Recently I attended a conference hosted by Jeanette Armstrong’s En’owkin Center at Penticton BC. For 3 days, mostly indigenous, academics from an array of disciplines from North America, New Zealand and Europe presented on various aspects of their theory, research and practice. The conference was called Transformation and Praxis and it came just when I needed it.
Typical lecture subjects ranged from forestry, water issues, language and history and generally speaking, the theme or point wasn’t commercial, it was real. I know this is a poor sentence and sounds vague but what I mean is that regardless of the topic or the presenter, most, if not all seminars were decidedly lacking in a commercial bottom line. In fact, it seemed that commerce was often the key factor that hindered much of what most are trying to accomplish in their chosen field. Add to that, the common experience of utter disregard or disrespect for indigenous methodology in the academy was clear. I can’t recall anyone who didn’t experience the same type of hardship within their respective institutions over the fact that Indigenous people don’t seem to get into these fields to exploit but rather to serve their communities (and no - I’m not naïve – I am very aware we have just as many exploiters and money shaker-makers, as any body else but c’mon we’re people too, ya know!). This stood out as the indigenous bottom line for me. I saw mostly PhD’s (or candidates) and master’s scholars detailing their research and their experiences in trying to learn how to help their communities. They want to learn so they can help their people. Universities don’t support this philosophy as it pertains to aboriginal people in any real way (of course some individuals in a particular institution have been supportive but they had to be found, at times in very obscure places around the world but then again that’s what good scholarship is).
For instance, one lecturer detailed her pioneering work in geographical satellite mapping of forest species types, locations and densities. Now the big forestry companies are very keen to utilize this kind of technology and information obviously to maximize their exploitation of this resource. But this individual is trying to use the information to find ways of enacting responsible and real sustainable forestry practice (not the completely inappropriate and misleading industry definition of “sustainable”). She also seeks to collect data in order to prevent industrial forestry practice from occurring near important traditional aboriginal hunting and fishing places and near important river systems and watersheds. Her expertise and knowledge of non-indigenous forestry practice shows clearly that it destroys the health and vitality of aboriginal land and water (eco-systems and bio-regions). As industry now knows, you cannot clear cut a mountainside, then plant small saplings of a cheaper, genetically modified (and often foreign to that area) species and say that the forest will simply grow back in time. Old and moderate growth forests only work because of their unique and abundant density and diversity and inter-related nutrient exchange at points located below tree lines or nearer the forest floor. Add to this the fact that snow, precipitation and its runoff is now completely altered and unfiltered and serves mainly to choke and contaminate any river system or freshwater source that lies below it, not to mention the large scale impact on wildlife that comes with road construction and installation of machinery by the forest industry. Sending a bunch of pot-smoking summer students out there after the fact, planting saplings for minimum wage is not sound, sustainable or ethical forestry practice. - - The presenter wants to identify areas that if forested, will have maximum negative impact on aboriginal people. Industry wants this information in order to build the cheapest roads to get to these very same places. Why does industry not go elsewhere? Because the reason aboriginal people inhabit these areas in the first place is because of its richness and density in natural resources. The ironic fact, aboriginal people have been there for untold thousands of years…but you would never know it, so expertly and deftly has their use of indigenous knowledge and practice been in place. - - So this person is under immense pressure because forestry provides millions to universities in endowments and grants solely for the purpose of accessing more efficient means of industrial scale forestry methods (i.e., to make more money, faster).
Next, our brightest minds must deal with the fact that at that non-indigenous academia is often reluctant to endorse the information we've cited - your sources for information and knowledge need to be cited, this is not the problem, in fact it's good. Though universities and other bodies claim to respect indigenous and “traditional” knowledge, when it comes time to assess or adjudicate material wherein a traditional source (i.e., information or knowledge not found in a liberry or a book) has been cited, the scholar (student, researcher etc) often has an uphill climb in having the work approved, endorsed, sanctioned, certified or accepted. Now some readers at this point will think: well, screw them we don’t’ need…blah, blah, blah…But the people engaged in this struggle are every ounce as committed as anyone else. They take on these challenges with a warrior’s spirit. They actively seek and find those places within and without that need to be found. When necessary, they engage with the oppressor, confront the barrier…and proceed. Research and learn about what Indigenous people have done for themselves in places like Hawaii and New Zealand. Look at the models they have developed for teaching their people their way. It’s very interesting and very powerful.
What’s really powerful is that they can now (indigenous scholars) more frequently and specifically articulate with data this “inter-related or inter-connectedness” that indigenous people have been speaking of since contact. In the past, there were simply linguistic barriers to mutual learning. I am not referring to the concept being new as of contact I am speaking of the effectiveness (or lack of) and difficulty in mutual understanding, based on language.
Vine Deloria Jr., Jeneatte Armstrong, Leroy LittleBear, Hunani Kay- Trask, Jack Forbes are just some of our people who have not compromised their spiritual or cultural selves to reach previously uninhabited places in the academy. And people like Armstrong and LittleBear, each of whom is a fluent speaker of their own nation’s language first, are also more articulate than most people whose first language is English (i.e., white people). What this does is that it gives no place for non-indigenous academia to run. They can no longer blame OUR deficiencies or OUR inabilities…they can only exhibit their unwillingness to see…and they do. Their (silence) is deafening but antiquated ideas and methods are on their way out…all sensible people know this. But just because they bury their heads in the sand doesn’t mean we’re going to…*(sigh)…(I'm so happy).
I mentioned at the top that this conference came along just when I needed it. This was in reference to frequent company i had been keeping that consistently slandered people who chose to pursue goals at universities, colleges and various institutes. If people could have seen the power inherent in stories of the struggle to achieve in the hostile and often lonely halls of academia, one couldn’t help but be inspired. For me I wanted to high five these women (as usual, it is mostly women, doing the hard work…but that’s a topic for another post) because of what they were giving me. Just hearing of their trials and tribulations AND, it must be said, their PROGRESS proved that nothing we do is in vain. I had been letting all these bad vibes sink in about what value he, she, they or it was having and I was slowly starting to give my power away to influential people (Indian lefties, yet…and I am one) and their cult of “the system.” Then creator sends me to this conference and I am restored and my faith and conviction gets stronger. Now more than ever, I see attitude is everything.
For those of a particular or hardcore stance, those who wield culture like a weapon, who have no room for other points of view who, have deemed and judged others (see previous blog on “judgment”) inferior or deficient…thank you for caring enough to share your opinion. We understand you don’t believe approaches such as education or other areas of endeavor (art?) are necessary. But I am so glad to disagree (what’s difference between you and them? They ALSO have god on their side, remember?).
It is necessary and difficult. But it is necessary in the same way we need people (wherever they are) to learn and practice traditional language and ways of knowing. In my own experience I have been to lots and lots of places to learn and find teachings that I now carry but these things were gathered with a respectfully critical process that takes nothing at face value (nothing). It is not helpful (or realistic) to think that only in the country does one have access to their cultural and spiritual influence and power. If that’s true, then most of us are wasting on our time aren’t we? Fundamentalists – beat it! I love my fellow sojourners and spiritual groove locaters and self/spirit makers who have no choice but to seek and find solace, comfort and power in these places in the heart and in the hood. Wouldn’t everybody love to have an island, cottage or home (a home, home on the rez) to retreat to a place to go to replenish? But we make do and some of us do the best we can for ourselves and each other. I see the willingness to engage at every level in every field and in every way that is meaningful and it’s powerful also. It is in keeping with traditional values I’ll have the reader know.
In fact, I would contend that most of these presenters I wrote about are solidly immersed in a traditional, spiritual and/or cultural identity and practice. You’d have to be to make it in the hostile environment of “higher learning” (or amid the urban wilderness) while hanging on your soul.
These scholars are working tirelessly to better themselves and their lives, and their communities. In the process they are creating space in these institutions and the larger society for their people to follow and contributing to a body of knowledge useful for a type of student after them. Eventually we will cite our own people in our work and in our scholarship and it will not be questioned. The idea is that down the road we have our own institutions, with our own curriculum, based on our own knowledge, values and philosophies and practices based on our own ideas of what is appropriate and most useful to our people.
We have a long way to go but what alternative is there? The only way to get through…is to get through.
Two Indians stood at the bottom of a mountain, each needing to be at the top by sundown. The one Indian started off and looked behind him to see the other sit down and bow his head. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’ll never make it in time…I am praying hard the Creator gives me wings.”
“Good idea,” said the other, “but I think I’m going to head out and pray along the way.”
© 2010 Champsteen Publishing
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Inner City East Side Red Man's Blues...
It’s been a helluva couple weeks, pages turning, doors closing and opening, milestones reached and I gaze down at my guitar…and fall in love every time. It’s never an exaggeration to say I don’t know what boredom is (certain people notwithstanding) if there is a guitar within reach. I’m no virtuoso by any means. I know several chords, mostly major but a few minor ones and with a capo I am able to access the entire musical scale. I’m working on song that’s so much fun to try and finish I’ll almost be sad when I do. I’ve got a catchy chord progression and melody that’s carved in stone and the lyrics consist of a conversation with the city, god (aren’t they ALL conversations with god?) and a girl (aren’t they all conversations with a girl?...well, they should be) – Inner City East Side Red Man’s Blues…
My father passed away some years ago and I was not able to be at his funeral and I spent many punishing nights bleeding over this and other life circumstances well beyond my control. I never knew the man and based on all the wildly different stories I’m told about him I have found I can take none of them for granted. The truth lies somewhere between some of my earliest hazy memories, some biased second-hand accounts (good and bad) and half a dozen brief exchanges I had with him as an adult after I had made my way back to my reserve and when he was still alive. I was an Indian baby caught up in the “60’s and 70’s scoop.” In those days, it was policy to apprehend first and let the chips fall where they may. I was taken when I was not yet two years old and did not return until my mother’s funeral. It was at this point, in most real ways, that I met my people. But I do remember things from my time before I was taken. There was me eagerly balanced at the knee of a seated fat man in a green shirt, playing a red guitar. There was a lightning storm and me carried in the arms of a young boy older than I through a field as the brilliant strikes tore though the sky. There was a woman lying face down in a kitchen in a widening pool of blood as a man stood above her kicking her again and again in the face and head. It took me a long time (that is, years and years) to understand that I could not say for certain who those people were. I assumed they were my mother and father but I have only the memory of it and no other accounts from anybody else (I had lots of brothers and sisters). Today I look at it as something I merely witnessed and I will not say that either person was my mother or father because I honestly don’t know and it is tortuous to think otherwise. This is my life and it’s what I have chosen. It is wrong for me to ascribe blame or guilt to anyone or to cast a mantle of victimhood on people I’m not sure of because it diminishes all of us. I can only pray there is peace for anyone involved in what I saw.
When I was 12 or 13 years old, my dad appeared at the front door of the house where I was fostered in the city and it was expected I would go out to his car parked across the street and speak to him. I knew the white people who kept me were peering through the curtains to see what he would do. By that stage of my life I had been fed a steady diet of rhetoric and stereotype (bullshit, is what it was) about what Indians were like but because I was the only Indian I knew I was terrified at what might happen. They spied on us because surely he would try something. I was terrified because I wore the unbearable weight of expectation of what he might do, of what I was supposed to say to this strange (and dangerous) man, of asserting some type of undefined loyalty for the people who kept me but who I also lived in constant fear of.
What happened?
Well.
He held me to him, kissed me, offered me his watch and a wad of cash (I declined both) and then he took a guitar out of the back seat of his car and handed it to me. Our visit was brief and I was unsure how I was meant to feel. I was painfully shy in the presence of adults back then so the visit and the de-briefing with my foster parents afterwards was the height of anxiety for me. I had never played guitar up to that point and in fact I was all about drummers back then. I would not see him again until many years later at my mother’s funeral but, one day, when I was eighteen, I had a friend tune that guitar for me and I learned my first song. Learning that song transformed my life and it’s became a seminal and profound part of the ongoing adventure that is my life.
As I sit alone strumming and singing my own song in a downtown apartment beside the ocean I do so in reverie. I have played and sang Woody Guthrie’s, This Land Is Your Land, in Cree, at my reserve for an oral assignment when I took Cree language courses there. I sang and played with the (indigenous) Sami people at one of their settlements in the far North of Norway. I played one of my songs at an aboriginal literary event in the Okanagan for some of the most respected and revered writers in Indian country (a couple of them personal heroes of mine) and they genuinely seemed to dig it. I have played and sang in Sty-We-Tan, “The Great Hall,” on Musqueam territory, here at Vancouver. I have played on assorted street corners and stoops all across the land. I’ve made songs for a friend’s wedding and for another friend’s first baby and for a friend who passed away. I have no real aspirations with music beyond recording a few for posterity. I would be lost without music. I still have desert island songs that year after year continue to inspire me, move me and still give me chills when I’m in the right frame of mind. Music has this effect and I haven’t even mentioned the drum!...
We were never more than strangers to each other, really, but during what was to be the next to last conversation with my father I told him my girlfriend and I were expecting and that I had completed my first year of art school in Penticton BC. He raised his eyebrows, nodded slowly then asked if I remembered his and my trip to Penticton when I was a baby. Of course I didn’t but he just laughed and told me how much I cried and how we hitch-hiked the whole way. He didn’t give any details only that it was Penticton and it was just him and me. When I think of it today I can hardly comprehend an Indian man with a newborn or one year old baby tucked under his arm, in 1970, hitching through the mountains from Alberta to BC. But I don’t doubt it in the least. It is just one among the countless strange but true stories I have become aware of during the ride on this big old merry-go-round (don’t be surprised to read my version of this story someday).
Today when I work with people who are like I was, sick with their experience, I try to help them locate choices. We work to find useful patterns in their lives that have gotten them here from there. I try to help form a perspective that the worst is over and anything that happened to them or that they may have done will never be that bad again. We help each other become aware of the strength inherent in the daily struggle to transcend the experiences that hurt us. I use my teachings and understanding as a Cree man. I (we) come from a long, long line of powerful and hearty people. The ancestral history of my people, though unwritten, exists and is confirmed by the very fact that I write this. My family’s troubles, in the historical sense, are relatively recent. That I should be constantly struggling to make a good life for myself and my loved ones makes more sense to me than it does to grieve and suffer day in day out. Suffering has never been the way of my people and will not be. We are Nehiyaw.
The guitar I currently play is the thirteenth I have owned. I’ve owned a few beauties but like women, I never seemed to be able to hang on to the good ones. The next one though, will be my last…guitar, that is. The guitar has allowed me to sit in some amazing circles and no man could be this lucky. As I get older, I find it is enough for me to sit alone with a six string, make this medicine and raise spirits.
This is what my father gave me.
© 2010 Champsteen Publishing
My father passed away some years ago and I was not able to be at his funeral and I spent many punishing nights bleeding over this and other life circumstances well beyond my control. I never knew the man and based on all the wildly different stories I’m told about him I have found I can take none of them for granted. The truth lies somewhere between some of my earliest hazy memories, some biased second-hand accounts (good and bad) and half a dozen brief exchanges I had with him as an adult after I had made my way back to my reserve and when he was still alive. I was an Indian baby caught up in the “60’s and 70’s scoop.” In those days, it was policy to apprehend first and let the chips fall where they may. I was taken when I was not yet two years old and did not return until my mother’s funeral. It was at this point, in most real ways, that I met my people. But I do remember things from my time before I was taken. There was me eagerly balanced at the knee of a seated fat man in a green shirt, playing a red guitar. There was a lightning storm and me carried in the arms of a young boy older than I through a field as the brilliant strikes tore though the sky. There was a woman lying face down in a kitchen in a widening pool of blood as a man stood above her kicking her again and again in the face and head. It took me a long time (that is, years and years) to understand that I could not say for certain who those people were. I assumed they were my mother and father but I have only the memory of it and no other accounts from anybody else (I had lots of brothers and sisters). Today I look at it as something I merely witnessed and I will not say that either person was my mother or father because I honestly don’t know and it is tortuous to think otherwise. This is my life and it’s what I have chosen. It is wrong for me to ascribe blame or guilt to anyone or to cast a mantle of victimhood on people I’m not sure of because it diminishes all of us. I can only pray there is peace for anyone involved in what I saw.
When I was 12 or 13 years old, my dad appeared at the front door of the house where I was fostered in the city and it was expected I would go out to his car parked across the street and speak to him. I knew the white people who kept me were peering through the curtains to see what he would do. By that stage of my life I had been fed a steady diet of rhetoric and stereotype (bullshit, is what it was) about what Indians were like but because I was the only Indian I knew I was terrified at what might happen. They spied on us because surely he would try something. I was terrified because I wore the unbearable weight of expectation of what he might do, of what I was supposed to say to this strange (and dangerous) man, of asserting some type of undefined loyalty for the people who kept me but who I also lived in constant fear of.
What happened?
Well.
He held me to him, kissed me, offered me his watch and a wad of cash (I declined both) and then he took a guitar out of the back seat of his car and handed it to me. Our visit was brief and I was unsure how I was meant to feel. I was painfully shy in the presence of adults back then so the visit and the de-briefing with my foster parents afterwards was the height of anxiety for me. I had never played guitar up to that point and in fact I was all about drummers back then. I would not see him again until many years later at my mother’s funeral but, one day, when I was eighteen, I had a friend tune that guitar for me and I learned my first song. Learning that song transformed my life and it’s became a seminal and profound part of the ongoing adventure that is my life.
As I sit alone strumming and singing my own song in a downtown apartment beside the ocean I do so in reverie. I have played and sang Woody Guthrie’s, This Land Is Your Land, in Cree, at my reserve for an oral assignment when I took Cree language courses there. I sang and played with the (indigenous) Sami people at one of their settlements in the far North of Norway. I played one of my songs at an aboriginal literary event in the Okanagan for some of the most respected and revered writers in Indian country (a couple of them personal heroes of mine) and they genuinely seemed to dig it. I have played and sang in Sty-We-Tan, “The Great Hall,” on Musqueam territory, here at Vancouver. I have played on assorted street corners and stoops all across the land. I’ve made songs for a friend’s wedding and for another friend’s first baby and for a friend who passed away. I have no real aspirations with music beyond recording a few for posterity. I would be lost without music. I still have desert island songs that year after year continue to inspire me, move me and still give me chills when I’m in the right frame of mind. Music has this effect and I haven’t even mentioned the drum!...
We were never more than strangers to each other, really, but during what was to be the next to last conversation with my father I told him my girlfriend and I were expecting and that I had completed my first year of art school in Penticton BC. He raised his eyebrows, nodded slowly then asked if I remembered his and my trip to Penticton when I was a baby. Of course I didn’t but he just laughed and told me how much I cried and how we hitch-hiked the whole way. He didn’t give any details only that it was Penticton and it was just him and me. When I think of it today I can hardly comprehend an Indian man with a newborn or one year old baby tucked under his arm, in 1970, hitching through the mountains from Alberta to BC. But I don’t doubt it in the least. It is just one among the countless strange but true stories I have become aware of during the ride on this big old merry-go-round (don’t be surprised to read my version of this story someday).
Today when I work with people who are like I was, sick with their experience, I try to help them locate choices. We work to find useful patterns in their lives that have gotten them here from there. I try to help form a perspective that the worst is over and anything that happened to them or that they may have done will never be that bad again. We help each other become aware of the strength inherent in the daily struggle to transcend the experiences that hurt us. I use my teachings and understanding as a Cree man. I (we) come from a long, long line of powerful and hearty people. The ancestral history of my people, though unwritten, exists and is confirmed by the very fact that I write this. My family’s troubles, in the historical sense, are relatively recent. That I should be constantly struggling to make a good life for myself and my loved ones makes more sense to me than it does to grieve and suffer day in day out. Suffering has never been the way of my people and will not be. We are Nehiyaw.
The guitar I currently play is the thirteenth I have owned. I’ve owned a few beauties but like women, I never seemed to be able to hang on to the good ones. The next one though, will be my last…guitar, that is. The guitar has allowed me to sit in some amazing circles and no man could be this lucky. As I get older, I find it is enough for me to sit alone with a six string, make this medicine and raise spirits.
This is what my father gave me.
© 2010 Champsteen Publishing
Thursday, April 22, 2010
...The Sun Really Is Setting...
The beautiful photo included in this blog shows the view outside my apartment window. The traffic you see is that exiting the Granville Street Bridge on either Granville street or Seymour Street, entering downtown Vancouver. When I moved in April 1st of last year, I had a choice of suites and I chose this one specifically for the Western exposure. I've always had a thing for sunsets (just look at the photo) and the other options were views of blighted rooftops next to this building or facing the nightclub directly opposite the front of this building on Richards Street. I was instantly in love with the view and have set up my desk and monitor next to the large window. What is not apparent in the photo is the lovely community garden that lies between where the camera was and where you see the headlights - another bonus.
Tragically, I arrived home early one afternoon, about the third week of April last year (that's right, 3 weeks after I moved in) and witnessed a small group of people with a large red ribbon, a silver shovel and a photographer getting it all on film. That's right, a sod turning ceremony directly across the alley outside my window and as of this writing they have begun the second floor bracing and constructing forms for the cement floor to be poured probably early next week. This means I'll soon be able to see what my neighbors are eating for breakfast, watching on TV...wearing! To make matters worse, an immaculately illustrated sign has been erected at the edge of the garden indicating the beautiful high rise that is going up where the rows of greenery are presently situated. That means the beautiful vantage point I've enjoyed this past year will soon exist only in memories. I suspect I'll linger just a little longer and a little more often these next coming months during the remaining sunsets I have left...(c'mon, this ain't a sob story - sunsets are medicine for a guy like me)
© 2010 Champsteen Publishing
Tragically, I arrived home early one afternoon, about the third week of April last year (that's right, 3 weeks after I moved in) and witnessed a small group of people with a large red ribbon, a silver shovel and a photographer getting it all on film. That's right, a sod turning ceremony directly across the alley outside my window and as of this writing they have begun the second floor bracing and constructing forms for the cement floor to be poured probably early next week. This means I'll soon be able to see what my neighbors are eating for breakfast, watching on TV...wearing! To make matters worse, an immaculately illustrated sign has been erected at the edge of the garden indicating the beautiful high rise that is going up where the rows of greenery are presently situated. That means the beautiful vantage point I've enjoyed this past year will soon exist only in memories. I suspect I'll linger just a little longer and a little more often these next coming months during the remaining sunsets I have left...(c'mon, this ain't a sob story - sunsets are medicine for a guy like me)
© 2010 Champsteen Publishing
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
...here comes the judge...
Someone recently confided their deep resentment toward a loved one of theirs over (as they put it) being judged too harshly.
“How do you know?” - I inquired.
“The way she acts.”
Fair enough. However, it did get me thinking about this idea because I hear it all the time. We fear or resent being judged. Judged by whom? Anyone - our friends, colleagues, acquaintances, siblings, parents, certainly our partners and frequently, it seems, complete strangers or people we’ve not known previously. But what does it mean to be judged? Let’s presume my haughty mother-in-law proclaims, insensitively and without subtlety over dinner in front of everyone…”I never imagined you of all people could compete at that level…” An observation or statement of this tone or slant clearly has an effect on a lot of people. Again, my question what does it mean…to judged by another person? Is it an assessment of guilt or innocence? Does it imply punishment, retribution, restitution and how are these are administered and regulated, under what authority? Already the reader is saying to themselves…well…I don’t mean like that!
And at this we agree. More accurately we are miffed by someone’s apparent opinion of us based on what he have done or said (and even more frequently, second hand news that may or may not have any basis in fact).
That’s it.
Someone judges me? – So what?
I like Buddhist (and Cree) philosophy: there are no good or bad events only the different degrees by which we react, if we must. Let’s say I walk up to Gordon Campbell and state unequivocally: I deplore what you do and I judge you to be immoral. – This man will probably shake my hand, thank me and ask that I write a letter to his secretary. He doesn’t have time to worry about my judgment of him; he’s busy changing the world (tell me that’s not the truth).
Another friend voices their near-constant oppression by Christianity. To hear them speak is to hear described a relentless onslaught of dogma and inescapable ideology on a daily basis. I’m not sure what that looks like because in my daily experience I encounter Christianity very little if at all. My best guess is that one of or all of this person’s parents or grandparents (the one possessing the greatest degree of impression on them) has had or continues to have a profound relationship with “something Christian” and it thereby colors everything they experience. Then again…who’s to say? In my experience there are daily connections in literary references because I read tons in the English language or simply in everyday conversation (again these are only references). I do not (nor am I forced to) read the bible, attend church or other institutions, watch religious or Christian programming or read such material, hang out with zealous (or otherwise) Christians. I see plenty of churches around town but all things considered I am impressed (rather than oppressed) by one or two for purely aesthetic reasons (as a side bar, I have experienced few man-made things as impressive as seeing firsthand Michelangelo’s work at Vatican City’s, Sistine Chapel in Rome, quite awe inspiring – damn those renaissance men, hey waitta minute…I wanna be one).
In short, Christianity has little impact on my daily life. Of course I am an Indian (that’s right, you heard me) and so I am painfully aware of what many of my people have experienced and this is as far as I will go with this thought other than to say to say; my experience of Christianity cannot compare to this type of trauma but I do have the opportunity (and responsibility) to see that it never happens again on my watch under any policy or circumstance.
Another good friend well on his way to exploring his spiritual self and the wider world was lamenting the fact that back at home, a person or two close to him had apparently remained unchanged in their thinking or behavior during all his time away. It saddened him because his personal growth seemed unmatched by those close to him, people he loves and cares for deeply and he was left feeling uneasy while engaged in conversation with them because of the oppressive quality of his experience. I think we can all relate to this at times but he remains optimistic and we discussed that time does wonders and if nothing else, he remains available and open and he understands that people can change. He has a sense of gratitude that there is even a perceptible difference because it indicates his own growth. They remain mutually loving and supportive and there isn’t much more we can reasonably ask of others if we cannot always have the “meeting of the minds” that suits our preference. He is contented and lifted with the things in his heart and as of that conversation it was enough for him.
I witnessed a wonderful perspective provided by Cree artist, Tomson Highway, during a lecture given at Toronto some years ago. He said that Christian mythology presents the notion that we are immersed in constant judgment by an imposing God who actually cast us out of the garden of paradise because we ate a piece of fruit. Someone sinned for us and we spend our entire lives trying to atone for that transgression (I am paraphrasing, of course). But then he spoke Plains mythology and how it presents our creator as a benevolent force that has us as equal to our environment - actually part of it…we articulate this with (among other things) language to effect that the trees and mountains are our relatives. We’re in paradise, it’s all around us to be enjoyed and taken care of and we never leave it as we are spirits and we are here forever.
We’re endowed with the beautiful gift of choice. Love something, revere it, worship it, honor and respect it and see how it makes you feel…exploit it and you will be doomed to live with niggling doubt and an overwrought psyche. I heard it said: to sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me.
It’s why I like artists. Typically they’re fresh thinkers, original idea finders. If you want good insight on the society/culture of a given time and place look to the arts and its various forms produced in that period. It can tell you a lot. This choice I spoke of is powerful knowledge because of its transformative potential - nothing actually happens without ideas first. Tyrants of this age (think powerful global conglomerates and several governments) know this well and history has shown that artists and other creative types are often the first to be oppressed.
Am I oppressed? I choose to say I am not. Certainly there are challenges but I am presented with unprecedented opportunities many, many others will never know. It is complicated and daunting but would Indians of any age say it has ever been otherwise lo these past 500 years or so? Probably not.
Eleanor Roosevelt said: no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Or as Junior in Oliver Stone’s film, Platoon, advises: Simple, free yer mind and the ass will follow…
© 2010 Champsteen Publishing
“How do you know?” - I inquired.
“The way she acts.”
Fair enough. However, it did get me thinking about this idea because I hear it all the time. We fear or resent being judged. Judged by whom? Anyone - our friends, colleagues, acquaintances, siblings, parents, certainly our partners and frequently, it seems, complete strangers or people we’ve not known previously. But what does it mean to be judged? Let’s presume my haughty mother-in-law proclaims, insensitively and without subtlety over dinner in front of everyone…”I never imagined you of all people could compete at that level…” An observation or statement of this tone or slant clearly has an effect on a lot of people. Again, my question what does it mean…to judged by another person? Is it an assessment of guilt or innocence? Does it imply punishment, retribution, restitution and how are these are administered and regulated, under what authority? Already the reader is saying to themselves…well…I don’t mean like that!
And at this we agree. More accurately we are miffed by someone’s apparent opinion of us based on what he have done or said (and even more frequently, second hand news that may or may not have any basis in fact).
That’s it.
Someone judges me? – So what?
I like Buddhist (and Cree) philosophy: there are no good or bad events only the different degrees by which we react, if we must. Let’s say I walk up to Gordon Campbell and state unequivocally: I deplore what you do and I judge you to be immoral. – This man will probably shake my hand, thank me and ask that I write a letter to his secretary. He doesn’t have time to worry about my judgment of him; he’s busy changing the world (tell me that’s not the truth).
Another friend voices their near-constant oppression by Christianity. To hear them speak is to hear described a relentless onslaught of dogma and inescapable ideology on a daily basis. I’m not sure what that looks like because in my daily experience I encounter Christianity very little if at all. My best guess is that one of or all of this person’s parents or grandparents (the one possessing the greatest degree of impression on them) has had or continues to have a profound relationship with “something Christian” and it thereby colors everything they experience. Then again…who’s to say? In my experience there are daily connections in literary references because I read tons in the English language or simply in everyday conversation (again these are only references). I do not (nor am I forced to) read the bible, attend church or other institutions, watch religious or Christian programming or read such material, hang out with zealous (or otherwise) Christians. I see plenty of churches around town but all things considered I am impressed (rather than oppressed) by one or two for purely aesthetic reasons (as a side bar, I have experienced few man-made things as impressive as seeing firsthand Michelangelo’s work at Vatican City’s, Sistine Chapel in Rome, quite awe inspiring – damn those renaissance men, hey waitta minute…I wanna be one).
In short, Christianity has little impact on my daily life. Of course I am an Indian (that’s right, you heard me) and so I am painfully aware of what many of my people have experienced and this is as far as I will go with this thought other than to say to say; my experience of Christianity cannot compare to this type of trauma but I do have the opportunity (and responsibility) to see that it never happens again on my watch under any policy or circumstance.
Another good friend well on his way to exploring his spiritual self and the wider world was lamenting the fact that back at home, a person or two close to him had apparently remained unchanged in their thinking or behavior during all his time away. It saddened him because his personal growth seemed unmatched by those close to him, people he loves and cares for deeply and he was left feeling uneasy while engaged in conversation with them because of the oppressive quality of his experience. I think we can all relate to this at times but he remains optimistic and we discussed that time does wonders and if nothing else, he remains available and open and he understands that people can change. He has a sense of gratitude that there is even a perceptible difference because it indicates his own growth. They remain mutually loving and supportive and there isn’t much more we can reasonably ask of others if we cannot always have the “meeting of the minds” that suits our preference. He is contented and lifted with the things in his heart and as of that conversation it was enough for him.
I witnessed a wonderful perspective provided by Cree artist, Tomson Highway, during a lecture given at Toronto some years ago. He said that Christian mythology presents the notion that we are immersed in constant judgment by an imposing God who actually cast us out of the garden of paradise because we ate a piece of fruit. Someone sinned for us and we spend our entire lives trying to atone for that transgression (I am paraphrasing, of course). But then he spoke Plains mythology and how it presents our creator as a benevolent force that has us as equal to our environment - actually part of it…we articulate this with (among other things) language to effect that the trees and mountains are our relatives. We’re in paradise, it’s all around us to be enjoyed and taken care of and we never leave it as we are spirits and we are here forever.
We’re endowed with the beautiful gift of choice. Love something, revere it, worship it, honor and respect it and see how it makes you feel…exploit it and you will be doomed to live with niggling doubt and an overwrought psyche. I heard it said: to sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me.
It’s why I like artists. Typically they’re fresh thinkers, original idea finders. If you want good insight on the society/culture of a given time and place look to the arts and its various forms produced in that period. It can tell you a lot. This choice I spoke of is powerful knowledge because of its transformative potential - nothing actually happens without ideas first. Tyrants of this age (think powerful global conglomerates and several governments) know this well and history has shown that artists and other creative types are often the first to be oppressed.
Am I oppressed? I choose to say I am not. Certainly there are challenges but I am presented with unprecedented opportunities many, many others will never know. It is complicated and daunting but would Indians of any age say it has ever been otherwise lo these past 500 years or so? Probably not.
Eleanor Roosevelt said: no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Or as Junior in Oliver Stone’s film, Platoon, advises: Simple, free yer mind and the ass will follow…
© 2010 Champsteen Publishing
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)