Kenneth "Bear Hawk" Cohen, MA, MSTh

Ken "Bear Hawk" Cohen author of the critically acclaimed classic, Honoring the Medicine: The Essential Guide to Native American Healing (Random House, 2003), is a a health educator, a traditional healer, and scholar of indigenous medicine. He is the recipient of the Alyce and Elmer Green Award for Innovation and Lifetime Achievement in Energy Medicine. Although best known for his pioneering work in Chinese healing arts (qigong), he has followed the "red road" of Native American wisdom as his personal spiritual path for thirty years.

Of Russian Jewish ancestry, Bear Hawk is an adopted member of a Cree family from Sturgeon Lake First Nation in Canada and teaches with the blessings and support of traditional elders of many Nations. He is an initiate of the Red Cedar Circle (Si.Si.Wiss Medicine) and various medicine societies. Bear Hawk was an apprentice to Cherokee spiritual teacher Keetoowah Christie, from 1977-87. He also trained with elders from the Northeast, Northwest, and Northern Plains.

In his quest for the common root of healing, Bear Hawk was initiated into Filipino oracion, prayer healing and psychic surgery, after a five year course of study. He studied African medicine with the Zulu shaman, Ingwe, in the lineage of the Holy Man, Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, and is a keeper of the sacred "bones" used in divination. Bear Hawk was one of four North American students of a master healer of the Igbo Tribe, Nigeria and is fully trained as an Igbo priest/shaman (dibia).

Bear Hawk demonstrated his healing abilities as one of nine "exceptional healers" studied by the Menninger Institute. He is a popular speaker at scientific, healing, and theological conferences. Bear Hawk's lectures have been sponsored by the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, the American Cancer Society, the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine, the World Congress on Energy Medicine, the Canadian Ministry of Health, and numerous universities.

In addition to writing Honoring the Medicine, Bear Hawk is the author of "Native American Medicine" in Essentials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This was the first work on Native American medicine to be included in a U.S. medical school textbook. He is also the author of Native Wisdom: 7 Keys to Health and Happiness (Sounds True, audio CD) and more than 200 journal articles on health and spirituality.

Bear Hawk lives with his family at 9,000 ft. elevation
in the Colorado Rockies.

Note: Ken Cohen was adopted by Andrew Naytowhow (Cree), Sturgeon Lake First Nation, during the 1980s, the same elder who wrote the introduction to his book, Honoring the Medicine. Although adopted by a Cree family, this does not mean he is a member of the Cree Nation—a political designation. Adoption by a family does not confer membership in a sovereign Native Nation nor does it magically change a person’s ethnicity. Unfortunately, in spite of numerous letters and protests by Ken Cohen, several websites continue to report that Ken is an adopted member of the Cree Nation. He strongly protests this misinformation.