MISSOULA -- Tribal community members and health service providers are invited to discuss the trauma associated with physical, spiritual and emotional violence in Native homes.

"We want to acknowledge the hurt and suffering that has occurred, but we want people to see the resiliency they have, too," said Iris Pretty Paint, co-director of the University of Montana's Office of Research and Development. "It's fine to teach people who are working with our people about the trauma, because it's real. But we also don't want to miss the opportunity to inform workers that they can't just open up the pain of our people and leave them raw."

"They need to have ways to tap into the strengths and tap into the healing of families and individuals when they get into these real serious issues of violence," she said.

Pretty Paint and Gyda Swaney, a UM assistant professor of psychology, will address violence and resiliency during a keynote speech Friday, Nov. 2, as part of a two-day conference titled, "Breaking the Cycle of Violence Restoring the Circle of Care," at Walla Walla College in East Missoula.

The conference, which ends Saturday, Nov. 3, is being organized by the Missoula Healthy Indian Families Consortium in response to a consortium report that explored Native homes affected by family violence and what prevents them from getting help. Leon Stewart, a conference coordinator, said the organizers aim to unite service providers with Native people. The end goal is to get the groups to work together to develop a plan of action to bring wellness into family homes.

Even though many answers lie within tribal communities, they, too just like the non-Native service providers who try to help them often aren't educated about the cultural practices that once sustained Natives, Swaney said. That's because about 90 percent of Indians are educated in state public schools, she said. Nor do they understand some of the legal issues that can prevent them from getting help.

Maylinn Smith, director of the UM Indian Law Clinic, will discuss some contemporary roadblocks to seeking justice when one is a victim of violence. Foremost, tribes can't prosecute non-Natives who commit crimes against Natives because tribes don't have legal jurisdiction.

"This is problematic because that's where the highest rates of violence occur," said Smith, citing a 2001 Department of Justice report. "They have to look at other ways of addressing the jurisdictional problems."

Conference speakers and organizers all stressed the importance of looking at our resiliency and strengths, said Emily Salois, conference co-coordinator.

"What we can do is to take another model that worked in another community to turn those statistics around," she said.

Salois and Stewart have invited Phyllis and Andy Chelsea from Alkali Lake in British Columbia to talk about how they brought their tribal community to healing after immense suffering from alcoholism, boarding school trauma and sexual abuse.

"We're coming down to share our story," Phyllis Chelsea said Wednesday from her home on the Shuswap tribe's reserve. "As we sobered up, we started to deal with the sexual abuse in our community and residential school abuse. We've gone through all that."

The Alkali Lake community still has some problems, and they are reaching out to help their young people.

"We are definitely alive, and ever so aware as before we were in a drunken stupor, those things didn't matter and people lived and died and that was an acceptable way of life," Chelsea said. "But now we're involved in our lives. We hurt. We cry. We heal."

The Chelseas hope others can learn from their story in which, at one point, they succeeded in getting the majority of the Alkali Lake community to quit drinking.

Every tribe has a Trail of Tears type of story, Stewart Chelsea said.

To understand the cycle of violence begins with an understanding of racism, colonization and oppression, which has led to a disruption of the traditional family value system in Native societies, a truth that isn't on most people's experiential or educational radar, said Swaney.

"People didn't understand the Native experience," she added. "The violence in Indian Country is systemic. I don't even want to say this out loud, but women beat up men like men beat up women. Children are beaten. Elders are beaten."

Swaney said it was important to build treatment models that include men, women and children.

"We really want to treat the whole family."

Reporter Jodi Rave: 1-800-366-7186 or jodi.rave@lee.net