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Bannock: we love it because it tastes good.
Baked or fried, with raisins or without, it’s the one food that bonds us together here on Turtle Island.
We love it because it anchors us to our childhood. I can think back to many meals of fried moose-meat (sauteed with onions and mushrooms), mashed potatoes, baked beans, hot tea and bannock. Especially on cold days, those were always the best meals. Meals like that symbolize my Mom’s love.
When we eat bannock, we can’t help but feel a connection with our Indigenous heritage. Bannock is what got many of our grandparents and great-grandparents through cold winters and trying times. Bannock served them well.
For those of you not in the know, bannock is a popular bread made by Native Peoples throughout Canada and the United States. It consists of flour, lard, baking powder and water. There are some variations on the ingredients, but that’s generally what goes into it.
You’ll find bannock being served at most pow-wows. It’s also known as fry-bread or Indian bread. Native women are very competitive when it comes to making the best bannock. Reputation quickly spreads. Just as everyone knows a community’s toughest guy, they also know the woman who makes the best bannock.
Now the bad news about bannock: it’s probably the worst food in terms of nutrition.
For a People who struggle with heart disease and diabetes, bannock unleashes a slow and lethal combination of clogging our arteries and shooting up our blood sugar levels.
Some people think they’re being healthy by making it with whole wheat flour, but it doesn’t really make it healthy. It’s like cooking up crystal meth without the drano and adding vitamin C instead.
This is an example of the many lies we tell ourselves and others about what we eat and our levels of exercise being more than healthy even when it’s the furthest thing from the truth. Talk with any obese person and most of them will try to convince you that they’re eating a healthy diet, even as they’re holding deep-fried food up to their mouths.
As Native People, we really don’t need any additional help in getting diabetes. And we can’t continue the perpetual lies about our diet at the expense of our health.
Let’s get real!
Looking at our history, bannock is not even Native in origin. It originated in Scotland over a thousand years ago. It only became popular when our ancestors grew to depend on government rations for survival.
In many ways, bannock symbolizes our colonization. We enjoy eating bannock in the same way we enjoy watching TV: we know it’s bad for us but we do it anyways.
Eating bannock encouraged us to break from generations of hunting and gathering to eek out alien, sedentary and largely dependent lives.
Government dependence didn’t happen overnight.
It’s okay to acknowledge bannock’s place in our history, but now is the time to embrace a new diet and a stronger concept of who we are–independent of the Crown.
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Our anger belongs to us, and it’s up to us to do something about it.
Making forgiveness work to strengthen a relationship is a three-step process. When someone is asking you for forgiveness, you may want to open your heart to allow a connection of love or light between you, but you fear that if you trust them you’ll be hurt.
The following three-step process will increase the likelihood that another’s request for forgiveness and your hard work at forgiving will have positive results for both of you.
Step 1: Listen
Listen to the person asking for forgiveness. True desire to repent and ask forgiveness involves an understanding that we have done something that resulted in another person’s pain or injury.
A person who is truly sorry or experiences regret is aware that their behaviour, whether intentional or not, resulted in another person’s suffering. Being able to see through another’s eyes and truly hear what they’re trying to say is the essence of good listening.
Step 2: Determine their Goals
People who seek forgiveness should be clear about their goals. When they are truly remorseful over what they’ve done, they communicate a sense of certainty that they don’t intend to choose the same behaviour in the future.
Step 3: Appraise their Commitment
Asking for forgiveness requires a commitment. The person who seeks forgiveness is essentially expressing a commitment to react to the same or a similar opportunity for negative action with a different choice.
Most people are given numerous chances to face situations that represent the core choice of a behaviour they want to change. Ask the person who is requesting forgiveness to tell you how they will manage their behaviour when faced with similar choices and situations in the future.
In order to make the changes that follow their request for forgiveness, they will need to have a plan for future behavioural choices in place.
Remember that the actual of forgiving is not a gift you give the other person, but a gift you give to yourself.
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My sister-in-law coined this term while living in Toronto. It’s used to describe what happens when any two First Nations men walk past each other on the street.
Nish stands for Anishinaabe and nod refers to any movement of the head in either an upward or downward motion. The nish nod is a friendly gesture shared by Native men all over Turtle Island.
One can be walking one way down a sidewalk in a three-piece suit off to meet a client. Another can be walking in the other direction still partying from the night before.
As they meet for a moment, they each give each other a nod and continue on their way. Sometimes you get a flicker of a smile and, if you’re in Toronto, an ‘Ahneen’, but always the nod.
The nod crosses tribal rivalry and social status.
Whenever it happens, the nod makes you feel good to be Native.
You could have just gotten fired from your job and evicted from your apartment, but if you get the nod, then you feel a little bit better.
This happens all the time in any urban centre in Canada. Perfect strangers acknowledge one another in a small but important act of unity.
The Nish Nod is quite prevalent in Toronto. While visiting my Mom in the hospital after her surgery, my Dad and I encountered this phenomenon at least a dozen times over the span of a weekend in the T-dot.
When I told my Dad about the term he had a good laugh. I think he appreciated how the phrase flowed and that I named something he’s experienced for decades.
Living in Vancouver, I still experience the nod, but to a much lesser extent. I don’t know if this is because I’m originally from Ontario or because it’s not as widely practiced out here.
I think it has more to do with Toronto being a more populous city. The smaller the urban centre, the less likely you are to encounter the nish nod if you’re a local because the greater familiarity breeds with it envy and jealousy, two after-effects of residential school syndrome.
Does the nish nod apply for women?
My wife says a similar thing happens whenever two First Nations women encounter one another on the street. For women, the smile replaces the nod.
Being acknowledged by another Native person for your common identity is what the nish nod is all about.
Feels good, don’t it?
Just another thing to be thankful for.
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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
Filed under: First Nations, First Nations issues, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous rights, Indigenous wisdom, Native American culture, Native Peoples, coaching, communication, culture, emotional health, family, health, humor, life, love, politics, protest, relationships, religion, residential school, residential school syndrome, self-help, spirituality, women | Tags: Aboriginal dating, American Indian dating, cougar attacks, cougarism, cougars, dating, endangered species, First Nations dating, humor, Indigenous dating, matriarchy, Native American dating, Native American issues, Native men, Native women, older women, relationships, younger men
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?
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As Native people, we need to feel and experience hope everyday of our lives. We have a responsibility to be hopeful.
This is something that is missing in many First Nations communities.
Hope represents the expectation that all will eventually turn out well. Creating hope does not mean expecting the impossible.
It means that even when your expectations and desires aren’t met, you have the ability to focus on some positive aspect of your experience and ‘know’ that it will have some positive outcome.
You know this to be true because you believe in your ability to make it happen. This focus keeps your attention on the strength of who you are and the benefits of your spiritual journey.
Spiritually-oriented people pay more attention to positive psychological outcomes and life satisfaction and less on trying to reduce symptoms of pain and distress when faced with tough life situations.
Hope consists of two parts: first, the belief in our ability to find workable and realistic paths to our goals; and second, the motivation to continue on our path to such goals.
The first part includes our ability to think optimistically.
Thinking optimistically helps you manage tough obstacles, disappointments, and adversity by expecting more positive outcomes in your life.
Hope takes optimism one step further.
When people are hopeful they actually use adverse events to give them information they need to stay with their goals and consider alternative pathways to reach them.
Finally, hope includes motivation to continue on a chosen path. Hope and optimism are important skills to have when you’re faced with life’s problems.
And as with any skill, hope can be learned, increased and enhanced. In my advanced seminars, I share tools and visualizations for creating hope and optimism.
Filed under: Environment, First Nations, culture, health, religion, self-help, women | Tags: A New Earth, Beyond Recycling, feminine power, Gender and the Environment, Global crisis, Green Revolution, Indigenous wisdom, Religion and the Environment, Sexism and the Environment, Spirituality and the Environment, Women and the Environment
An Indigenous Perspective on the Green Revolution
Two things are necessary for us to change our connection to the Earth and save us from ourselves. And they both come from an Indigenous worldview.
It’s not enough to recycle, buy organic local produce, or vote for the Green Party. Those things, among other best practices, don’t address the fundamental attitudes that got us where we are today, which is in the midst of our Planet’s sixth mass extinction.
Until women hold the balance of power, we will continue to destroy our Planet.
Yeah, I said it.
The greatest champions of Mother Earth have been Indigenous Peoples. Anything espoused by the Green Revolutionaries today has its roots in Indigenous wisdom.
Virtually all Indigenous Peoples were matriarchal. It is no coincidence that the Earth’s greatest protectors were led by strong women. Respectful attitudes towards women go hand in hand with being respectful of the Planet.
Conversely, when we look at the societies responsible for destroying our Mother Earth, we notice they are dominated by men and have been for centuries. This is also no coincidence.
Western European attitudes towards women have been anything but respectful and caring. It’s blatant sexism, and it’s been like this for centuries. The whole purpose of the Inquisition and its ‘witch’ burnings was to eradicate female power. Before Christianity’s introduction into European culture, the early Europeans had the same caring attitude towards the Planet.
However, with the advent of Christianity came the subjugation of women and the Planet’s ‘resources’. This is clearly stated in the Bible and it is one pronouncement that Christians centuries over have had a very easy time obeying. The cheating, lying, stealing and killing are habits that have been a little harder to curb.
It is a given that Islamic-Judeo-Christian (yes, all three can trace their roots to Abraham) societies are among the most disrespectful of women. You can see this in the power structures of those Churches, Temples, and Synagogues. In art, the ratio of female to male nudes in the Louvre, the Tate, and all the other repositories of ‘civilized culture’ speaks to this imbalance of power.
You can see this in the laws of these nations, where the number of laws that govern property rights greatly outnumber the laws that protect women. In many countries, the courts turn a blind eye to husbands beating their wives.
How you treat women, so you treat the Earth.
In Indigenous societies, it is the women who have that direct connection to the Planet. The women were (and still are in many communities) largely responsible for the picking of medicines. Women were the decision-makers and caregivers, while men were the warriors and hunters.
Only when the Europeans landed on Turtle Island did they demand to deal with the men. It is only a recent phenomenon that you see men as chiefs. This has more to do with the continued colonization that my People still face, than with any tradition.
Venture into any Indigenous community today and you’ll see something that’s missing from the ‘green revolution’. It’s the spirit of true humility and gratitude. Traditional people give tobacco as a sacred gift to the Creator before anything is ever taken from the land. It is this concept of reciprocity that’s missing from the ‘green revolution’.
With so much to give to the World, it makes me sad to see many of our People embrace the trappings of colonization and Christianity. It’s as depressing and ridiculous as seeing a Kodiak bear competing in a televised hot dog eating contest (you can find that clip, like everything else, on YouTube).
The two things that will nurture the Planet are: women holding power and a spirit of gratitude. It worked for Indigenous Peoples for millenia. In a nutshell, that’s what separates an Indigenous perspective from a Western European one.
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“No Man’s Land” is what they call native housing in Vancouver. The reason for this is the almost total lack of fathers taking care of their children.
From a visiting alien’s perspective, it seems like someone is conducting a wide-scale social scientific experiment on the Native population in Canada to determine what happens when nations of children are raised without their fathers.
Preliminary findings of this grand experiment indicate low self-esteem across the board, a predisposition to a host of self-defeating behaviors, high incarceration rates, and widespread violence.
Single mothers, grandmothers, or aunties are forced to raise their children on their own without the support of the children’s father. Make no mistake about it: most of these women deserve superhero status.
This is such a huge problem in the Native community, yet no one talks about it. This is having a huge effect on the holistic health of our People.
Our children need a father’s love and concern to compliment the love they receive from their mothers. Without it, a child isn’t complete. And without it, a child can grow up resenting and even hating all men.
Where are the fathers?
The crux of it is no one ever taught them to be men.
The coming of age ceremonies have largely vanished as a direct result of colonization and the long-lasting effects of residential school syndrome. Some of these ceremonies included the throwing away of all the child’s toys to both symbolize and actualize the child’s transformation into an adult.
Simply put, G.I. Joe and candy morph into guns and alcohol. They’re too busy acting like boys, shrugging off any responsibility or accountability. Detention turns into prison time for many Native men.
If you’ve read my last blog, then you’ve caught a glimpse into the Native community’s unwillingness to embrace adulthood.
The sad fact is that most Native men do not want to get married and raise children.
It’s surely not a problem of not enjoying the company of women or being physically capable of having children. Native birthrates are among the highest in the world. The problem occurs after the child is born.
Even some of our leaders are busy acting inappropriately when it comes to having extramarital affairs and fathering children with a number of women.
Now before you start to think that I’m putting all the blame on Native men, that’s missing the point. What happens in the Native community happens in others communities as well.
As a sidebar, we still haven’t seen a movie about the life of Martin Luther King, despite all of his political accomplishments and inspiring leadership. Even though he said all the right things in public, his private life did not always live up to his upright reputation. In this respect, he shares even more in common with JFK.
It’s too simplistic to blame just the men for the problem of single-parent families. The women must share in the responsibility for this wide-ranging phenomenon. When you point the blame at one party, it has the effect of polarizing the community even more.
Instead of focusing on entrenched positions of “He doesn’t have anything to do with raising his children” to “She is constantly being manipulative”, we have to shift to the common interests of how we can come together to raise our children.
To end on an upswing, my father was and still is an excellent role model for all Native fathers. He is still married to my mom after 44 years. Along with my mother, he accepted and embraced the responsibility of raising both my brother and myself. Together, they overcame the long-term effects of their time spent at the Pelican Falls residential school–the place where they first met as children.
There are others just like my dad all over Turtle Island. The problem is there are just far too few of them. This must change.
Life isn’t a rap video. Perhaps if more Native men suffered from early onset male-pattern baldness, they would act their age much sooner. Flowing hair aside, no one should aspire to be the old guy at the club. It’s more sad than laughable for many reasons.
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I smile every time I see a happy Native couple.
Choosing your partner is not only a romantic decision. It’s also the most political statement you make. Native couples don’t know it, but they’re political activists in so many ways–keeping our cultures strong.
For those who do stay in the community, finding romance is difficult for other reasons. There are not that many new faces arriving on the scene. Unemployment is a major reason why our People are moving away. And because no one wants to end up with a relative, the pickings are slim.
Also, our Brothers are locked up in prisons at alarming rates. The Aboriginal population in some correctional facilities on the Prairies is over 70 %. The transition, over two generations, from being a semi-nomadic hunter to sitting behind a desk in this society has been harder for us men in a lot of ways.
And still, Native people are getting together. The birth rates in Native Country are soaring, and this is a good thing. Given the numbers of our People who died as a result of smallpox during contact, these high birth rates signify an unconscious effort to bring our numbers back to what they once were.
Why is it so important to date Native? Our cultures are at stake, that’s why.
The Canadian government has actually commissioned a study to figure out when the final Status Indian will be alive. Given the recent trends of dating outside the culture and Bill c-31 legislation, the term “full-blooded Indian” will become a historical term within 100 years.
Here’s some scary statistics from the U.S.:
Given the blood quantum levels, Native Americans are decreasing as they assimilate into North American populations. In 1980, 60% of all Native Americans were full-blooded. By the year 2000, 34% of all Native Americans were full-blooded and by 2080, .03% of all Native Americans will be full-blooded.
If you’re a Native woman who’s looking for love, then this post will be an important first read. This entry on Romance in the Native Community will be part of a series dedicated to Native Romance.
You’re probably wondering if Native men even care about love. You’re probably envisioning a cousin who does nothing but go from woman to woman, fathering children like he was ordained by some extremist Mormon sect.
The marriage rate on Native reservations is extremely low. Following a greater global trend, relationships don’t tend to last all that long. However, that doesn’t mean that Native people aren’t falling deeply in love.
Common law is the law on most reservations, as most Native people shy away from getting the government involved in their affairs. Given the history, can you blame any Indigenous couple for not making it ‘official’.
Surprisingly, Native men date within the culture at a higher rate than Native women do. As one of these Native women, you’re probably thinking there are some very good reasons for that.
Physical abuse is a real problem in Native communities. Alarmingly, Indigenous women are the most abused segment of the population. All it takes is getting hit just once and some Native women will not have anything to do with Native men ever again.
Personally, my Grandma left my Grandpa when my Dad was just a child at residential school. The reason for this was simple: she was tired of getting beaten up. She ended up living with a decent war veteran for the rest of her life.
Not all Native men are violent. Not all Native men are cheats. Not all Native men are immune to real love. The healing journey has begun.
One point that must be stressed is Native men are not like other men out there. For one thing, you don’t have to fit into those kids clothes they call “ladies wear” at department stores everywhere. Traditional-sized women catch the eye of many Native men.
Another point that Native men really differ with the mainstream is that we love strong women. If you’ve got a strong voice, that’s great. If you’ve got your own ideas, even better! If you think you have to be quiet to get a Native man’s attention, then think again.
Tune into this blog repeatedly for more of the scoop on Native romance. If this subject really interests you, then write to me for workshop information on finding real love. Until then, keep on smiling and living in the moment.
Filed under: First Nations, culture, family, health, religion, women | Tags: family, religion
Stopping the Attack
First Nations people still take a lot of abuse. No one, however, takes more abuse than our women.
It is unacceptable to hurt a woman in any way. Let’s remember this truism not only in public, but in private as well.
Our First Nations women are strong. They are our life-givers, our protectors, and, in many cases, the providers.
Compared to us men, our women are graduating from high school and university at higher rates.
In business, many women are taking the lead. For instance, in the male-dominated world of TV & film, most of the Aboriginal production companies are run quite successfully by women.
Let’s not be afraid to speak out on violence against women. Everyone must be held accountable for their actions.
One of my workshops deals with teaching our young men to be real, respectful men. Extending ceremony into daily living is the ultimate goal of this workshop.
We’re not protecting our brothers from the law after they’ve been violent. What we’re doing is preventing justice for our women.
www.sweetgrasscoaching.com
