STAHS honors author Castle at local book signing for A Time to Wail
By Teresa Simmons
It was with great pride that STAHS (Siletz Tribal Arts and Heritage Society)
honored Grace Elting Castle at her book signing for A Time to Wail on Dec. 1 at the
Tribal Community Center on Government Hill.
A native of Siletz, Grace has spent her life digging, uncovering, exposing and
writing about the events and lives of the first of people in the Lincoln County area and
then on a national scale. Many local people have followed her career first as a writer
for the Lincoln County Leader (now the Newport News-Times) and then on to larger
venues, most recently Oregon Coast Magazine.
For many years Grace worked as a private investigator in Chicago. She participated
in the re-investigation of countless wrongful convictions and continues the battle to
reform our system of justice.
She was an outspoken advocate for the passage of the Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and was often the lead investigator for
American Indian defendants.
After an eventful life as an award-winning journalist, photographer and private
investigator, Grace set herself the task of creating this novel that has received the best
of reviews.
Michael Koryta, New York Times bestselling author, had this to say: “A Time to
Wail is a marvelous novel, written with unique empathy and authenticity. Grace Elt-
ing Castle uses her firsthand knowledge of both PI work and the reservation life and
customs of the Siletz people to create a compelling and insightful read that will call
to mind the great Tony Hillerman.”
STAHS took this opportunity to honor Grace with a plaque to express appreciation
for her efforts and ongoing support of Native people and to celebrate her achievement
in creating a literary work featuring Siletz.
Courtesy photo by Teresa Simmons
STAHS members Cynthia Farlow (left), Gloria Ingle, Angela Ramirez, Grace Elting
Castle and Shawna Gray (far right) at the book signing
For more information about the Siletz Tribe, please visit ctsi.nsn.us.
Adverse childhood events can impact digestion and health
By Nancy Ludwig, MS, RDN, LD, Head
Start Consulting Nutritionist
As part of my role as a consultant
nutritionist to Siletz Tribal Head Start, I
offer information for families. In a previ-
ous issue (February 2017), I stated that
stress could significantly interfere with
digestion, even when nutritious vital food
is consumed. Everything is connected –
nothing in our body stands apart. Diges-
tion is at the core of health, yet more than
what we eat influences our digestion.
My focus this month is on adverse
childhood events (ACE or ACEs when
plural) and their correlation with negative,
lasting effects on health and well-being.
Niki Gratrix is a nutritionist who edu-
cates about the topic of adverse childhood
events. ACEs are potentially traumatic
events that range from physical, emotional
or sexual abuse to parental divorce or the
incarceration of a parent or guardian.
Niki’s website is www.nikigratrix.
com/ where you can find a link to calculate
your ACE score, learn about additional
ACE factors and get her free e-book on
The 7 steps to Healing Childhood Emo-
tional Trauma and Building Resilience.
Her references are provided in the e-book.
Possibly the most under-exposed risk
factor on health across a lifetime for all
major chronic health conditions in the
world today is the effect of unresolved
emotional trauma from childhood.
In the late 1980s, a study of obese
people discovered that more than 50
percent had been sexually abused as
children. Research suggests a 34 percent
increased risk of developing obesity as an
adult when one is subjected to moderate
abuse during childhood. For severe abuse,
research supports a 50 percent increased
risk of developing obesity in adulthood.
Trauma isn’t always a direct experi-
ence with memory. Trauma can be a col-
lective experience, inherited or passed
down through families and groups.
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Collective or intergenerational trauma
is at work in the Native population and
adds a burden to health. In research, it has
been found that third-generation children
of the survivors of the holocaust have the
same physiological symptoms of trauma
as their grandparents.
The prenatal period, the time we are
in our mother’s womb, is also a critical
time when trauma experienced by our
mothers can be passed on to the unborn
child. When evaluating your own ACE
score, you may want to consider the fol-
lowing: whether your mother experienced
significant trauma during her pregnancy
with you, what the ACE scores were for
your parents or key caregiver, or whether
your parents or grandparents were affected
by war, political upheaval or other adverse
events listed above during their lifetimes.
If during childhood there was no out-
side support or the ACEs we faced were
even a family “secret,” research shows the
impact is worse for the child. Research
shows just having one reliable adult to
speak to about their experience can help
children bounce back from an ACE.
How does our childhood biography
become our biology? People who expe-
rienced trauma in childhood have an
increased risk (7 out of 10) of the top 10
causes of death and a 20-year reduction
in lifespan.
How does emotional trauma and
early life stress change our biology over
a lifetime? It turns out that emotional
trauma has an effect on three major areas
– our behavior, our biochemistry and our
beliefs, all of which lead to diseases and
health conditions in later life.
Behaviors or habits, like over-eating
to suppress or distract from emotional
pain, and addictions often occur after
unresolved childhood emotional trauma.
Studies show an increased likelihood of
using injection drugs, binge drinking,
smoking and risky sexual behaviors. It
is noted that these behaviors may lead to
January 2019
increased risk of diseases like hepatitis,
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
ACEs also lead to other destructive
health patterns, which lead to lack of
healthy self-care, including perfectionism,
workaholism and over-achievement.
Our biochemistry shifts when we
face trauma. The body responds with
increased activity in the brain’s limbic
system to release stress hormones. These
hormones ready the body for a fight or
flight response.
In the case of emotional trauma in
childhood, however, when neither a fight
nor flight response is possible, these
impulses cannot switch off and two things
result: 1. The trauma becomes “frozen into
the psyche of the body.” 2. Young brains
become hardwired to respond to stress
more easily; less external stress is required
to produce all the cascading changes in
the body that result from a stress response.
Toxic early life stress creates low-
grade inflammation in the brain, some-
thing that was thought not to be possible.
This toxic stress leads to depression,
digestion problems (called dysbiosis or
leaky gut), hormonal imbalances, chronic
fatigue and immune system problems,
such as susceptibility to infection or food
and chemical sensitivities.
Beliefs have an extremely powerful
effect on biology, directly and indirectly.
When we are unable to process and release
the impact of the traumatic event, our
memory becomes stored in the uncon-
scious mind and in the body.
World-leading expert in trauma recov-
ery, Dr. Bessel Van Kolk, discusses this
in his book, The Body Keeps the Score:
Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing
of Trauma. When traumatized, the body
remembers. Time does not heal, but it
conceals and our biography eventually
becomes our biology.
When trauma becomes unconscious,
it is possible to have parts of us that are
angry, crying or fearful all the time. These
parts of us can have unconscious beliefs
associated with them that may include
feeling unworthy of health and wellbeing,
feeling ashamed and like we deserve to be
punished with ill-health. We may have a
conscious belief that we can be well and
recover from an illness, but this can be
sabotaged by our unconscious belief sys-
tems linked to trauma from ACEs.
Science does not yet fully understand
how conscious and unconscious beliefs
can change biology, cause spontaneous
disease remission and so forth, but it
happens all the time. Many clinicians and
healers have observed that unconscious
beliefs and “conflicts of consciousness”
that are not consciously processed can
become symbolically expressed via pain
and illness in the body.
Healing emotional trauma is one of
the most important aspects to address in
all chronic complex illnesses. Unresolved
emotional trauma leads to pain and is at
the core of addictive and destructive health
patterns (behaviors).
Unresolved trauma leads to a state
of chronic stress and inflammation (bio-
chemistry), which perpetuates illnesses
and leads to beliefs that sabotage our
ability to recover.
Siletz Tribal Head Start offers nutri-
tional support at no cost to Head Start
families. This usually occurs over the
telephone. If you have questions or nutri-
tion concerns about your Head Start child,
please contact your teacher or the director
and ask to speak to the nutritionist.
For trauma, additional help may be
needed (at any age, regardless of cause).
When we learn about and support chil-
dren’s needs, we help Head Start children
and their families. Likewise, if we didn’t
get the support we needed as children and
we address it now, we also help children,
their families and a much greater world.
We are all connected. Let’s support
each other to be well.