NEWS HERO OF THE MONTH
Photo by Erin Bloodgood
MAKING MENTAL HEALTH CARE
Accessible for Everyone LEA DENNY’S HIR WELLNESS INSTITUTE WORKS TO HEAL INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA
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ur mental health systems were never meant to help Indigenous and marginalized communities because they have been built inside a system of patriarchy and colonialization, according to Lea Denny, founder of the Healing Intergenerational Roots (HIR) Wellness Institute. For the last few years, Denny has been working nonstop to build an organization specifically for the healing of Indigenous people who have suffered from trauma passed down through generations. To effectively heal people who have been subject to oppression, she knew she had to look at mental health services in a new way and build her organization in a way that doesn’t mimic the power structure of this country’s mental health system.
A daughter of Pacific Islanders and married to an Oneida tribe member, Denny understands the pain that comes with having
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By Erin Bloodgood Indigenous ancestors who were forced to assimilate to American culture. Both her ancestors and her husband’s experienced residential boarding schools and “genocide through culture and spirit,” she explains. The trauma created from that history gets passed down through generations as Indigenous people are forced to give up parts of their culture so that they can fit in with American norms. “American society has plasticized my culture into leis and bobblehead hula girls… We’re living in pained societies.” These experiences led her to her master’s thesis focused on intergenerational trauma, which became HIR Wellness in 2017. As she heard feedback from Native American communities, she continued to see this trauma and made a promise to them that she would never charge people for mental health services. “I just knew that [mental
health services] had to be different. It had to heal intergenerational roots,” says Denny. So, she built HIR Wellness as a nonprofit that could receive grants and donations to fund healing. By not accepting money or insurance from patients, she wasn’t constricted by the rules that were already built into the existing mental health system that has done so much damage.
COMMUNITY ACTIVATED MEDICINE Instead, Denny created a new method of therapy and healing based on her years of research and community feedback. Her approach, that she calls Community Activated Medicine or CAM, helps people heal alongside their community members. The traditional clinical therapy approach isolates the individual, but Denny learned that communities of color often heal in groups, such as church services or pow wows. “I knew from my experience working
