl: Epigenetics is--I think it's a fascinating field, and it's really grown in probably the past 15 years, which is really the environmental influence on gene activation, how things outside of us are stored within us, and how it pops when necessary, when the environment requires that.

There's a lot of really good research about it that it goes back generationally.

And I've inherited things from my great-great-great-grandfather, my great-great-great-grandmother, that maybe I consider a personality trait, like I said earlier, or a temperament, but it may have been handed down to me for the purposes of keeping that alive, or keep--or survival.

How do my ancestors talk to me?

Bill: If I'm having a hard time with something, I get picked up, and I guess a boost from my family and the community when these ceremonies happen.

So I always keep that as a part of my responsibility to the community that I have to be ready to conduct these ceremonies, and you know, it's interesting because I've had really great teachers.

I was fortunate to grow up with people like my great-grandfather, Richard Johnny John.

You know, it really helped me.

I was really healed by helping people and helping the community.

♪♪♪ Darryl: How do my ancestors talk to me?

I don't have direct contact with them, so their ways of communication is through their genetic coding, and so how that gets passed on generationally, generationally, generally gets stored in me.

It doesn't have to be just the hurt, but if you part on, these are the awful things that happen.

That may be a disservice to the person because my great-great-great-grandfather's strengths, my great-great-great-grandmother's ability to survive famine and drought and colonization and hurt, that strength was passed down to me, and it lives in my kids right now.

If we take the easy road, then we don't need that extra strength.

It's not going to necessarily pop for us because I have constricted and I stay in my bedroom, and I wonder why I can't do these things, and so I don't need that extra strength, not until we challenge ourselves, 'til I challenge my kids and scaffold them that you're gonna be challenged, but you're not gonna be left alone in your challenge.

Then that pops in them, and they realize, "I didn't know I had this capacity."

And even clinically, when people have that moment, it's a beautiful thing because a light turns on, and they say, "I didn't know I could do that."

And I'm like, "Heck yeah, you can do that."

And it's so--that moment is so rewarding as a parent, as a friend, as a relative, and as a clinician.

Bill: There were certain things at certain ceremonies that I was lucky to be able to understand enough Seneca that I could communicate with them, and they liked that.

So because I made that effort, they would teach me more.

I was able to learn from multiple extended family like my great uncle Avery Jimerson and my great-grandfather Richard Johnny John, and you know, also from Herb Dowdy.

You know, these guys were legendary singers, and they were all here at the same time when I was coming up, so I would learn different things from different ones, you know, and I was like, it was awesome to be able to do that.

So now, my grandkids are asking me for songs.

Audrey: There are certain chemicals in the brain that can help to promote certain types of connections.

One chemical we call oxytocin.

When oxytocin is present in the bloodstream, it's thought that it can help produce bonding, and bonding between family members, between friends, promoting relationships.

And so, if you have family traditions, cultural traditions to help promote trust and love and bonding, you can help promote oxytocin.

Hunter: It's freeing to like always have something to do and always having something to push you forward because I think some people need that, especially during like the pandemic and stuff.

Like, I think a lot of people noticed it's like, if you're not busy, you kind of just like shut down emotionally, mentally.

So that's, like, stuff like this did help a lot.

I mean, I had the fortune of still working through the pandemic.

I mean, it wasn't the best job ever, but at least I had a constant paycheck, which I know a lot of people didn't, especially at the beginning.

So for me, when like that time like came about, like, I think I did have like, bead work commissions, I had my job.

I had a loving boyfriend at the time, so it's like, I had a lot to push me forward even though the world around me was crumbling.

Kari: In our culture, we stay with the person that has passed, so I stayed up--like, you're supposed to stay with them 24/7 until they get into the ground, and so when my grandmother passed, I stayed up all night with her in her house, and I made those grad stoles doing that.

So it also, like, kept me awake, kept me like, you know, and then I think if her spirit was there, she also enjoyed watching me do it.

She was always--my grandmother was always promoting me.

She was always like very proud, and promoting like, "Oh, you know, Kari does this, and Kari," you know, "Kari's making this," so she--so I'm sure she appreciated that, that I was there.

I've always been very thankful for it, but I'm even more so now, like, since their passing, so it's kind of like also healing for me that it's--I'm just more--I'm just very thankful for every breath I have, and every stitch that I make, and... Darryl: So a lot of the kids that I work with who have had significant traumas, I don't even dive into that for a while, if necessary.

I just want them to get a sense of me.

I want them to know what I'm about, and sometimes I just need to be a present, safe adult.

So once we can establish that with them, their system senses that and allows you.

They open the door for you instead of me trying to pound the door or try to find a window.

Let me just be present for a while.

Audrey: We can break the cycle, though, by making people aware, and educating people and parents about these reactions, and then making sure they're aware that there are other options.

You don't have to respond with anger or fear or hate, and taking that step back to look at a situation, and instead perhaps offer empathy and compassion.

Kari: My community has helped me through that traumatic time.

Hunter: It was a beautiful thing too, because, like I--you sent me the video of a--because Aunt Cindy was a school teacher at Prospect in our community, so like there was thousands of people that know of her.

It was one of those moments where it just says, like, it really did sink in for me being so far away that it's like, that she really is gone when they did like this beautiful parade throughout the entire town in solidarity.

Kari: It was a bus parade.

Hunter: Bus parade, yeah, to like mourn her death.

Bill: It's awesome now that being native is a good thing, you know, and it's awesome that the kids are very proud of that.

Kids are learning to--learning their language, and they are involved in those ceremonies.

We learn by doing with all of our cultural ceremonies, and all of our our way of life, we didn't learn or look at a book or a Bible or anything.

It was this living culture that we have.

So it happened that my kids now and my grandkids, you know, I always looked at it as a miracle that we had anything at all, you know?

By living through what I did in my lifetime, I can't imagine how it was when people were forced from the Genesee River Valley to this area and to Buffalo Creek.

Mike: It seems like there's a change happening, you know, from the people that I talked to in their, you know, twenties or so, and you know, they're raising their kids in the language.

Some of them just, maybe they're finally removed enough from the the actual traumas a little bit that they can move on their own.

It seems like they are, and art and music and expression and inclusiveness are all part of that.

I think there's a revitalization happening right now, like when I talk to people that are in their twenties, and I'm hoping this is true.

It looks like it is.

They're revitalizing their culture, their ceremonies, their language.

They don't--some of these kids in their twenties don't want to drink.

I don't remember that when I was--we all just wanted to drink and forget things.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker: We are the Allegany River Seneca dancers.

We're gonna do some Native American dancing right here, and we are sharing this idea of passing on oral tradition from one generation to the next.

[singing] This is what we're talking about.

We're talking about teaching our young people the songs, the dances, and the history behind it.

[singing] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Bill: Regardless of what was going on and what terrible things were happening in our history, when it was time, the people sang and danced and had these ceremonies.

So we have survived these traumas, and instead of being defeated by it, I think it's made us stronger, and we're moving forward as a people, for the people.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪