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CHEYENNE RIVER PARENTING PROGRAM After several years of planning, our Parenting Program has finally begun. Read About the Reason for Our Parenting Program (From the Book Essence of Lakota Sioux Spirituality by Tommy Suggs), and letters from Debra Bruguier RH/MCH who is directing the Parenting Program on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota: 14. BREAKING THE CYCLE OF POVERTY The above information was included to help in understanding what
resources are missing from the lives of many Native Americans living on reservations. Realizing what is needed provides a list of
elements – resources – that must be infused into the lives of individuals living
in poverty. The task is difficult, but not
insurmountable. There is a place to start – the children and their parents. The idea is both workable and feasible. I presented this idea in my book, Thoughts on
Native American Spirituality. I would
like to quote from that book. I realize that
this represents duplication for many readers. For
this I apologize. However, the idea is still
a good one, workable, and very appropriate to the current discussion. “Seven or eight years ago Karen and I went to hear Dr.
Jocelyn Elders speak at the University of Arkansas.
I had never attended one of the many outstanding lectures offered by the
University. Nor have I been there since. I suppose that the next time will be when Spirit
has information I need to help me manifest Spirit’s thoughts on the physical plane. Dr. Elders had been the Surgeon General under
President Clinton until she was forced to resign because she made an unpopular suggestion
about birth control. She knew about the poor
and disadvantaged – individuals called ‘at risk’ – as she had grown up
poor. She presented many good ideas, but one
was meant for me. She said that to break the
cycle of child abuse that poverty spawns, at risk expectant mothers need to be taught how
to raise their children, because they were not shown how by example while they were
raised. “I mentioned this concept to Dr Ryschon. He said that he was working to develop a program
that addressed the problem of child and wife abuse that was prevalent on the Reservation. The goal of his program now is to prevent wife and
child abuse by counseling at risk mothers when they first become pregnant and continue
through the formative years of the child. Dr.
Ryschon left the reservation hospital because of the severe cuts in funding by the
administration putting his programs at risk. He
now is in the process of raising money from foundations so that he can continue his work
with proper funding.” The last time I talked with Dr. Ryschon, he was having difficulty
securing funding for his programs. How a
nation can spend one and a quarter billion dollars a week fighting a war with no end,
killing thousands of innocent of people in the process, and not be able to find a few
million dollars to fund a program that could begin breaking the cycle of poverty is a
mystery to me. I am sure I have said more
than I should, but sometimes I have trouble keeping quiet when compassion for others
becomes overwhelming and greed and ignorance are the culprits in their suffering. After finishing this segment of this chapter, I came upon another
interesting study that adds validity to the ideal of the importance of teaching young
mothers how to raise their children, particularly the importance of loving and nurturing
them. The scientific study was presented in
the magazine, Discover. Scientists
have been able to breed mice that carry a particular gene that makes the rodents
ravenously hungry, yellow, and prone to cancer and diabetes. In most cases the offspring are identical to their
parents. However, through a simple change in
diet the offspring looked altogether different. They
were not only slender and mousy brown, but also failed to display their parents’
susceptibility to cancer and diabetes. How was this possible? Our
DNA – specifically 25,000 genes – is widely regarded as the instruction book for
the human body. But genes themselves need
instructions. These instructions are found
not in the letters of the DNA itself but on it, in an array of chemical markers and
switches known collectively as the epigenome – a complex software code capable of
inducing the DNA hardware to manufacture an impressive variety of proteins, cell types,
and individuals. Now for the part of the study that applies to breaking the cycle
of poverty by teaching mothers how to raise their children.
Some scientists have pursued the provocative notion that some epigenetic
changes can be induced after birth, through a mother’s physical behavior toward her
newborn. Results of experiments have shown
that rats that patiently licked their newborn after birth produced offspring that grew up
to be relatively brave and calm. Neglected
newborns grew into the sort of rodents that nervously skitter into the darkest corner when
placed in a new environment. Analysis of
brain tissue indicated that the mother’s licking activity had the effect of removing
dimmer switches on a gene that shapes stress receptors.
The well-licked rats had better develop hippocampi and released less of the
stress hormone cortisol than the neglected pups. Scientists now intend to see whether similar epigenetic changes
occur when human mothers caress and hold their infants.
They point out that the genetic sequence silenced by attentive mother rats
has a close parallel in the human genome. Therefore,
they expect to find similar epigenetic influences in humans. These researchers have found that adults who
reported in a questionnaire that they had a poor relationship with their mother were found
to have hippocampi that were significantly smaller than average. Those adults who reported having had a close
relationship with their mother, however, showed perfectly normal size hippocampi. These facts strongly suggest that the quality of
parenting was responsible for the different shapes of the brains of these two groups. Studies are currently being conducted to gather even more
evidence of the value of the mother child relationship.
All things considered, I believe that the idea of teaching young mothers how
to love, nurture, and raise their newborn in a spiritual environment, when implemented,
will be the start of breaking the cycle of poverty and the personal suffering it spawns. Eventually, mankind will stop sweeping poverty
under the carpet and start doing something about this social cancer we have growing in our
midst.
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