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Artist
Bear Heart
3+ albums
about
Marcellus Bear Heart Williams is not a large man, but his presence fills a room. His voice does, too— it is deep and sonorous, especially when he chants or sings. And he sings often, sometimes in his native Creek, as one would expect of a medicine man, but sometimes at a wedding he sings old love songs in English. Bear Heart was born in 1918 into the Muskogee Nation Creek Tribe in Okemah, Oklahoma, and reared on two spiritual paths. His uncles taught him the traditional medicine ways of his tribe, and his mother steeped him in the Christian faith. He came to Rio Rancho 28 years ago when the late Dr. Harold Cohen asked him to serve as an adjunct consultant to the Memorial Psychiatric Hospital, and he still lives there with his medicine helper, Regina Water Spirit. If he were so inclined, Bear Heart could string a bunch of titles and credits after his name. He is a Road Man in the Native American Church and an ordained American Baptist minister. He has received an honorary doctorate. He is the author of The Wind is My Mother, which has been published in 14 languages, and another book, The Bear is My Father, is in the works. More significant to Bear Heart are the lives he has touched. He prayed with the firefighters at Ground Zero in New York City in November 2001, provided spiritual counseling to rescue workers and their families after the Oklahoma City tragedy and once met with President Truman. “I went into the Oval Office and we talked,” Bear Heart says of his visit with