I am a retired physician, born in 1947, whose mother was a Vermont Lost Nation Mohegan Indian. Like my two older brothers, I suffered from a severe congenital hearing loss. My deafness made me a solitary, introspective youth, and I spent my days wandering through the woods and fields surrounding the small DuPont factory town in South Jersey where I grew up. Thanks to my mother's father, I received a thorough grounding in traditional Mohegan culture. I found thousands of Indian artifacts, and dreamed of a career in archaeology. My white father, a DuPont research chemist, saw to it that I received an excellent education in the best of prep schools and universities, which laid the foundations for my writing career. In 1966, I entered the University of California at Berkeley and dreamed of a career in archeology, until I was caught up in the Age of Aquarius and sought a "more relevant" calling in life. In 1968, I dropped out of college, joined the Army, and volunteered for Viet Nam. I was trained as a medical corpsman, and decided that I would go to medical school and become a physician after my discharge from the military. In 1975, I graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. I did two years of pediatric residency at the Boston Children's Hospital, and two in internal medicine at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. I was interested in medical anthropology from the beginning. I saw medicine as a means of participating in tribal cultures around the world. While at the Ford Hospital, I spent time in both South America and Botswana, where I was able to work in bush hospitals, meet shamans, and learn about traditional medical practices. I completed my residency training in 1980, and worked in Papua New Guinea from 1981 through 1983. I asked the government of PNG to post me in areas that had had the least contact with western civilization. I was first sent to the Enga Province in the Highlands, which had not met white people until shortly before World War Two. The Enga Province is famous in Papua New Guinea for its tribal warfare, and I found myself in the middle of a hot combat zone. We also had many epidemic diseases that took thousands of lives. As I learned the languages of the Enga, I became ever more involved in tribal disputes. The Engans said that I was becoming one of them, which it wasn't that hard for a Mohegan Indian to do. Traditional Engan and Mohegan cultures are similar. Unfortunately, I became so Engan after one year that a tribe believed I had sided with their enemies in a dispute, and came with axes to kill me. The government of PNG transferred me to the far more peaceful Southern Highlands, where I finished out my time in Papua New Guinea. In 1984, I began a solo private practice in Sandersville, Jones County, Mississippi, so that I could learn from the shamans at the nearby Bogue Homma Choctaw reservation. I was run out of town in less than eight months by the Ku Klux Klan. In 1985, I became the physician chief of staff at the Choctaw Indian reservation hospital outside Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi. My relationship with an elderly Choctaw shaman so angered the local white police that I was strangled and left for dead in the Neshoba County jail in May, 1985. While my body was comatose, I had a Near-Death Experience during which my soul journeyed to Indian heaven. In the view of Choctaw traditionalists, my NDE made me a premier shaman. Beginning in 1966, I was in the habit of writing long letters home that descried my various adventures. Friends and family soon said I should be writing books. After 1985, anthropologists added their encouragement, saying that "my unique access" to shamans and sorcerers worldwide could "transform science's understanding of the religion of the American Indian and other tribal peoples." Now that I am retired, I have the time to go over my letters and pictures from my travels. I enjoy writing about the interface between tribal cultures and modern medicine. I have completed books about the Mississippi Choctaw and Papua New Guinea. I am at work on a book on my pediatric residency at Boston Children's. I plan to write about caring for my dying parents during the 1980s, 1990s, and early years of the 21st Century. I plan to explore the role of shamanism in modern medical practice to outline the contributions traditional cultures can make to improve the care of the mentally ill and the dying. I have no need for any income from my writing. My books are a labor of love intended to assist others who confront the great mysteries of life and death.
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