This semester has challenged me to go beyond the borders of what I know about myself and the world, and to see history and life from another perspective. Life is never just one story; it is thousands of stories woven and blended together that create one big intricate picture of what life is. Life is more than just me and my own opinions, thoughts and memories. It is not simple, and to think that it is, is to miss the point. My life is shaped by my past, present and future along with the past, present and futures of those around me, those who came before me and will come after me. While our differing experiences and ways of knowing cause us to question each other, it is important to remember that different is not necessarily bad, and it should not be ignored. This semester I have learned, from this course and many others, to be aware of the different voices of those who history has ignored so that I can have a full picture of the events and interactions that have formed our world today and that continue to make sense of our everyday day lives. To start, having gained a deeper understanding of the Indigenous way of knowing has been an important insight for me. In my precious experiences of visiting reserves and observing various Indigenous cultural events I have always known that the Indigenous people do things differently than how I have been taught. They run on different schedules and put a greater emphasis on certain elements than I had grown up with, but I never understood why. I know now that it was the remnants of personal sovereignty struggling to survive within them that had made me look twice at how they ran things. This concept of personal sovereignty contradicts everything I know about how power is distributed. It does not place power within a hierarchy, or place all power with one ruler; it dismisses selfish ambition and marginalization of its members. Personal sovereignty places all power within the group, where everyone has an equal voice and responsibility to honour the choices that are best for the individual. It promotes a selfless way of living that benefits the whole group, enacting a true form of democracy and decisions made by consensus. There are so many things that I have tried to wrap my head around, to make sense of, and my conclusions is that I long to see it in action today. I keep comparing our current system to the past Indigenous way and it captures in me a desire to bring it back into being. Our society has become too caught up on what is best for the individual that it forgets to respect that same freedom in others. The voices of the earth and its marginalized people within have been left unheard for long enough. We need to go back to a system where respect and care dictate what action should be taken, and society needs to do it before it is too late. This course has made me question the authority that I live my life under here in Canada. So many of the terrible things that our government did to the Indigenous peoples in Canada, and that other governments continue to do worldwide, happened because people followed blindly. Throughout history people did not question the choices that those in power made because they were either powerless to stop them or had placed their trust in unworthy rulers. How else could the people have let justice and truth become so twisted? Power was not meant to trample others and religion was not meant to manipulate people into obeying human rulers, especially not Christianity. However, I also believe that we are called to respect the government institutions that have been put into place. This world is temporary, and there will be a source of justice that comes to those who have done wrong. That is not to say that we should agree with or follow our leaders blindly. To be able to stand firm in our own beliefs we need to be aware of the actions that are being taken around us. We should not assume that the decisions of those above us are right for us, but we must respect them, and as a democratic nation cast our vote; we cannot convince the world of our values—a lesson that is too obvious from the journey of the Indigenous peoples. The miscommunication that collided between ways of knowing and ideals about how power is used hurt them the most. We need to be aware of the situations going on around us so that we may be able to stand up and be a voice to those who have been forgotten and support those who are working for change; to merely follow blindly is to be indifferent. When each of us looks for the other side to the story and examines what has been left unsaid, when we can come to a place where we can look past the comforts of life and see the true reality before us, it is then and only then that we can make the right moral decision. These kinds of decisions must be made on an individual level, for no one can force a moral decision on someone else, it must be decided within. I need to decide for myself what I believe and then take the steps to further worthy causes while still respecting the way things are run. The Indigenous people believe that everything on earth is connected to each other as members of a family are connected to each other. In this way all elements of nature and life act as a community, depending on each other for growth and survival. In the same way as elements are taken away, exploited and cut down, these dependent communities fall apart. The colonizers did not have an appreciation for this concept as moved across this lush land taking and exploiting both nature and people as they pleased. With every unjust and exploitative move they cut down communities that could never be replaced, they cut down the foundations of the Indigenous culture in ways that may irreplaceable. The interdependency that once formed a beautiful world collapsed on itself to bring us the state that our world and the crisis that Indigenous people are in today. This realization has affirmed within my mind that we, as white people, with a different way of knowing and source of values cannot pull the Indigenous peoples of Canada out of their current state of poverty by implementing our solutions. The contrast in values and methods has placed them in this crisis, how then can those same values and methods provide the solution to their release? The key to finding a solution lies within the nature of the Indigenous peoples. Our duty is to help them find their own solution that aligns with their way of knowing, giving them a new purpose that rejuvenates how they live their lives. Only then can the situation be reversed as it should be. As they seek a solution we need to honour their ways and respect the promises we made with them in the past, honouring the spirit of treaty that these promises and understandings were made in. We do owe them that much. As much as this journey has been full of struggles to understand and relate new concepts it has also been insightful towards my own beliefs. The spirituality of the Indigenous peoples holds many similarities to my own Christian belief system. While I do not personally agree to the degree of seeing nature as my own flesh and blood I do recognize that we have been charged by God with the task of taking care of the earth and being good stewards of what we have been given. We were meant to live in harmony with each other, to share the gifts that we have been given for the benefit of the community and not to hoard them for our own selfish gain. We are called to live selflessly; gain is not gain if it is costly to someone else. God commanded us to be kind to our neighbours and treat them better than ourselves, and if that was applied to the issues surrounding treaty today, then our next move would be obvious. We have been called to honour our words and to make right situations that have been wronged. The Christianity that the colonizers used to manipulate the peoples here is not what I believe in; the truth lies somewhere else within the love that is meant to bind all peoples together in peace and harmony. As I sift through the lessons I have learned throughout this course I know that I will not be able to view the world in the same way again. What stands out to me is not to judge a person or situation until I have taken the time to sit and understand them. Their way of knowing may be different than mine but that does not mean that it is bad or inferior. Once time has been taken to understand why and how and I have made the effort to try it, then I may be able to make a more informed decision. It may cause me to question my own way of knowing but this is not a bad thing. To ignore the process of taking the time to understand is to invite in miscommunication and injustice. If I am to learn anything from the past it is that power blinds us to what is important in life and it convinces us that personal gain and satisfaction is worth more than caring for others. I have learned many things from the differences of the Indigenous peoples of North America, and my hope is that these differences will come to fruition in my life. Different is not inherently bad, it may in fact be quite the opposite, and well worth learning from. In the changing culture around us as a new peace and a new way of life is in the process of taking root. It is my hope that this will be led by the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and that I and my fellow Canadians will take the time to recognize the need, will understand why it is needed and in turn support the progress that is being made to bring our peoples together in harmony. - Indigenous Studies Student, November 2013
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:44:59 +0000
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