How some of Oregon’s Indigenous youth are using equine therapy

By Rolando Hernandez (OPB)
July 22, 2024 2:48 p.m. Updated: July 30, 2024 1:07 p.m.

Broadcast: Tuesday, July 23

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A growing number of Oregon tribes have been investing in equine therapy for youth struggling on reservations and in foster care. Both the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs have developed programs in the last three years. And the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Klamath Tribes and Burns Paiute Tribe have plans to launch programs, some as soon as this summer. Nancy Marie Spears is the Indigenous children and families reporter for The Imprint. She has been reporting on this trend and also collaborated with Gray Area Podcast. Spears joins us to share more.

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This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller:  From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. A growing number of Oregon tribes are turning to horses to help youth struggling on reservations and in foster care. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs have both developed equine therapy programs in the last three years. The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, the Klamath Tribes and the Burns Paiute Tribe all have plans to launch their own programs, some in the coming months. Nancy Marie Spears is the Indigenous children and families reporter for The Imprint. She’s been reporting on this trend and she joins us now. Nancy, it’s great to have you on the show.

Nancy Marie Spears:  Hey, thanks for having me.

Miller:  Can you give us a sense, first, for just what often has been going on in these young people’s lives, before they end up in these equine treatment programs?

SpearsSure. That’s a great question. I was honored to be able to observe a horse therapy session that happened on the Forward Stride Ranch located in Beaverton, Oregon. A lot of these kids come from a variety of backgrounds. They range in age. The teen boys that I had the pleasure of speaking with, the day that I was there, ranged from the ages of 10 to about 16 or 17. And again, they come from a variety of backgrounds.

Some of these kids may have been in foster care. Others may have been in recovery from harmful experiences with drugs and alcohol dependency. One young gentleman that we had met was recently incarcerated as well. So there’re a lot of different backgrounds that these kids can come from. And they’re all seeking healing through this idea of animal kinships and the movement of cultural reclamation, in that way.

Miller:  Can you describe the scene at Forward Stride Ranch? This is a place you went to in Beaverton?

SpearsYeah, so again, I was able to spend one day there. I wish I could have spent more time there, but I was able to spend a full day observing an entire therapy session in July of last year. The way that this typically works is that every Tuesday and every Thursday they have between five and 12 youth participants in the equine therapy sessions. It typically starts out with the kids learning about the markings of horses, the terminology for how we talk about the markings of horses. Their stockings are long, short, and medium stockings and stripes on their faces, things like that. They learn terminology and then they just get comfortable around the idea of navigating around such a large animal.

Some of these kids may have had prior experience with horses. But others may not have. So there’s this navigation that happens with the kids, just getting comfortable around such large animals. And then they have the option of either leading the horse around on a lead or they can choose to ride. If they choose to do that, they get paired with a horse that they’re choosing to do that.

Miller:  What is it about horses in particular? Why have horses been chosen for therapy?

SpearsI want to thank you for that really thoughtful question. It really comes back to cultural reclamation and coming back to the Indigenous ways of being that existed prior to colonization. There’s this idea that a lot of tribes, including my own – I’m an enrolled citizen of Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma – and a lot of tribes come from horse nations. Historically, they had these very deep reciprocal relationships with horses, and that was used for a variety of needs. They were very much a deep type of friendship in that way. And the reason that it’s so important now is really [that it] comes back to the idea of how we think about horses in prior times, historically.

We have to remember tribes did not have fences for their horses. So why did horses stay around them? Well, it came from this much deeper relationship that only can come from time and from earning that horse’s trust in a very genuine, authentic way. So the Indigenous ways of being really centered on connection and relationship with, not just the land and horses certainly, but all living things. Horses really bring us back and bring a lot of tribal communities back to a time, prior to when land was taken away, prior to the boarding school era and the Indian adoption projects, and prior to this weaponization of the child welfare system against Indigenous communities that we’re seeing now. Prior to all that, there was this very, very deep relationship with horses, and with all living things and all animals. And we’re in a constant state now of trying to get that back.

Miller:  I want to hear more about this connection between culture and healing. But I wonder, first, if you could tell us about this remarkable man, John Spence, who’s been spearheading these efforts at Forward Stride and basically helping tribes around the state of Oregon create their own programs. Who is John Spence?

SpearsIt’s a great question, and I want to first say that my time with Mr. Spence has really come full circle in a way. This is a man that I met at a National Indian Child Welfare Association Conference in Reno last year. We had been talking since then and were tossed around this idea of doing a multimedia project. It was beautiful because I was actually very honored and privileged to be able to present this story at the next Indian Child Welfare Association Conference that happened in Seattle this past April.

That really came full circle for us. This is a man that everyone, I think, could really learn a lot from. As an elder, this is someone who is a direct representation of surviving the relocation policies of the federal government. He is the descendant of boarding school survivors. Actually, both of his parents met at the same boarding school where he ended up working, between 1988 and 1995. And this is a situation where horses were quite vital to his own recovery. He’s 38 [to] 40 years sober from alcoholism. At the time of this intense amount of grief that he had in his life, after he lost his wife of 22 years, several years ago, there was a horse at the time that he had named Koda.

He writes in his memoir that Koda was his healer during that period of very intense grief. So now he’s in his eighth decade. He really is more convinced than ever that there’s this very strong ability that horses have, and really all animal kinships have. But horses specifically have this ability to really help young people navigate through similar struggles [to what] he’s actually had in his life. And he comes from the background of horses. It kind of synergizes with his social work career.

He’s had other experiences with horses throughout his life. He was a ranch hand for his stepfather at 18, and then later in life he did 14 years of rodeo. And 20 years into his sobriety, he actually began having dreams about horses, which prompted him to, in 2009, volunteer at the Mustangs Offering Hope and Renewal Ranch, which is a mustang rehabilitation ranch in Oregon. And his work has really just taken off from there. He’s done equine therapy for about a dozen years now, part-time.

Miller:  At one point he had the young people, who had been a part of the group that you visited, say a prayer. It’s a little hard to hear but I want to have a listen to part of what it sounded like.

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Prayer Recording:  Pray that we all have a good day, have a good meal, get along with each other. Pray for my peers, their friends and their family, my friends and my family, and definitely friends of family. Everyone here has a good day and the horses get better. And hope.

[Together the group says] Hope.

[John Spence replies] Hope. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Miller:  In case it’s a little bit hard to make out at the end, he ends his prayer by talking about hope and everybody responds. What did you hear from these boys, and girls you talked to elsewhere, about what they get out of these sessions? What [do] they get in particular from spending time with horses?

SpearsYeah, it’s a really beautiful question, and I was honored to be able to witness a lot of really beautiful things regarding the transformation and the blossoming of these kids’ relationship with the horses. Again, some of these kids had never really been around a horse before. And when you’re small compared to these really, really big animals, that can be really intimidating, especially if you’re not someone who, like myself, grew up around horses and was very comfortable with them in that way.

Really, I think a poignant thing to mention here is the fact that Mr. Spence is always very mindful of this transformation that happens with the kids. He asks everyone at the end of every session, on a scale of one to 10, how do you feel have you improved since you got here? In my experience of what I witnessed throughout my week-long stay in Oregon, that had always been the case to where every child that he asked that question felt very much improved after the therapy session and after just one therapy session. That’s not even to say what would happen when more therapy happens more consistently with these kids. It was just my first experience witnessing them for one day.

One thing really always sticks with me – there was one kid, his name was Rocky, and he said that one thing that he liked about today was that he liked being in existence. And that’s such a basic thing for a teenager to say. But it’s so beautiful because it really goes to show the powerful proponent that animal kinships and horses can really bring to these kids. And there were other times where kids like to give goofy answers to things. If you give them a scale of one to 10, they’re going to say a 637 out of 12, or they’re going to say 99 or 6,000 or something. They’re just very, very enthusiastic responses.

Also, a lot of kids were very frank and honest with me about how they were feeling about the whole experience. A lot of them told me, “This isn’t as scary as I thought it would be with being around these big animals. These animals are like my best friends that make my problems go away.” The lowest score on the scale of one to 10 question was one little girl who said that her answer was number eight. And she said that her reason was because she didn’t ride. So that just goes to show you how much these kids enjoyed these horses.

Miller:  John Spence told you that what he’s doing is part of a movement towards Indigenizing therapy options. What does he mean by that?

SpearsEquine assisted psychotherapy, as it’s called, is something that has been gaining popularity in the western realm of medicine for a long time. There’s plenty of published articles out there from different health journals about the efficacy of this. But the real thing about Indigenizing is again, bringing it back to culture, bringing it back to the idea that culture can be a protective and a healing factor for kids and for families.

So there’s the incorporation constantly, a very mindful and intentional incorporation of language lessons, for example, of cultural teachings, of activities that are woven into the relationship and with the interactions with horses. And it goes back to what I’ve been saying earlier about cultural reclamation. There’s a lot of ways that, because of history and because of what happened to tribes systematically, we lost a lot of our land, which in turn meant that we lost a relationship with horses in a very big way. When you lose a huge amount of land mass, that’s an inevitable thing when you’re dealing with an animal that needs a lot of land to live on.

Another really, really important point to mention about the Indigenizing approach to equine therapy is this idea of going against the western ways of how you do things in a normal setting. You hear, in the wild, wild west movies or whatever that the typical term is, you’re going to “break” this horse, you’re breaking this wild stallion. But with the Indigenizing approach, you’re not doing that at all. You completely flip the mindset to what you’re actually doing. As they call it, you’re “gentling” the horse. We’re going to gentle with this horse through body language and through taking the time to earn a horse’s trust naturally, without it being steeped in control and dominance in the way that which very much runs contrary to the western way of interacting with these animals.

Miller:  You were accompanied by a Mexican American photographer named Josué Rivas. I want to play some of his reflections from the end of the day that you all spent together with these young people and horses.

Josué Rivas [recording]:  What would it look like if maybe we didn’t have to do this anymore? What if we didn’t have to deal with the trauma because there’s no trauma there? And I think that the work that they’re doing is setting a foundation for a potential future that looks like that. Where those young kids can just come and ride for fun. If we focus on the trauma so much, then something doesn’t allow space for receiving those stories of joy, or of triumph, or those stories of just pure silliness.

Miller:  I should say, that’s from a companion podcast episode that was tied to your reporting. I’m just curious what stands out to you in that clip?

SpearsOh, so many things. I think what I love most about the point that Josué made there was that it was a point that I had made as well, but from a completely different perspective. really. This is a person who migrated to the Americas from Mexico. And me, being from a background with a tribe that originated in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and was forcibly migrated to Oklahoma – my home state – it was this duality and this idea of what the world would look like today if trauma wasn’t there? And that we could actually choose to focus on more positive things at hand instead of always feeling like we need to highlight these systemic injustices of what the trauma has brought us. I think it’s just very beautiful and it makes a really beautiful point about recovery as well. These horse therapy programs are meant to help kids and adults. There’s a tribe in South Dakota that has an equine therapy program that centers on both children and adults. But when it comes to kids, it means a lot to have this idea that we’re talking about recovery, we’re talking about healing.

Mr. Spence mentioned to me several times, all throughout this year-long multimedia project, that horses are healing. This is something he believes very personally. This is something that the people he trains on these programs feels very healing about. The kids themselves told me that it’s something that’s healing for them. There was one 12-year-old girl that explained to me that she feels like horses can be a therapist in a way, and it’s something that kids are a lot more accessible to, compared to something that’s like talk therapy or those types of things.

So really Josue’s point brings it full circle for me in terms of the fact that this is a recovery story. This is a story about what healing can look like and how cultural reclamation is a really big part of that when it comes to Indigenous communities.

Miller:  Nancy, thanks very much.

SpearsThanks for having me. It was a pleasure.

Miller:  Nancy Marie Spears is the Indigenous children and families reporter for The Imprint. She joined us to talk about the spread of equine therapy programs for at-risk Native youth in Oregon.

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