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Transcript: Healing Totem stops at Arrow Park, New York


[Singing:]
I used to think that I could not go on.
[Singing:]
That life was nothing but an awful song.
[Eve Bucca:]
I think the big lesson to be learned is with the Lummi Nation and the Native American Nation they have suffered their own trauma and their own difficult, difficult unjust history where so many innocents were affected and yet in many ways they have managed to move beyond that and to transcend that and give the message of "we are all one" and that healing needs to be universal.
[Singing:]
I believe I can touch the sky.
[Chief Dwaine Perry:]
When you've put your intent into these wonderful carvings, that intent is what is manifested out to children that are sick people that are hurt, people that feel alone people that are in need. I think art itself as we know is healing and I think with the additional aspect that these wonderful people themselves have infused in this artwork, just enhances its ability for that message to carry through.
[Paul Dolan:]
I think it's a great honor to have this new totem pole make its stop here. I think it's also very important that it's marking in a more traditional medical establishment library that healing is not always something that comes out of a pill. There's as much that we don't know about healing as we do. And Native American tradition, culture – reminds us of what we don't know and also what we owe to the Native American community for gifts in terms of medicines and understanding of plants and frankly of nature and other areas that are not purely scientific.
[Singing:]
…then I can be it, if I just believe it. There's nothing to it. I believe I can fly.

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Discover the interconnected relationships between health, illness, and cultural life in Native communities.