Ojibwe author Jim Northrup took me aside at his seventieth birthday party a couple of years ago and told me it was time for me to write a book. He told me when he was starting out as a writer; the well-known poet and author Simon Ortiz pulled him aside:
“This is what he told me and I’m passing this on to you. ‘Believe that what you have to say is important. The spelling, commas and punctuation will take care of themselves.’”
In the Spirit of Medicine features the essays of Dr. Arne Vainio, an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and a family practice doctor on the Fond Du Lac reservation in Cloquet. His essays on life, work, medicine, and spirit are published in News from Indian Country and you can find the link to this story here.