I want to tell the story of being kicked out of Canada, since it's one of the more bizarre experiences of my life, but it's also a message that Creator has a different plan for me. To my complete shock and amazement, on October 15th, I got a response from Canada Immigration in Los Angeles about my application for permanent residency. I had just been declared "criminally inadmissible" to Canada because of a traffic violation in Arizona in 2005 for which I paid a $200 fine. I had a misadventure with a red light late one evening when no one else was around. I didn't realize that the U-turn green arrow (which always followed the red light) was turned off after 9:30 pm and I habitually turned, only there wasn't a green arrow like in the daytime and a cop was sitting there and bingo! Little did I realize this would someday make me a "criminal" in Canada. The ticket dropped from my record after three years and I have a clean driving record now in the U.S. What's even more funny was that the same Immigration people knew about this from the time I entered Canada and it was no big deal for me when I got a work permit in 2005 and in 2007. Apparently policy changed, or this is what I was told by a Saskatchewan provincial judge with whom I became acquainted. The new policy as of July 2008 is to treat all traffic stops in the U.S. as "felonies" in Canada. Strange.

So that's a long way of saying I had to rethink my life plan. Besides focusing more on teaching rather than clinical practice (I'm teaching psychology now at Argosy University and anthropology at Johnson State College), I'm throwing my creative energy into the newly formed Coyote Institute (for Studies of Change and Transformation) which is a way to blend and re-energize indigenous wisdom with the post-modern world. Anyway, our two main current projects are 1) the Hahokah Project, which is to create a healing circle in every living room in the world, and 2) the Traditional Healing Project, which is to create a network through Second Life of traditional healers from around the world who can connect with each other and can also be reached by anyone interested in traditional cultural healing. We're slowly building all this at www.coyoteinstitute.org.

Lewis