Whose roots?
Nov. 20th, 2020 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormPart of getting my professional credential involves a lot of reading about Canada's situation with regards to its indigenous peoples. Specifically I live in British Columbia, which has one of the dodgier relationships with First Nations. Where most of the Canadian provinces had some sort of treaty process, British Columbia really did not. One of the folks in charge of BC joining the confederation added some wording that basically kept the federal government from doing much about that at the time, and the provincial government has been incredibly avoidant of the issue except to step in and reduce reserve sizes from time to time. Plus there's the whole residential school/foster care situation and, well, quite a lot of things.
It's interesting that in my life I've lived close to two of the residential schools that were closed down most recently, one in Mission and the other close by up here. Both those areas had pretty high First Nations populations, which might be either a cause or a result of the schools.
I'm a third of the way through this lesson and I've read over maybe three dozen articles so far. I'm not new to this knowledge at all: we got it at school for forestry, I've kept up on it myself a fair bit. But eight or nine hours of reading in 30 or so hours is really a lot.
At the same time I'm involved in an anti-racist training at work which I did yesterday and will attend the next two Thursdays as well.
I don't know how many normal Canadians get this stuff, or how much of it they have to read. I know the older foresters didn't get it. Part of the way Canada is supposed to make up for this is to take it out of the closet and let everyone see what happened. Today I feel like all that effort is being directed at folks coming up into my forester type role: absolutely important, and absolutely not enough.
You know, at the end of a lot of these (not the association, but most other stuff around internalized -isms) they say: this is hard work, be good to yourself. Have some ice cream, have a hot bath, give yourself space to process. I've had enough trouble doing that for myself on a good day.
Right now I'm seeing everything through the lens of the next step I'll create in my life, that of community. Every interaction I think: how could this be improved by community? Is this person part of a community I want? How would I like to feel supported in this situation? Where am I missing support or connection? What would it feel like to feel like I was in something together with folks, and what things would I like to be in together with folks?
The First Nation of a place always has fit into that aspiration for community. it's of course impossible to say what that relationship would look like because the folks who belong to each place are different, but I don't want to live in somewhere that's eradicated or completely marginalized its folks. Here the Nakazdli and the Yekooche and the other communities are real entities, with real political and social force.
One of the things I love about this area is that government in a very practical, nuts-and-bolts sense is shared: busses and flu shots and social services are administered through a hybrid system, often strongly involving or spearheaded by the Nakazdli. There's a fair bit of decolonization going on around the edges, just because our own government has abdicated its role in providing services and the Nation has stepped in. The bus doesn't run on a schedule, you call and it'll come get you when it can manage. Daily levels of health care are often accessible without provincial ID.
I would miss that were I to move back to a place where my culture of origin dominates.
It's interesting that in my life I've lived close to two of the residential schools that were closed down most recently, one in Mission and the other close by up here. Both those areas had pretty high First Nations populations, which might be either a cause or a result of the schools.
I'm a third of the way through this lesson and I've read over maybe three dozen articles so far. I'm not new to this knowledge at all: we got it at school for forestry, I've kept up on it myself a fair bit. But eight or nine hours of reading in 30 or so hours is really a lot.
At the same time I'm involved in an anti-racist training at work which I did yesterday and will attend the next two Thursdays as well.
I don't know how many normal Canadians get this stuff, or how much of it they have to read. I know the older foresters didn't get it. Part of the way Canada is supposed to make up for this is to take it out of the closet and let everyone see what happened. Today I feel like all that effort is being directed at folks coming up into my forester type role: absolutely important, and absolutely not enough.
You know, at the end of a lot of these (not the association, but most other stuff around internalized -isms) they say: this is hard work, be good to yourself. Have some ice cream, have a hot bath, give yourself space to process. I've had enough trouble doing that for myself on a good day.
Right now I'm seeing everything through the lens of the next step I'll create in my life, that of community. Every interaction I think: how could this be improved by community? Is this person part of a community I want? How would I like to feel supported in this situation? Where am I missing support or connection? What would it feel like to feel like I was in something together with folks, and what things would I like to be in together with folks?
The First Nation of a place always has fit into that aspiration for community. it's of course impossible to say what that relationship would look like because the folks who belong to each place are different, but I don't want to live in somewhere that's eradicated or completely marginalized its folks. Here the Nakazdli and the Yekooche and the other communities are real entities, with real political and social force.
One of the things I love about this area is that government in a very practical, nuts-and-bolts sense is shared: busses and flu shots and social services are administered through a hybrid system, often strongly involving or spearheaded by the Nakazdli. There's a fair bit of decolonization going on around the edges, just because our own government has abdicated its role in providing services and the Nation has stepped in. The bus doesn't run on a schedule, you call and it'll come get you when it can manage. Daily levels of health care are often accessible without provincial ID.
I would miss that were I to move back to a place where my culture of origin dominates.
