Peninsula's use of religious text in treatment concerns parent
A local residential treatment program for troubled youth has at least one Blount County parent incensed.
By Ladawna Parham
of The Daily Times Staff
Peninsula Village in Blount County offers residential treatment for hard-to-reach 13- to 18-year-olds who haven't responded to past "more conventional treatment approaches," according to the center's Web site.
Jamie Abernathy received a workbook used in the treatment programs at the village from a friend she said used to work there, and became extremely alarmed after reading its contents.
According to Abernathy, the "Medicine Wheel Workbook" written by founding director Dr. Patte Buice Mitchell, is an effort to "force this North American (Indian) religion on kids who have to be there.
"We're talking about a locked-down environment, they have no choice but to be there and they're being forced to learn this," Abernathy said.
Religious concerns
Throughout the workbook, stories of Native American people and the spirits that help guide them are followed with questions asking children to relate to the story and find meaning within their own lives.
"All of Creation is a Medicine Wheel, every group is a Medicine Wheel, and you are a Medicine Wheel," the workbook states.
It discusses the Great Spirit or The Creator, animal spirits and characteristics represented by directions and seasons, etc.
At the end of the workbook, which is a 12-step type of program to recovery of their problems, it states "If you practice the principals of all you have learned, you will become a source of healing for others, a Shaman."
Abernathy said the program, which receives state funds, specifically through TennCare recipients, imposes a particular religion related to Shamanism or other similar religions on children who have no choice but to listen to it.
"That's like sending a kid into a public school classroom and saying 'you can't come out of this room unless you become a Jew,'" she said, likening the village to public schools because it receives state-funding.
"It's illegal. You can't have an institution receiving state funds promoting a specific religion," Abernathy said.
"What kind of religion it is has nothing to do with it; it is a specific religion."
The next step
"As you grow in your capacity to pray and meditate, as you become more willing to turn your will over to a Higher Power, you will grow in enlightenment and illumination. These are the Virtues of the East, the place of the Eagle."
That's one type of statement made in the workbook that has concerned attorney Jim Wright, of Butler Vines and Babb, whom Abernathy contacted regarding the village.
"At this point I can just say we're investigating it," Wright said.
"There's a lot that really concerns me," Wright said. "But I wouldn't have contacted the press at this point.
"Generally, we want to contact Peninsula (Village) first and let them explain what they're doing, why they're doing what they're doing, before taking the next step."
Wright said he has drafted a letter to submit to Peninsula outlining some concerns and seeking answers.
Just a metaphor
Dr. Larry Brown, clinical director of Peninsula Village, said he didn't see any real issue.
Brown said most of the adolescents who end up at the village are "treatment-resistant" and have previously failed in other more conventional or traditional programs.
Much of what is done at the village is done to develop a sense of cohesion among youths isolated from mainstream society, such as having them live in cabins and chop their own wood for heat.
Brown said the 12-step program Abernathy objects to is "just one aspect" of the overall treatment program, which often is as long-term as 10-12 months or as short as two to three months.
He said everything in the workbook is "just a metaphor," and that taking it out of that context would be a "gross misunderstanding of what we're really doing here."
He said the Medicine Wheel concept was created as a metaphor for how participants can think of their treatment, that is out of the conventional, traditional plan that they have already failed in before.
"We are a non-denominational facility," Brown said. "We are not shoving this stuff down anyone's throat."
He said adolescents from different races, religions and cultures have come to the center and that the village must be careful not to promote any one religion.
If anyone says they don't feel comfortable participating, he said they work together to create something beneficial to the individual outside of what the others are doing.
"I don't see us as promoting or insisting upon a particular religious or theological point of view," Brown said.
He agrees that there is encouragement for the adolescents to recognize some higher power, whatever they feel that higher power is, and to recognize that they are "linked to powers beyond themselves."
"But that's not any one religion," he said. "We're not trying to fill in the blank for them."
A general sense that some higher power exists is all that's being encouraged, he said.
"By no stretch of the imagination are we turning out shamans from the village," Brown said. "We use the term 'Shaman,' or the idea of them being a 'wounded healer,' figuratively."
Last modified: March 05. 2000 12:00AM
Larry Brown's gone, of course, but they still have the 12-step medicine wheel hoodoo shuffle going on. Native Americans are the ones who should be upset about this.
