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I would like to thank my sisters and brothers from the Environmental Protection Agency for inviting us to celebrate Earth Day with you. I wish to acknowledge the EPA’s new Administrator, Lisa Jackson, and also thank her for this invitation. I am honored to share this platform with the other esteemed speakers and performers. I am also very excited to be here in Washington DC – to come together in a spirit of sharing and friendship.
My name is Richard Bull. My ancestral name is Kakeena-monghee-wininiwag – which means ‘Teacher’. I was born into the Bear Clan and adopted into the Eagle Clan. I am Anishinaabe from the Lac Seul First Nation in Canada. I travel with my wife Tamara from our home in Vancouver.
The knowledge I share with you reflects the teachings I received from my Elders. There are many, but I would like to acknowledge three special people. They are Margaret and Jules Lavallee of Winnipeg, Manitoba and Bob Lovelace of the Ardoch First Nation in Ontario. Without their teachings, I wouldn’t be on this stage with you today.
When I was asked to speak at this beautiful celebration, I was deeply humbled at this chance to share my views on the environment. What we’re doing here today cannot be understated. We’re building a bridge – a bridge of understanding, a bridge that brings cultures closer together. We’re coming together in a good way to learn and to grow. Each time we get together like this, it’s an opportunity to see our similarities, hear our shared passions and feel the same energy. I come to you with open hands and an open heart.
We have many reasons to celebrate. We have many reasons to be thankful. In 2009, we’re a part of a real shift in Earth consciousness. Awareness about the Planet’s needs has never been greater. We’re making smarter choices as consumers. Our voices are coming together to demand Earth Justice. And this awareness is growing every day.
I’m very proud of the growth in accountability towards the environment. The very thought that our actions have real consequences, not only for us, but also for the generations to follow represents a true shift. Taking the long view is the ultimate in being considerate, for we’re thinking about people who have yet to be born.
My ancestors thought in this same way. They didn’t make any important decision without first considering the impact it would have on seven generations into the future. With our shift in priorities, we are learning to be less like the rabbit and more like the turtle. We are valuing patience and persistence over flash and dash.
As a Native man, my insight on the Earth is one that differs from mainstream approaches, even the progressive ones. As Indigenous people, the environment, our mother earth is sacred. It’s a relationship that is complex, oftentimes misunderstood. But it’s one that needs to be honored.
The environment is the most critical issue facing us today, even more so than the economy.
When we speak about the environment, anger is not the answer. My People traditionally used ceremony to cleanse and purify the mind, heart, body and soul from this toxin. If anger were to infect this message in any way, then it would quickly turn from one of care to one of attack. And that is definitely not my intention.
The scope of my talk here today is to focus on our emotional and spiritual connections with the Earth. In short, it’s a heart and soul approach.
The conventional approaches to the environment deal only with the mental and the physical aspects of being. However, to live a truly balanced life, the mind, the heart, the body and the soul must all be nourished. Our solutions for healing Mother Earth can’t just be about how we act or what we think. Emotion and prayer are just as important to charting the healing journey for our Mother Earth.
There is hope. We are on the dawn of a new way of thinking that seeks to learn from ancestral wisdom. It is this thinking that will let our great-great-grandchildren come together in celebrations like this one.
It’s not enough to recycle, buy organic local produce, or vote for progressive political candidates. These are all good actions and must be applauded. Make no mistake about that. However, the Earth needs more.
Many of us talk about ‘our relationship with the environment’. The language of relationship is very powerful. This widely used phrase signifies our emotional bond with the Planet. We can apply the lessons of building strong relationships to enriching our own bond with the Planet.
Communication is essential to building any relationship. Think about all your important relationships. They are all built on the strength of communication. Think back to the conversations you’ve shared, even the ones this morning. Consider the wide range of emotions you’ve experienced. It’s quite hard to imagine having any of these important relationships without the essential element of communication.
Our relationship with the Planet is no different. We start by listening. Our Elders say, ‘We were born with two ears and only one mouth for a reason’. Listening is twice as important as speaking. Our spirit shifts when we listen with an open heart to the sounds around us. If we listen long enough, we can actually hear rhythms forming from seemingly random sounds. It is then we are reminded that we are not separate from the rest of creation. We are a part of it.
When we develop a personal bond with the land, we begin to build trust. And trust is the foundation of any relationship. My People offer tobacco, as a sacred gift, whenever we approach water, so that the spirit of the water will know us and be gentle with us.
In my culture, traditional people still give tobacco to the Creator before anything is ever taken from the land. It is this concept of reciprocity – this give and take – that’s missing from the green revolution as it stands today. This type of balance exists in all lasting and meaningful relationships.
A simple act of reciprocity lies in saying just two words: thank you. We say ‘thank you’ dozens of times a day. It’s almost an automatic response to the good in our lives. We say ‘thank you’ to appreciate and acknowledge the many acts of kindness that come our way. Similarly, our spiritual bond to Mother Earth is summed up in those same two words. The spirit of thank you is a powerful way to express gratitude. When we say thank you in a conscious manner, it makes us focus on the positive. And there are so many things to be thankful for.
In the leadership training I do across the country, I have encountered communities ready to embrace healing. People from coast to coast are recognizing the need to grow and to heal. And this is a good thing. A big part of our healing comes from the return to ceremony.
Women are at the fore-front of this wellness movement. It is the women who nurture, who protect and who teach our children. And this care begins even before birth. To all mothers, the womb is sacred. The connection mothers have with the child inside the womb is so very special. This sacred relationship can instruct us all on how to nurture and protect Mother Earth. It is this deep relationship with the Earth that we seek to replicate in ceremony.
Each year, my wife and I take part in the Sun Dance ceremony on the Sagkeeng First Nation in central Canada. In this sacred ceremony, we go without food and water for four days as we renew our vows with the Earth. The days are long and grueling as we’re tested on all levels. Each morning starts before six a.m. with a sweatlodge ceremony. The sweatlodge is a ceremony that takes us back into the womb of Mother Earth. The drumming we hear in the Lodge represents the heartbeat of our Mother during those first nine months of life. The sweatlodge is deeply purifying. It’s a rebirth of our spirit. It’s a reawakening.
Our spirits are allowed to feast when our physical bodies endure suffering and sacrifice. All of our focus and energy during the Sun Dance is centered on the Sacred Tree. Our ceremonies and our altars are born out of the Earth.
In ceremony, I have witnessed truly amazing events. The terminally sick have been healed. Two years ago, I’ve seen a powerful healer even turn away pouring rain and thunderclouds. Behind the power of all these ceremonies sits an unwavering love for our Planet.
The Medicine Wheel is our sacred symbol. It signifies the balance of the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual. In its simple beauty, the four directions and the four colors are also in balance. Red and yellow, black and white all come together. No color is bigger than any other in the Medicine Wheel. All colors are equal in size and importance. This speaks to our interdependence.
A central theme in every major religion is to break through the illusion of difference and realize the undeniable fact of our interdependence. On a deep level, there are no divisions. Our own full experience of life depends on the life force held in the breath of even the smallest living creature.
The challenge I leave each of you is to nurture your emotional and spiritual relationship with Mother Earth. Smart as we are, we cannot fully predict the effects of love and care on our Planet. Not one of us is fully aware of the boundless energy resting inside each of our hearts. Let’s open them together and feel what happens. We’re making our Mother very happy today.
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THE WEB OF LIFE
The one thing that allows us to enjoy true relationship and deep peace is the feeling of interconnectedness with life and all other beings. It is the living web out of which our individual, separate existences have risen, and in which we are interwoven. Our lives extend beyond our skins, in radical interdependence with the rest of the world.
Western Science Catches Up with Indigenous Wisdom
Until recently, classical Western science had proceeded on the assumption that the world could be understood and controlled by dissecting it. Breaking the world down into ever smaller pieces, classical Western science divided mind from matter, organs from bodies, plants from ecosystems, and analyzed each separate part. This mechanistic approach left some questions unanswered – such as how do these separate parts interact to sustain life and evolve?
As a result of such questions scientists in the twentieth century, starting with biologists, shifted their perspective. They began to look at wholes instead of parts, at processes instead of substances. They discovered what Indigenous Peoples have known for millennia – that these wholes (be they cells, bodies, ecosystems, and even the planet itself) are not just heaps of parts, but dynamic, intricately organized and balanced systems, interrelated and interdependent in every movement, every function, every exchange of energy. They saw that each element is part of a vaster pattern, a pattern that connects and evolves by discernible principles. The discernment of these principles is what is known as general systems theory.
Instead of beholding random separate entities, the scientists are beginning to see the universe with “Indigenous eyes”. They are becoming aware of interconnecting flows – flows of energy, matter, information – and see life forms as patterns or currents in these flows. By these flowing currents, open systems sustain themselves and evolve in complexity and responsiveness to their environment. Interacting, they weave relationships that shape in turn the environment itself. Every system – be it a tree, a cell, a human being – is like a transformer, changing the very stuff that flows through it. What flows through physical bodies is called matter and energy, what flows through minds is called information; but the distinctions between matter, energy and information have become blurred.
What has become clear, however, are the principles by which systems evolve – and central to these principles is openness to the environment, openness to feedback. This is how intelligence and power are created. For it is by interaction that life forms are sustained. As earlier stated, the old mechanistic view of reality has erected dichotomies, separating substance from process, self from other, thought from feeling. But given the interweaving interactions of open systems, these dichotomies no longer hold.
What had appeared to be separate self-existent entities are now seen to be so interdependent that their boundaries can only be drawn arbitrarily. What had appeared to be “other” can be equally construed as an extension of the same organism, like a fellow-cell in a larger body. What we had been taught to dismiss as “just” feelings are responses to input from our environment that are no less valid than rational constructs. Feelings and concepts condition each other, both are ways of knowing our world. In this way we participate and co-create in the living web, giving and receiving the feedback necessary for its nourishment.
To convey this dynamic process, systems theorists use a variety of images: an open system is like a pattern made by flowing water, or it is like a flame that keeps its shape by transforming the stuff that flows through it. The image or symbol many First Nations use to express this interconnectedness is the Medicine Wheel.
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This is a post about preventing Aboriginal youth suicide.
Suicide is never an easy subject to discuss.
My sister’s own suicide still haunts me ten years later.
It would affect me even more today if it was not for the Sun Dance.
Two years ago, I gave my body and flew with the eagles for her spirit’s return to the circle.
Even now, I can’t help but ask the question everybody asks: why?
Suicide is about stopping the pain. It’s not about wanting to die.
When I think about her tragic life, there must have been lots of pain. She found herself living the worst life any woman can experience. She turned to prostitution to feed her addictions. For her, suicide was about stopping the pain.
The answer to preventing Aboriginal youth suicide can be found by looking to our Elders, says Aboriginal suicide prevention expert Darien Thira. Darien developed the “Through the Pain” Aboriginal suicide prevention curriculum, which he facilitates to First Nations communities. I find his ideas to be both profound and accessible.
Even though Aboriginal youth suicide rates are very high, the suicide rate for our Elders is extremely low.
There are four reasons to explain the low Elder suicide rate:
Emotionally, our Elders are cared for. There is a connection that the general population of seniors don’t experience. Connection is the sense that you are valued by those who are important to you
Physically, our Elders are respected. This leads to empowerment. Empowerment is the belief that you are in control of your life and that you are valuable for who you are and what you can do.
High levels of connection and empowerment lead to high self-esteem. People have high self-esteem when they feel lovable and capable.
Mentally, our Elders are given meaningful family and community roles. This, in turn, creates positive identity.
Spiritually, our Elders have maintained our sacred traditions. Spirituality and culture have the power to create vision and transformation.
With positive identity and vision, our Elders have a well-lived life.
Our youth need these four elements.
They need to feel loved. Attention and encouragement go a long way in building youth self-esteem.
They need to feel empowered. “They need more responsibility, not more entertainment,” says Darien Thira. Boredom stems from a lack of responsibility, but we think the answer lies in giving them more video games, I-pods, cell phones, TV’s, and cameras.
Our youth need a meaningful role in the community. So often, lip service is paid to the needs of our youth without fully involving them in important decisions. Before colonization, this was different and we need to get back to those traditional ways of involving the whole community.
And finally, our youth need our spirituality and culture for a greater vision and deep transformation. You can signs of this yearning in our youth, but many of them can only express this need in a superficial way. If they had a deep connection to their own clan, there would be no need to belong to an artificial clan based on brand-named clothing, rap music and sports emblems.
Many of us adults would be wise to heed this advice as well.
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we learn to proselytize.
The meaning of proselytize is to convert someone from one faith to another.
Indigenous people the world over lack this skill.
Personally speaking, I struggle when it comes to marketing and selling my business. At 32, I realize I can’t get by on my looks or even my ideas anymore. Being an entrepreneur is forcing me to grow. Right now, it’s forcing me to gain a new skill, that is to hustle.
We’ve been at the receiving end of proselytism for centuries, but never its agents.
We have so much knowledge and wisdom to give the people of Mother Earth.
Instead, what happens is green revolutionaries take our knowledge and spread it themselves.
The environmental movement and green revolution would not exist without the input of Indigenous wisdom.
However, in swallowing our knowledge, these scientists and politicians miss a fundamental component to this wisdom: prayer. Not only do we have to recycle more, buy less, ride a bike, we also have to pray for Mother Earth. Without a deep sense of spirituality and love for the Earth, the shift in consciousness will be incomplete and ineffective.
Although people many North American environmentalists credit Native Americans, First Nations and Indigenous Peoples for what makes their perspectives holistic and balanced, it’s still them and not Indigenous Peoples taking the stage, glorifying their ego’s and getting rich for what is really ours.
A stolen idea is not so different from stolen land.
What is it that prevents us as Indigenous People from trying to convert the world into our way of thinking?
Many of us are excellent orators, so it’s not that.
When Christopher Columbus and host of others landed on Turtle Island, why did we not convince them to turn away from Christianity instead of the other way around?
Initial contact with the inhabitants of Turtle Island definitely had a huge impact on Europe, but it’s not because it was our ancestors’ intention to make it so.
Like the environmentalists and new age people after them, early Europeans took the seeds of our vegetables and adapted them for a surge in food production. Can you imagine Italian cuisine without the tomatoes and peppers? Or the Irish without potatoes?
The enlightened few are beginning to realize that Indigenous wisdom holds the key to our survival on Planet Earth. Why can’t we see that ourselves?
Just as non-Natives are turning to our ancient wisdom and holistic way of being, Native People are turning away from the lessons of our Elders.
In Canada, only 3% of us practice our ceremonies. As a society of many Nations, the large majority of us are backwards in the sense of clinging to the tired ways of our colonizers. When are we going to realize that there’s nothing new they can teach us? When are we going to realize that there’s real strength to the teachings of our ancestors?
When are we going to have enough courage to stand up and spread our own ‘good word’?
Perhaps our gentle way of being stands in the way of the aggressiveness and persistence required to win converts.
I don’t know the answer.
I’m trying to envision the Native community filled with zealots and aggressive salespeople going door to door like the uniformed Mormon teenagers that blanket the planet.
Although it’s a strange thing to conceptualize, I feel it’s time we, as Indigenous Peoples, get into people’s faces, debate the issues, sell our ideas, close the deals, and begin winning converts.
After all, it’s the fate of Mother Earth at stake.
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Why is it that a western medical doctor gets paid well over $200,000 a year while a traditional healer lives on social assistance and is paid most times with cigarettes?
This says a lot about what we, as First Nations people, value and what truths we accept.
As we discard our own healing ceremonies, a lot of us are quick to embrace new ones.
Going to the doctor is largely ceremonial, but we just don’t see it that way.
Think about it.
We get sick. We call the doctor’s office, speak to a receptionist and an appointment is set. When we arrive for our appointment, we are asked by the receptionist to have a seat in a clean and quiet waiting room and read an appropriate magazine, like People, National Geographic or Time.
When the doctor is ready to see us, we are told to wait in a smaller room equipped with many strange instruments. At some point, the doctor appears, wearing a white coat and a stethoscope, holding a chart that documents our history with that office, and begins a series of rapid fire questions. Usually, after less than five minutes a prescription is issued and we are told to go to a pharmacist for the medication, that we must strictly self-administer until it’s gone. After those steps, we are told we will be healed.
For the most part, when people believe in a healing mechanism, it usually works. The indoctrination into this healing modality begins when we’re young and our parents say things like, “Jimmy, you’re sick. We better take you to a doctor so he can make it all better”.
Because we believe a medical doctor can heal us, that’s what our mind tells our body.
However, if anything was out of place in the common scenario I just laid out, then I believe the healing process would be compromised.
What if food was served in the waiting room? What if the waiting room played loud heavy metal music and had strobe lighting? What if the doctor insisted you call her by her first name? What if the doctor wore a red coat instead of a white one? What if the doctor admitted to you that she doesn’t know anything about where or how the medicine was made that she’s prescribing you?
What would happen to your belief in that doctor? At the very least, it would come into question.
Our perspective on medicine is largely influenced by the ads we hear, the TV we watch, and the society we live in. It is the programming we experience, especially the messages we receive at a young age, that determines our belief in anything.
Because we are colonized to accept everything white and ridicule everything brown, this attitude pervades the quick judgements of our communities’ traditional healers.
Just because we don’t understand how a song can heal, we dismiss it as quackery. If only a doctor could explain exactly what was put into that pill he just prescribed to you.
Just because one healer is guilty of inappropriate conduct, we label all healers as guilty of that same offense. If only we applied that same flawed logic to all doctors, based on the inappropriate conduct of just a few.
Just because one traditional healing fails to take effect, we dismiss it all as useless. If only we forgot about western medicine based on the faulty diagnosis of one doctor.
Just because it’s brown doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
With the rising costs of sending our sick to nurses and doctors, we, as First Nations people, need to support our own medicine people.
This action will do many positive things for our communities.
By paying our traditional healers a living wage, we are telling the world that we value our ancient medical practices. This will get our youth interested and engaged in pursuing this knowledge.
As it stands now, there is no incentive for our young to embrace this knowledge.
As it stands now, this knowledge is quickly becoming a memory of just the elderly few.
What can we do this year to ensure our traditional healing continues into the next century, if not the next millennium?
For one thing, we can stop paying our healers with cigarettes. If tobacco costs money, then why should giving money to a healer be against everything we stand for. This attitude has more to do with the Christian notion that money is the root of all evil, than with a strict adherance to tradition.
Get real! Let’s pay them what they deserve.
Part of the change must focus on re-educating our traditional healers that asking for money in return for services rendered is not necessarily a bad thing. If it was, then how do we justify the pay-cheques we receive every two weeks?
I believe the roots of this attitude are two-fold. For starters, capitalism is still new to us. And secondly, Christianity plays a bigger role in our lives than we care to admit.
What do you think?
www.sweetgrasscoaching.com
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The place where my Mom was born is no more.
She was born 72 years ago this December in Mammatawa, a Cree settlement on a tributary to the Albany River in northern Ontario. It has been over 65 years since anyone lived there. No one goes to Mammatawa anymore.
The community has relocated twice since her birth. Before she was sent to residential school, the community moved in 1938 upriver and further south to Pagwa River when the Canadian National Railway sub-line was built. In the 1960s, the community relocated again near the town of Calstock, twenty minutes west of Hearst, to its current location, the Constance Lake First Nation.
Once my Mom became a nurse, she never lived in her home community ever again.
After marrying my Dad in Toronto years after having first met him at residential school near Sioux Lookout, they raised my brother and I in Timmins, a mining town in northeastern Ontario. They still live in the same house they bought in 1972. Being practical people, they moved there because that’s where they found work.
They are not alone.
Following global trends, First Nations people in Canada are moving from the rez to the city at alarming rates.
If this trend continues, then many isolated First Nations communities, like Mammatawa, will become ghost towns.
If this happens, then Indian Affairs will be head over heels in love with themselves because that was the whole purpose of setting up the reservation system in the first place. Public policy in Canada concerning First Nations people has always focused on separating the Indian from the land.
I know that many First Nations people continue to live in their home communities. This is becoming a lot harder because, for the most part, work opportunities are sparse, the social problems are taxing, and the community infrastructures are horrendous. These hardships do not necessarily apply to those First Nations, like Six Nations, Akwesasne, Squamish and others, situated close to towns and cities.
The people who endure and keep the home fires burning for the rest of us deserve our praise and respect. It is them who prevent the colonizer from fulfilling his destiny.
I hear the prevailing attitude of many conventionally successful urban Indians. They typically say things like the people on the rez should get off welfare and get a job. Well, that’s hard to do when there are no opportunities and you’re not related to anyone on band council.
The proper attitude towards our brothers and sisters on the rez should be one of gratitude. They are the ones who keep our connection to our ancestral lands strong. They are the ones who sacrifice work opportunities and endure economic hardships to stay on the land.
The alternative is frightening.
Just imagine if everyone in economically depressed First Nations communities decided to leave the rez and moved to the city. What would make us different from all the other Canadians? Not very much.
It’s our connection to the land that makes us who we are.
The saddest thing in the world is never being able to go back home, and sadder still is not having a home to go back to.
I can imagine the joy felt by Jewish people the world over when the state of Israel was created. The home that existed in the spirits became actualized. And even for those Jews who will never live there, it still must be comforting to know that there is a real home to go back to.
I get down when I think about Mammatawa, not for the abandoned Hudson’s Bay trading post, but for the graves that remain there attended to only by mosquitoes and black flies. My grandmother is buried there. When my Mom dies, she wants her ashes brought to her mother’s graveside.
When that day eventually comes and I make that trip for her, I will encounter a place completely foreign to me.
I will have a heavy heart for more than one reason.
If First Nations communities continue to be underfunded, then the fate of Mammatawa will only be a sign of things to come for those of us from the more remote regions of Canada.
Our leaders need to think and act with the foresight and hindsight of at least 100 years to prevent this from happening.
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One night recently I was savagely attacked by big hair, sharp teeth, long nails and a ferocious growl.
The strange thing about this wild attack was that it took place not in the mountains, but in the bedroom by my wife.
With my wife being fifteen years older than me, it’s safe to say that I am officially in cougar country.
At least in North America, the term ‘cougar’ is used to define older women who hook up with younger men. As this society becomes more gender egalitarian, cougarism is definitely becoming more widely accepted.
The most recent celebrity example of cougarism in motion is the union of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. Here’s something that not many are aware of: both Moore and Kutcher have Native American ancestry swimming through their DNA. Exactly how much? I don’t know.
What’s the point of mentioning this bit of trivia?
The point is that prior to colonization, many Native American societies practiced cougarism to varying degrees. An older woman taking a younger man as a husband was not uncommon.
A rule of thumb is that the more power exerted by women in a society, the more common the practice of cougarism.
My wife comes from the Haida Nation, a very powerful and proud People living on the southern tip of Alaska and Haida Gwaii.
The Haida, like all Coastal Peoples, are also matrilinial and strongly matriarchal. That is, they trace their lineage through their mother. In these societies, it is the women who traditionally held the balance of power.
The kryptonite for any matriarchal culture is Christianity. You can see the remains of once proud people in churches throughout Turtle Island praying to a god that was force-fed to their ancestors.
In First Nations societies plagued by (what I’ve termed) the Christian Syndrome, you will generally find more patriarchy than in healthier communities.
Sadly, patriarchy thrives in many First Nations communities. It is not surprising that in these communities you also find high rates of domestic violence, nepotism and other social ills.
In patriarchal cultures, cougarism is definitely not happening.
Women, I offer you a challenge. Take back your power, stand your ground and have the guts to date a guy who doesn’t yet understand Viagra jokes.
Being a predator in this respect can be both liberating and exhilarating.
Use those claws to find your roots.
You will inspire fear in the hearts of the establishment.
If nothing else, doesn’t that sound exciting?
Filed under: First Nations, Indigenous wisdom, culture, family, health, life, protest, religion, residential school syndrome, self-help | Tags: Aboriginal suicide rates, colonization, First Nations, native suicide rates, post-colonial theory
I take many of the ideas in this post from Darien Thira, an expert in the field of Aboriginal suicide. I spent all of last week in Nanaimo learning how to deliver his suicide prevention workshop.
The reason why Aboriginal youth kill themselves at a rate six times higher than the overall population is to stop the pain and hopelessness that result from being subjected to colonization.
You can’t understand Aboriginal suicide without looking at colonization. We, as Indigenous people, must realize that we did not have sky-high suicide rates before the European invasion (contact is too clean a word for what actually happened).
When Canadian society says we’re sick that’s like a psychopathic killer complaining to someone he’s tried to strangle repeatedly that she should do something about the marks on her neck and see a psychiatrist about her recurrent nightmares and low self-esteem.
This intended target would not show these symptoms and others if this strangler never attacked her in the first place. You see the problem does not lie with the target as it does with the strangler. The problem with this psychopath is that he never goes away.
That is the point that Roland Chrisjohn makes in his book “The Circle Game” when he unpacks the term residential school syndrome and places the sickness squarely with the insatiable colonizer. What follows, is his theory:
DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR
RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL SYNDROME:
POST COLONIAL MODEL
Residential school syndrome is a personality disorder manifested in an individual’s
specific behavioural action of:
(1) Obliterating another people’s way of life by taking the children of the group away
from their parents and having them raised in ignorance of, and/or in contempt for,
their heritage;
(2) Helping himself/herself to the property of the target group;
(3) Pervasive pattern of attempted indoctrination of children of another group of
people.
Symptoms must also include at least four (or more) of the following:
(1) a grandiose sense of self-importance and/or infallibility;
(2) unjustified feelings of moral and/or intellectual superiority;
(3) an intense desire to change the subject when phrases “economic self interest”
or “crimes against humanity” arise, or the words “genocide,” “racism,”“colonialism,”
or “oppression” are heard;
(4) lack of personal insight, or an absence of self-criticism;
(5) unwillingness to accord human status or rights to creatures not passing arbitrary
and inexpressible “standards”;
(6) obsession with juggling history books and/or shredding documents;
(7) marked fluency in rhetoric, including ability to sound like apologizing without
doing so, to call people “liars” without actually using the word, and to sound
sympathetic while studiously avoiding any criminal or financial liability;
(8) tendency to repeat certain phrases like “We don’t need an enquiry” or
“Let’s let bygones be bygones”.
Chrisjohn, R., Young, S., & Mauraun, M. (1997). The circle game: Shadows and substance
in the Indian residential school experience in Canada. Penticton, BC: Theytus Books, Ltd.
Filed under: First Nations, Indigenous wisdom, Native American culture, culture, health, life, protest, religion, residential school syndrome, self-help | Tags: Aboriginal culture, Aboriginal health, Aboriginal suicide rates, Indigenous health, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous wisdom, Native American culture, Native American issues, Native American self-esteem, Native American wisdom, Religion and the Environment, residential school syndrome
The term “residential school syndrome” is a seemingly neutral way that people in Canada use to describe the horrific experiences and wide-ranging effects of Christian boarding schools on First Nations children.
I have no problem with the seemingly high-minded attempt to diagnose a wide variety of social ailments. I know through my parents that the abuse was real and has lasting effects.
Both my parents attended the Pelican Falls Anglican Residential School in Hudson, Ontario and suffered through horrifyingly typical abuse.
I really don’t know how they stayed strong enough to endure that trauma and successfully raise my brother and I. For me, they are brave beyond belief.
Where I have problems with this term is in the euphemistic omission of one key word. And that word is Christian.
Call a spade a spade! There were no other types of boarding schools for First Nations children.
Sure, there were Anglican schools, Catholic schools, United Church schools and maybe even Presbyterian and Lutheran schools. Despite the denominational differences, they’re all Christian schools. Talk about an elephant in the room!
There were no Buddhist schools. There were no Jewish schools. There were no Muslim schools. There were no Hindu schools. And there were certainly no traditional indigenous schools.
Vague terminology, like the term ‘residential school syndrome’, disguises and sanitizes the truth.
We’ve seen repeated examples of this intentional practice with regard to recent military terms. “Collateral damage” really means the killing of innocent people and their property during battle. “Friendly fire” is a twisted way of referring to killing your own soldiers while engaged in a military operation.
I can continue in this vein, but the point is that the intention behind this terminology is to dehumanize and minimize violence, to further the end goal of taking away accountability for unjustifiable death.
In the same way, by omitting “Christian” from the ‘residential school syndrome’, you take the blame away from the religion responsible for causing a syndrome.
Residential school syndrome should properly be referred to as the ‘Christian Syndrome’. Imagine that, a religion responsible for something worse than a disease.
As a proud Indigenous man, I don’t blame Europeans for the problems that we have overcome. That’s the easy way out.
If asked, however, to select just one destructive force on the planet, then, without a doubt, the single most destructive force on Mother Earth has been Christianity. You can track the destruction of the planet with the spread of Christianity throughout the globe.
As an English major, I can appreciate the poetic beauty to certain passages in the Bible. However, being poetic has little to do with truth.
As proud nations, we don’t want to end up like Afro-Americans, who completely lost their spiritual practices centuries after they were brought to Turtle Island on slave ships. It’s not their fault, but they can’t even remember any of their stories.
Sadly, many of our People still suffer from Christianity–my parents included.
We have to remember that everything beautiful about our proud Nations has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.
Today, we’re here despite this syndrome.
We stand taller without it.
Filed under: First Nations, Indigenous wisdom, Native American culture, culture, family, health, life, religion, residential school syndrome, self-help | Tags: Aboriginal dating, Aboriginal health workshops, Aboriginal self-esteem, First Nations dating, First Nations self-esteem, forgiveness, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous Peoples, love, Native American culture, Native American dating, Native American issues, Native American self-esteem, Native men, Native self-esteem, Native women, relationships, resiliency, self-love, wellness workshops
At one point in each of our lives, we’ve all encountered someone who’s not remorseful and may not even believe they have done anything wrong. In fact, they may even think that you’re the one at fault.
In this case, you may feel trapped and crippled by the anger and sense of injustice you experience in response to their selfishness and egotistical attitude.
You may believe that it’s important to convince the other person that they have done something wrong and have them understand the pain they have ’caused’.
The barrier to forgiveness here is a sense of moral outrage that will not move because to remove the outrage is viewed by you as an admission that the person did nothing wrong. Your sense of justice prevails.
This moral outrage isn’t necessary. Letting go of anger does not excuse the hurt or loss created by the other person. Forgiveness is not the same as pardon, condoning, or even reconciliation.
You can forgive and at the same time decide that you do not wish to spend time or work at building a more trusting relationship with people who are so reluctant to be accountable for their actions.
We can change the way we think and feel in an instant.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they obtain mercy.”–Matthew 5:7
