Some Wounds Are Slow To Heal

Interview by Barbara Spronk

Russell and Yvonne Willier and their two young children live on the Sucker Creek Reserve, a few miles south of High Prairie in northern Alberta. Using traditional techniques, Yvonne creates beautiful clothing and other articles, and teaches this art to others in continuing education classes. Russell is a medicine man and has been the subject of a bestselling book, Cry of the Eagle: Encounters with a Cree Healer, written by anthropologists David Young, Grant Ingram, and Lise Swartz from the University of Alberta.

Cry of the Eagle provides a rare glimpse into the beliefs and practices of a Native healer, rare because such healers have been reluctant to share these practices with outsiders, and even more reluctant to see them committed to paper. Russell, however, is a visionary, who hopes that by having his work written down he will help open the minds of both Native young people and outsiders to the power that learning to live in balance and harmony with all the spirits around them can bring to their lives.

The power of Russell's healing practices has been documented in the “Psoriasis Project,” which has been carried on by a number of faculty at the University of Alberta. The cameras of these researchers have documented dozens of cases in which the dreadful scales and lesions of psoriasis have begun disappearing immediately after Russell's treatment; the photographs taken two months and seven months after treatment are even more dramatic.

However, Russell takes no credit for these successes. If he has been able to help, he explains, it is because he has learned, and continues to learn, from his elders, including his great-grandfather Moostoos, whose medicine bundle Russell inherited as a teenager and whose work as a shaman and healer Russell continues.

There is nothing haphazard or “magical” about these practices. The healer must know the spirits that inhabit the earth's creatures and forces—plant, animal, sun, wind, and thunder. In gathering the herbs to be used in healing, for example, the healer must know not only which herbs will be helpful in the ailment he is treating, but the combinations and sequence in which they must be gathered and used. Each plant spirit must receive appropriate offerings of tobacco and prayer if it is to be expected to co-operate in the healing process.

The requisite ceremonies, such as sweats, must be carried out at the appropriate time, with the right combination of people and material, and with due attention to the sequence of actions taken and to the messages received. If this meticulous care is not taken, bad spirits can intervene and cause trouble, even death.

Cry of the Eagle documents not only Russell Willier's enormous fund of knowledge and skills that enable him to carry out his work of healing, but also his and Yvonne's struggle to do so in the face of opposition from both their own people and the world outside. Some of the elements of this struggle, and of the political and economic context which shape it, emerged as we talked at his home this fall.

Aurora: Are you still working with the people at the University of Alberta?

Russell: In a way. They're still checking on the people we were working with down there. For example, that little girl who is mentioned in the book [Sandra, aged seven at the time of treatment], nothing has broken out, and that's after four years.

Yvonne: Her parents have lots of faith. They're a very spiritual people, and that has a lot to do with it. They believe in the Creator, their God, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Russell: It makes a difference. All religions are different approaches to the same Spirit. So when I doctor anyone I tell them to pray their own way. I don't tell them, “Here's my Indian religion, go that way.” I tell them to pray the way they know how.

Aurora: Do you ever get anyone coming to you who's never prayed, who's never had any relationship to the Creator?

Russell: There are some people I know who think that when you die, you die, there's nothing beyond this. There's no use working with them. I want to say that God gave us a mind. The techniques that we have, and that are still coming up in the future—heart surgery, blood transfusion, what not—these are gifts from God, because He gave us the mind to get into that state.

In the early 1800s, we weren't in that state at all. It's slowly grown, over the whole globe. If somebody is against blood transfusion because of their religion, I think they're actually against their God-given gift. You have to realize that God gave you a mind that it's developing all the time, maybe not only as one individual but as people working together, getting these things developed. Once you accept that, you realize that things today are all part of the great planning of the Great Spirit.

The Bible does the same thing. It's written in black and white, but our way is not written in black and white. It'll end up being written in black and white, it has to, because there's too much doubt back and forth.

Aurora: Is that part of the reason that you agreed to be the subject of the book?

Russell: Yes, not because of money. That book was all volunteer time, you see. I didn't get paid for it at all.

Yvonne: If there's a second book, I can guarantee that it won't be volunteer time. We had to sacrifice so much, him volunteering all his time and not working.

Russell: It was a sacrifice in another way, because Native people don't look at this the way we do. They don't want this healing written down. They just want to clench it to themselves.

Aurora: Did that get you into trouble?

Russell: I don't know. In the future, if they look back, they'll realize that I'm on the right road. Right now a lot of people who were against me are trying to jump on the bandwagon. We had a big meeting in Slave Lake about the Children's Hospital that's going to be built in Edmonton in 1996 or ‘97. The administrators and planners were trying to involve some Native healers. As soon as that all opened up, the people that were absolutely against me in the beginning were actually the first ones that jumped into the wagon, trying to be involved in it.

Aurora: Are these others now regarding you as some sort of forerunner?

Russell: Oh, no, no! They don't want me in there.

Aurora: And here you are, with the proof documented.

Russell: (Laughter) Too many people figure there's a money racket involved, but there isn't. It's a lot of volunteer work. It's not easy. You get called all kinds of different names.

Yvonne: That's our people's downfall. The government doesn't have to kill the Indians off, they'll kill each other off, with all their jealousy. And you know who's to blame for that? The government—welfare system, handouts, poverty. Anyone in a lower income bracket who sees someone else get ahead automatically thinks they're getting a handout, rather than that they worked their butt off for it.

Aurora: But you two have never made any money at this healing.

Yvonne: But everybody thinks we do. Everybody thinks we're well off. People phone, they want to borrow money, they want to pawn this and that. In the past, Russell has such a kind heart, he's done it. He feels sorry for people. They think, “Well, the Williers aren't playing bingo, they're not drunk at the bar, look at their house, their cars, they must be well off. They must be making piles of money by talking to the university.”

Aurora: It sounds like it's hard doing this on the reserve. From the outside, we assume that there's a lot of support for people who want to make a difference in other people's lives. But it doesn't sound like that's the case.

Russell: No, it isn't like that. Anyone who wants to make a go of it in any reserve, it doesn't matter what reserve, people will go against you. I had a big argument with a fellow from Indian Affairs back in 1987, in Edmonton, when he talked about how many thousands of dollars he put out for the 42 reserves in Alberta. I said, “We have 500 people on our reserve. By the time the economic development money you're talking about comes to our level, we have $10,000 for the truckers, for the farmers, for anybody that's going to get going. 500 people are going to fight over that. How can it go very far?” I said, “You, sitting there, you probably make $30,000 a year. We only get a third of that, for 500 people.”

Put that way, you can understand why people are fighting each other on reserves. They can't help it. Nobody can get ahead. If you gave it to one person he wouldn't get ahead, because all the rest would be after him.

Yvonne: I had a visitor yesterday, a lady from a nearby town, who thought that by living on the reserve we get a monthly income. That's the mentality of people out there. Another woman, who was white and married onto the reserve, was going to college and doing a survey for one of her courses. Some of the people that she talked to, just a little ways from our community here, said that Indians living on the reserve got a new car every year—besides your $1,000 a month.

Aurora: So when people come to you for healing, does it occur to them that they should pay you?

Russell: It's entirely up to them. I can't tell them what. Some pay, some don't. Their heart has to tell them what to do.

Yvonne: I'm often tempted to dress in rags, and hide my car! (Laughter) If you're a medicine man, you're not supposed to care for material things. Because you're involved with the Creator, you're supposed to forget material things, live in the spirit world. You can't raise your kids that way.

Russell: You have to live in a balanced way with everything around you. The best way is to pick up both cultures, the best on both sides. It doesn't matter what nationality, as long as you pick the best parts and balance yourself.

Aurora: You must wish that medicine could work that way too, that the medical profession could be more open to other ways of healing.

Russell: I think that they will be, maybe not right away, but they will become more open-minded.

Aurora: Do you see signs of that?

Yvonne: I do. This summer, at the hospital in High Prairie, one of the doctors introduced the intern to Russell by saying that this was another doctor. So more people are beginning to believe in Native healing, and some doctors are being more open-minded, the ones that are willing to give up their power, I guess. It's threatening, to know that there's an alternative.

Russell: To begin with, the mind does a lot of work on its own. The body does a lot of its own healing. But you've got to make up your mind, and work with that.

Yvonne: Some people at the university say, “Well, the sweat lodge is healing, but after all, the willows in there have a certain chemical like aspirin that make you feel better.” They're always trying to analyse things in a scientific way, never mind the spirit helpers. To them, their scientific world is very real. But when people leave that small world, half of what they've learned there loses its point.

Aurora: Perhaps sometimes patients are trained that way, too. There's something easy about taking a pill three times a day and not having to change the way you live or think. Whereas, from what I know about your work, people do have to change the way they relate to the world if the healing is going to last.

Russell: It all depends. If they figure, “that medication is just starting to help me, maybe I should keep on using it,” I'll tell them to keep on using it, rather than step in between. It's no use, because their mind doesn't give a damn.

Aurora: So you need their minds.

Russell: (Laughter) Sometimes. Other times, the plant itself can do a lot. Suppose you've got a bad ulcer wound, and you've got to get it out, you probably wouldn't need that much of a mind to heal it. The plant will heal it on its own. The plant spirit will do that. But you've got to know at the time what you're using, and how you're using it. The most important thing is balancing yourself, spiritually, mentally, physically.

Aurora: How do you know when you're balanced?

Russell: When you're balanced, you'll be happy. You'll feel good. If you have revenge or jealousy in your heart, you'll feel it all the time. It's always there, always bugging you underneath. It's always interfering with your balance.

Now, the body can do the same thing. If you drink too much, the body will start telling you in different ways. You might get nosebleeds a lot, or wake up jumping out of bed. The body and the spirit are trying to tell you that they're not balanced. You've got to smarten up.

I've got a chart we use to tell young people how to balance themselves. We have seminars for teenagers. As we go along in our Medicine Life, our Sweetgrass Trail, we have to put all the parts together—material possessions, love, wisdom, and planning. Then life will be easy.

We also have the four downfalls in us: hatred, jealousy, greed, and revenge. Let's say you've got lots of wisdom, education, a trade, whatever, but jealousy takes over. You'll wreck the love part, because you'll wreck your family and also your material possessions part, because you'll have to split it. So you have to teach your little ones, from the start, to overpower these by love.

It's hatred that exploded at Oka. People are teaching that to their little ones, and that's not right, because it will overpower their lives. It will wreck any of the other things they're trying to accomplish. Jealousy and greed were taught in the schools and missions. You fought for bread, you fought for clothes. There was no love involved. You were taken from your family and held in the missions for ten months straight. The mothers and the dads couldn't exercise their love. Now there are lots of people who don't know how to raise kids, because this is what they went through, and that's what they pass on, because that's the only thing they know.

Aurora: You went to a residential school. How did you manage to break out of that inner circle?

Russell: The last four years of school I was in day school, so I had my family, and I listened to the elders, the medicine people, and learned from them. The older people, like my dad and my mom, knew all along that you have to learn how to exercise love. That was their argument with the government, with Indian Affairs, that they should have their kids, in their home, and send them to day school. That way they can exercise love, rather than have their kids treated like cattle.

People keep talking about “having to join the Medicine Circle.” No one has to join the Medicine Circle. Everyone joined the minute they were born. But people walk blindfolded all the time. When I show this to the kids, I get them to write their own Circle-who loves them, their grandmas and their grandpas, their moms and their dads; what they plan to do with their lives; what's missing. Anyone can write one. And the kids are proud that they have this, that they have these spirits they never knew.

Aurora: What ailments do you mostly treat?

Yvonne: He gave up doctoring psoriasis. He had to work too hard, the patients had to have the right mentality. For what he was getting out of it, we were going broke on it. He only did it because of his work with the university. Psoriasis was easy to see, easy to prove. That's why it was chosen.

Russell: Psoriasis is one of the hardest ailments to treat, because it's stress related. Some patients would come back and back, with not much change, because their marriage problems were still going on, or they wouldn't give up their drinking. You can't drink alcohol if the herbals are going to work.

Aurora: Are there any other ailments you don't like treating?

Russell: Cancer. People usually come when it's too late. When they come early enough, maybe I can do something. But if it's too late all I can do is maybe give them a bit more time.

Russell and Yvonne went on to talk about some of the successes they had seen, and how good it felt when someone Russell was doctoring got better and stayed that way. They also had dramatic stories to tell, like the one about the older man who had come to Russell for help with his rheumatism, but shortly after arriving collapsed on the Willier's living room floor with a heart attack. While the man's wife was on the phone to her relatives, already telling them he was dead, Russell and Yvonne were setting out a smudge and praying to the Great Spirit to release this man's spirit for another while. The man revived, and was breathing normally by the time the ambulance arrived. Russell jokingly refers to this treatment as “Indian CPR.”

Russell and Yvonne have stopped keeping people in their home while they are being treated. Having patients underfoot was very disruptive to the family, and costly, in terms of the food and clean linen which had to be supplied, but especially in terms of Yvonne's time and goodwill. People who come for long-term treatment are now asked to find their own accommodation. Russell and Yvonne hoped they would be able to get seed funding for a residential treatment centre that would eventually become self-financing, and set up a registered, nonprofit organization to raise funds and run the centre. They have had very little success, however, in attracting large enough donations, and are on the verge of giving up that dream, at least for now, because they must also make a living.

There is sadness and resignation in Russell's voice, and considerable anger in Yvonne's, as they speak of their disappointed hopes. There are many, many wounds to be treated, and the spirits need many helpers. But it is also evident from the words of Russell and Yvonne Willier that some wounds go deep and will be very slow to heal.

The Spiritual World: A Native Perspective

Central to Russell Willier's work as a healer and medicine man is his knowledge of the spirit world and of how he and humans in general must act in relation to it. The generic term for spiritual powers in a number of North American Native languages has come to be known as a single deity, Creator or Great Spirit, as described in Jordan Paper's book, Offering Smoke. As Russell Willier emphasizes, however, human beings are less worthy than a blade of grass to speak to the Great Spirit directly. Instead, humans may ask the spirit helpers to assist with tasks like healing or hunting.

There are primary, elemental spirits known as the Grandfather spirits—Sun, Thunder, Wind, and Earth—as well as a spirit for every species of plant, animal, and insect on the earth. These spirits can be good or bad, but it is the good spirits that serve as helpers to human beings.

The whole world, spiritual and human, is tied together in Russell's version of the medicine wheel. At the centre of the wheel is mother nature, the Earth, known also by her colour, green. To the East is the Sun, embodied in the colour yellow and in autumn, the yellow season. The Eagle, who soars through the day sky and sees far ahead, is also associated with the Sun and the East. To the South there is Thunder, as well as summer, the season of thunder; and red, the colour of heat and of human lifeforce. Mouse, the scurrying little animal who is always busy gathering what it needs to survive, is also placed in the South.

To the West is Wind, who usually blows from the West in the plains and woodlands east of the Rockies, and who is associated with spring, blue skies, and Bear, the animal that emerges from the earth in spring with her new family. To the North is the Great Spirit, and white winter, and Buffalo, the animal on whom the first peoples of the plains depended so greatly for the skins, flesh, sinews, and bones that they crafted into clothing, food, lodging, and tools.

Medicine men like Russell are always mindful of this great circle of life, as they call upon the spirits to assist them and their fellow beings. Life is a gift from the spirits, therefore nothing must be removed from the circle without appropriate gifts being offered in return. So, for example, Russell leaves offerings of tobacco, the sacred plant, to the spirits of the plants he gathers for use in healing. Tobacco is also used to fill the sacred pipe, whose smoke is offered during pipe ceremonies to the Sky, the Earth, and the four points of the Sun's course through the heavens, always beginning, like the Sun, in the East.

This circle of life is powerfully portrayed in the lodge that Russell and other healers build to house the sweat, a potent communal ritual of confession, catharsis, decision making, and direct communication with sacred beings. To make the sweat lodge, poles in multiples of four are placed in a circle and bent to form a dome, which is then completely covered in skins. The only opening is a low entrance that is covered during the ceremony. A round pit is dug in the centre of the lodge, and the earth removed to form an altar to the east of the lodge. Between the altar and the lodge is the fire, symbolic of the sun, which heats the stones in the pit. In the words of Jordan Paper, (1989:41).

Thus the cycle of birth and death is joined to that of the seasons, the circuit of the Sun, the power of the elements, and the gifts of plants and animals, to create the circle of life, the wheel of medicines that are gifts of the spirits. It is this circle that enfolds Russell Willier, and any who come to him for healing.

Article originally published Winter 1990

An Aurora Update

In 1995, the Provincial Museum of Alberta announced the opening of the Syncrude Gallery of Aboriginal Culture. Russell Willier played an instrumental role in its undertaking as a member of the Aboriginal Advisory Committee.

In 1996, Russell Willier was involved in the production of the documentary film, Poisoning Paradise as part of the Elders Panel. Barb Allard and Kelly Reinhardt 's 1996 documentary recounts the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council's fight to save this land from the environmentally hazardous effects of the Alberta Special Waste Treatment Centre, Canada's largest toxic waste incinerator. Poisoning Paradise premiered at the Global Visions Film Festival on June 5, 1996 in Edmonton. It was screened at the American Indian Film Festival on November 12, 1996 in San Fransisco.

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Spronk, Barbara (1990). Some Wounds Are Slow To Heal: Conversations With Russell & Yvonne Willier. Aurora Online: