Native American Perspectives on Pandemic

In this webinar, Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy will be talking with Neal Rzepkowski, MD, who was a physician active in the early days of the AIDS epidemic and also a deeply committed student of Lakota philosophy. Neal will share his perspective on what happened during the AIDS epidemic and the similarities and differences with the current Coronavirus pandemic. They will discuss how people have responded to the unknown in medicine, both from a physiological perspective as well as a sociological perspective. They will investigate the indigenous North American experience of European-originated pandemics which devastated the people of North America; how the Lakota philosophy and worldview makes sense of pandemics and gives meaning to those who live through them. 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom, focusing on what Native culture has to offer the modern world. He has also written Narrative Medicine; Healing the Mind through the Power of Story: the Promise of Narrative Psychiatry; and his most recent book, with Barbara Mainguy, Remapping Your Mind: The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story. He graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed his residencies in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He has been on the faculties of several medical schools, most recently as associate professor of family medicine at the University of New England.

Barbara Mainguy studied psychology and philosophy at the University of Toronto and received her master’s degree in Creative Arts Psychotherapy at Concordia University in Montreal. She has co-written Remapping Your Mind: the Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story with Lewis Mehl-Madrona. Currently she is completing her MFA in documentary filmmaking at York University, Toronto, and working with Lewis in Orono, Maine. She is the Director of Education for the Coyote Institute in Orono.

Dr. Neal Rzepkowski, physician and previous president of the Lily Dale Assembly, lives in southwestern New York, USA. Neal has a special interest in physical mediumship and our potential relationships with the spirit world. He is also actively involved in the ways of the Lakota. His home, “TiOmime,” is the site of many activities including sweat lodges, an annual sundance, seances, readings, and classes.