At the edge of the Texas-Mexico border last week, beneath the shade of towering trees, immigrant advocates convened in a Brownsville park to protest a new state law.

“No SB4!” they chanted, rallying in English and Spanish, calling the bill “anti-immigrant.” Two months earlier in Brownsville, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott had signed that Texas Senate Bill 4 into law. 

As the Biden administration and Texas continue to clash over illegal immigration, the Lone Star State seeks to expand its own immigration enforcement powers through SB4, in a test of traditional state and federal roles. Barring a court ruling expected soon, the law goes into effect March 5. 

SB4 empowers local law enforcement to arrest individuals suspected of entering the state illegally, and extends deportation powers to Texas judges. Beyond raising fear and due process concerns in immigrant communities, SB4 is also sparking questions around the logistics of enforcement. 

After all, legal experts say, immigration enforcement has long been understood as a primarily federal authority upheld by the Constitution. During an election year when many Americans rank immigration as a top concern, a win for Texas could open a new legal era.

“It would mean you now have a federal immigration system and a state immigration system, and they’re going to be interacting in chaotic and confusing ways,” says Denise Gilman, co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. The constitutional tradition of federal authority “would be called into question.”

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Fernando García, executive director of Border Network for Human Rights, protests Texas' new law SB4 and Operation Lone Star, in Brownsville, Texas, Feb. 22, 2024.

Will the law go into effect? 

Generally, U.S. law allows individuals to apply for asylum even if they entered the country between official ports of entry. Another part of immigration law, however, makes “improper entry” a federal crime. 

Along the southern border, Border Patrol encounters with migrants between ports of entry have swelled to historic highs – more than 2 million a year – under the Biden administration. However, due to border policy changes during the pandemic, some people who crossed unlawfully are counted more than once.

Texas authorities have made thousands of migrant arrests for trespassing through a border security program called Operation Lone Star, launched in 2021. SB4 goes further, making illegal entry into Texas from a foreign nation a state crime. It also authorizes state judges to deport individuals who violate the new law. 

The law may not go into effect, however. In January, the U.S. Department of Justice sued to block SB4 from taking effect, arguing that it violates the Constitution and is preempted by federal immigration law.

In 2012, the department noted in its complaint, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government “has broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of” noncitizens. That case involved a similar attempt to create state immigration crimes in Arizona. 

Federal Judge David Ezra, who will decide whether to block the law’s rollout, meanwhile, voiced concerns about the prospect of Texas setting up a state immigration system parallel to the federal system. A victory in court for Texas could open the door to other conversations about states’ rights, says Huyen Pham, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law.

For instance, if a local jurisdiction wanted to grant work authorization to immigrants, which is currently a federal power, “what keeps them from granting that?” If Texas’ laws are upheld, she says, “I don’t see where this ends.”

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Shipping containers and wire line the edge of Shelby Park, on the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, Feb. 25, 2024.

Texas will “fend for itself” 

Though the case may land at the U.S. Supreme Court, logistical questions remain about SB4’s rollout on the ground. In Eagle Pass, the epicenter of the Abbott-Biden showdown in recent months, Police Department spokesperson Humberto Garza says regular operations are already strained. The border city of roughly 30,000 is in the process of hiring more police officers, which he says Eagle Pass needed even before SB4. 

More personnel and other resources are needed for police to assume new immigration duties, says Mr. Garza, who adds that officers aren’t trained in immigration law.

SB4 is “going to stretch us even thinner than what we already are,” he says. Under current operations, “our main objective here is to the citizens of our community.”

Allowing Texas judges to issue deportations also requires cooperation with Mexico, which is not guaranteed. The Mexican president has called the new law “inhumane.” 

Texas lawmakers contend that SB4 is lawful, and necessary, because the federal government hasn’t properly exercised its own immigration enforcement powers.

“President Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself,” said Governor Abbott when he signed SB4. The law, he added, “will help stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas.” 

Meanwhile, an affidavit by a Texas Department of Public Safety official sheds some light on the state’s vision for implementing SB4. Unauthorized immigrants, the official wrote, will primarily be held and processed in state-owned facilities, rather than in county jails. 

And a Republican state lawmaker who helped draft SB4, Rep. David Spiller, told a podcast in November that he envisions officers enforcing the law mostly along the border, within sight of illegal crossings. “We’re not going after someone’s grandmother that’s been here for 50 years,” he said. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

The Rev. Julio Vasquez, pastor at Iglesia Luterana San Lucas in Eagle Pass, Texas, stands outside the office of his Eagle Pass Frontera Ministries, Feb. 24, 2024.

Concerns among immigrant communities 

The passage of SB4 and Governor Abbott’s increasingly sharp rhetoric – he’s called the levels of illegal crossings an “invasion” –  concern Texas immigrants and their allies. That includes people with a legal basis to live here, like one medical assistant in Austin who declined to have her name published for fear of legal consequences. 

After being brought to the United States as a baby from Mexico, she gained Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status – or DACA – in 2015, and has two American-born children of her own. While SB4 creates a carve-out for certain DACA recipients like her, she worries about her unauthorized parents, who’ve lived here for years. She says her family wanted to celebrate her mother’s birthday in March, but canceled plans due to fear of the new law.

“My mom is scared to plan something. ... She’s afraid of driving because she might be stopped and asked her immigration status,” says the Austin woman, whose family is considering moving out of state due to SB4. “I even cry sometimes just thinking about it. It’s just really stressful.” 

A separate law signed by Governor Abbott in December increased minimum sentences for people found guilty of smuggling immigrants. The suite of new legislation raises racial profiling concerns for Fernando García, the executive director at Border Network for Human Rights, an organization that co-led the Brownsville rally. Mr. García encourages Texans to resist answering questions about immigration status if stopped by police.

“You give your name and your date of birth. But when it comes to immigration status, you have the right to remain silent,” the U.S. citizen tells the Monitor, his sunglasses patterned with the stars and stripes of the American flag. “If you’re asking me if we will disobey an illegal law,” he says. “Yes, indeed. Because we believe that is illegal.”

In at least one city, Tyler, in eastern Texas, local law enforcement told residents last week that they wouldn’t ask for citizenship status during routine traffic stops, or arrest people simply transporting an immigrant relative. 

Still, immigrant advocates like the Rev. Julio Vasquez are preparing. He plans to track any reports of abuse by law enforcement through a new “human rights office” at his church. The Lutheran pastor also co-directs Eagle Pass Frontera Ministries, which offers immigrants free clothing, shoes, food, and occasionally bus fare to San Antonio.

His house of worship, Iglesia Luterana San Lucas, sits some 3 miles away from an Eagle Pass city park, now occupied by state forces and ringed with wire and shipping containers to deter illegal crossings from the Rio Grande. 

“I only see families seeking asylum,” says the soft-spoken man in Spanish. “I don’t see the invasion.”

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland pauses beside the highway in Terrell County, Texas, Feb. 26, 2024.

View from a rural county 

Other officials and residents in Texas are concerned about what they see as a lack of federal action and support the goals of SB4, even if questions linger about its implementation. 

Sixty percent of Texas voters support “making it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant to be in Texas in most circumstances,” according to a poll this month from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. 

About 170 miles up the border from Eagle Pass, Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland pulls his truck off the highway and walks into a patch of scraggly brush. In his white, wide-brimmed hat and dark-blue jeans, he squats by a thin metal fence and points. 

“You can see where they’ve crossed it,” says the sheriff. “It’s kind of bent.”

The White House has done “absolutely nothing” on border security, says Sheriff Cleveland. Yet he’s also frank about limited resources. He’s one of four deputies working for rural Terrell County, whose jail can hold seven people. 

That won’t be enough bandwidth to arrest all migrants who unlawfully cross into his county. Instead, the former Border Patrol agent regularly calls up – and will continue to rely on – his former agency for close collaboration. Last fiscal year, he says his office assisted Border Patrol with more than 800 apprehensions, which is more than the population of Sanderson, the county seat. 

“It’s another tool we have in our pocket, for sure,” he says of SB4. However, with “the Border Patrol resources that we have, I don’t foresee us changing the way we conduct ourselves.” 

Editor's note: This story was updated to correct the name of the Iglesia Luterana San Lucas church. 

Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone/AP/File

Monitors show Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, as he speaks to the media regarding the pandemic and global health priorities at the WHO headquarters in Geneva Dec. 20, 2021.

In the wake of the pandemic, there was a widespread feeling of urgency, a question of, how could we do better next time?

The World Health Organization sought to use that moment to come up with a plan for more unified global action – not just for responding to future pandemics, but for preventing and preparing for them as well.

Now, negotiators are in the final months of a two-year process to come up with a new pandemic treaty or agreement to do just that. 

“We must seize the opportunities to improve global preparedness and response and to work together to find solutions,” says a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Human Services, which together with the State Department is leading U.S. involvement in the talks. “Infectious diseases do not respect national borders.” 

Safeguarding the United States means expanding global as well as domestic capabilities, the Biden administration says. But as representatives from around the world meet in Geneva this week for the eighth round of negotiations, they face an uphill climb ahead of a late May deadline. 

There is a divide between the Global North and the Global South. Developed countries are focused mainly on preventing outbreaks from coming in over their borders. Developing countries seek greater health equity after feeling left behind during the last pandemic. A parallel effort to strengthen the legally binding International Health Regulations, last revised nearly 20 years ago, has muddied the waters – with some countries trying to shoehorn their priorities into the amended regulations, in case the agreement fails to pass. 

Meanwhile in the U.S., congressional Republicans and their allies are pushing back against the Biden administration’s involvement in the talks. They say the process reflects little attempt to review or learn from the WHO’s track record during the pandemic. They also argue that the proposed agreement would strengthen the WHO’s hand at the expense of U.S. interests – including free speech and freedom of religion.

“We must ensure that the final draft does not violate our national sovereignty or infringe upon the rights of the American people,” said Ohio Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a doctor and chair of a special subcommittee investigating the COVID-19 pandemic, at a Feb. 5 House GOP press conference.

The event was convened by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on global health. He said there has been “far too little scrutiny” of the legally binding agreement and its impact on U.S. health policy.

Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA/AP

Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey speaks at a press conference about the World Health Organization's "pandemic treaty," at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 5, 2024. He says there has been far too little scrutiny of the legally binding agreement and its impact on U.S. health policy.

A treaty by any other name?

The agreement is essentially a treaty but is not so named – and would therefore not have to clear the hurdle of Senate ratification by two-thirds vote.

“If you look at the text, it looks like a treaty; it tastes like a treaty; it smells like a treaty. But negotiators have avoided using the term ‘treaty,’ in particular not to raise political problems in the U.S. Congress,” says Gian Luca Burci, the former legal counsel for the WHO and now a visiting professor of international law at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. But what matters, he adds, is not the label but the content.

The agreement would address three main governance gaps: spillovers of diseases between humans and other species; a lack of a cohesive global framework for sharing information on pathogens, including for vaccine development; and equity issues such as uneven distribution of vaccines. Some experts say an agreement that addresses those three gaps, even if modestly, would be a significant step of progress.

The most recent public draft, from late October, lays out a framework of principles but does not get into detailed proposals for implementation. With so little time left in the negotiations before a planned vote in late May, the details will likely either be unveiled at the 11th hour or worked out after the fact, including in annual follow-up meetings. There would also be a process for passing amendments, which would require support from at least two-thirds of signatories. Amendments would only come into force for nations that accepted them.

“The idea that this somehow is going to deeply impinge on American sovereignty implies that it’s going to be a really intense maximalist kind of international agreement – and it’s not heading in that direction right now,” says Ian Johnstone, a professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a United Nations consultant. But he adds that treaties generally involve giving up “a little bit of sovereignty” for the sake of a broader public policy goal.

Concerns about free speech, Chinese influence

Republicans and their allies are concerned about where a framework agreement could head, however, citing the WHO’s bending to political pressure from China, whose Communist Party espouses a different model of global governance.

Former Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, the U.S. representative to the WHO during the pandemic, said at the Feb. 5 event that not one of the proposed agreement’s provisions under consideration would deal with the No. 1 issue: China’s lack of transparency and accountability. In 2020, earlier epidemiological data could have helped the U.S. and other countries understand the nature and scope of the outbreak sooner – and thereby respond more effectively.

Another key concern is Article 18, which calls for combating misinformation through international collaboration. Critics say that could exacerbate the suppression of dissenting viewpoints, which conservatives see as systematized censorship. 

Some on the right are also worried that such an agreement could give global backing to controversial policies, such as the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates. Professor Burci says the International Health Regulations are trying to facilitate mutual recognition of vaccine certificates but not to require vaccination, which remains a decision for each government.

“We will not sign on to an accord that in any way undermines our national sovereignty, our health security, or the ability of Americans to make decisions about their own health care,” says a senior Biden administration official, describing the primary U.S. goal in these negotiations as protecting Americans from future pandemics.

When the U.S. agreed to the International Health Regulations, it formally reserved the right to assume those obligations in accord with its “fundamental principles of federalism.” However, the pandemic agreement would not allow any such reservations, at least according to the latest public draft. The next two-week round of negotiations is scheduled to begin March 18.

In her work with U.S. military veterans here on the Navajo Nation, Bernadine Tyler routinely logs 1,200 miles a month driving across an area the size of West Virginia, over high windswept plains dotted with rust-red mesas.

Roughly one-third of homes here on America’s largest reservation don’t have electricity or running water, so Ms. Tyler, herself a member of the Navajo Nation and an Army veteran, brings services directly to her fellow vets, most of whom are over the age of 65. 

She points out the occasional gas station and folks walking on the dusty shoulders of pot-holed roads. There’s a bus, “but it’s very unreliable and only runs one route,” says Ms. Tyler, program lead for the Diné Naazbaa Partnership (DNP), which serves the Navajo Nation and receives funding from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 

“If you’re there, you’re there. If not, you’ve missed it for the day.”

For vets without transport or refrigerators, she carries bags of ice to fill the convenience store coolers that many use to chill their food and medications. She enlists volunteers, including her sons, to help haul water and chop wood for warmth in the winter. 

Though Navajo and other Native Americans serve in the U.S. military at five times the national average – a higher rate than any other demographic – they are also more likely to be unemployed, grapple with post-traumatic stress, and have lower incomes. They are also far less likely to use, or even apply for, VA services.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

View of a home on the Navajo Nation reservation, on Feb. 28, 2022, outside Thoreau, New Mexico. Many people living on the Navajo reservation do not have indoor plumbing, running water, or electricity.

The particular challenges of accessing this care came to light during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Native American veterans living in small multigenerational homes without running water on closed tribal lands died at significantly higher rates than other former service members. The VA subsequently pledged to better serve America’s Native American community. 

In 2020, the VA created the first advisory committee for Native American veterans. It held its first meeting in 2022 and began issuing its recommendations last year. Though they aren’t binding, the suggestions of some committees have an acceptance rate of 90%, according to the agency. 

The committee’s work will be “essential,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said, “in helping us to find and to develop better and more innovative ways to serve native veterans.” 

Congressional charter recognition 

With this year’s 2024 defense spending bill, lawmakers also granted the Native American Indian Veterans a congressional charter, making it the first-ever group dedicated to the interests of Indigenous people in the U.S. to get the status. It is a development that took the NAIV nearly 20 years of lobbying to achieve. With the charter, NAIV can testify before Congress and, ideally, more easily help the VA process benefits claims. 

The hope is that these developments will not only improve care, but also foment faith that, even after decades of neglect, change is possible – particularly among the 57% of Native American veterans who say their top reason for joining the military was a desire to serve their country. 

Native American veterans are among America’s most patriotic, says Adam Pritchard, a researcher at Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families. “It’s a very important step in the right direction to acknowledge their history of the service and their ongoing needs.” 

“Our history has much mistrust,” Ms. Tyler says. Good-faith efforts to fix a long-broken system and build it up, she adds, can help heal old wounds, too. 

Anna Mulrine Grobe/The Christian Science Monitor

Bernadine Tyler at the Window Rock Department of Navajo Veterans Affairs, November 2023. Ms. Tyler, an Army vet, works for the Diné Naazbaa Partnership, which serves the Navajo Nation and receives funding from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

From code talking to broken plumbing 

In 1943, Thomas Begay joined the U.S. Marines. He was 16 or 17 years old – he’s not sure which. His grandmother delivered him at home on a snowy day in New Mexico, where his parents spoke Navajo, not English, and didn’t record the date and year of his birth.

He wanted to be an aerial gunner, Mr. Begay told the recruiter, who said, “Sure, you’re just the man that I see in the bubble shooting down the Japanese Zero,” as enemy fighter planes were called. 

The recruiter was being sarcastic, as Mr. Begay learned when he was sent to become a code talker. While he and his fellow troops practiced the top-secret tribal language with a twist, their basic training was more ad hoc than the Marine norm. 

“They got us a rubber boat, and they just dumped us way out in the ocean and said … ‘Learn how to get to shore,’” he recalled in a 2013 discussion cataloged by the National Archives.

Months later, after landing at Iwo Jima in February 1945, Mr. Begay and his fellow code talkers were hailed as instrumental in taking the island – and later with helping to win the war. Their code was never broken. 

Mr. Begay returned to America and a high school for Indigenous kids after Japan’s surrender, but it was shut down soon afterward. With unemployment high, he joined the Army. While saluting an instructor during training, he was asked, “Are you looking for Indians?” and ordered to give 10 pushups. “I guess it’s comical. I didn’t get offended. No such thing then.” 

Today, Mr. Begay is living in a house where bad plumbing has damaged the floors and ceiling. “It’s not safe for him,” says Karen Shirley, community coordinator for DNP, which is helping him apply for VA grants to fix up his home, or get Mr. Begay a new one. 

“How can we not support this great warrior who helped save this country, and just get him the housing he needs?” Ms. Tyler says.

While there are roughly 17.5 million veterans in the U.S., only some 9 million are enrolled in the VA health care system, notes Jim Lorraine, president of America’s Warrior Partnership, a veterans service organization that acts as an umbrella group for the DNP and other nonprofits that support Native American vets. 

Anna Mulrine Grobe/The Christian Science Monitor

Regina Lewis, who served in the Army 30 years ago, recently learned she’s eligible for care from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Ms. Lewis stands in Window Rock, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, November 2023.

Building relationships “before ... they need it” 

In the Navajo Nation, self-harm is very much looked down upon, but depression due to poverty or post-traumatic stress frequently takes the form of alcoholism and drug use, advocates say. 

“We don’t talk about suicide – it’s taboo. We talk about improving quality of life,” Mr. Lorraine says. “If I have good housing, good employment, connection to spirituality, my quality of life goes up, and the suicide risk goes down.”

To date, the DNP has connected with some 1,228 of the estimated 14,700 veterans living on the Navajo Nation. It has also worked with some 370 partner groups to fund more than 1,100 projects to get veterans assistance with everything from improvements in housing to emergency financial aid. 

The key is “to build a relationship with veterans before they think they need it. We don’t wait for people to come to us,” he adds. “You’ve never helped anyone you didn’t know.” 

Regina Lewis wasn’t looking for help in the years after she served in the U.S. Army as a radio mechanic. She enlisted in large part to prove to her family her ability to stand on her own two feet. 

“My uncle told me, ‘You know, you’re not going to make it – you’re too girlie.’ I wanted to prove him wrong.”

Once she returned to the reservation after completing her service in Germany and Texas, she found that as a female veteran, “We’re not as recognized,’’ she said. “When they honor people, it’s the military men.”

She didn’t feel inclined to join local vets organizations. 

This is a common sentiment among female veterans here in a “male dominated” culture that is also heavily maternal, Ms. Tyler says. When women finish their service, the sense can be, “‘OK, now we have to go home and be the nurturers that we are.’ They don’t try to be seen as veterans,” she adds.

Karen Norris/Staff

Out of the loop of service culture and often without access to reliable technology, many aren’t aware of the VA services available to them. Part of the challenge is getting the word out.

For Ms. Lewis’ part, even though she finished up her Army duties 30 years ago, she just recently learned she’s eligible for VA care.

“I’m new to the whole system – I didn’t know about these services,” she says. She is now getting coverage for service-incurred hearing loss and soon, she hopes, for help building a water tank on her land. 

It needs to be refilled monthly, but it’s better than hauling water from friends’ places for a bath, as she did this morning, she notes.

Through consistent acts of service, the hope, Mr. Lorraine says, is to help Native American veterans grow in trust that “we have their back – no matter what they face.”

Colette Davidson

Artwork from group participants is displayed on shelves in Le Hamo, inside the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Nov. 21, 2023.

Tucked in the back of the Palais de Tokyo, a sweeping modern art museum in Paris, is a large studio. Called Le Hamo, like the French word for hamlet, it is just like its homophone – cozy and inviting. Wormlike ceramic shelving shows off amateur artwork: rust-colored clay figurines and sculptures made of old batteries, cardboard, and toothpicks.

Since September, small groups have come to the studio for art workshops, often in conjunction with visits to the museum. Today, four young people diagnosed with autism have just come from “Infinite Vessel,” by Algerian artist Dalila Dalléas Bouzar, next door.

Resident cultural mediator Lorraine Suty spreads a black cloth on the floor and hands out bits of white string, encouraging the group to re-create the artwork. A teenager in a mauve sweatshirt loops the string into squiggly lines, placing colorful cotton balls around the edges. Although he is nonverbal, a wide smile crisscrosses his face – just like it did during his encounter with the original piece.

Le Hamo goes beyond traditional art therapy. It focuses instead on bien mieux – (feeling) much better – for those who are neurodiverse or struggling with mental health. It is part of a broader push across France to incorporate art, culture, and in-person museum visits in individual care plans.

France’s art world is taking a bigger role in public health, from mental health issues to chronic illness and disability, in order to help people find community and feel better. Advocates say museums can be more than one-way encounters with art. They can also be participatory, promote well-being, and help people move out of social isolation, depression, and anxiety – especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Museums are these exceptional environments where everything is beautiful and you can slow down. It’s like walking through the forest,” says Nathalie Bondil, a pioneer in the field of museum therapy and the museum and exhibitions director at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. “For many people, it’s not natural to go to a museum. But there’s something powerful about the direct confrontation with a piece of art, and that can have benefits on numerous levels.”

Colette Davidson

"Infinite Vessel," by Algerian artist Dalila Bouzar, provided fodder for contemplation by a small group of young people attending an art workshop at Le Hamo, Dec. 9, 2023.

“A window into reverie”

The concept of museum therapy has existed since the 1980s, but it experienced a big boom in the 2010s. There were programs like Meet Me at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which helped people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease experience art from 2007 until 2014. And Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts launched a comprehensive art therapy and education wing in 2017.

In France, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille has employed art therapists since 2012. And Ms. Bondil, the museum director, has led a seminar on museum therapy for the last three years at the École du Louvre in Paris.

But until recently, much of art and museum therapy here has been siloed, with therapists, health care workers, and educators each working in their own corners without much coordination. That is slowly starting to change.

This past November, the Palais des Beaux-Arts and the Lille University Hospital signed an agreement for doctors to begin writing “museum prescriptions” to encourage patients to experience and practice art as part of their care plan. 

And in January 2024, the Claude Bernard University in Lyon began offering the country’s first college degree in “cultural prescriptions,” in partnership with neurologists, psychologists, and arts professionals. 

“A cultural prescription is an invitation to contemplate what you like: music, poetry, or art,” says Laure Mayoud, a psychologist and founder of L’invitation à la Beauté, a nonprofit that promotes culture as part of healing. “When you follow something you like, it liberates your neurotransmitters.”

Ms. Mayoud works with children in the Hôpital Lyon Sud, including those in end-of-life care, and she uses colors, perfume, and music as part of her therapy. If patients can’t leave their beds to go to a museum, she brings the artwork of their choice to them. “It takes you outside your own suffering,” she says. “It creates a window into reverie.”

Colette Davidson

Le Hamo began offering workshops and guided visits to the museum in September for small groups of people who are neurodiverse or struggling with mental health.“We look for something participatory, but even just walking in the museum is fascinating for them,” says Sannah Sadiq, a volunteer with J’imaginerais, a nonprofit arranging group visits.

“Art by prescription”

Although some of the museum therapy initiatives were already in the works prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, administrators have increasingly seen their relevance in the years since. The number of diagnoses of depression among French people of ages 18-24 has nearly doubled since 2017, according to an October 2023 study by France’s national public health agency. And psychiatric consultations among university students have risen by 30% in the past two years.

In 2022, the MO.CO. Contemporary Art Museum in Montpellier, France, created its project “Art sur ordonnance” – “Art by prescription” – with mental health in mind. In collaboration with the University Hospital of Montpellier, small groups, mostly made up of young people, visit exhibitions, meet artists, and engage in related workshops.

“Many of these people have broken with social and physical activities, and are no longer in touch with their emotions or what they like to do,” says Stéphanie Delpeuch, manager of public services at MO.CO. “They come here and can get back into life through art and culture.”

Museum operators say they want to use their spaces to help build community, which means adapting them to each group’s needs. That can translate to bringing groups into museum spaces when they are closed to the general public or selecting pieces ahead of time that will reduce anxiety, not add to it. One of the ultimate goals is to help participants re-create social links.

At the Palais de Tokyo, Le Hamo acts as a bridge between the health care sphere and the general exhibition area of the museum. That’s been an important part of participants’ personal care paths, which can look different for everyone, administrators say.

For the four young visitors diagnosed with autism, Le Hamo is a welcome respite after their morning visit to the museum. There, some members of the group wanted to touch the intricate beading and colorful threads on the tapestry of “Infinite Vessel” or lie down on the red carpet inside the gauzy tent. They were not allowed, but inside Le Hamo, interacting with art is not just permitted – it is the goal.

“The starting point is a person’s confrontation with art, but here, we can re-center our emotions, touch materials, discuss the art, and share a moment together,” says Marion Buchloh-Kollerbohm, head of cultural mediation at the Palais de Tokyo. “It’s all about inclusion, exchange, and finding common ground.”

AP

The Rev. Ai Hironaka, resident minister of the Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, offers a prayer on Dec. 7 inside the nokotsudo, or columbarium, that survived the August wildfire.

Those making plans for restoring postwar Gaza, as well as Israeli border communities destroyed in the Oct. 7 attack, do not need to look long for ideas. After many wars and disasters, people have created opportunities for recovery, shifting the focus from what was lost to what might better reflect a society’s values.

The most relevant model might be Lahaina in Hawaii. The coastal town on the island of Maui was leveled by a wildfire last August, leaving its people dispersed and many structures destroyed. While Gaza is shaped by complex land security issues between two historically divided peoples, for residents of Lahaina, rebuilding raises concerns that Palestinians would find familiar. They seek to preserve their community from dislocation and decisions made by more powerful outside interests.

A bill working its way through the Hawaii Senate sets out this goal: “There is an opportunity to rebuild Lahaina by preserving and reintroducing its valued resources in a manner that reflects the values and priorities of its residents and businesses, and addresses future challenges, including climate change and affordable housing.”

That aspiration reflects local sentiment. Although residents remain mostly scattered, they speak of the rebuilding of their town in biblical terms of resurrection and redemption. The work of protecting property and restoring economic activity starts with establishing joy and unity. They see the fire’s devastation as a call to knit the community and government more closely together and rethink the uses of the local environment, which had been altered over the past century by commercial agriculture.

“The biggest part we’re learning through this process of rebuild is that [every stance or opinion] should also be equal in encouragement,” Kaliko Storer, a Maui community advocate, told Island News in December. “It’s not the different things we do, but it’s the heart in which we do [it]. If the heart is in the right place for the right reasons, supply and provision [follow].”

The Senate bill acknowledges the principle of letting the community lead. It would establish a board composed of nine local residents to oversee $100 million in state matching funds for rebuilding projects that they determine. That marks a shift away from the way the state manages other local administrative boards. Its purpose, one senator told West Hawaii Today, is to give the people of Lahaina “liquidity and agency” to rebuild deliberately, reflecting local values.

Restoring communities by restoring community has worked elsewhere. Following the 2020 earthquakes in İzmir, Turkey, residents formed housing co-ops in collaboration with the local municipality to ensure that new housing reflected their needs and concerns.

“We didn’t know our neighbours before we initiated the co-operative effort,” one resident told The Conversation earlier this month. “But now, we design and build our homes together and try to make our neighbourhood more liveable.” That process has strengthened local self-government, seeding collaboration between residents, local universities, and professional associations on issues such as civil rights.

“There’s always a chance to new birth of something even better,” Kuhio Lewis, CEO at the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, told Island News. “But it has to be from the people’s perspective.” The post-disaster resilience in Lahaina shines a light for postwar restoration in Gaza and Israel.