Interview between Speaker 1 (Meg) and Speaker 2 (Jules Edwards)
Episode 59: Culturally Responsive Therapy for Native Autistic Kids
[Introductory note]
Hey, it’s Meg. I know that if you are a professional and you’re here, it’s because you want to work in a way that has a positive impact on the self-identity and well-being of your autistic clients. And at Learn, Play, Thrive, we really want to support you on that journey because the way we do our work impacts kids, families, communities. It really matters. And it is so hard to swim against the current on your own. That’s why we’ve put together another huge continuing education summit, and this one is for occupational therapists, that will give you the tools and confidence to go deeper into your work with a neurodiversity-affirming lens. I want you to leave this summit just buzzing with confidence and enthusiasm for your work, and connected to a community of like-minded therapists. We have a truly engaging and brilliant panel of neurodiverse professionals teaching on everything from disability justice, to AAC, interoception, regulation, supporting kids who learn language through echolalia or delayed scripting, and even strengths-based approaches to literacy. Yes, that includes what we should be doing instead of drilling letter formation and rewriting lines with our autistic clients. There are only a few early bird spots left, so head over now to learnplaythrive.com/summit and be a part of this huge culture change in the therapy world. The OT summit takes place in January of 2023; it’s registered for AOTA CEU’s. All of the talks will be recorded and on demand. Then, go tell your friends after you’ve registered, because we’re giving $500 to the therapist who refers the most people because we want to make a huge impact on the OT field with this event. That’s learnplaythrive.com/summit.
[Introductory music]
Welcome to the Two Sides of the Spectrum Podcast. A place where we explore research, amplify autistic voices, and change the way we think about autism in life, and in our professional therapy practices. I’m Meg Proctor from learnplaythrive.com.
Meg:
Before we get started, a quick note on language. On this podcast, you’ll hear me and many of my guests use identity-affirming language. That means we say ‘autistic person’ rather than ‘person with autism’. What we’re hearing from the majority of autistic adults is that autism is a part of their identity that they don’t need to be separated from. Autism is not a disease, it’s a different way of thinking and learning. Join me in embracing the word ‘autistic’ to help reduce the stigma.
Welcome to Episode 59 with Jules Edwards. In this episode, Jules, who is Anishinaabe and autistic, talks with us about culturally responsive therapy for supporting Native autistic kids. Jules zooms out and takes a look at our worldview to share with us how the Western, capitalist, linear view of the world and the medical model itself is really incompatible with Native worldviews. And we dive into how this impacts the way non-Native therapists write goals for and support our Native clients. We go into historical trauma for Native folks and how this shows up for every Native person in the present day. And Jules asks us to keep in mind that Native kids might not always look Native; they might look white, brown, or black. And if they are Native, they will present with this historical trauma, even if we don’t know that they are Native. Jules gives us a plan for how we can move towards more culturally responsive care. And make sure you listen until the end, because this does include how we can change up those Thanksgiving crafts you may or may not be planning for your therapy clients this week.
So, I’ll tell you about our guest. Jules Edwards is an Anishinaabe woman from Onigamiising, which is Little Portage, now living and working in the Minnesota metro area. Jules is a writer, gardener, accountant, and Disability justice advocate. She is passionate about improving child’s safety and disability policy and to do that, she is in so many places. She’s been a Linde fellow, she’s completed a fellowship with the Association of University Centers on Disabilities. She was the co-founder of the Minnesota Autistic Alliance and has been involved in far too many projects to list here. You may know her from social media as @AutisticTyping. I have learned so much from Jules and I’m really excited to share this interview with you.
You’ll hear me say in the episode that I’ve been working on my own land acknowledgement statement for a while, waiting to get the action piece into place before adding it to my e-mail, or podcast intro, or website. If you haven’t seen them before, land acknowledgments are one way that we can name that the land we are on was stolen from Native people by colonizers and land action plans are the steps we’re planning to take to support indigenous communities. So, I mentioned that the lands that I’m on here in what we call Asheville, North Carolina is occupied Tsalagi land. The Cherokee people were nearly entirely removed from their ancestral lands here in the mountains in 1895 at the beginning of the Trail of Tears. Several hundred people hid and avoided being removed, and they eventually bought back a portion of their lands, and they now make up the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. So, at Learn Play Thrive, we are still building our action plan that goes along with our land acknowledgement. But one step we’re taking is donating $100 per month to an organization supporting indigenous struggles. This quarter, we’re donating to the Indigenous Environmental Network. You can reach out to us with ideas for places where we should send these donations in the future; we’re open to your ideas. And if you want to learn more about land acknowledgments and action statements, you can check out the Native Governance Center’s website. Here is the interview with Jules.
Hi, Jules. Welcome to the podcast.
Jules:
Hi, Meg, thank you for having me.
Meg:
I’m really excited to be sitting down and talking with you. And I want to start with you, Jules. To start us off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your family, and how you got to this place where you are now with your work?
Jules:
Yes, so I am an Anishinaabe parent of three afro-indigenous children, age ranges from elementary school to adulthood. So, I have over 20 years of parenting now. All of my children are neurodivergent, including autism. And after my oldest child was diagnosed with autism, I was trying to figure out how do I be the best parent I can be for this child? How do I adapt how I parent to work best for him? And as I’m learning, I am seeing all of these things that reflect myself. I’m like, wondering, “But that’s — everybody does that right? That’s — that’s totally normal.” And it is normal for autistic people. So, shortly after my eldest was diagnosed, I was diagnosed as autistic, among other things. And it kind of just led me down this path of advocacy and trying to make the world a better place for kids like my kids.
Meg:
That’s a pretty common story for women, high-masking women who have kind of gotten through and then they learn about themselves through their child’s diagnosis. Can I ask you just a little bit more how that changed things for you, knowing that you were autistic?
Jules:
It changed everything. I have dealt with a lot of the typical autistic difficulties in life. I’ve dealt with joblessness, and homelessness, and poverty, and domestic violence, and all of those messy things that happen to a lot of autistic people who don’t have the tools or the supports they need. And I felt like a failure. And once I got my diagnosis, for me, it was like, the key to unlocking the ‘Why’. And knowing why helped me to find the resources, and supports, and tools that I needed to be happier and live a better life. So, having the diagnosis changed everything for me. I don’t even feel like I’m the same person that I was a decade ago, even though I am. I’m just better supported and more knowledgeable.
Meg:
I feel like we can’t hear this enough, because there’s still so many people tiptoeing around autism diagnostics, on telling children and adolescents that they are autistic. And this message is loud and clear that it is so much better to learn about no, accept yourself, find your people, and be able to go from that place of knowledge and acceptance rather than all of the confusion, and rejection, and self-criticism, it sounds like, that happens when you’re going through life as an autistic person who doesn’t know you’re autistic.
Jules:
Yeah. It’s incredibly enlightening. It definitely improves quality of life. And as a parent, one thing that’s really important to me, for my children, is that they understand how their diagnoses fits into their life. So, something that happens quite often is my children might ask me, “Well, what is autism again?” I don’t give a really brief description. I’m like, it’s a social communication and sensory disability. And that’s all. That’s all I will say for what is autism. But when they are having some kind of autistic experience, I might name that so that they understand how it fits into their life, rather than pathologizing, “Autism is X, Y, and Z.” If they’re having a hard time with selective mutism or something, I’ll be like — after the fact, once they’re feeling regulated and able to have a conversation — I’ll be like, “Remember when you were having a hard time, you wanted to talk to the other child at the playground, but you didn’t quite know what to say. And you were having a hard time getting the words out. That happens to a lot of autistic people. And so, one thing that we can do is practice what we might want to say.” So, it’s super important to provide that information with the context so that they can apply it to their life and just kind of build this skill building into the regular routine so it’s not a separate thing that’s compartmentalized from real life, and it also doesn’t make them feel bad about themselves.
Meg:
I love that. Thank you for sharing that, Jules. It’s lovely to see how you approach this with your own family. Okay, we’re gonna be talking in the interview today about how we support Native kids in therapy. And I just want to acknowledge there’s commonalities, I’m sure, but I also imagine that the experiences between groups and for kids who live on reservation versus off reservation might be very different. So, before I start asking you questions about things like Native culture and supporting Native kids, can you talk about this diversity of experience a little bit, right off the bat?
Jules:
Absolutely. So, every Native community on Turtle Island — and Turtle Island is what my culture calls North America. So, it includes Canada, the US, and Mexico. People indigenous to Turtle Island are very, very different. Every nation is different from one another. It’s similar to saying, “Korea and China have the same culture,” to compare different nations on Turtle Island. So, there’s a broad range of diversity culturally. And then also in modern times, people who live in different spaces have very different experiences and access to resources. So, urban Natives often have access to a lot more supports and services, and people who are living in rural areas or on reservations oftentimes don’t have anything. And what is common in both areas, in both rural and urban areas, is frequent intervention by government systems in the form of child protection. So, it was — I once heard from a friend that Native children are more likely to be put in foster care than to have access to AAC. So, and that’s augmentative and assistive communication.
Meg:
Hold on — native children are more likely to be put in foster care than to access AAC.
Jules:
Yes:
Meg:
Okay.
Jules:
It’s a horrifying, horrifying fact. Native children with disabilities are targets for child protection. And we know that about 40% of children who go into foster care have a disability. And we know that Native children have the highest rate of out-of-home placement of any race within the United States. And I live in Minnesota, and Minnesota has the highest rate of all the states of out-of-home placement for Native children, a good portion of whom are disabled when they go into the system, all of whom are disabled by the time they exit the system, because if nothing else, they leave with trauma. So, it’s definitely not a monolithic experience. But there’s a lot of systemic harm that occurs to our children.
Meg:
Yeah, and there’s history here, right? I mean, just like it’s useful to look at, let’s say the modern police force, it traces its origin back to slave catchers. And that continues to impact and color how it operates and why it operates. There’s a very intense history of Native kids being removed from their families by non-Native, I don’t know, quote- unquote ‘professionals’, right?
Jules:
Yes, to assimilate in that — they’re called Indian residential schools. They were not schools. They were concentration camps, much like reservations, our prisoner-of-war camps. We just call them different things because it’s more palatable to think of. We mean well, but it doesn’t result in positive outcomes. And thinking about the history of residential schools were Native children were stolen from their families and forced to go to a residential school where they were required to assimilate, think about what children were most likely to be harmed in those environments. It was the non-compliant children. And there were electric chairs. They built electric chairs in the residential schools, which is not that far off from what’s happening at the Judge Rotenberg center, where they’re putting backpacks on kids and electroshock — not therapying them. I can’t bring myself to call it therapy because it’s not. So, these systemic harms haven’t ended. They’ve really just narrowed their focus on a specific subset of people. And so, disabled BIPOC — so, Black, Indigenous, People of Color — are experiencing the most harms of these systems.
Meg:
Absolutely. And I think a lot of people maybe are familiar, but in case people aren’t, the Judge Rotenberg center is in Massachusetts. It’s basically an ABA center that uses electroshock quote-unquote ‘therapy’ for compliance for autistic people. It is extremely abusive and state funded. And there’s a lot of movement to try and remove its funding because it is explicitly abusive. I appreciate you helping us trace those threads through history. Native, disabled kids are obviously very vulnerable in so many ways, and I want to circle back around to the role of therapists who are trying to reduce their harm in how they support Native kids. But before we get there, I want to do a little bit of a zoomed-out view. Can you dive in a little bit with me on culture and cultural competence, starting more broadly with Native worldviews, and how they might differ from the dominant culture’s worldview in the US?
Jules:
Sure. So, I’m going to flip that around, I’m going to start with talking about the linear worldview, and that is the colonial, capitalist worldview that we all operate under in modern times where we can measure everything. Everything is on a line; everything has a cause and effect. And we can impact the effect by manipulating variables and change the outcome of things, how we want them to be. But it often doesn’t take into account all of the other factors that are impacting a process. So, with treatment models, a lot of the time we’ll identify a problem, we’ll evaluate the problem, look for a cause, change inputs and outputs to hopefully get to a goal. And that’s the line. That’s the linear worldview, right there in the medical model that providers have to operate in, whether they want to or not.
And Native worldviews have something called the relational worldview — or Native cultures, I’m sorry. And the relational worldview was named and developed by the National Indian Child Welfare Association — so, NICWA — in the 1980’s. And it’s used as a technical assistance document within child protection systems. And that document helps us understand that everything around us is related. So, everything that we’re experiencing, everything and everyone that we come in contact with, impacts us in ways that we might not even recognize. So, we’re connected to the earth, we’re connected to one another, we are connected to events that happen around us, even if we’re not directly impacted; we still have a connection. So, it’s kind of complicated. As a lot of things are, it’s very nuanced. But it has a basis in the idea that connection is what makes us human, that connection is what gives us a full and rich experience. And that relationship that we have with other people and things is important.
Meg:
You know, it’s interesting. A lot of us doing the work now to try and change the way therapists support autistic people are using this word over and over again: connection over compliance, right. Connection, connection, connection. It’s antithetical to what we’re trained to do. It is, yeah, and you’re saying it’s foundational for your worldview. How does this show up in how autistic and otherwise disabled people are integrated into the culture in Native communities?
Jules:
That is — that’s a very important and complex question. Autistic people in Native communities are almost never diagnosed. Almost never. We have this monitoring program in the US called the ADDM Study. And it’s like the prevalence studies. And there is a site here in Minnesota that counts how many eight-year-olds are autistic, and they’ll break it down by race and other demographics. And in Minnesota last year, they identified two Native autistic people, one of whom was my kid. So, we’re not identified, because a lot of the time we just accept the normal variations in humanity. But there’s also the problem with attributing Native children to having a behavioral disorder, or having fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. That’s a common misdiagnosis. Because if we can blame the mom for drinking, then it was just those drunken Indians that caused that problematic child and that that is not a child who is in need of support. We can just blame the mom, take the kid away, and fix the kid. It doesn’t work. But that’s what we operate under in modern society.
But in actual Native communities, everybody’s just accepted. I have an uncle who passed away a couple of years ago who was certainly autistic. He was never diagnosed. And in his later years in life, he was learning from me as I was sharing information about autism, as I was learning myself about myself and about my children. I would share stuff on Facebook, or I’d talk to him every now and again in person, because we didn’t live close. And I think he was coming to understand that he’s autistic, but he is so beloved. And he was cherished. And even though he didn’t speak to a lot of people, he was probably considered eccentric or reclusive, or whatever else, like everyone loved him. And everyone appreciated what he did contribute to the community. He was a beadwork artist. And he’s the one who actually taught me how to do beadwork. And there was never — there was never an assumption that there was something wrong with him. He was just, that’s just who he was.
Meg:
I love this. You said a lot of times folks are not identified because we accept the normal variations in humanity. And that story really highlights and epitomizes that, right, that it was never important for your uncle to be able to explain and justify, or even like, be treated, be pathologized, and then therapized for his differences. He contributed what he contributed and was loved for who he was. That’s a pretty dramatic difference. And so, now, I’m thinking about non-Native therapists who are working with Native kids who likely don’t have a good understanding of Native worldviews. How are we likely to get off track with our goals and our therapy practices?
Jules:
I think one way to be off track would be to apply that linear model of care. Of ‘we’ve identified a problem now we need to assess, intervene, measure, adjust, et cetera’ without an exploration of what is important to the child and that child’s community. Because a lot of the time, we project our own wants onto someone else. And the disability rights movement has always promoted self-determination, and that’s super important. And that is foundational to being able to do good work to help people improve the quality of their lives. And I think that should be the goal, is to help people improve their quality of life with respect for self-determination. So, of course, we always want to make sure that we’re enhancing people’s safety. So, if there are self-injurious behaviors, or dangerous things that are happening, we need to intervene to make sure that person is safe in a way that respects their humanity and in a way that works with the person’s natural inclinations, their natural abilities and skills, to help them be safer.
And then, once we know that they’re safe, all other goals, all other work that we do with a person should be based on what they want for themselves. Because when we impose what we want on someone else — for example, we want somebody to make eye contact — but is that what they want? And I’m sure that most of your listeners are more enlightened than to think that eye contact is the epitome of, you know, treatment goals. But that still exists. And it’s also really important to know that culturally, a lot of people don’t make eye contact. So, I went to a presentation a couple of years about the Korean people, which is a pretty significant immigrant group here in Minnesota. And they were talking about a lot of cultural traits, including Korean people do not make eye contact. I’m thinking, “I wonder how many of their children are misdiagnosed because they don’t make eye contact,” or something as simple as that. So, that’s something to consider.
Meg:
That’s such a good reminder to us about cultural competence in general, which can really fall to the wayside because we don’t know what we don’t know. And if we aren’t actively learning about the cultures of the folks we support, then we usually are creating ruptures and making mistakes that can be pretty impactful. And I appreciate you really tying this into self-determination as the antidote to imposing cultural norms on people. If we can take the time to learn about a person’s own life, about their own goals for themselves, about what meaningful and authentic participation in their daily life looks like for them and for their family, and then that really gives us a much better place to start with determining our goals. Are there any other foundational pieces that non-Native therapists should know when supporting Native children?
Jules:
I think one of the foundational pieces non-Native therapists should know is that the intergenerational impacts of the fact that every Native person you know is a descendant of a residential school, those intergenerational impacts will show up as intergenerational trauma. So, every Native child has trauma, whether it is inherited or experienced firsthand. That trauma is going to impact how they experience interventions and treatment. And their responses may not always make sense for someone who does not share that trauma history. But it’s still valid. And one of the things — I’m gonna go off on a little tangent because us Natives like to share stories. Something that I really love knowing is that how half of me was created in my grandmother. So, when my mom was born, all of her eggs were already present when she was born. That means half of me was created in my grandmother. And I think that shows a very strong implication for understanding how that intergenerational experience can be long lasting. Even when we don’t know it, we can still feel it. I was personally not in a residential school. But I still have those visceral reactions to certain imagery or sound. Because while my specific person wasn’t there, I partly was. But I’ve also inherited a lot of resilience. And I’ve inherited ways to not only survive, but thrive, in hostile environments. But then, when you’re a provider, you might see maladaptive behavior, but I found a way to survive.
So, I think that’s something really important to consider as a treatment provider or a therapist. It’s something to keep in mind. And another, like I have another — it’s not a funny story. But in my early 20’s, I was in a car accident, and it was pretty bad. And I’m lucky to be here today. And my daughter had a dream a couple of years ago. And she described that car accident in detail. And she said she was with me, because she was. She was. I was carrying her — half of her. And she described that car accident in detail. And she described her fear. And she described being happy to wake up and know that she was okay. But that’s a real experience, that the intergenerational information that that carries with us forever, and our children and our grandchildren will know what we know. And even if it’s not explained explicitly, even if it’s not experienced firsthand, it’s still there. So, that’s showing up in Native children today in treatment, and sometimes those harms are being replicated by systems, even if people don’t understand that and they can’t put words to it.
Meg:
Thank you so much for sharing your stories. And it is really important for us to keep trauma and intergenerational trauma on our minds. And trauma doesn’t show up in kids as, “Oh, this is making me really stressed because of this previous experience I’ve had. Now I’m going to cry,” right? It, it shows up in their bodies, it shows up in their behaviors. We have to be the thoughtful, curious professionals. And one assumes that that these kids are doing their best, and that their feelings and their needs are real, and they matter. And I also appreciate you encouraging us to shift how we look at quote-unquote, ‘maladaptive behaviors’, that sometimes often they are related to trauma, and often they are tied in to how a child has learned to survive, thrive, be resilient, and that we don’t know what we’re seeing. You mentioned that there are not untraumatized Native people because of intergenerational trauma. We’re layering onto that. But there also aren’t untraumatized autistic people in our culture and the dominant culture in the US. We’ve heard this over, and over, and over from autistic folks that being autistic in this culture of neurotypical dominance is traumatizing. So, we’re working with folks with complex layers of trauma and we want to do it in a way that supports their well-being instead of causing more harm. What advice do you have for therapists who want to further develop their cultural competence for supporting their Native autistic clients?
Jules:
So, I want to start by clarifying that a lot of the time people talk about cultural competence, and I’m not sure that that term is something that I support because it’s not a checklist that people can master. I embrace the idea of culturally responsive care. So, that means we’re responding in an open and affirming way to people of cultures, not our own. And it requires something that is one of the Seven Grandfather Teachings, which is the Native guide for living a good life, and that’s humility. So, being humble and acknowledging, “I don’t know everything about this child’s background, but I’m curious.” So, really embracing that humility and curiosity is foundational. Like, you need to be able to do that in order to treat and support children, BIPOC children, all BIPOC children well. And as it pertains to Native people, I would go a little further and say, it’s important to know the history of the people indigenous to your specific area.
So, something that is kind of trendy right now is something called a land acknowledgement, which is acknowledging the tribal nations that existed on the land that you currently occupy. And so, that’s a great stepping stone. That’s a great first step. But after that, learn about the history, where you are specifically. Because the children that you’re treating are, if they’re Native, they’re probably native to your local area. So, understanding, what is the history of the land that you’re on? What is the history of the people? How was that experience of colonization and settlers? And what is the impact today? What are the modern fights? Are they fighting for tribal sovereignty? Are they fighting for ICWA, which is the Indian Child Welfare Act? Are they fighting to keep pipelines off of their reservations, away from their water supply? What is important to that particular community? And understand the history, and just take some time to reflect how is that manifesting in the child in front of me. How is that impacting that child? Because it is related.
Meg:
I really appreciate this shift from cultural competence to culturally responsive practice. We just had a podcast episode on culturally responsive therapy with AC Goldberg. And that’s a nice place for people to go back and relisten, or listen if they haven’t yet, where we do dive into this as a process as an ongoing act. And also, one thing that AC tied in that was really helpful to me was that we need sort of an accountability process, a repair process, built in. That it’s not, “Oh,” like you said, “Check. I’m culturally competent, I’m going to do everything right.” It’s, “I’m engaged in a process of learning. And I’m going to make a lot of mistakes. And I want to make sure that I have spaces to acknowledge that and repair when I make those mistakes so that I can build an authentic therapeutic relationship with my clients.” I appreciate the push for me. I hadn’t shifted my language from cultural competence to cultural responsiveness. So, thank you for that.
And also, this call to learn about, know about, the Native people in our area. I’ll tell you, Jules, I hadn’t told you this before, I’ve been working on our land acknowledgement statement for Learn Play Thrive for a while, but hesitating to put it in the podcast intro, put it in my e-mails, until it becomes something that’s not token. Not a trendy token, ‘I did the thing, this shows I care’. Trying to figure out how to make that a little bit more broadly meaningful. So, I do appreciate you naming that as a step and as the first step in learning about our own areas, and translating that to how we support our clients. What’s the role of listening in this, and what are the opportunities that we might need to look for, listening to and learning from Native folks?
Jules:
That’s a good question. I want to kind of adapt the question to like treatment and applying it to work. A lot of the time, intake paperwork will ask about ‘What is important to your culture?’ or they’ll ask about your religion or something like that. And while that is well meaning, and it is important to know, sometimes people can’t put that in writing. Sometimes people may not have the language to describe it, nor is the responsibility theirs to describe their cultural and religious beliefs. It’s something termed ’emotional labor’. A lot of the time when it comes to like, advocacy and education, and when we’re naming those belief systems for consumption of a person who doesn’t belong to our culture or religion, it can be very frustrating. Because if you don’t word it just right, then there’s a lot of additional questions, or sometimes there will be challenges. That’s something that really bothers me. I was doing a — I was the partner to somebody in a DBT program. So, the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. And if listeners aren’t familiar with what that is, there’s a group meeting every week, and then there’s individual meetings every week. And of course, every program is a little bit different. But we were at the group meeting one time on the winter solstice. That’s a holiday that I celebrate, and it’s a religious holiday to me. And there are certain things that I can and can’t do on that day, much like many religions have different beliefs and things you’re supposed to are not supposed to do on certain days. And I said that in the group therapy, “I can’t respond to this right now today, because it’s my holiday.” And I set that expectation. And then, I was challenged on it. And they’re like, “Well, it’s just a little bla, bla, bla,” and I’m like, “No, we don’t, we don’t do that here. It’s not — I’m not negotiating this.” But that’s one way that that can show up, is the challenging the validity of somebody else’s cultural or religious beliefs. And that can’t really — that’s not culturally responsive. So, just something to consider.
Meg:
Yeah, we can do better than that. I do, just on a personal note, love the way you stated your boundary there. You shouldn’t have had to, but there’s a lot to learn for all of us, I think, from your resolve in how you did say, “No, I’m not negotiating this. This is important to me. And I don’t owe you any information.” Jules, I want to ask you, this episode is coming out the week before Thanksgiving. So, therapists all over the US are preparing to make turkey crafts and other Thanksgiving-themed activities with their clients. I’ve actually been trying to talk a little bit to my own five-and-a-half-year-old in the last couple of months about the history of the land that we live on. And it is tricky to negotiate with little kids. Can you talk a little bit about how therapists can approach this holiday of Thanksgiving in a more thoughtful way?
Jules:
So, Thanksgiving is a difficult holiday for a lot of Native people. Because for Natives, gratitude is a way of life. Something that we’re taught is to give before taking and anytime that we take anything from anyone or anything, we offer gratitude and a token of appreciation. So, gratitude is a way of life for Native people. That’s part of our culture. So, I do like the idea of Thanksgiving, but I also think it’s a little bit ironic considering the next day is like the biggest consumption unofficial holiday that exists. So, it’s kind of funny to me. But as therapists are approaching their work with all children — this should not just apply to Native children — learn about why turkeys. You know, why are turkeys the thing? Well, because it’s one of the indigenous meats, because we didn’t have beef, we didn’t have chicken, we didn’t have pork. We had turkey, we had other birds, we had fish, we had game, we had, you know, elk and deer, and things like that. So, it was an indigenous food. And it was in abundance. It was everywhere. So, it helped us to survive. So, that understanding of ‘Why a turkey?’, that’s important. And then, why the other foods that are, you know, called out specifically on Thanksgiving? There are three indigenous foods that we call the Three Sisters. So, it’s corn, beans, and squash. And they grow very well together. And they are some of the foods that sustain Natives throughout the winter, and they helped us survive. They’re very important to us.
Talk about that. Talk about those foods and why we should be thankful for everything that we have, including being thankful to the earth for providing for us, and how we should be providing to the earth in exchange. And so, something that I wanted to briefly touch on and I forgot to bring it up a little bit earlier is in our work as providers of care — and I’m not a therapist, but I do provide care to disabled children — it’s really important for children to have that connection to the earth. So, something that I do, I have a sensory garden. And I’m exploring horticultural therapy as hopefully, an option for local communities. I have big dreams. But incorporating our connection to the earth is super important. So, in occupational therapy, going outside and doing stuff like gardening is so good. You can get that heavy work in; you can get all kinds of interesting bodywork out there. So, getting that vestibular input by doing stepping stone activities and smelling things and all of that, it’s so good for everyone, not just kids. So, I’m kind of looping around a little bit. But.
Meg:
I love this shift, Jules, because you took us from some sort of bizarre form of cultural appropriation or just weirdness around taking things from a culture without naming them, learning about them, acknowledging them, and then just making them a cute themed Thanksgiving thing towards a practice of learning about and from, and celebrating what there is to learn from a culture on that day. And this is without even going into the history of Thanksgiving, right? You just sort of helped us reframe the cultural pieces that are in place with the food, and how we can use it and with the earth, and how we can change how we approach Thanksgiving in a more respectful, thoughtful, curious way. I really appreciate that. So, if people listening today, Jules, have just one key overarching takeaway from what we’ve talked about, what would you hope that takeaway would be?
Jules:
I think there’s not just one thing, there’s so many things, because one thing is linear and all of the things is relational. So, when we understand that all of this stuff is connected, we can make better choices in how we approach our work and how we support the children in our care. And it doesn’t have to be just Native children. So, if we approach these ideas from that universal design perspective, not only will we better support Native children and black children, but we’ll also be modeling anti-racism work for white kids. So, and that’s important, because everyone benefits when children are treated as whole people, and not a sum of their deficits. So, I would love to see that shift.
Meg:
Thank you. I should acknowledge that I have gotten pushback on this question so many times, though, ‘What’s one thing?’ It’s me trying to take learning theory and say, okay, let’s reiterate something. And especially my PDA autistic folks, I’ve gotten the like, “I’m not gonna pick one thing, no.” I’m like, I respect that. Maybe I’ll eventually rework this question. I ask it in every interview, and it goes well about half the time so maybe I’ll rework it into one takeaway message, one final thought.
Jules:
Oh, no, it’s not a bad question. It’s, yeah.
Meg:
Jules, you have so much good content out there. I love your social media. You’re publishing a book. Tell us what you’re working on now and where we can find you online.
Jules:
I do so much. So, online, artistictyping.com. It is still in ‘Under Construction’. Of all of my strengths, website developer is not one of them. But I’m trying and I’m learning a lot. So, I’m Autistic, Typing on all social media platforms. I co-wrote a book with Megan Ashburn of Not An Autism Mom. It is called ‘I Will Die on This Hill: Autistic Adults, Autism Parents, and the Children who Deserve a Better World’. I am a co-founder of Minnesota Autistic Alliance. We’re working on a self-advocacy program that includes both a curriculum of things to know and it applies circle-of-support model to individualized support. So, a person who needs support with self-advocacy will be matched with multiple neurodivergent people to provide individualized support. It’s like a mini support group that focuses on one person. So, we’re trying to provide culturally responsive care within our own community and make sure that people are living the lives that they want to live.
Meg:
I love that so much. Thank you, Jules. And I’m reading the preview version of your book. I’m so excited about it. And we’re already talking about having you and hopefully Megan back on the podcast soon to talk about that as well. Thank you so much for sharing with us today.
Jules:
Thank you, Meg. It was good to talk to you.
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