Transcript: Healing Totem begins its cross country trip

Jewell James

There’s a lot of history in Indian country where it’s kind of like ‘Horton Hears a Who.’ We’re here! We’re here! We’re here! Does anybody hear us, you know? And so we really do feel that like that sometimes and now we have the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine say, ‘We hear you.’ You know. So thank you, Dr. Horton. You know.

So this campaign is about traditional knowledge, traditional medicine, traditional healing and that’s good because we come in all colors -- red, black, white, and yellow -- and we all have indigenous teachings and we all have knowledge of the earth because we live with the earth, and we all have ceremonies.

Kurt Russo

This is 4,500 miles, 26 days, 13 blessings. This is the first blessing of 13 blessings that will be going on across the United States along the northern tier. And this is, by the way, a blessing totem pole so it has a certain, I say, charisma to it when it’s put up at the exhibit in Bethesda, Maryland on October 5th and we just hope that all the people that see this pole, that meet this pole are able to share their thoughts and prayers for it, so when it is stood up it has that sense to it.