For Adelina Alva-Padilla, healing means opening up to the presence of God.

"Every aspect of healing revolves around the Grandfather," says the 69-year-old elder of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, a Catholic, and a renowned spiritual healer who welcomes and sings to the sick arriving on her doorstep. Her prayerful songs lift the spirits of the weary and aid in their recovery. She also uses medicinal herbs, candles, oils and Native rituals to comfort anxious minds, instill hope, even ease physical pain.

Sometimes she will take an ailing patient to the sweat lodge behind her home. An outdoor wood fire is used in healing prayers. And, when necessary, she helps people to accept death with dignity and peace.

"I will put all the gifts the Creator has given me to help someone," says Alva-Padilla, who sometimes spends the whole day with a visitor. "We're in God's time. Nothing should be in a hurry."

Residing on the Santa Ynez Reservation in Santa Barbara County, Alva-Padilla is supportive of modern medicine and encourages people to follow their doctor's advice. She also understands the intricate link between mind, body and spirit and helps them reconnect with the Creator in a way conventional medicine cannot. For that reason she turned her home and property into a healing center, called Healing Together with the Ancient Ones (Kiyicxalaswun Molmoloquiwas).

Alva-Padilla charges nothing for her healing ministry, which draws people from all over. "Grandfather has been very, very generous with letting me see that light, the light of healing," she says. "And he gave me all my songs. He gave them to me very freely."

In gratitude, people bring gifts displayed throughout every corner of her home --- hanging baskets, pottery, woven blankets, paintings and food --- and also meet her four Chihuahuas scampering about.

A mother of seven grown children, grandmother of 37 and great-grandmother of 27, Alva-Padilla weaves and integrates her Native heritage with her Catholicism. Her backyard is an eclectic mix of wooden Native sculptures and a variety of religious symbols as well as a prominent outdoor altar to Our Lady of Guadalupe, whom she calls "Virgencita."

Father Tom Schweitzer, chaplain to the Native American Catholic community, has celebrated Palm Sunday Mass with the Chumash community at Alva-Padilla's center, and appreciates her ministry.

"She's trying to reconcile the traditional ways of the Native people with the modern world so that they can take the best of both without losing their identity," he says, adding that Catholics of other heritages can learn from the Native reverence for the land. "The Native teaches us to care for creation, to be part of the balance, and to always respect Mother Earth."

Healing from suffering

Alva-Padilla has had to heal from much suffering in her own life. Her mother gave her away when she was six years old (the two reconnected when she was 16). Her first husband, with whom she had seven children, left the family, and poverty as a single mother was another struggle.

Alva-Padilla sent her children to Mother of Sorrows Catholic School in South Los Angeles, but later became discouraged with her faith during the break-up of her marriage. She was no stranger to anger, and during this time had little connection to her indigenous heritage.

Her life began to change soon after her mother was diagnosed with cancer and pleaded with her daughter to embrace Native traditions. "Would you wear a headband for me?" her dying mother asked her. "Would you go back to our people for me? Would you learn the ways and learn the songs?"

Alva-Padilla, who had taken off work for three months to care for her mother, wasn't interested. Yet her mother kept asking, and slowly a daughter's heart opened to the possibility. When her mother died, the Chumash community organized a traditional burial for her at Santa Ines Mission in Solvang, and Alva-Padilla was filled with questions about drumming customs, and the use of herbs in religious rituals.

At the same time she cherished her Catholic beliefs and traditions and kept a lit candle in memory of her mother in front of a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

In the following weeks and months Alva-Padilla began to learn about Native ways and incorporate them into her life. She put on a traditional headband, and fixed hair in braids. She wore shell jewelry and learned about the use of feathers.

The first year she carried a bag of prayers, and friends asked if they could put their names in her bag.

"I started feeling all the people's pain," she says, "all of what they were going through."

The second year, following a trip to Mexico, she carried an urn, and learned that when she spoke her truth people trusted what she had to say. The third year she carried a staff and learned from God the Creator to be proud of who she was as a Native woman.

She felt God's protection, but understood that sometimes her heart would ache when seeing and listening to the hurts of her Native people.

"You have to have a heart to be a healer," says the petite woman with a small bear claw tattoo gracing her right cheek. She tries to embody the spirit of the healing bear.

Alva-Padilla moved to the Santa Ynez Rservation in the mid-1970s and later married Osvaldo Casillas, her steadfast support, for the past 22 years.

Her healing songs have taken her to Africa, Latin America, Europe and across the United States, where she has sung Native songs to people with cancer, kidney disease and in comas. She has sung to families facing the loss of a son to the war in Iraq.

"God loves us and he wants to give that light to us. Sometimes in life we're so devastated with things that happen that hurt our mind, body or spirit that we can't relate to that light," she says, recognizing that she too continues on her own healing journey. "I can only teach you how to open your heart to God, because everything else He will teach you," she adds, her eyes sparkling.

In December, more than 90 students from the University of Monterey will learn about Native healing traditions from Alva-Padilla. She frequently speaks at conferences and travels to Mexico about three times a year.

Embracing the wonder of the day, Alva-Padilla's first prayer each morning is one thanksgiving. "Thank you, Creator, for opening my eyes to another day," she says softly. "Door in. Door out. Bless whoever is going to come."

November is Native American Heritage Month, a significant opportunity to recognize the contributions of Native peoples in California. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles resides in the lands of the Acjachemen, Chumash, Tataviam and Tongva Tribes. The four tribes have survived in their Sacred Ancestral lands to the present.