Tribal Healing Program
Traditional Healing For Tribal Members
Tribal Healing At Puget Sound
The Tribal Healing program at Royal Life Centers at Puget Sound Tribal Healing implements Wellbriety’s White Bison-certified cultural education initiatives that illustrate the origins and influencing factors of Native American substance use as a means of drug and alcohol addiction prevention.
Our staff of Tribal Addiction Specialists provide alcohol/drug abuse assessments, co-occurring disorder evaluations, diagnoses, and individualized treatment to each guest. We at Puget Sound strive to generate and promote positive culturally-based social adjustments that benefit our guest’s relationships within themselves, their families, and their communities.
Within Tribal Healing, we reintegrate Native cultural practices and customs utilizing guest involvement and collaboration, participation in tribal ceremonies and events, and educational courses to promote healing and growth from within.
Puget Sound’s Tribal Healing focuses on the holistic recovery of our tribal guests through the fusion of traditional, evidence-based treatment practices with traditional Native American philosophies and customs. Within the Medicine Wheel & 12 Steps, our staff of tribal specialists educate our guests on prevention, preparation, and harm reduction tactics regarding alcohol and drug addiction within the scope of Native practices. Additionally, our staff review the historical trauma inflicted on native peoples following the introduction to European settlers, offering practical and positive coping skills to aid in their healing from intergenerational trauma.
We at Royal Life Centers are proud to be one of ten Wellbriety certified substance abuse treatment centers as it affords us the opportunity to honor the centuries-old traditions of holistic healing for any and all tribal members in need of SUD treatment.
Wellbriety
The Wellbriety Movement was formed as a way to fill the gap in Native American healthcare, providing culturally-based healing for current and future generations of Indigenous people.
Wellbriety Teachings:
Traditional Customs -
The Cycle of Life
The 4 Directions
4 Seasons of Recovery
AA in Indian Country
Wisdom Circles
How to Conduct Talking Circles
Cultural Allegories -
Eugene B Recalls Meeting Bill W
Story of the Orange Frog
Female-focused Motivations -
Celebrating Motherhood
Women Taking Their Power Back
Message to a Younger Sister
Wellbriety aims to revitalize the traditional tribal principles, values, and teachings to restore the strong foundation of health and interconnectedness amongst Native American communities. In doing so, the movement aspires to promote holistic tribal healing of alcohol abuse, substance use disorders, co-occurring disorders, and the aftereffects of intergenerational trauma.
White Bison
White Bison is the Wellbriety Movement’s internationally recognized training institute that provides education and certifications for Wellbriety’s culturally-based healing curriculum to substance use treatment programs and grassroot activists. White Bison embodies the Wellbriety Movement, striving to spread awareness and native-based education to reconnect indigenous people to the traditions and customs that allowed their ancestors to flourish and coexist in nature, their communities, and as individuals.
White Bison Training Programs:
- Medicine Wheel & 12 Steps
- Mending Broken Hearts
- Warrior Down (Recovery Coach)
- The Red Road to Wellbriety (Education)
As a center of excellence, White Bison offers tribal healing training in addition to necessary tools and resources that promote sustainable and beneficial growth within Native American Communities.
The Opportunity To Heal
Native American addiction treatment should be founded on culture, tradition, and values in addition to evidence-based practices. The essence of Native American culture—the spiritual ideology of interconnectedness— is what enabled the healthy, harmonious existence of tribal communities prior to the introduction of European settlers who attempted to indoctrinate Native people and erase their peaceful ways of life. To revitalize this culture of unity and oneness with the Earth, we at Royal Life Centers work with our guests to reconnect their spirit to all things around them, bringing them clarity and wholeness alongside their sobriety.
Our dedication to providing compassionate care those who seek our help is extended to reach tribal members who deserve a full opportunity to experience a life of sobriety built on their cultural beliefs and foundation of values.
Reach Out to Our Tribal Addiction Specialist
Melissa Hood
Melissa Hood, our Lead Tribal Addiction Specialist, is available to help you figure out the details of your treatment. Melissa's extensive knowledge and experience will make the process of entering treatment easy.
Tribal Healing Curriculum
Traditional Healing for Tribal Members
Our Tribal Healing Services
Medicine Wheel and 12-Step Program
The Medicine Wheel is a sacred Native American symbol that represents healing and health. Often, the Medicine Wheel is regarded as a representation of all knowledge of the universe, a true symbol of hope and healing— for those who seek it. The Medicine Wheel’s symbolism can vary from tribe to tribe, as it is up to their interpretation. The Medicine Wheel has four directions: north, east, south and west. Each of these directions is a marker for many other attributes of that section of the Medicine Wheel.
Elements of The Four Directions:
- Stages of Life: Birth, Youth, Adult, Death
- Holistic Health Aspects: Mental, Emotional, Physical, Spiritual
- Natural Elements: Water, Air, Earth, Fire
- Seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
- Ceremonial Plants: Sage, Sweetgrass, Cedar, Tobacco
The Medicine Wheel and 12-Step program is certification that focuses on healing the pain in communities (hurt, violence, suicide, the impact of addiction, etc.) and provides culturally-based treatment services within the 12-step approach. This adjusted 12-step program is based on teachings of the medicine wheel, the cycle of life, the Four Laws of Change, and ceremonial practice. Including culture, tradition, and values into this 12-step approach proves to be the missing piece for many tribal members who need more of a tailored approach to a traditional 12-step program of recovery.
The Medicine Wheel
The Medicine Wheel, also called the Sacred Hoop, is a physical representation of the Native American ideology of universal interconnectedness. For generations, tribes have adopted the wheel’s mentality for physical, emotional, and spiritual healing.
The Medicine Wheel embodies the Four Directions, as well as Father Sky, Mother Earth, and Spirit Tree, which symbolize dimensions of health and the cycles of life. Depictions of the Medicine Wheel have been found in works of art such as artifacts and paintings in addition to large-scale physical constructions on the land. Over the last several centuries, thousands of these Wheels have been built on Native lands in North America.
Physical representations of the Medicine Wheel provide a sacred ground on which Native Americans ceremonies take place. Medicine Wheel rituals align the forces of Nature, such as gravity and the rising and setting of the Sun. To restore the natural balance, these events mirror the Medicine Wheel itself, moving in a clockwise, or sunset-wise, direction.
The Four Directions
While interpretations of the Medicine Wheel differ from tribe to tribe, the Four Directions (North, South, East, and West) are typically assigned a distinct color [black, red, yellow, and white], which represent the human race.
The Directions can also represent:
Wellness: Spiritual, Emotional, Intellectual, Physical
Life Stages: Birth, Youth, Adult, Death
Seasons: Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall
Natural Elements: Fire, Air, Water, Earth
Animals: Eagle, Bear, Wolf, Buffalo, &c.
Ceremonial plants: Tobacco, Sage, Sweetgrass, Cedar, &c.
Mending Broken Hearts
Mending Broken Hearts is a course through Wellbriety's White Bison training course. Mending Broken Hearts focuses on an approach to addressing intergenerational trauma for the purpose of healing. Mending Broken Hearts teaches about the trauma from stripping away the culture, interconnectedness, elders’ teachings, spirituality, language, values and ceremonies from Native Americans. Historically, this trauma occurred generations ago, as a consequence of mission and boarding schools that the Native American youth were forced into. This shift resulted in trauma— the taking away of an identity, values, having native languages silenced, even sexual and physical abuse.
The pain from this trauma is still felt, seven generations later. We are committed to breaking this cycle. Some of the biggest roadblocks to addiction treatment for Native Americans are addressing this intergenerational trauma, the generations of substance abuse and addiction, generations of shame and generations of abuse. We use the knowledge from this training to address the very real and ever-present root emotions of anger, guilt, shame, and fear— so that we can make room for healing.
Warrior Down
Warrior Down is White Bison's relapse and recidivism prevention program. The Warrior Down program provides structure through relapse prevention techniques and recovery support for tribal members that have graduated our treatment program and are returning home to their tribal communities. Warrior Down offers a continuum of care for our Native American guests, smoothing the transition from treatment to their tribal communities through our collaboration and preparation with their tribe's sober support systems.
Royal's Tribal Healing program recognizes the importance of Warrior Down as it acts as a preventative measure against recidivism through a built-in sober support system— a vital part of recovery maintenance for individuals navigating early sobriety. As our guests reintegrate into their communities, they are guided through a sustained support network that doubles as a response team. Within this response team, our warrior graduates are given resources through this peer-to-peer program that equip them with the wisdom of fellow tribal members in recovery.
The Red Road To Wellbriety
The Native American wellness and recovery book, The Red Road To Wellbriety: In the Native American Way, is Wellbriety's literary resource written by tribal members and for tribal members. This book a culturally-based wisdom provides a Native American perspective on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Borrowing from AA's "Big Book," The Red Road To Recovery utilizes the 12-step format to jumpstart the recovery of tribal members. On the other hand, instead of a checklist to be completed, Wellbriety's sober guide looks at the steps through the lens of the Medicine Wheel's circle teachings. In essence, Red Road integrates the traditional principles of AA within the centuries-old traditions of Native American ancestors as a way to teach tribal guests cultural information about healing from substance use disorders.
During a guest's time in Puget Sound's Tribal Healing program, they are provided a copy of The Red Road To Wellbriety as a recovery resource to guide them on their journey to long-lasting recovery. Wellbriety's recovery literature can also be purchased for $18 through Wellbriety's website for all those who would like to review its wisdom.
tribal HEALERS
Here are a few of Royal Life Centers' Tribal Healers
Reach Out To Join Our Tribal Healing Program
Royal Life Centers is in-network with Shasta Insurance and the Healthcare Management Administration (HMA). We also have a collaborative relationship with IHS (Indian Health Services) and are fully willing to work with other insurance providers in order to get you into our Tribal Healing program for treatment. Should our admissions team find that your insurance plan is out of network we will work relentlessly on your behalf to come to an agreement with your provider.
Royal's Tribal Healing Point of Contact
Our Corporate Tribal Liaison, Melissa Hood, is Puget Sound's tribal specialist for our admissions department. Please contact Melissa Hood for additional information and assistance in entering our addiction treatment programs.
Joining Royal Life Centers’ Tribal Program
You can also expedite the admissions process by filling out the form below, which directly sends your information to Melissa in Tribal Healing department. In doing so, we will expedite the verification of your insurance so that she can start your entrance into our treatment program.