But in 2011, I started meeting with her every week, you know, on Tuesday at 2.30 and we would sit and talk and I would ask her questions and she'd tell stories and I'd work on her because by then I was already a certified massage therapist or they did energy work or I did plant work and all sorts of things.

I had a human services degree with counseling and so I'd work on her and finally after a year I'm like, Rita, how do I get certified as a traditional viewer? And she just looked at me and she laughed and she laughed and she was a little impish woman and she's like, you already are. I knew you were the first time I met you. Oh, that's great. Oh my gosh.

That was clink at traditional healer, media to wit. When media was in her early 20s, she began her journey as a traditional healer. She was pursuing a degree in nursing when she says that spirit had other plans for her.

She was having health events that couldn't be explained by Western medicine, so she sought and found answers in holistic medicine.

She says that people have a tendency to think of traditional healing as antiquated or obsolete. However, traditional healers of the past and the present are in constant pursuit of knowledge and understanding and for over 10,000 years they have focused on a culture of wellness that promotes mental, physical and emotional health.

So here she is, me to do it.

Welcome to Chattermarks, a podcast of the Anchorage Museum dedicated to exploring Alaska's identity through the creative and critical thinking of ideas, past, present and future.

My name is Cody Lyska and I'll be your host.

My English name is me to do it. My clink at names are caught clot and say to knock my adopted a new back name is to get a look and my adopted pre name is possible spirit woman.

My family comes from Wrangle and Prince of Wales Island and Jakarta and also the Northwest Coast family that's tall tan from the BC area and family that comes from Washington and Oregon as well.

And I am predominant, my identity is predominantly can get, however, I'm also have some height at like I said, tall tan, some distant relation to as pierced or just, you know, distant descendant and also a lot of Scottish, I didn't actually realize how much, but we had our DNA done.

And I'm a lot more Scottish than I had ever realized that I might be so it's fun to understand how we relate and I'm calling in from the Dina Lance and Anchorage Alaska and I look here with my fiance and we have eight children between us.

That's great. Can you explain what traditional healing means to you?

Yeah, so I'm glad that you personalized it because there's like the academic or the anthropologic terms of traditional healing and for me, because it's something that I was raised with and had to kind of come into this identity, it has the concept of transformation through traditional values and practices.

So when people start talking about decolonization or healing communities or, you know, rematriating culture and subsistence, I think it's in my mind, it's inclusive, right.

And part of the challenge with translating or people connecting to this is they think of the word as traditional as something that's past tense.

For us, our traditional healers were dynamic in their pursuit of knowledge and understanding and it was a lifelong pursuit of growth and also the concept and healing in western terms is a static goal or measures that you obtain from the doctor.

But traditionally, healing was again, something that was a consistent pursuit that you engaged in on a daily basis and you transformed.

And so that healing and that transformation of the physical body, the emotional body, the spiritual body and the mental body, you know, healing may look very different when you're five years old, 25 years old or 50 years old, right.

Right. So it's more of a concept of that bringing back who we are as indigenous people and elevating our traditional practices and values into accessible ways of interaction with the world today so that we can continually improve and grow as individuals and communities.

Yeah, and I, I like what you said about physical, spiritual and mental health because I think that with more traditional medicine, a lot of the time it is not so much proactive as it is reactive to the illness that you already have.

Whereas with this traditional healing, it seems like if you're actively thinking about your physical, spiritual and mental health, then you're already in the realm of being proactive.

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