In a recent reading I was giving, the man sitting opposite me muttered something about being, “told what to do.”
When he said this my body sat upright in the chair, realizing that on my drive that morning, I had heard the same thing.
He went on to say that as a child he and his sister knew: “to do as they were told” that there was little room for how they felt.
As he went on he explained how, for a few years, he taught carpentry to prisoners. It was fascinating to hear about the prison where he worked, Kwìkwèxwelhp Healing Village.
He told of a healing river pond and an invitation for a winter swim in ceremony with Indigenous Medicine Wheel teachings, how every prisoner had their own drum they’d made themselves, how they lived in dorms not individual cells, that the men were still “told what to do” but not to the extent of a Max Prison.