1. Discuss how the concept of “time” is different, and how that might affect a treatment regimen for diabetes.
2. Read The Soul of an Indian by Ohiyesa (Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman), 1911. (Available in most book stores: Kent Nerburn, ed. Navato, CA: New World Library, 1993). Dr. Eastman (Santee Sioux) was educated at Dartmouth College, and Boston University as a physician, around 1900. He was widely acclaimed as an “Indian success” story. His childhood was spent in Canada as a traditional Native American, taught the ways of the forest and his people, when his band of Sioux fled to avoid internment and starvation after the Sioux uprising of 1862.
Dr. Eastman spent many years in the Indian Health Service as a physician at the Pine Ridge reservation, and tended the survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890). He was an activist, organizer and leader. He seeks in this writing to explain the nature of Indian religious and spiritual belief and the tenets of Christianity—how the two can be combined (pluralism), and how this may be a foundation for common ground between the Indian and non-Indian.
Discussions:
a. Discuss how Indian spiritual values and Christian religious values might be in conflict; and how they might be complementary?
b. Using the Historical Chronology of Significant Events in Learning Activity 1, discuss what was happening during Dr. Eastman’s (1858-1939) childhood, middle age, and older age, and how these events may have colored his worldview.
