A mother turns to a Lakota Sioux healer

[Thunderwolf, MSN, RN]

JoEllen Koerner, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, felt her heart beating wildly as she watched her daughter pace in circles like a caged animal. Kristi Welch, 30, had endured months of knife-stabbing pain from kidney stones and stents, and was accelerating toward her breaking point.

Then, Welch asked her mother a dreaded question: "If this does not change in two days, will you help me die?"

For the veteran nurse, the question revealed just how thoroughly Western medicine had failed her daughter. At that moment, Welch didn't need another procedure, pill or visit to the emergency room. In desperation, the two women turned to the aid of an American Indian healer named Wanigi Waci, a Lakota Sioux who offered Welch new options for medical aid-options that ultimately helped her walk away from the brink of death.

The experience propelled Koerner toward a new mission in her nursing career: working to introduce the American Indian model of medicine to more patients, doctors and nurses. She is one of several nurses nationwide pioneering programs that incorporate indigenous holistic health into the Western medical system. These nurses suggest that American Indian practices derive healing power from spiritual and familial connections that Western medicine often fails to tap into.

But even with Koerner's strong convictions about the power of indigenous healing, the path to integrating these considerably different models has proved to be far from simple.

"There is an arrogance in Western society that we have the only way to heal," said Koerner, who lives in South Dakota. "I think Western medicine diagnoses a disease and treats the symptoms, but not the root causes. The root causes can be the emotional component of something. I really believe now that sickness is a manifestation of something deeper."

Read the entire article here:

http://www.nurseweek.com/news/features/03-09/nativeRN.asp