About Bob Vetter: A Healer's Odyssey

I went on to graduate school at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where my path took a major turn.  Since Oklahoma is home to more tribes of Native Americans than any other, I decided upon what I thought would be a short-term project to conduct fieldwork among one of the tribes living in the region. My area of interest was the intersection of spirituality and healing.  Eventually I met Oliver Pahdopony, the last surviving medicine man of the Comanches, who adopted me as a grandson.  My “Grandpa Chief” as we called him, was healed of “incurable” cancer through his encounter with a healing spirit at a sacred site.  His tradition required of him that he repay that favor by healing others in his community until his death.  The many lessons I learned from him became a lifelong inspiration that continues to guide me to this day.  

As fate would have it, graduate school introduced me to the lifeways and spiritual teachings of other Native American peoples.  I was still deeply wounded, but the kindness that my Comanche family showed toward me initiated my process of healing.  My notion of spirituality slowly changed also as I developed an understanding of the sacred as connected to place.  I spent a lot of time alone in the Wichita Mountains––lands considered sacred to the Comanche and Kiowa people.  I had a series of profound awakenings during my interactions with the spirit of that powerful landscape.

I left Oklahoma with a Master’s degree in anthropology and a new notion that for me, spirituality was found through a connection with the Earth and in meaningful social relations with others.  This was very different from my earlier idea that the sacred was to be found only in a world up above. 

After receiving my degree in anthropology, I returned to New York.  I continued my interests in Native American lifeways and returned to Oklahoma frequently.   I was later adopted into families from other tribes including that of my adopted Kiowa uncle, medicine man and family historian Richard Tartsah, with whom I wrote a book called Big Bow: The Spiritual Life and Teachings of a Kiowa Family.  A Caddo elder Fred Parton adopted me as a son at a Native dance one year on Father’s Day.  After his passing another elder Moses Starr, a Cheyenne spiritual elder took me as a son.  Being adopted into various families of different tribes became the impetus of a great deal of my own healing.  Somehow these adoptions continued to heal the sense of isolation and woundedness that stemmed from my childhood.  Becoming a part of that indigenous world also helped me to view spirituality as an essential aspect of relationship with others.  I discovered and directly experienced that the sacred was to be found in community.

Parallel to my interest in the Native tribes in Oklahoma, beginning in graduate school I also became interested in Curanderismo, the traditional healing system found in Mexico.  Over the years, my involvement turned from academic interest to apprentice and eventually practitioner and teacher.  My first teacher was La Golondrina in San Antonio, TX (featured in the book They All Want Magic by Elizabeth de la Portilla).  Soon after I began an apprenticeship with Elena Avila, author of Woman Who Glows in the Dark.  I went on to learn various aspects of Curanderismo including the way of the temazcal (traditional Mesoamerican sweat lodge) from Laurencio Lopez-Nunez from Oaxaca, Mexico and Rita Navarrete Perez from outside Mexico City.  Over the years, I also studied various healing arts from far and wide including Medical Qigong, Sound Healing, various types of Energy Healing, Neuro-linguistic Programming and Ericksonian Hypnosis.