Description
“The manuscript is truly an Indigenous, Native American work filled with spirits, dreams, and knowledge. The author is a Truth Teller [who] offers wonderful ways to recognize and fight historical trauma, which is major contribution…Young people and their families carry many Soul Wounds, and I find this book manuscript to be helpful to individuals and families.”
— Dr. Clifford Trafzer, Costo Distinguished Professor of American Indian Affairs, University of California Riverside
“Later in the night, I felt another stirring inside me. Something I had buried and denied for over twenty years began to make itself heard. I cried out, ‘Who am I? Am I Indian—or am I white?’ I heard a voice, and it told me, ‘Go home.’”
Severe emotional pain set the author on a fresh path of discovery. Repeatedly encountering birds, she sensed her ancestors and began listening to their messages. Then, with help from her relatives, she uncovered five generations of her family’s stories. They start with a Nez Perce chief who met Lewis and Clark in Idaho, continue to a warrior who died fighting alongside Chief Joseph in the War of 1877 followed by three generations attending government boarding schools, and end with a sixteen-year-old Irish American girl who defied her parents and decided to marry a handsome young Indian boy. Listening to the Birds is one family’s saga—told with the intimacy of a memoir, the heart of a warrior, and the intensity of a woman on a mission to heal the soul of her people.
About the author
An enrolled tribal member of the Nez Perce tribe, Roberta Tawlikitsanmay’ Paul, Ph.D., was born and raised on the reservation. She now gives presentations for survivors of intergenerational trauma, where she teaches that sharing stories is a Native way to heal wounds—but, she says, “If you don’t know the story, you can’t heal.” Unearthing that past became her own first step toward healing wounds of racism, relocation, and assimilation. In addition, she teaches workshops on healing historical trauma using a ten-step model she developed—one she describes in Listening to the Birds.
