David Edward Walker and Kussamwhy Levina Wilkins (Yakama-Wenatchapam)

D avid Edward Walker was born in Lansing, Michigan, and spent much of his young adult life in the north suburbs of the Detroit area working as a dishwasher, cab driver, coffee salesman, and clerk. He overcame numerous personal challenges to complete his bachelors degree in psychology at Oakland University (1986, magna cum laude), and a masters (1988) and doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Detroit in 1992.

He overcame numerous personal challenges to complete a doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Detroit in 1992.

As he began his practice, he also embarked as a performing singer-songwriter using the stage name of ‘David Folks’, releasing two compact discs, Roadside Park and Refusing to View, garnering airplay on college radio shows across the U.S., touring and sharing the stage with luminaries like Rodney Crowell, Richard Shindell, Richie Havens, Clive Gregson, and Pierce Pettis.

After his Native-themed song, Joshua Maiden, achieved airplay on college radio, David was recruited as a board member of DreamCatchers, a Detroit-area musicians’ project benefiting Native causes, and contributed two songs to compilation discs, performing at several regional concerts. By 1997, his song repertoire had grown, and he was recruited by Rod Kennedy to perform at the 25th Anniversary Kerrville Folk Festival and also went to Nashville to offer an hour-long set at the legendary Bluebird Cafe.

Soon afterward, his recordings to date were honored with an entry into Music Hound’s Essential Folk Album Guide (1998), noting “a style that encompasses urban and rural images, rich metaphors, spiritual themes, moving ballads, and ambitious fingerstyle guitar work, [and] a singer-songwriter with a special ability to reach listeners on an emotional level.”

Handed his pay at Kerrville by folk idol, Tom Paxton, writer of classics like “Ramblin’ Boy,” which moved him to tears as a child, David arrived at a music career high and a soul-searching moment. “I was playing musical baseball in the minor leagues, and the sacrifices for making it to the majors just weren’t for me,” he remarks. He missed his wife and kids and felt tired of the lifestyle of the independent musician. David soon returned home and quit performing altogether for the next five years.

Dr. David Edward Walker accepted a position as sole professional psychologist serving the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation with the Indian Health Service in 2000 and relocated with his family to central Washington. His personal path brought many spiritual changes, and he connected more deeply with his Cherokee heritage through his dad and grandmother, and attended numerous traditional ceremonies, sweatlodges, and meetings. He also fell in love with the Bahá’i faith.

From his first day on the job, David found himself in conflict with the Indian Health Service’s medical model ideology and bureaucracy, yet oddly, his misadventures increased his rapport and friendship with the Yakama Nation community. A collaboration with Yakama Nation community members unfolded over several years, and he helped design the first two Pathways to Hope and Healing conferences as well as the first behavioral health program centered upon Yakama cultural traditions, Niix Ttáwaxt (neeK tau’waukT, ‘good growth to maturity’). As manager of the program, David was able to quit Indian Health Service and continue under contract with Yakama Nation.

Download David’s Curriculum Vitae

Over the years, David developed his own scholarship on a lesser-known perpetrator of  cultural oppression in Native America — the U.S. mental health movement itself. He first began seeing the fruits of this system’s troubling history in his everyday work. For example, some Native youth and young adults felt convinced their lack of success in school and other places came from an underlying genetic inferiority, being “born Indian,” an internalized racism traceable to the biases of psychologists working in American Indian boarding schools in the first half of the twentieth century.

David worked with many Native survivors of violence and abuse. With heroic effort, some were able to overcome social, economic, and racist barriers they faced. Others, however, became desperate, lost their way, and eventually took their own lives. David began to see the psychiatric labels and pills dispensed so freely by IHS as obscuring his clients’ understandable reactions to cultural oppression. He began to feel “disgusted and impatient” with the U.S. mental health system’s blindness to its own past and continued complicity in colonialism, its abuses, and incompetence.

David’s critical writing on this topic began with a chapter challenging the use of the ADHD psychiatric label in Indian Country for the edited book, Critical New Perspectives on ADHD (Routledge, 2006), which won the 2006 National Association for Special Needs Academic Book Award (NASAN) in the United Kingdom. This was at a time when Native American boys led all ethnicities in the U.S. in being labeled with ADHD. With collaborator Dr. Albert Galves, he published “Debunking the ‘brain science’ behind attention deficit hyperactive disorder” for Ethical Human Psychology & Psychiatry in 2012.

David’s first novel, Tessa’s Dance, medaled in the 2013 Independent Publisher Magazine Book Awards (IPPY) and its sequel, Signal Peak, won in the 2013 IndieFAB Book of the Year Awards. In a 2014 review of both books for Indian Country Today, Shawnee-Lenape writer and activist Steven Newcomb told readers: “Visualize two novels so grounded that they will resonate with familiarity for anyone who lives with the beautiful and maddening daily realities of ‘Indian’ life. Imagine that the two books deal with all the issues of tragedy, psychological healing, and cultural and language revitalization that are necessary in the wake of centuries of genocidal efforts to destroy our Nations and Peoples. If all that appeals to you, then you’ll love Tessa’s Dance and Signal Peak . . .”

In 2015 and 2016, David offered four historical critiques of the U.S. mental health system for Indian Country Today which were controversial and received thousands of likes and hundreds of shares across social media.

Coyote’s Swing: A Memoir & Critique of Mental Hygiene in Native America (Washington State University Press, 2023) is his first nonfiction book, and the only comprehensive history and critique of the U.S. mental health system in Indian Country. “There were many stops and starts,” he says. “I began gathering research and writing this book in 2002 and digressed into writing the novels, then several other things, before I could rise to such a challenging project. For a long time, it seemed too hard to do.”

David recently let his contract go with Yakama Nation but continues to visit old friends there, including his kala, Kussamwhy Levina Wilkins, originator of the Twelve Virtues of Níix Táawaxt, pictured with him above at Yakama Nation Treaty Days (2023). He currently lives with his family on the Port Madison Indian Reservation, Suquamish Nation, in western Washington state.

David says, “I’m getting a little older but am still up for making trouble.” A husband, father, writer, poet, activist, and singer-songwriter, he continues his work as a valued consultant, speaker, and psychologist to several tribal communities. His highest aspiration is to use his remaining years to “widen love and compassion, serve justice, and avoid doing harm.”

He also wants to play more guitar, record a backlog of songs, and pick up better skills on the banjo. He loves to hear from new friends so feel free to contact David.

Read the Citation – that accompanied David’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry, awarded in 2023.

Articles, Podcasts & Interviews
with Dave

Missouri Cherokee Descendent

Iam not enrolled in a federally- or state-recognized tribe or organization and make no claim thereby. I also request that conference organizers, interviewers, and others please remember that I am no more and no less a “Missouri Cherokee descendent.”

I refuse to deny my heritage through my grandmothers, Elizabeth Gibson, and Elizabeth Jane Albina Alexander, both of whom were compelled to suppress who they were in the time in which they lived.

I’ve never profited or benefited from the Missouri Cherokee connections in my family. If you are curious to know more, they are detailed in the memoir portions of Coyote’s Swing. Please feel free to contact me with any further questions.

Pictured at the right – David’s Grandma Donna, a Missouri Cherokee Descendent

David Edward Walker’s Grandma Donna Smouse Barlow Walker, Missouri Cherokee Descendent

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