Larry Dettweiler: The Best Job I

Ever Had
Several years ago my son gave me the gift of
Storyworth. Every week he would send a question
and at the end of the year all 52 responses were
published in a book. This article is a response to
my son’s question: “What was your best job
ever?”
The best job I have had is the one I have now. I
am a psychotherapist working 10-15 hours per
week from my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. However, the best job working
for someone else was definitely my job at Camosun College.
In 1975, after working three years at a treatment center
for pre-adolescent children and two years at the
University of Victoria, I was looking at a future with no
employment in sight. One day I got a call from Pat
Floyd, who told me they were expanding the liberal arts
department in order to service the Human Services
programs at the College. He wondered if I was
interested in teaching there. This was a golden
opportunity since teaching positions at the college were
highly coveted and very hard to attain.
At the time I was giving
talks at local preschools
in order to become better
known which I hoped
would eventually lead to Pat Floyd
more folks coming to my
private practice. I’m not sure this is true, but I was
told that Pat’s wife, Greta, had heard me talk and
told Pat about me! My first interview with Pat went
well and then I interviewed with Wilna Thomas who
coordinated the Human Services programs. We
really hit it off and she wanted Pat to hire me but
he was undecided about hiring another
psychologist. After a couple of anxious weeks, I
called Pat and said I needed to know by the end of

Wilna Thomas
the week if he was going to offer me a job. Several days later, he called, and I
was hired.
While teaching at Camosun I had many wonderful experiences. Working on the
union negotiating team, starting the Camosun Aikido club, feeling a sense of
camaraderie with fellow instructors and working for Pat, Neil and Thelma was a
joy.

Left: Larry practicing Aikido

Above: Larry being thrown my Anne Forrester

One of my favourite experiences was

teaming up with Gary Anderson to present a
course in Child Development over the radio.
It was the most popular radio course ever
presented and even though it only broadcast
in the Victoria area, I have been told that at
one point we had 10,000 listeners! Only
about 100 were actually registered but Gary
and I had great chemistry and apparently we
were very entertaining. But my most
rewarding experience was teaching
indigenous learners.

Right: Gary Anderson with his wife,

Elizabeth
 The Native bands had many social
issues. Each band had a social
worker whose job it was to deal with
those issues. Often the workers
had no training and few resources
and were overwhelmed and
desperate for help. From this need
sprang the Camosun College
Native Band Social Worker program
under the direction of Wilna Thomas
and Carol Easterbrook, two
Larry with his family while in Victoria amazingly talented and dedicated
L to R: Larry, Colin, Josh and Susan women. I was chosen to teach
several of the courses, beginning
with Basic Counseling Skills, a week-long all day program of instruction.
The history of disease, mistreatment, residential schools and many more
injustices at the hands of European culture were on my mind when I first arrived
at the Red Lion Inn in Victoria to begin teaching a basic counselling skills course
to some of the Salish people of Vancouver Island. However, never in my life have
I met a kinder, more welcoming group of students. After all of that history, they
still made me feel welcome.

I remember unloading my station wagon that was packed with boxes of reprints
and carefully reviewing my presentation schedule complete with exercises and
role plays before arriving at the classroom promptly at 9:00am. No one was
there. Around 9:30 people began to straggle in and at 10 we began. At
lunchtime I carried all my boxes back to the car unopened and returned them to
the college. It was clear to me this was nothing like any group I had ever taught
before. The problems they faced were momentous and I was lost as to how to
approach the topic in a way that would be helpful. I soon realized I would learn
much more from them than they would learn from me. In retrospect, teaching in
that program was one of the highlights of my life.
My first lesson was about the indigenous concept of time. At the end of the day I
asked if we could start on time the next day.
“What time?” one student asked.
I said, “How about 9:30?”
He said, “9:30 white man time or Indian time?”
“What is the difference?” I asked curiously.
“White man time, 9:30. Indian time, see you for lunch.”
Everybody laughed and we decided that 10:00 white man time would suffice.
One wonderful elderly lady said, “Yeah we got to go to the Bingo tonight so we
can’t get up too early.” Everybody laughed again and we adjourned for the day.
The next day, for my first exercise I chose reflective listening, a style of listening
that shows the other person that you hear them, understand them and have
empathy. The first role-play went something like this:
Ernie (a chief): “You know about 5 years ago I quit drinkin’. Me and my friend
Paul was out on my fishin’ boat one night and we drunk up a storm. Then next
day I woke up and Paul was gone. Overboard in the night. I still cry about it.”
Frankie (a wonderful young man) said: “Ernie it sounds like you come here with a
heavy heart.”
Never in all my years of teaching counselling skills had I seen people so naturally
listen and speak from the heart. I had nothing to teach them about this.
After a long discussion about what
was troubling them most, I
realized they were frustrated by
their inability to stand up to the
Canadian bureaucrats who
controlled their lives.
Assertiveness and outspokenness
were not valued traits in their
culture but are essential when
dealing with government agencies
and what they would call
“European culture.”
One of the reasons direct communication and assertive behaviour was difficult for
these indigenous learners was because much of the communication between
them was indirect or spoken in metaphor. Assertiveness, confrontation and in
some cases even eye contact were considered rude. Many of my students
remembered being beaten because they would not look a nun or a teacher in the
eyes for fear of appearing disrespectful.
I recall one time when we had to make an important decision. We sat in a circle
and I laid out the problem. One of the students started by telling a story about
his sister. The next described a fishing trip. This went on as each told a story. I
became more and more confused and was about to demand that we deal with
the issue at hand when Chief Josephine said, “Well, I guess we have arrived at a
decision.”
Stunned, I asked, “When did that happen and what was the decision?” They all
laughed and one of them said playfully, “Oh, you white people are so stupid.”
Somewhere in all that metaphor was a discussion and decision about the topic
but I’ll be damned if I had any idea what it was.
At the end of one course, the students asked me when I would have their papers
finished and grades submitted. I said, “Well, you know, I have to go fishin’ with
my brother up in Uclulet and then I have to go huntin’ with my dad. Also, my
cousin wants me to help him clear some pasture….” Amid howls of laughter, one
of them said, “You really understand us don’t you?” I hoped I did.
On another occasion I was teaching a course at the College with only one
indigenous student in the class. I assigned a paper that required the students to
describe how their parents had disciplined them as children and the effect it had
on them. The lone Salish student came to me and
told me she couldn’t do the paper because she
was not raised like that. She explained that if a
child misbehaved some adult or elder would take
them aside and tell them a story, most likely with
that pesky trickster Raven at the center. It was up
to the child to realize the meaning of the story and
apply the moral to his or her own behaviour. She
wrote a beautiful paper relating stories she was
told and how her behaviour changed in response
to the stories.
Nothing was more moving than watching some of
my former students graduating from University
with degrees in social work, wearing the beautiful
beaded and buttoned capes of their people. While other students were
introduced by their name only, the names of indigenous students were followed
by phases like, “From the Salish Nation” or “From the Haida Nation.” It seems to
me this communicated that, “Yes we are part of Canada but we are our own
people.”
The education I received from these students prepared me for one of the most
meaningful experiences of my life. Shortly after teaching the courses I received a
phone call from one of the indigenous employees at the College. She had
relatives in the course and she said: “Larry, my sister’s son is in terrible trouble
and I know you understand our people. Could you help him?” I agreed and soon
met with the boy in order to get a clear idea of the situation. The rest of the story I
can tell because it appeared in the local newspaper.

Shortly after I met with him, he robbed a convenience store. He beat the clerk so
badly he was in hospital for weeks. It looked as though the young man was on
his way
to adult prison. Soon after, I received a call from the chief of his mother’s tribe
who
asked me to write a letter to the judge pleading with him not to send the boy to
prison
but rather to turn him over to the elders of the tribe. The judge agreed.

Although this young man was living in urban Canadian culture, this action by the
elders solidified his identity as an indigenous young man. They told him, “You are
one of us.”
The boy was taken into the tribe and they taught him the spiritual practises and
the
respect for nature and life in general that were so central to the culture. Then
they
placed him on a rural trap line for the winter where he had to practice the skills
they had
taught him and how to survive on his own.

At the end of this experience they held a Potlatch ceremony in the long house in
which gifts are given by the host to others in the tribe.In this case, however, the
recipient of the gifts was the young man who had been beaten.

Each member of the tribe donated money to cover the clerk’s expenses and lost
wages. Then each member stood up and expressed the shame they felt after
hearing of the treatment he had received from one of their own. Then the young
man who had beaten him stood up and expressed his shame and they
embraced. The last I heard of this fine young man many years ago was that he
was helping indigenous youth around the province in a program aimed at
preventing drug and alcohol abuse.

We often talk about shame as a bad thing. In this case it served to solidify this
boy’s identity as a member of the tribe and emphasized the fact that he belonged
and was truly a member of a race and culture with values and expectations. It
gave him an identity as a proud indigenous man whose behaviour reflected on
his brothers and sisters in the tribe.

That may have been the most important letter I have ever written.
Another moving experience happened during the first course I taught. One of the
younger members of the group, Frankie, approached me and said to me “I like
you Larry and I want to explain to you what it is like to be an Indian.”
He began by saying, “I used to hate myself for being Indian. Then I hated white
people. Now I don’t hate anybody.”
He talked about his life as a child and the difficulties of growing up in white
culture. At some point in his adolescence he entered a program that had the
purpose of teaching indigenous boys the old culture and the values that were so
central to his people . It transformed him and he became the proud young man
he was at that time with a purpose in life based on love and respect and not on
hate. I will be forever grateful for that
experience.
At the end of that first week, I was
overwhelmed with gratitude and aware
that somehow these people had changed
me. But I was wondering if I had
achieved anything of substance when
Chief Ernie walked up to me, grabbed my
hand and said, “Thank you Larry. I think
what you have taught me will really help
me help my people.” I only hoped the
same was true for me and my people.
In 1986 my wife, Susan, and I travelled to
Santa Fe, New Mexico for a vacation.
We felt such a personal and spiritual
connection to the place that we vowed to
move there when I retired. In the early

Larry and his wife, Susan, in front of a sculpture

by Apache artist Craig Dan Goseyun titled
“Feeding the Spirit”
90s I became interested in Jungian Psychology and realized I no longer wanted
to teach but rather to become a full-time therapist. When I turned 55 I took early
retirement, we moved to Santa Fe and I took a job as a dean at a college training
counsellors and art therapists. Eventually I left that job to live out my dream as a
full-time therapist in an office I shared with Susan, also a therapist.

Larry’s family (without Larry) L t R: Josh (Larry’s son), Maddy (grandson), Hazel
(granddaughter), Molly Bell (Josh’s wife); Leo (grandson), Kristin Futon (Colin’s wife),
Milo (grandson), Ellis (granddaughter), Colin (son) Susan Riley (Larry’s wife).

As much as I love New Mexico, I

carry with me wonderful memories
of my experience at Camosun, the
beauty of Victoria, all I learned and
the friends I had there. I have
instructed my wife and children that
when I die, I wish my ashes to be
spread on the west coast of
Vancouver Island for that is where,
as the Dine (Navajo) people would
say, I learned to be a human being.