Arts, Faculty of
Political Science, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Walker, Katherine
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
University of British Columbia
For generations, Cree Elders and other Indigenous philosophers on iyiniwi-ministik (North America) have recognized that revitalizing concepts of ourselves from within our Indigenous knowledges can bring about new lived realities. This recognition is partially reflected in Indigenous political theory as an examination of the ‘self’ of self-governance (Alfred, 2005) or the process of what was once called ‘surviving as Indians’ (Littlebear, Menno & Boldt, 1993), and is today often called ‘resurging as Indigenous peoples’ (Wildcat, et al., 2014). Building from Indigenous resurgence literature, my research takes a deep insurgent turn inward to explore the ethical implications of a Cree-recognized self formed in relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy or ‘mother earth.’ While it's important to understand how colonization affects the self or how we and others think about nîhiyawâtisowin / Creeness and Indigeneity, colonization is also an ongoing problem because it effects a certain non-nêhiyaw/non-Cree concept of the self. In effect, wîhtikow politics or a colonial, dehumanizing and consumptive-driven politics has eaten away at a wholistic Cree ethical understanding of ourselves and relationships with others. In revitalizing a Cree wholistic ethics, I deal with two ongoing woundings inflicted by wîhtikow politics: the attempted killing of a spiritual domain of the self and the displacement of our mothers from within wholistic Cree relations. I argue that the resurgence of a self grounded in okâwîmâwaskiy is attending to these wounds. Drawing primarily on Cree narratives, language and contemporary Cree theory and practice, I seek to relocate okâwîmâwaskiy in Cree life to better illuminate the life-ways that comprise this sense of self. Though represented as a mother’s care, the wholistic layers of okâwîmâwaskiy distribute the responsibility of care among all living beings and offer a care based on wholistic needs.
OKÂWÎMÂWASKIY: REGENERATING A WHOLISTIC ETHICS by Katherine Walker A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Political Science) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) June 2021 © Katherine Walker, 2021 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: okâwîmâwaskiy: regenerating a wholistic ethics submitted by Katherine Walker in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science Examining Committee: Barbara Arneil, Professor, Department of Political Science, UBC Co-supervisor Sheryl Lightfoot, Associate Professor, Political Science, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and First Nations and Indigenous Studies, UBC Co-supervisor Kiera Ladner, Canada Research Chair in Miyo we'citowin, Indigenous Governance and Digital Sovereignties, and Professor in the Department of Political Studies, UM Supervisory Committee Member Mark Warren, Professor, Harold and Dorrie Merilees Chair in the Study of Democracy & Department of Political Science, UBC University Examiner Cash Ahenakew, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples’ Well-being & Associate Professor, Department of Education, UBC University Examiner Adam Gaudry, Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, UAlberta External Examiner iii Abstract For generations, Cree Elders and other Indigenous philosophers on iyiniwi-ministik (North America) have recognized that revitalizing concepts of ourselves from within our Indigenous knowledges can bring about new lived realities. This recognition is partially reflected in Indigenous political theory as an examination of the ‘self’ of self-governance (Alfred, 2005) or the process of what was once called ‘surviving as Indians’ (Littlebear, Menno & Boldt, 1993), and is today often called ‘resurging as Indigenous peoples’ (Wildcat, et al., 2014). Building from Indigenous resurgence literature, my research takes a deep insurgent turn inward to explore the ethical implications of a Cree-recognized self formed in relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy or ‘mother earth.’ While it's important to understand how colonization affects the self or how we and others think about nîhiyawâtisowin / Creeness and Indigeneity, colonization is also an ongoing problem because it effects a certain non-nêhiyaw/non-Cree concept of the self. In effect, wîhtikow politics or a colonial, dehumanizing and consumptive-driven politics has eaten away at a wholistic Cree ethical understanding of ourselves and relationships with others. In revitalizing a Cree wholistic ethics, I deal with two ongoing woundings inflicted by wîhtikow politics: the attempted killing of a spiritual domain of the self and the displacement of our mothers from within wholistic Cree relations. I argue that the resurgence of a self grounded in okâwîmâwaskiy is attending to these wounds. Drawing primarily on Cree narratives, language and contemporary Cree theory and practice, I seek to relocate okâwîmâwaskiy in Cree life to better illuminate the life-ways that comprise this sense of self. Though represented as a mother’s care, the wholistic layers of okâwîmâwaskiy distribute the responsibility of care among all living beings and offer a care based on wholistic needs. iv Lay Summary There is a common understanding that Cree and other Indigenous knowledge systems on iyiniwi-ministik or North America are embedded in relationships with the land as ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ or ‘mother earth.’ My analysis examines this relational worldview in a way that approaches okâwîmâwaskiy as a relational word bundle with multiple layers of meaning that point to fundamental conceptual understandings of the self and self-determination. In particular, I focus on how a self grounded in okâwîmâwaskiy requires the acceptance of spirituality as a domain of the self and as a dimension of knowledge; as well as the emplacement of mothers and mothering in Cree social relations. I conclude that what okâwîmâwaskiy’ teaches us is how we can all engage in ‘mothering’ through a wholistic Cree ethic of conscious care for all life. v Preface This dissertation is original, unpublished, interdependent work by the author, K. Walker. vi Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary ............................................................................................................................... iv Preface .............................................................................................................................................v Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... vi Glossary of Cree Terms .................................................................................................................x Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xiii Dedication .....................................................................................................................................xv Chapter 1: The wîhtikow, Turtles & sihkos ................................................................................1 1.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. A wîhtikow problem ....................................................................................................... 4 1.3 Research Questions ....................................................................................................... 13 1.4 ‘Turtles All the Way Down’: On the significance of my research ............................... 14 1.5 On Being a Word Weasel: History, Habitat and Habits ............................................... 19 1.5.1 A Brief History of the Weasel in Philosophies ..................................................... 21 1.5.2 My sihkos Cree Theorizing ................................................................................... 28 1.5.3 On Theorizing Cree Lived Experience ................................................................. 35 1.5.4 Philosophizing & Storywork................................................................................. 44 1.5.5 Making a Cree home in the English Language ..................................................... 47 1.5.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 56 1.5.7 Thesis Organization .............................................................................................. 57 Chapter 2: How to Write a Literature Review in a Time of the wîhtikow .............................59 vii 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 59 2.2 Indigenz ‘n the Selfhood ............................................................................................... 60 2.3 The Problem of Defining Spirituality ........................................................................... 62 2.3.1 Discerning Between Indigenous Spirituality and Religion ................................... 63 2.3.2 The Significance of Narratives to Spirituality ...................................................... 69 2.3.3 Spirituality as Integral to the Whole ..................................................................... 75 2.4 Bridging Indigenous Spirituality with Western Thought and Practice ......................... 77 2.5 The Significance of Mothers to the Whole ................................................................... 86 2.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 89 Chapter 3: okâwîmâwaskiy & the Wholistic Self .....................................................................91 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 91 3.2 Superpositionality of the Self........................................................................................ 94 3.3 Wholistic Inclusivity ................................................................................................... 106 3.4 Cyclical Reciprocity.................................................................................................... 107 3.5 Four Domains of the Self ............................................................................................ 108 3.6 Wholistic Practices...................................................................................................... 116 3.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 118 Chapter 4: Towards a Wholistic Cree and Indigenous Ethics ..............................................121 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 121 4.2 The Knowledge of creation ......................................................................................... 121 4.2 The unknowability of Creation ................................................................................... 135 4.3 The Unknowability of Creating .................................................................................. 140 4.4 The Good Life and the Whole of What we Know and Don’t Know .......................... 144 viii 4.5 Locating Cree Values .................................................................................................. 152 4.6 Irreconcilable Values.................................................................................................. 163 4.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 169 Chapter 5: okâwîmâwaskiy as a Regenerative Word Bundle ...............................................171 5.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 171 5.2 The Debate over Okâwîmâwaskiy .............................................................................. 172 5.3 A Relational Word Bundle.......................................................................................... 178 5.4 A Mother’s Bundle ..................................................................................................... 185 5.4.1 What’s inside ...................................................................................................... 185 5.4.2 The Roots of the Bundle ..................................................................................... 186 5.4.3 The Story Inside the bundle ................................................................................ 193 5.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 203 Chapter 6: A Cree Wholistic Ethic of Care .............................................................................204 6.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 204 6.2 Genderlessness ............................................................................................................ 205 6.3 Gender Complementarity/Balance .............................................................................. 206 6.4 Maternal Pluralized Gendering ................................................................................... 210 6.5 Mothering as Conscious Caring .............................................................................. 222 6.6 How to Live Carefully ................................................................................................ 228 6.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 240 Chapter 7: Conclusion: keyam! A Cree Apology .................................................................243 7.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 243 7.2 Telling the same story, only different ......................................................................... 251 ix 7.3 A Care Crusader .......................................................................................................... 254 7.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 257 References ...................................................................................................................................258 x Glossary of Cree Terms âtayôhkêwin – a Cree sacred story that often features wîsahkêcahk or the Cree transformer, trickster or life-ways hero âtayôhkêwina - Cree sacred stories that often feature wîsahkêcahk or the Cree transformer, trickster or life-ways hero (plural) âcimowina - personal histories aski poko – land only iyiniwi-ministik – the Peoples’ Island (North America) ikamâ î tipîmisoya - we do not own ourselves kihci-manitow - Great Spirit kihciyimitowin – respect or an ultimate, sacred-like respectful thought for one another kisteanemêtowin - respect kitimâkêyihtowin - compassion or pity konta wiya ôma pîkiskowin - this talk is for nothing mâmawi ohtâwîmâw - parent of all of us mino-pimatisiwin – a good life (Swampy Cree and ‘n’ dialect) miyo-pimatisiwin – a good life (Plains Cree and ‘y’ dialect) miyo-wîcêhtowin - the laws concerning good relations nêhinuw – a group of Cree peoples whose traditional territories extend across Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba and have a distinct linguistic dialect and life ways nêhiyaw – Plains Cree nêhiyawak – Plains Crees (plural) nêhiyaw tâpisinowin – Cree worldview or the Cree maps or concepts xi nêhiyaw-isîhcikêwin - Cree culture; the doing so, such rite; what is thus done, such activities; act nêhiyawêwin – Plains Cree language nîhithaw - Woodland Cree nîhithawakwho – Rock Cree - Cree peoples whose traditional territories extend across Northern Saskatchewan along the Churchill River system and its tributaries nîhiyawâtisowin - Creeness niwâhkômâkanak – relatives ohpikinâwasowin - child rearing/raising okâwîmaw - mother okâwîmâwaskiy – mother earth okihcitâwiskwêwak - clan mothers or warrior women okihcitâwiskwêwikamik – lodge of the clan mothers or warrior women okimâhkân – an Indian Act Chief okimāw – a leader omosômipanak - Eternal Grandfathers omosômimâwak - grandfathers sâkiyitowin - having love for one another sakawiyiniwok – Bush Cree tapahtîmisowin - a form of humility roughly implying ‘to never think higher of yourself than others’ wâhkômtowin - kinship relations based on the familial ties among human beings wâhkôtowin - interrelatedness wîhtikow – a voracious, malevolent, insatiably cannibalistic spirit xii wîhtikowak - voracious, malevolent, insatiably cannibalistic spirits (plural) wichikapache - Cree transformer, trickster or life-ways hero (Swampy Cree) wîsahkêcahk - Cree transformer, trickster or life-ways hero (Plains Cree) witisanihitowin - rules of conduct and boundaries among family members xiii Acknowledgements I certainly didn’t get here on my own. First and foremost, I acknowledge kihci-manitow and all my relations. kinanâskomitin to my dad who left this physical world during the writing of this dissertation. I know you’ve been here the whole time. Thank you to my kind mentor, Joe Garcea, a professor in the department of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan, who passed away last year. Thank you to my daughter, Danika, for honouring me with your presence. And a special thank you to Jade for being a good big brother to Danika & a sweet dude. Thank you to my mom, the first Indigenous feminist in my life, for passing on your love of reading and teaching me to think outside the box. I acknowledge my other nêhiyaw relatives for bringing light and warmth and generally making the process of researching and writing this dissertation less difficult: nisîmis Patricia and my siblings, Dawn, David & Pam; and all the children in my life—my nieces and nephews and my nôsisimak; my co-parent and favourite co-dependent Bryce; and especially my Sutherland & Dumont relatives. Next, a huge thank you to my supervisors Professors Sheryl Lightfoot & Barbara Arneil. I would not have survived academic life without either one of you. kinanâskomitin to Sheryl for your multifaceted guidance and support—the breadth and depth of your understanding is immense. Thank you to Barbara for your compassion, boundless intellectual insight and curiosity, and your unwavering insistence that I find my own voice. Thank you to my third committee member & fellow nêhiyaw, Professor Kiera Ladner for all the years you have run Cree intellectual interference down the academic field, tackling the big guys and making it possible for me to move forward. xiv Thank you to Professors Mark Warren, Bruce Baum and Glen Coulthard at the University of British Columbia who through their questions and sharing their considerable knowledge significantly contributed to my work. In Vancouver, I have to thank my favourite Cree couple Jules & Jake for their friendship and laughter; the other fun couple Jody Nippi-Blanchette & Mike Fabris; my adopted ‘daughter’ Adina Williams; and my good friends Rose (Guorún), Sarah & Denali; I also want to thank all my fellow students and friends who made the department of political science at UBC a welcoming place and community: Deanne, Élena, Kate, Gregor, Allison, Corey, Jordan and Matt the Wildcat. I thank my fellow UBC moms group members: Danielle, Aurelia & Claudia, and their little ones who aren’t so little anymore; and all my neighbours at Acadia Park especially Rene and her family from Bella Bella. In Saskatoon, I thank my friends Lois & Nadine for the long walks and longer talks; and thank you to my Anishinaabe and Métis brothers Martin Paul & John Desjarlais for throwing me financial lifelines disguised as hardwork. I also thank Dana Carriere & Adrian Waskewitch for being good friends and tenants. I thank Elder Louise Halfe and my special Cree teachers and friends Cathy Wheaton, Simon Bird, Rose Roberts, Bill Cook, Charlotte Ross & Andrea Custer for generously sharing their time and knowledge. In Okanese, I thank all my fellow community citizens and the past and current Chief and Council for your ongoing support and belief in me. A special thanks to my auntie Marie-anne DayWalker-Pelletier for your support. Lastly, I acknowledge the financial support of the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the University of Saskatchewan. xv Dedication For nitanis, Danika, ahcahk iskwêw And all awâsisak 1 Chapter 1: The wîhtikow, Turtles & sihkos 1.1. Introduction nêhiyaw activist and author Darlene Okemaysim-Sicotte speaks in what you might call a ‘little’ voice, because it is gentle, soft and unassuming. Yet the words she speaks are gigantic—emitting tidal waves of resonant reflection. In early winter 2020, Okemaysim-Sicotte presented to my second-year university undergraduate class on Indigenous Governance and Politics at the University of Saskatchewan on the work of ‘Iskwewuk E-wichiwitochik’ (IE) or ‘Women Walking Together,’ a local organization dedicated to supporting the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. IE was founded more than 12 years ago in response to the ongoing failure of dominant institutions, such as the police and the media, to care about the growing numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people on iyiniwi-ministik1 (Okemaysim-Sicotte, Gingell & Bouvier, 2018). The organization provides wholistic support to families while advocating for institutional change to stop the targeted violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. For the most part, the work of IE occurs outside of formal institutional processes. Its labour is not recognized through any funding mechanism or formal representation and all its members are volunteer. Rather than standing out in terms of formal, recognized authority or power, instead IE stands in—attempting to fill in the institutional gaps of an apathetic society and government. Rather than moving in lockstep with institutional processes, IE is not path dependent but instead seeks to move with deliberate care at the right place and at the right time 1 iyiniwi-ministik is The Peoples’ Island (North America) (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000) 2 to help institutions move in a restorative direction. While engaging in caring action or functioning as a ‘gap filler,’ IE is also a search light that illuminates not only the lives of the victims of violence but seeks to bring some warmth to the cold shadows of our collective failure to care. In addition, the work of IE reveals the power differentials inherent in the giving and receiving of care on which our institutions are built. First, the type of work they do is commonly undervalued or lacks the support of state and institutional power because it is predominantly performed by women, the poor, People of Colour, Black people and Indigenous peoples. Secondly, IE’s work is carried out in service to those often deemed by dominant society as unworthy of care because they lack socio-economic power or status. This seeming unworthiness is regurgitated at trials and in the media by cruel misrepresentations and devaluations of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit peoples as “poor, ill-educated, alcoholic or otherwise drug-addicted, and hence deemed throwaway people” (p. 245). In effect, in addition to the loss of a loved one, friends and family often must further endure society’s public murdering or disappearing of the memory of their friend, sister, daughter, mother, grandmother and aunt. The more powerful in society have a privilege to not care at all, while the powerless are subjected to uncaring attitudes and those who care for them receive little institutional support in searching for them. To say the least, it is difficult for families and friends to cope under such conditions. Relatives and friends are often left to carry the care and love that society has made into a burden rather than a joyous bundle. IE is one of those few organizations that truly walks together with the women and their families, supporting them in searching for and publicly embracing their loved ones. 3 During her presentation, Okemaysim-Sicotte went through different cases of missing and murdered girls, women and two-spirit people, indicating the type and level of support offered to their families. The mothers of the missing and murdered figured prominently in many of these cases, often determinedly driving the searching, and as Okemaysim-Sicotte provided relevant details of cases, in many instances she would note matter-of-factly that this mother—'she died of a broken heart.’ She died of a broken heart. The phrase was not declarative nor open to debate, but enumerative—it was an intimate and tender listing of how the search for a missing and murdered loved one had ended for some mothers. But the phrase also expressed a distinctly nêhiyaw emotional counting of a mother’s profound capacity to care. This care is itself rooted in a valuing of life that resists dominant devaluations of whose lives matter. Cree and other Indigenous peoples have long theorized about the capacity of a mother’s care for her/his/their child. Emulation of the seeming unbreakable bond between a mother and their child can be embodied in a general ethic that asks all of us to act as though a mother to their child in virtually all our relations. This ethic is further encapsulated in the metaphor of okâwîmâwaskiy or ‘mother earth,’ where we find a mother’s conscious care extended to all living things in Creation, including a care for all human and more-than-human life. Though represented as a mother’s care, I believe the multiple layers encapsulated within okâwîmâwaskiy distribute the responsibility of care among all living beings. Ultimately, Cree care work oriented within all of creation is not divided among racial, gendered and other lines of exclusivity, but is situated in real, living and natural grounds. In the following pages, my 4 intention is to further assist in opening the bundle that is okâwîmâwaskiy in the hopes of renewing this wholistic2 Cree ethic of care. 1.2. A wîhtikow problem While moniyaw3 may have ‘wicked’ problems, I believe Crees4 and other Indigenous peoples have ‘wîhtikow’ problems—which is to say that the concept of the wîhtikow enables clarification of the problem of colonization and colonial spectres according to Cree and other Indigenous knowledge systems (Brundige, 2004; Forbes, 1992; Highway, 1998; McCall, 2013). In this section, I use the wîhtikow as a metaphoric and metonymic device to better explain and examine the interrelated problems of colonization that are the starting point of my research. This framing not only makes these problems intelligible from within Cree knowledge systems but reveals how Western philosophy’s processes of making Cree knowledges intelligible and unintelligible are part of the problem of colonization. Ultimately, the problem I wish to examine is how we can fully re-envision a Cree self that lives in relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy or with ‘askiy’ the ‘earth/land’ as okâwîmaw or ‘mother.’ Since settler colonization ensued on iyiniwi-ministik, okâwîmâwaskiy has long been the original missing indigenous wo/man/myn who is remembered more by their absence than their presence in Cree life. While they are becoming visible again, it's unrealistic to expect that all Cree peoples, especially young people, are knowledgeable about and fully skilled with living in relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy when other ways of seeing ourselves and the world predominate on iyiniwi-ministik. The aim of my researching is to relocate okâwîmâwaskiy or a 2 I purposely use this spelling of holism to emphasize that it is rooted in the concept of ‘wholeness.’ 3 Cree language colloquialism for ‘Europeans’ and European-descended settlers living on iyiniwi-ministik. 4 It’s important to note that other nations in the Algonquin language family describe the presence of a wîhtikow or windigo figure in their narrative histories. 5 sense of self formed in relationship with the ‘land as mother’ from within Cree thought and practice. In effect, I carefully track okâwîmâwaskiy to better illuminate the Cree life-ways that enable us to walk with her. This searching begins with a problematization of colonization as a wîhtikow because it is the wîhtikow that obstructs our path and disappears the life-ways by which we can reconnect with okâwîmâwaskiy. According to Cree knowledge systems, the wîhtikow is a ‘voracious, malevolent, insatiably cannibalistic’ spirit (McCall, 2013, p. 2) that is feared not only because it consumes human flesh or bodies from without, but because it can consume from within by gnawing at the heart, mind and spirit of a person (Brown & Brightman, 1988). A gigantic, skeletal figure with a heart of ice, âtayôhkêwina5 describe how the wîhtikow “could devour you, chill your heart and steal your memory” (Brundige, 2004, p. 168). Those psychically consumed by the wîhtikow become wîhtikowak6 themselves, and though they occupy human bodies, their affliction is evident in eyes that glisten greedily, altering how they see their relatives. Isolated and overwhelmed by their desire to consume, wîhtikowak are those who eventually come to see all their relations as objects for consumption (Brundige, 2004).7 This consumptive spirit both haunts and can infect humanity on an individual or collective basis, in whole or in part, and in body and psyche. What’s worse is that the more a wîhtikow consumes, the more powerful and dangerous it becomes (McKinley, 2012). On iyiniwi-ministik, the colonial wîhtikow has long sought to devour the life force of the Crees—our children, our languages, our memories, our narratives, our philosophies, our land, 5 Cree sacred stories that often feature wîsahkêcahk or the Cree transformer, trickster or life-ways hero (Reder, 2007, p. 7) 6 Plural of Wîhtikow. 7 Please note that I am not proposing that desire or the pursuit of pleasure is wrong, but only a desire that is based on the objectification of our relatives or people, both human and more-than-human. 6 our ceremonies and so on—through various formal and informal policies, laws, practices, institutions and systems. From starvation policies (Daschuk, 2013) to the removal of children through residential schools (Truth and Reconciliation, 2015) and ongoing child welfare policies (Stevenson, 2019) to other systemic practices aimed at political and cultural genocide (Ladner, 2003; Palmater, 2014; MacDonald, 2019), the thrust of colonization has been to consume Cree and Indigenous lives and life-ways. Colonial justifications based on various stereotypes and lies not only mask the wîhtikow appetite but eat away at Cree emotional life—often denying us the right to publicly express our grief and horror. Although Indigenous, feminist, Black (African American & African Canadian), queer, post-colonial and other critical theorists and activists collectively resist the gnashing teeth of oppressive categorical ideas and action, nêhiyaw tâpisinowin (the Cree worldview) itself is still often chewed up and spit onto plates to feed colonial aims. The result is that dominant intellectual frames and politico-legal systems set the table for the colonial wîhtikow to carve up and carve off Cree life-ways. For my purposes, the most significant element of framing the problem of colonization as a wîhtikow is that it centres a concept of the self that is wholistic. At the most basic level, this is a self comprised of interconnected mental, emotional, physical and spiritual domains that exists in interrelationship with all other life. From a Cree perspective, a wholistic view of the self is integral to understanding and thereby addressing, the problem of colonization. While it's important to understand how colonization affects the self or how we and others think about nîhiyawâtisowin / Creeness and Indigeneity, colonization is also an ongoing problem because it effects a certain non-Cree concept of the self. In effect, the wîhtikow has eaten away at a wholistic Cree understanding of ourselves and our relationships with others, including the 7 metaphysical, epistemological and ethical understandings of Cree relationships with the land (Brundige, 2004). This means that underlying the disappearance of okâwîmâwaskiy and other Cree sources of life is the need to revive a wholistic understanding of ourselves. From a wholistic understanding of a collective Cree self, we can see that colonization is one strain of a wîhtikow illness that exists across a broader context of time and space. The wîhtikow is an illness that includes European colonization, but that also precedes and supersedes this particular form of oppression. While contemporary depictions of the wîhtikow as an illness vary in terms of their generality and particularity (McCall, 2013), historically Crees have always described the wîhtikow as being here on iyiniwi-ministik, constantly hovering near Cree peoples, long before European colonizers arrived (Nelson, Brown & Brightman, 1988). I would venture to diagnose the wîhtikow as ‘a disease that is as old as humanity.’8 Those particularly susceptible to this illness live unconscious of the destructive presence of the wîhtikow or live in a careless and uncaring way. While Crees and other Indigenous peoples had powerful processes of renewal and healing to keep the wîhtikow at bay and potentially cure those infected, the wîhtikow disease was epidemic and chronic among European colonizers, because much of their ‘goods’ were infected.9 These ‘goods’ included intangible systems of theory and practice, diagnosable by the wîhtikow symptom of dehumanized cannibalism or a half-dead (alienated) humanity feeding on itself. Contrary to dominant narratives of colonial settlement, by the nineteenth century Western 8 I borrowed this phrase from Daes (2014, p. 4) who describes oppression in this way. 9 For more information on how Crees and Indigenous peoples historically rejected or sought to treat many of these European ‘goods,’ please see Ahenakew, 1974 and Simpson, 2014. Regarding the association of Europeans and their goods with the ‘wîhtikow,’ Swampy Cree/Métis philosopher Lorraine Brundige (2004) speculates on Cree historical understandings of the relation between the wîhtikow and Europeans. She believes that while Europeans were initially greeted as equals and not as wîhtikowak that "my [Swampy Cree] ancestors whose daily lives were filled with the stories of the wîhtikow could not have failed to see the similarity between the wîhtikow heart of ice and what appeared to be a European heart of ice" (p. 176-177). 8 European economic, political, religious and social systems had produced rampant social sickness, such as religious persecution, gendered and sexual violence, widespread material poverty, child labour, disease, and malnutrition across Europe.10 With their arrival on iyiniwi-ministik, Europeans sought to continue their wîhtikow ways, which depended on further consuming the ‘wealth’ of the ‘new world’ in order to continue their great stagger forward. As a result, the wîhtikow disease manifested on iyiniwi-ministik as colonization or genocidal processes targeting the consumption of Indigenous life-ways. This means the colonial wîhtikow is not a sickness that can be adequately treated by focusing on healing Cree and Indigenous peoples from the ‘trauma’ of colonizing processes. Nor can the wîhtikow be banished by striving to revitalize a pre-colonial time when the wîhtikow supposedly was not present. Instead, we should regard colonization as a virulent strain of a chronic wîhtikow disease that is now epidemic on iyiniwi-ministik. This illness is highly contagious because as it creates dehumanized wîhtikowak they then dehumanize others until the absence of a wholeness of life and ourselves becomes violently normalized. We see this normalization in the replication of past harmful attitudes and policies despite our ‘never again’ avowals (Regan, 2010, p. 2). So the treatment of the wîhtikow must be wholistic or involves inoculating all of us. The wîhtikow’s heart of ice is a key facet of its monstrosity—because of its coldness, it is incapable of caring and becomes intent on consumption. An absence of warmth or compassion within a person or collective is manifested multi-directionally as an incapacity to nurture compassionate relationships with one’s self and others (Daes, 2014, p. 5), including with the 10 For a fuller account of European conditions during early colonial settlement see Manuel & Posluns,1974 (The Fourth World: An Indian Reality) and for a detailed account of how European colonists normalized gendered and sexual violence on iyiniwi-ministik see Deer, 2015 (The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America). 9 living earth. Given the “epidemic levels of anxiety, hopelessness, apathy, distrust, and suicide” among Indigenous peoples (Simpson, 2017, p. 93), it is apparent that the intergenerational effect of this coldness has been embodied to varying extents by Indigenous peoples. The communal warmth or “joy of community” that “can temper the despair of systemic violence and ideological erasure" continues to be torn apart (Cox, 2017, p. 198). Of course, the carriers of these cold wîhtikow hearts also suffer the consequences of this sickness. Although social ills in ‘privileged’ communities are “less visible, less publicized, less a topic of scholarly debate and official scrutiny” they exist in full force in a haunting “cycle of internal mistrust, domination, and violence” (Daes, 2014, p. 6; Nietzsche, 1887). Sadly, although Indigenous youth are over-represented in the statistics, suicide amongst all youth on iyiniwi-ministik has quadrupled over the past four decades (McKinley, 2012). Another way of understanding the wîhtikow’s cold force may be to say that the wîhtikow causes harm to the web of human and more-than-human relationships that is not only difficult to heal but that eventually becomes irrevocable. In a vicious wîhtikow cycle, this coldness leads to death-ways or processes that continuously sever the interconnectedness of all life so that we all eventually become cut off from our life supports. In time, such as now, this coldness becomes a type of wîhtikow ethics or is enforced as various conceptions of the ‘common good’ (Manuel & Posluns, 1974). Restoring the place of mothers and mothering among all our relations is key to warming cold wîhtikow hearts. The interconnectedness of our mothers and the living earth as valuable sources of life suggests that when we connect with our mothers in a reciprocal, respectful relationality then we are similarly reconnected with the living earth and all sources of life itself. Relations based on a profound disrespect for mothers and the land constitute a negation of life itself. These disoriented relations have also been described in terms of Cree lawlessness (McAdam, 2015) or 10 as the displacement of the structural support systems of wâhkôtowin or ‘familial interrelatedness’ (Laboucane-Benson, 2009). The ensuing result when we follow wîhtikow ways is that mino-pimatisiwin or Cree conceptions of ‘a good life’ are virtually impossible to actualize. This concept of a good life requires the restoration of a wholistic self. Another way of portraying this absence of warmth is as a type of spiritual death (McCall, 2013 citing Rock Cree playwright and philosopher Tomson Highway). The cannibalizing of an individual and collective spiritual domain of the self occurs through the normalization of an ‘oppressed consciousness’ whereby the need to express one’s spirit is rendered irrelevant to life rather than regarded as integral to a wholistic self and a full life. This deadened consciousness is embedded in dominant institutions that seek to create ‘docile bodies’ devoid of any type of autonomous inner life of their own (Foucault, 1995). Our very selves are instead shaped to desire ill-begotten institutional privilege that only leads to greater wîhtikow social sickness. This missing spiritual domain leads to spiritual death when each living being ceases to be regarded as having inherent value based on their distinct spiritual being. Ultimately, when we draw on Cree and Indigenous wholism, we reorient how we understand colonization and ourselves. While colonial oppression is a real problem, it is more a virus in constant need of treatment that undermines the revitalization of Indigenous peoples’ and other beings’ life orders. As George Manuel (1974) once asked “Do they think that if they stop the oppression we will stop being our parents’ children?” (Manuel & Posluns, p. 215). When Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan (2000) were interviewed about their understanding of the treaties, their responses did not only speak to a ‘reinterpretation’ of treaties from Cree and Indigenous perspectives but also identified the need to “restore among First Nations peoples a positive sense 11 of origin and belonging” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 22). I believe these broader restorative processes depend in large part on revitalizing the concept of a wholistic self. Recognizing the danger of the wîhtikow is the first step towards restoring/restorying our lives and life-ways to wholeness. Framing the problem of colonization as part of a larger wîhtikow disease helps us discern between settler difference and colonial danger and how a wholistic understanding of the self is fundamental to this discernment. When we regard settler colonialism on iyiniwi-ministik as a wîhtikow, we are not referring merely to a 'different' being with which we must reconcile but to a 'dangerous' being that must be ‘surged’ against. I use the term ‘surge’ to further connect the discourses and action of Indigenous resurgence to the need not only to resist colonization, but to revitalize a wholistic concept of the self. Action is necessary to prevent the wîhtikow illness from spreading. At the same time, identifying the wîhtikow as a specific danger that impacts our concept of the self discourages overgeneralizing in either direction whereby we insist that ‘being Cree’ requires avoiding all non-Cree difference or isolating oneself from all non-Cree socio-political-legal processes; or, alternatively, that Crees must embrace danger as part of a colonial politics of reconciliation by submitting to dominant consumptive processes.11 Instead, we must embrace difference and resist danger. As many of us are aware, we are living not in 'different' times, but in 'dangerous' times—times in which humanity’s survival (and that of many other beings) is imperiled. The skeletal spectre of the wîhtikow stalks us around every corner. Cree knowledges teach humanity to respect and be open to difference, but also to act responsibly and actively in 11 For example, Coulthard (2014) illustrates the danger of colonial state-driven lands claim processes that seek to further consume non-renewable resources and the subjective effect of participation in these processes on a Dene self that lives in relationship with the land (See especially Chapter 2 for the Dene case study and Chapter 3 for a discernment of ‘transformative’ (restorative) reconciliation versus ‘affirmative’ (consumptive) reconciliation). 12 the face of danger (Brundige, 2004; Reder, 2010; McAdam, 2015). To avoid creating more dangerous wîhtikows, we must become conscious of wîhtikow death-ways and how to heal from them. We arrive at this recognition by drawing on our own, as well as different knowledges, theories, practices and technologies that assist us in navigating contemporary contexts. okâwîmâwaskiy not only carries forward a wholistic Cree conception of the self but helps us to recognize and resist the wîhtikow. A self formed in relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy keeps us alive to the inherent irreconcilability of wholistic and wîhtikow orientations in the world. Living in relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy entails embodying a particular self-governance that is wholistic or that orients us towards autonomous relationships with all life, human and more-than-human that refuses wihtikow relations of power. What is particularly irreconcilable is the need to nurture a spiritual autonomy based on a wholistic connectedness with all life through the careful selection of caring thought and practices. In other words, the resilience of Cree and other Indigenous peoples to recognize, resist and recover from the wîhtikow was and is rooted in a spiritual relational autonomy carefully nurtured through relationships, laws, practices, values and processes of conscious care or what we tend to call harmony. While there are many different ways to live your life harmoniously or with conscious, careful care, to fail to do so endangers all life. I attempt to flesh out in more detail the wholistic nature of this relationality from within Cree knowledge systems and how it relates with contemporary political theory and contexts by focusing on formulating a distinct Cree self grounded in okâwîmâwaskiy. As such, I would say that the starting point for my research is based on an insurgent direction of Creeness or a fuller turn inward to revitalize a wholistic Cree self, at least in theory, that can more ably resist the 13 wîhtikow. Although my focus is on the theory of this self, I believe it is provisionally representative of significant, corresponding political voices and action on the ground. In helping to revitalize this wholistic self, my intention is to further its embodiment in contemporary political processes of self-determination and self-governance. Specifically, I attend to two deep, wîhtikow self-woundings in an effort to promote healing at the level of ourselves. These woundings are of two types: the disappearance of a spiritual domain and the dislocation of our mothers from our order of relations. You could say that this insurgent turn consists of two processes of ‘coming in’ (as opposed to ‘coming out’).12 The first consists of an internal revolution that restores a spiritual domain to our selves; and the second involves restoring the place of our mothers and mothering to Cree and Indigenous life orders and life-ways. Both of these movements better orient us to being in rhythm with the wholeness of life. 1.3 Research Questions I use the following questions as signposts for my researching: 1.4.1 What knowledges of the self and processes of Cree self-formation underlie the revitalization of a relationality with the land as okâwîmâwaskiy? This question raises the following sub-questions: a. How do Cree people recognize the spirit in all life, but particularly in relation to our view of how the self is constituted? b. What is the relationship among spirituality, the land and our mothers? Relatedly, what does a return to the spiritual mean for Cree women’s self-determination and our relationships with our mothers and the land? 1.4.2 How can a Cree recognition of a self constituted in relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy be represented in a contemporary political theory of the self? This question raises the following sub-questions: 12 As Swampy Cree scholar Alex Wilson (2015) explains, a “coming in” process represents “an act of returning, fully present in ourselves, to resume our place as a valued part of our families, cultures, communities, and lands, in connection with all our relations” (p. 3). She maps the ‘coming in’ of two-spirit peoples. 14 a. What contemporary theoretical framework of the self can re-present a Cree self formed in relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy? b. Are ‘ethics’ and ‘care’ the proper contemporary representations for enabling a politics of co-existence among all life that is inclusive of an understanding of the land as okâwîmâwaskiy? 1.4 ‘Turtles All the Way Down’: On the significance of my research In an academic context, outlining the significance of my research means that I must speak to how my theoretical insights or findings advance the academic literature of my discipline either by filling in gaps in understanding, marking out new theoretical terrain or contributing to contemporary terms of debate in my field. At the root of this process is the question: who is my audience? Or who are those others that I imagine will listen to or be able to hear what I’m saying with my research? Ultimately, to whom will my work matter? The answers to these questions can either attest to or negate the significance of one’s research within academia. In presenting my research at various academic conferences in North America, this question of ‘who is your audience’ was regularly posed to me. At such conferences, you have the opportunity to ‘test drive’ your ideas by presenting unpublished papers or outlines of papers that you plan to publish. This is an opportunity to have any weak or erroneous areas of your arguments, logic and evidence assessed by others who purportedly are experts in your field or similar fields. With the support of the department of political science at the University of British Columbia, I was able to present my research at a number of American, Western Canadian and Canadian national political science conferences across North America and once in Australia. I am a nêhiyaw or Plains Cree doctoral student working in the discipline of political science and my research centres Cree and Indigenous knowledges largely without a mediating Western lens, discourse, framework or theory. While I attempt to speak with or centre the words 15 of nêhiyawak kêhtê-ayak, or Cree Elders, who think, speak and feel in nêhiyawêwin and embody nêhiyawêhicikêwin, or Cree life-ways, I am also purporting to speak with those Cree and non-Cree dialogue partners who today rely on philosophical analysis or more explicit interpretation of the lived experience, narratives and languages of the kêhtê-ayak. I believe that those who will be readily able to ‘hear’ or understand the significance of my work are those who move through the middle, shared grounds of political science discourses and nêhiyaw, Cree and Indigenous discourses. In other words, within this middle ground is my ‘audience’ or those who will readily hear me. Unfortunately, the dominant boundaries of the discipline of political science are still erected in a way that mutes voices like mine, thus largely rendering my research insignificant within the larger confines of the discipline. From my standpoint, this problem of ‘significance’ is rooted in the fact that the disciplinary frames of political science on iyiniwi-ministik have rendered Indigenous political histories and most pre-settler state constitutional history, including Indigenous political theory and practice, not only irrelevant but largely unrecognizable within the discipline (Ferguson, 2016; Ladner, 2017). Granted, narratives and languages grounded in different ways of life enclose diverse epistemological and ontological frames for making sense of the world (Turner, 2006; Innes, 2013), making it difficult for concepts rooted in different discursive and linguistic traditions to be made mutually intelligible to one another. But this unrecognizability cannot be fully attributed to “mere ignorance,” rather, it is a “deliberate avoidance” of Indigenous identities, philosophies and histories (Ferguson, 2016, p. 1029). More generally, it is a deliberate epistemological ignorance of Indigenous presence on iyiniwi-ministik. Excluding Indigenous knowledges serves colonial power because recognizing Indigenous presence unsettles the settled colonial frames of the discipline (Ferguson, 2016; Ladner, 2017). 16 For example, political theory that recognizes Indigenous presence cannot accept the discipline’s key doctrines of settler sovereignty and the legitimacy of the settler state; state-controlled rights-based discourse that fails to recognize Indigenous relationships and responsibilities (Corntassel, 2008) as well as the political histories of American settler ‘exceptionalism’ (Ferguson, 2016) or Canada as a ‘peaceable kingdom’ (Choquette, 2019). More broadly, the entire discipline of political science on iyiniwi-ministik still carries “racial, cultural, and civilizational presumptions” that deliberately exclude Indigenous thought, action and experience from being regarded as ‘political’ and worthy of serious study at all (Ferguson, 2016, p. 1030). A review of the past fifty years of Canadian Journal of Political Science (CJPS) articles on Indigenous politics confirms that in Canada the discipline’s deep enlightenment foundation ‘define and confine’ its language and epistemic frames within Western-eurocentric traditions (Ladner, 2017). The CJPS articles tend to focus on ‘the intersection between indigenous peoples and the state,’ or operate primarily within the confines of the ‘Westphalian state’ rather than focus on Indigenous politics and governance (Ladner, 2017, p.165). In addition, rather than studying Indigenous governance “in Indigenous terms” one instead studies Canadian approaches to governing Indigenous peoples or ‘Canadian Indigenous governance’ (Carriere, 2018). The exclusion of Indigenous governance from the discipline’s core doctrines is typically only ameliorated by the marginal inclusion of Indigenous issues as “a special topic” (p. 17). This paradigmatic approach centres the Canadian state and constructs political relations with Indigenous peoples based on its political order and logic. Again, within the Canadian tradition, the justification for excluding Indigenous political traditions is that they do not employ complex state structures, but had primitive, stateless societies without any political traditions (Ladner, 2017). 17 However, it seems that a reckoning from the margins is underway—whereby scholarship not enabled to fully speak within the discipline is exerting a constant, iterative pressure as it speaks against the disciplinary structures of political science. Along this trajectory, the CJPS review revealed a surge in a ‘new’ type of ‘Indigenist’ scholarship—or an increasing number of articles by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars denouncing the discipline’s ‘primitivist’ characterization of Indigenous political theory and history; and that is increasingly focusing on Canada’s need to deal with its “colonial past and present” (p. 174). The impetus behind this type of scholarship is attributed to the rising visibility and strengthened voice of Indigenous peoples in interacting with the state, which is happening “most often without a Western-eurocentric lens” (p. 170). It seems that Indigenous political voices are very significant to changing the parameters of dominant, normative, political languages and discourses on iyiniwi-ministik. Perhaps, rather than asking who my audience is or with whom who am I trying to speak, with, the proper question to ask when it comes to the significance of my research is: ‘who am I listening to?’13 Beyond a Cree understanding of North America as ‘iyiniwi-ministik’ or ‘the people’s island,’ other Indigenous peoples have oral histories that relate how North America is a ‘turtle island’ because it rests on the back of a turtle. A storyteller was once asked by a child what lies beneath the turtle’s back. He replied that it was another turtle. When asked just how many turtles the existence of the people’s island depends on, the storyteller remarked: ‘No one knows for sure…but it’s turtles all the way down’ (King, 2003, p. 2). 13 I thank Este Mvskokvlke or Muscogee Nation poet Joy Harjo (2019) for illuminating this difference in orientation in explaining her own method of inquiry or creative process. 18 In a sense, Cree and Indigenous presence are rooted in these turtles. Our existence rests on the backs of countless Cree and other Indigenous generations that have continued to give voice to and pass along our knowledges. In this particular moment, it’s up to us to be ‘intrepid’ and ‘good’ listeners to discern the ‘resonance’ or deeper meanings and connections of these voices within our contemporary contexts (Lyons, 2007). This mode of listening has also been called heeding the voices of our ancestors (Alfred, 1995) or is referred to more simply as an attunement with the voices of all my relations (King, 1992). While Indigenous peoples and other subjugated peoples narrate our existence through our C/creation stories of this land, some of us fail to listen to these stories and instead cling to colonial stories with their reductive, one note histories (adapted from Tuck & Yang, 2012). The collective failure to listen to all the stories of turtle island culminates in a refusal of presence that denies that “colonialism, genocide, and theft of lands, bodies, and cultures have defined the rise of new world nation-states and empires" (Byrd, 2011, p. xxxi). As was demonstrated by the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., as Black (African American) people mobilized around their stories of lived experience to lead society in a new direction, they forced American whites to listen to narrative realities that lay beyond white, colonial privilege and circumscribed liberal virtues (Hall, 2005). Today, rather than equitable representation or the co-creation of narrative realities, certain stories are still routinely subjugated and silenced in the liminal spaces between who is present in the world and who is empowered to be represented. Achieving a harmony rather than a cacophony (which is still regularly drowned out by white noise) among the voices of all our relations requires the capacity “to move at the right time and in the right place” (Lyons, 2007, p. viii). I believe this is the capacity to move in rhythm with the flow of all living things—which is key to Indigenous resilience. Such movement is more of a 19 dance than a march, not only because beauty or harmony is produced by such action, but because the power of these steps lies in their wholistic resonance or how they motivate others to move. One nêhiyaw-Metis and nahkawê woman describes this resonant process as “a spiritual rebirth and political awakening thanks to the many politically astute, culturally tenacious, and spiritually strong voices of Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas” (Acoose, 1995, p. 30). In other words, it involves listening to turtles all the way down. As a Cree scholar, I feel that it is simply expected that I will listen to the voices of all my relations. If I don’t, then nothing I say will be of any significance. This is why I’ve chosen to dance on the turtle’s back whether I have an academic audience or not. 1.5 On Being a Word Weasel: History, Habitat and Habits From my current position, my researching journey must move in concert with the voices of all my relations while being acutely aware of the danger of the wîhtikow and of the cacophony of academia. Fortunately, there are generations of scholars who have walked ahead of me and have translated the mode of listening to all our relations as a tool or as decolonizing methodologies that can help me find my way and resist the cold wîhtikow heart of things. This type of listening ultimately entails a number of methods, all of which I believe fall under the type of work called Indigenous storywork within academia. The term “storywork” was created by Stó:lō scholar Jo-Ann Archibald (2008) to reflect Indigenous approaches to story and that “our stories and storytelling were to be taken seriously” (p. 3). nêhiyaw/Metis Elder/philosopher Maria Campbell similarly advises “We had people whose job it was to tell stories” because “All our history, our legends, our way of believing, everything was passed on to each generation orally” (Brundige, 2004, p. 37). As such, the wholistic Cree and Indigenous research 20 methodologies I outline here are not only a way of doing research, but they are also a way of life based on listening to our narratives. The ideal Indigenous participants in academia have been called ‘word warriors’ or Indigenous intellectual intermediaries who are able to move between Indigenous knowledges and mainstream political and legal discourses to engage and nurture mutually beneficial dialogue (Turner, 2006, p. 7). The laudable warrior aspect is intended to represent the fact that “Indigenous theory is probably the only body of scholarship to theorize a peoples’ survival” (Alfred, 1995, p. 191) or more generally, to underline that Indigenous scholarship is frequently a place of battle: “I consider all acts of exclusion calls to immediately start writing; that is where I do my fighting" (Sellers, 2017, p. 189-190). Today, a ‘critical Indigenous theory’ has emerged across disciplines that is linked in its defense of the continued presence of Indigenous peoples and knowledges, such as our rights, lands and sovereignty (Kolopenuk, 2020). While I agree with these general Indigenous theoretical directions, I prefer to think of myself more as a ‘word weasel’ with an emphasis on the weasel. Why a weasel? First of all, personally, I don’t think of myself as a warrior type. Warriors are brave and determined, and I’ve frequently been neither. I’ve failed numerous times to both stand up or stand with others during pivotal activist struggles, or to put it another way, I’ve hidden under and burned plenty of bridges in my life. Rarely did I join with others to march across a bridge. My shifting ethical positionality aside, I believe that acting like sihkos or ‘weasel’ is ultimately critical to my mode of Cree theorizing or Indigenous storywork. In this section, I outline the history, habitat and habits of sihkos to further illuminate the nature and significance of ‘weaselness.’ I draw on Cree and Indigenous narratives of sihkos as well as Western philosophy’s methodological ‘weaselry.’ 21 Finally, I apply the story of sihkos to the process of storywork that characterizes my research approach. 1.5.1 A Brief History of the Weasel in Philosophies On the surface, weasels seem to be a lot like your enlightenment Western philosopher. Such a comparison arises from the early philosopher’s intent to bring the whole world ‘under a rule’ or a ruling philosophy, narrative or theory.14 This individualistic and absolutist purpose has often led to secretive, lonely15 philosophers acting like weasels in hunting prey and rival knowledges through countless theoretical tunnels and holes with numerous twists and turns. Such researching often ended in viscous polemical and political battles in various holes, with victors enjoying the spoils of their sharp-toothed truth. Recognized knowledge and truth became the effects of polemical and strategic battles (Foucault, 1994; 1997). As Foucault (2003) elaborates: “On principle, he [the polemicist] possesses rights authorizing him to wage war and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he confronts is not a partner in the search for the truth, but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is harmful and whose very existence constitutes a threat” (p. 382). The inherent and perpetual destructive orientation created by Western notions of power, knowledge and truth is consistent with a discursive ‘war’ waged by weaselly philosophers. Such knowledge, truth and power are borne out in the dominant and celebrated stories on iyiniwi-ministik from the last half century and beyond that valorize conflict, 14 I refer here to the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1921), who wrote in th poem ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’ formerly titled 'Thoughts upon the Present State of the World’ the following:“…We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, / And planned to bring the world under a rule, / Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.” 15 Like all truth at this time, even loneliness was experienced and described in absolutist terms—or as a self-fulfilment of the philosophical and poetic worldview of early and mid-twentieth century existential philosophers and poets. This view is aptly summed up by poet W.H. Auden: "Mostly, he seems to comprehend...the tragedy of human loneliness. He sees each man as alone, struggling for himself and perhaps for a better world in a universe which is dead to him, where animals, stars and deities have nothing to do with the order or disorder of his personal existence" (Dewsnap, 1965, p. 8). 22 war and colonization.16 The result has been a philosophical tendency to defend old ideological strongholds and validate existing relations and practices of power and force. Even the words of philosophers have often been kin to stinking ‘weasel’ words, reeking of ambiguity and ambivalence. Such words conjure mystical sentences that somehow say a lot without really saying anything at all or that perpetually qualify statements to the point of meaninglessness (Jason, 1988). Just as the many species of the weasel family are quite cognitively intelligent with large brains relative to their body mass (King & Powell, 2007)—so it has been the case with their human philosopher cousins, who have tended to strategically wield ambiguity (Smith, 2016). For a long time, colonization in settler colonial states flourished through Western theorizing. The weasel words of philosophers working in service to colonization managed to twist what Indigenous peoples already knew, authorize theories against us and advance “careers for people who already had jobs” (Smith, 2016, p. 3). In effect, the weaselly philosopher could commit grievous wrongs, deny his wrongdoing and benefit from her wrongness. Such philosophy was weaselness par excellence. In actuality, this comparison of weasels and philosophers is itself wrong-headed because it is based on many misconceptions about weasels. In fact, both Cree and Anishinabek âtayôhkêwina narrative traditions17 tell a story of how sihkos or ‘weasel’ is a wondrous, heroic being (Ahenakew, 1923; Halfe, 1994; Brundige, 2004; McKinley, 2012; National Centre, 2021). I purposely use the Cree word ‘sihkos’ here because it refers to all three species of the smallest 16 It’s important to note that while wars occurred among Indigenous nations and that bravery in battle was celebrated, conflict and war were not venerated. Instead, leaders who could make peace rather than war were celebrated. It has only been since the twentieth century that Indigenous war-likeness or militancy, rights and tradition became fused in the popular imagination. This is largely the result of a Western philosophy and media that co-opted the image of the Indigenous “warrior" to mold it in its likeness (Innes, 2004). 17 These are the cycle of narratives or sacred stories that follow the Cree wîsahkêcahk or the corresponding Anishinaabek nanabush transformer cycles (Reder, 2007). 23 members of the weasel family on iyiniwi-ministik.18 While I don’t have the affinities and skill (authority) to retell the story of sihkos in its entirety in the âtayôhkêwina tradition,19 I will describe and interpret a few elements of this story to show how my philosophical emulation of sihkos is desirable and necessary from a methodological standpoint.20 Ultimately, I believe it is necessary to adopt sihkos’s researching ways because we are trying to defeat the wîhtikow, and it is sihkos who shows us how to kill a wîhtikow with her unique methods of hunting. Various Cree and Anishinabek versions of the story of sihkos describe how wîsahkêcahk or nanabushu (the trickster/transformer) is caught by a wîhtikow because they fail to listen to the words of others warning them of the danger of taking a shortcut through the bush (McKinley, 2012; Bird, 2021). As a result of her carelessness, wîsahkêcahk comes face-to-grimace with the wîhtikow. In keeping with Cree views of the wîhtikow, wîsahkêcahk’s encounter is also referred to in Cree as ‘[s/]he met [her/]himself’ (National Centre 2021). wîsahkêcahk is then forced to carry out her own death dance in that she is unable to refuse doing what the wîhtikow says because the power and strength of the wîhtikow are simply too great (Halfe,1994; McKinley, 2012). As wîsahkêcahk carries out the wîhtikow’s instructions, the wîhtikow, who is gigantic at this point, lazes powerfully about on his stomach—so comfortable in his own power that he eventually falls asleep and begins snoring with his mouth wide open. Though asleep, the powerful presence of the wîhtikow continues to control wîsahkêcahk with fear, compelling her to 18 The three smallest weasel species are the short-tailed weasel or stoat or Mustela erminea; the long-tailed weasel or M. frenata; and the least weasel or common weasel, M. nivalis. In North America, “weasel” generally refers to any of these three small, native Mustela species (King & Powell, 2007, p. 13). The inclusion of all three of these species in the meaning of ‘sihkos’ was clarified by Cree linguist Art Napoleon in a personal communication. 19 For one oral, Cree version of this story told by nehithinaw scholar Simon Bird, please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgZnDClg-E8. 20 Please note that my description and interpretation barely touches on the broad and deep meanings of the narrative of sihkos. 24 continue building the very fire that will destroy her. Both the wîhtikow and wîsahkêcahk are aware that wîsahkêcahk cannot resist nor defeat the wîhtikow directly on her own. Fortunately for wîsahkêcahk, nisîmis or her little sibling, sihkos, happens to cross her path. Crying mournfully, wîsahkêcahk tells sihkos they are dying and asks her to kill the wîhtikow. At first, sihkos is reluctant and doubtful that she can help because she is so small and the wîhtikow is so gigantic. sihkos requires a gift before she agrees. In different tellings, the gift offered to sihkos is a beautiful coat of white fur (National Centre, 2021 citing Simon Bird) while other versions describe the gift as pride in being herself (McKinley, 2012, p. 27, citing Anishinaabe storyteller William Jones from North of Lake Superior, 1904). Obviously, both gifts may be regarded as one and the same. sihkos does indeed kill the wîhtikow. And through a unique method. According to different versions, sihkos either “travels the back hole” of the wîhtikow or the anus (McKinley, 2012 citing Jones, 1904; Halfe, 1994, p. 116) or goes in through the mouth (Ahenakew, 1923; National Centre, 2021). In any case, we must understand the courageousness of sihkos’ actions here, because the wîhtikow is extremely scary and difficult to kill—by one account the wîhtikow is even impervious to bullets (McKinley, 2012 citing George Nelson, 1853); and still, sihkos travels towards and inside the wîhtikow. Although the journey itself is formidable, simply gaining entry is still not enough. sihkos must find the way to the wîhtikow’s ice-cold heart and cut the cords supporting his heart. Fortunately, sihkos finds the right way through the wîhtikow, and stops him from further destruction. In one version, sihkos actually dies after cutting the wîhtikow’s heart cords because she is then drowned by the blood of the wîhtikow; but wîsahkêcahk is able to breathe life back into her, and she then becomes the proud creature she is today (McKinley, 2012 citing Jeremiah 25 Michel of the Rock Creek Cree of northern Manitoba, p. 103). A high regard for sihkos is still encoded today in nêhiyawêwin or the Plains Cree language, with an ermineskin or weasel’s pelt synonymous with ‘a chief’s robe’ or okimâwayân (Miyo Wahkohtowin Education, n.d.). From a Cree standpoint, the history of sihkos is an exceedingly proud one because she kills the wîhtikow! Their beautiful coat is a symbolic and material reminder of their heroism. Central to this narrative history of sihkos is deep Cree and Anishinabek knowledge of her natural, living and real history. In a great cosmic act of ironic Cree humour, the smallest members of the weasel family are born with an inherent and unprecedented vulnerability. Though about the size of a chipmunk, they are required to hunt to survive—making them nature’s smallest carnivores (King & Powell, 2007). In addition to the difficulty of being small and forced to kill for their survival, sihkos lives each day straddling the edge of life and death because her daily energy requirements are so high. While other hunters must eat a third or more of their weight each week, sihkos requires the equivalent of a third of their weight each day. As such, sihkos is both extremely lively and deadly. Modern scientists also recently discovered that the average weasel has a metabolic rate higher than any other carnivorous mammal because their heart beats exponentially faster than that/those of other predators and even their prey. Although they are the embodiment of warmth or akin to a ‘furry furnace’ (Angier, 2016), sihkos is particularly vulnerable to the cold because she does not grow a heavy winter coat like other mammals. So in addition to searching for food, she needs to constantly seek out sources of warmth; and, she achieves both by endless plays of rehoming herself in the holes and dens of her prey. Not only does she literally eat her prey out of house and home, but as a final insult, she uses their fur as insulation to keep herself warm. But 26 she can never stay for long as she must move in constant search of new life and warmth, in rhythm with the ever-quick beating of her own heart. sihkos is also remarkable in being better equipped than any other hunter on the planet with endlessly creative, yet grounded methods of hunting. Not only is her heart extraordinarily strong and large relative to her body mass, but so is her mind. sihkos’ ‘neural bounty’ enables them to “continuously fine-tune their movements during a hunt” so that they are constantly “tailor[ing] their methods according to their targets and their opportunities” (King & Powell, 2007, p. 114). They overcome their inherent disadvantages through various methods: their short legs are ameliorated by their sitting up on their hind legs; they’ve learned to swim; they know how to cache excess food; and with hearts that beat extremely fast, sihkos is both enabled and compelled “to be more active and search farther for food in more places and more diverse ways” (Angier, 2016). In fact, you will almost never see sihkos hunting in the wild because they are everywhere and nowhere in their systematic searching of every hole around them—"the forest floor along logs, under fallen branches, down holes along roots, and up trees into holes and crevices” (King & Powell, 2007, p. 113). Scientists today rely on radio collars to track the movement of sihkos, with one study reporting an average of 26 holes explored per kilometre (p. 114). With a fierce concentration they continuously employ all their senses in searching their ground—missing nothing of value; occasionally, they will locate their prey by enlarging a hole by digging. In effect, no animal is more ‘grounded’ or knowledgeable of her ground than sihkos. Her movement is a study in contradictions: primarily nocturnal, she often goes out during the day; she can both sprint and run with endurance; and though slim and sleek they are extraordinarily strong in body. Most notably, sihkos is also “bold and confident out of proportion to their size, and they seem to play by a different set of rules” (p. 118). As a result of these latter 27 traits, sihkos can kill entities up to 10 times larger than herself; and, again, modern scientists are just beginning to realize that she kills larger prey with some regularity (King & Powell, 2007). Such scientists conclude that sihkos’ virtues are key to her hunting capacity: “Their extraordinary courage, strength, and tenacity put them among the few solitary predators able to attack prey larger than themselves” (p. 118). Typically, only animals that hunt in packs can kill prey larger than themselves. In some ways sihkos and the wîhtikow seem related—in that both are driven to kill, fuelled by the nature of their hearts. In addition, if you have ever kept chickens, then you know that sihkos engages in seeming ‘overkill,’ killing all the chickens in a coop—more than she can possibly eat or store for future use. But at least one study into this behavioural trait indicates that sihkos is simply responding to opportunity that normally does not exist in her world (King & Powell, 2007).21 In a laboratory setting, where sihkos is faced with repeated opportunities to kill large amounts of prey, she quickly (in two days) adopts a ‘new normal’ where she refrains from killing all the prey in large amounts, taking only what she needs to keep her heart beating or for her own survival. Conversely, driven by a heart that negates life and warmth, a wîhtikow has an appetite that can never be satisfied: sihkos moves toward life and the wîhtikow towards death. It seems that the ‘myth’ of sihkos encapsulates many layers of intergenerational, empirically verified, Cree and Anishinabek (living) knowledge that natural scientists are still only discovering. With deeper knowledge of sihkos, we can more fully appreciate that it is no 21 In the words of Chance The Rapper (feat. Kanye West & Chicago Children’s Choir) in ‘All We Got’: This is all we got Isn't this all we got? So we might as well give it all we got This is all we got Music all we got, got, got So we might as well give it all we got. 28 coincidence that sihkos comes across wîsahkêcahk nor is it a surprise that with her numerous qualities and multiple hunting methods that sihkos proves to be adept at destroying the coldness of the larger-than-life wîhtikow. Her story, in other words, is not only myth—rather sihkos really demonstrates the methodological capacity to defeat the wîhtikow historically and today. Correspondingly, though we seemingly operate in a different context, these same types of methods can be used by humanity in responding to our wîhtikow problem. I interpret sihkos’ real capacity or organizing ‘rule’ as that of balance; they have learned to embrace their own vulnerability and to expertly exploit the vulnerability of their prey. By embracing the opposite poles of vulnerability, weasels have become largely invulnerable to differences in ancestry, climate and geography, making weasel species of ‘least concern’ to conservationists on every continent they inhabit. As a result, sihkos neither fears nor has desire, but is the embodiment of continuous movement that is immovable. Unlike the wîhtikow, sihkos is driven by a creative self-care that then becomes a collective care among weasels as they creatively adapt to their ever-shifting ground. For me, sihkos’ story is about wholistic presence. 1.5.2 My sihkos Cree Theorizing The storywork of our Cree and Indigenous ancestors continues today through our efforts to maintain the value of our oral traditions within contemporary contexts, such as in academia. The value of Indigenous narratives is maintained when translations retain their story connections and implicit meanings (Archibald, 2008). To realize this value, an over-arching Indigenous framework for interpreting value must be based on a wholistic context that assesses what a story is saying about bringing balance and harmony or destroying it in the present context. Another way of understanding such interpretation entails “telling the same story, only different” (Patrick interviewing Lee Maracle, 2020). 29 On the surface, it may seem strange and even problematic to be told to ‘tell the same story, only different.’ By way of further explanation, I offer some key questions identified by Lakota scholar Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (2008) as helping us discern among Indigenous narratives and narrative processes and other types of storywork. She makes clear that a story told by an Indigenous author is not necessarily an ‘Indigenous story’ in her understanding. In discerning among the different types, Cook-Lynn asks “Does the Indian story as it is told now end in rebirth of Native nations as it did in the past? Does it help in the development of worthy ideas, prophecies for a future in which we continue as tribal people who maintain the legacies of the past and a sense of optimism?” (p. 22-23). In effect, the function, language, lens, content, context, structure and purpose of stories all matter to how a story works. As such, Indigenous narratives can include forms that are ‘Western’ in their origin, such as a novel, comic book and film, but contain traditional Indigenous narrative language, patterns, actors and themes. As demonstrated in this chapter, a type of storywork is central to my analysis. Yet, I do not consider myself a storyteller in the Cree or any other Indigenous tradition. My self-understanding in this context arises from the knowledge that to retell a sacred story or an oral story handed down over many generations, requires, well, a lot of work (Lightning, 1992). You must demonstrate to the proper beings who have affinities with a story that you will perform the storywork responsibly. Your potential to act responsibly is gauged by whether you can re-tell and re-interpret the story in a way that is consistent with Cree wholistic frameworks and values. I have tried to act responsibly, but at the end of the day, I am still a long way from the skill and knowledge exercised by those whose job it was and is to tell stories. In other words, I, myself, am working at storywork. 30 Here, I begin the work of truly listening to the story of sihkos by retelling herstory as my story. Arguably, the story works when the words of her story and my own dance across our skin and into your story. In keeping with sihkos’ methodology, I have sought to, first, value Cree and Indigenous knowledges in academia in a way that promotes balance. Two Métis concepts provide further insight on what constitutes a balance in an academic context. The concepts are kaa-tipeyimishoyaahk or ‘they own or govern themselves’; and wâhkôtowin or ‘the act of being related to one another’ (Gaudry, 2014, p. 1). Together the two terms represent a balance of autonomy or independence with interrelatedness. It’s important to note that such balance is not optional, but rather “all human life is dependent on being related” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 49 citing Herman Michel). Thus, for Cree and other Indigenous peoples processes of objectification, alienation, separation and superiority are regarded as enervating life because they destroy our relational capacity. But academic discussions of Cree and Indigenous knowledges tend to focus on their equivalencies or differences with other bodies of knowledge. The prevailing motivation seems to be to determine the extent to which Cree and Indigenous knowledges fit into pre-existing Western theories or frameworks. The result is often that Cree and Indigenous knowledges are only understood in terms of their relationships with Western or other knowledges. In other words, academics tend to emphasize wâhkôtowin or interrelatedness. To create a balance or a relational autonomy, Indigenous scholars have been regularly articulating the need to treat Indigenous knowledges more autonomously in academia. This autonomy means that “Not only is it important that [Indigenous] cultures are preserved and encouraged, but it is also important that they are recognized as the domain of [Indigenous] 31 peoples and not subverted by the dominant culture” (Battiste, 2014, p. 194). In my analysis, I have consciously sought to provide the intellectual autonomy or the theoretical space for Cree and Indigenous knowledges to stand up and apart from their relationships with a Western other. Reiterating the significance of strong Indigenous voices, I try to present them as whole as possible, rather than as muted or off-key versions of themselves amid the louder and distorting effects of Western voices. An ‘autonomous intellectual framework’ or ‘theoretical framework’ for understanding Cree and Indigenous knowledges establishes its own terms and methods for articulating truth by serving Indigenous needs and aspirations and following its own intellectual directions (Smith & Simpson, 2014; Smith, 2010). Again, like sihkos, I chose the scope of my analysis in an effort to maintain a careful balance while paying careful attention to my wholistic ground or understanding the autonomous and relational value of all our relations in living, natural and real contexts. Ultimately, I chose what appears to be an approach that centres Cree knowledges. This approach is very much a reflection of my living, natural and real contexts because ‘Cree’ is how I primarily identify myself. But I also do not profess to speak for anyone else, including other Cree people or Cree knowledges as a whole because all others stand on different ground and will have their own distinct views. Instead, my understanding arises from my particular ground and from speaking with other Cree people. In focusing on Creeness or Indigeneity, I also do not want to presume ‘the place, position, or belonging’ of anyone else (adapted from Maracle, 2015, p. 12) based on a narrow or absolutist identification of the ‘grounds’ for being Cree or being Indigenous. Such presumption would be akin to interfering with sihkos’ life-ways to name the single home she can inhabit and in which she must remain if she wants to continue being sihkos. This would not only be unfair to her but 32 would undermine the constant rehoming of herself that ensures her continued life. Instead, I am simply tracing the complex ways in which sihkos moves and continuously makes not only geographic but ideological homes from their diverse living, natural and real grounds. In examining the grounds of Creeness and Indigeneity wholistically, I do not accept the usual ‘touchstones’ or grounds for determining ‘who is Cree’ or ‘who is Indigenous,’ which are typically identified as race, blood, culture and language (King, 2003). In my analysis, I refuse to entertain the fabricated concept of ‘race’ and its dependence on an illusive ‘purity’ as a marker of Indigeneity; and my focus is not unpacking the complex meanings of ‘blood’ as markers of Indigeneity, which sometimes are akin to race and sometimes not.22 I do take up language though as an important ground of Creeness and Indigeneity. Overall, I focus on specific elements of ‘culture’ as the predominant grounds on which the ‘idea’ of Creeness and Indigeneity arises. At the same time, I reject ‘culture’ itself as a meaningful category of analysis for my purposes. Specifically, I focus on lived experience, language and narratives. Since these elements are typically heaved into an earth-quaking mess with a number of other ‘cultural’ components, I will attempt to differentiate culture from my trio of elements. The fundamental problem with defining Creeness or Indigeneity based on ‘culture,’ is that culture is one of those English language ‘bag words’ that tends to confound more than it clarifies. Bag words are akin to "a bag holding so many other words, images, and concepts that it almost tells us nothing” (Maracle, 2015, p. 20). Such words become “still” and “lifeless” from the pressure of their “bloated” meanings. When you empty ‘culture’ of its voluminous contents, a number of goodies fall out: customs, laws, stories, memories, conventions, values, constitutions, ceremonies and so on. Putting these elements in the same bag not only jumbles the meaning of 22 For more information, see the voluminous body of literature on critical race theory, esp. Appiah, etc. 33 culture, but often obscures the distinctness and interrelatedness of each of these elements. So rather than wade into the tiresome debate over the proper nature of culture or whether it has an essential core or not, or whether it is tied to Indigenous sovereignty or not—I have chosen to focus on three elements commonly put in the ‘bag’ of culture. But often a culture-like word is still needed to refer in general terms to the collection of elements that are involved in self-formation. For this purpose, I adopt the English term 'life-ways' as defined by siksikiwa philosopher Leroy Littlebear (2005) to describe how “Prior to the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent, Native Americans were organized into nations with group life-ways that resulted in philosophies, customs, values, beliefs, and governance systems arising from Native American paradigms” (p. 9) [emphasis added]. Littlebear’s definition of the term 'life-ways' denotes both historical and continuous processes that have produced ways to not just live, but to regenerate life. I believe this concept of life-ways is much better aligned with Cree and Indigenous wholistic worldviews or actual ways of life. If there is a 'core' or 'essence' to so-called Indigenous 'cultures' it is this collection of life-ways formed from the processes that seek always to nurture life. This simultaneity is further reflected in the Cree word ‘pimâtisowin,’ which is commonly translated as ‘life or culture,’ as well as ‘continuous rebirth' (Napoleon, 2014, p. 51 & p. 30). In keeping with the ‘lived’ reality or material embodiment of life-ways, there is much overlapping meaning among the nêhiyawêwin word ‘pimâtisowin’ and the words sihkîwina or ‘ways of doing things’ and nîhiyawâtisowin or ‘Creeness’ (p. 51). Conscious of the meanings of pimâtisowin, I analyze how our lived experiences, languages and narratives are regarded by Cree and Indigenous peoples as key tools for shaping and animating our lives. 34 In keeping with a balance that recognizes autonomy and interrelatedness, the boundaries between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ are both constantly moving and immovable. This means that achieving a balance of relational autonomy requires being in constant movement, as we listen and dance with all the voices present in a given context while understanding the immovability of these same selves grounded in specific contexts. When we listen to others or when we are in wholistic dialogue with another, then the ‘boundary’ between what we often consider ‘separate’ ways of being, such as ‘Indigenous and Western,’ can become spaces of ethical relationality and shared beingness (Ermine, Sinclair, & Jeffery, 2004). This shared space is where we work out the terms of our mutual belonging—it is where we have the potential to become one. In listening wholistically and being together in this shared space, we draw from a deeper and broader well of imagination, creativity and possibility. Outside of this space, I believe we are enabled to retain our autonomous, grounded distinctness. Like sihkos, amidst constant processes of rehoming ourselves, we never really leave our home or ourselves behind. This space of ethical relationality may also be characterized as being constituted by a shared boundary of co-presence that recognizes what lies within its bounds and outside of them (Andreotti et al, 2011). This line is where autonomy and relationality meet or where every boundary holds the potential to be a liminal space of co-presence. When I apply this understanding to Creeness or Cree nationalism, then pan-Indigenism need not be a negation of Cree autonomy, but can be an acknowledgement of a relational co-existence that collectively refuses and embraces norms as it works out the terms of being in relationship with each other and others in a way that regenerates their collective life-ways. On the other hand, a delimiting boundary negates co-presence or a space of shared beingness and ethical relationality. This type of boundary renders any ‘outsider’ knowledge 35 nonexistent or as “not existing in any relevant or comprehensible way of being” and proceeds to produce knowledge based on its singular conceptualization of reality (Andreotti et al, 2011, p. 223). The refusal of co-presence is akin to a relation of dominance that marginalizes or makes the ‘other’ invisible or unrecognizable. Of course, the ‘other,’ despite being told they do not or cannot exist based on their own self-recognition, are conscious of being rendered absent or conscious of the presence of their absence—because it is them and their knowledge that is being disappeared or eliminated. In terms of approaching knowledge from a 'Cree' perspective, it's important to note that 'Cree' is also an adopted category of identification as mediated by the French language with its own boundaries of copresence. When I refer to myself as ‘Cree,’ I am fully aware that how I understand myself as being Cree is shaped by where I am situated in Saskatchewan and the copresence or my shared lineages and close relationships with other Prairie Indigenous peoples where I am situated in Saskatchewan, namely the Métis, Saulteaux, Lakota, Nakota (Stoney) and Dakota people. Casting the net a little wider, close autonomous relationships also exist for me with the Dené in northern Saskatchewan and the Blackfoot Confederacy east of me. Finally, being Cree means I must consider my relationships with moniyawak and all other living entities. When I refer to myself as ‘Cree,’ I do not mean it as a category of exclusion, but as one that includes my relationships with all these others. When I mention being ‘Indigenous,’ or a ‘critical theorist’ I am referring to a large body of knowledges that have arisen from shared relationships across many near and far grounds. 1.5.3 On Theorizing Cree Lived Experience I choose to focus on ‘lived experience’ because it emphasizes the contextual or grounded nature of Cree knowledges and is inclusive of and illuminates our experiential interrelatedness 36 with other life-ways. Neither Creeness nor Indigeneity is a single, essential thing, nor are they an ideology or an intellectual understanding; instead, they represent a state of being that is lived, embodied, felt and materialized (adapted from Hunt, 2014).23 Arguably, academics perpetually misrepresent Indigeneity because its “dynamic” nature or its heterogeneity as “lived, practiced, and relational” can never be fully captured by “pre-established modes of inquiry” (Hunt, 2014, p. 29). Instead, most Indigenous scholars access the “living knowledge of their culture” and use it as a means to reanimate and reorient academic research to challenge academic frameworks that rely on ‘original’ sources that would distort it (Larocque, 1988, p. 203). In research practice, this means grounding your research in living sources of Indigenous knowledges, such as your lived experience and contexts (Deloria, 1974; Borrows, 2016), community (Napoleon, 2007), Elders and knowledge keepers (Cardinal, 2007, Laboucane-Benson, 2009; Carriere, 2018; Napoleon, 2014; Makokis, 2010), ceremony (Laboucane-Benson, 2009; Makokis, 2008), and Indigenous laws, narratives and languages (Brundige, 2004; Napoleon, 2014, McAdam, 2015;). A primary effect of embodied, wholistic Cree and Indigenous presence in academia has been to displace knowledge about Cree and Indigenous peoples produced outside of or with little relationship with its natural, living contexts and the ground of real-life relationships and experience. In navigating the ‘messiness’ of our diverse experiences, Cree and Indigenous scholarship often follows a mode of theorizing our experience that in Anishinaabemowin or the language of the Anishinaabe is called ‘akinoomaagewin’ or ‘physical philosophy’ (Borrows, 2016). This approach is both directional and grounded. By ‘directional,’ I mean that it is oriented to move us from our current state to ‘a better state’ (p. 10) while the ‘grounded’ dimension reiterates the importance of wholistically contextualized knowledge. It is a philosophizing based 23 The adapted aspect refers to my explicit inclusion of ‘Cree’ peoples in Hunt’s description of being Indigenous. 37 on data inductively derived from “experience, observation and discussion” that “engages with the real world’s constraints and opportunities which Indigenous peoples encounter, rather than attempting to answer questions by an a priori appeal to idealized forms and idealized traditions” (p. 11). Basically, through the exercise of physical philosophy we theorize problems and directions based on situated and specific relationships, which frees us from unthinking or uncritical adherence to practice or to thought disconnected from our current contexts. The specific contexts in which I carried out my research include my original Prairie homelands in Saskatchewan and then brought me to Coast Salish lands in Vancouver, BC, and then back again to Saskatchewan. I was living in Saskatchewan when I first thought about engaging in a formal process of researching and applied to do a PhD program at the University of British Columbia. Once accepted into the program, I then moved to Coast Salish lands as an uninvited guest, eventually returning home after four years to take up a teaching position at the University of Saskatchewan while still completing my dissertation. While living in Vancouver, I was fortunate to meet and be introduced to Coast Salish scholars and Indigenous authors from south of the medicine line. On the West Coast, there is a strong geographic and ideological affinity among all residents that runs along the entire West coast of iyiniwi-ministik and includes the Pacific islands. In addition, there is a generally close affinity with Indigenous scholars south of the medicine line in the so-called United States, an affinity that is not common in Saskatchewan. These ideological connections opened up exciting new ways of thinking Indigenous for me. Specifically, two philosophers have had a profound effect on my work: Stō:lö poet, novelist and scholar Lee Maracle and Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr. In the department of political science at the University of British Columbia, I also had the good fortune of being taught political science and supervised by two leading Indigenous 38 political scientists: Anishinaabe kwê Sheryl Lightfoot and Yellow knives Dene scholar Glen Coulthard.24 Finally, in my positions as a teaching assistant and as a lecturer, I have had the benefit of being invited and sometimes dragged unwillingly along by diverse bodies of undergraduate and graduate students into seeing the world from their positions, which has proven to be an invaluable and humbling learning experience. ‘Cree’ itself is also a highly relational category based on a shared language family with at least seven distinct dialects, and diverse life-ways, histories and geographies (Carriere, 2018). While we continue to embrace the category of ‘Cree’ based on our close relationships, we must be aware that it is a label that was historically imposed on us or that did not arise organically from within our language and narratives (Quinn, 2015). In Saskatchewan, Cree peoples in Northern Saskatchewan identify themselves as Rock Cree people or nihithawakwho (Michell, 2015) or as Swampy Cree or nehinuw (Carriere, 2018), and in central and southern Saskatchewan as Plains Cree or nêhiyawak. As Cree people continue to be increasingly diverse because of our complex, contemporary contexts and differential social positioning, we may see more emphasis on autonomous distinctions among ‘Cree’ peoples or maybe a continued emphasis on our interrelatedness; hopefully, we see a balance of both orientations. There are at least two different accounts of the origins of the word ‘Cree.’ One story is that the word is derived from the French ‘La Crie,’ which French missionaries and traders used to describe citizens of diverse Indigenous polities who shared the characteristic of 'crying out' as a general greeting to visitors (Quinn, 2015). Another story is that the name ‘Cree,’ comes from the word ‘Kiristino,’ or ‘Kristineaux,’ which has been described as an Anishinaabemowin-derived name to describe a division of Cree speakers living south of James Bay in northern 24 Although I’m sure both of them fully deny any responsibility or blame for the contents of my own writing. 39 Ontario in the mid 17th century (Michell, 2015 citing Brightman, 2002). In both cases, the term was supposedly later shortened and used to refer to all ‘Cree’ people. In nêhiyawêwin or the Plains Cree language, a more inclusive name for a group of people, such as Crees, is ‘iyiniwok’ or ‘ininiwok,’ meaning "the people” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000). I opted to use the name ‘Cree’ because this identifier is commonly used in everyday speech among my Metis/Métis, nêhinuw, nêhiyawak, nîhithaw and nîhithawakwho niwâhkômâkanak or ‘Cree’ relatives and the subversion of a Cree-language-based title is outweighed for me by the large body of valuable, unified knowledges and experiences that converge in the word ‘Cree.’ Within the boundaries of Canada, Crees are today the most populous Indigenous nation and are geographically situated from Quebec across the prairies to BC and up into the Northwest Territories. Our geographic territories also extend into some northern, central U.S. states (Michell, 2015). Overall, the contexts of my lived experience of being Cree on iyiniwi-ministik attest to an autonomous relationality with other ways of being. Being Cree does not fit into cohesive, oppositional subjectivities from which I can readily choose to speak or act from a single voice or social position. Instead, I speak with “multiple voices” and “embody supposedly dichotomous subject positions: colonizer/colonized, native/academic, and community member/scholar” (Hunt, 2014, p. 28). Though I call myself Cree, I do not live in a singular Cree ‘world’ and so to ignore other knowledges would be the same as refusing to see myself wholistically. In academic contexts, this does not require isolation from other intellectual traditions, but instead entails building coalitions with others engaged in thought and practices that align with my direction towards life or with dismantling oppressive power structures (Smith & Simpson, 2014). Such coalitions converge around their shared opposition to interlocking wîhtikow systems of settler 40 colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and so on. Not only intellectual but political coalitions are built by such directions. The complexity of being Cree when applied to contexts of knowledge certainly requires the multi-methods of sihkos. Just as sihkos is able to climb, swim, stand and burrow as needed throughout her shifting ground, Crees engage in a continuous ‘shapeshifting’ across multiple ‘worlds’ with their attendant practices of knowledge production and ways of being (Hunt, 2014) experiencing multiple consciousnesses (Simpson, 2007) and seeing through multiple worldviews (Fullenwieder, 2017). Indeed, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) speaks about “dissent lines” in addition to those of “descent,” in that they “come down through my tribal lines but also through my experiences as a result of schooling and an urban background” (p. 48). While our freedom to choose our collective life-ways and our individual life-paths within them is impeded by relations of domination, such as colonization, our lives are not totally restricted by colonial force. As okimaw or nêhiyaw leader Harold Cardinal once noted, colonization is “descriptive” not “definitive” (2007, p. 66) and so when we use the term colonization today, it seems more accurate to speak of “colonial logics” that pervade our multiple relationships grounded in Indigenous and Western thought (Starblanket & Stark, 2018, p. 175). So the grounded knowledge I draw on is not only Cree, but also comes from the intimate knowledge of the oppressed, which as Lee Maracle (1996) reminds us, is the knowledge that ultimately ‘paves the way to freedom’ (p. 139). At many points in my analysis, achieving a balance has meant adopting a thematic-based approach that is layered by the multiplicity of these ways of knowing. As such, I do not restrict the parameters of my analysis to the insights of a single community, nation, Elder or group of Elders, single scholar, text, philosopher, knowledge keeper, story, discourse, discipline, theory or 41 body of literature. Yet, in keeping with the aforementioned need for autonomy, I do ground my analysis in my own lived experience as a nêhiyaw or Plains Cree person who lives in relationship with a specific community and nation, Elders, as well as within the particularities of the Cree language and narratives. This particular grounding is not meant as a sphere of exclusivity, but as a grounded layer of responsibilities and relationships that direct my theorizing in an accountable way. So my approach has often meant both anchoring myself deeper in my Creeness, while also exploring well beyond its parameters to embrace the co-presence of Plains Indigenous, Indigenous and Western knowledges. Like sihkos, I ground my knowing in striving to be wholistically present and attuned to my shifting ground. As I set out on a voracious hunt for written, academic Cree sources to inform my researching, I ventured down countless tunnels and holes. Western critical theory proved at many junctures to be a useful conduit for further analyzing and deconstructing the thought of dominant systems on iyiniwi-ministik and enabling me to foreground Cree modes of thought and being. Specifically, I was taught critical theoretical techniques from political theorists Barbara Arneil, Bruce Baum and Mark Warren, all professors in the Department of Political Science at UBC. I consciously centre the academic and the so-called ‘popular’ and poetic texts of Cree (Cree/Métis) and Indigenous scholars in my research. As a political theorist, I have been encouraged and allowed to get the bulk of my knowledge from books or written sources or from other ‘theory.’ The type of texts I accessed are what you may call interdisciplinary in that they are not solely ‘political’ in terms of being published within political science disciplinary journals; instead, I read Cree and Indigenous authors wherever I have found them, which is across multiple academic disciplines. 42 I have relied on a mix of ‘secondary’ sources. All the stories that I use have been written down virtually verbatim or digitally recorded online, often blurring the line between what is a primary or a secondary version. However, since I was not there when they were originally told in person, I regard these sources as secondary sources. Other texts are more typical of what we regard as ‘secondary’ sources because they are based on a primary storytelling, interview, ceremony, event or experience of the author to which I only have access to through that author’s lens for understanding the primary event. To ameliorate this secondary experience, I have tried as much as possible to get ‘inside’ the author’s understanding by tracking the wholistic context in which they have written. In addition, I have tended to rely on works by Cree authors and other authors writing about Cree people who have spent a large part of their lives living with Cree people or who have taken the time to intimately understand Cree community, ceremony, narratives, the language and wholistic relationships. Most notably, I have relied a great deal on the work of Plains Cree scholar Walter Lightning (1992); Rock Cree playwright, novelist, philosopher and piano virtuoso Tomson Highway (2003; 2008); Swampy Cree/Métis scholar Lorraine Brundige (2004); nêhiyaw/Métis Elder and author Maria Campbell; nêhiyaw poet, Elder and ceremonialist ‘skydancer’ or Louise Halfe (1994; personal communications, 2020-2021); and nêhiyaw political scientist Kiera Ladner (2003; 2006; 2009; 2017). In many ways, my work is simply a continuance and creative elaboration of their stories. There is a convention within Indigenous decolonizing methodologies that one should seek out primary sources in one’s community as this is where the ‘real’ Cree knowledge lies. While there is much knowledge in communities among Elders and other knowledge-keepers, and I have drawn directly on a respected Elder and ceremonialist to help me interpret and translate Cree narratives and language, I do not think our geographicically located communities are the 43 only place that a substantive and valuable body of Cree knowledge now lies. For instance, in my personal case, I feel that I carry much of my Cree community with me wherever I am because it’s an integral part of me. I grew up in a Cree community and have lived and worked in Cree and Indigenous communities most of my life. Cree knowledges certainly reside in actual communities and on the land, but their spirit can extend and is extended to written works. There is so much for us to feast on! My own research barely scratches the surface of this immense body of knowledges. Out of my own stubborn pragmatism and necessity, my research draws on the large and growing body of Cree knowledges that now reside in multiple types of writing and in online formats, largely in the English language. My reliance on secondary sources arises from the fact that I wanted to show that the difficult effort of writing down Cree knowledges undertaken by numerous Cree scholars is not for nothing; and also, as a mother and graduate student who simultaneously worked full-time at other jobs to pay my bills, I simply did not have the privilege to travel to communities and speak in-person with Elders and other knowledge keepers. Initially, my plan was to start with written sources and then do primary interviews among knowledge-keepers in community. But I simply was never afforded this time for travel and so I had to relinquish ownership even of my own research path and instead focus on fully realizing my presence amidst the ground of written and otherwise recorded Cree knowledges. I rely on these ‘secondary’ sources with confidence, because like Good Crees, the authors have been careful and caring in presenting Cree knowledges as precisely as possible. Overall, my primary way of tracing okâwîmâwaskiy in Cree knowledges has consisted of locating primary elements among written and recorded secondary sources over a relatively long period of time. In my researching, I go back in time to look at some of the earliest works of Cree scholarship, such 44 as by Edward Ahenakew, who wrote his manuscript in about 1923, but which was not published until 1973 after his niece found it in a dusty drawer 12 years after his death. I also look at the most recent works of Cree scholars, such as Gina Starblanket (2017), Réal Carriere (2018) and Matt Wildcat (2020). 1.5.4 Philosophizing & Storywork Key to physical philosophy as defined by Borrows is storywork. Cree philosophies are embedded in and recreated through processes of narrativity that teach us how to move in relationship not only with the story, but with all life (Brundige, 2004). Like the story of sihkos, the boundaries of our stories are fixed and constantly moving as we learn and explore from all the beings that coexist within our grounds. Unlike the understanding in most Western theory, language and experience are not separate in a story (Cowan, 2017), which means that Cree and Indigenous stories are not ‘objects’ of philosophy but are practices of knowledge co-creation by which philosophies and theories are carried, changed and created. Through their capacity to “help people think, feel, and ‘be’” (Archibald, 2008, p.ix [emphasis added]), stories facilitate mutual and co-constitutive interrelatedness among the storyteller and the story-listeners. This co-creative aspect of story is what keeps the ‘spirit’ of a story ‘alive’ (p. 147-149). Stories are both old and new in that they act as a repository of knowledge and are a way to express new knowledge. Their purpose is to both record perspectives of a current generation and investigate “philosophical formulations” so that storytelling “tells one generation of listeners what the previous generation has come to know through the long tenancy of the tribe in a specific geography” (Cook-Lynn, 2008, p. 4). Stories can also transcend epistemological and ontological lenses by teaching “new ways of being moral and political in the social world” (Denzin et al., 2008, p. 23). When they perform this function, they constitute a common 45 language for “struggling together to find liberating ways of interpreting and performing in the world” (p. 23). But this does not mean ‘taking’ someone else’s story, it means simply, listening and then telling your story. Specifically, a number of distinct and related types of Cree stories continue to be told that include: âtayôhkêwina, kakesihkimowin, kaya-acimowin, âcimisowin, âcimowin and waywiyácimisowin (Reder, 2007; Wolfart & Ahenakew, 2000) that account for a vast range of Cree experiences and knowledges, including history, social rules, prohibitions, genealogy, ecological knowledge, and multiple survival systems, including humor (Brundige, 2004, p. 30). These stories include: ‘sacred’ stories of Creation and wisahkechahk, the Cree transformer/trickster figure; Cree historical accounts of heroism and achievements; counselling texts; auto/biographical or personal narratives of daily life; factual stories and humorous stories. In addition, contemporary Cree narratives that include more explicit political and philosophical critique now exist that blend both the Cree "philosophical practice" of "narrative construction" and the Western philosophic practice of "making the theory explicit through argument and analysis" (Ahenakew, 1929; Brundige, 2004, p. 23; Reder, 2010). The struggle to tell these stories is also part of these stories since colonization largely involves “obscuring the story of who we are and will always want to be” (Maracle, 2015). More than subjugated or buried knowledges that unsettle dominant discourses and official histories, Indigenous narratives are generative practices oriented towards the continuance of autonomous and relational Cree and Indigenous selves. A balance or an autonomous interrelatedness is reflected not only in the practice, but in the bounded/unbounded structure of storywork. Contained within stories are “history, myth, and identity” which inevitably point towards the importance of the landscape, geography or “sense of 46 place,” and enable people to “recognize all of the creature worlds and sights and sounds of the universe which surround human beings and their lives” (Cook-Lynn, 2008, p. 2). In effect, as Laguna Pueblo scholar Paula Gunn-Allen (1986; 1992; 2015) concludes, stories resonate on multiple levels, with a single story able to simultaneously affect an individual, a society and a landscape, which often serves to bridge the gap between the living earth and humanity or “between isolate human being and lonely landscape” (p. 120). Within each layer, Cree and Indigenous stories unapologetically blend the narratives of ‘humankind, animalkind, and God’ (Highway, 2003, p. 21) Overall, Cree stories, such as âcimowina, function as both history and myth and resist attempts at both demythologizing and mythologizing (Lightning, 1992). Rather, Because [Indigenous] oral tradition blends the material, spiritual, and philosophical together into one historical entity, it would be a clear violation of the culture from which it is derived if well-meaning scholars were to try to demythologize it, in order to give it greater validity in the Western sense of historiography. It would be equally unjust and inappropriate to place this history into the category of mythology or folklore, thereby stripping it of its significance as authentic historical documentation. Wolfe, 1988: ix The lines of story are delicate and strong like a spider’s web as they are employed to continue and create knowledge without letting their borders reify into a regime of truth. Following other Cree scholars, I employ primarily Cree and Indigenous narratives and narrativity for their insights and as a “theoretical framework” for exploring key elements of Cree processes of self-formation (Brundige, 2004; Reder, 2010; Innes, 2013; McLeod, 2000; Michell, 2015). In particular, I draw on the spiritual history of Cree âtayôhkêwina or Cree sacred stories as generative sources “of conceiving of a Cree critical theory” that constitutes “a narrative embodiment that creatively reflects on the situation and the world in which we find ourselves.” (Innes, 2013, p. 35 citing McLeod). In my case, I have sought to narratively embody the âtayôhkêwina, focusing on how the wîhtikow and sihkos creatively inform our current situation 47 and world. The âtayôhkêwina are particularly important stories because they are regarded as our creation stories or original stories from from which all other stories flow (Michell, 2015). Like sihkos, I gain sustenance by making myself at home in these stories and wrapping my world in the warmth of their communal and cosmic skins. In addition, I draw on a multiplicity of other types of Cree and Indigenous narratives to create an autonomous and relational Cree story map and compass or orienting framework to guide my research. Together these stories tell us a lot about how to relate through story and to orient ourselves towards being in balance. Finally, since I am retelling these stories, my own story and relationships with these stories and storytellers, typically regarded as ‘research subjects,’ means that my own personal and subjective story and agency are intertwined with them. Following other Cree researchers (Laboucane-Benson, 2009; Napoleon, 2014), to approach and acknowledge the personal aspect of research strengthens the validity of one’s findings because it can lead to deeper knowledge based on one’s close relationships and manages potential bias by a self-consciousness of the researcher’s own position. 1.5.5 Making a Cree home in the English Language In this final section on methodology, I emphasize how language is the other pivotal tool I use in analyzing Cree knowledges. Language is intimately tied to narrative construction, so it is impossible to tell or understand a story without being attentive to the words chosen to tell it (Brundige, 2004 citing Maria Campbell, p. 38). But understanding the Cree language is also not just about understanding the meanings of and using isolated words and phrases—though this is how most of us begin to understand a language—the Cree language is highly contextual and land-based so to truly understand it requires understanding how it is embedded in relationships with the land, narratives and its contexts (Michell, 2015). In exploring language as partly 48 constitutive of an overall Cree autonomous relational framework, my emphasis shifts slightly from researching based on Cree terms to researching in and into Cree terms. But just as sihkos has learned to overcome the limitations of her short legs, I have had to think deeply about my own relationships with the Cree and English languages given my lack of fluency in nêhiyawêwin. Here I explain how I stand on my hind quarters to sense as broadly as possible in all directions to understand the ways in which the Cree language continues to move around and through our social realities. Again, following sihkos’ method of going into someone’s home, including enlarging it at times, has meant my own enlarging of and tracing of how the English language is being expanded by others to make it more hospitable to Creeness, Indigeneity and the Cree language. This method has involved little and big changes to the interior designs of both academic and English languages. In my analysis, I have used two specific methods in analyzing the Cree language. To ameliorate minimizations and mistranslations from Cree into English, I rely on translations from fluent Cree speakers who typically translate words as carefully as possible; and I draw on multiple translations where they exist. In addition, to a limited extent, I was able to consult fluent Cree speaking Elder and poet Louise Halfe to review my use, translations and interpretations of Cree words in English for accuracy.25 Secondly, I am attentive to how Crees use English and Cree words in the English language as placeholders for infusing Cree values, norms and perspectives. What I have found is that most Cree people act like sihkos in making a home in English for ourselves. Below, I describe in greater detail how these methodologies play out on linguistic grounds. 25 I take full responsibility for all errors, omissions and mistranslations of the Cree language. 49 First, following other Cree scholars (Carriere, 2018; Jobin, 2014), I have refused to follow APA or American Psychological Association style referencing guidelines that insist I use italics when I include Cree words in my writing. The convention is that italics should be used for all “foreign phrases not common in English” (Carriere, 2018, p. 28). But Cree phrases are not foreign to me and the italicized insistence on their foreignness perpetuates a linguistic subjugation and disconnection of Cree from the English language that I refuse to reinforce. In effect, I will not make Cree words bend to English language conventions, in grammar or in theory, and so nêhiyawêwin and other dialects of the Cree language stand equally alongside English words in my writing. While not providing an explicit rationale, Swampy Cree philosopher Brundige (2004) seems to take this orientation one step further: not only does she refuse italics when using Cree words in her writing, she underlines them—literally and figuratively underlining their significance in relation to English. In addition, my system of grammar and spelling of Cree words relies on a standardized grammar and spelling system that Cree language teacher Andrea Custer calls ‘Standard Cree Orthography’ (SCO) (A. Custer, personal communication, March 14, 2021). This system of writing Cree words has been developed by generations of fluent Cree-speaking language teachers over the last 80 years (Okimâsis & Wolvengrey, 2008). It uses the standard Roman alphabet in forming a written Cree language (in addition to the original written Cree language system of syllabics) specifically designed to assist English and French speakers in learning Cree. It is important to note that this system does not use capitalizations, regardless of whether a word is a ‘proper noun’ or the name of a person or place. This linguistic convention is in keeping with a wholistic, egalitarian world view where “nothing is singled out or marked for special attention or status by any special use of symbols such as capitalization” (p. 5). To promote standardization, 50 particularly of nuanced Cree words that can differ based on the place of a differently accented vowel, I follow the rules of this system, although I keep non-SCO spellings of Cree words in quoted passages and key references intact. Secondly, in keeping with generations of Cree feminist and two-spirit writers, I do not represent genderless Cree words as the masculine gender (Brundige, 2004; Wilson, 2015; Highway, 2003; Halfe, 1995). For example, I do not translate the genderless nisîmis or ‘my younger sibling’ as ‘my little brother.’ When referring to any being, whether human or sihkos, my preference is to use the genderless English pronoun ‘they.’ However, this English pronoun is not only genderless but plural in English, and so its use often creates confusion in the construction of sentences in English. As a compromise, I use all three personal pronouns interchangeably to signal linguistically that I approach gender not necessarily as fluid, but as a category of beingness that is relatively inconsequential in the Cree language. This means that I use ‘she’ or ‘her’ in many instances, sometimes ‘he’ and ‘him,’ and the plural ‘they’ to refer to the same living being. Thirdly, another key insight about my analysis of language use by Cree authors is that I strive to put oral sources on an equal footing with written sources, without privileging one over the other. Some of the Cree and Indigenous authors that I analyze write what may be called ‘textualized orature and textualized orality’ (Gingell, 2012). Rather than reinforcing a false binary between the oral and written word, it's important to note that the written and oral offer instead "a continuum of performance possibilities" (p. 5). Even the action of silent reading requires an enactment of the written words in the "private forum of the head" while an oral performance is played out "in an external social arena" (p. 5). Orature (oral+literature) includes both types of performance and multi-modal meaning-making that goes beyond seeing words on a 51 page or hearing them spoken, but that in a variety of ways writes in "paralinguistic elements of communication" like facial expression or movement. In addition, it’s important to note that orature is a "socio-cultural event" because it carries and reenacts knowledges about life-ways that the reader can remember and apply to the present and the future. Specifically, I analyze the use of Cree ‘word bundles’ in contemporary writing in English and the implications of the knowledge they carry on political thought and action. I’ve come to realize that the symbols or relational word bundles of our oral traditions have a remarkable linguistic resilience in that they are able to carry multiple bodies of knowledge through time and space (Essen, 2018). Like other bundles, these words hold the power to re-new ourselves and our worlds. I seek to revive nêhiyawêwin in a way that provides much needed context for understanding the implications of its linguistic contexts. But translations of nêhiyawêwin into English are impacted by ‘profound structural and philosophical differences’ that hinder accurate translation (Napoleon, 2014, p. 33-34). In particular, the sacred or spiritual concepts are often minimized or misinterpreted, which would suggest that any "spiritual" component of the self implicit in the language is also minimized or misinterpreted when a concept is translated from nêhiyawêwin to English (Napoleon, 2014). Fourth, if I am truly committed to researching from grounds that are natural, living and real, then I think this requires using ‘grounded’ speech that is easy to understand or that at least resists jargon and overly academic language. If I use a big word or complex phrasing where a small word or a simple phrase would have sufficed, then it’s due to my lack of writing skill and not my intention. My intention is to write as plainly and beautifully as leaves26 of grass, like the real, natural and living grounds of my current prairie home. This manner of speaking further 26 ‘Leaves’ is a nineteenth century term for ‘pages’ made popular by the poet philosopher Walt Whitman. 52 reflects a grounded way of speaking because it is how I speak when I am truly being my grass-roots self. This natural and real way of speaking for me has been formed largely by my upbringing in a close-knit community that identifies as nêhiyaw or Plains Cree, but includes Métis, Saulteaux, Nakota (Stoney), Métis and Dakota lineages and people. The ‘everyday’ speech of family and friends from my home community involves varied relationships with the English language. The multiplicity of these relationships is imprinted on my own tongue. It is true that Cree and Indigenous peoples have lost much with the English language being used as a tool of cultural genocide, but the forcing of Indigenous children to speak, write and think in English has not resulted in us completely forgetting our languages and the ways of life they express (Napoleon, 2014). Though the Plains Cree language or nêhiyawêwin was not passed down to me, my dad was a fluent nêhiyawêwin speaker and my mom’s English is peppered with the nêhiyawêwin and Michif fluency of her nêhiyaw/Métis parents, giving her own English a unique spiciness. What I’ve realized though is that both my dad and mom spoke and speak English largely as though their first language was Cree in that their English was often “filtered through the mind, the tongue and the body of a person who is speaking in Cree” (Highway, 2008, p. 33). My everyday English has long been inflected with Cree values and perspectives. For example, my mom would borrow metaphors directly from Cree and their local sister languages—often telling me and my siblings to stop acting like 'nanabush' (Saulteaux and Anishinaabek name for wîsahkêcahk) whenever we would do something particularly foolish; and infusing Cree humour in his speech was something my dad prided himself on. One of his favourite English language labours of love was to collect and retell the best jokes he could find. As an adult, if I had not seen him for a few weeks or so, the first thing he would do is recite to me all the jokes he 53 had collected. Some of these jokes are what larger society may view as unacceptably ‘dirty’ jokes or jokes of a sexual nature, but if they were funny my dad would tell them to me. I only remember his recitation of such jokes being an issue because someone who was listening to us one time pointed it out—much to our surprise. Many years later, Cree playwright, novelist, philosopher and piano virtuoso Tomson Highway (2008) helped me understand that the way my parents spoke and speak to me is, at least in part, a reflection of Cree linguistic norms and not only their personal eccentricities. In his essay, ‘Why Cree Is the Sexiest of All Languages,’ he notes that the Cree language reflects norms around sex and sexuality that are absent in the English language. So it is quite humorous for him to say to a close friend in Cree “All right, you stinky cunt. Drive to Montreal right away together with that old bag of yours (my Cree friend’s gay lover) or I’ll never fuck you again!” (p. 37). But in English, such speech is typically unacceptable among those who follow its linguistic norms. Rehoming Cree linguistic norms around humour and sex and sexuality into English are some of the ways that my parents and other Cree people have made themselves more fully at home in this language. It’s important to note that these norms are not superficial, but express and represent deep philosophical Cree understandings. A Cree linguistic norm that is not afraid to acknowledge the humour or ‘the fun and funniness’ of sex and sexuality and that refers unashamedly to the body reflects a distinct Cree understanding and relationship with nature (Highway, 2008). This relationship is grounded in âtayôhkêwina that resist Christian stories of Genesis where the first people were created ex nihilo or from a rib, where childbirth becomes painful as a punishment for sin rather than a joyous result of r\sexual love, and where humankind was also ousted from the Garden of Eden. In effect, with the story of Genesis the entire English language was ‘evicted’ from this garden, because it 54 set in motion linguistic disconnects with other types of gardens or profound sites of beauty and pleasure—the body and the land. As Highway explains this is not the case with the Cree language: there is no such story as eviction from any garden in the mythology of the Indian people of North America…and it therefore follows that if we were never evicted from that garden, then we are still inside it. North America, easily the most stunningly beautiful continent on earth, in other words, is, to us, a garden—a garden of beauty, a garden of pleasure, a garden of joy.” (38) In effect, the Cree language reflects that ‘nature is not an enemy but a friend, an ally’ and the use of English by Cree speakers can reflect this deep norm (p. 39). The journals of English fur trader George Nelson, written in the 1820s, who spent about a decade with northern Cree people in La Ronge, Saskatchewan similarly notes how his English sensibilities are offended by Cree stories. He describes them as “indecent in the highest degree” and reports that “there are many of these Tales the author durst not publish for the obscenity and indecency” (p. 36). Yet, in the same journal entry Nelson notes that the ‘mythology’ of the Crees he encounters tell about ‘Key-shay-mani-to’ or ‘The Greatly charitable Spirit’ who ‘addresses them and talks to them as to children whom he most tenderly loves and is extremely anxious for’ and “they love him a great deal, and are by no means afraid of him” (p. 36). So below this linguistic norm lies a deep bedrock of differing narrative orientations with Cree stories arising from loving grounds and Old Testament Christian stories founded on fear of a wrathful God. My other Cree relations have often used English to continue wâhkôtowin and wâhkômtowin or Cree processes of relating with others. For example, our informal practices of recognition commonly reflect and reaffirm a person’s relationships. Cree family and friends almost never call anyone by their regular English names—virtually everyone has a nickname based on a personal story about them or a relation; or else they would call you by a kinship title, albeit mostly in English. For example, my mom’s oldest brother insisted on calling my dad’s 55 only uncle by the title of ‘father.’27 Hearing my maternal uncle call my paternal ‘great uncle’ his ‘father,’ who in turn insisted that my siblings and I call him ‘môsum’ or ‘grandfather’ was normal for us and everyone around us. Our great-uncle really was our grandfather and our uncle really regarded him as a father according to Cree norms that we carried forward in English. Here, I have provided a brief glimpse of my parents and my other relatives’ relationships with English as examples to illustrate the presence of absence of nêhiyawêwin and their sister languages in our English. I focused on only a few Cree norms, and specifically chose ‘sex and sexuality’ and ‘kinship’ norms for their humorous disconnections with English language norms, but other such norms could be illuminated. My main point regarding language is that when I speak and use English grounded in who I am as a Cree person, I am also saying tawow to nêhiyawêwin and other Indigenous languages; ‘tawow’ is often translated as ‘welcome’ but literally means ‘there is room.’ This linguistic capacity has been distinguished as a difference in ‘active’ and ‘passive’ competence (Acoose, 1995). Though English speakers like me are unable to “participate in my Indigenous languages with active competence,” I have some “passive competence that allows me to understand, even think, feel, and have some intuitive connection with those languages, ideologies, philosophies, values, and beliefs” (p. 12). Basically, I’ve been taught some of the context of the Cree language or how Creeness is lived, absent the Cree words to express this way of life. As such, I experience Cree possibilities ‘unrealized but felt’ that enable a distinctly Cree critical approach to the English language. 27 I suspect he intended the title to mean ‘grandfather’ but because they were close in age, grandfather seemed inappropriate. My mom was one of the youngest in her family of 13 siblings while my dad was the oldest in his family and so her brother and his uncle were about 10 years apart in age. 56 In keeping with the presence of absence of Cree in the English language, my mom continues to insist that she ‘only’ speaks English and will tell you that she doesn’t remember any âtayôhkêwina, while lamenting in the same breath that people don’t pronounce Cree words correctly today and Elders are no longer like the ones she remembers. On the other hand, my dad’s nêhiyawêwin often fell off his tongue in unguarded moments. He would tell us proudly how he remembered all the wîsahkêcahk stories his grandfather told him, and yet he never found the right time or season to teach us. While both my parents were forced to make a home for themselves in the English language as a method of survival, in the process they built a more expansive home for me in the language. I hope to continue this methodology. It is from these foregoing understandings that I analyze nêhiyawêwin in English in my research. 1.5.6 Conclusion When I began framing colonization as a wîhtikow problem for this chapter, I have to admit that my concern was that this framing would prove to overly reduce and simplify not only the meaning of the wîhtikow, but the problem of colonization; on the flipside, I feared that an overly expansive and complex rendering would cause the parameters of both to collapse into a heap of meaninglessness. My intention was to make the interlocking problem of colonization stark and more readily intelligible and recognizable according to Cree intelligence and ways of seeing. While my own researching methods barely compare with the immense skill and courage of sihkos, I believe I have shown how to follow in their nimble footsteps by using a few of their creative, researching methods. Like sihkos, I seek to find the way to the cold heart of colonial logics and to cut its cords. In effect, though we climb into a wîhtikow, when we carry the 57 grounded knowledge of all our relations with us, we can use this knowledge to destroy what enervates not only Cree and Indigenous life but all life. 1.5.7 Thesis Organization This collection of leaves is organized into seven chapters, including this first one. In this first chapter, I have identified my focus, problem, methodology, orienting framework and the significance of my research. In chapter two, I flesh out the two wîhtikow woundings identified as part of the ongoing wîhtikow problem facing humanity. I focus on identifying and tracing the presence of these woundings through a review of literature on Cree and Indigenous self formation. I also relate how these woundings are problematic for the revitalization of a wholistic self grounded in okâwîmâwaskiy. In chapter three, I focus on delineating and reconstructing a wholistic Cree conception of the self, focusing on how this self is intimately connected with okâwîmâwaskiy. I delineate this self as structurally composed of four domains that coexist in superpositionality with all other life. Resonance enables this coexistence supported by processes of wholistic inclusivity and circular reciprocity. Again, balance or a movement towards autonomous relationality is the orienting process for this self. In the fourth chapter, I draw on one of the earliest, published articulations of Cree wholism by nêhiyaw author Edward Ahenakew (1923; 1973; 1995) to show how wholism is applied as a framework for determining the value of thought and practices. Specifically, I focus on how Cree wholism determines what is ethical based on a presupposition of the value of a living thing. In the fifth chapter, I explore the potential of okâwîmâwaskiy in restoring wholistic balance to Cree relations that have been damaged by colonial patriarchal ideologies and institutions by undermining the place of mothers and mothering in Cree societies. My focus is on the Cree practices of mothering and the place of mothers in Cree life-orders that are carried in the word bundle that is okâwîmâwaskiy. In chapter 58 six, I examine how the category of gender and its multiple theories are being used to interpret Cree linguistic and narrative representations of motherhood. I assert that the proper theory by which to understand okâwîmâwaskiy is one of maternal plural gendering, because it is aligned with Cree life-ways that restore a wholistic balance based on conscious care. In the concluding chapter I discuss the implications and key related topics and issues for more dialogue and researching. 59 Chapter 2: How to Write a Literature Review in a Time of the wîhtikow 2.1 Introduction In this chapter I trace the genesis of the different threads of my research and how they fit together in outlining my problem. As I mentioned in the introductory chapter, the problem is that a colonial wîhtikow has not only disappeared parts of a wholistic self, but that the concept of a wholistic self grounded in okâwîmâwaskiy is being eliminated by the wîhtikow on iyiniwi-ministik.28 Here I further explore how the concept of a self grounded in okâwîmâwaskiy is not only irreconcilable with a wîhtikow self but is damaged by it. In particular, I focus on demonstrating two woundings being inflicted by the wîhtikow on a Cree and Indigenous self: 1) the ongoing attempted murdering of spirit and a spiritual domain of the self; and 2) its attempted displacement of our mothers and mothering from Cree wholistic relations. These harms are not mutually exclusive because spirituality and mothers and mothering are intertwined with one another, just as they are with understandings of land. This literature review focuses on identifying specific techniques that undermine the spirituality and mothering elements of a wholistic self. First, I focus on the significance of the ‘self’ in Cree and Indigenous worldviews and then focus on delineating what I mean by ‘spirituality’ and the significance of spirituality to a wholistic concept of the self. In particular, I focus on the representation of Indigenous spirituality as ‘ethics’ or as a type of relationship with oneself and how this continues to be misrecognized or unrecognized at the level of the self. Finally, I set out how the values of mothers and mothering 28 iyiniwi-ministik is ‘The Peoples’ Island’ (North America) (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000) 60 has been displaced from Cree and Indigenous relations by a colonial patriarchy, negating wholistic relations within and among ourselves. 2.2 Indigenz ‘n the Selfhood In framing dialogue at certain gatherings, Cree Elders have often asked the question: ‘awina maga kee anow’ or ‘who is that we really are?’ (Cardinal, 2007, p. 66). This question indicates a consciousness that critical dialogue must begin with an examination of the ‘we’ that is driving our speech and action. Multi-generational scholarship on Indigenous governance reflects this explicit understanding that how we conceive of the ‘self’ is fundamental to our lived realities. This focus has manifested in Indigenous political theory as an examination of the ‘self’ of self-governance (Alfred, 2005) or the theoretical content of what was once called ‘surviving as Indians’ (Boldt, 1993), but today is described as ‘resurging as Indigenous peoples’ (Wildcat, et al., 2014). Surviving and then resurging or thriving as Indigenous peoples generally entails grounding this question of who we really are in Cree and Indigenous knowledges. In referring to these knowledges, I am not insisting that Creeness or Indigeneity lives as an essentialist a priori idea or ideal outside of the lived experience of someone who identifies as Cree or Indigenous; rather, I rely on the characterization of Indigenous knowledges as being like trees, with many branches and unimaginably deep roots grounded in “a thousand generations’ cultivation of North American soil by [Indigenous] people” (Manuel & Posluns, 1974, p. 4). These roots exist both outside of and within ourselves, enlivening the life-ways that contribute to who it is that we are and connecting us as Indigenous to the lands of iyiniwi-ministik. As has been described in numerous texts, beginning with some of the earliest scholarship by Cree and Indigenous scholars and continuing today (Eastman, 1920; Ahenakew, 1923; 1973; 61 Deloria, Jr, 1974; Manuel & Posluns, 1974; Gunn Allen, 1988; LaDuke, 1999; Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000; Littlebear, 2000; Henderson, 2000, Brundige, 2004; Laboucane-Benson, 2008; Watts, 2017), these collective self-knowledges share an understanding of a self that is embedded in wholistic, land-based relationships with all life. Within the contemporary discourses of political science, this relationality has been recognized as ‘ecological contextuality’ (Ladner, 2003), ‘grounded normativity’ (Coulthard, 2014) and explored as a core intervention in international Indigenous and human rights norms (Lightfoot, 2016). Generally, this relationality among Indigenous peoples is informed by “ecological considerations mediated through [our] experiences, knowledge, spiritual understanding or interpretation and relationship to a local ecological order” (Ladner, 2003, p. 150). This ecological context creates methods of inquiry that are "living," "natural," and "real”—the result of a millennia of collective, wholistic empirical methodologies of how all of Creation functions.29 The political systems that arise from ecological context-based knowledge systems are regarded as ethically oriented “to create and maintain a political system in which all beings (human and nonhuman) can live together in the best way possible" (p. 129). A self wholistically embedded in these contexts relies on normative understandings of how all life relates with one another that establish an ‘emotional’ title with the land based on nodes of wholistic, relational responsibilities that enable a People and a person to belong to a given land (Deloria, 1973). Anti-colonial Indigenous Elders, activists and other teachers typically are rooted in the types of relationships that arise from these deep knowledges and processes of knowing (Maracle, 2015); and arguably many of us have been similarly rerooting ourselves for decades (Ladner, 2001, p. 311). As Lee Maracle (2015) observed “Franz Fanon says that Native intellectuals want 29 In my introductory chapter, I outline the specific methods I use from within this wholistic methodology. 62 to return to culture only because they have left it behind. It never occurs to the intellectual that the mass of the people may not have left themselves behind” (p. 99). The deep roots of our knowledges are often not visible nor tangible and continue to be buried and subjugated by colonial practices that refuse to acknowledge or see the value of these deep roots. But at the same time, these deeply rooted knowledges remain and can be accessed when one learns or is taught how to dig below ‘surface’ knowledges that are often only markers of much deeper knowledges and ways of knowing (Fortunately, sihkos is excellent at burroughing and is at ease in the liminal, subterranean depths that lie between the surface of the ground and the bedrock). We see these types of relationships continuously being foregrounded by multiple generations of Indigenous grassroots leaders from around the globe (Lightfoot, 2016). Yet, the interlocking grooves of colonization and other dominant oppressive practices and ideologies still require that Indigenous peoples reject our self-recognitions of Indigeneity and particularly our wholistic relationships with land (Coulthard, 2014). Among these self-recognitions, is the understanding that Cree and Indigenous relationships with land are inherently spiritual (Iseke, 2013). 2.3 The Problem of Defining Spirituality I now focus on providing a working definition of ‘spirituality’ before expanding on its significance to Cree and Indigenous understandings of the self, while simultaneously noting how recognitions and nonrecognitions of spirituality are problematic. Briefly and aptly defining Indigenous spirituality is virtually impossible given the expansive and diverse literature on the topic, but, more significantly, descriptions and definitions can be problematic because how one describes and defines Indigenous spirituality can reinforce Western and/or colonial frames of reference. For a long time, Indigenous people have been reticent about sharing sacred knowledge 63 or knowledge of spirituality outside the authority of Indigenous communities. As Anishnaabe scholar Dale Turner (2004) admonished “We should leave Indigenous ways of understanding the world where they belong – in the communities,” and instead should focus on “asserting and protecting our political sovereignty within the dominant culture’s existing legal and political discourse of rights and sovereignty” (p. 230). nêhiyaw activist and author Sylvia McAdam Saysewahum (2015) also notes that “Elders clearly stated that only physical laws and not spiritual laws could be written down” (p. 10). In addition, there are specific protocols and laws that must be followed before a person can be entrusted with certain knowledge, and dominant society is still antithetical in many ways to adhering to such protocols (Watts, 2016). But it seems that we are at a point in time where there is a renewed hope that ‘others’ will begin to understand what Indigenous people have known and lived for thousands of years. For some the translating of Indigenous knowledges is now deemed a necessity. nêhiyaw scholar Blair Stonechild (2016) gives voice to such sentiments: “We have to capture back the stories of the old people before we lose them all” (p. 6). On a more optimistic note, Stonechild has the sense that we’ve reached a point in time when such translation is possible: “The old people tell us there will be a time when there will be people who can recapture our way of knowing in books…” (p. 6). It seems the written word can be regarded as a tool for continuing to transmit deep knowledges that includes descriptions and definitions of spirit and spirituality. 2.3.1 Discerning Between Indigenous Spirituality and Religion A common frame for understanding Indigenous spirituality is through the lens of Western concepts of dominant, text based, montheistic religion. Indigenous scholars tend to use this classification of religion more as a springboard for understanding and validating Indigenous spirituality rather than embracing religion as a appropriate frame of recognition. While using the 64 term and category of ‘religion,’ Indigenous scholars tend to describe Indigenous spirituality as distinct in many ways from Western religions. This difference has not led to new frames or modes of recognizing Indigenous spirituality, but instead the frame of religion predominates. In addition, Indigenous spirituality’s lack of fit with religion often results in less formal legal, intellectual and political recognition for Indigenous conceptions of spirituality. As such the category of religion may be regarded as a ‘double-edged sword,’ but such an understanding obscures the fact that we don’t need to cut up Indigenous spirituality at all if we strive to understand Indigenous spirituality on its own terms. To avoid reinforcing the frame of religion, I use the more expansive term of ‘spirituality.’ I also use the term ‘sacred philosophy’ given the centrality of spirituality to Indigenous philosophy (Stonechild, 2016); and I use ‘sacred knowledge’ to emphasize the epistemological / methodological nature of spirituality. However, for simplicity’s sake, I rely on the more straightforward term of ‘spirituality.’ Indigenous spirituality is regularly defined as ‘tribal religions’ in the U.S. (Deloria, 1973; 1997; 2006) and as a type of religion in Canada (Shrubsole, 2013) with such recognition indeed necessary for legal protection of sacred sites and practices. In Canada, ‘religion’ is the term privileged in legislation, the Charter and case law to deal with spirituality, and so if one is seeking redress for spiritual freedom within the legal sphere, then using the terminology of religion makes sense (Shrubsole, 2013). American Indigenous scholars working within religious studies also tend to refer to Indigenous spirituality as religion (Hernandez-Avila, 1996; Churchill, 2016). The plural form ‘religions’ at least indicates recognition of multiple, distinct systems of belief among Indigenous peoples, which is consistent with diverse spiritual traditions that exist not only across nations, but within a nation. For example, notable regional differences 65 exist across nations with larger populations and territories, such as the Anishinaabe (Watts, 2016). But there are crucial differences between Indigenous spirituality and religion. The obvious material differences from religion are that spirituality lacks written texts (Churchill, 2016; Stonechild, 2015), a visibly documented history (Churchill, 2016) and prominent physical markers of ‘sacred’ places (LaDuke, 2005). These lack of material objects often mean Indigenous spirituality is regarded as less ‘authoritative’ than other religions or as one scholar notes, Indigenous spirituality can be trivialized as “the quaint fantasies of a ghost of a people” (Churchill, 2016, p. 129). In Canada, Indigenous spirituality is de facto regarded as virtually outside the frames of religion or as the greatest “religious ‘other’’” in an era of religious diversity (Daniels, 2012). While the category of religion may afford some protection to Indigenous spirituality, Christianity was often wielded as a weapon against Cree and Indigenous peoples on iyiniwi-ministik by colonizers with many significant divergences in understanding. In his Cree counselling speeches, nêhiyaw Elder and knowledge-keeper Jim Kâ-Nípitêhtêw (1998) notes that his father would only refer to a ‘priest’ as a ‘scout’ who comes ahead of regular soldiers, because “he is going to come and fight the way of [Cree] worship” (p. 51).30 When comparing the substance of Christianity with Indigenous spirituality, the differences are also many, and include Christian beliefs in: monotheism or one God as well as, “the doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus as the divine son of God, original sin, salvation, the Bible as the word of God, [and) evangelism.” (Churchill, 2016, p. 129). In particular, Indigenous spirituality stands in direct contrast with the central premise of monotheistic religion, namely a belief in “God’s dominion over the Earth, and 30 Kâ-Nipitêtêw's father also notes that the priest “will never succeed” (p. 51). 66 human superiority over the natural world” (p. 129). In fact, spirituality is not only different from Christianity, but often stands in direct opposition to it. The idea that God/man is at the pinnacle of the world and dominates nature contradicts spiritual relationships of belonging to the land. While hierarchies exist within Indigenous spirituality, there is an abiding ‘equality of spirit’ in that “everything—humans, animas, plants, and inorganic matter—has a spirit” that is more akin to pantheism, rather than mono- or poly-theism (Littlebear, 2005, p. 10). The differences between Indigenous spirituality and Christianity do not begin and end with their substantive content, but entail broader epistemological differences concerning how knowledge is gathered and reproduced. Unlike Christianity, Indigenous spirituality is not separate from Indigenous ‘scientific’ and ‘philosophical’ methodologies for apprehending reality but is in alignment with empirical understandings of the natural world. Indigenous spirituality functions more as a type of philosophical questioning informed by ongoing real, lived experience that also goes beyond cognitive rationalization in its ways of knowing and interpreting phenomena. Indigenous spiritual systems are distinct from religions in that they do not rely on abstract de-contextualized principles applied to any time and place but are “related directly to the physical world and real human situations” (Deloria, 1974, p. 72). By this process the ‘content’ of spirituality is continuously refined by its constant iteration with empirical information (Deloria, 2004). Spirituality’s frames of reference for understanding the world extend wholistically beyond human sensory experience and transcend time. First, understanding the world is “not only intellectual but intuitive and practical, involving the senses and the heart as well as the rational mind” (Deloria, 2006, p. xxxi). Second, understanding is accessed in communication with Creation, which occurs through “unusual events and dreams” (p. xxiv), including through sacred 67 ceremony (Stonechild, 2016). There is a ‘normative’ element to these communications with Creation, because they are always intended to bring one closer to Creation or to facilitate a more balanced and harmonious relation with the energy or the life force of all living things (Littlebear,1998). Spirituality may simply be regarded as both a “motive force governing every living thing” as well as what defines a living thing (Maracle, 1996, p. 134). Stopping at the five senses in accessing knowledge would be seen as falling short of a complete comprehension of Creation. Inherent here is a fundamental belief that ‘worlds’ (e.g. natural, spiritual, social, inner) are not separate, but are overlaid with one another and co-exist simultaneously. For instance, a Cree healer when using plants to treat a certain condition can get his knowledge from other people, e.g. knowledge of the medicine bundle handed down through generations with knowledge primarily acquired through methods of ‘natural science’, and he can get the knowledge from ‘spirits’ (Young et al, 2015). In practice, he must apply his own empirical experiments to see which combinations of plants work when it comes to many of the teachings from other people. The combinations that come from spirits always work and do not need to be ‘tested,’ but the healer must follow strict harvesting protocols that respect the life/spirit of the plant. So sacred knowledge or spirituality is part of the comprehensive and deep understanding of the ‘natural science’ that Indigenous peoples know through generations of ‘scientific’ observation, experiment and analysis. There is no firm line between knowledge and spirituality; instead, the two are often used synonymously. A spiritual leader is described as a ‘truth seeker’ or someone whose calling is the search for knowledge. These “holy ones” undergo a “rigorous and disciplined life” and are in “contact with the higher powers” (Deloria, 2006, p. xxv-xxvi) which enables them to “go beyond the physical world into the deep mysteries of the cosmos” (p. 13). Deloria quotes Lame Deer as 68 putting it best: “I believe that being a medicine man, more than anything else, is a state of mind, a way of looking at and understanding this earth, a sense of what it is all about” (p. 14). In other words, being “chosen by the spirits opened up a much larger arena of experience” (p. 15). ‘Ordinary’ people also sought spiritual guidance to enhance their capabilities, receive protection and help live their lives to the fullest (p. 13). But most people avoided deeply spiritual experiences because these came with not only more knowledge, but additional responsibilities. There is quite a bit of practical and philosophical evidence to suggest that Cree and Indigenous peoples not only regarded spirituality as one of four domains of the self or as a dimension of knowledge on par with other types of knowledge, but in fact have considered it to be the most valuable self-domain and type of knowledge. The personal, first-hand account (ethnography) of fur trader George Nelson, who spent two decades in the early to mid-1800s with Anishinaabe and nîhithaw31 peoples in Minnesota and later in Lac la Ronge in northern Saskatchewan, indicates that the whole of life was organized according to ‘orders of the Dreamed’ (Nelson, Brown & Brightman, 1988). The ‘dreamed’ were ‘mythic beings’ that occupied multiple worlds of existence and appeared in dreams, visions, ceremonies and in real-life encounters as human, animals or in other forms. Since they participated in the everyday lives of ordinary human beings, they were regarded as persons and relatives. The Cree and Anishinaabe often described the dreamed as “our grandfathers,” and in narrative retellings such characters would typically address human beings as “grandchild” or “younger sibling” (Nelson, Brown & Brightman, 1988, p. 120). As a precursor to the understanding of Indigenous spirituality later articulated by Deloria (2006), while not every ordinary Cree or Anishinaabe person was a spiritual leader or a medicine 31 nîhithaw is what the ‘Woodland Cree’ and the ‘Rock Cree’ call themselves. 69 person able to conduct a ceremony, almost everyone carried a medicine bag and was initiated into a ceremony (Nelson, Brown & Brightman, 1988). Formal spiritual ceremony, such as the shaking tent ceremony, was a recognized part of ordinary life, if not a routine part. Such ceremonialists were regarded as special and were called upon to assist when people sought knowledge about their personal life-paths and for everyday purposes, such as locating missing items, people, and to aid in securing food or for locating animals (Brown & Brightman, 1988). In this way, spiritual knowledge and practice were not only normalized and recognized parts of life experience, but such knowledge and the capacity to access it were highly regarded. In understanding the self as spiritual, I now review how spirituality is connected with a wholistic self through narratives and ethics. 2.3.2 The Significance of Narratives to Spirituality Narratives are particularly significant to spirituality because how Indigenous peoples understand people and their politics typically originates with creation stories, which are fundamentally spiritual or ‘sacred’ stories (Episkenew, 2009; Deloria, 1997; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996). Conventional religious studies or theology often fails to fully comprehend the wholistic nature of ‘sacred stories’ and creation narratives. Religious studies tends to study discourse on God (or Gods) in relative isolation from other types of discourses, while Indigenous spirituality is a discourse on ‘narrative, or the art of story-telling, including, most notably, a narrative on all three of humankind, animalkind and god” (Highway, 2003, p. 21). When told in the right way (Lightning, 1992; Archibald, 2008), Indigenous narratives imbue every word and action with spiritual meaning. Put another way, spirit is regarded as the source or authority of Indigenous ‘oratory’ or story-telling because such stories are intended to connect listeners to spirit through the act of storytelling, using both language and listening as the 70 mediums for this connection (Cowan, 2017 quoting Maracle). In effect, stories or mythology act like the “collective spiritual nervous system” of everybody: Where very cord, every wire, every filament has a purpose and a function, every twitch a job in the way that collective human body, mind, and soul moves and operates from one day to the next to the next and to the next. Without this mechanism, that is to say, there would be no reason for getting up in the morning to go to work, to school, or to play. Life would have no meaning. And suicide would flourish. (Highway, 2003: 26) Stories are regarded as enlivening and renewing the spirit that directs all action or how we relate with our selves, our bodies and the world. Although for dominant society, the ‘religious framework of the rules’ is no longer explicit or apparent in most other spheres of life, “the secular and the religious are not in fact opposites but closely intertwined in paradigmatic ways in all nation-states” (Mahmood & Danchin, 2014, p. 7-8). From Indigenous perspectives, the differing creation narratives of Western European-descended settlers and Indigenous peoples have long been identified as primary sources of divergence for Western and Indigenous politics and life-ways (Deloria, 1973; Gunn Allen, 1992) that continue to play out today (Deloria, 2006; Innes, 2013; Watts, 2016). Indigenous narratives of nationalism are not based on a past that is merely ‘imagined’ but are retellings of narratives that demonstrate how our nations have existed in relationship with particular places (Altamirano-Jiménez, 2013, p. 50). As a Gitksan Elder once asked a judge in the Delgamuukw legal case (1997) regarding the defense of Indigenous land title: ‘if this is your land, where are your stories?’ (Chamberlain, 2003). In analyzing the effects of Indigenous and Christian creation stories, Deloria identified three contemporary problems that existed in the 1970s with recognizing (outside of Indigenous spiritual experience and worldviews or narratives) a relationship with the land that is spiritual. I believe these problems still largely hold true today. The primary problem is that since spirituality 71 is largely unknowable without personal experience, most of us fail to acknowledge or harness its energy. The second problem is that since Christian symbols, doctrines, structures and practices are disconnected from land—then from an ideological and practical point of view, the idea of a spiritual or religious connection to a living earth is unfathomable for most Christian-influenced theories of knowledge. The third problem is that Christianity has infused the mystery of Creation with the absolute knowability and knowingness of ‘God’ through rationalism and scientism. Not only did Christianity displace its connection to a particular land, but the ‘promised land’ or ‘holy land’ was abstracted as ‘heaven,’ and the Christian Creation story was generalized to the entire world. The shift that took place when substituting heaven for land represented nothing less than a fundamental change in the ultimate good of Western religious belief: rather than living well on the land in which one was emplaced, one now had to reach heaven. With Christianity and politics closely intertwined, this process of ‘salvation’ found its twin in ‘progress,’ with both running parallel along the same ascendant view of time. Salvation meant otherworldly immortality or heaven and progress led to worldly immortality via history. Both metanarratives necessitated a transcendence of the context of one’s life. To ‘fit’ experience within these time-based theories required privileging faith in a theory of historical progress over interpretation based on actual, place-based experience. Keeping the faith also required singularity or attempting to organize all events into a single belief system through a structure of intersecting and interlocking linear biblical story arcs. Christianity continues to impact politics most fundamentally at the level of story with many of the dominant narratives of secular politics following the same story arcs of Christian mythology. For example, political history is often regarded as the unfolding of a divine plan. This creation and ordering of knowledge was then passed off as universal. 72 Most notably, time-based religion and politics could only thrive on individual, human will. Like the “preaching and teaching” aimed at transforming the individual behaviour of “Christians,” each and every citizen had to be properly educated in order to grasp the value of a politics disconnected from everyday life. When politics was loosened from religion’s grip it could place its faith not in God, but in man or a will to power that meant “the complete development of human powers and all talents possible” (p. 53). Now politics urged man to further free himself from his context by fully expressing and realizing his own self-development. Such was and largely is the ‘religion’ of modern politics on iyiniwi-ministik. The effect of displacing place for time on subjectivity or how the self is formed becomes complete when it reaches the level of ethics. Deloria argued that ethics should be based on context or place, and the land and local community will help show you how to be ethical (p. 67). If your ethics is spatial, then there is virtually no disconnect between religious reality and community experience. In contrast, when time underlies religious or secular reality then “the earth simply does not matter...human affairs alone are important” (p. 68). While many strands of Western philosophy now follow spatially-oriented theories, arguably this time-based view of the world continues to be a fundamental aspect of colonial politics that denies the fullness of human experience in a given space and sets in motion multiple processes of disconnection, which impact the actualization of ethical action. An emphasis on time promotes the disconnection of the spheres of life from one another, namely politics, religion and culture; disconnects each of these spheres from real life contexts; and, at a psychic level, disconnects mind, body, emotion and spirit (Deloria, 1973). Yet, these disconnections continue to promote the ‘good’ of an unbalanced individualism that negates relationships for the sake of autonomy. 73 While modern academia largely blamed the interrelationships among religion, politics and culture for creating dominative power relations, these interrelationships only become ‘interlocking’ or problematic when embedded within a linear, hierarchical, competitive framework of progress and salvation—or when they became situated in the overarching idea that all humanity must find meaning in individual striving according to a singular ascendant timeline. Rather than fixing a real systemic power imbalance, the disconnection of these spheres of life has largely resulted in a powerlessness at the everyday level of community. Politics and religion now fail to align with a person’s everyday lived context. In fact, since human action is, in real life, multi-faceted and readily influenced by religion, politics and other spheres of life we commonly refer to as ‘culture,’ when these belief systems are not systemically aligned, their continued interrelationships can create conflict in a single individual, not to mention within and among communities. Today, the structure of contemporary stories remains largely Christian in their continued emphasis on some ‘good’ prevailing over some ‘evil.’ While the ideas of ‘good and evil’ are evident in Indigenous creation narratives, these stories are always oriented to balance and harmony rather than dichotomous ‘sides’ winning out over each other. This difference in ‘mythologies’ is, again, largely attributed to their roots in different views of Creation and theories of knowledge. Deloria (1973) speculated that Christian stories originally had value within their original contexts, but lost meaning and value as they were transplanted to new contexts. Cherokee scholar Thomas King (2003) is less generous; he surmises that Christianity may have put the world in motion with “the wrong story” (p. 26) sending humanity hurtling in directions that have lead to dead ends. King’s critique of Christianity’s story of Genesis is total: he holds this story responsible for setting in motion a world oriented towards war, environmental 74 degradation and an exclusive nationalism—because it set hierarchies, dichotomies and destructive competition loose in the world. King advises: “Want a different ethics? Tell a different story” (p. 164). While life is not predicated on speech alone, stories enable the values that structure the range of action that is considered ethical (Innes, 2013). The wholistic nature of oral narratives and histories is also undermined in Western legal contexts. Here, the subjective, non-linear and contextual nature of oral history is inconsistent with the court’s reliance on the Western metaphysical idea that ““truths” are absolute, knowable, and “out there” waiting to be revealed” (Mildon, 2008, p. 81). The fact that stories invite creativity and change are held up as particularly problematic and ‘inauthentic’ in a court of law. These aspects of orality undermine its veracity in a court of law, and so ‘written’ histories are held to be superior to oral histories. The underlying problem is what Derrida called the “violent binary distinction” between the written and the oral; this violence can only begin to be addressed by “bringing both oral and written traditions under the singular term “Writing” (Mildon, 2008, p. 80). Derrida believes that the west oscillates in how it positions writing: On one hand, it has privileged orality because of a belief that the physical presence of an individual, their being present, offers greater control over the transmission of truth—presence means there is an unmediated exchange between the speaker and the listener (Derrida, 1974:21). Writing, on the other hand, means that the “listener” receives a message without the presence of the speaker to control the interpretation of meaning; anxiety rises about how the message will be received and interpreted, how the “truth” will be known. Writing cannot be trusted—and yet it remains the “true” marker of “the civilized.” (80) A step towards addressing this binary would be to stop inferiorizing and trying to categorize “story, legend, law and ritual” into western frameworks, and instead to differentiate them based on a fuller understanding of their function in not only historical but present terms. If we want to understand the whole of story, then we cannot deny its spiritual dimension. 75 2.3.3 Spirituality as Integral to the Whole The inclusion of spiritual knowledge enacts not only a more wholistic understanding of knowledges, but results in the continued reproduction of wholistic knowledges. As each individual engages in varying degrees of spiritual learning, a collective and cumulative body of knowledge or oral history is passed successively through the generations. In particular, Elders and other knowledge-keepers take care of and nurture a collective memory of empirically-verified, intergenerational knowledge that includes spiritual or ‘sacred’ knowledge. As a result, our foremothers and fathers tended to access much more knowledge than today’s typical academic or dominant society’s contemporary version of a formal knowledge-seeker. Today, although a large body of experiential evidence attests to “a world wholly different from the one in which we live,” where “higher spiritual powers are still active,” is dismissed in favour of selective experiences that fit with “popular beliefs and dogmas” (Deloria, 2006, p. xviii-xix). Deloria (1999) expresses his ongoing frustration in this regard: To what degree do we do violence to non-Western religious traditions when we try and force them into pre-existing categories? When are we going to free ourselves up and just look at these things? I have been in ceremonies. I have talked to spirits. I’m an educated man, I have three degrees…I’m no damn fool. And I go through experiences like that and I have to find a way to integrate those kinds of experiences with what I already know and believe. And I can’t deny those experiences. They’re as real to me as anything in the world. (1999: 15) Certain (wîhtikow) categorizations impede the collective capacity to recognize and build a more wholistic way of seeing ourselves and the world “that will allow us to interpret those anomalous human experiences” that do not fit into dominant ‘scientific’ or ‘religious’ categories (Deloria, 2006, p. 15). The limbs torn from Cree and Indigenous bodies of knowledge typically include: “the presence of spirits, human-animal communication, the power of thought and speech, shape-shifting, visions and dreams, the power of the land, and the being of inanimate “objects” (such as mountains, water, the sun)” (Churchill, 2016, p. 130). A recognition of spirit is at the core of all 76 these understandings. A wholistic orientation enables us to account for a larger body of experiential evidence that attests to the existence of a spiritual dimension and spiritual domain of the self. Deloria’s (1974) definition of ‘tribal religions’ or Indigenous spirituality brings together these life-orders and life-ways gained from multiple bodies of knowledge grounded in relationships with land. Though his definition is over four decades old, it is still applicable today. He describes tribal religions as the “complexes of attitudes, beliefs, and practices fine-tuned to harmonize with the lands on which the people live” (p. 69). Such a definition intertwines spirituality with all spheres of life and life-ways in order to achieve a harmony that arises from wholistic knowledge of all life within particular places. It is impossible from an Indigenous perspective to hold dominion over land in the way that Christians and Christian-based politics understand it – with the sovereign power of the Crown and the private ownership of the individual constituting a God-given right to own and use land, which is still the formal law of the land. While social scientism is ostensibly ‘poly-paradigmatic,’ and draws on other means of gathering knowledge, such as the intuitive and emotional, it has yet to fully grasp the trans nature of Indigenous spirituality. By this I mean that centreing Indigenous spirituality requires a fundamental shift from the conventional frames of philosophy, science and religion to recognize wholistic ways of collecting, interpreting and organizing knowledge. Like other Indigenous knowledges, a wholistic nêhiyaw tâpisinowin32 is trans-formative in that “there is no distinct boundary between 76cimowi philosophy, worldview, ontology or knowledge” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 51) nor rigid boundaries among domains of knowledge (e.g., spiritual, physical, emotional, 32 Cree worldview (Napoleon, 2014) 77 mental) nor separations among intersubjective spaces of relationality (e.g., natural, spiritual, social, inner). Even human needs, which include spiritual ones, are regarded as wholistically interdependent rather than hierarchical (Blackstock, 2009 citing Cross, 2007). The trans aspect of Cree and Indigenous knowledges orients us to challenge the binaries, dichotomies and professed ‘goods’ and ‘evils’ of a colonial, Manichean world neé a wîhtikow world. Although Cree and Indigenous critical theories collectively resist the gnashing teeth of oppressive categorizations, our knowledges are still chewed up and spit onto plates to feed colonial aims. In particular, spirituality has yet to be robustly reinstituted into our lives as a recognized part of our life-orders and life-ways. 2.4 Bridging Indigenous Spirituality with Western Thought and Practice Although Indigenous spirituality still occupies the margins of western thought and practice, efforts have been underway to bring this processual and relational knowledge into meaningful conversation with Western philosophy. Various conceptual bridges and tools of translation have been employed. Given the normative aspect of spirituality, the language of values and ethical frameworks seems to be the preferred approach for bridging Indigenous spirituality with Western theories. Western ethics seemingly has the capacity to comprehend different ontologies and disciplinary foci by distilling substantive life-orders and life-ways into generalizable principles or relational ethics that are manifested in specific places by particular peoples. For example, one’s spiritual relationship with Mother Earth is typically represented as the virtue of ‘reciprocity.’ This value is demonstrated in the reciprocal principle that since the land provides the material means of life for us, then we must reciprocate by ensuring the land’s continued survival. 78 Ostensibly, the benefits of an ethical approach for Indigenous peoples is that it allows traditions to evolve and is consistent with the use of ‘modern’ tools of expression, while still retaining Indigenous values, worldviews and purposes that “situate Indigenous histories, traditions and ways of knowing as the basis for theory” (Scudelier, 2016, p. 5). Recognition of this process of tradition-making has been assigned a Cree name, the neologism ‘oskisihcikêwak’, or ‘new ways of doing things.’33 The potential value of this approach is that it facilitates understanding in a straightforward way and promotes incremental, grounded change at the level of ethics or in one’s relationship with oneself, without having to challenge an entire system of belief. Of course, these new traditions and ethics only serve as a bridge to self-change where they are not co-opted or appropriated to maintain dominative structural power. For example, the practice of ‘boardroom smudging’ tends to (dis)integrate Indigenous ceremonies into statist desires for resource development via consultative and land use assessment procedures (Watts, 2016). An Indigenous ethics is also significant in explaining the process of Indigenous resurgence. Indigenous resurgence has been explicitly described as necessitating a ‘new ethics’ or embracing an ‘Indigenous warrior ethic’ (Alfred, 2005). This is an ethic that can “capture the spirit of a warrior in battle and bring it to politics” based on “evoking cultural and spiritual rootedness in this land” and fighting for “justice and freedom” in a way that is “anti-institutional, 33 Based on personal communication with the creator of the phrase, nêhiyaw scholar Neal McLeod, Scudeler describes oskisihcikê as consisting of “osk-new and -isihcikê: a way of doing something (sometimes used for ceremonies, but can be used for any systematic pattern of action)–ak pluralises the word.” It’s important to note that this term does refers to ‘new patterns [that] emerge as people tell or perform narratives.’ 79 radically democratic, and committed to taking action to force change” (Alfred, 2005, p.45). Today, this resurgent ethical frame remains grounded in an expressed need for Indigenous peoples to turn inward for the personal and collective strength that comes from “a regeneration of Indigenous cultural, spiritual and political practices,” which then enables a turn outward to engage in “a disciplined confrontation with settler society” (Wildcat et al., 2014, p. 4). This understanding does not entail isolation from politics. Engagement with colonial settler politics is necessary for Indigenous peoples, because it “channels social, cultural, and economic powers and makes them imminent in our lives” (Alfred, 2005, p. 20) and; reminiscent of the wîhtikow, “Abstaining from politics is like turning your back on a beast when it is angry and intent on ripping your guts out” (p. 20). Instead, stressing again the importance of revitalizing a Cree and Indigenous concept of the self, what is required is a psychic turn away, not a political turn away. Indeed, a psychic turn or revolution of the self is the very thing that enables all of us to turn political systems in a new direction. In seeking to work with (as opposed to fully outside or within) dominant Western and often still colonial systems, Indigenous political movement depends on maintaining and revitalizing a psychic resistance that can effect material change to political and legal systems without the Indigenous self being assimilated into or colonized by the system. Arguably, this type of psychic resistance can only occur at the level of ethics. This new(old) Cree and Indigenous ethics can, in turn, become fully-embodied in practical and political selves that then drive and become embedded in systems on iyiniwi-ministik. But this emphasis on Indigenous ethics as a locus of Indigenous political distinctness is not new. Historical accounts of Indigenous life on iyiniwi-ministik by early male colonists tended to focus on an ethics that differed from previous notions of ethics known to Western 80 European males. This Indigenous ethics was based on a commitment to personal virtues or at least those virtues as observed among Indigenous men by colonial men. One of the earliest accounts of this trend was captured by Anglo-Canadian fur trader, George Nelson, who lived among the Anishinaabe in Wisconsin and the Nîhithaw34 in northern Saskatchewan (Lac LaRonge) from 1802-1823 (Nelson, et al., 1988). Nelson notes: “the old men told me that all was in common before we came in amongst them to put an imaginary value upon their furs . . . they consider every man equal, since every man comes into, and goes out of, the world in the same way – there is no precedency known but such as are acquired by the practice of the virtues” (p. 22). While colonists like Nelson could see (sometimes) the ethical value in Indigenous life ways, colonial ideologies steeped in Western philosophies still tended to wholly devalue Indigenous life ways. The idea of the ‘noble savage’ reflected this propensity. While this label locked Indigenous peoples living on iyiniwi-ministik into a narrowly defined and inferior position based on abstract, colonial Western theories of Indigenous peoples as vanishing, pagan, primitive and uncivilized—the ‘nobility’ identified in this term pointed to an early recognition of an ethics unknown to male Europeans. This ethics, though distorted, inspired some Western European philosophers. Based on accounts of the ‘new world’ of the Americas, eighteenth century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau notes the “natural pity” of Indigenous peoples, which he regards as “the basis of man’s happiness and virtue prior to man’s transmutation into the avaricious, disingenuous, and “degenerate” being” of modernity (Clifford, 2013, p. 2). Rousseau equated this “natural pity,” as the source of “all the social virtues,” prompting him to pose the question: “In fact, what is generosity, what democracy, what humanity, but pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to 81 the human species in general?” (p. 2). It seems this idea of ‘natural pity’ was a counter-balance to western theorizing based almost solely on the dominative use of reason, though it was still characterized as a type of unmodern sentimentality. Reconfirming Rousseau’s identification of the ‘nobility’ of Indigenous peoples, Thomas Jefferson, through first-hand observation, notes that the typical Indigenous man is brave . . . he meets death with more deliberation and endures tortures with a firmness unknown almost to religious enthusiasm with us; . . . he is affectionate to his children, careful of them, and indulgent in the extreme; . . . his friendships are strong and faithful to the uttermost extremity; . . . his sensibility is keen, even the warriors weeping most bitterly on the loss of their children, though in general they endeavour to appear superior to human events; . . . his vivacity and activity of mind is equal to ours in the same situation; hence his eagerness for hunting, and for games of chance. (2-3) Arguably, Jefferson sought to incorporate this ‘new kind of nobility’ that was “not defined by blood, heritage, power, or position, but a willingness to grapple with [human] nature itself” into the new American political subjectivity or citizen (p. 3).35 However, any supposed personal or professional recognition of Indigenous ‘nobility’ did not stop Jefferson from instigating a ‘double bind’ for the Cherokee nation, whereby they were forced to ‘choose’ between their wholesale removal from their homelands or relinquish their life-ways and life-orders if they choose to remain in their homelands (Arneil, 1996).36 35 Of course, Jefferson did not extend this ‘grappling’ to his own life, as evidenced by his rape and confinement of Sally Hemings that started when she was a teenager. She bore him multiple children and died enslaved. Jefferson inherited Sally from his father-in-law when she was a toddler and he was 30 (Woolfork, 2019). 36 In January 1803 Jefferson writes: In order ... to provide an extension of territory which the rapid increase of our numbers will call for, two measures are deemed expedient. First, to encourage them [indigenous peoples] to abandon hunting, to apply to the raising stock, to agriculture and domestic manufactures, and thereby prove to themselves less land and labour will maintain them in this ... leading them thus to agriculture, to manufactures and civilization and in preparing them ultimately to participate in the benefits of our Government (p. 193). 82 The argument is that this emulation resulted in “a transmutation of Western identity itself” or “a form of identity characterized in part by a reconceptualization of personal virtue, of what it is to be noble” (p. 4). Living alongside Indigenous peoples, Americans supposedly “learned to overcome every difficulty” by “emulating the patience and self-denial of the 82cimowina native warriors” (p. 4). Sto:lö author and philosopher Lee Maracle (2015) describes the process of exchange between Indigenous peoples and colonizers slightly differently: arguing that instead Indigenous peoples gained knowledge of “the very tools that gave the oppressor dominance” and settlers have “gained in humanity” (p. 99). The positive, albeit severely limiting, view of Indigenous peoples as ‘noble’ was of course violently countered by the negative and dominant view of Indigenous peoples as ‘savage,’ and full of ‘vice.’ For a colonist to become ‘indianized’ was socially verboten, and a “good” Christian would never adopt such ‘pagan’ ways. The fear of “becoming “Indians”” was expressed early on in relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers, with some of the Indigenous vices to be avoided being that “they are out of measure indulgent unto their children; [and] there is no family government among them” (Pfister, 2004, p. 21 citing Cotton Mather, 1692). Of course, ‘playing Indian’ became quite popular among settler colonists on iyiniwi-ministik by the early twentieth century (Deloria, 1994). It has been suggested that this desire to appropriate ‘Indianness’ was driven by the continued recognition of a distinct Indigenous ethical relationality: “”There must be in [the Indians’] social bond something singularly captivating, and far superior to anything to be boasted of among us; for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of the aborigines having from choice become Europeans” (Deloria, 1994, p. 1 quoting J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, 1912, p. 215.) 83 Eventually, this ‘nobility’ became a romanticized distortion that Indigenous peoples were required to perform (Larocque, 1988). According to this ‘romantic fallacy,’ ‘Indians’ came to be regarded as “without fail innocent and magical beings who have run afoul of fate” with ways of life that “were simple, stark, and pure, guided by a few simple philosophical principles and a transcendent comprehension of the laws of the universe which the Indians, in their simple but pure way, adhered to unfailingly” (Gunn Allen, 1992, p. 129). American society’s ‘White romance’ with the ‘souls,’ ‘nobility’ and ‘indignation’ of ‘Indians’ was in keeping with a larger nostalgic trajectory that was supposed to end in the unfortunate but inevitable disappearance of all Indigenous peoples (Pfister, 2004, p. 101). While such romanticizing can account for distortions of Indigenous ethics, and their encapsulation in the reductive idea of ‘nobility,’ there is still a realness to the sense that Indigenous ethics is fundamentally distinct from Western-European notions of ethics. Amidst this quagmire of denouncing, amplifying, appropriating and perhaps emulating Indigenous ethics, some early Indigenous scholars have tried to more precisely represent their ethics. Charles Eastman, a Sioux37 physician and the author of Indian Scout Talk: A Guide for Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls (1920) lived at the turn of the nineteenth century on iyiniwi-ministik and by his own admission, did ‘participate’38 in the romanticized reduction of Indigeneity, ironically calling it the “School of Savagery” (Pfister, 2004, p. 101). This school of savagery not only locked in a distorted view of Indigenous peoples but enabled the white settler to appropriate any remaining vestiges of value contained in its constructed ‘noble savage.’ In promoting and normalizing the practice of ‘playing Indian’ among impressionable children, 37 Here I am using Eastman’s term for describing himself. 38 I put ‘participate’ in quotations because the term denotes a volunteerism or an agency that may have been largely lacking for him at the time. 84 particularly boys, Indigenous ‘scouting’ was masculinized or seen as a way to counteract the perceived effeminizing aspects of a rapidly urbanizing world in Europe and America that was making boys ‘soft’ (Deloria, 1998). But Eastman is also the author of The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation (1911), one of the first written attempts at articulating the interior life of Sioux people by an Indigenous person. Eastman explicitly states in this text that he has resisted to the extent possible the fabrication of an Indigenous subjectivity by trying to protect the integrity of Sioux “character and religion” (Pfister, 2004, p. 100). The ethical integrity steadfastly maintained by Eastman (1911) is based on an ecological context, but the most significant relationship within this context is a spiritual one. He describes every Indigenous action as “in a very real sense, a religious act” (p. 47), with the values of gratitude, unity and love key to religious understanding and practice. He locates these ethics in the teachings provided by an ‘untutored’ woman who educates him based on her understanding of the ecological context. He notes “With the help of dear Nature herself, she taught me things simple but of mighty import. I knew God. I perceived what goodness is. I saw and loved what is really beautiful. Civilization has not taught me anything better” (p. 87). Eastman is explicitly speaking to the unparalleled value of an ethics (and an aesthetic) grounded in a spiritual connection to one’s ecological context. He extends this ecologically based ethics to a self that must be “free from self-seeking” (p. 4), which means eschewing material wealth and luxury as well as other material and physically driven ‘vices.’ For example, the daily practice of prayer was more important than eating, and “it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers.” (p.10). 85 According to Eastman, even in his time, this ethical way of living is already waning among Indigenous peoples. He notes in his foreword that among some Indigenous peoples, spirituality has been commodified: “Give a reservation Indian a present, and he will possibly provide you with sacred songs, a mythology, and folk-lore to order” (xii). Though he, himself, wrote for the boy scouts and campfire girls, he had hoped to impart a modicum of ethical knowledge to newcomers in order to “reform Euramerican ‘‘character’’ and ‘‘common sense’’—to make them more ‘‘wholesome’’ (Pfister, 2004, p. 23). Presumedly, despite their reductive simplification within the context of colonial ideology, Eastman believed that imparting some Indigenous values and knowledge drawn primarily from an Indigenous spiritual relationship to the land was better than none. But while an ethic or moral code may arise from our ecological contexts, the materiality of land alone cannot fully account for the formation of a concept of spirit or deity. The Indigenous relationship to land goes beyond the material to focus on the idea of a “living earth” with “an unsuspected spiritual energy or identity that shapes and directs human activities” (Deloria, 1973, p. 145). This unity with the land was inevitably pluralistic, because in order “to relate to the rhythms of the land,” humanity had to continually subdivide itself among particular places. This pluralism was more than tolerated, instead it enabled “a virtually uncontrollable freedom of the spirit” among Indigenous peoples (p. 143). Within a sacred philosophy grounded in land for millennia on iyiniwi-ministik, the revitalization of this immense intergenerational knowledge and strong spiritual connection to the living earth is still ongoing and is reflected in practices that can discern and regenerate this spiritual power. Foucauldian analysis and phenomenology have provided promising bridges since they are based on “an embodied existence where knowing the world is based upon lived experience,” but 86 both fall short of understanding how land is a being, because they abstract “place” as “a subject of the self-referential academic voice” (Larsen & Johnson, 2017, p. 16). The range of posthumanism and other critical theories also fall into the trap of “often inadvertently” enabling “the human thinker” to decide what constitutes life, e.g. “which nonhuman beings actually exist and are to be reckoned with,” and overall determine a reality that goes beyond human determinism or the self-determining capacity of humanity (p. 191). Arguably, the Western, academic self is approaching an understanding of sacred knowledge with its focus on political theology, metaphysical science, intelligent design and so on, but it has yet to fully cast off its colonial, wîhtikow ways. Yet, among virtually all spiritual belief systems indigenous to iyiniwi-ministik, maintaining this harmonious, wholistic spiritual connection to land and the regard for the living earth as a spiritual being is the ultimate good. It is the embodiment of this wholistic ethics and relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy that I attempt to reconstruct in the subsequent pages of this dissertation. 2.5 The Significance of Mothers to the Whole Articulations of Indigenous peoples’ relationality to land tends to overlook its relationship to gender and kinship. Spirituality is typically regarded as genderless, with little consideration of feminine deities or how spiritual-based conceptions of gender affect social relations. But then, in some cases, Indigenous ‘sacred law’ seems to reinforce gender binaries and patriarchal domination, with its sacredness not only reifying such gendered understandings, but deifying norms to place them beyond worldly contention and change (Snyder, 2018). For the most part, decolonization has been a masculine process, both in its political practice and theory, and in articulating relations with land. While kinship is significant in understanding Indigenous 87 social relations and a focus on gender within Indigenous critical theory is emerging, examinations of maternalism, motherhood and the feminine, especially as they relate to land and spirituality, remain undertheorized. Diverse Indigenous spiritual understandings of gender/kinship and their intersubjectivity with Western feminism are also resulting in different conceptions of the role of women. I approach the regeneration of feminine and maternal deities as integral not only to Indigenous spirituality, but to the resurgence of Indigenous societies and nationhood. The revitalization of life-ways among American Indigenous peoples that began more than four decades ago has been attributed to the return of the spiritual ‘grandmothers’ and their prominence at the forefront of ‘tribal values, tribal thought, and tribal understandings’ (Gunn Allen, 1992, p. xiv). More recently, the feminine supernatural beings in Haida Gwaii have been recognized as guiding the efforts of the Haida to live a sustainable and interconnected existence (Williams-Davidson, 2017). For most Indigenous people, spirituality involves a specific understanding of the land as a ‘Mother Earth’-type figure or a decidedly maternal, animate being that teaches us how to live in relationship with one another and the land. Similar to the spiritual relationship with land, with Christianization, the narratives of a spiritual, land-based mother that once informed and guided Indigenous life-ways became subjugated by colonial narratives of violence. Dominant interpretations of the Christian creation story point not only to a dominative man with dominion over the land, but a patriarchal Father with absolute dominion over all creation—including women and mothers. Highway (2003) describes the effect of Christianity on the “the Mother Earth goddess of the Cree” as “the worst cases of rape, wife battery, and attempted wife murder in the history of the world as we know it” (p. 47), because 88 At that point in time, in other words, the circle of matriarchy was punctured by the straight line of patriarchy, the circle of the womb, was punctured, most brutally, by the straight line of the phallus. And the bleeding was profuse. Circles, however, and fortunately, can be repaired. The account above provides a telling re-enactment of the violence that ensued when two spiritual systems of belief collided on iyiniw-ministik or the Peoples’ Island (North America). The dominant Christian mythology prescribed a way of being based on the image of a vengeful, white father who was omniscient and omnipresent. At stake in this collision were vastly different understandings of spirit, gender, the land and how these elements contributed to formative processes of self-hood and ideal selves. The analogy of physical and sexual violence underscores the degree of trauma inflicted on Indigenous bodies, souls and lands when Christianity was forced on Mother Earth. These spiritually-based, disparate belief systems and the relations to land they engender are still central to the conflict between processes of decolonization and colonization in settler colonial contexts. With narratives significant to understanding and constructing a wholistic, ethical self, the wholistic content of Cree stories is incomplete, because important stories are missing from the oral history—the stories of our mothers and maternal understandings of spirituality. There is a need to repair the circle of Cree relations through “the retrieval of female stories from the colonially imposed silence, thus recuperating Cree women’s power as the life-giving force” (Barrieses & Gingell, 2011, p. 70). Wholism requires that equal value is afforded to every life in the circle (Gunn Allen, 1992; Tinker, 2004). The colonial process of disappearing and denigrating all stories and practices that hold Mother Earth in reverence continue, and so, She, is the original missing Indigenous woman. Her disappearance continues to do violence to Indigenous peoples on various levels, including 89 epistemologically and socially; and, arguably direct violence to the spirit and substance of the land. A mothering relation from a Cree standpoint not only has wholistic components at the level of intimate human relations, but the multi-layers of okâwîmâwaskiy encapsulate relations of care akin to that of a mother to their child that exist with non-human and more-than-human beings. 2.6 Conclusion Cree and Indigenous theories of the self are diverse and complex webs of relationality with multilayered bundles of meaning. In this brief review of the literature, I have tried to focus on two threads and trace where and how they have become disconnected from Cree and Indigenous concepts of a wholistic self. To keep my analysis manageable, I have considered only one Indigenous theory of the self: wholism and have focused on two threads within this theory: spirituality and mothering. As I have attempted to demonstrate, any spiritual-based ethics must be understood wholistically, and in particular, not disconnected from our relationships with ourselves (ethics), land and our mothers. Generally, narrative, ethical values are identified as critical to how Indigenous peoples relate with all of Creation and are described as the foundation of our institutions and structures. Yet, ethical frameworks must be further expanded if they are to properly represent a wholistic concept of the self that recognizes spirit in all living things, including the spiritual beingness of the land. While my research focuses on the interrelatedness of Indigenous spirituality and mothering to Cree and Indigenous knowledge and Western theory, I largely eschew Western religious and secular frames. In the next chapter, I attempt to reconstruct a Cree concept of a wholistic self by describing the relationship between a Cree self and others. Such a (re)construction builds from 90 the deep Cree knowledges and those of other scholars, mostly Indigenous, who have long sought to revitalize wholistic ways of being in the world. 91 Chapter 3: okâwîmâwaskiy & the Wholistic Self 3.1 Introduction What Plains Cree39 call ourselves or ‘nêhiyawak’ is often translated as “four directions people” (Iseke, 2013; Napolean, 201440), which may be regarded as recognition of a wholistic connection to okâwîmâwaskiy.41 Representing multidirectional movement and a fixed location, this name connotes constant movement that remains balanced within a wholistic sense of place. The emplacement of oneself within okâwîmâwaskiy through naming aids in maintaining a consciousness of what may be the first ‘others’ we perceive in life: our mothers, the natural world and a Creator. This means that whatever direction we move in, we are conscious of our mother, the land and Creation. This interconnection is also manifested as sound with nêhiyawak conscious of a vibrational ‘hum’ of the universe that can be heard in the beating of our hearts and our drums (McAdam, 2015, p. 37). The Plains Cree language of nêhiyawêwin is similarly rooted in a wholistic understanding based on the four directions. Syllabics or the system of writing nêhiyawêwin and other Cree42 language dialects begins with four primary symbols that represent the four directions (Daniels-Fiss, 2008; Jobin, 2013; Quinn, 2016).43 These directions are our relatives who orient us according to certain laws (McAdam, 2015), knowledges (Jobin, 2013), natural elements 39 For precision, I focus on the Plains Cree, but my analysis is inclusive of all Cree peoples and dialects, with many of my citations including other types of Cree peoples. 40 The full word for ‘four directions people’ is “nîwo-iyinowak” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 39). 41 okâwîmâw means ‘mother’ and askiy means ‘land, country, earth, or world’ 42 The name ‘Cree’ is a French-language derived misnomer that describes Indigenous peoples connected by language, trade, kinship and belief systems situated on lands that range from present-day Quebec to British Columbia and from the provincial norths of Quebec, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C. to northern Montana in the U.S. Within this group are seven linguistic dialects and numerous communities. While I draw on the knowledges of multiple communities, my focus is primarily the Nehiyawak or Plains Cree, situated primarily in Alberta and Saskatchewan. 43 It’s important to note that the syllabics writing system came from Badger Call, a sakawiyiniwok or ‘Bush Cree’ (Fineday, 1973, p. 58; Jobin, 2013. ). 92 (Cuthand, 2007; Quinn, 2015) and relationships (Daniels-Fiss, 2008). Since these directions are the fundaments of nêhiyawêwin, the language may be regarded as deepening relationality with the land and all of Creation (Daniels-Fiss, 2008; Michell, 2015). The language itself is regarded as a gift from Creation with syllabics described as ‘spirit markers’ that represent sacred sounds (Quinn, 2016). By one account, the nîhithawakwho or the Rock Cree regard the Cree language as “the spiritual breath of Kitchi Munto” that “filters through our words and indeed through the entire circularity of life” (Michell, 2015). Another meaning of the name nêhiyawak is “People of the four body,” constituted by the root words: “nêwo” meaning “four” and “–iyaw” or “miyaw” meaning “body” (Lee, 2006; Lightning, 1992, p. 83). These four “parts” of the body are the: emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual, which are found in the four directions of the Medicine Wheel (Lee, 2006). So here you have the individual centred within the four domains of the self; but who is still part of the larger whole (‘four directions people’) of the collective centred in the totality of the landscape and all life. The centre of these four directions is not empty. At the centre is a fire, which is representative of the autonomous self and the source of meaning in one’s life (Lee, 2006). The circle of the medicine wheel is representative of your life journey or “life itself,” with its attendant seasons, and directions: “Spring in the east, summer in the south, fall in the west and winter in the north” (Lee, 2006). Each season corresponds to one of humanity’s four life cycles: conception to walking; childhood and youth; adulthood, and grandparenting/Elders (Anderson, 2011). As we journey through life, we have the gifts of the four directions to help us. Whether or not contemporary Cree people still orient ourselves in this way is up to us, individually and collectively. As nêhiyaw Elder and Healer Russel Willier noted “There are very few people who 93 know north from south when they are in the bush. It’s not in their blood anymore” (Young et al., 2015, p. 15). In this chapter, I begin to explain how wholism is fundamental to understanding how a Cree self is connected to okâwîmâwaskiy. It’s crucial to begin with wholism because according to nêhiyaw tâpisinowin or Plains Cree worldview “there is no clear separation between the realities of self, society, environment, or the cosmos. Many 93cimowi elders and language practitioners also argue that 93cimowi tâpisinowin must be lived in order for it to be fully understood” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 51-52). In recognizing that wholism means we walk in multiple places in autonomous interrelatedness with other life, the Cree conception of the self strives to account for and analyze from the whole of our natural, real and living grounds. In particular, the self is structured as interconnected with the whole of Creation, where the four directions orient nêhiyawak to being mindful of moving in balance with the world and keeping our internal selves balanced. This concept of the self strives to walk in balance within ourselves and with all life outside of ourselves, so that “We are part of the whole. We are the whole” (Ahenakew, in press, p. 9). Specifically, I focus on how the Cree concept of the self is oriented towards wholism by nurturing a wholistic self that coexists in the world with other life largely through the structuring processes of superpositionality and resonance. It is through these processes that the self is able to be part of a whole and the whole. The capacity to tap into these processes are shared among all living things by virtue of their being comprised, in part, with a spiritual domain. When spirituality is re-emphasized, it cultivates “the ability to acknowledge, understand and feel wholeness and connection within oneself, as well as interconnectedness with other creatures, nature and the universe,” which is an ability that seems to have been “forgotten over colonial 94 history” (Lightning, 1992, p. 37). A self grounded in spirituality does not allow for objectification, and so “to educate for social change we must engage the spirit.” First, I describe: 1) how wholism leads to the superpositionality and resonance of the self and others that is in turn reflected in all other relationships; and 2) how wholism leads to a particular ontology of the self with four domains that includes a ‘spiritual’ domain. Next, I show that this spiritual domain produces a more fully wholistic self that operates from the widest possible context and thus is able to capture a fullness of human experience and lived realities that better enables us to live in harmony with okâwîmâwaskiy. 3.2 Superpositionality of the Self As quantum physicists are aware, to occupy a position of ‘superpositionality’ means to be in two positions at once, or to exist separately and as a unity (Holmes, 2016). This type of relationship, while long observed among photons at the quantum level, has not been scientifically proven to exist in ‘real life’ although new scientific methods seem to be lending credence to the universal existence of this type of relationship (Holmes, 2017). In describing the nature of the relationship between the self and another, nêhiyaw Elder Louis Sunchild describes the self and the other as existing in superpositionality with one another because they are intrinsically and extrinsically connected through resonance. Internally, one domain of the self (e.g. cognitive) not only has an effect or resonance in another domain (e.g. physical)—it “exists” in that other domain as well and a similar extrinsic connection exists among all living entities with the capacity for resonance (Lightning, 1992). In light of this understanding, the proper relationship to cultivate between the self and others may be: “you are I and I am you,” which denotes both “unity and indivisibility among people” (p. 80). The emphasis on this mode of 95 being in the world recognizes a constant and interactive intersubjectivity between the self and others but still grounded in a distinct ‘I’ and ‘you.’ This idea of self-hood is intelligible according to a Cree logic that is reflected in language, oral history, ceremony and other practices. This logic breaks three rules of Western thought: “first, the law of non-contradiction, where nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. The second [is] the law of the excluded middle, where something either is or is not. And third, the law of identity, where something is what it is” (Brundige, 2004, p. 10). It seems there is a relationship among these laws, whereby the latter two laws reinforce the first, so that if the latter two are shown to be false, the first is probably false as well. In this section, I present conceptualizations of the nature of relationality and context in Cree wholistic belief that disprove these laws by conceiving of bonds among all living beings that are wholistically inclusive and cyclically reciprocal. With respect to the first ‘rule’ of logic, Cree contradictions are possible when one truly eschews universal and absolutist categorizations (Brundige, 2004). While it’s probably true that you cannot simultaneously act in opposite or contradictory ways, there is no law in historical Cree philosophy that dictates that an animate being cannot be two things at the same time (Brundige, 2004). For example, the conceptual categorization of being one way, e.g. a human, does not foreclose a human also being another way, e.g. a bear. The extensive oral history and empirical experiences of not only Crees, but other Indigenous peoples, bears this out (Deloria, 1999, p. 15). As the Lakota philosopher Vine Deloria Jr. noted “The doctrinal exclusion of certain kinds of phenomenon by the West has no basis except the superstition that certain things cannot exist. How do these superstitions become so entrenched in a society’s beliefs, at a level so deep that it becomes unthinkable to voice them?” (Deloria, 1999, p. 7). Arguably, as mentioned, quantum 96 physics has similarly grasped the possibility of how contradictions readily occur in human experience with quantum particles existing in multiple overlapping states at the same time. With respect to the second law of non-binarism, this is possible when one considers that instances of “change” are recognizable as stages in a person’s life, and that in the process of undergoing change, a self can be both what it was and what it is becoming (Brundige, 2004). The two seemingly absolute different states are not in binary opposition but are intimately related with one another. Finally, the principle of identity cannot stand up against wholistic interrelationality because: “If our selves are defined by the different relations that inform us, then there is no single, static self with which to be identical. In this sense, we are not just what we are” (p. 11). All three of these rules of logic are grounded in a relational and wholistic context that does not render some element of life ‘unrecognizable,’ instead these principles strive to include and precisely represent the fullness of human experience. The relationality that underlies this self is distinguished as being in relationship with another rather than relating to another (Brundige, 2004). While in English this seems like a minor distinction, the latter type of attachment or ‘relating to’ connotes a distance between the self and another that impedes not only a superpositional, resonant relationality, but enacts a process of disconnection that denies any overlapping relationality between a self and others. This difference is aptly illustrated in how a reader is often asked to ‘relate to’ a written text: The written word has difficulty moving in relationship, although it can and does often draw a reader into “relating.” […] In “relating to it,” the story remains outside as though it was disconnected from the reader. “Relationship with” on the other hand, implies a process of joint participation, a connection, rather than a separation. (65) In relating to a written text or another type of ‘representation,’ the reader often is asked to infer that this is ‘the truth,’ but often the context of this ‘truth’ is not provided and without 97 knowing how the self is positioned in this work, it is nearly impossible to connect one’s self with it (Lightning, 1992; Smith, 2012). Representations of the self that are devoid of context or shared context have the effect of disconnecting one’s self from others, and disconnect you from your self. When I read texts, for example, I frequently have to orientate myself to a text world in which the centre of academic knowledge is either in Britain, the United States or Western Europe; in which words such as ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’, ‘I’ actually exclude me. […] So, reading and interpretation present problems when we do not see ourselves in the text. There are problems, too, when we do see ourselves but can barely recognize ourselves through the representation. One problem of being trained to read this way, or, more correctly, of learning to read this way over many years of academic study, is that we can adopt uncritically similar patterns of writing. We begin to write about ourselves as indigenous peoples as if we really were ‘out there’, the ‘Other’, with all the baggage that this entails. (Smith, 2012, p. 83) Such representations mostly occur in academic writing, but also take place within journalism and fictional literature (Smith, 2012). Both the exclusion and unrecognizable inclusion of Indigenous peoples is problematic, with neither an accurate representation. In addition, there is a tendency to use written as opposed to oral ‘text’ or narrative to create and share knowledge. This tendency often results in a disconnection among knowledge and real self in a living context. The reliance on written text for knowledge creation reinforces the “academic insistence that knowledge is outside the self” (Iseke, 2003, p. 210-211). Such disconnections impede recognition of one’s relationship with your self and others, while elevating ‘relating to’ as indicative of how all ourselves actually and should, exist in the world. This othering process through such representations has long been normalized in settler colonial places like Canada and the United States. Narrativity is entwined with power, and settler colonial story-tellers tend to use their unequal colonial power to deny representation to 98 indigenous selves rooted in actual lived experiences and contexts. For example, in Canada, for many generations, what could be re-presented about the policy of Indian residential schools was highly regulated and controlled. As one survivor notes: “As a child, I tried to tell anyone who would listen about those night visits to our dorm, the cruel punishments, and the deadly threats, but my voice was silenced by my family’s fears, the community pressure, and the church’s power. As a result, I grew up believing that what I felt, heard, and saw was not real” (Acoose, 1995, p. 27) [emphasis added]. The failure to represent and thus publicly recognize the empirical experiences of indigenous peoples, and other subjugated peoples for that matter. From a wholistic standpoint, this is a deliberate, public failure to attend to actual contexts. Ultimately, othering separates us all from one another, and from ourselves, and normalizes a self-understanding that tends to lead to a very lonely sense of self. On a more practical level, this process of ‘relating to’ makes it difficult to ‘translate’ nêhiyaw concepts into a written format, as its normalized lack of context ultimately obscures the capacity to be in relationship with others that nêhiyawêwin requires to be fully intelligible from within its own cultural contexts. Cree Healer and Scholar Willie Ermine (2007) conceives of a similar relationality between an Indigenous self and non-Indigenous others in collective terms that exists not in the textual world, but in the actual world. He describes a ‘space’ between a collective Indigenous self and others that is created through an emphasis on differences among histories, knowledge traditions, philosophies, and social and political realities. But this intersubjective space between the collective self and others is not empty. Instead, this space lies at the interface of one’s self and others where at a minimum “the presence of the other is acknowledged” on an “unstated, unseen level of thought and feeling” (p. 195). 99 In this characterization, this space “is created between peoples and cultures, and in particular whenever and wherever the physical and philosophical encounter of Indigenous and Western worlds takes place” (p. 195). This space can remain at a “superficial level” of recognition, but the “deeper level thoughts, interests and assumptions” of this space will “inevitably influence and animate the kind of relationship the two can have,” whether or not one is conscious of these entities (p. 195). In his characterization of this space, he seems to be describing ‘resonance’ between two distinct selves that exist partly in the same place. The proper way to approach relationships between the self and others is by attending to the content of this shared space. Indigenous research methodologies tend to further emphasize the need to fully and intimately engage in this shared space when one seeks ‘knowledge’ from another. This means understanding, first, that the researcher is in relationship with the “research subjects” and so these living others should be “recogniz[ed] as esteemed contributors” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 59). This relationship inevitably leads to “a personal and subjective understanding of the agent” (Laboucane-Benson, 2009, p. 37). The more carefully one operates in relationship with another and with context, then the more one can lay claim to the validity of a ‘truth’ in their findings because they will have a better understanding of the full range of empirical ‘evidence’ that has led to a given result, and factored in the effect of their own relationship with the living entity they purport to learn with. Indigenous peoples know the effects of research that is not conducted in relationship with us. Academic institutions have tended to treat Indigenous peoples as ‘objects or subjects’ of study and to subjugate our knowledges (Smith, 2012). The predominant, underlying belief has been that Indigenous peoples are not “agents” with the capacity, expertise or interest to engage in 100 research about ourselves and our conditions. Research can and does still treat Indigenous peoples as “disembodied representatives of an amorphous Indigeneity that serves European intellectual or political purposes” (Todd, 2016, p. 7). The result has been ‘research’ that consisted predominantly of “half-truths or downright lies, that misrepresented our world, and that gave authority about us to academic researchers” (Smith, 2012, p. 21). Decolonizing the ways of doing research entails heightened awareness of your positionality and relationality when doing research and how these elements shape understanding of what is actually a problem and whose interests the research will serve. One alternative, decolonizing methodological approach that builds on this type of relationality in research follows an indigenous feminist research ethos of ‘standing with and speaking as faith’ (Tallbear, 2014). This approach requires shifting a number of conventional methods for doing research including softening the line between the researcher and the researched to view subjects as colleagues; engaging in critical conversations that centre subjugated and situated knowledges through relationship-building and accessing particular networks; being faithful to the claims and acts of your colleagues to co-create knowledge; and, exercising a feminist ethic of care (TallBear, 2014). Rather than an ‘exchange’ of goods or services, the research expresses a reciprocal relationship that embodies standing with others and speaking together. The researcher is building relationships across networks of “colleagues (not “subjects”)” where one converses and shares knowledge, rather than gathers “data.” Any initial research aims must be provisional, so they can change as the researcher deepens their understanding in conversation with their colleagues. Through this type of relationship-building in research, your ‘subjects’ likely will become “colleagues/friends/teachers/mentees,” but this does not compromise or undermine the veracity 101 of your results, instead it can only deepen and strengthen your understanding (p. 5). Of course, you will encounter others and knowledges that you cannot ‘stand with’ due to fundamental ideological conflict or other barriers to relationship, but attempting to stand with someone still facilitates better understanding of a conflict or problem than if you had opted to isolate or distance yourself from the ‘research subjects.’ The particular strength of this approach of ‘standing with and speaking as faith’ is that it not only humanizes Indigenous peoples and so-called ‘subjects,’ but it recognizes that the researcher is human, all too human. Instead of aiming for ‘objectivity,’ one should instead strive for “a highly disciplined subjectivity” (Freund, et al., 2015, p. 338). Every time we enter into relationship with those who know something we seek to learn, we can quickly appropriate or we can choose to slowly learn to appreciate what they know. Reciprocity is vital to this type of relationship (Laboucane-Benson, 2009, p. 37) It’s important to note though that a critical sense of distance is built into this relationality when it is approached as wholistic. Wholism requires us to constantly ‘zoom’ out to consider the bigger picture and what may be generally gleaned from the context, while still standing within this picture in a particular, personal position. To borrow a phrase from Judith Butler (2002), wholism represents a type of “constrained generality” where one “broaches the philosophical, but must, if it is to remain critical, remain at a distance from that very achievement” (Butler, 2002, p. 212). Relations based on ‘standing with’ and having faith in speaking with other peoples can be extended beyond the realm of research to our lives in general. When all indigenous peoples stand with one another and have faith in what each other is saying to engage in dialogue about what 102 matters to us, then not a single one of us can advance in life without also bringing forward those who stand beside us. The same goes when we stand in relationship with non-Indigenous peoples. Drawing on feminist legal theory and her Cree & Dennuzine community-based knowledge, Val Napoleon shows that being in relationship with others does not undermine the autonomy of the self but supports it. Instead, ideally, the individual is grounded in inter-dependent social relations that are “properly contextualiz[ed]…within an understanding of aboriginal citizenship and nationhood, and applying the goals contained in aboriginal legal orders” (Napoleon, 2007). Again, it’s important to distinguish between an autonomy not solely defined by one’s relation to others, but that is defined in relationship with others. This type of autonomy is oriented to building and strengthening a “capacity to find [one’s] own internal law, and the work is to figure out what social relationships and personal practices foster this capability” (Napoleon, 2007, p. 34). In this formulation of autonomy, one’s ‘internal law’ is maintained within a relational context and its content is articulated in terms based on “shared social norms, values, and concepts” (Napoleon, 2007, p. 34 citing Nedelsky, 1989, p. 3). In effect, this view of individual, self-determining autonomy reaffirms a self “constitutive of” the collective that is forged through strong, reciprocal relationships that ultimately result in strong and unified polities and societies (Napoleon, 2007, p. 34; 38). The boundaries of the self and the community are wholistically interconnected and interdependent in a way that nurtures the self and community. While there are still boundaries among individuals: “The Indian boundaries were in the manner in which people related to each other, not what they were taught to believe” (Deloria, 2004, p. 9). These boundaries are lived— as fixed and fluid as the relationships require in a given context. According to most Indigenous knowledge systems, ‘freedom’ is oriented towards re-establishing responsible relations (Ladner, 103 200’). One's individual capability or ‘agency’ is understood as part of a series that promotes a connection with others and the land that eschews a disconnected or separated individualism. If there is a ‘border’ to community, its nodes are ever-changing people and their gifts, grounded in land. So context itself is also not separate from the self and the community but co-constitutes them (Iseke, 2013, p. 41). For most Indigenous peoples, all creative ‘freedoms,’ not just those centred in a world of politics, must be oriented from and to a wholistic context (Pitawanakwat, 2008; Maracle, 2015). While the general understanding of art is that it is an individual act of self-expression, the wholistic ‘self’ is never separate from their community and context (Maracle, 2015). Those whose bonds to community are based on affinity rather than a false authority would not sacrifice what’s good for their community to support their “own personal interest” or “desire for fame, fortune, and status” (Yazzie & Estes, 2016, p. 18-19 citing Cook-Lynn). Stories, poems, dances and other expressions are oriented to the renewal of life. In St:olo belief, a story has the very specific purpose of “spiritual concatenation with one another and the natural and spiritual world” (Maracle, 2015, p. 48). This means that “Story, poetry, word art engage the imagination of the community, the heart of the nation, and the spirit of the present, past and future. Word art must move people from where they are to where they need to go to ensure community transformation. They must activate the community-based thought process of the listener without prescribing a response” (p. 48). So we are ‘free’ to use words and other modes of expression that are in relationship with the unfolding interconnections of ever-changing contexts. The ontology or word order of nêhiyawêwin, the Cree language, tends to emphasize the relational transfer of action. It would seem that embedded in the language is a continued recognition that a particular relationality is not only productive but is necessary to sustain life. 104 Verbs are classified, in part, according to whether the action is being transferred to someone or something (transitive) or whether there is no action being transferred at all (intransitive) (Okimāsis, 2004, p. 30). In nêhiyawêwin, verbs and pronouns are also classified as inanimate or animate, and can switch classifications based on whether they refer to animate or inanimate entities (Goulet, 2008). For example, “Knowledge or the theory of knowledge is expressed as kiskeneetumowin. This general concept is inanimate but it does change form when it refers to either animate or inanimate entities. For clarification, the statement “I know him or her” is translated as “Ni giskenimaw unu” while “I know it” is written as “Ni giskeneeten unimu” (p. 9). Thus, by its structure, nêhiyawêwin emphasizes the importance of particularly positioned and personified phenomena engaging in a reciprocal exchange in relationship with one another for life to continue. Wholistic context and one’s position in this figurative and conceptual landscape is the crux of wholistic understanding. When Cree Elders talk about the self and the effects of colonization, they do not talk in terms of dispossession, but instead they speak of ‘dislocation’ and ‘disharmony’. For example, early colonization is explicitly referred to “as a time of great dislocation” where “Colonizing forces disrupted the fundamental relationships of Aboriginal people and disrupted their way of being in the world" (Alberta Education, 2005, p. 4) [emphasis added]. 4) An individual cannot be properly perceived without understanding their place within a context that includes all their relations (Blackstock, 2011). In a dialogue, Cree Elders would typically establish two reference points as precisely as possible to enable the listener to get their “bearing,” one in relation to time and the other to the land to eschew any abstraction in the validity and interpretation of their communication, so that: “One of the feelings that seems to be created by an Elder is that a hearer always feels that they 105 know where they are, or ought to be, in relationship to the earth” (Lightning, 1992, p. 64). Context establishes a sense of where one belongs and reinforces the connection to the land and all ‘others.’ A precise genealogy of an oral history is intended to provide the context that enables a present-day listener to better discern how the story may apply to their context. Oral histories are meticulously presented in a way that underscores their contexts (Stevenson, 2000). To further reinforce the centrality of a story’s context, the form of a particular type of storytelling explicitly denotes that this story was told by someone else in a different time and place. Within nêhiyawêwin, many words also provide precise locations for the speaker. For instance, the pronoun ‘we’ is unambiguous, as there are exclusive and inclusive forms and the verb ‘to be’ is never used as an auxillary verb, it is only used to indicate location (Okimâsis, 2004, p. 31). This commitment to providing a proper wholistic context was elevated to the level of tapwêwin or ‘truth,’ which reinforced not an ‘absolute’ truth, but that “truths are relative to an in’ividual's time, place, gender and perspective” (Stevenson, 2000, p. 252). To not provide a proper context was akin to having one’s own individual position in the community and the larger cosmos called into question (Stevenson, 2000), and to risk one’s words becoming “a jumble of confusion and misinf”rmation" (Lightning, 1992, p. 2). As such, nêhiyawak spoke very carefully and tried very hard to be precise speakers. Overall, a careful and close connection to how the self is in relationship with others in a context is regarded as fundamental for capturing a given reality and truthfully representing and recognizing this reality. This orientation has been called “physical philosophy,” which reinforces the ‘physical’ or strong empirical basis of most Indigenous knowledges. In short, this is a mode 106 of thought and being that relies on empirical verification or data inductively derived from “experience, observation and discussion” (Borrows, 2016, p. 10-11). 3.3 Wholistic Inclusivity While some theories from the western tradition grasp this interconnectedness, such as human ecology and family ecology theory (Laboucane-Benson, 2009), the difference often lies in what and how they are able to include all others within this interconnectedness. While I will be covering the nature of this relationality in greater detail in a subsequent chapter, it’s important to note here that to be wholistically inclusive from a Cree standpoint requires a recognition that all living entities have intelligence and can communicate (Brundige, 2004, p. 26). This view recognizes the “personhood” of all living entities and as such presupposes their inherent worth (Quinn, 2015). Relationality in these contexts is not just among human beings or ‘physical’ phenomena that can be immediately perceived by the five senses; instead, the range of ‘empirical’ data is based on a more exacting precision and attention to all forms of life, which involves deliberation with a broader range of evidence (Ladner, 2003; Deloria, 2004). This is not an inclusiveness based on recognition of diverse pluralities that is then aggregated into a particular and pre-existing interpretative framework. Instead, it is akin to a framework that presupposes value before interpretation based on the widest context possible. These structures are formed through affinity not authority and so are oriented to affirming life in all its diversity without the authorizing binaries and exclusive categories imposed on humans, such as gender, sexuality, race, etc. that do not permit for multiple, shifting, overlapping and sometimes seemingly contradictory identifications. In effect, wholism compels us to suspend judgment based on pre-determined knowledge or according to a regime of truth because it eschews abstraction from human experience. Instead, 107 the experience takes precedence over any assembled body of knowledge. So wholistic inclusivity is a presupposition of the value of every living thing, whether or not it is recognizable according to what is already known. Through explicit and wholistic recognition of all our relations, we regenerate a wholistic connection that includes all living entities. There are certain ‘laws’ underpinning this framework, but these laws are intended to support the continuous unfolding of the whole (Quinn, 2015). 3.4 Cyclical Reciprocity In order to maintain a wholistic orientation, much emphasis is placed on reciprocity or reciprocal relations. We often think of reciprocity in terms of an ‘exchange’ or “as calculated gift exchanges” that occur primarily between humans (Ahenakew, in press). In other words, ‘I care for you, because you care for me.’ This same notion of reciprocity is applied to the land in that we must care for the land because then the land will continue to care for us. But this notion of reciprocity is only partially correct; where it is incorrect is in its assumption that reciprocity is an implicit transactional contract where there is always an expectation of directly receiving something in return. In other words, reciprocity is regarded as proceeding linearly. Circular reciprocity, on the other hand, refers to a type of “radical sharing” (Kuokkanen, 2007) or a “gift giving that does not expect anything in return as the idea is for the gift to be passed forward” (Ahenakew, in press, p. 7). Reciprocity is viewed in terms of a wholistic ‘circle of life’ (Ladner, 2003). This form of reciprocity strives to act responsibly not only in relation to one’s immediate and knowable relations, but to all living entities, even those that are unseen and virtually unknowable. The more you share, the richer you are so that “‘poverty’ is defined as not being able to share what you have” (Ahenakew, in press, p. 7-8). This form of reciprocity is embodied and carried out during give-away ceremonies where the giver offers gifts to others 108 without expecting anything in return. In most cases, you give more than you could ever receive back. This ceremony also renews the life of the community by strengthening bonds among participants. One reason the Raindance or Thirst Dance is one of the most highly regarded ceremonies among Crees and other peoples from the Plains is because it represents a very deep and wholistic form of circular reciprocity. Like the give-away ceremony, the Thirst Dance also is about the renewal of community but its purpose is very much attuned to going beyond anthropomorphic relations to include all of Creation. During the ceremony, what is offered is one’s physical, emotional, mental and spiritual pain as a gift not only to the community, but for the “renewal of the whole cycle of life” (p. 8). In this regard, it is a transformative form of gift-giving. Ahenakew draws an analogy between this pain and how individuals and communities can transform the pain of colonization from “deadly poison into good medicine available to all” (p. 2). When the bonds among us are based on a circular reciprocity, we take care of ourselves, each other and all of Creation, because of our deep wholistic orientation and the need to keep things in harmonious balance. 3.5 Four Domains of the Self Understanding wholism also requires looking more closely at how nêhiyawak structure the self in a wholistic way that perceives the widest multi-dimensional context. This ontology of the wholistic self further encapsulates and embodies the superpositionality and resonance of interconnectedness and interdependence. Fittingly, this exploration takes us back in a cyclical direction to where we started: to how the Plains Cree name ourselves. As mentioned earlier, another interpretation of the name ‘nêhiyawak’ is that it means “People of the four body,” constituted by the root words: “nêwo” meaning “four” and “–iyaw” or 109 “miyaw” meaning “body” (Lightning, 1992, p. 83). Lightning speculates this may mean ‘four dimensions’ or ‘four domains.’ One way to further interpret this meaning is that the name refers to a wholistic self comprised of four domains: emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual (Napoleon 2014, p. 40 citing Reuben Quinn, 2014). So here you have the individual centred within the four domains of the self; but who is still part of the larger whole (‘four directions people’) of the collective centred in the totality of the landscape. The interconnected whole is governed by a balance among the four domains, so that what is ‘good’ for Cree people is remaining ’centred' within these four domains and with the land. These interrelated interpretations reinforce being in balance within oneself, with the collective and with the environment in a way that connotes a multi-directional fluidity, while still maintaining a groundedness in one’s context. Self-centredness is the effect of wholism. It’s important to note that the many layered meanings of what nêhiyaw call ourselves, while seemingly imprecise or confusing, should be regarded as underscoring the idea of superpositionality and resonance. A word can simultaneously have the same meaning and different, yet resonant, meanings. What typically matters is the context of a word. nêhiyawêwin linguistic Art Napoleon notes that one practical outcome of this effect is the difficulty of translating nêhiyawêwin into English. But up to this point, what’s been described is a probable sketch of the inner structural nature of the Cree self and its relation to the rest of the world/Creation. This structure is not empty. While a circle is typically used to capture the whole of the Cree understanding of the world and ourselves in it, a single, one-dimensional circle cannot properly represent all the elements of the world (Carriere, 2018; Laboucane-Benson, 2009; Willier, 2015). But some factors are common to these circles. One is the four directions and the other is the idea that there 110 is a centre to this circle. Each direction is associated with a number of entities, such as a colour, a season, a sound, a law, a spirit marker and often an animal, reinforcing the epistemological sources of the self as grounded in intimate relationships with the living earth. The centre is never empty. In one rendering, ‘Mother Nature, Earth and green’ are placed at the centre of the circle, while the Great spirit is situated at the top of the circle—at the beginning and end of an individual’s life or ‘Sweetgrass Trail’ (Willier, 2015, p. 6). The superpositionality of different ‘centres’ of the circle may be part of a wholistic ‘ethos’ that links all of these together. Lightning encapsulates the capacities for orienting oneself to this ethos in the concept of ‘Compassionate Mind.’ He states “a compassionate mind is making oneself a part of the ethos, or to put it more modestly, less ambitiously, and more safely, having a compassionate mind may be a movement towards it” (p. 77). With these two terms ‘ethos’ and ‘compassionate mind’, Lightning is, again, reinforcing the idea that the self is part of the whole and is the whole. One strives to be whole, to be human, by cultivating a ‘compassionate mind’ while one is part of the larger whole or ‘ethos.’ For an individual to move towards compassionate mind, they must know how to listen to their Elders or other knowledge keepers. These requirements are reflected in two assumptions that Cree Elders apparently hold about all learners: 1) that the person seeking knowledge would do so in a way that was attentive, humble and respectful, so that ‘mutual thinking’ or ‘a meeting of minds’ could occur; and; 2) that this person understood that the wholistic nature of words / thoughts / feelings / practices expressed in one domain or dimension resonated and reverberated within all domains/dimensions. (Lightning, 1992). In effect, the conditions for understanding and actualizing a wholistic way of being in the world are interdependent on maintaining the 111 superpositional space of mutuality between the self and others and understanding that this interrelatedness constantly resonates within the four domains of your self. The concept of the compassionate mind was spoken and written in syllabics by the nêhiyaw Elder Louis Sunchild who never spoke English. He was asked by one of his students to describe what Cree people meant by ‘mind.’ Lightning was a graduate student in the field of education, and he wanted to employ this concept in his approach to education. This rendering of ‘mind’ again conceived of a superpositionality of all the domains interconnected with one another in a single self and attuned to the ‘truth’ of their whole environment, to the ethos. In one respect, ‘mind’ represents the place where the creative process occurs and one can “entertain and process new thought and insights into life every day, as well as in their own livelihood” (p. 72). But the point of this thought is to move towards a more whole ethos or truth. The capacity of the mind for creating knowledge is regarded as a ‘life-giving’ power so that through speech and other creative expression, your mind is oriented “in such a way that others have life” (p. 71). The traditions and protocols of storytelling support the co-creation of knowledge as each listener has a responsibility to attend to the veracity of a story’s truth, primarily by deciding if a story is applicable to their context (Brundige, 2004). In this way, each individual is working to ensure there is constant alignment between the stories that are collectively being told and their unfolding experiences. In some instances, an old or new story (or a new word) gleaned from another context could disrupt the existing frames of reference in your context by challenging the limits of life as you understand it (Skydancer, 2006). This iterative co-creation of knowledge ensured that what was known to be true was maintained, but that ‘new’ experiences or ‘truths’ could also be readily assembled into the pre-existing system of knowledge. Protocols for the transmission of knowledge both ensured that everyone was in the 112 right frame of ‘mind’ for receiving knowledge, which included assessing a person’s capacity to responsibly receive knowledge based on their own commitment to being a whole human. In short, “protocols help ensure that one does not use the knowledge against Creation” (Lightning, 1992, p. 75). But the creative capacity alone cannot be solely relied on to be oriented towards regenerating life. The first and strongest ‘natural’ law with the capacity to simultaneously connect all the domains of the self and connect the mind with the larger unity and indivisibility of Creation, is “to love” (p. 82). The understanding is that to maintain a harmonious life and world all living entities must “consciously care” for one another (Dumont, 2005). For example, according to Cree hunting processes it is thought that animals and plants care for their human relatives by giving their bodies to sustain the life of humans. In return, this requires that humans exercise great care towards animals, approaching them always in a humble and respectful way (Napoleon, 2014). There are a number of ‘natural’ laws or manitow wiyinkêwina (Creator’s laws) that govern all aspects of nêhiyaw life (McAdam, 2015) to ensure that people are oriented towards harmony and balance with all living things. These laws are also wholistic in that there are “four parts to them: human laws, earth laws, spiritual laws and animal laws (plants and water are included” (McAdam, 2015, p. 38). Under these laws one’s actions can harm animals, humans, and Creation more generally. For example, a subcategory of a category of Creator’s laws is pâstâmowin, which “refers to what someone said which led to something undesirable happening” or “blasphemous or dangerous speech thought to bring misfortune to the speaker” (p. 43). This includes a range of speech that upsets the balance of relations with other humans, animals and/or Creation such as “threats, gossip, or profanity” and “being boastful of [your] success through 113 hunting or other areas of life” (p. 43). For this reason, you must exercise great care in the words you utter because then “the words are outside of you and have a life of their own” and you are also misusing Creation’s gift of language when you use it wrongly (p. 44). Again, in keeping with the grounded, cyclical and open nature of knowledge co-creation, these laws are not absolute (Alberta Education, 2005) and nobody can “presume to know them all” yet the ‘ethos’ of these laws has been maintained through the intergenerational ‘chain’ of our relatives who follow the oral traditions and protocols (McAdam, 2015, p. 38). The law keepers were traditionally women, referred to as okihcitâwiskwêwak or ‘clan mothers or warrior women.’ The Cree word for love, sâkiyitowin, means “having love for one another” (p. 84). Closely connected to “wahkôtowin,” this law would have been “used to guide nîhiyaw social organization and kinship” and also represented the “deep reciprocal connection not just to humans but also to other aspects of the universe” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 84). Arguably, the action of love is care. The ultimate aim of harmony is intertwined with care as harmony is the overarching belief that “all of life consciously cares for one another” (Dumont, 2005). With the wholistic inclusivity and cyclical reciprocity of relations, this means that love is cyclically reproduced by all living entities in the world. It is virtually impossible to love another or extend care to someone without relating to that living entity in a respectful and humble way. Respect and humility may prefigure the possibility of love. The two nêhiyawêwin words with no direct translation into English for ‘respect’ and ‘humility’ are kihciyimitowin ‘an ultimate, sacred-like respectful thought for one another’ and tapahtîmisowin, ‘a form of humility roughly implying ‘to never think higher of yourself than others” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 81-82). Given that ‘sacredness’ is embedded in the word for ‘respect’ what you are being called upon to ‘respect’ is the sacredness of others that 114 connects them through the root word ‘kihci,’ with “a sacredness or larger than life greatness” that is also present in the term for “kihcimanitow” (Great Spirit). Overall, nêhiyawêwin contains many concepts that delineate a self that contains a spaciousness akin to what may be called ‘spirit.’44 A close study of the language of nêhiyawêwin does not articulate a singular, cohesive being or 'God’ or pantheism; instead, ’manitow' or God is described as "a benevolent life force" that arises from various contexts and points to multiple meanings (Napoleon, 2014,p. 36). The diverse collection of Cree stories may be regarded as consciously connecting listeners to this compassionate mind or benevolent spirit, using both language and listening as the mediums for this connection. To put it another way, stories act like the “collective spiritual nervous system”: Where very cord, every wire, every filament has a purpose and a function, every twitch a job in the way that collective human body, mind, and soul moves and operates from one day to the next to the next and to the next. Without this mechanism, that is to say, there would be no reason for getting up in the morning to go to work, to school, or to play. Life would have no meaning. And suicide would flourish. (Highway, 2003, p. 26). Generally, nêhiyaw tâpisinowin or Cree worldview and spirituality are regarded as “inseparable” (Napoleon, 2014). To further illustrate, a common norm stated amongst the nêhiyawak is “ikamâ î tipîmisoya or “we do not own ourselves” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 99). These words recognize both the fact that the self is co-constituted by this “unseen” quality of Creation and that we are never independent of “kihcimanitow” or the larger interconnectedness of Creation. While such a self- 44 I should note that part of the multidimensional view of reality that is inclusive of nêhiyaw tâpisinowin (Cree worldview) is the belief that not only are all living entities spiritual beings, but one can have a relationship with a spirit or spirits that are non-human and not fully within this dimension. I have chosen not to focus on this aspect of the spiritual domain because I believe it is probably best left in ceremony and within the sphere of those who follow strict protocols on sharing and interpreting this type of information. 115 understanding may be misconstrued as inciting a fatalistic irresponsibility, in fact, this statement is a constant everyday reminder that we are intimately connected to a greater whole and so we must fully and carefully be “accountable and responsible for our actions and decisions” (p. 99). In other words, we must take care of ourselves and attend to our relationships with all living things. By wholistically caring for yourself and others, you care for all of Creation. The realization of compassionate mind entails a certain freedom of mind (Lightning, p. 80). Realizing this freedom means being careful about what “we give ourselves to” because “we become a part of [them] and they ca” own us" (p. 78). The four domains of ourselves are interconnected and so what happens in one domain will affect the others, and so you must exercise care for all domains. Since ownership can take root in any domain, you can be ‘owned’ through any and all of these domains. The list of things that may own us include addictions to substances and activities, but also to concepts, ideas, issues and so on (Lightning, 1992, p. 79). The type of care we will need at any given time depends on our context. The limit of fulfilling our needs is the extent to which we cause ourselves, our family, our community or the world to go out of balance. From this standpoint, self-centredness requires taking your bearings from Creation, to be humble and to recognize “what we do not know, rather than to profess what we know” (p. 71.) In the words of one Elder, a mind that is able to comprehend and be aware of its interconnectedness to all things is “like the plume of an Eagle. (The plume is the soft downy part of the feather.)” (p. 84). In sum, moving towards this wholistic ‘ethos’ entails four individual capacities necessary for relating in a wholistic way. I have adapted these capacities from Walter Lightning’s structural principles for interpreting an Elder’s text to show how individuals can ‘read’ wholism in the 116 world.45 The first is the capacity to love, the second is the capacity to grasp a wholistic context, the third is the capacity to grasp resonance/reverberation and the fourth is the capacity to co-create knowledge with others (Lightning, 1992). While Lightning provides a framework to enable someone to grasp the deeper meaning of Elder Louis ’unchild's words, he still leaves room or space fo“ other "implications and interpretations of I text...depending upon the occasion ”nd context" (p. 65). The four domains of the self also correspond to the four dimensions of knowledge—emotional, spiritual, cognitive, and physical (Blackstock, 2009). In other words, knowledge is based on access to all the levels of our self-capacity—the body, mind, heart and spirit. Within nêhiyawêwin, the Cree language, there are words that reflect both the multi-domain nature of the self and the self’s ability to access multi-dimensional knowledge. 3.6 Wholistic Practices It is not enough to ‘theorize’ or to talk about nêhiyaw tâpisinowin (Cree worldview), ultimately action and the physical manifestation is necessary to realizing this vision. This is why virtually all of the concepts can be construed as verbs and capacities, whereby even a spiritual connection becomes action through practices of care. This profound disdain for not following through on one’s talk is encapsulated in the phrase “konta wiya ôma pîkiskowin, which means “this talk is for nothing” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 61). 45 Lightning is trying to not only provide the content of a text or the words of an Elder, but also the context and lens by which one should listen to the words. In the 'learning how to listen' section of his thesis on Compassionate Mind, Lightning seems to be imparting intimate knowledge about how to see and be in the world as though one were Elder Louis Sunchild or, more simply, if one approached life with Sunchild's 'compassionate mind.' So in his interpretation, Lightning is not only describing a text and its interpretation, but describing how an old Cree Elder experiences the world, which is why I think his structural principles may also be regarded as capacities. 117 In terms of the ‘application’ of this wholistic self and relationality, there are many everyday practices that reaffirm its existence. For example, the Cree protocol of giving tobacco represents a multi-layered type of wholistic recognition of the four domains of the self and being in a superpositional and resonant relationship with others. First, the giving of tobacco recognizes the relationship between the giver of the knowledge and the receiver. The giver is someone in need of care and the tobacco reinforces their neediness, humbling them. It also recognizes the authority of the person to whom they are giving the tobacco. In this way, the gift of tobacco is a recognition of the reciprocal nature of the relationship. But tobacco also works on an ethical and spiritual level. The one being presented with the tobacco may refuse it if they cannot help or if they learn the request “is not coming from a ‘good’ place” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 62). “The tobacco is essentially a sign of respect to the spirits that will be called upon to guide the process. Upon acceptance of the tobacco, the process is now recognized as sacred and inclusive of the nîhiyaw spirit realm” (p. 62). In terms of application to land-use decisions and treaties, this wholistic view of the world must reject ‘ownership’ or ‘possession’ in order to maintain its interconnectedness: “I cannot say that [the land] belonged to the Cree because, actually, all the land belongs to the Creation” (Venne, 2007, p. 1). The relationship with all of Creation is the foundation of the Cree legal system that is designed to protect and honour the land as a part of Creation. For example, these laws guided Cree Peoples when the Chiefs negotiated and concluded Treaty Six in 1876 (Venne, 2007, p. 2). When treaties were signed on the prairies, the Cree (and their relatives, e.g. Saulteaux, Nakoda, Assiniboine, Mètis) signed these treaties not only with the Crown, but with the Creator, represented by smoking the pipe (Stevenson, 2000; McAdam, 2015). 118 Generally, community and spiritual functions are ‘coextensive’ as both are spatially constituted (Deloria, 1973, p. 211). National identity also had a spiritual function with a ‘community's psychic identity’ revealed by its attitude to strangers. Showing hospitality to a stranger was viewed as a spiritual duty (p. 210). Spirituality's insistence that “we are part of Creation and we are a part of all life” (Wastesicoot, 2004 p. 126) rather than constituting narrow religious dogma is expansively inclusionary and attuned to context. No religious wars occurred on iyiniwi-ministik because there was a recognition of plurality of value in other religions (Deloria, 1973; 2004). However, within this inclusiveness, the uniqueness of communities and individuals’ peoplehood or personality could be distinguished from the rest of Creation (Deloria, 1973, p. 210). The strength of community and politics depended on the continued maintenance of spiritual thought and practice. In characterizing the ‘spiritual domain,’ I have focused on the understanding that all living entities are spiritual beings who are interconnected and interrelated by virtue of this spiritual quality that connects all of Creation. Despite this representation and recognition, there is an inherent unknowability to spirit, but rather than eschew this unknowability, Cree people have largely opted to attend to this sacredness as a life-giver through care of the self and others. This is in contrast to the overarching orientation to know the self. 3.7 Conclusion Drawing on only a few strands of the immense web of knowledge on selfhood from within nêhiyaw tâpisinowin published in academic and curricular texts, I’ve offered my interpretation of a nêhiyaw wholistic structure of the self and relations between the self and others. The self is structured as consisting of four domains that correspond to wholistic ways of being in the world and are interconnected through superpositionality and resonance. The bonds 119 of relationship are wholistically inclusive and based on a circular reciprocity that affirms and supports the wholistic regeneration of all life. The most significant element of this ontology of the self is that it is able to capture a fullness of human experience and lived reality based on an understanding of interconnectedness from the widest possible context and by attending to all our relations in the world. In effect, a wholism grounded in the land compels us to suspend judgment based on pre-determined knowledge or according to a regime of truth, because it eschews abstraction from human experience. The possibilities for human experience occur among multiple realities, based on Indigenous peoples’ wholistic and expansive methods of accessing knowledge. Instead, the pre-existing, assembled body of knowledge, expands to incorporate any new experience it encounters in various contexts, but it only values experience that significantly contributes to achieving wholistic balance. Cree educator and ceremonialist Reuben Quinn talks about how each individual has two eyes, two nostrils and two ears for perceiving reality, but only one mouth for expressing this reality. While there are multiple realities, the choice is up to us in terms of what we want to express and co-create. We can centre ourselves in okâwîmâwaskiy by grounding our self-formation in their interconnected relationality, or not. The direction or the way to this centre involves wholistic processes that are interconnected and depend on a caring relationality and networks of kinship. Harmony is achieved when people and the People are in alignment with the ultimate ‘context’ of okâwîmâwaskiy and its ‘community’ of non-human relatives that include trees, rocks, animals and plants, so that we, indeed, become inseparable in every way. Overall, in terms of the self and others, if we think of them as parts of an interconnected whole, the proper relationship to cultivate is that of belonging whereby “individuality and unity 120 are not opposites,” instead they are relatives ((Lightning, 1992, p. 81). Again, referring to the collective centered on the land, all your relations or relatives would include not only the immediate or the extended family, but the entire family of living things. Lightning notes “When that is elaborated in all its complexity there is an identity with creation. We can speak of Nature as being us” (p. 81). So the name, nêhiyawak, emplaces the collective and individual selves in constant alignment with the whole earth and their whole selves, so that what matters is one’s interconnected relationship to the whole of creation. 121 Chapter 4: Towards a Wholistic Cree and Indigenous Ethics 4.1 Introduction In this chapter, I seek to further explore the orientation towards life that underpins a Cree and Indigenous wholistic self. In particular, I explore what framework of valuing enables a self to value every living thing, whether it is known or knowable. First, drawing on nêhiyaw author Edward Ahenakew’s early twentieth century analysis of colonization, I show how he sets out a political way forward for nêhiyawak based on a wholistic view that is contextual, empirical and attuned to establishing a regenerative balancing of Cree life with the lives of others. Without a colonial/decolonial frame to guide his analysis, I argue that he relies instead on a wholistic Cree framework to determine the value of an idea, practice or relationship based on whether it renews life. In my second and third sections, I examine how wholistic knowledge of our contexts includes the recognition that the ultimate source of our natural context or of all life is unknowable both in terms of how to create life and how all natural life was originally created. In my fourth section, I outline how Cree and Indigenous modes of relating are connected and support this wholistic ethics. Finally, I consider the conceptual capacity of the language of ‘values’ to represent this wholistic ethics. In sum, I seek to show how a wholistic Cree and Indigenous ethics orients humanity towards respecting all life, whether it is knowable or not. 4.2 The Knowledge of creation One of the earliest written accounts of ethics written by a Cree person, largely for Cree people, was authored by Edward Ahenakew (1923; 1973)46. Writing from the perspective of the first generation of nêhiyawak born into ‘reserve’ life and subjected to colonial ‘Indian’ policy, 46 Voices of the Plains Cree was completed in 1923 but could not find a publisher until 1973 or 50 years after it was originally drafted and 12 years after the author’s death. 122 Ahenakew notes “If right is at the centre of this confusing web, ours is not yet the discerning eye that can pierce through” (p. 9). In his work, he goes on to locate what is both right and wrong with Cree life in the context of early Canadian colonization in an effort to reorient Cree life along a ‘right’ path or an ethical path. According to Ahenakew, a pivotal problem is that the worldview of nêhiyawak is no longer an ‘unobstructed’ and ‘keen’ vision rooted in the context of freedom shaped by centuries of life on the prairies; instead, the right way through the web of interrelated relationships is now obstructed by colonial and Western frameworks for interpreting value. These include frameworks of civilization, Christianization, patriarchy, racialization, individualism, paternalism and rationalism. Ahenakew’s text puts these foreign frameworks of valuation into conversation with Cree frameworks of valuation. The nêhiyawak voices in his text are neither rejecting nor accepting any of the available frameworks of valuation in a totalizing way. But through his analysis, Ahenakew himself is rejecting the totalizing force of colonial ideologies that purport to wholly devalue Cree life and life-ways and that are attempting to fully occupy the ethical terrain of ‘goodness.’ As Ahenakew notes on the first page of this text, when determining what is ‘good’ for Cree people: “The whole matter…rests upon the viewpoint taken” and that “To the superficial observer, we may often seem to be ungrateful to those who are endeavouring to work for our good. Perhaps, in some cases we are” (p. 9.). Though his analysis is not explicitly decolonizing, (primarily because this framework for understanding Indigenous-settler relations will not be introduced to Ahenakew’s context for another 40 years47), Ahenakew attempts to pull up much of the colonial logics that have taken root in Cree relationships with the imposition of 47 Métis scholar Howard Adams is the first scholar to explicitly apply the critique of colonization to Indigenous-settler relations in Saskatchewan with his book, Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View, published in 1975. 123 settler colonialism. The question that arises is how is Ahenakew determining value if not in accord with an Indigenous decolonial/colonial framework that has yet to be named? Lacking the frame of colonial/decolonial, I assert that his assessment proceeds from a wholistic framing of his contemporary context that ultimately values life. The wholistic Cree framework he operates from is oriented to deliberating with or figuring out how to be in relationship with other frameworks of value in a way that renews life. Such a framework enables the Cree voices to denounce colonial relationships and their associated values as unethical or lacking in any value because they do not lead to the regeneration of life for Cree people. Where unethical relationships exist, Ahenakew offers myriad insights on how to reorient them so that they support Cree flourishing in all domains of life. But still certain ideas and practices expressed by Ahenakew can be regarded as ‘colonial’ because they are rooted in frameworks genealogically aligned with colonial ideology. For example, when Ahenakew supports the abandonment of certain Cree ceremonies this seems rooted in a harmful Christianity-based ideology that devalues such ceremonies as ‘pagan’ and his endorsement of the practice of ‘field matrons’ sent to reserves to advise on hygiene and health seems located in a colonial paternalism. In fact, the text does read at certain points as though Ahenakew is advising nêhiyawak to “ally themselves with the colonizer, despite the fact that it was not in their own interests” (Reder, 2010, p. 55). Following Reder’s search for alternate Cree justifications for Ahenakew’s praxis, I situate Ahenakew’s critique within a Cree wholistic framing. I believe this frame better accounts for understanding his praxis as something more than an uneven internalization of colonialism or as someone who sometimes “speaks with the voice of the assimilated” (p. 58). In addition, it enables us to better understand how Ahenakew and nêhiyawak conceive of life and life-ways. 124 While Ahenakew did sometimes devalue Cree life-ways according to colonial ideologies, he does so in a way that attempts to account for their value in terms that support Cree life. Conversely, the settler colonial devaluing of Indigenous people tended to be total, with Indigenous peoples depicted “as lacking culture or moral values and having nothing of any social value to merit kind comment"; and, this devaluing was oriented towards ensuring a ‘good’ life for settlers only (Laenui, 2014, p. 150). In other words, the location of Ahenakew’s ‘error’ may not be in his complicity with colonial ideology and relations of oppression, but in his determination of what best serves Cree life. The absence of dichotomies in Cree thought also enables Ahenakew to see value or good in a thing without having to accept or reject all its aspects. Though indoctrinated in a Christian church, Ahenakew and at least one other Cree Anglican minister instead embodied a nuanced approach to religion. By this I mean that they did not accept all that their Christian religion demanded, and certainly did not accept the total denigration of Cree sacred philosophy as part of their religious belief (Ahenakew, 1923; Cuthand, 1988). Instead, they sought to transform the destructive elements of Christian religion to better align with a Cree wholistic ethics oriented towards balance. Christianity was also used as a tool by some Cree communities and individuals to guard against the fearful aspects of Cree belief. For instance, Christianity was sometimes adopted as added protection against the wîhtikow (Cuthand, 1988, p. 193).48 Of course, proselytizing also likely exploited collective fear of the wîhtikow. Christianity could also serve more pragmatic purposes for perceived shortcomings within Cree belief systems. For example, it could help one maintain material goods perceived as necessary to one’s survival in a new reserve context by 48 For more information on the wihtikow, see Chapter 1. 125 replacing Cree ceremonies that advocated giving-away valuable material possessions (Ahenakew, 1923). Again, in presupposing value, Cree wholism was much more open to deliberating on how a thing may add value or help regenerate the life of the whole. With the hindsight of a century, we may also be inclined to dismiss Ahenakew’s reflections as irrelevant and futile given our awareness of the colonial policy and practice at the time. Surely, nothing right can be found amidst such colonial wrongs. Rather than the voices of the Plains Cree, maybe we should regard Ahenakew’s work more as a collective crying out or a tragic record of unfolding genocide, as evidenced by such eyewitness accounts as “Again and again I have seen children come home from boarding schools only to die” (p. 90). It’s even more difficult to imagine that his analysis can offer insights into what is right today when the context in which he wrote is supposedly so different from nêhiyawak now. In many ways, today we take ‘ours’ as the discerning eye that can pierce the ‘confusing web’ to find the right way through. But yet contemporary critical theorists are still engaging in vigorous, ongoing debate about the value of various structural modes of relating among Indigenous peoples and others, often situated within the overlapping and shifting discourses of resurgence and reconciliation (Asch, Borrows & Tully, 2018). Perhaps revitalizing insights from the voices of the Cree as represented by Ahenakew can help inform this debate. By operating from a wholistic framework, Ahenakew offers a contextual and empirical analysis attuned to promoting an ethics based on balancing Cree and other life-ways. More specifically, this wholistic approach strives to balance personal autonomy and the collective autonomy of all Cree people with their relationships with the state and church authorities. As Reder (2010) notes, in his analysis, Ahenakew clearly brings nêhiyaw concepts of relationship and authority into play with other sources. Ahenakew’s wholistic framing includes a 126 careful analysis of the value of nêhiyaw beliefs, ceremonies, norms, and so on, to determine what should be kept, altered or discarded based on a Cree understanding of what is necessary to achieve balance in this new context. There does not seem to be any sense of a Cree ‘tradition’ as ‘innate’ or any cultural practice as ‘essential’ to being Cree; and other types of thought and practice are similarly regarded. Of course, we must be mindful of the role of colonial power on Ahenakew’s capacity to resist the internalization of colonial ideology and the extent to which he is able to consciously and deliberately assess value according to a wholistic framework. But for the most part, the text is notable for its ability to discern among Cree and other orders. The “hybridity, fusion, or creolization proposed by postcolonial critics, which creates a new form to challenge old genres and the colonial order” is largely absent (Reder, 2010, p. 50). The first half of Ahenakew’s text presents the voice of nêhiyaw Chief Thunderchild or kâ-pitikow in the form of the oral narratives he tells Ahenakew. These oral history and personal experience stories are collected by Ahenakew while working as an Anglican minister in the early 1920s in the nêhiyaw community of Onion Lake (Saskatchewan). At the time, Chief Thunderchild is in his seventies. The second half of the book expresses the views of the fictional character ‘Old Keyam.’ Old Keyam provides both political analysis that reflects the collective experience and thought of Cree people; and the distinct autobiographical experience and thoughts of Ahenakew. In effect, Old Keyam presents collective Cree voices but is also sometimes a stand-in for the personal position or particular voice of Ahenakew. For example, when faith in Christianity is professed at one point in the text, this is Ahenakew, the man, speaking and is not meant to represent all the voices of the Cree (p. 95). Though he is the author of the text, Ahenakew never foregrounds his own personal voice as representative of all Cree voices. His voice is but one part of a greater 127 whole with which the reader can deliberate. The way in which Ahenakew blurs the boundaries of the voice of one’s self with that of the collective voice is in keeping with the wholistic or autonomous relationality between the self and others described in chapter three of this dissertation. Ahenakew begins with maintaining the ecological context and the intergenerational and collective history within a place as sources of Cree autonomy that resonate both materially and spiritually: We are told by some thinkers that between the material and spiritual parts of man there is a great division, that there is no shading of one into the other. I cannot believe that. One affects the other, and the place where a man lives can shape his character…It is the nature of one’s country, its effect through many generations, that makes the difference in men. (58-59) Chief Thunderchild has already concluded earlier in the text that nêhiyawak “wisdom came not from books but from life and from God’s earth” (p. 47). The material sense of being of this land is illustrated most precisely when Old Keyam notes that the Old Men advised young Cree men against enlisting during WWI, because they thought "it seemed against nature to them that an Indian should go to fight in a distant land and perhaps lay his body to mingle with earth that was not ours" (p. 82). From the Cree point of view, while they understand that diverse epistemologies may exist, they refuse to give up their own sources of autonomous life—particularly when the sources of autonomy in this new context are failing them horribly. In this new 1920s context, one’s freedom is supposedly protected by the law of England. But such freedom is not only illusory, but the law becomes “something quite the opposite” of freedom (p. 73). Ahenakew cites the events of 1885 (his year of birth), whereby several Cree and Métis men are sentenced to death and imprisonment for resisting the imposition of the colonial state on their lands as a key example of how the law is used as an instrument of oppression rather 128 than autonomy. He also supplies a careful reading of the Indian Act, 1876 showing how it robs Cree people of the capacity to consent to decisions affecting the use of their lands and money. Another reason the law is problematic is because it is being implemented by “small men who owed their position to political patronage alone, who used the law to become despots in their own areas” (p. 73). In a practical sense, the local agents are the law that must be obeyed by Cree people (p. 105), which Ahenakew readily recognizes as a further perversion of the actual law. Finally, Ahenakew notes the injustice of law and policy-making without the input of Indigenous peoples and their ways. He writes that “It seemed to the Indian that the Government was pulling the reigns of control even tighter, that the white man’s customs were steadily asserted, the Indian ways shoved aside, and that finally he would be ignored altogether in the making of policy” (p. 73). Not only is Ahenakew critiquing the law as a viable source of Cree freedom, but he delves deeper to note how the processes of law-making and its application not only subjugate but seek to totally eliminate the autonomy of Indigenous peoples. A major failing of this Western source of autonomy is that it is not being applied in relationship with Cree people. Any potential for autonomous relationality at the intersection of the reserve context and Western legal knowledge is foreclosed by the oppressive political, social and economic conditions of the reserve. There is no space for Cree life, life-ways or relation with settlers at this intersection of knowledge and context. By grounding his analysis in this way, it is easy to see how the law’s promise of freedom is impeded by the context of Cree people. In enunciating the failure of the law, Ahenakew further blurs his authorial voice by explicitly deconstructing the border between his supposedly fictional narrator, Old Keyam, and real life. He does this by having his fictional character pretend he is speaking directly to the colonial authorities “Keyam’s own eyes fell upon his actual audience, intent, seeming to believe 129 that all those others were listening too” (p. 73 [emphasis added]). Old Keyam then concludes that these ‘others’ are not listening or “They will not hear!” (p. 74). By crossing the boundaries of narrator, author and audience and what is real and fictional, Ahenakew dramatically gives voice to, ironically, not the lack of voice among the Plains Cree, but to the fact that colonial authorities refuse to hear this voice. In other words, the problem is not one of Indigenous voicelessness, but of colonial deafness. I believe part of Ahenakew’s project is to show how this deafness is rooted in a disoriented colonial relationality unable to hear Cree voices or see (recognize) the autonomous presence of Cree people. This Western disorientation is supported by a broader philosophical “lexicon of erasure” or an ‘epistemological ignorance’ that deigns only to hear the singular voice of an autonomous western European male subject (Reder, 2012, p. 508). It is a confused philosophy that has lost its way because of its deafness and blindness. For the most part, Ahenakew denounces the colonial systems masquerading as well-meaning protectionism, ably pointing out the totalizing ways in which Cree people are deprived of autonomy in all areas of their lives, such as education, politics and earning a livelihood. But one area where he seems to agree almost fully with the efforts of government officials is in regard to physical health. He attributes the causes of the current ill physical health of Cree people to three sources: 1) their bodies are weaker now, due to the reserve lifestyle; 2) their previous lifestyles based on mobile, renewable shelter and replaceable clothing no longer exists yet they continue with household and hygiene practices suited to this lifestyle; and 3) they tend to treat some sources of ‘llness ’s 'unknown' and so such illnesses must be borne with strength. He theorizes that given the excellent physical health of Cree people in the past and their cyclical patterns of settlement that ensured pristine household environments, the causes of illness likely were non-material and 130 largely of a spiritual or mental nature, necessitating the ‘conjuring’ of medicine people. But today these conditions no longer exist and so he sees the medicine “en who do”"conjuring" as harming Cree people because they are obscuring the practical causes of ill health. He implores Cree people to be aware that many prevalent illnesses are preventable through changes in household and hygiene habits and to heed the “wise direction of a field matron” or nurse (p. 99). But here there is some ambiguity, because in one chapter, he puts the onus for overcrowded and poor housing conditions on Cree people, but in another chapter, recognizes these conditions are largely beyond their control. But other than some uncertainty about the extent to which Cree people are able to take responsibility for these conditions, the frame in which he operates is one that is oriented towards valuing the physical life of Cree people. Though he is open to changing life-ways, the character of Old Keyam also illustrates the critical need for maintaining relationships among Cree people where these life-ways can be maintained. He situates the value of life-ways in their ability to structure life-enhancing (joyous) connections among Cree families. In what is probably one of the earliest published critiques of the ‘cultural genocide’ and genocide of residential schools,49 Ahenakew cites the disconnection of students from their families and life-ways at residential as one of the causes of death among students: "Again and again I have seen children come home from boarding schools only to die, having lost during their time at school all the natural joys of association with their own families, victims of an educational policy" (p. 90). He notes that the point of education cannot be to “make a white man out of an Indian” as that is impossible, but “to make our children into good Indians” 49 Many years later, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) uses the term ‘cultural genocide’ to describe the intent and outcome of Indian residential school policy and MacDonald (2019) analyzes Indian residential school policy from the perspective of genocide. 131 (p. 91). The impossibility of assimilative education is reflected in the understanding that residential schooling is not a life-way for nêhiyawak but is a death-way. Such education has zero ‘value’ from within a wholistic Cree frame. But Ahenakew is still able to see value in a Western education, and in another chapter explains how the treaty promise of education should be fulfilled through day schools on reserves, where a student can remain within their natural contexts among their families and communities. Old Keyam gives deep thought to the effect of the residential school education received by thos“ students "who do live, w”o survive," arguing that what a Cree student has really been taught in residential school has tended to make “im into”a "machine" in“tead of a "s”lf-start“r" who is ”able to go" of his own accord (p.‘89). As ’ 'machine,' t“e student "needs a crank that will start him, and perhaps another to keep”him going,‘ with’the 'crank' being an external source of authority that holds a student under constant surveillance. By this method of teaching, the student is taught not to exercise autonomous agency based on a wholistic understanding of life, but to a“t onl’ if "there's someone right there to direct him and make”him listen" (p. 89). ’he student's sense of value comes to be totally tied to recognition from external authorities. Old Keyam observes this effect of education in the difference between Cree football (soccer) players who did not attend residential schools and a graduate of residenti“l school: "these young men were good players indeed, making every effort to play as a team, resisting the strong desire for individu– display -- all except one whom – noticed -- a tall slim fellow who raced about the field, shouldering others away, kicking the ball great distances, stopping often as though to make sure that his achievements were recognized. It seemed to Keyam that for all the display he was the least useful member ”f the team" (p. 89). While a student may ac‘uire much’'knowledge' at a residential school, this knowledge is valued only 132 through empty, individual recognition, rather than through its intrinsic value in propelling one to act autonomously. Ultimately, knowledge grounded solely in external recognition leads to “false” value such as “football achievements,” “smart English” or the “ability to adapt himself among whites,” but it does not “earn him a living” (p. 91). Here Ahenakew connects the intrinsic motivation of pursuing a livelihood to Cree life-ways, reinforcing another way that the Cree orientation to regenerating life is being destroyed by residential school. Significantly, he calls such ‘knowledge’ an ‘abuse.’ The multiple positions expressed by Ahenakew about spirituality and religion are more complex than for any other life domain in his text. This is likely because Cree wholism is fundamentally based on an understanding of life as consisting of a spiritual life-force and so spirituality and religion would be afforded more deliberation among Crees than other knowledges. In the first half of the book, Chief Thunderchild offers one collective Cree view on the subject of religion. Chief Thunderchild declares “I believe in freedom of worship, and though I am not a Christian, I have never forgotten God. What is it that has helped me and will help my grandchildren but belief in God?” (p. 50). Indigenous spirituality and Western religion are described as different types of worship of “one God” that are of equal value (p. 50). This recognition of equal value leads Chief Thunderchild to question why Indigenous forms of worship do not receive the same respect as their Western counterparts. This belief runs counter to the prevailing Christian view at the time. Chief Thunderchild also suggests another qualitative difference between the religious belief systems when he states “He [God] looks upon the wrong that is done on earth, and knows what would correct it. But we ourselves must find the way and do it” p. 50. He seems to be indicating that the Crees’ view of Creation is that it provides knowledge, but not as a means of 133 transcendence; instead divine knowledge is a means to make life better on this ground, here and now. Here, Chief Thunderchild re-emphasizes the contextual and empirical nature of nêhiyaw spiritual knowledge. Old Keyam uses both Cree and Western sources of autonomy and relational knowledge to denounce colonial legislation outlawing ceremonies like the Sun Dance. The ban is described as not only coun‘er to the 'Britis’ pri“ciple' of "freedom to wor’hip as one's conscien”e dictates" (p. 95), but also that the banning of spiritual practices will not work because you cannot force someone to be a Christian. Old Keyam then goes on to show the value of the Sun Dance from within a Cree wholistic worldview. The presentation of the origin story of the Sun Dance attests to its spiritual powers, and how it is based on a plea for the fulfilment of the wholistic needs of all beings. Dancers asked for health, peace and love towards their fello“ man, and "above all for rain to refresh the land, to bring to life again what had lain dormant all winter, that there might be plenty for ma” and beast" (p. 94). Within a wholistic framing that emphasizes the regeneration of all life, this ceremony produces immeasurable value. Despite an understanding of the central significance of the Sun Dance to Cree ethical and spiritual practice, Ahenakew (née Old Keyam) believes it will naturally fall away as the context of Cree life continues to change. Like Chief Thunderchild, Ahenakew also emphasizes the equivalent value of the different modes of worship but does so to attest to the value of Christianity not Cree spirituality. He explicitly states that “In my own heart, I long for the day when the Christian Church will be strong on every reserve, and when in the hearts of all Indians the homage to the Supreme Being will take no other form than that given to us by the Saviour” (p. 95). But through the character of Old Keyam, Ahenakew gives voice to a key caveat in his endorsement of Christianity. He is adamant that both the Christian Church and government 134 should use persuasion, not force, if they want Cree people to set aside practices like the Sun Dance. This persuasion must be of an ethical and spiritual nature, which requires a certain type of leadership on the part of the church and the minister. Old Keyam counsels that the “ministry of the Christian Church must be one of love, of sympathy, of understanding, of tolerance where that is necessary, and of wisdom” (p. 95). I believe that a Cree ethic of care50 is being firmly emplaced within Christianity to guide its practice as Ahenakew was clearly aware that Christianity could be uncaring. Old Keyam also extends this care to governmental authority, advising that “the Indian Agent should be equally understanding, not acting more strictly than the law warrants when he passes judgment und”r that law" (p. 95). Old Keyam himself is described as the emb“diment of "kindly advice, carefully and prayerfully”considered" who does not prejudge bu“ respects "any sincere form of belief that may be in the heart of my”fellow man" (p. 93). In sum, Chief Thunderchild, Ahenakew and Old Keyam all offer wholistic-based improvements to the relationship between Cree spiritual autonomy and Christianity, as well as other forms of autonomy. Overall, it seems that Western sources of authority have the potential to support Cree life if they seek an ethical wholistic balance. Aside from performing a sustained dialogue among Cree, colonial and western voices, Ahenakew performs a transformative feat with the character of Old Keyam: the Cree institution of ‘Old men’ is reanimated as a pivotal source for helping Crees achieve balance. The Old Men have been greatly devalued through their displacement within a new reserve and colonial context in that they are seen as lacking the knowledge that will help future generations navigate this context. Old Keyam is representative of this devaluing in that he is regarded by Cree people as 50 I will further explore the idea of a Cree ethic of care in the next chapter. 135 “an inferior and garrulous successor to the Old Men” (p. 52), who do not “know what to do” and instead “in disguising their bewilderment and their hurt, seem not to care” (p. 52). The word ‘Keyam’ itself means ‘to not care.’ Prior to colonization, the Old Men were the ethical embodiment and repository of wholistic Cree values and valuing—exhibiting masterful skills of eloquence in relating knowledge. They were also kind and friendly and entreated others to be just and merciful to each other. By reconstituting the storytelling practice of Old Men to include political and philosophical critique, Old Keyam comes to represent a new type of knowledge holder that will help lead the way to a good Cree life. This new approach to storytelling includes using new knowledge sources, such as legal and policy analysis and consulting newspapers and the published works of contemporary public figures. These are all the methods of inquiry that Ahenakew relies on in formulating the voice of Old Keyam. The value of the wholistic knowledge of Old Keyam is acknowledged by the Chief of his band near the end of the book: I wish that I knew as much as Old Keyam. He holds no office amongst us, yet when we want to say what is in our minds, we ask Keyam to say it for us. He is more important than any other one of us here, for he is our Voice, he is the Old Man of this band, in the finest tradition of the past. Sometimes I think that when all the rest of us are forgotten, Old Keyam will be remembered. He thinks and says that he is old. I think that Keyam lives forever. 107-108 Most significantly, Ahenakew elevates the knowledge of Old Keyam to the highest spiritual value, by revealing at the end of the book that Old Keyam is also a holder of a red pipe-stem and therefore carries a sacred bundle. 4.2 The unknowability of Creation The foregoing analysis points to an ethics based on the most complete or ‘whole’ knowledge possible. This is the knowledge that comes from deliberating on a broad range of contextual and empirical evidence that includes spiritual knowledge. But in the last pages of his 136 book, Ahenakew also acknowledges the ultimate unknowability of knowledge. Despite re-establishing ‘Old Men’ as the holders of valuable knowledge, Ahenakew concludes with an assertion that Old Keyam may not know anything at all. In particular, Old Keyam expresses a self-consciousness of not being able to fully know “'how far my old ideas are prejudiced” or whether he has precisely represented “the minds and feelings of the new generation” (p. 107). Such limitations are reinforced by noting the limits of human capacity for accessing knowledge: “Nor do I know how far the failing of my sight and my other faculties has led me astray” (p. 107). Ahenakew then ends with a seeming reference to the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, noting: “There was once a very wise man who said, 'He is wisest among you who has found out that in truth his wisdom is worth nothing at all.' Now our Cree language can say all that in one word, in the name that you have given me: Keyam" (p. 108). While Ahenakew does not expand further on the unknowability of wholism, this idea is more fully explored and situated in the Swampy Cree value of kisteanemétowin or ‘respect between people’ (Reder, 2010, p. 55-56). This respect underpins Cree relationships with diverse beings in cases where the social orders and worldviews of other living beings are largely unknowable to Cree people. The reasons for this unknowability likely are due in part to the limits of human faculties, in that accessing knowledge within the confines of human faculties means that one can never fully know if their knowledge is correct in any absolute way. But I believe this unknowability is also based in a Cree understanding of an inherent unknowability to all life in that we do not know the ultimate source(s) or ‘author of our being’ as Chief Thunderchild referred to kisemanitou or ‘God.’ The ultimate source of our natural context or of all life is relatively unknown despite scientific theories purporting to definitively ‘know’ this answer. As such, Indigenous peoples 137 treat this source as “a mysterious spiritual power” or a ‘Great Mystery’ (Deloria, 1973, p. 151). In many cases, the Great Mystery or Creator is not ascribed singular human qualities and nor are humans elevated above other life forms as being created in her/his/their image. Instead, a recognition of the Creator in all life or of “spirit” underlies respect for the “personality” (possibly personhood) of all forms of life: “mountains, rivers, waterfalls, even the continents and the earth itself have intelligence, knowledge, and the ability to communicate ideas” (p. 151). In effect, the earth represents a nexus where all “things and life are interrelated” or “filled with spirit” (Halfe, 2006, p.70). Another prefigurative Cree foundational value based on this orientation is tapahtîmisowin or “a form of humility roughly implying, ‘to never think higher of yourself than others’” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 81-82). Recognition of this common and shared spirit is a great equalizer. For Cree peoples, such views are reflected in “the âtayohkîwina ‘sacred stories’, in the traditional prayers, and in the affectionate way that the land is spoken of by elders and traditionalists” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 40-41). There are nuances among animate things in terms of the nature of their spirit and knowledge—which humanity does not and likely cannot know. As I attempted to show in the previous chapter on the wholistic relation between the self and others, Cree and Indigenous classifications tend not to be dichotomous or binary. This view arises from a wholistic worldview that considers all things as imbued with energy and as part of the dynamic patterns or interrelationships within a constantly moving whole. This non-binary orientation is also extended to the fundamental category of animacy. Rather than a thing being animate or inanimate; instead, "Everything is more or less animate” (Little Bear, 2000, p. 78). To be animate means to be imbued with “spirit and knowledge” (p. 78) and so “If everything has spirit and knowledge, then all are like me. If all are like me, then all are my relations" (p. 78). 138 The maintenance of this ‘unknowability’ is integral to not only spiritual praxis, but everyday practice and ideas. In fact, all Indigenous ethical action has been described as religious action because it is based on the recognition of the spirit in all living things (Eastman, 1911). Even the expansive English term ‘spiritual’ denotes a separation of “intellectual or embodied knowledge,” but such knowledges are not fully separate from Indigenous perspectives, but flow into one another (Reder, 2012, p. 512). In effect, Indigenous ethics truly decentres humanity, attributing relational capacities to all forms of natural life based on their unknown intelligences and knowledges, thereby positioning these capacities as fully recognizable and realizable in this world. What is particularly significant is that under the Indigenous view, such capacities are realizable only through a wholistic ethics that enables respectful and humble relationships with our living contexts. In the face of such unknowability and the strangeness of other beings, what matters is forging the proper respectful relationship with all others or to “come together in a relationship as relatives who had much to learn and benefit from each other” (Reder, 2010, citing Brundige, p. 116). This is the ethical approach that Cree people adopted when first encountering ‘strange’ Western European peoples. Despite their strangeness, because of kisteanemétowin, Crees “would not have had reason to dismiss Europeans as less than human or incapable of relational interaction” (p. 55-56). Rather than a prejudicial valuation or devaluation based on what one knows, or on one’s pre-existing knowledge and its frames for interpreting value, the inherent value of European peoples was presumed by Cree peoples. Western Europeans would have been treated with the same respect afforded other nations. Similar to the Siiksikaawa, just as the Crees readily recognized that the "social structures and protocols which "govern" other "nations" such 139 as the buffalo and the wolves" have a place in Creation that is parallel to Siiksikaawa governance (Ladner, 2003, p. 135), so too do the life-ways of Western Europeans. Kisteanemétowin or in Plains Cree ‘kihciyimitowin’ is a foundational Cree concept. Expanded as a respect for achieving a relationship with all of Creation, it is particularly significant to acting ethically (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000). Napoleon (2014) elaborates on the significance of kihciyimitowin: the root kihci represents a sacredness or larger than life greatness as in the term kihcimanitow ‘great spirit’. The morpheme iyim represents how one’s mind views someone else. [The suffix –owin translates the verb tense of the concept into a noun]. The full meaning then is ‘the act of thinking sacredly about others’. There is a built in recognition that everyone has a soul and a god-given life. It is a form of pure mutual respect. One can only imagine a world where humans recognized the sacredness in each other and treated each other accordingly. (p. 83) This type of spirit and life-based recognition is apparently still evident among some Indigenous Elders who are able to see a common relationality with others despite the many obstructions to this view: “…the way I saw elders look at me. Many seemed to look right through the barriers, the politics, the boundaries, and the status debates. Reflected in their eyes, I began to see myself as a granddaughter, a member, and a relation” (Anderson, 2016, p. 9). This foundation of respect is perhaps why Cree Elder Mary Lee (2012) from Chitek Lake (Saskatchewan) regards ‘being spiritual’ as ‘remembering.’ What one is remembering is that “the first thing that was gifted to you when you came into being was the spirit.” The Cree value of kisteanemétowin or kihciyimitowin prefigures relationships with strangers or strange living beings. The acknowledgment and attention to the inherent unknowability of the contexts of life continuously makes space for infusing knowledge with something else, such as kisteanemétowin, critique and even care. Of course, this space can also be misguided by disrespect, ignorance and uncaring. The lack of a corresponding, basic respect among newcomers for Indigenous peoples 140 and their knowledges is identified by Plains Indigenous Elders as a fundamental ethical problem. In their view, “without respect there can be no reconciliation” or ‘good relations’ among people (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 24). But rather than turn away from being in relationship with others who don’t respect you, Elders instead offer to share knowledge and education, as well as “to provide guidance, direction and cooperation to bring about good relations (miyo-wicehtowin) between their peoples and other Canadians in order to bring about respect” (p. 24). 4.3 The Unknowability of Creating A certain unknowingness is attached to contexts and knowledges in that you cannot know things through knowing alone, but instead must experience or live them. This is tied to ethics in that realizing ‘good’ relationships must go beyond understanding to living them or taking up the responsibilities of one’s positions within these relationships (Starblanket & Stark, 2018). You don’t know what this ethical action is going to look like until you do it. Another way of putting it may be that the processual nature of living knowledge means that “Until exposure to knowledge occurs, you do not know what you don’t know” (Absolon, 2011, p. 10). When looking at the whole, knowledge is regarded as being alive in that it comes from “living and fluid” processes rather than being “concrete and fixed like typeset words” (Absolon, 2011, p. 10). Another articulation of this aliveness is captured in the idea of “enactive political practices” that “are not simply backgrounds from which meaning must be extracted; they are also dynamic sites of meaning production and contestation” (Rollo, 2018, p. 12). But knowledge is also deemed to be alive in the same way that the land is alive in that both contain and are able to transmit that unknowable, autonomous quality of spirit or energy. Whether this is knowledge contained in ideas or stories, they have their own generative autonomy. For instance, “Ideas uttered have energy…they have their own productive capacities 141 semi-independently from the one who uttered them…the animacy of knowledge creates and destroys, obscures and proliferates, captures and releases. Knowledge manifests and reorders sets of relations” (Kolopenuk, 2020, p. 6). In terms of Indigenous stories, their aliveness is represented as a type of weaving akin to a spider’s web where “the structure emerges as it is made” (Archibald, 2008, p. 8 citing Silko, 1996, p. 48-49). While oral tradition is an intergenerational body of knowledge, it is "a living body" that depends on context to give it life, and so this tradition is also vulnerable to reproducing the ‘values’ it finds there (Gunn Allen, 1992, p. 224). With knowledge as a site of struggle, Indigenous modes of relationality often become subsumed under power, along with “narratives [and] modes of understanding our world” (Starblanket & Stark, 2018, p. 180). Here, the ‘asymmetrical’ power of the Canadian settler state means it is able to structure and determine the critical elements of knowledge to serve its aims, and so decide what frameworks of value matter. Exposing relations between power and knowledge seems to be a particular strength of the emphasis on relationships and their genealogies that characterizes the narrative processes of most Indigenous knowledges. Cree oral traditions largely have withstood the hegemonic mythologies and narratives embedded within various contexts. Although residential schools were a fundamental site for “produc[ing] subjects who had internalized the goals of colonial institutions—people who saw themselves through the eyes of the colonizer, seeking recognition and therefore mimicking non-Indigenous ways of being” (Jobin, 2016, p. 40; Ahenakew, 1923), this enforced doctrination was not total. For example, in many cases, Cree mothers and grandmothers resisted the ‘double consciousness’ of residential schooling by passing along the knowledge of Indigenous women through their stories. What was significant about these stories is their carrying forward of “the 142 relationships of women to the land broadly conceived—including relationships to the air, water, earth, and other nonhuman beings” (p. 40). More generally, âtayôhkêwina, kayas âcimowina and âcimowina continue to guide contemporary Plains Indigenous relationships enabling the “cultural persistence, revitalization, and resistance to colonization" (Innes, 2013, p. 24). Indigenous interpretations of contemporary social relations as formed and informed by our ‘traditional’ narrative practices and content has long been a neglected area of study (Reder, 2007). Arguably, Indigeneity is perpetually misrepresented in academia because its “dynamic” nature or its heterogeneity as “lived, practiced, and relational” can never be fully captured by “pre-established modes of inquiry” (Hunt, 2014, p. 29). Most Indigenous scholars access the “living knowledge of their culture” and use it as a means to reanimate and reorient academic research to challenge academic frameworks that rely on ‘original’ sources that would distort it (Larocque, 1988, p. 203). A popular orientation of Indigenous knowledge reproduction today is to relocate all ‘real’ Indigenous knowledge in a ‘pure’ past and so provide “a "real" portrait of Native America as it should be, rather than as it is,” so that any new social knowledge is considered invalid or devalued as not being Indigenous knowledge at all (Simpson, 2007, p. 485). As Deloria has pointed out, spatially-oriented knowledge must not be overtaken by any theory that enables time to dictate its value. Similarly, when separated from wholistic ethics, even ‘spirituality’ today can be wielded as a tool of oppression that places spiritual matters beyond both human dialogue and contestation on the ground (Snyder, 2018). In the past, the subject of Indigenous spirituality itself was not beyond deliberation and may very well have been the result of deep deliberative processes over many generations. In the early days of contact, some Indigenous leaders were wary of 143 missionaries because they feared that people would be taught “to quarrel about god” (Deloria, 1973, p. 240). The great Rocky Mountain Cree Chief Maskepetoon who lived during the 1800s never became Christian, in part, because the competing missionaries were constantly telling him that the other was wrong. While he disdained from interfering with the religious belief of any members of his Band, his position was that “they [the missionaries] ought to call a council among themselves, and that then he would go with them all three; but that until they agreed he would wait" (Dempsey, 2010, p. 133 citing Maskepetoon’s conversation with artist Paul Kane, 1848). Maskepetoon refused to accept a religion that incited conflict and disharmony within itself and advised that a deliberative council should be held to get it working in the proper direction. Based on a wholistic approach oriented towards regenerating life, one could suppose that Maskepetoon ultimately did not value Christianity because without an orientation to consensus, the religion simply created constant conflict that inevitably enervated life. The orientation of Indigenous governance further reinforces working towards wholistic agreement based on the value and affirmation of the lives of all its citizens. Most Indigenous governance embodied a consensus-driven model that gave equal voice and status to each person in the circle in order to arrive at an agreement with which the whole can agree (Alfred, 2005; Palmater, 2015; Lightfoot, 2016): “Political life included vibrant debate, extended discussions, the inclusion of all voices, and a commitment to understanding and consensus…While there are many important aspects of our traditional governance systems, the commitment to consensus building – not just the final decision itself – is what stands out as one of the keys to restoring balance today” (Palmater, 2015, p. 1-2). Arguably, a crucial reason global Indigenous political movement has been successful in achieving some of its key aims has been because of its motivation and capacity to build consensus among diverse voices (Lightfoot, 2016, p. 16). 144 While Deloria understood the deep and broad differences among Indigenous and Western knowledges—articulating the “metaphysical premises underlying all political, academic, legal, scientific, religious, and moral gaps of understanding and conflicts between Native American and Euro- American peoples,” his work was not intended to deepen difference and divide peoples (Anderson, 2011, p. 93). Instead his intent was to promote meaningful dialogue. But before that could happen, it was necessary to take Indigenous knowledges seriously as having something valuable to contribute to humanity’s collective understanding of the world. To this end, he was a bridge-builder “identifying common as well as contested ground” (Anderson, 2011, p. 93). Within a wholistic frame, the spiritual beliefs of indigenous peoples are not only open to empirical testing and persuasion, but are based on empirical evidence and direct experience with the land and real-life contexts, and also promote and support dialogue, deliberation and contestation as contexts change. The accommodation rather than the negation or devaluing of diversity and difference is part and parcel of a wholistic process. Not only is there a wholistic inclusion of all life, but there is a constant striving to understand and support the distinct value of all life, for the sake of all life. 4.4 The Good Life and the Whole of What we Know and Don’t Know From a wholistic relational standpoint of what we know and don’t know, Cree and Indigenous ethics is concerned with certain types of relationships and responsibilities that orient us towards living a good life (Laboucane-Benson, 2009). The Cree concept of the ‘good life’ is expressed in different dialects as ‘mino-pimatisiwin’ or ‘miyo-pimatisiwin’ and is translated or interpreted in different ways. But its normative ground is wholistic as possible, encompassing all of Creation and an ethical direction that supports the regenerative creative capacity of all life. 145 This ethics makes us aware of beings (typically human beings), who are not "living their responsibilities" towards other life forms (i.e., they are not living with respect, responsibility, humility and control)” (Ladner, 2003, p. 148). The core relational Cree doctrines of wâhkôtowin (the laws governing all relations) and miyo-wîcêhtowin (the laws concerning good relations) govern one’s actions to ensure that one stays in wholistic relationship with all of Creation (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 14). These relationships and responsibilities are governed by the “laws, values, and principles” of an Indigenous Nation, and, of course, the “first and fundamental relationship is with the Creator” (Wastesicoot, 2004, p. 7). The sense of this relationality echoes the words of Chief Thunderchild in that the nature of this spiritual relationship is not of “prayer and worship for a deity that lives in another plane of existence” (Ahenakew, 1923); instead, this relationship is one “with all of creation” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p.10). Leadership consisted of those individuals best able to represent and mobilize this wholistic direction so that “Being a Blackfoot leader was not about taking orders or making decisions. It was about representing the one-mind or the collective decision of the people and being a good person, good provider and good advisor or a knowledgeable helper" (p. 139). Understanding and maintaining a unity of life across multiple contexts is emphasized as leading to a good life. One translation of ‘mino pimatisiwin’ is that “we are responsible to live in conscious connection with the land and living things in a way that creates and sustains balance” or that we must strive “to live beautifully” (Wilson, 2015, p. 1). This meaning encapsulates the deep, deliberate ethical interconnectedness with living contexts that creates a beautiful or a good life. In the context of colonization, the ‘good life’ has also been described as synonymous with ‘Cree 146 life’51 or a life path based on wholistic alignment with “Cree values, spiritual and cultural expression” (Laboucane 2009, p. 124). One problem with achieving this good life today is that the connection to Cree life has been interrupted or interfered with for most Cree people due to colonization, whether through cultural genocide or by virtue of being taught Western visions of the good life that undermine wholistic balance. This is not to say that non-Cree traditions cannot contribute to a Cree concept of the good life. Just as Cree life is entangled with the living narratives and oral traditions of other peoples, the ‘good' aspects of these other traditions can come to be part of a larger wholistic balance. Along this line, the ‘good life’ from an Indigenous wholistic perspective may be described as a certain mode of being that occurs within one’s self, community and environment that is transmitted through Indigenous modes of storytelling. The “goodness” inherent in most story-telling traditions means “to always think the highest thought…This thinking in the highest, most respectful, and compassionate way systematically influences the actions of both individuals and community. It is a way to perpetuate “a good life,” a respectful and spiritual life, a wholesome life” (Archibald, 2008, p. 12-13 citing Cajete, 1994). The point is to learn from those who have “tried to live their lives right, just like a story” (p. 13). One interpretation of wâhkôtowin is that it serves a pedagogical function in that it teaches us that “as human beings, we are enmeshed in series of relationships (human and more-than- 51 But as we assess what goodness entails from Cree perspectives, we must be careful not to conflate this ethical focus on being or becoming a ‘real’ Indian or Indigenous person. Efforts to get ‘Indigeneity’ ‘right’ fluctuate from narrowly prescriptive definitions to open-ended self-identifications. Ultimately, the determination of authentic Indian-ness or Indigeneity depends on your reference points and your personal and political power-seeking. Some common and problematic referential points of definition are: law, biology, culture, and self-definition (Simpson, A., 2007, citing Garroutte, 2003). Instead, it’s important to note that “There is no single, irreducible way of "being" Indian nor of "being understood" as an Indian, but these very values do matter, and they matter not only to the state, but to Indian peoples themselves” (p. 481). In short, I want to avoid locating the problem of ethics as ‘real-ness’ but rather recognize the process of ‘becoming a ‘real’ Indian’ or the very “logics of identity formation” as the problem (Simpson, 2007, p. 482). 147 human) that give us life” (Donald, 2019, p. 11 citing Laboucane-Benson). According to this concept ‘good relations’ are those that are life-sustaining, with an everyday ethics based on wâhkôtowin that attends to these relationships: “To do otherwise is to act against life and the survival of those relational networks” (p. 11). In turn, these ethical relationships themselves become sources of regenerative creativity. Wâhkôtowin is also translated as ‘kinship’ relations or the creation of familial relationships with all life, not just humanity. In effect, the family is an organizing framework for relationships (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000) and so along this vein, wâhkôtowin has been translated as a type of interrelatedness (Reder, 2007; Gaudry, 2014). But such kinship relationships are not based solely or at all on a shared biological genealogy or on a ‘blood’ line, but instead involve reference to a “kinship nexus” or a shared centre that can be economic, legal, political, religious” and so on (Devine, 2004, p. 8) and is grounded in particular contexts (Macdougall, 2006). The idea of a multiple centre for kinship is an important distinction because it dissipates the idea of hybridity or in-between-ness that is often used to define Metis peoples, who are not in-between anything, but are plural peoples who autonomously self-define themselves through interrelationships of kinship (Macdougall, 2006). Together, miyo-wîcêhtowin and wâhkôtowin were intended to orient the bonds of relationship “in part, to consist of mutual ongoing caring and sharing arrangements,” such as those that exist between family (p. 15). The nêhiyawêwin concept of Miskâsowin also identifies a necessary process in relocating a specific nêhiyaw ethical goodness. In establishing ‘good relations’ and countering colonial ‘myths’ of Indigenous origins on iyiniwi-ministik, Elders state that miskâsowin or the restoration of “a positive sense of origin and belonging” among Indigenous peoples is necessary (Cardinal & 148 Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 22). This process has also been described as akin to finding “one’s self” or finding “one’s centre” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000). This concept should not be equated with the English idea of ‘finding one’s self’ or as a type of ‘self-discovery’ as several knowledgeable Cree language speakers are adamant that a ‘self-discovery’ concept does not exist in the Cree language (personal communication, Ray Fox; Stan Wilson; Mary Cardinal Collins, Johnjames Boychiets Spence, and Barry Ahenakew, January 11, 2019).52 Instead, miskâsowin is about finding belonging or knowing one’s place within the circle. An alternative translation of Miskâsowin is that it involves finding a “wholistic strength” (personal communication , Norman Martell, January 11, 2019). The most closely related concept in Cree would be ‘e-wansihkik’ or ‘being lost; being confused about life/culture’ (personal communication, Mary Cardinal Collins, January 11, 2019). The idea of an abstracted self that one can lose is not an idea that resonates with the Cree language or life-ways from the perspective of certain fluent speakers, many of whom are respected Elders and knowledge-keepers. Based on the interpretation of miskâsowin as meaning “to find one’s centre,” this is further articulated as a process of “learning to relate” (Baker, 2016, p. ii). This relationality is to the “worldviews and identities that connect us in multiple ways with the dynamic, living, patterns of nature” and occurs through a “slow pedagogy of relations” involving “ceremony, story, land, and language” (p. ii). In terms of one’s relationship with one’s self, learning to relate in this way leads to an orientation of the self with “a deeper sense of humility and reverence for 52 Please note that these individuals responded to my request in the public group on Facebook, Nêhiyawêwin (Cree) Word/Phrase of the Day, for fluent Cree speakers to share their views on the meaning of ‘miskasowin.’ I was fortunate to receive responses from and observe a conversation among a a number of respected Elders and knowledge-keepers, such as Mary Cardinal Collins and Barry Ahenakew. 149 life.” This relationality also enables one to cast off the internalization of “realities” created by colonial narratives and ideologies that are continuously seeking “to diminish and weaken the First Nations’ sense of origin and belonging to ‘the Peoples’ Island’” (Kolopenuk, 2020, p. 22). So miskâsowin is “a way for Indigenous peoples to re/orient and empower themselves among their relations” that creates strength. This concept seems to encapsulate both a process of desubjectification or a sloughing off the colonial subject position of Indigenous peoples, as well as a return to Indigenous ways of relating through a turn inward. A key aspect of this concept is the centrality of the body to realizing miskâsowin in that this process also denotes connecting with the “relationally generative” capacity of the body to know and co-create realities (p. 6). Similar to the Anishinaabe, whose word for themselves, Anishinaabe, translates into “good man” (Borrows, 2008, p. 10), the Cree idea of 'goodness' is always grounded and within reach of ordinary people and infuses all aspects of Cree life. There is no distance between the superheroes and heroes of Cree stories and ordinary beings. Recognition of good and great feats are not presumed to elevate someone to an unreachable place of greatness, instead all that is good remains grounded. It is not only that all life is grounded, it is that they inhabit the same ground. Countless Cree stories tell that the mythical and original beings that prepared the world for 'mortal' life have not left, they are still here, having heroically "transformed themselves into stars, plants and animals" (Cuthand, 1988, p. 190). Cree oral history does not narrate distance between spiritual, philosophical and moral history (Highway, 2003), but instead forges a "strong" relationship between Cree oral histories, stories and society (Cuthand, 1988, p. 195). In these stories, 'superheroes' struggle with forces of good and evil, but these battles are for everyone—"a preparation for future generations who may get to live in an ideal world where only good remains" (p. 190). Other stories of more recent 150 history or what is called acimowin53 tell about the 'war heroes' or the "old warriors" who acted as "guardians of our heritage and lifestyle," whose stories are also of struggle: "It was they who objected when the school officials cut the braids of children whose families had maintained their traditions" (p. 189). While the ideas of ‘good and bad’ are evident in these narratives, it seems that these stories are always oriented to balance and harmony rather than dichotomous ‘sides’ winning out over each other. Trickster stories, common to many Indigenous sacred philosophies, are a story form that focuses on transformative struggle oriented towards balance. Hundreds of unpublished stories of the Cree trickster figure, Wīsahkēcahk, exist (Cuthand, 1988), and with many different versions of the same story circulating in Cree societies (Halfe, 2006). These types of stories are called âtayôhkêwina.54 wîsahkêcahk is a demigod whose origin predates humanity, and who is often recognized as "recreating the world after the flood" (Cuthand, 1988, p. 191). This being is both human, all too human, in terms of being susceptible to "the negative aspects of "humanness," such as vanity, greed, selfishness, and foolishness" and is also “like a powerful spiritual being” because they/s/he exercises "the ability to do good things for others" (Archibald, 2008, p. 5). The trickster has also been called "the core of Indian culture" (Archibald, 2008, citing Tomson Highway, p. 7), which again emphasizes the importance of relationality to Indigenous ethics. From a Dakota worldview, revitalizing the “trickster” figure and the body of 53 Reder defines âcimowin (plural âcimowina) as ‘autobiographical storytelling’ in that it is an account of daily life or a "story about oneself" or “their own life stories” Although distinct from âtayôhkêwina, this story form still blended the ‘supernatural’ with the factual world. (Reder, 2007, p. 7). 54 âtayôhkêwina are described as “Cree sacred stories, the stories of the trickster ‘the culture hero’” (Reder, 2007, p.) 151 stories about this character has been central to understanding one’s place in a nation and how to be Dakota (Yazzie & Estes, 2016, p. 12). The trickster stories are also interrelated and tied to their contexts. A single wîsahkêcahk story would contain only a partial account of Cree social life. There is reason to believe that this interrelatedness of stories is international. Or that the stories of one nation, e.g. the Crees, is connected to the stories of Indigenous peoples from other nations. For example, the ending of at least one Blackfoot Creation story of their trickster, Napi, ends with the acknowledgement that this is where the Cree story of their trickster begins: "This is as far as the Blackfeet followed the Old Man. The Crees know what he did further north'' (Ladner, 2003, p. 133). Most significantly, the stories of wîsahkêcahk can only be understood within their contexts and with the understanding that they have different ‘foci’ in terms of relating to social boundaries—sometimes the stories are about expanding or enlarging these boundaries, reinforcing limits, challenging the content of social phenomena or pointing out inherent and internal contradictions in social life (Innes, 2013, p. 29). It seems this non-binary, shape-shifting creature sits at the intersections of in/humanity-super/subhumanness to embody the very act of relating and the constant potential of transformation necessary to maintain balance. While the revitalization of “Indigenous philosophies of relationality” are increasingly being emphasized as integral “source[s] of direction for environmental, social, and political change” (Starblanket & Stark, 2018, p. 175), these arguably can only be emancipatory if they are attuned to “interdependencies with one another and the world we live in” (p. 176). This means the value of Indigenous theories of relationality lie both in their capacity to “dissolve the boundaries imposed by Western discursive, social, and political orders” and to avoid “overlook[ing] or reproduc[ing] oppressive power dynamics within Indigenous communities” (p. 152 177-178). So not only is the recognition of embeddedness in interdependent relationships accurate, but it is necessary to overcome multiple interlocking and intersecting boundaries that keep oppressive relations in place. In sum, to regard one’s relationship to land as spiritual is akin to accepting that the source of our ultimate contexts are both deeply knowable and unknowable. But the inherent unknowability can leave ethical space for infusing knowledge with a direction based on what is deemed valuable at a particular juncture. This uncertain and unknowable space is perhaps the key to mitigating power relations in every context in which we find ourselves, because it is a space of ethical relationality where life is able to recreate itself anew. Making use of this space is an exercise of autonomy that is not about resistance nor rejection but is about choosing the direction in which one will go based on what is deemed to be most valuable based on its ground. To a large extent, this valuing has not been represented solely as ‘values’ in written articulations of Indigenous ethics, but as broader ways of relating. 4.5 Locating Cree Values In this section, I would like to briefly consider the representation of wholism as constituting a set of values. While I’ve attempted to show how a wholistic ethics is a process of valuing based on our relational orientation to intersecting sites of context and knowledge, we still often use the English shorthand of ‘values’ to represent Indigenous ethics and this holds true for a wholistic ethics. I believe that Indigenous values tend to carve out transformative spaces of ethical representation and recognition through the conceptual indeterminacy of how ‘values’ are defined 153 in the Western tradition.55 This mode of theorizing is not simply playing word games but involves bringing in wholistic reference points by which to understand ‘values’ and by association, ethics. How a Cree doctrine and other concepts are translated into English impacts the nature of their ethical importance. For instance, wâhkôtowin, which I have presented as a ‘doctrine’ and a mode of relating, is also represented as both a ‘natural law’ and as ‘values’ or ‘virtues.’ The translation of wâhkôtowin as ‘values’ raises the question of whether such a translation undermines the significance of its place within a Cree knowledge system (Napoleon, 2014). In addition, when ‘translation’ of Cree concepts into English is being performed, it seems that certain English words are also simultaneously being expanded to more precisely represent the nature of wholistic Cree meanings. This process is evident with the word ‘law.’ Plains Indigenous Elders interviewed for the development of a Cree culture and language curriculum in Alberta (2005) first broaden the meaning of the English term ‘law’ to include ‘traditional wisdom,’ and then expand further on what they mean by ‘law’: The “laws” that govern life are not laws in the literal and mechanistic sense. They are perspectives that can help young people to orient themselves positively as Aboriginal people while establishing or strengthening their personal identities. They are perspectives that enable Aboriginal people to live with integrity, regardless of the environment or circumstances in which they find themselves. Alberta Education, 2005: 2. Here, it seems that ‘laws’ have an inherent wholistic orientation with contexts that is also ethical. While these laws have an unchanging quality, they are still applicable across multiple contexts. 55 For an excellent analysis of how Indigenous concepts are revitalized through the indeterminacy of Western concepts see Rifkin, 2010; and for a recent identification of this mode of theorizing within Indigenous critical theory see Snelgrove, 2019. This method of theorizing is also part of a broader research direction commonly called ‘Indigenist’ that calls for “setting new directions for the priorities, policies, and practices of research for, by and with Maori [and other Indigenous peoples]” (Smith, 2010, p. 298). 154 Another definition of Cree laws provided by Elder Wes Fineday from Regina56 (Saskatchewan) situates these laws more specifically as the “parameters of acceptable behaviour within each relationship” that indicate how “to survive with integrity” (p. 3). These definitions suggest that Cree ‘laws’ are both relational and autonomous in terms of being integrally related to context, but still maintaining an autonomous integrity as they move in relationship with contexts. Put another way, “Indigenous law grows from a place, but it cannot always be contained by that place, at least in some of its manifestations” (Borrows, 2019, p. 16) A nêhiyawêwin word representing ‘law’ is wiyinikêwina which refers to “an act similar to a type of weaving,” but this meaning of law is stated in conjunction with manitow or Creator, so that these laws are manitow wiyinikêwina or Creator’s Laws or the laws of Creation. (McAdam, 2015, p. 38). The Creator’s laws are wholistic in two senses: “The weaving describes all of creation as bound together, having been given laws” and also that “manitow wiyinikêwina are said to have four parts: human laws, earth laws, spiritual laws, and animal laws (plants and water are included)” (p. 38). At one time, the manitow wiyinikêwina “guided and directed” the everyday actions and special events of nêhiyawak (p. 39), with these laws still known and practiced by knowledge-holders who have retained them through their knowledge of oral tradition and natural contexts or ‘land’ (p. 41). There are also wholistic consequences for breaking laws, with a distinction made between breaking laws against human beings (pâstâmowin) and against all of Creation (ohcinêmowin) (p. 39). Those who seek knowledge of these laws must first wholistically prepare themselves to properly understand these laws following nêhiyaw protocols. In the case of the ‘spiritual’ laws of manitow wiyinikêwina, these cannot be written down. 56 This is the location provided for Elder Wes Fineday in the Alberta curriculum document. 155 There seems also to be a risk of misrepresentation in using the single term ‘law’ rather than ‘natural law’ to refer to some types of Cree laws, which is further complicated by the fact that the word ‘natural’ has a different meaning when applied to Cree knowledges as opposed to Western knowledges. Using the single term ‘law’ absent its qualifier ‘natural,’ risks perpetuating a full decontextualization. In other words, the linguistic separation of these laws from their source effectively separates them from the deep, intergenerational valuing of ‘nature.’ The significance of ‘nature’ as the proximal source of these laws is underlined by Cree Elders “The natural world has its own laws that must be respected if people are going to be sustained by it…Even today, it is necessary to live with the laws of nature and to feel a part of it” (Alberta Education, 2005, p. 5). The laws of nature are akin to the idea of manitow wiyinikêwina (Creator’s laws) in that they include responsibilities to all ‘natural’ living, orders of Creation. But the word ‘natural’ also has an additional meaning when applied to Cree knowledges. The description of Cree laws as ‘natural’ underscores not only their grounding in ecology or land, but the high regard in which they must be held; because to be ‘natural’ as opposed to ‘human’ laws means they come from “higher orders of life within the nêhiyaw cosmology” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 81). Since humans are at the bottom of Creation’s life forms, because we are the most dependent on other forms of life, then to follow natural law is to be accountable to all these other beings with greater intelligence and life-giving power than us. This use of the English term ‘nature’ by Cree people can be traced back to the writings of Ahenakew from almost a century earlier. If you recall, Ahenakew (1923;1973) notes that during the first world war, the Old Men advised younger Cree men against enlisting, because they thought "it seemed against nature to them that an Indian should go to fight in a distant land and perhaps lay his body to mingle with earth that was not ours" (p. 82 [emphasis added]). Implicit in 156 this idea of ‘nature’ is that one’s placement on the earth was decided, again by a higher unknown order or Creation, and so one’s being is ‘naturally’ tied to its place. To go against nature is to transgress a higher order of Creation that is yet grounded in an understanding of one’s connection to a specific ecological order. Your responsibilities are tied to taking care of the land in which you are emplaced, and when you fail to do this you are transgressing nature itself. Within Western philosophy, 'naturalism' tends to be regarded as an orientation towards discovering 'ahistorical causal laws.' This approach of 'naturalization' when applied to society led to a profoundly harmful 'scientism' that mistook as 'natural' what was historically contingent (Bevir & Blakely, 2018, p. 434 citing Foucault, 1977; 1988). For example, "Foucault (1977, 1988), thus, worked for much of his life to show that modern institutions like the asylum, hospital, school, and prison were the result of particular cultural histories and not inescapable features of human political life" (p. 434). Today an 'anti-naturalist' or social scientific view attempts to ground values in "the particular web of beliefs, the relevant inherited traditions, and the process of reasoning employed by creative agents within context" (p. 428). This means that ethical systems are interrelated, contestable, rooted in context and contingent on one's socio-historical meanings. Most significantly, expressions of the good life are plural and "can be challenged by a rival set of contingent meanings" (p. 430). While there is a recognition that values have an "objective" type of realness to them or that values are "independent of [individual human] preference, inclination or desire (Meijer, 2017, p. 987 citing Taylor and Mandelbaum), the source of this objectivity is still debated in western moral philosophy. This 'objectiveness' is variously theorized as rooted in human experience and interiority versus originating from what is “experienced as emanating from "outside" us, and as being directed against us” (Meijer, 2017, p. 987). While there is an 157 understanding that ethics arises from a “metaethical view” based on “extrapolat[ing] claims about metaphysical reality (ontology) from facts about human reality (phenomenology),” the ‘metaphysical’ aspect of this ethics is still regarded as ‘non-naturalist’ (p. 984-985 citing Taylor, 2007). So while this Western understanding of values addresses the 'false dichotomy' that formerly existed whereby values were "conceived of either as an objective science or else as a relativistic, subjective phenomenon" (Bevir & Blakely, 2018, p. 428), this connection to context fails to grasp that social contexts may actually be or should be based on a deeper understanding of ‘nature.’ Because of its wholistic orientation, Cree knowledges interject metaphysics into the constitution of material contexts with their definition of ‘nature,’ while the Western definition cannot. When Indigenous knowledge-holders use the word ‘natural,’ they are referring to ecological contexts that are deeply ‘historical’ in that they are based on a millennia of empirical evidence. This is a ‘natural’ history in that it is tied to a natural landscape, but one that narrates the physical, social and spiritual movement of life across a landscape (Highway, 2003). The context is ‘natural’ because it is "not an imagined, artificial context of inquiry or an imagined "cosmological order;" rather, "it is the result of millennia of field observations and direct experiences" of a people with Creation as it is defined by an immediate ecosystem" (Ladner, 2003, p. 128). This broad contextual scope when applied to knowledge production/gathering enables "those who move within it to discover everything about the world that they can discover" (Ladner, 2003, citing Henderson, p. 135) and includes epistemological methods that are wholistic, or based on “processes of inward journeying, reflection, dreams, and visions, and through individual and collective experiences in the natural world" (p. 135). These 158 epistemological methods do not conform to typical ways of knowing through only sensory perception of material contexts. In other words, “nature and the natural order are the basic referents when thinking of power, justice, and social relations”—unlike their western philosophical counterparts that ultimately still regard an ‘anti-naturalist’ stance or a certain “philosophical distance from the natural world” as structurally necessary (Alfred, 2005, p. 30). But more significantly the limits of what is ‘natural’ by western definitions also forecloses the possibility of accepting that there may be an unknowable metaphysical aspect to all contexts or even non-metaphysical aspects that we still do not know very much about. This means that so-called social scientific views cannot be based on contexts that are partially based on spiritual laws of nature that are rooted in a universal intelligence that humans can only experience, but not know. This Cree orientation suggests a type of ‘universalism’ that is not “objectively grounded in a universal framework” as per Kantian ‘rational’ ethical action (Bevir & Blakely, 2018, p. 429), but that also is not solely contingent on its historical and contemporary context-based meanings so that it becomes simply another contribution to a “sociology of values” (p. 434). This is all to say that the way the concept of ‘law’ is used in Cree contexts does not fit neatly into Western understandings and its relation to ethics because of a series of philosophical differences concerning the nature of the concept ‘nature.’ Going back to Cree and Indigenous language use concerning the validation of knowledge, conceptual variation also exists in English translations with the precise role that values play in reanimating Indigenous modes of relating at the intersection of context and knowledge. By one account, reclaiming a context is akin to reclaiming certain values. For example, there is a sense that “Some of our people have relearned our ways, but have not necessarily reclaimed the pre-colonial Indigenous context within which those traditions 159 operated” (Simpson, L, 2008, p. 17 [emphasis added]). By this account, this necessary ‘context’ consists of certain values, identified in this case as a “strong ethic of respect for individuals” and “an equally strong ethic of non-interference” (p. 17). The sense here is that Indigenous values depend on context rather than solely on human action. I believe this conceptual description underscores both the living and natural contextuality of Cree and Indigenous values. Another approach has been to separate context and values so that values form a theoretical framework that guides Indigenous knowledge production across various contexts. For example, the framework of values identified for storywork or "for making meaning from stories and for using them in educational contexts" consists of: respect, responsibility, reciprocity, reverence, wholism, interrelatedness, and synergy (Archibald, 2008, p. 1). The ultimate point of ensuring contexts adhere to these values seems to be to ensure a wholistically progenerative, educational context where stories "take on their own life" and "become the teacher" (p. 1). Here wholism is one aspect of a larger framework for interpreting Indigenous knowledges in proper relationship with their contexts. Yet, Archibald also positions the capacity to discern ‘balance and harmony’ in a story as dependent on a wholistic understanding of life (p. 10). This means that all the other values in her framework are encapsulated into the concept of wholism because: “Only when our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits work together do we truly have Indigenous education” (Archibald, 2008, p. 12.). In her particular context, Archibald was trying to ‘balance’ community-based oral traditions with academic, written representations of them. In order to do this, she had to stop thinking of orality and literacy as dichotomous categories, as well as Indigenous and Western as dichotomous. This dichotomy was not deconstructed by ‘fitting’ Indigenous stories into western frameworks or proving the ‘value’ of Indigenous stories through these frameworks by illustrating 160 the presence of equal, robust ‘thought’ in Indigenous oral traditions when compared to literate traditions. Instead, Archibald “had to read and hear the voices of First Nations/Indigenous peoples and find the theories embedded in their stories” (p. 16). This means being conscious of how “the stories we already know” have been changed and consciously choosing the story we will tell next. Story is a means to change one's "understandings of life and living" because it can enable one to recognize and relate differently (Donald, 2019, p. 1-2). But not every experience is a story and neither can we “make up stories that suit our interests and desires and expect people to follow them enthusiastically” (Donald, p. 11). In effect, Indigenous ‘values’ open up the autonomous space of relationality for regenerating life across multiple contexts, enabling consideration of which stories will best serve the collective whole at that given time and space. While varying and distinct contexts exist among Indigenous peoples, the “wholistic circle,” arguably Indigenous wholistic values carry the “common goal” of “mutual balance and harmony among animals, people, elements of nature, and the Spirit World” (p. 11) across such contexts. Certain cultural practices are regarded as ‘essential’ to achieving wholistic balance and harmony, and these include certain “ways of acquiring knowledge and codes of behaviour,” with Indigenous storytelling as one of these practices (p. 11). In short, “Stories have the power to make our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits work together” (p. 12). Despite whether values are deemed to be part of a context or are situated as part of a framework to guide knowledge production and action in a context, it seems that values are an important placeholder for an integral aspect of a process of relating with contexts in a regenerative way. Another approach similar to Archibald's is to position values or virtues as part of a theoretical framework for understanding stories, but to orient this framework of values within a wholistic principle. Similar to the Cree orientation of life-ways, the Anishinaabe understanding is 161 that the land taught our ancestors how to live in harmony—and they call this process "the land's directions" or "aki-noomaugaewin" p. 5. Here, wholism is positioned as a pre-figurative principle by which to value all life or all values must be situated within an overarching understanding "to live in harmony with the world and within one's being" (Borrows, 2019, p. 5). From the land’s directions, we receive the "gifts" of the Seven Grandmother / Grandfather Teachings: love, truth, bravery, humility, wisdom, honesty and respect. Similarly, Cree worldviews contain a corresponding belief that ‘values’ (as well as laws, principles and mores) are “metaphysical” gifts that arise from one’s relationship with Creation and are intended to “guide or regulate the peoples' conduct in all their many and varied relationships” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 10-11). While the so-called 'authentic' origin of the articulation of the Anishinaabe Seven Grandmother/Grandfather teachings has been debated, Borrows argues that relocating them in 'old' or precolonial traditions is not necessary because Indigenous law is itself "a living and dynamic force" that cannot be and should not be "tethered to what is regarded as being integral to aboriginal communities prior to European contact or sovereignty" (Borrows, 2019, p. 15). Instead, given their broad usage and application by Anishinaabe peoples, these Seven Grandfather Teachings can be regarded as "current expressions of Indigenous authority in the modern world" (p. 15). A vital aspect of orienting these virtues in a wholistic principle is that it supports interpretive nuance guided by a wholistic orientation to context, thus avoiding "Simple binaries, dichotomies, and either-or categories" (p. 28). For example, the gift of 'love' must be "exercised in ways that are attentive to the full spectrum of concerns and protections expected in all areas of legal life" (p. 28). To put it more bluntly "Appeals to love must always be contextual" (p. 28). Yet, again ‘life’ is identified as the autonomous element that guides the application of this value, 162 because one must consider how "its application is liberating and enhances agency" (p. 28). This means that love as a value cannot prescribe ‘objective’ ethical action or, ultimately, the wholistic relationality of love and law that exists across multiple spheres of life is "concurrently discrete, separate, distinct, related, parallel, corresponding, and cross-cutting" (p. 32). In other words, the prefigurative value of life itself, assessed from wholistic contexts, is what constitutes ethical action, and is what must guide our application of 'values' or ‘laws.’ It seems that a Cree and Indigenous wholistic ethics cannot be fully represented by the singular idea of values, but that the identification of values serve an important function in expressing wholism. Perhaps this is because wholism, like the interrelated, interdependent and fluid processes it represents is simultaneously a context, knowledge system and paradigm that is both autonomous and relational. Its fluid and non-linear nature of approaching reality “with no segmentation, differentiation or fractionalization among the various elements, structures or functions within that circle” (p. 140) means that its ‘order’ is a constant interrelated ‘flux’ or movement, with living structures continuously animated by action and processes. This complexity may explain why separating Indigenous knowledges from their ecological contexts is often described as problematic because it changes the mode of relating that underpins them (Watts, 2013; Todd, 2016). Perhaps wholism is best represented as a general principle that assesses value based on the regeneration of our personal and collective lives situated within our living, natural and real contexts. This type of principle has been articulated as: "to live in harmony with the world and within one's being" (Borrows, 2019, p. 5). This principle leads us back to okawimawaskiy and the need to remain centred in the land’s four directions from which we receive four gifts “the 163 gifts of the spirit, physical body, emotions and mind—and where we need to find balance within these four realms” (Lee, 2006, p. 2). 4.6 Irreconcilable Values One last element of the way values are defined that bears discussion is the idea that when comparing life-worlds or ontologies, what a society or People attributes the highest value or worth to—forms the pivotal core of irreconcilability or incommensurability among life-ways or life-orders situated within their contexts. Put another way, people adopt varying attributes of worthiness and empirical reference points as normative principles to construct their systems of beliefs (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999). These different frames of reference and normative principles are then applied to justify action. Various ‘common worlds’ or systems of belief can be constructed from which individuals make sense of their actions.57 We come to understand these different ethical justifications precisely because they form the basis of conflicting intersubjective relations among Peoples. Disputes are then ‘solved’ in three ways: first, by way of a “reality test”, whereby a given dispute is regarded as being caused by the competing realities created by these different worlds so that the only way to resolve it is to agree on which worldly reality will take precedence in that given scenario; second, disputes can be resolved by way of a “compromise” whereby people agree, but for different reasons that correspond to their respective worldviews; and finally, the third way of resolving a dispute, which is not really a resolution at all, is merely an agreement to disagree or to ‘just drop the disagreement’ because no common ground or equivalencies in worldly understandings can be found. This last option typically involves ‘holding one’s tongue’ 57 These include: The World of Inspiration; The Domestic World; The World of Renown; and The Civic World; The Market World and the Industrial World. 164 and choosing “not to see or, at least not to unveil, what is going wrong” (p. 375), which is supposedly necessary because “without this capacity ordinary human relationships would simply be impossible” (p. 375). On this understanding of ethics, the systems of beliefs that best encapsulate the normative principles that correspond the most closely to experiences in a given context seem to be the most plausible and robust moral responses to life. For example, with respect to global politics, competing meanings of health have been construed as arising from different systems of values (Hanrieder, 2016). Four “orders of worth” or “moral narratives” are identified based on “ideas about moral worth and deficiency” from deeper bodies of knowledge. These include “the order of survival, the order of fairness, the order of production, and the order of spirit” (p. 402). These orders each correspond to a particular political identity, based on different understandings of communities composed “of species, of liberals, of bodies and of souls,” which respectively produce the “common goods of survival, fairness, production, and spirit– and provides different criteria for distinguishing a virtuous sacrifice from a selfish pleasure” (p. 410). These orders overlap in the real word of shared co-existence to compete and conflict with one another. Arguably, they are irreducible to one another. For example, an “order of spirit” based on “the ideals of wholeness and of personhood and the vision of a community of souls” is antithetical to an “order of production” based on the “disintegration of human beings into quantities of functionalities, or healthy life years” (p. 410). Neither of these ‘orders’ are ‘right’ nor ‘wrong,’ each simply ascribes to a different ‘higher common good” (p. 390). In terms of determining ‘ethical’ action, all that remains to be done is to negotiate which vision of a common good will direct our action. 165 The fields of business and medical bioethics also echo these efforts to bring indigenous ‘ethics’ into conversation with their disciplines. In business, a ‘relational ethic’ is being introduced in ethics education that purports “to shed the blinders of normative myopia and recognize a totality of relationships not only among humans but also relative to the Earth - a relational ethic - through which we are morally formed” (Verbos et al, 2014, p. 4-5). One source used to teach this relationality and how to maintain good relations is that of the Anishinaabe ‘Seven Grandfather Teachings.’ This relationality is intended to counter the “instrumental economically oriented logic” of business. This logic is described as “a toxic combination of rugged individualism, market fundamentalism, and out of control materialism” (p. 5), the effect of which is that “people forget, deny, or diminish the relevance that we are interrelated and exist in communities with each other and with Mother Earth” (p. 5). In medical bioethics, the ‘moral educations’ of Indigenous and Greek teachings are being compared. Again the ‘seven gifts or teachings of the Grandfathers, spiritual beings in Ojibway oral tradition” are being drawn upon, and then compared to European virtue ethics or “moral virtues as they have been studied and taught in the European tradition of ethics scholarship, from the age of Plato and Aristotle to the present,” as a basis for a new, culturally appropriate framework for the bioethical medical care of Indigenous patients (Kotalik & Martin, 2016, p. 40). The language of ethics virtues and the seven grandfather teachings are deemed to be linguistically and substantively similar. For instance, both systems of ethics have been passed along by oral traditions and mandate similar, yet non-prescriptive virtues as necessary for ‘living a good life.’ In the case of the Ojiibwa /Anishnaabe gifts, each “provides the capacity or power to be a person of a certain kind, a good person who possesses a certain excellence. In this way, 166 gifts are very much like virtues, which do not instruct us how to think or how to act, but provide a disposition to do what is good” (p. 40). Of course, there are many obstacles to including Indigenous values or even a seemingly wholistic relational ethic into such fields. The idea of ‘negotiation’ seems to romanticize the extent to which other ‘competing’ systems of thought are willing or able to discuss or deliberate the ethics or values arising from other traditions. With respect to business, there is “a tendency to dismiss a relational ethic as either too simplistic, romantic, or, paradoxically, too complex for the speed of business today” Verbos et al, 2014, p. 7). The distillation of these ethics also risks leaving behind the methodology by which one learns these ethics, such as storytelling, which often provides “context” and “a complex, meaningful framing” (Kotalik & Martin, 2016, p. 40). The extent to which a largely decontextualized ‘ethical’ frame can capture “complexity, ambiguity and emotional essences” remains to be determined. One identified step in this direction is to call on “Aboriginal elders, healers, and others who are bearers of the tradition” to accompany patients and work collaboratively with bioethicists (p. 42). Finally, we are still left with the problem of what to do when seemingly irreducible elements of these worlds are deemed to be incommensurate with one another. In the articulation of plural values, Western ontological constructions of the self are still being valued over other constructions. Theories of how the self is formed typically start with some source or sources of the human self, and the nature of these sources leads to locating the human self within a certain social position and structure. These sources are typically articulated in comparison to non-human others. In other words, the sources of humanness are found in certain features, capacities or gifts that differentiate us from animals. For example, dominant Western views of the self tend to be rooted in the idea that only humans have the capacity for 167 self-consciousness (Hegel) or the singular capacity to reason (Kant). Contrary to these traditional Western sources of the human self, most Indigenous knowledges locate humanity in a wholistic understanding of Creation. If we approach valuing in a wholistic way, arguably we begin to see that still circulating beneath seemingly ‘neutral’ or plural orders of worth are Western hierarchical ontologies that privilege the human mind as the pinnacle of ‘consciousness’ and inferiorize all other life forms, with some life not regarded as ‘life’ at all (Tinker, 2004). In addition, a ‘spiritual’ domain of the self is not uniformly recognized within Western ontologies. Despite the fact that no human epistemology knows or can agree on what ‘consciousness’ is or “whether its qualities are to be identified through a process of scientific study (neurology, psychology, and so on) or through philosophical or theological reflection” (Tinker, 2004, p. 106), there is still an implicit belief in a superior human consciousness based on a cognitive domain or thought. We may respect ‘spirit’ as an order of worth or value, or Indigenous worlds for their unique paradigmatic insights and interesting ‘theory’ into the relationship between knowledge and context, but in the end, ‘spirit’ can be readily devalued in favour of other types of worthiness. Operating from an ontology of interrelatedness, Indigenous peoples do not regard human consciousness as superior to the consciousness of animals or plants—even a rock may have consciousness. In fact, human consciousness is regarded as inferior to all other life forms (Tinker, 2004, p. 106). Rather than disconnected from context, this understanding comes from a deep understanding of the natural world and an understanding of its intricate relationality (Deloria, 1999). So the overarching problem with the idea of plural values that include Indigenous values of ‘spirit’ is that there is still a fundamental orientation that allows decontextualization at certain scales rather than being fully attuned to experience across living 168 contexts. We seem to be calling ‘irreconcilable’ the continued centring of non-wholistic, human-centric views of Western structures and relationships. In terms of positionality, Indigenous views regard humanity as occupying neither the centre of the web of life and since it is cyclical, there is no pinnacle for humans to occupy; instead, humans are but one node among many responsible for sustaining this web. Humanity's position in the web is precarious because, as many Indigenous worldviews teach us, humanity is "the youngest life form on Earth, and the most dependent and the least knowledgeable" (Ladner, 2003, p. 131 citing Henderson). To survive requires a wholistic relationality with the living earth that is ethically oriented towards maintaining the position of humanity in this web: "Traditionally, Aboriginal people studied the behaviour of life forms and the seasons to develop an understanding of the dynamics of a space and the role of each life form within it. They also studied life forms and seasons to create a lifestyle that was harmonious with the local ecosystem. The ecosystem in which they lived was their classroom; the life forms who shared the land were their teachers" (Ladner, 2003, p. 131 citing Henderson). In the articulation of plural values, a Western ontological, decontextualized construction of the self is still being valued over other constructions. If we can convene a council about it, it is not irreconcilable. A wholistic ‘ethical relationality’ is not formed from tolerance for plural values; instead, what is necessary is an understanding of human relationality based on natural, living and real contexts that seeks to find a way for humans to relate with one another and all other life in a way that sustains life. Rather than denying or obscuring the contexts from which ethics arise, contexts are foregrounded as part of a commitment to ethical relationality. I believe this means that ethics are neither the result of the relationship between knowledge and context nor do they drive knowledge production but 169 instead, ethics arise at multi-scalar, intersecting sites of knowledge and context as a dialogue that makes observations, contests, embraces, expresses refusal, and so on. The relationships that result from these dialogues must be those oriented towards the wholistic regeneration of life—such an ethics can aid us in standing with one another on firm ground. Arguably, at the core of Cree life-ways is “neither a set of beliefs nor a set of ethical principles, but a constant dialogue which is accessed and maintained in virtually all action. 4.7 Conclusion In going back to one of the earliest published renderings of a Cree ethics by a nêhiyaw author, we can note that Ahenakew (1923) does not set out any prescriptive nêhiyaw values or norms; instead, he offers us his own lived example and that of other Cree peoples to show how we may produce value in our lives and thereby discern our own direction towards a good life. In other words, Ahenakew does not hand us our Cree ancestors or prescribe how to walk in their footsteps, but so as not to let us walk away emptyhanded, he gives us himself.58 Implicit in his approach is an understanding of ethics as interdependent with a wholistic personal and collective orientation attuned to and in relationship with our contexts that draws from the intergenerational knowledges of Cree relationality with their contexts. In a sense, the contemporary application of these doctrines indicates that the knowledge of Old Keyam continues to live. It seems that to be truly ‘decolonizing,’ the application of Indigenous values requires a wholistic context (Archibald, 2008; Scudeler, 2016). Indigenous values or protocols cannot simply be ‘grafted’ onto existing methodologies and frameworks, instead “Indigenism is the protocol, an all-encompassing embrace of creation: the realms of earth, sky, water, plant, animal, human, spirit, and, most importantly, a profound humility with regards to our position as humans 58 This sentence is adapted from Lee Maracle’s (1992) profound insight about her Grandmother. 170 within that constellation” (Scudelier, 2016, p. 9). We must not selectively decide what aspects of our self-understanding to value, thereby dismissing the wholistic frame from which we must understand ourselves. In situating the source of humanity in the processes of creating and of Creation, there is the problem of an inherent unknowability or indeterminacy in locating their sources. Ultimately, despite the many theories and stories of our origins, the source of humanity is a great mystery in that all of humanity lacks the knowledge or the ability to determine our origins. As such, the best we can do is be attentive to how the whole of life is created and lived all around us or our emergence, while affording respect to the representative sources of life we encounter in our lived experience. So what matters is the capacity to create life anew and to sustain it. The representative sources of life or all of Creation are, empirically speaking, our mothers, the Creator and the land, which must always be afforded respect. But at the same time, all living beings contain the capacity to generate and regenerate life or to transfer an energetic life force from themself to another being. We are all mothers, creators and land or the living context through which life is regenerated. 171 Chapter 5: okâwîmâwaskiy as a Regenerative Word Bundle 5.1 Introduction In this chapter, I focus on the linguistic and narrative resurgence of okâwîmâwaskiy or ‘mother earth’ and their relation to gender and sexual justice. First, I seek to show how okâwîmâwaskiy is an entangled site of Cree narratives of motherhood rooted in relationships of kinship and animacy and the ontological category of gender. Specifically, I look at the debate that has arisen from within Cree resurgent movement over whether ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ is an integral element of our language and narratives or a newly coined word or expression. This debate calls into question the integrity of calling the land our mother or the Cree maternal gendering of the land as our ‘mother.’ Though the debate starts with language, it then leads to a questioning of Cree narratives of okâwîmâwaskiy. While this debate arises from evidentiary grounds rooted in a careful analysis of the Cree language and narratives, I argue that the adoption of an understanding of the land as okâwîmâwaskiy is consistent with Cree wholism because okâwîmâwaskiy is acting as a Cree relational word bundle to restore a wholistic balance within the Cree language and narratives. The Cree language and narratives have undergone a colonial paternalist and patriarchal gendering that is being balanced by the maternal gendering of okâwîmâwaskiy. By restoring the place of our mothers, okâwîmâwaskiy is unweaving colonial heteropatriarchy and enabling the revitalization of multiple Cree genealogies that enable pluri-gendered representations of land. Rather than a balancing of opposite hetero-genders, this wholistic balance enables a ‘coming in’ for people of diverse genders and sexualities. As Alex Wilson (2015) explains, a “coming in” process represents “an act of returning, fully present in ourselves, to resume our place as a valued part of our families, cultures, communities, and lands, 172 in connection with all our relations” (p. 3). By being in relationship with the land as our mother, this maternal gendering leads to the restoration of mothers and an expansive view of Cree mothering as an ethic of care that reorients Cree life-ways to embrace plural genders and sexualities. By way of a chapter road map, first, I set out the debate among Cree men as to whether okâwîmâwaskiy is a word of recent origins or not; secondly, I explain the significance of a ‘bundle’ to Cree knowledge systems; and then, I describe how okâwîmâwaskiy is acting as a relational word bundle to reweave our linguistic and narrative understandings of gender and sexuality. In effect, okâwîmâwaskiy is helping to clear a resurgent path for the wholistic return of our grandmothers, mothers, sisters and two-spirit people59 in the ongoing names and narratives of who we are as Cree peoples. 5.2 The Debate over Okâwîmâwaskiy At one point, a debate about the origins of ‘Mother Earth’ on iyiniwi-ministik60 was raised in the academic literature over whether the term ‘Mother Earth’ had Indigenous origins at all. As its title suggests, the argument of Mother Earth: An American Story (Gill, 1991) was that the concept and narrative of the land as Mother Earth was a wholly American settler story that was then mistakenly attributed to Indigenous peoples on iyiniwi-ministik. This work exemplified an ironic research methodology in that a lack of research or any semblance of credible research into Indigenous oral histories and traditions was the ‘strength’ of its thesis (Deloria, 1998). In effect, Gill based his entire argument on the premise that the concept of ‘Mother Earth’ was 59 For an explanation of how the term ‘Two-Spirit’ fits within Swampy Cree knowledge systems, please see Wilson, 2015. 60 North America 173 wrongly attributed to Indigenous peoples because he could find only two quoted references to Mother Earth by Indigenous peoples in the American ethnographic historical record. The terms that Gill set for his debate over Mother Earth were intended to undermine not only the strength of Indigenous oral narratives outside of his historical record, but to appropriate the entire theoretical and practical basis of ‘mother earth’ narratives for American settlers. The result was that any land-based, Indigenous ethic was now the property of American settlers. As Deloria (1998) wryly points out in his review of the book “Thus Gill sets us straight—whites composed the noblest sentiments previously attributed to Indians” (p. 77). Such an argument is not over Mother Earth at all, but instead is set within settler colonial terms of ‘debate’ that seek to further justify settler claims to Indigenous lands by also stealing the narratives of these lands. Such harmful terms of debate should not be confused with those set by Cree peoples or by other Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars who discuss the location of a Mother Earth figure in their own traditions. The difference with these other studies is that pointing out that Laguna Pueblo life-ways came into being through the thought of their first mother (Gunn Allen, 1992) or that the ancient Greeks conceived of an earth mother goddess called Gaia (Tully, 2018) is that such assertions have the potential to inform and expand collective contemporary life-ways, without the need to appropriate or eliminate the life-ways of Cree and other Indigenous peoples. Another popular origin story of ‘Mother Earth’ is that the concept arose from combining Indigenous and ‘hippie’ ideals during the 1960s social movements. Historian Hugh Dempsey cites the 19-month-long occupation of Alcatraz in late 1969 to June 1971 as a pivotal event in the construction of the term ‘Mother Earth’ and the ‘Whole Earth’ movement (Matthews, 2003). While this may be true, again, such an origin should not be used to undermine the veracity of 174 Indigenous narratives of mother earth figures. In addition, the continued marginalization and superficiality with which ‘mother earth’ is held within the matrix of Western settler colonial political and economic frameworks suggests the relative absence of this idea from Western philosophies and praxis—which is in contrast to most contemporary Indigenous knowledge systems. The terms of debate over okâwîmâwaskiy that have arisen from within Cree knowledge systems are part of a larger ‘Radical Resurgence Project’ that includes Anishnaabeg and other Indigenous peoples on iyiniwi-ministik and beyond. Such a project centres debates “within our own nation-based intelligence systems of grounded normativities” while also functioning within “an expansive, emergent, generative theoretical space that engages the best of the world’s liberatory thinking within the context of grounded normativity” (Simpson, 2018, p. 54). This means any linguistic analysis of okâwîmâwaskiy is not intended to question the veracity of Cree oral narratives and histories—their robustness is not up for debate.61 The Cree debate over okâwîmâwaskiy also refuses to debate on terms that Borrows (2016) calls ‘constitutional originalism’ or a process that seeks to establish ‘authentic’ traditions disconnected from change and life. This means this debate is not about creating ‘sides’ to arrive at a singular, authentic Cree name for the land—again these terms for establishing ‘authenticity’ are set by settler colonial ideology and its insistence that ‘real Indians’ and ‘real Indian’ traditions must predate the arrival of Europeans on iyiniwi-ministik (Brundige, 2004). Shifts in language and narratives are part of the 'everyday' acts of resurgence that can open up alternative political possibilities outside of organized political channels and movements (Starblanket, 2017, p. 33). In effect, resurgence centres both Indigenous resistance and our historical contexts, while 61 For comprehensive research on oral histories and traditions, see Stevenson (now Wheeler), 2000. 175 naming and critiquing colonialism (Simpson, 2018). Consequently, the theoretical space opened up by the terms of the debate over okâwîmâwaskiy has the potential to deepen our understanding of Cree resurgence because it takes seriously different aspects of normative ‘liberatory thinking’ based on how Cree people envision the ground of our normativities. The debate over whether Cree peoples ‘traditionally’ called the land ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ or ‘Mother Earth’ is raised in the context of analyzing the grammar and structure of the Cree language and the frames it offers for making sense of the world (Matthews, 2003, interviewing Stan Cuthand; Goulet, 2008; and Napolean, 2014). By ‘traditionally,’ what is meant is whether this name has origins or a longevity in Cree linguistic traditions; or if the Cree language includes long-standing use of the word ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ to refer to the land. Swampy Cree/Métis scholar Keith Goulet (2008) reflects on his own informal regional study and lived experience with the name, noting Although Cumberland House [in Saskatchewan] was surrounded by the three major Cree dialects of N, TH and Y, I never heard of the term in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s. It was only in the 1980s that I started to hear of its use when it was being talked about with students, some leaders and certain Elders. Gradually into the 1990s, I was hearing of its use in Cree. (2008:11). Cree teacher and Anglican Minister Stan Cuthand from Little Pine (Saskatchewan) corroborates this sentiment. In his lived experience, Cuthand had never heard the phrase ‘Mother Earth’ used by old people to talk about the land or spirituality and had enquired about its usage with his Elders, who also confirmed its absence from Cree vocabulary (Maureen, 2003, p. 4). In addition to such insight, some fluent Cree speakers note that the grammatical structure of the néhiyawêwin word ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ is inconsistent with the Cree language because it is a compound of an animate word ‘okâwîmâw’ or ‘mother’ and an inanimate word ‘askiy’ or ‘earth’ or ‘land’ (Goulet 2008; Napoleon, 2014). Since the Cree language is structured by animacy, or whether a subject is less or more animate, to compound animate and inanimate terms into a 176 single word would have been structurally incorrect. This suggests the word did not arise organically from within the structure of the language or from the worldviews represented by the language. Cree linguist, ceremonialist and philosopher Art Napoleon (2014) theorizes that in terms of philosophical/structural alignment between the term and Cree knowledge systems/language, the greater inconsistency lies not in calling the land ‘mother’ but in the usage of the word ‘askiy:’ Given the close wholistic connection we had with the land and spirit world; and given that trees, plant varieties, rocks, creatures, and many entities immediately born of the land are seen as animate, I would argue that many elders do see the earth as a form of sacred living entity. These views are often reflected in the âtayohkîwina ‘sacred stories’, in the traditional prayers, and in the affectionate way that the land is spoken of by elders and traditionalists. Many nîhiyaw oral narratives describe the landscape as being alive, and ceremonial offerings continue to be required for the taking of medicinal plants, including ones not spoken of in animate terms. Since the term askiy can mean dirt, soil, landmass, or territory, was it even originally used to describe the earth or the world as a whole, or is this an adopted concept? (2014: 40-41). Since other words, such as “wihtaskamihk, which means ‘across the entire land’ to describe the entire continent, and the word akâmaskihk means ‘the land on the other side’ to describe lands across the sea” (p. 41), perhaps Cree words to describe the materiality of land tended to be oriented around the position of the speaker(s) and to whom one was speaking to or about. This analysis of askiy also suggests that speaking in terms of the whole of ‘land’ may have been less relevant to Cree philosophy than speaking in terms of the whole of creation or a living earth that includes all life. While the meaning behind the changing usage of ‘askiy’ is significant, I would like to focus on the implications of calling the land our mother as neologism. Certainly, the creation/adoption of the compounded word ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ can be attributed in part to a general linguistic responsiveness to contemporary contexts and their 177 related discourses and language. But if the inclusion of okâwîmâwaskiy in the Cree language was the result of outside influence, it seems to have now been embraced by not only Cree language speakers but in Cree narrative practices, denoting a more significant place in Cree life-ways. The adoption of this maternalistic relation has been described as negative because it is perceived as a type of ‘pan-Indigenism’ or ‘new age’ belief that ultimately undermines the integrity of Cree knowledge systems (Napoleon, 2014). Specifically, there is a sense that the idea of ‘mother earth’ carries connotations into Cree knowledge systems that represent a maternalism and gendering of the land and spirit that do not quite fit with Cree relationality. While Napoleon (2014) describes a Cree concept of creation based on animate and kinship relations that includes mothers, these relationships are represented as not being about gender, nor is motherhood central to them; instead, rather than the perceived gender or maternalism of the earth, what matters is the aliveness of creation and the deep, genderless, collective respect and wholistic connection with the living earth. This brief, yet compelling, linguistic genealogy of okâwîmâwaskiy raises the question of whether the maternal gendering of the land was an integral element of Cree life-ways. In the next section, I offer an alternative theory to Napoleon’s as to how and why ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ is emplaced within the Cree language and narratives. I seek to show that okâwîmâwaskiy is functioning as a relational word bundle to bring back the narrative presence of our mothers and grandmothers, both in real and spiritual terms in order to restore the power and place of women and two-spirit people in Cree life-ways. In the tradition of Cree narrative irony, this maternal gendering of Cree life-ways is necessary to restore a resurgent pluri-gendered 178 wholistic balance that does not elevate mothers, but situates all gender diverse people on an equal, normative ground. 5.3 A Relational Word Bundle In this section, I describe a ‘bundle,’ its significance to Cree people, and how it functions linguistically, rhetorically and in real life. Then I show how within a context of Cree resurgence, okâwîmâwaskiy is a bundle that weaves together restorative meanings of land, spirit and motherhood in an act of creative, caring continuance that seeks to wholistically restore life. The concept of a ‘bundle’ is integral to Plains Indigenous life. Specific bundles reside in particular locations and nations, such as the Beaver Bundle of the Blackfoot, which “among many other insights, teaches ethical relationality, sacred ecology, and the interconnectivity of life” (Donald, 2019, p. 8). Like Indigenous life-ways such as ceremonies of renewal and oral narratives—“the unbundling of medicine bundles at certain phases of the year” are intended to support the continuity of creation (Youngblood-Henderson, 2000, p. 248, quoting Leroy Little Bear). The material contents of a ‘medicine’ or ‘pipe-stem’ bundle consist of an actual pipe stem and medicines, as well as other material objects that embody and represent its power. A Pipe-stem bundle is a symbol and a practice of the continuance of creation because a bundle is passed physically, philosophically, emotionally and spiritually from one generation to the next. The first carrier of the bundle would have received it from creation (Ahenakew, 1973). The knowledges encapsulated in a bundle are regarded as timeless or as being “for all time; they belong to all ages, to all people” (p. 108). But this ‘timelessness’ is not based on an unchanging account of a universal reality, but rather on a fixed “understanding of the processes of ecological change and ever-changing insights about diverse patterns or styles of flux” (Youngblood-Henderson, 2000, p. 265). This is knowledge of impermanence and inherent 179 change and the need to continuously “create temporary harmonies through alliances and relationships among all forms and forces” to maintain creation and the creative agency of all life (p. 265). Bundles facilitate these processes of creative continuance. While we often talk about the ‘value’ of 'tradition,' this word carries an implicit value of "conformity and propriety" (Gunn Allen, 1992, p. 227) that is often mistaken for its value of continuance. Such an emphasis on conformity overlooks the fact that many 'traditional' stories are about breaching tradition. For example, the ‘traditional’ Yellow Woman stories of the Keres of Laguna, which are women-centred, are frequently about how "the behavior of women, at least at certain times or under certain circumstances, must be improper or noncomformist for the greater good of the whole" (p. 227). Continuity does not entail unchanging tradition, but instead shows that creative change is often necessary. Those who are responsible for a bundle must embody and contribute to this continuance and so are carefully chosen before this trust is placed in them. At one time, carriers of a bundle were required to direct restorative practices, which meant they had a responsibility “to intervene in all inter-tribal disputes, however hazardous” (Mandelbaum, 1940, p. 258-260). Ahenakew (1923;1973) describes these practices as akin "to speak[ing] words of deep thought” to all of creation’s children (p. 108). The obligations of carriers of the red-stone pipe-stem bundle were also ethical and spiritual, requiring courage, mercy, love and ‘reverence towards God’ (p. 108). Another account notes that the keepers of the bundle must have the potential to sustain “obligations of fearlessness, liberality, and equanimity” which meant that one “…could not engage in quarrels however provoked…his conduct had to be exemplary” (Mandelbaum, 1940, p. 258-260). The bundle was not merely a ‘status’ symbol or recognition of the personal virtue of 180 an individual or group, instead a bundle encompassed a real-life role and responsibility based on embodying and living its restorative thought and practice. Within Blackfoot governance, and arguably among all Plains Indigenous nations, bundles are also an integral structuring source for relationships. Bundles both create and maintain the governing order and are regarded as bringing this order to the people. In the case of the Blackfoot The bundles set forth a philosophy, guiding principles, and direction for the Confederacy. Bundles, therefore, provided the framework or structure of governance, and they also provided all leaders and all people with a philosophical and spiritual foundation for a good life. They also provided direction to leadership by operationalizing and demonstrating good decisions and good practices” (Ladner, 2003, p. 142). In practice, all political and social organization emanated from bundles. Bundles provide physical guidance through their processes and functions and metaphysical guidance through abstracted manifestations of education, knowledge and philosophy. Each bundle itself also represented a wholistic balance among autonomous and interrelated powers that accrued from its particular place in creation. The idea of a ‘bundle’ can also be extended to all Indigenous thought and feeling. Youngblood-Henderson (2000) quotes Laguna Pueblo writer, Leslie Silko, to illustrate how Indigenous thought functioned as a ‘single prayer bundle’ before its subsequent ‘entanglement’ with Eurocentric thought. The old instinct had always been to gather the feelings and opinions that were scattered through the village, to gather them like willow twigs and tie them into a single prayer bundle that would bring peace to all of them. But now the feelings were twisted, tangled roots, and all the names for the source of this growth were buried under English words, out of reach. And there would be no peace and the people would have no rest until the entanglement had been unwound to the source. (253) 181 The division and separation created through the imposition of colonial language and ideologies have largely obscured the bundle as a vital source and process of Indigenous governance. The bundle orients life-ways in a cyclical direction, which is quite disorienting for those of us accustomed to thinking and telling stories linearly. This non-linear narrative method not only enables “a broader inclusivity of information” (Brundige, 2004, p. 35), but allows for seemingly contradictory directions to co-exist and to be understood as moving in the same direction. For example, within the context of resurgence, the process of reclaiming and using this bundle means “To speak initially, [Indigenous peoples] have to share Eurocentric thought and discourse with their oppressors; however, to exist with dignity and integrity, they must renounce Eurocentric models and live with the ambiguity of thinking against themselves” (Youngblood-Henderson, 2000, p. 249-250). The process of bundling is thus akin to a series of turns and returns or constant iterations of turns toward, away, inward and outward from multiple knowledge formations and political formations. Reassembling this bundle of thought and feeling has begun with learning to name and resist oppression, injustice and domination by understanding its languages and discourses; and now entails creating new knowledge within the continuum of knowledges that protect against the violent ideologies and praxis that enervate and destroy creation or life. The concept of the ‘bundle’ also exists in the world of language and is used to denote the special nature of some nêhiyawêwin words. The ‘incorporating’ nature of Cree and most other Indigenous languages means that some words are joined with others to create “paraholophrases or relational word bundles,” which are “series of interconnected signs that point to a bundle of meaning” (Gingell & Roy, 2012, p. 36). Cree Métis Elder, author and scholar Maria Campbell 182 explains that a ‘word bundle’ is akin to being “full of treasure” in that it reveals layers of meanings within ‘nêhiyaw itwêwina (the Cree words)’ (Essen, 2018). Generally, learning nêhiyaw itwêwina guides hearers towards the deep roots of “nêhiyaw laws, histories, sacred stories, and ceremonies” or home to “nêhiyânâhk” (Cree territory)” with a word bundle able to carry considerable meaning in relationship with narrative, song, ceremony, protocol and more (p. 71). Some key questions to consider when examining a word bundle are: “What's inside? What are the roots of that word? What is the story? Is there a song in the bundle, a ceremony, a protocol? Where did it come from?” (p. 71). To open a word bundle is to enter a process of orientation within a “collective memory” of place that includes relations with “the land, songs, ceremonies, language, and stories" (p. 72, citing McLeod). Each word bundle carries knowledge of and is connected to the whole of nêhiyaw tâpisinowin (Cree worldview) and has the potential to connect the hearer/reader to this whole. The multiple meanings of an itwêwina bundle are akin to nested layers only readily discernible to an audience with significant ‘background’ understanding of the language and life-ways in which the words are embedded. This would suggest that in many instances only someone fluent in the language and knowledgeable about Cree life-ways would be able to access the multiple layers of meaning. Arguably, Ahenakew’s (1923; 1973) text is filled with Cree word bundles, albeit in English, that are intended to continue the teachings of napêwatsowin or ‘man ways’ in a textual code indiscernible to colonial authorities (Reder, 2010 citing Maria Campbell). Even if today’s reader, Cree or non-Cree, does not fully understand all the meaning carried by a bundle because they lack background understanding, the potentiality of the fuller meaning of the bundle remains for those who can earn its knowledge. 183 So, in many cases, nêhiyawêwin and its word bundles function not only despite their translation, but because written English is used as a means of continuance and protection of the language by applying a distinct Cree linguistic process to English written text. As Reder notes, the effect of the word bundles in Ahenakew’s text is that “Encoded for future generations are instructions on how to be warriors, providers, and protectors in an ever-changing world" (p. 51). Similarly, contemporary nêhiyaw poets, such as Louise Halfe, use Cree relational word bundles to interpolate western language and discourses with those from nêhiyawêwin and nêhiyaw tâpisinowin (Neuhas, 2012). So Cree word bundles are effectively using the English language to revitalize Cree life-ways. A relational word bundle is an effective technique for furthering a wholistic balance among narratives because it can connect linguistic, rhetorical, spiritual and community, kinship-based contexts. This ability to traverse contexts or to resonate simultaneously across multiple contexts has been referred to as intercontextual (Neuhas, 2013, p. 128). This intercontextual capacity points to a Cree narrative structure and process that enables a relational word bundle to both create discourse and embody Indigenous relationships. While a relational word bundle is rooted in Cree linguistic structure, it also forms the ‘narrative grid’ or story structure (Neuhas, 2013, p. 128). Its structure is akin to a spider web where word bundles function as multiple centres radiating outward in relationship to create webs of narrative. The resulting stories are themselves networks of webs rather than disconnected, linear, autonomous narrative fragments of life. This cyclical structure lends itself more readily to drawing linguistically and rhetorically on one’s multiple contexts and connecting these to other knowledge formations, text-based and beyond. nêhiyaw law fully recognizes this living power of words and the need to use words 184 responsibly, because once uttered “the words are outside of you and have a life of their own” (McAdam, 2015, p. 44). It’s important to note that the ‘relational’ aspect of a word bundle refers not only to its layers of interrelated meaning, but to the relations among the teller, audiences and their shared context. While the ability to be 'in relationship with' a story is largely lost when oral stories are written down (Brundige, 2004), a narrative cyclical process of unfolding meaning that is not explicit encourages the likelihood of such a relationship, because each narrative turn requires an internalization through the co-creation of meaning. This relation is one of dialogue, where the narrative process is not about relating a series of events to another, but where the meaning of an event(s) is co-created. In other words, it is a wholistic relationship because it connects the self to the whole of the story, but in a way that enables you to determine how you fit within the whole (Neuhas, 2013). The revitalization of the word bundle as a linguistic technique to navigate worlds is necessary not only to interpolate colonial authority and values, but to effectively guide those of us whose understanding of Cree knowledge systems is limited. The unfolding of meaning is like a gentle hand guiding us back in time into the present to a future of treasures. For generations, colonial education systems blocked this sharing of narratives—“elders were robbed of the necessary linguistic tool to make sense of their grandchildren’s newly learned narrative and to reverse the colonial values and attitudes. Memories were stolen and grandparents were prevented from giving back the memories to those children whose schooling involved years of indoctrination in a monolingual education” (Brundige, 2004, p. 186). Colonial story telling sought to rename and restory Indigenous peoples and lands, and this process has targeted the disappearance and destruction of the names and narratives of our mothers. The tool of a 185 relational word bundle is one way we are reinvigorating our narratives and getting our memories back, especially the memories of our mothers. Words, relationships and stories, like lives, are fragile, but bundles are strong. 5.4 A Mother’s Bundle 5.4.1 What’s inside ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ represents a maternal gendering of Cree animate and kinship relations that seeks to address the imbalance in contemporary Cree life-ways. This maternalism is necessary to counteract the colonial patriarchal gendering that has sought to displace and disappear our mothers from Cree life-ways. In a word okâwîmâwaskiy is carrying backward and forward the bundle of our Cree grandmothers and mothers to restore/restory their place in Cree lives through the Cree language and narrative processes of âtayôhkêwina and âcimowina. By making the presence of our mothers visible again, the animacy or life-force relation of kinship predicated on reciprocal, conscious care is ultimately revitalized. With the emplacement of okâwîmâwaskiy, the Cree linguistic and narrative understandings of our mothers and grandmothers are not only being revitalized but they are being brought into narrative dialogue with story listeners within contemporary contexts. In effect, I believe that the adopted word ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ is part of what Sojourn (2013) calls "narrative medicine" or "maskihkîyâtayôkêwina," which is restorying "towards the attainment of a desired state of being" (p. 176-177). In this case, the desired state of being is the respectful re-emplacement of our mothers within Cree life-ways to restore balance and harmony. The spatial process of emplacement is particularly apt given that a wholistic orienting framework for storywork is being restored. 186 Along this vein, okâwîmâwaskiy may be said to be functioning as a relational word bundle for carrying and connecting meaning and relationships among women, land and life. Goulet (2008) recognizes and affirms the term’s value in this regard: I believe that the concept does have merit. It does bring together some important interconnecting notions. On the critical side, it does bring into focus the degradation and destruction of the environment as well as the historic discrimination and oppression of women. On the positive side, it highlights the nurturing, the connection and protection of the land, life and environment. p. 11 The emplacement of ‘okâwîmâwaskiy’ in the Cree language emphasizes that the Cree language can, does and must change to reflect its contemporary contexts and can be a key tool to help solve contemporary problems and injustice. 5.4.2 The Roots of the Bundle okâwîmâwaskiy is necessary to counteract the violence against mothers created within our contemporary contexts by colonial patriarchal gendering. Colonial practices and ideologies have been used to not only displace Indigenous mothers, but to eliminate the presence of Indigenous mothers and motherhood. Indigenous mothers are disproportionately targeted by systemic, Canadian state-sanctioned, genocidal violence and, for the most part, do not have the needed structural supports to protect themselves or their children. In fact, being a mother may put an Indigenous woman at heightened structural risk of targeted, systemic violence. As of 2010, over 88% of the missing and murdered Indigenous women were mothers and grandmothers (Johnson, 2012, p. 16, citing NWAC, 2010). While this statistic may be explained by the fact that a large proportion of Indigenous women also happen to be mothers—our current socio-political context indicates that only Indigenous mothers leaving violent situations are subjected to the additional systemic risk of governmental removal of their children. 187 In cases of intimate partner violence involving Indigenous women, investigations by child protective services under the charge of a “failure to protect” are quite prevalent—with this body of cases representing “the largest and most often substantiated (78% of cases) child maltreatment category in Canada” (p. 15). The ““failure to protect” concept is one in which assaulted mothers are held accountable by child protective authorities because their children are unintended victims or witnesses to their mother’s experiences of intimate partner violence” (p. 15). These investigations are almost always directed at the child’s mother while perpetrators, typically male, go unnoticed. Such a policy disincentivizes the reporting of violence by mothers and increases the likelihood that mothers and children will be subject to further violence. In addition to such policy, mothers fleeing violence also have to consider the possibility of unsupervised shared custody or losing custody of their children to a violent partner. This violent double bind leads to “isolating and horrific options for any woman to have to contemplate, and are particularly troubling for Indigenous women who experience intersectional oppressions” (p. 18-19). In cases where the removal of children is not subjected to intimate partner violence, mothers are subjected to investigations into what has been called a ‘failure to provide.’ (Johnson, 2012). Based on research in the field of social work, we do know that First Nations children are not over-represented among reports of abuse but are twice as likely to be reported as neglected than non-Indigenous children (Blackstock, 2011). A direct correlation has been drawn among neglect and structural factors linked to the legacy of colonialism, such as poverty, poor housing, and substance misuse (Blackstock, 2011). In effect, mothers are largely losing the right to care for their children due to structural inequities stemming from processes of colonization, such as loss of land, autonomy and livelihood. 188 The colonial charge of ‘neglect’ without any consideration of the colonial production of conditions of structural inequality has long roots. Blaming Indigenous mothers for these conditions has been a primary rationale for Indigenous child removal since the peak of Indian residential schools policy. Since the 1950s, Indigenous children have been removed from homes whereby “social workers who had little or no knowledge about colonization and residential schools often mistook symptoms of systemic discrimination as parental failure” (Blackstock, 2011, p. 188). Historically, provincial and federal government policy has repeatedly utilized neglect as the predominant rational in the bulk of Indigenous child removal cases, with, again, mothers seeking structural support for caring for their children being met instead with state scrutiny as to their fitness to mother their children (Stevenson, 2019). The historical policies of residential schools and the ‘sixties scoop’ with their intention of forced Indigenous child removal are increasingly being analyzed as legal genocide perpetrated by federal and provincial governments (MacDonald, 2019) as is the systemic violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people in Canada (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), 2019). Both of these systemic violences converge at the site of Indigenous motherhood. At one point in time, a Saskatchewan government policy in operation from 1967 to 1977 targeted the children of Indigenous single mothers for adoption. The intent of the ‘Adopt Indian and Métis project’ was to promote the adoption of Indigenous children through highly publicized advertisements of adoptable Indigenous children (Stevenson, 2019). This policy was partly in response to the high proportion of ‘unwed’62 Indigenous mothers in Canada who refused to 62 The discernment of being ‘unwed’ was in keeping with patriarchal and common law definitions, rather than Indigenous concepts of familial commitment and partnership. 189 surrender their children to state care. Often, these mothers and children were part of extensive Indigenous kinship networks that belied Western nuclear family and marriage conventions. The project aggressively promoted the adoption of Indigenous children who were not only immediately adoptable, but those deemed to be “socially free”—which “presumably meant Indigenous children of unwed mothers who were receiving care who might potentially be adopted at some future date” (Stevenson, 2019). The twin rationale for this project was that these mothers would eventually be required to relinquish their children to the care of the state; and, given this reality, adoption was more cost-effective than foster care. From historical times to the present day, the material trauma of practices of colonization continue to be used to undermine Indigenous motherhood. In addition to the material effects of colonization, Cree and Indigenous mothers have had to contend with Western patriarchal ideals and ideologies of motherhood that have targeted all mothers, as well as those colonial ideologies of motherhood particular to Indigenous women. For the most part, patriarchal motherhood operates through the normative ideal and ideology of the ‘good mother’ that seeks to eliminate all diverse types of mothering (O’Reilly, 2014). Such ideologies and images support ‘motherhood’ as a “patriarchal institution to constrain, regulate, and dominate women” (Hallstein et al., 2020, p. 2). This means virtually all mothers are normatively and perpetually situated as “‘bad' mothers in need of societal regulation and correction" (O’Reilly, 2014, p. 3). Ten primary patriarchal ideologies of motherhood that seek to simultaneously justify and exploit the vulnerability of mothers created by this normative ideal are: essentialization, privatization, individualization, naturalization, normalization, idealization, biologicalization, 190 expertization, intensification and the depoliticization of motherhood (O’Reilly, 2014).63 Arguably, all of these techniques have been applied to undermine the diversity of Indigenous mothering. For example, the historical and ongoing justification of ‘neglect’ as the primary basis for the removal of Indigenous children draws on an individualization of parenting, often further applied to mothers, that assigns the work and responsibility of parenting to one person. This technique and ideology of individualization is not only a powerful mechanism of social control, but in the case of Indigenous mothering obscures the visible socio-economic effects of colonization and disregards an Indigenous parenting model that relies heavily on the extended family. In addition to the effects of patriarchal mothering, Indigenous mothers have also been subjected to a 'civilizing' ideology of motherhood. This view of Indigenous mothers is the extension of a broader ‘colonial imagination’ that has regarded all Indigenous peoples as uncivilized and inferior (Brant, 2014). In the past, this ideology "positioned white women as superior mother figures who needed to take charge of Indigenous women and their children," which led to targeted government policies intended to ‘educate’ and ‘civilize’ Indigenous mothers (Anderson, 2016, p. 61). In effect, this civilizing discourse rendered all Indigenous mothers ‘unfit’ to care for their children by virtue of their Indigeneity, justifying the removal of children based on the need to isolate children from their “backward” mothers (Anderson & Lavell-Harvard, 2014). The ‘unfitness’ of Indigenous mothers has played a large role in justifying colonial policies of child removal, such as residential school policy (Rule, 2018) and the Sixties Scoop (Stote, 2012) where removals supposedly occurred for the children’s benefit. Other state policies, 63 Please see O’Reilly, 2014 for definitions and descriptions of these ideologies and techniques. 191 such as forced sterilization also have disproportionately targeted Indigenous women (Stote, 2012; 2015; Palmater, 2014; Rule, 2018). Particularly in the Western provinces of Alberta and BC, ‘negative eugenics’ was practiced by provincial governments through targeted state-building policies that sought to build settler colonial societies by controlling which people were able to reproduce (Stote, 2015). Indigenous women were disproportionately affected under both Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928, which legalized the sterilization of women without their consent, under the guise of being “mentally defective,” (Stote, 2012) and under the Sexual Sterilization Act of BC, which included authorizing a residential school principal, as a student’s legal guardian, to permit the sterilization of any Indigenous student in his ‘care’ (Dhaliwal citing Pegoraro, 2015, p. 162).64 In Saskatchewan, an informal yet systemic practice of ‘negative eugenics’ targeting Indigenous women appears to be ongoing. As of December 2018, 60 Indigenous women have launched a class-action suit against involved physicians, the Saskatchewan Health Authority, the province of Saskatchewan, and the Government of Canada regarded forced sterilizations over the past 20 to 25 years with the most recent coercive sterilization identified as occurring in 2017 (Moran et al., 2018). An external review was conducted for the Saskatoon Health Region, and a report released in 2017 titled “External Review: Tubal Ligation in the Saskatoon Health Region: The Lived Experience of Aboriginal Women” (Boyer and Bartlett, 2017), which prompted the Saskatoon Health Region to ‘apologize’ for its role in coercive sterilizations (Moran et al., 2018). While this review was specific to the Saskatoon Health Region, one of the report’s authors, Yvonne Boyer, has called for a national review of this issue (Moran et al., 2018). 64 While I focus on the harm of this legislation and policy on Indigenous women, it’s important to note that this legislation sits at the intersection of ableism, colonialism, racism and misogyny manifested in the eugenic practise of forced sterilization. 192 Indeed, the ideology of the 'unfitness' of Indigenous mothers continues to subject Indigenous mothers to "a moralizing campaign that attacks the very right of motherhood" (Brant, 2014, p. 19). The long colonial history of intergenerational violence against Indigenous mothers only reinforces this colonial ideology. It’s important to note that whether or not their socio-economic circumstances render them ‘vulnerable’ to violence, the colonial ideology of ‘unfitness’ tends to be used against Indigenous mothers whenever they refuse to act like ‘settler citizens’ (Rule, 2018). Another recent policy example of removing children 'for their own good' from ‘unfit’ Indigenous mothers is found in the practice of removing newborn babies from Indigenous mothers. In 2019, the policy of ‘birth alerts’ or alerting child-welfare authorities that a newborn could be at risk of harm due to their parents’ backgrounds was criticized because it was found to disproportionately affect Indigenous mothers (Stueck, 2019). The harmful effects of this policy were also raised by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019). In B.C., where the practice of birth alerts was discontinued in 2019, the B.C.'s children's advocate noted that supports for mothers and families, such as housing assistance, did not accompany these birth alerts (Steuck, 2019). Corresponding federal government failure to protect First Nations children from maltreatment through inequitable funding of Indigenous child welfare agencies has now been found to be a human rights violation (Blackstock, 2015). The violence against Indigenous mothers must be understood as a constitutive element of colonization (Anderson & Lavell-Harvard, 2014; Brant, 2014, Rule, 2018). But practices of empowered mothering and the exercise of maternal agency can challenge patriarchal ideologies and institutions of motherhood, transforming mothering into a site of political resistance and freedom (Hallstein et al., 2020). Indigenous practices of mothering have been explicitly targeted 193 by colonial violence because empowered Indigenous mothering represents not only ‘difference’ but has long threatened the colonial, patriarchal social order (Gunn Allen, 1992). Overtly and covertly, Indigenous mothering has persisted in the face of the “forces that marginalize, demoralize, and oppress Aboriginal mothering practices" (Anderson & Lavell-Harvard, 2014, p. 19). Rather than operating in lock-step with feminist mothering in direct opposition to patriarchal mothering, the aim of Indigenous mothers has been rather "to reclaim and revitalize the more empowering cultural beliefs, traditions, and practices of our ancestors" (p. 5). This reclamation includes working to stop violence against Indigenous mothers that has been encoded in our language and narratives through colonial patriarchy and its gendered violences. okâwîmâwaskiy is at the nexus of a Cree turn towards restoring the valued place of mothers and mothering because empowered Indigenous mothers are a vital element of revitalizing wholistic structures and sacred philosophies. 5.4.3 The Story Inside the bundle In this section, I turn away from the colonial dimensions of the bundle and the violence inherent in them to shift the focus on the story that okâwîmâwaskiy carries across multiple contexts and time periods for Cree people, which I believe is one of wholistic balance. The emplacement of okâwîmâwaskiy in the Cree language and narratives is intended to deal with the patriarchal, gendered nature of colonial violence that has taken root within Cree life-ways and that is affecting our ideas about the contemporary place of mothers within the nêhiyaw nation. Specifically, I examine the effect of colonial attacks on motherhood that have impacted the Cree language and narratives and the Cree linguistic and narrative resistances to them. This resistance comes in the form of three main theories of gender that impact how we conceive of motherhood: 194 1) gender complementarity/balance; 2) genderlessness; and what I’m calling 3) maternal gendering. Of all these theories, only maternal gendering is able to restore the place of mothers and mothering in a wholistic Cree balance—because it seeks to revitalize the animacy or life-force relation of Cree kinship predicated on reciprocal, conscious care. Language and narratives have been key sites of disappearing our mothers due to the increasing dominance of heteropatriarchy on Cree life, which is then re-presented in the language and narratives. These representations are present within both âtayôhkêwina (sacred stories, including Cree creation stories), and âcimowina (older and more recent Cree histories composed from the autobiographical, shared life stories of Cree narrators). The presence of these patriarchal representations is almost imperceptible due to their functioning largely through the subjugation or burying of Cree modes of re-presenting gender and sexual diversity. It is very difficult to ‘prove’ the presence of a systemic absence particularly with a ‘genderless’ language like Cree that should result in plural gendered or non-gendered representations. Also, since Cree narrative practice is a dynamic process that supports continuity as well as the creative expression of the storyteller, it’s expected that oral narratives will be diverse as they “live, change and grow through continuous retellings” (Sojourn, 2013, p. 3). In the words of the late Cree Elder Maggie Okanee of Turtle Lake: “Do what an Elder tells you and at the same time, develop your own understanding and follow that” (Alberta Education, 2005). Yet, despite this tradition of creative continuity, a male-centric bias is evident. This bias is demonstrated in representations of the Cree trickster figure. A patriarchal norm is evident in the unproblematic, ubiquitous representation of the Cree trickster figure as kistêsinaw or ‘elder brother’ or as a perennial ‘he.’ This is not to deny that âtayôhkêwina or Cree sacred stories often do portray the trickster figure as an elder brother, it is only to say that there is 195 a tendency in translations of Wîsachkêcâhk stories to unproblematically present this masculine representation as the sole or only representation. While stories of wîsahkêcâhk in the Cree language cannot structurally assign a gender beyond a gender-coded, kinship label, because there are no gendered pronouns, it has been noted that English representations of Wîsachkêcâhk are “always found to refer to the hero as a male person, therefore many children today are in fact learning to ascribe a gender bias” to this figure (Brundige, 2004, p. 34). By one account, our ‘elder brother,’ wîsahkêcâhk is described as someone who “calls everyone and everything he meets on his travels “by the formal kin term for ‘my little brother(s)’” (Neuhas, 2013, p. 133-134 citing Wolfart). This representation instills the idea that every living being in the world of âtayôhkêwina is connected through brotherhood. If this is the case, then the presence of our sisters and sisterhood is disappeared from virtually all âtayôhkêwina as the trickster is the central figure in these narratives. The effect of a male-centric spiritual universe effectively disappears other genders and kin from spiritual being. Awareness of this patriarchal turn is only possible because representations exist of wîsahkêcahk that are not solely masculine. A more recent telling of the Cree Creation story of the diver, told by a nêhiyaw narrator, presents wîsahkêcâhk decidedly as a ‘she’ (Barrieres & Gingell, 2011, p. 83, citing Louise Halfe). Other representations of the Cree trickster hero eschew non-anthropomorphic meanings and representations altogether. One account emphasizes the wholistic, ethical direction of Wîsachkêcâhk who “shifts gender, form and space to playfully teach us about ourselves and our connection to the wider universe, land and waters, living things and each other” (Wilson, 2015, p. 2). Another emphasizes the capacity of the trickster to occupy the overlapping, storied space between human and spiritual worlds (Highway, 2003). By these 196 non-anthropomorphic accounts, what matters about Wichikapache65 is not necessarily their ontological beingness, but that they are “the spirit being of the Cree” or “a spirit being” with the capacity to create/recreate (Brundige, 2004, p. 70-71). Patriarchal, pluri-gendered and genderless interpretations also are reflected in other types of Cree representation. For example, the names used to describe Cree/Métis and Metis peoples reflect both patriarchal and non-patriarchal naming practices. One Cree name for the Métis is Apeetowgusanuk or "half-son," which denotes a Métis identity based on Cree and European lineage that follows patriarchal lines (Larocque, 2016, p. 128). But the Métis were also called by the genderless Cree term 'Otehpayimusuak' or 'people who own themselves' (p. 129). The extension of the Cree name 'Otipimsuak' ('the free people,' 'people who own/command themselves' or 'their own bosses') to Metis not descended from Red River further indicates a mode of identification or worldview based on complex Metis kinship identifications (MacDougall, 2012).66 In terms of kinship and relationships to land, the Metis initially identified themselves based on "having rights to the lands of their mothers and rooted in the economic pursuits of their father’s society” (MacDougall, 2012, p. 446 [emphasis added]). This matrilineal relationship to land was recognized by prominent Cree, Saulteaux, Assiniboine, and other Plains Indigenous Chiefs. At the time of historical numbered treaty-signing, these leaders advocated for the recognition of matrilineal rights to land for Metis/Métis people, including making it a condition of treaty signing (MacDougall, 2012). It’s important to further note that the ‘genderless’ Cree name 'Otipimsuak' recognizes both Métis/Metis matrilineage and patrilineage to create a distinct, 65 Swampy Cree name for Wîsachkêcâhk. 66 This name also eschews racial categorizations based on the idea of the metis as a people caught between racialized concepts of 'Indians' and 'Europeans' based on their paternal and maternal antecedents (MacDougall, 2012). 197 autonomous identity based on a wholistic understanding of Métis/Metis genealogies and livelihood. Again, we can observe that Cree linguistic representations reflect varying approaches to gender, but that one name centres a paternal lineage while the other name represents a balancing of maternal and paternal influences. Of course, with the growing erection of colonization, acceptance of plural Cree linguistic approaches to gender were systematically subjugated by patriarchal naming practices. These practices explicitly undermined the distinct autonomous identities of Plains Indigenous mothers and relationships between them and their children. nêhiyaw-Metis and nahkawê scholar Janice Acoose (1995) explains that patriarchal naming “disconnected me from my mother’s history and stole my right to assume a part of my identity through my mother’s lineage, as it did so many other female children before me” (p. 22). Such practices also resulted in the official ‘effacement’ of entire generations of Plains Indigenous matriarchs, because “in some of the old documents as baptismal certificates, applications for “Halfbreed” Scrip, and even in some of the census registers, where in the space reserved for women’s names, individual women are generically referred to as “Indian woman”” (p. 23). When Acoose was born, hospital authorities also assigned her the same generic name of ‘Mary’ as her two biological sisters. These practices not only refused to recognize Indigenous mothers and in subsequent generations, their female children, as distinct persons, but attempted to sever intergenerational, matrilineal relationships and clearly impose the same western and Christian identity (Jesus’s mother) on every child born. Prior to patriarchal colonial naming, Plains Indigenous peoples had their own naming practices that eschewed the patriarchal imposition of a solely paternal lineage and instead recognized the multiple genealogies of a person, including those to land (Acoose, 1995). These practices have been continued informally and covertly within most nations, although the 198 affinities recognized by these names fail to be reflected in dominant legal and political systems on iyiniwi-ministik. These Plains Indigenous naming practices stand in stark contrast to their patriarchal counterparts as they deeply connect a person wholistically to their autonomous place in creation and with all their relations. As Acoose affirms, “As I arose newly baptised, Misko-Kisikawihkwe, in the ways of my people, I felt strongly connected to the Earth and Kah’ Ki Yaw Ni Wahkomakanak’” (p. 19). Such linguistic differences are also reflected in the physical movement and composition of Plains Indigenous polities. Quite simply, individuals and collectives did not locate themselves solely by reference to their fathers and grandfathers. Before the creation of ‘Indian’ reserves, oral histories suggest that the Cree and their Plains Indigenous relations may have followed a matrilocal tradition of marriage (Cey, 2014, p. 29 citing Okanese Elder John Stonechild) or at a minimum recognized both matrilineal and patrilineal ties as they “were highly fluid and people would move from Band to Band quite often” (McLeod, 2000, p. 449). While many of the prominent ‘Cree’ leaders had inter-national lineages (e.g. pîhtokahânapiwiyin (Chief Poundmaker), payipwat (Chief Piapot) and mistahi-maskwa (Chief Big Bear)), their recognition and acceptance as Cree occurred through their maternal lineages. In effect, Plains Indigenous peoples certainly did not form societies and polities based solely on patrilineal lines. But the colonial enforcement of patrilineage representation eventually became embedded within Indigenous communities. As most of us are aware, for generations the Indian Act relied on male ancestry to determine ‘Indian’ status and Band memberships. This practice became particularly pernicious when it became normalized “under the rubric of Indian self-government and Indian tradition” (McLeod, 2000, p. 448). But, again, like the presence of two names, while many Indigenous peoples and governments came to regard patrilineal identification as the norm, 199 many Indigenous peoples resisted it. Primarily Indigenous women and their descendants waged a lengthy, uphill legal and political battle that challenged the gender discrimination in the Indian Act. In 2019, Bill S-3 (CIRNAC) was passed, finally enabling descendants to legally ‘reclaim’ the presence of their mothers and grandmothers without any arbitrary cut-off date. But for decades, male-dominated Indigenous political organizations and indigenous men in leadership positions not only failed to stand with women in this fight, but actively blocked their path (Ladner, 2009). In terms of representing a Creator or ‘God’-like figure, the Cree language reflects both the patriarchal father and maternal, genderless and pluri-gendered depictions of spirit. For instance, the Creator is described in several Cree knowledge texts and prayers as ‘mâmawi ohtâwîmâw’ or ‘parent of all of us.’ Yet, many representations abound of a pluri-gendered and genderless Creator who is both or neither gender. In many accounts, a spiritual distinction is made between a Creator and creation. While the Creator is regarded as being of the ultimate magnitude of spiritual greatness or as a Great spirit, creation is often depicted as the physical or material embodiment of this spirit—the living earth as spirit. This idea of a physical creation is typically defined as the land or earth or ‘askiy’ and is commonly described as akin to okâwîmâw (our mother) (Hart, 2007) or kikâwînaw (your mother) (McAdam, 2015). In addition, there are a pantheon of other spirits, both female and male, typically represented as grandmothers and grandfathers (Napoleon, 2014). When it comes to linguistic representations within Cree Creation stories, while a paternal bias is evident, many stories have maintained an integrity to a genderless or pluri-gendered Creator. One account describes the Creator as the genderless ‘Almighty,’ and the material creation of earth is described as emanating from the four winds who are all brothers, and from 200 the son of one of the brothers, wîsahkêcahk (Cuthand, 2007). A more place-based view of spirituality that reconciles the traditions of the Cree and Saulteaux on the Plains describes the Creator as “Kisê-Manitow,” which means “Benevolent Creator” (Stonechild, 2016, p. 48). According to this account, in creating the physical world, “The Creator, which is the woman within God, came out and became the physical essence” (p. 48 [emphasis added]), but: The Creator is both spiritual and physical, the physical being a manifestation of its creativity. It is male and female, father and mother. It was with the female mother aspect of his being that he created the physical world. She gave birth to the world and everything in the universe and will continue to give birth until those spirits who have come into the physical world have obtained all the knowledge that they originally sought. (p. 49) By this account, while the Creator is both man/woman and father/mother, not only is physical Creation female, but the first human was a woman, who “became lonely and so the Creator made man to provide companionship” (p. 49). In telling this story, what is stressed is that the Cree/Saulteaux account of selfhood is based on spirit: “The fundamental precept to understand and appreciate…is that we are really spirit beings who are on a physical journey as humans,” (Stonechild, 2016, quoting Elder Danny Musqua). Musqua’s version of Creation is corroborated by Woodlands Cree artist and author Tomson Highway (2003), who notes that “the universe and its contents came into being as the result of the efforts of a female force of energy known as O-ma-ma” without any “evidence of masculine involvement in the process of procreation” (p. 39). It was the Creative female power that created the trickster, and then all other living things, including women and “men, as an afterthought” (p. 40). Simultaneously, since the Cree language has ‘no concept of gender,’ then despite the material body of Creation as female, the Creator or this “Cree mother earth goddess” is both woman & man or a “he/she” (p. 41). Here, what is emphasized is the pluri- gendered 201 nature of the Creator and creation as the physical manifestation of a feminine, creative, life-force. The ‘soul flame’ or “ahcahk iskotêw” is another Cree creation narrative that tells of how humans were created and how our spirits are related to gender. The Creator is identified as the ‘life-giver’ who resides in a spiritual place and has a flame or manitow iskotêw (Creator’s flame). Before being born, humanity chooses a ‘soulflame’ from the ‘Creator’s flame’ and “with it…pimâtisiwin (life)" (p. 22). Children are regarded as being still close to Creation or this flame, which is why the name for ‘child’ in Cree is ‘awâsis,’ which means ‘sacred flame’ to denote this closeness (Stonechild, 2016, p. 51). This flame is intended to guide our bodies, minds and souls. Nehiyaw education teaches and shares knowledge where "Each role, each teaching, each learning is believed to heal and nurture the soulflame of each human being" (McAdam, 2015, p. 21). The soul flame is “half man half woman” (McAdam, 2015, p. 27; Stonechild, 2016), and it is the soul that chooses whether to “be male or female or what you would look like” (McAdam, 2015, p. 27 citing Barry Ahenakew). In addition, the Creator or Manitow is described as creating kikâwinaw askiy or ‘our mother Earth’ (p. 37). By one account, kikâwinaw askiy refers to the ‘earth’ or ‘land,’ but does not include animals or the rest of physical creation (McAdam, 2015). ‘askiy’ is regarded as a mother and her material body is akin to that of a female body. For example, the sweetgrass (wîhkaskwa) that grows on the prairies and which is a sacred medicine used in many Cree ceremonies is regarded as kikâwinaw askiy’s hair. Water has also been described as "the milk of Mother Earth" (Fineday, 1973, p. 5). All of creation, such as animals, are regarded as having an ‘ahcahk’ or ‘spirit or soul’ (McAdam, 2015, p. 52), and so all of creation must be treated with 202 respect, which is enforced by nêhiyaw law. The spiritual relation of nêhiyaw laws are renewed and reaffirmed through ceremony. While non-male and genderless representations of the Creator and creation are clearly present, a tendency to represent the Creator as a Father figure and spirits as predominantly male has been observed in Cree sacred stories. The harmful effects of the patriarchal gendering of spirituality are evident in Indigenous communities. Generally, there is a tendency to re-enact a male-centric, patriarchal bias in contemporary practices of ceremony that not only marginalizes women and gender-diverse individuals, but that exists in dogma that seeks to discipline those who do not conform to ‘traditional’ gender and sexual binaries (Wilson, 2015). Further, often when ‘motherhood’ is described in Cree traditions, such as in articulations of Cree law, it is used to tie the agency of Cree women solely to motherhood (Snyder, 2018). There is a sense that if Indigenous women are going to be empowered, then they must look beyond "spiritual or symbolic" forms, because these do "not necessarily guarantee any degree of political agency in one's own or in community life" (Starblanket, 2017, p. 33). Again, foremost among this patriarchal gendering is an attack on the presence of maternal spiritual beings, and matriarchal oral histories, including songs and ceremonies (Gunn Allen, 1992; Barrieses & Gingell, 2011; McAdam, 2015). Like the names of Cree women and matrilineages, the stories of female spiritual and other kin are only beginning to be told again (Barrieses & Gingell, 2011, p. 70). For example, the story of Pahwâciskwew, a now obscure female spirit in Cree and Anishnaabe cosmology, had to be painstakingly reassembled based on scattered, surviving oral history (Gray, 2011). The techniques of colonial patriarchal violence, including its effects on Cree linguistic and narrative practices, have operated to not only disrupt a 203 Cree wholistic balance, but this imbalance has occurred largely through the displacement of our spiritual Mother and mothers. 5.5 Conclusion Clearly, colonial patriarchal gendering and its associated policies and processes have undermined Cree and Indigenous practices of mothering. The result has been not only targeted gendered violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people, but damage to the wholistic Cree and Indigenous relationships with one another that impact all other relationships, including with the living earth. The significance of okâwîmâwaskiy in restoring balance to the Cree language and narratives in the revitalization of Cree social orders through the re-emplacement of Indigenous mothers and mothering is crucial to decolonization. While the debate over whether okâwîmâwaskiy is a word of relatively recent vintage or not may seem inconsequential or irrelevant to the real and pressing problem of gendered violences towards women, girls and two-spirited people, colonial, patriarchal gendered approaches to Cree language and narratives are playing out in conflicting ways on the ground when it comes to revitalizating our life-ways. The implications of this debate extend to our innermost selves or what constitutes Cree ethical action towards gender and sexual diversity. In a word, okâwîmâwaskiy is attempting to reorient ourselves in a restorative direction that empowers people of all genders. In the next chapter, I look at how Cree motherhood concepts are being revitalized through diverse approaches to gender. Specifically, I argue that a theory of maternal gendering is consistent with practices of mothering or conscious care that are still present in Cree linguistic understandings of life. 204 Chapter 6: A Cree Wholistic Ethic of Care 6.1 Introduction The effect of patriarchal gendering is most pronounced in terms of how mothering is interpreted from Cree linguistic and narrative representations. The diversity of Cree motherhood concepts are filtered through three general approaches to gender: genderlessness, gender balance and maternal gendering. The first approach is based on a genderless spirituality that tends to obscure the significance of gender and thereby risks overlooking the distinctness of mothers. The second lens, gender balance, centres gender and situates balance in either heteronormative, binary conceptions of the body and sexuality while more expansive portrayals situate gender in spirit. The overall effect with this second approach is a limiting of the range of diverse mothering as well as a limiting of gender and sexual diversity. I assert that a third theory of maternal plural gendering blends the strengths of the first two theories by restoring a wholistic balance to Cree understandings of gender and mothers that recognizes gender and sexual diversity and empowers mothers. This theory articulates an emplacement of mothers based on kinship within an expanded view of balance that can recognize the effects of gender, but that also goes beyond gender to situate living beings within a wholistic, animate order based on conscious care. I now explore how these prominent Cree concepts of gender may be helping and hindering the empowerment of Cree motherhood and the restoration of a wholistic balance grounded in okâwîmâwaskiy. In terms of cultural revitalization, all these streams are valued in various communities and nations for resisting the identarian control and confusion caused by the attempted cultural genocide of indigenous peoples and the ongoing effects of settler colonialism. 205 6.2 Genderlessness While recognizing a plurality of Indigenous representations of spirit, Deloria (1974) asserted that any gendered or even anthropomorphic representations of spiritual beings do not inform Indigenous theories of human beings. While one may refer to the land as ‘Mother Earth’ other Indigenous peoples, such as the Lakota, have an understanding of deity as based on the ‘Six Grandfathers.’ In light of these diverse examples of gendering, what must be emphasized is that the Creator is the ‘Great Mystery’ that ultimately defies anthropomorphic conceptions or those modeled on ‘human personality’ (esp. chapters 5 & 11). It is clear that deity in most Indigenous spiritual traditions, including Cree traditions, is indeed represented as non-anthropomorphic and as genderless. Deloria adds that if a gender was identified, ‘there was no effort [by Indigenous people] to use that concept as the basis for a theological doctrine by which a series of complex relationships and related doctrines could be developed” (p. 78). In other words, spirit is not gendered. Under this view, the organizing principle for Indigenous society is a spiritual-based view of community that is inclusive and eschews divisions along gendered lines to value the distinct gifts of each community member. Gender is deemed to be a non-issue as community takes precedence over an individual attribute like gender. The Indigenous focus on land is typically represented in terms of a genderless relationality that emphasizes collective responsibilities for Indigenous governance and relationships to family and community (Deloria, 1999; 2013; Corntassel, 2008; Coulthard, 2014). But there is a sense that Cree and Indigenous people did not fully support 'genderless' representations and relationships, but instead focused on specific relationships among men and women rooted in spiritual understandings of gendered beings. Specifically, the narratives of 206 female spiritual beings arguably were used to teach Cree and other Indigenous men how to approach relationships with women (Gray, 2011, p. 259). Real life consequences also ensued when one transgressed such roles. For example, “Men who dishonoured women were not accorded political, spiritual, or social status and were often physically attacked by women” (Anderson, 2016, p. 62 citing Elizabeth Cook-Lynn). Similarly, Cree women’s relationships are described as tied to spiritual understandings, particularly with respect to land. For example, nehiyaw women’s teachings are regarded as co-extensive with an understanding of the land as our mother. McAdam (2015) states “Our mother earth’s teachings and the women’s teachings cannot be told without one or the other because they are interconnected” (p. 24). Given the connection between women and land, the “authority and jurisdiction to speak about land resides with the women” and “water ceremonies belong to the women” (p. 55). As well, decolonization depends in part on “living and practicing ceremonial teachings that explain our roles and responsibilities as women” (Makokis, 2011, p. 9). Women’s ‘rites of passage’ ceremonies also were based on the recognition that women had specific experiences associated with motherhood, such as childbirth and menstruation (Anderson, 2016; Brant, 2014). 6.3 Gender Complementarity/Balance The recognition of gendered experiences within Cree narratives is often tied to specific, prefigurative roles for men and woman situated in the ‘sacred’ roles of each gender. This theory is referred to as a ‘gender balanced,’ or ‘gender complementarity’ approach. The emphasis is on gender-based spiritual societies, ceremonies and roles that enable men and women to carry out different, but equal and complementary roles that enact positive and stable masculine and feminine identities. It includes outlining women’s roles as keepers of life-ways and laws, which 207 includes not only teaching but modelling ethical and spiritual rules of conduct. Within this stream, there are many variations, with women often associated with maternity, although not solely. Consciously or not, Stonechild (2016) interprets an account of a Cree/Saulteaux pluri-gendered Creator according to this theory. The unity of Manitow is divided between women and men, with the female aspect representing “the physical” and the male representing “the transcendent” and the “ideal relationship is one in which the role of each gender is respected” (p. 86). This view of gender balance is grounded in a women’s physical capacity of motherhood. In terms of their ‘physical’ service, women have the role and responsibility of “raising and nurturing children, maintaining the family, and caring for the aged” (p. 86). Women are also regarded as having “particularly strong” hearts which makes them a solid foundation for family and the “maintenance of stability” (p. 83). In effect, women’s power accrues from their physical capacity to give life, and so the power of motherhood ascribes to them the responsibility “as the givers of life…to care for and nurture life once it is brought into the world and, by extension, to care for and nurture our nations” (Anderson, 2014, p. 3). The roles of women and men in ceremony are also different and described as equal. These roles are intended “not to discriminate, but rather to balance male and female powers so they don’t conflict” (Stonechild, 2016, p. 86). Gender-based exclusions from ceremonies, such as women’s relegation to the periphery of a Pipe Ceremony, are described as equally distributed. Finally, such gender roles are characterized as fluid in that “individuals of one gender can exhibit attributes of the other and are typically considered “two-spirited”” (p. 87). People who embody gender fluidity are believed to have “additional and unique abilities” that constitute “a spiritual gift” (p. 87). 208 In terms of spiritual development, gender also manifests in various ways in adolescence and adulthood. Teen girls do not have to undergo the same spiritual ceremonies as teen boys, because their life-giving power or capacity for child-birth means they already have a direct spiritual connection to Creation. Thus, this spiritual communication does not need to be established through ceremony. To a large extent, this theory is seeking to regenerate respect for women’s bodies by emphasizing their valuable symbolic and spiritual purpose. By locating the value of women and their bodies in deeper spiritual meaning, the aim is to ascribe an autonomous, inherent value to women independent from men. In particular, the valuing of women and their bodies as “sex objects” is eschewed (Anderson, 2016, p. 63). But with the central focus on women’s bodies or their ‘physicality’, this theory becomes ripe for mechanisms of hetero-patriarchal control under the guise of ‘spiritual’ tradition. It is difficult to advance a theory with such a strong focus on a woman’s body that does not lead to patriarchal regulation of these bodies that ultimately constricts the self-expression and bodily autonomy of women. In addition, despite its insistence on empowering mothers and women, both the range of activities in which women can engage is often limited—with ‘respect’ and ‘honouring’ for women being tied almost exclusively to their using their bodies for childbirth. The focus on Indigenous motherhood seems to prefigure a limited representation of women based on their capacity to give birth. In addition, gender and sexually diverse mothers are effectively excluded from serious consideration because they cannot, will not or do not conform to the biological, heteronormative body of woman. The valuing of a woman’s spiritual power and autonomy or 209 their life-giving capacity should not be defined on the basis of a heteronormative body that can and will biologically reproduce life. The idea of 'balance' in this theory is not based on gender equality, but rather on narrow, patriarchal ideas about gender that associate women only with “servile” and “maternalist” roles (LaRocque, 2017, p. 125). Those who critique these power relations are often characterized as “culturally deficient” while those who accept these dominative relations are regarded as “cultural” or deemed to “understand traditional knowledge and values with a level of depth that erases the need for critique” (Starblanket, 2017, p. 26). Together, the “gendered notions of cultural authenticity” and the “selective, exclusionary or essentialist traditionalism” demanded by legal processes and settler colonial constitutionalism ultimately inform decisions about “whose experiences or interpretations count as significant and whose do not” (p. 26). In sum, this theory is based on predominant colonial, patriarchal interpretations of ‘tradition’ and ‘balance.’ The pivotal question is whether the interpreted representation of the ‘mother’ is truly honouring mothers or is respectful and balanced if it fails to result in "equality and empowerment in all areas of women's lives, including, for example, in decision making in the body politic?" (LaRocque, 2017, p. 125). Unfortunately, the ‘gender balance’ view seems to ascribe virtually all responsibility for birthing, nurturing and renewing life to Indigenous women, while the role of mother is often used to control the lives and bodies of girls and women. It seems suspect that 'honour' and 'respect' for women or mothers can accrue from highly prescriptive gender roles (LaRocque, 2017). This ‘balanced’ or complementarity view of gender tends not to bring about a wholistic balance because it precludes the autonomy and personal freedom of women and mothers to choose their life-ways. Rather than act as a lens for more properly realizing the equality of all 210 living beings and their place in the world, gender can predetermine who a person can be and their status in the world. In this sense, gender not only obscures a context, it unfairly delimits the contextual parameters of a person’s self. You cannot be in relationship with another when your autonomy is not being respected (Napoleon, 2007). While there is a recognition of a spiritual, regenerative, creative capacity of women that is also embodied or not dependent on their physical capacity for motherhood, this theory undermines the autonomous relationality of women by prescribing a particular role for them grounded in their physical body. 6.4 Maternal Pluralized Gendering A mother-centred approach grounded in Indigenous matriarchal societies makes the case for the centrality of mothers and ‘the feminine’ to spirituality, asserting that the two are inextricably intertwined and fundamental to the rebuilding of Indigenous societies and nations (Gunn Allen, 1992). The return of feminine and maternal deities is described as integral not only to a more wholistic Indigenous spirituality, but to the resurgence of Indigenous societies and nationhood. Specifically, the revitalization of life-ways among Indigenous peoples on iyiniwi-ministik is attributed to the return of the spiritual ‘grandmothers’ and their prominence at the forefront of ‘tribal values, tribal thought, and tribal understandings’ (Gunn Allen, 1992, p. xiv). This idea also finds resonance among other Indigenous nations. For example, among the Haida the feminine supernatural beings in Haida Gwaii are recognized as guiding the efforts of the Haida to live a sustainable and interconnected existence (Williams-Davidson, 2017). Generally, a maternal, feminine spirituality is regarded as key to empowering women by guiding social norms among different genders in accord with particular views on the spiritual status, power and authority of mothers and mothering. An interpretation of narratives via maternal gendering potentially addresses how gender is overlooked or over-emphasized while 211 either dismissing or constraining the distinctness of motherhood. This interpretation is based on an expanded view of a mother that is not tied to gender or heteronormativity. Based on a Cree pluri-gendered, spiritual representation in Cree sacred narratives, Highway (2003) provides an interpretation in keeping with maternal gendering. Rather than a narrow ‘balance’ of genders, his interpretation focuses on the rebalancing of an entire wholistic order. This order is based on the matriarchal regenerative power of the womb, which neither reinforces gender binaries nor centres the heteronormativity of a woman’s body. Instead, maternalism is represented as a constant rebirth or cyclical regeneration of all life that is neither linear nor straight. The revitalization of a ‘Cree mother earth goddess’ is characterized as repairing a matriarchal circle of order harmed by the structural violence of a linear heteropatriarchy rooted in Western religious and political narratives grounded in absolutist, male authority that regards life as oriented along a linear line of development, progress and history (Deloria, 1973; Highway, 2003). Like all Cree relationships, those with our mothers are situated within the doctrines of miyo-wîcêhtowin and wâhkôtowin. In particular, the role of mothers in creation is based on the “ancient family relationships to the land” where a system of “nêhiyaw laws of the land” hold all members of the family responsible for caring for ecosystems (McAdam, 2015, p. 53). If you recall from the last chapter, the doctrine of miyo-wîcêhtowin “unequivocally directs” that we “always strive for the best relationships possible, through an enactment of respect for all living things” (Laboucane-Benson, 2009, p. 93, citing Harold Cardinal) and wâhkôtowin refers to interrelatedness or “the laws that we have as nations that govern the conduct of our relationship with each other and with all things in life” (p. 93). In particular, miyo-wîcêhtowin is a 212 foundational law that mandates modes of relationship building that result in good relations (McAdam, 2015). The peace among nations promoted by these doctrines is also directed inward to the home (McAdam, 2015). Since the fundament root of wîcehtowin is “wicêw – which means to come alongside or to support” (McAdam, 2015, p. 47), relationships among family members were about ‘standing with’ one another or ensuring egalitarian and mutually supportive relationships among all family members. There are two types of kinship relations. Wâhkôhtowin is based on the presence of spirit or the soulflame that connects all life as relatives. This includes the organization of nêhiyawak into “various clan systems that that create kinship responsibilities to the animals and to creation in general” (p.60). Ceremonies are a way of “renew[ing] and affirm[ing]” these relationships with the land. Wâhkômtowin refers to kinship relations based on the familial ties among human beings (McAdam, 2015). It’s important to note that not only humans are regarded as capable of kinship relations. For example, plants are also described in familial terms, with observable genders and children, and plant families must be respected like any human family. Again, the presence of a creative life-force underscores all our relations: “Understanding and knowing the use of each plant, animal, and sacred site animate each act in reverence for creation” (p. 65). In effect, a kinship-based recognition of life is relational, contextual and “coauthored by one's place and family/community” (Brundige, 2004, p. 206). The egalitarian principles of wâhkôtowin and the mutual respect of miyo-wîcêhtowin cannot be fulfilled if our mothers are not equal members of the circle. Within nêhiyaw nationhood, women occupy an integral and central position—they are responsible for laws, education and citizenship (McAdam, 2015). The first circle a child enters is occupied by the grandmothers and mothers and the first words they hear are spoken by their grandmothers. New 213 babies are welcomed into the nêhiyaw nation by the okihcitâwiskwêwikamik or a lodge of the clan mother, who is also simultaneously represented as a warrior and lawkeeper. In this ceremony, the baby's female relatives welcome the baby: “"niya oma kohkom" (I am your grandmother) were the first words said to a child held by the Eldest woman from among select women sitting in a ceremonial circle (Welcoming to the Nation ceremony) to welcome a new citizen for the nêhiyaw Nation” (p. 32 quoting Mrs. McAdam (Saysewahum). This ceremony was followed by a naming ceremony in which fathers and grandfathers were included. Specifically, wâhkôtowin’s overarching value of mutual respect was intended to govern the relationship between a Cree mother and child, which requires fulfilling “the reciprocal duties of nurturing, caring, loyalty and fidelity” (Laboucane-Benson, 2009, p. 95). But all family members have distinct roles and responsibilities in child rearing—with more specific doctrines, such as ohpikinâwasowin (child rearing/raising) (McAdam, 2015, p. 48) and witisanihitowin, setting out rules of conduct and boundaries among family members to ensure “healthy and interdependent relationships” (Laboucane-Benson, 2009, p. 94). Within these systems, women and mothers were able to leave problematic marriages easily and make decisions for the family (Anderson, 2016, p. 61; Carter, 2008). These structures resisted individualism and connected interdependent family members, communities and nations. The imbalance and disharmony in Cree life-ways caused by patriarchal gendering has also been explained as a state of "lawlessness" (McAdam, 2015). This means that the Cree nation "does not understand their laws or live by them...This lawless state has created an imbalance that has spanned several generations" (p. 28). While all nêhiyaw citizens and their relations with all of creation are affected by this lawlessness, the imbalance is based primarily on the displacement of the place and power of women and mothers in nêhiyaw circles of family, society and 214 nationhood—because it is nêhiyaw women's role as lawkeepers that has been disrupted. Children are affected because they grow up without “the foundation of laws in which each child is nurtured and raised” (p. 28). The women’s teachings are the educational and legal system of the nêhiyaw Nation. There existed a group of women called okihcitâwiskwêwak or ‘clan mothers/warrior women/lawkeepers’ whose role was to provide the legal “system” of the nêhiyaw people. These women invoked the laws and provided remedies on a case-by-case basis, depending on the situation or circumstances before them. As well, these women were the first to carry each child into the nation (24). In fact, it was the woman who “acted” and men who “reacted,” to the point that women established the norms of action (p. 56). These laws still exist in nêhiyaw stories, songs, ceremonies, land, languages and so on, but the relation between nêhiyaw children and their mothers and grandmothers in transmitting fundamental néhiyaw laws to children has been interrupted. Though the songs of the okihcitâwiskwêwak were silenced for many years, some women still sing those songs “to recall the teachings and to remember the authority and power Indigenous women once had” (McAdam, 2015). In addition, Cree women and mothers are represented as providing the warmth, fire and love needed to sustain Cree nationhood. In the Cree language, women are called ‘iskwew,’ after iskwuptew, which means ‘the centre’ or ‘the fire.’ This name refers to “that fire in the centre of the tipi, which brought that warmth and comfort” (Elder Mary Lee, 2006). Similarly, in nakawê, the word “fire” is defined as a “woman’s heart” (McAdam, 2015, p. 54). This relational naming situates women within Creation because it refers to the understanding that “the love of a woman is so great that it caused creation to take place, and, because her love is so powerful, when she withdraws it, destruction can occur” (p. 54). The womb of Mother Earth is equated by some nations with the sweat lodge ceremony, a ceremony of purification and healing that is accompanied by songs that speak of “Our Grandmother” as the “Heart of the Earth,” and the 215 “Tree of Life” with “flowers bloom[ing] in the four colors that represent the four directions of the universe” (Hernández-Ávila, 2017, p. 57). These multiple representations are significant, because they point to an understanding of mothers in which mothering becomes representative of a capacity for love and care that leads to birth or regeneration—ultimately encapsulating both feminine and masculine energies. As Highway’s (2013) representation underscores, the image of ‘O-ma-ma’ or the “Mother Earth goddess of the Cree” is simultaneously male and female, embodying both the beauty of the garden and the tree of knowledge. (p. 47). Similarly, the ‘warmth’ associated with Cree mothers emphasizes the significance of the emotional and spiritual interconnection among ourselves, our mothers and the land. This interconnectedness between humans and non-humans is not merely symbolic and is not an abstraction of a moral code (Watts 2011). Instead, narratives of our spiritual mothers are historical examples where human and non-human consciousness, thought, desire, and imagination interacted. This means that without a respectful and loving connection with our mothers, we are likely to develop a ‘coldness of heart’ that enables a corresponding alienation from the land (Brundige, 2004). The interconnectedness of our mothers and land suggests that if we cannot connect with our mothers in a reciprocal, respectful relationality then we are likely to be similarly disconnected from the land. This interconnection works both ways in that the reverse is also true: “[s]o long as men have no respect for the land, they will have no respect for women” (McAdam, 2015, p. 40). This dysfunction affecting Cree families has also been described in terms of the suppression of knowledge of and the dismantling of the structural support systems of wâhkôtowin and miyo-wîcêhtowin (Laboucane-Benson, 2009). All these representations emphasize the centrality of women and mothering to Cree wholistic understandings of Creation. 216 While the role of mothers is represented in a similar way as with the gender balanced view—where Cree women and mothers exercise pivotal roles and responsibilities for nation-building—this interpretation of motherhood is situated within a wholistic order rather than one determined by hetero-patriarchy. Within wholistic contexts, relationships and narratives, not only women and mothers, but all gender diverse beings are fully supported by their kinship relations, which tends toward an equal distribution of ‘work;’ and, the range of actions and roles available to women is not delimited based on their physical bodies. Further, the ‘status’ accorded to so-called ‘women’s work’ is not devalued. Gunn Allen (1992) further explains how occupying the so-called ‘background’ or working in the home and caring for children is not necessarily oppressive when this work is explicitly situated within a wholistic frame. Since a wholistic balance is based on a cyclical structure, this means no living thing can be elevated or valued above another and no life form “is foregrounded, leaving the others to supply background” (p. 241). In some narratives, depending on their intent, an element in the circle may be highlighted, but this does not mean the background must or should become insignificant: Westerners have for a long time discounted the importance of background. The earth herself, which is our most inclusive background, is dealt with summarily as a source of food, metals, water, and profit, while the fact that she is the fundamental agent of all planetary life is blithely ignored. Similarly, women's activities--cooking, planting, harvesting, preservation, storage, homebuilding, decorating, maintaining, doctoring, nursing, soothing, and healing, along with the bearing, nurturing, and rearing of children—are devalued as blithely. (244) In effect, "everyone is a part of the background that shapes the meaning and value of each person's life" (p. 244). In a wholistic context, I believe motherhood and feminism are united in the idea of an autonomous and interrelated matriarch who is empowered and empowers others. This shared 217 matriarchal site is reflected in Anderson & Lavell-Harvard’s view of empowered motherhood (2014) that promotes qualities of “strength, independence, and self-reliance” within “interdependent supportive networks of kin” (p. 6). The idea of the matriarch is one way that we can engage in an Indigenous feminist resurgence that can answer the call of "being Indigenous" in ways that “are informed by creation but decoupled from heteronormative understandings of spirituality and physicality" (Starblanket, 2017, p. 33). The concept of the Indigenous matriarch represents a site where Indigenous feminism and motherhood meet in solidarity or mutual care. In focusing on mothers, okâwîmâwaskiy is using a feminist technique of creating sites for "the strategic instantiation of gendering" that "makes visible “new forms of women’s presence” (Suzack, 2010, p. 181). Specifically, okâwîmâwaskiy is maternally gendering Cree narratives and language sites to make mothers visible in a new form. Generally, the âcimowina or life histories of Indigenous decolonizing activism and resurgence have been alternately rendered genderless or patriarchal in that there is either no differentiation by gender in terms of who is acting or else primarily men are identified as the agents of change. Indigenous women tend only to be identified as driving political action on 'Indigenous women's issues,' which means their contributions to advancing sovereignty are not visible. This has been due in large part to Indigenous women being asked to ‘balance’ the need to address gendered and family violence with the need for self-determination (Million, 2009). With the rise of Idle No More and other women-led political activism, narratives of resurgence are being restoried within a wholistic balance. Today, Indigenous feminism and feminists regard sovereignty movements as co-extensive with gender justice (Kuokkanen, 2019). Indigenous women have typically eschewed such gendered divisions within their political movements to pursue ‘sovereignty’ in a wholistic way. This is a sovereignty defined within an 218 empirical understanding of the actual "spiritual, natural and social existence of native peoples” rather than as a circumscribed understanding of sovereignty limited to "political power or authority" (Suzack, 2010, p. 184 citing Redbird). This orientation is a type of feminist “politics of care” that challenges colonial and patriarchal regulation of Indigenous women by "propos[ing] new forms of community and solidarity” (p. 181). A pivotal dimension of this process has been telling their personal narratives in a wholistic way that articulates “the racialized, gendered, and sexual nature of their colonization” (Million, 2009, p. 54). The âcimowina not only speak about collectively experienced trauma but express wholistically sovereign resistance and persistence through practices of care. The emplacement of okâwîmâwaskiy in the Cree language and narratives is reviving our matriarchs and matriarchy. Specifically, this means letting go of rigidly defined hetero and gendered ‘spiritual’ roles and responsibilities that undermine the autonomy or the capacity for self-determination of women and two-spirit people. Brant (2014) further affirms that the reclamation of Indigenous mothering must be based on multiple histories so that its reclamation need not point to a single, essential attribute, model or mode of mothering; and also, offers that the aim of reclaiming motherhood must serve the goal of holism or be attentive to "the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs of our present" (p. 9). When we mobilize our living oral tradition in a wholistic way, we open up alternative political and critical possibilities for being in the world. The maternalistic life force represented by okâwîmâwaskiy embraces all life, no matter how diverse. The act of mothering is akin to an egalitarian, cyclical value and respect for life that supports the autonomous gender and sexual expression of all bodies. While the interpretation of maternal gendering does exhibit a degree of ‘genderlessness’ because it does not divide Creation 219 into gender binaries with prescribed roles; yet, a motherhood tied to the power of cyclical regeneration is still centred and valued as constitutive of Creation and Cree social orders. Within this understanding, the distinctness of mothers is recognized and embraced. This maternalistic gendering is simultaneously mysterious/genderless and pluri-gendered. Put another way, a maternal, wholistic order embraces both the unknown mystery and known plurality of life. By targeting mothers, the ultimate effect of patriarchal and colonial ideologies of motherhood has been to break down the maternal, regenerative nature of wholistic Indigenous social, political and economic orders. Heteropatriarchy seeks to only ‘care’ about what is knowable, which is predicated on a very narrow recognition of personhood driven by a dominative view of what it means to be ‘man’ and ‘a man.’ Ultimately, an interpretation of Cree motherhood must be attentive to how the self is in relationship with others in a wholistic context. This wholistic orientation is key to representing and recognizing reality based on the broadest and fullest information possible. In other words, being wholistically attentive to context or understanding our co-being with the land is vital to interpreting a ‘narrative’ or understanding its ‘truth.’ The debate over okâwîmâwaskiy raises the additional question of whether gender is a fundamental part of our contexts (and therefore a constituent element of ourselves), co-extensive with time, place and thought. The argument in favour of including gender as a fundamental part of our contexts is that gender shapes our narratives, because gender informs how we understand ourselves and our place in the world. The 'context' of any story should include the context of the storyteller or "who I am, where I come from, and what experiences inform my claims" (Brundige, 2004, p. 24). Since we live in a world where gender largely determines our experiences, then we must be aware of and consider the gender of the author or narrator in interpreting a story. Another way of 220 understanding gender in this regard is that assessing narratives requires an understanding of the personal relationships that undergird it as much as possible, and gender plays a large role in personal relationships today (Hart, 2007). The listener’s personal and subjective relationship with the teller leads to a fuller range of empirical ‘evidence’ upon which to validate ‘the truth’ of a narrative. To ignore the impact of gender on experience would be to potentially misinterpret a narrative. But some ways of understanding the ‘personal’ aspect of a person, such as those relating to Elders, refuse to rely on categories of age or gender, but instead interpret life by ethical frameworks and the self’s capacity to contribute to the life of the whole. This means recognition as an Elder is based on the depth of their knowledge and their ethical commitment to “walk with truth, dignity, and humility” and their capacity to use this knowledge to serve and heal others (Hart, 2007, p. 127). Consistent with this understanding is a definition of an Elder as someone who strives to embody the highest expression of one’s humanity (as told by Joseph Couture (1996)): Elders are superb embodiments of highly developed human potential. They exemplify the kind of person which a traditional, culturally based learning environment can and does form and mold. Elders are evidence that Natives know a way to high human development, to a degree greater than generally suspected. Their qualities of mind (intuition, intellect, memory, imagination) and emotion, their profound and refined moral sense manifest in an exquisite sense of humour, in a sense of caring and communication finesse in teaching and counselling, together with a high level of spiritual and psychic attainment, are perceived as clear behavioural indicators, deserving careful attention, if not compelling emulation. (127) Similarly, Elders are often regarded as those who have long followed a Cree ceremonial life or the wihkaskomîskanâs (‘the sweetgrass trail’). This is a path “requiring the nîhiyaw virtues of sohkitîhîwin ‘vigorous heartedness’ and sîpinîwin or ‘resilience and endurance’” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 99). 221 Rather than deepen one’s understanding of the self and relationships, gender risks authorizing binaries and exclusive categories that undermine the self’s autonomous capacity for expression and contributions to the greater whole. In other words, by imposing gendered limits, the highest, autonomous expression of an individual may be denied—or their soul flame dimmed rather than supported to shine as brightly as possible. In assuming gender as part of our contexts, we may be applying a pre-existing interpretative framework for determining value, rather than according equal value to the diverse unfolding of life. Recalling the capacities for reading ‘holism’ in the world (Lightning, 1992), these are not based on gender, but on four structural principles that “set in place the proper circumstances for "truth to happen" when co-creating knowledge through talking (Lightning, 1992, p. 63). These structural principles are: the relationship between the Elder and the hearer; the use of metaphor in specification; the specification of location of self; and the use of systems of implication. The relationship between the Elder and the listener must be one of vulnerability, openness and compassion, which “can be expressed with the word love” (p. 62). The second principle of metaphorical specification in Cree speech speaks to the aforementioned understanding that certain Cree words are ‘bundles’ that often have layered meanings that will unfold, but that actually and not only symbolically, connect multiple sites of being. The third principle speaks to the grounded or empirical nature of knowledge in that for it to be true, the knowledge must be borne out by reference to the location of the self or their grounded experience. The fourth principle involves the understanding that to grasp all the possible intended implications of the speech of another, a wholistic ‘mutual discourse’ that is cognitive, tangible, emotional and spiritual must be facilitated (p. 64). 222 To the extent that gender undermines the capacity to recognize another based on a relationship of love, then it is not a useful category for understanding the self or our contexts. Similarly, while there is a social reality to gender that prefigures how one is viewed by others and your social location, gender is not determinative, nor even descriptive in some cases, of one’s empirical being in the world. Perhaps, the aim is to see the effects of gender, but to also see beyond gender. Finally, gender can obstruct ‘mutual discourse’ because gender does not resonate on a spiritual level. Putting gender in its proper place in a wholistic context would relegate it as a slice of empirical experience that may inform understanding of one’s self and another, but this bare and partial knowledge can never wholly define a person nor should gender be used to disempower another. Ultimately, I don’t think gender is a wholistic category of being, but its effects must still be accounted for when striving to understand the whole of a person and their stories. In other words, determining a person by their gender cannot lead to balance or wholeness, either individually or collectively. 6.5 Mothering as Conscious Caring The fact that okâwîmâwaskiy may not have been a part of the Cree lexicon at one time suggests that her linguistic and narrative insertion in Cree life-ways now is necessary to restore a regenerative circle of life and the place of mothers. Another layer of the bundle reveals a representation of okâwîmâwaskiy as the site where the balancing of individual autonomy and interrelatedness strives for harmony. Here, the relation of ‘mothering’ may be regarded as equally applicable to all kinship roles and therefore to all living things. Holism is interdependent with a harmony defined as a “conscious care” exercised by all life; this ethic of care is what ensures the “quality of life for the collective whole” (Dumont, 2005, p. 7). All living beings contain the capacity to generate and regenerate life or to transfer an energetic life force from 223 themself to another being. When we transfer life to another, we may refer to this transference as a practice of care. Narrativity and discourse are key to care and, thus, achieving this harmony. Earlier I described the significance of a co-creative and narrative capacity in orienting human beings towards regenerating life—but the narratives about ourselves and the place of mothering in creation must also involve care if they are going to regenerate life. Generally, to contribute to life, narratives must take care of ourselves and one another (Cuthand, 1988; Archibald, 2008). The compassion of storytellers and storytelling as a practice of care is a continuous thread among Indigenous nations. Such compassion is expressed both on an individual and collective basis and by the listener and teller. When one learns to listen, then one can "take care of the speaker" and reciprocally "the storyteller can take care of others by selecting the appropriate story to tell" (Archibald, 2008, p. 76-77). Listeners do not only listen with their minds, but with their whole selves often represented as listening with the ‘heart.’ For néhiyawak, the expectation is that the listener will exercise ‘nanahitamowin’ or ‘careful, respectful listening’ (Muehlbauer, 2016, p. 89). The respect and openness shown to the storyteller by the storylistener are a means of taking care of them. In a given context, a storyteller would carefully assess the needs of the listener(s) in a given context to share the story that would offer care or healing to the listener(s) (Kâ- Nîpitêhtêw, 1998). Cuthand (1988) notes the care exercised by revered Cree storytellers in the early twentieth century: "Poundmaker, the second, used to come to our house in the winter to tell stories. On one occasion, when my brother's child died, he came with his blankets and moved in. He told stories all night long to keep the parents going" (1988, p. 191). This exercise of care by Cree people is also extended to the choice of words and other forms of speech. To engage in 224 harmful speech, such as gossip, insults or bragging, is regarded as breaking ‘natural’ law or going against life; often, unintended destructive and sometimes dire consequences would result from such speech (McAdam, 2015; kâ-nîpitêhtêw, 1998). Older narratives passed along intergenerationally carry not only the voices of our ancestors but their compassion. Indigenous narratives tend to follow linguistic and interpretative norms (discussed later in this chapter) that urge that stories be told under conditions of compassion so that: “In the very telling of the stories, the spirits of our beloved ancestors and family become present with us. The ancestors love us and care for us though we may not know this” (Archibald, 2008, p. 27 quoting Silko). Specifically, this narrative care encompasses the idea of living one’s life “right” or to live one’s life “just like a story” (p. 12), which requires “practising the values of respect, reverence, responsibility, and reciprocity” (p. 18). To tell and listen to the ‘right’ story is an act of continuity and conscious care that strives for and reinvigorates wholistic balance. This care is extended to discourses. From an Indigenous standpoint, discourses are “ways of thinking, talking, and representing our knowledge and perspectives in a scholarly context” (Archibald, 2008, p. 18 citing Urion). But for an Indigenous discourse to be credible, it requires not only the ‘assumption’ of holism, but a relationship with knowledge holders with ‘moral authority.’ I believe this moral authority is only accorded to those who strive to take care of themselves and others. Indigenous discourses reflect this care when they are expressed in wholistic terms that strive for wholistic functionality. An Indigenous discursive autonomy is one that resonates wholistically, and this is certainly true with Cree discourses given that Cree modes of learning are wholistic. For example, types of Cree learning include “nâkatohkîwin” or “paying absolute attention with all of our 225 senses and intuitions;” “ahkamîmowin or “a rapid focused use of the mind” and “môsihtâwin” or “becoming suddenly aware of something with the use of all senses” (Napoleon, 2014, p. 8-9). The cumulative effect of these modes of discernment is that one learns to listen not only with our "ears," but "with our minds, heart and spirit" and to be attuned to sensing "visible and invisible presences" (p. 8-9). In other words, learning is not only physical, but felt and spiritually centred (Lightning, 1992). The felt aspect of Indigenous autonomous discourse is not constituted by a series of so-called ‘rational choices’ taken under the prevailing conditions of Western discourse and practices within specific contexts (Million, 2009). The significance of feeling is illustrated by the functions and modes of this discourse, which have included addressing the violence and victimization of Indigenous peoples by requiring “a past properly understood, felt, and moved beyond” (p. 73). It’s a discourse based on the deep understanding that, for example, when collective grief has no narrative means of transformation, it is carried intergenerationally in “a continuous passing on of unresolved and deep-seated emotions…to successive descendants” (Laboucane-Benson, 2009, p. 117). In speaking about the intimate violences of colonization and the profound lack of care instituted by them, Indigenous women and mothers have been co-creating discourses to dismantle and transform structural violence towards Indigenous mothers and their children (Million, 2009). This discursive action is both an act of care and an invocation to care that resonates through and beyond rational thought. For this care to be wholistic, theories and narratives must have the capacity for ‘spiritual concatenation.’ To bring about a "spiritual concatenation with one another and the natural and spiritual world” means that stories have the capacity to link the imaginations, hearts and spirits of individuals and collectives throughout the present, past and future (Maracle, 2015, p. 48). Stories 226 must move people towards oneness or create movement in the direction of interconnectedness or concatenation. Spirit as ‘original being’ is the ultimate source or authority of Indigenous oratory or story-telling, and so the storyteller or orator occupies not only a place of thought and feeling, but a place of prayer. A story connects listeners to this spiritual authority through the act of storytelling, using both language and listening as the mediums for this connection. In other words, there is a collective understanding among Indigenous storytellers that words “brought to our shores can and must be transformed into the sacred” (Fife, 1993, p. 105). As with most understandings of discourse and subjectivity, narratives and words are understood as not only describing a reality, but as co-creating reality and ourselves in this reality (Gunn Allen, 1992). Of course, dominative discourses tend towards dominating and seeking to control our subjective realities. Despite a historical lack of access to public and political platforms or the colonial imposition of discursive paradigms in Canada that limit who can speak and what they can say, Indigenous women could still "speak to ourselves, to inform ourselves and our generations, to counter and intervene in a constantly morphing colonial system" (Million, 2009, p. 55). In this sense, discursive autonomy has not only entailed a ‘turn inward,’ but is about thinking and speaking differently about ourselves and directing this discourse outward in expressing our experiences differently from dominant, colonial, heteropatriarchal praxis. By maintaining the wholistic grounding of their narratives, discourses and words, Indigenous women have led resistance to dominant discourses. In telling and listening to a story, and passing this knowledge along, we have taken on the responsibility of co-creating "our history, our understanding of ourselves as humans, and our recognition of our place in the universe" (Brundige, 2004, p. 69 citing Maria Campbell). Critical engagement and thought is 227 therefore required before we pass along a story. This responsibility promotes consciousness of our interrelatedness and requires us to pay attention to it. As mentioned, reciprocal care among storytellers and storylisteners is fundamental to the Cree narrative process. This reciprocal relationship requires that both the storyteller and listener act in respectful and responsible ways. Fundamentally and most significantly, this means respecting the source of narrative knowledge or the storyteller. Since all of creation tells us stories and provides gifts of knowledge, then we must respect all of creation. In effect, we must recognize and respect the discursive narrative autonomy of all living beings. As storylisteners it’s then up to us to use the knowledge shared with us responsibly. Through these gifts that we call stories, all of creation is thus regarded as engaging in 'conscious care.' But it is the attunement to non-patriarchal voices that enables this type of listening or the capacity to listen wholistically. In other words, a maternalist gendering of narratives opens up possibilities for listening to all storytellers, particular and especially the narratives of okâwîmâwaskiy. The maternal pluralized gendering of this sovereign, wholistic orientation completes one revolution or turn when okâwîmâwaskiy is able to occupy a place of mediation among the voices of all genders. This would mean that all genders are able “to feel, not only [their] own pain but also [their] family's and community's” (p. 62). Men and masculinity are not the opposite of a maternal representation of our collective life-force, the ‘opposite’ of matriarchy is death or that which is “inimical to all that lives, creates, and nurtures” (Gunn Allen, 1992, p. 118). This ‘death’ is also akin to disordered thinking that not only fails to be attuned to the interrelatedness of all life or our shared being, but that “makes enemies of our relatives” (p. 125). In a sense, patriarchy makes an enemy of mothers through oppositional dominative force that results in an 228 isolation of male-oriented consciousness that refuses to see interrelationships and dissociates individuals from caring relationships. Repairing relationships with mothers and mothering empowers men to be whole and to be part of the whole as well. We will know when this wholistic balance has occurred because “the women won't be lost. They will be respected and taken care of and so will the children" (Anderson, 2016, p. xxiii quoting Catherine Martin). In sum, the rise of women and the emplacement of okâwîmâwaskiy does not detract from the power of our omosômipanak (Eternal Grandfathers) or omosômimâwak (grandfathers), and other male kin, but instead brings us together to stand with one another in a balanced way. When we occupy these places we all act as mothers. 6.6 How to Live Carefully Conceptions of land and care are further intertwined or bundled in the structures of the Cree language oriented around mothering or the regeneration of life. Like all other representations in Cree thought, life is not defined in binary terms. In other words, it is not simply a matter of ‘animacy’ and ‘inanimacy’ or of being alive or not alive. Instead, there are many nuances with what may be called a ‘lifeforce’ (Goulet, 2008). This nuance is perhaps best illustrated by the Cree language. This nuance matters because the way in which Cree people characterize life points to a nuanced understanding of the ethic of care. This means the greater the degree of transfer of life, the more caring the action. A mark of Cree intelligence and leadership is the consistent capacity to care for others, which is reflected in the language. While the ‘non-anthropocentric’ nature of life and personhood embedded within the Cree language is relatively well understood outside of Cree language circles, what is lesser known is how the Cree language is structured to discern qualitative differences among animate and inanimate beings. In virtually all Cree grammar books, there is little explanation of the nuances 229 of these categories (Goulet, 2008; Ratt, 2016). Focusing on the specific Cree dialect he speaks, Nehinuw, which is spoken by Swampy Cree in certain communities/regions, Goulet attempts to explain the logic of the animate and inanimate classifications in depth (Napoleon, 2014). His explanation is that the Cree language operates according to multiple orders, which are not adequately captured by the designation of an 'animate' and 'inanimate' linguistic structure. It’s important to note that not a single one of these orders contains the binary classification of gender. Goulet identifies eight subgroups of entities that are considered ‘animate’ because they are "related in the nature-life-movement continuum" or are related in "the sacred-power-magnitude sphere" (2008, p. 8). The animate sub-categories are: Cosmo-Natural, Whole, Life-giving, Survival, Movement, Sacred, Powerful, Large. For the most part, inanimate words are those that refer to "all processes, whether they are cultural and natural" and include "major sensory and educational processes and actions" (p. 9); or refer to those entities that are "part of the cultural and people-created realm" (p. 13). In the inanimate category are also eight subgroups: processual, cultural, part, instrumental, stillness, secular, ordinary, small. Given these multiple orders, Goulet sets aside the animate/inanimate designation and instead offers classifications of the ‘life force entity’ based on the English neologism ‘cremanation’ (p. 14).67 The neologism "cremanation" is "a combination of the words create and emanation," which capture a living entity’s "creative cultural construction side" and "the natural process side of "-emanation"” (p. 14). For example, based on an animate/inanimate classification of ‘essential’ life-force energy, beads would be animate, because they originally ‘emanated’ from 67 At this point, I hope you can appreciate that neologisms are a norm within Cree autonomous narrativity and discursivity. For more discussion on this Cree linguistic practice, please see the work of Cree/Métis scholar June Scudeler, 2016. 230 shells found in nature, but beadwork would be inanimate. But Goulet's description allows for 'beadwork' to be neither fully animate nor inanimate, but something else. The cremanation distinction is more attentive to multiple genealogies because it encourages the classifier to consider the nature of a thing’s origins and emergences, or that ‘beads’ once came from shells while beadwork is a combination of cultural creation and the emanation of beads. The category of wholism is a key order in determining animacy in that a 'whole' is considered animate when it “is more than the material entity of the body and its parts” because it is considered to "perform an “essential” life-giving function" (Goulet, 2008, p. 13-14). In this way, a body and many of its parts are not considered animate, such as a foot, nose or mouth, but breasts are animate, because "they are "the source and passageway for the essential food of milk" (p. 13-14). Similarly, the vagina is considered animate as are the male testicles. The penis is not considered animate. This relationship between the whole and life is not just an occasional instance of word usage but is embedded in the deep structure of the language. In effect, the structure of the language requires one to constantly consider and determine if an entity is essential to regenerating life by constant reference to an entity’s genealogies. This is not a theoretical determination, but a pragmatic and necessary linguistic decision that must be made prior to uttering virtually any Cree word, because all language usage is predicated on the discernment of the ‘life’ of an entity. Thus, the language constantly underscores the ‘essentials’ of life and attention to multiple genealogies. Genealogy is further underscored by the fact that every Cree verb or action is regarded as having an accompanying actor. Swampy Cree philosopher and scholar Lorraine Brundige (2004) explains 231 Action and agency in particular have a distinctive connection when spoken in Swampy Cree. The significance lies in the fact that in Swampy Cree language the object and subject are both inside the same verb word…Take for example the words “He went looking.” In English, the words suggest that he is some separate entity that went to do something, in this case he went looking. But in Swampy Cree there is no separation of the subject from the object “went looking.” In order to translate kanawapamew I would have to write literally “looks at him/her, he/she.” Removing the gender confusion reduces the translation to “He looks at him.” Even where there is an intransitive verb such as “looks he” where there is no object, there is still unity. Within the verb word wapahtam “looks, he” there is still unity of subject/action.” What is most significant with the Swampy Cree language is that there is no “look” without a “looker.” In the world there are not actions without actors. (45) In addition, when a process of transference takes place through action, then not only the original actor/subject is regarded as having agency, but the object of the transference is also imbued with some agency. For example, a ‘sound’ produced by an actor/action may be imbued with a certain agential capacity to transfer a degree of life to another, depending on its genealogical sources and context (Brundige, 2004). The language requires that in referring to this sound produced that one determines if it transfers some degree of life or not. Cremanatory words exist as separate entities but simultaneously share an integral interrelatedness with other words owing to the process of transference. One could say that this intimate connection among the subject/verb/object means that the Cree language reinforces the need for wholistic balance with virtually every utterance. The action of thought is particularly held in high regard as a wholistic form of cremanation. Thought is regarded as both emanating from and being created by the mind, and as such, the mind is regarded as “a sacred place, for within the mind is the possibility for creative birth just as a mother’s womb is a sacred place where birth is created’ (Brundige, 2004, p. 47). So the structural underpinnings of the Cree language and its emphasis on the careful discernment of regenerative action links deep thought with mothering. 232 For the most part, colonial action is defined as neither emanating from nor co-creating life. Instead, the category of the ‘artificial’ is used to describe the nature of colonialism (Goulet, 2008). This classification linguistically separates the colonial order from Cree cremanatory structure. For example, in Swampy Cree a leader is called ‘ogimaw,’ which is a so-called ‘animate’ term because such leadership is performed by a human being. But leaders chosen outside of Cree governance traditions were called ‘ogimagan,’ which means "an artificial, not real or substitute leader” (p. 16). Since human beings occupied these positions, they could not be classified as inanimate; but such positions were not categorized as alive either, because owing to their colonial roots, their genealogy lacked a natural regenerative or creatively constructive life order. Hence the designation as artificial or not real. Similarly, the colonial idea of the ‘Headman’ as the councillor of an ‘Indian’ band was translated into Cree as “simaguniseegan” (p. 10 citing Elder Starr, a great grandson of Chief Star Blanket). The root of this word, ‘simagun,’ means ‘the spear or ‘spear point,’ with ‘simagunis’ used to describe human beings who protected people, somewhat like a police force. But by the early 1950s, the term ‘simaguniseegan’ was being used to refer to not only specially designated Cree constables who assisted the police, but to headmen ostensibly chosen by colonial authorities. So in multiple instances, the suffix ‘-gan’ was used to maintain a Cree understanding of European colonialism as derived from artifice (Goulet, 2008). Arguably, this denotation of the artifice of colonialism reflected a deeper understanding of its separation from regenerative and life affirming natural and creative forces. However, the Swampy Cree did classify the Western European ‘crucifix’ and ‘money’ as life force entities in the Cree language—suggesting that not all aspects of European life were viewed as artificial. Both of these entities were regenerative by virtue of their inherent 233 relationship with the order of ‘power.’ But this is a ‘power’ synonymous with ‘magnanimity’ (Goulet, 2008). Sacred objects, such as the pipe, also were classified within this same order of power. Arguably, this ‘power’ was the power of benevolence, altruism, high-mindedness and generosity or that which is connected with sacred, life-giving power. So in certain contexts of trade and treaty-making, it seems that religion and money were deemed to be powerful because they represented and furthered magnanimity. But there is also an informal linguistic indication that the recognition of money as belonging to this order of ‘power’ was not fully accepted by Cree people. The colloquial word for Europeans is ‘mooniyas’68 which rhymes with ‘sooniyas’ or money. ‘Mooniyas’ is akin to the English meaning of “the greenhorn.” In terms of context, “when you accidentally did something wrong or were being careless, like cutting your foot, people would state that you were doing things like a European or greenhorn” (p. 17). The close relationship of the word ‘mooniyas’ with ‘sooniyas’ and the former’s definition as carelessness and possibly naiveté suggests an associated Swampy Cree mockery of sooniyas as a life-giving source. The separation of the real and artificial based on Indigenous and other worldviews is also present within other Algonquin family languages (Youngblood-Henderson, 2000; Donald, 2019). In these languages, the names that Indigenous peoples have for themselves literally mean the ‘real people’ or the ‘true human beings’ (Donald, 2019). This ‘realness’ is attributed to the reality that humans are really or actually in co-being with Creation or As real human beings…we proceed with acknowledgement of the sacred ecology that lives inside us. First and foremost, we acknowledge that the sun is literally the giver of life. We acknowledge that our bodies are comprised of sunlight-inspired energy that inhabits the air, water, minerals, plants, and animals that we consume. We acknowledge too that despite any current and future technological advances in how we live our lives, we will remain fully dependent on this sacred ecology to keep 68 This word is still in common usage today to refer to people of European descent. 234 us alive. Whoever we are and wherever we may live, there is no way around this simple truth. (Donald, 2019, p. 2) The structure of the languages retains this memory of how ‘real’ human beings live. In the Kainaiwa view, often regarded as synonymous with the Cree worldview, to say ‘the Earth is our Mother’ is not intended as only a metaphorical relation but as a real relationship (Youngblood-Henderson, 2000, p. 248 quoting Leroy Little Bear). It is real in the sense that being Indigenous and the beingness of the earth are wholistically interdependent. In other words, they depend on the conscious care of one another for life. As Lightning (1992) expressed, to consciously care or to have a compassionate mind connects the individual to their proper place in all of Creation. An ethic of care is fundamental to the Cree linguistic paradigm. There is a general understanding of ‘kâ-yôskâtâk ôma nêhiyawêwin’ or 'the Cree language is soft’ (Muehlbauer, 2016, p. 80). While there are multiple meanings of the Cree root yôsk or ‘soft’ depending on its context, such as the sensual meaning of ‘touch,’ one philosophical meaning is that the language is “medicine that helps the mind” (p. 82). In other words, “As part of one’s compassionate mind, one must speak pêyâhtik ‘quietly, slowly, kindly, softly, understandably’ to others. This pêyâhtik speaking is the linguistic aspect of compassion, including a demand for careful choice of words, a controlled voice, and careful representation of the hearer’s perspective” (p. 87) “kitimâkêyihtowin” or ‘compassion’ or ‘pity’ is reflected in the fundamental norms for speech, with a relation of “compassion” or “kitimâkêyihtowin” required between the speaker and the listener (Muehlbauer, 2016, p. 87). This relational norm of compassion operates wholistically and so is entangled with all other relations, beginning with one’s relationship with Creation. It is with kitimâkêyimowin that the Creator is regarded as seeing human beings (p. 86, citing kâ-pimwêwêhahk). This ethic of compassion is also found in the relations expressed in atâyôhkêwin 'myths' or 'sacred stories' and 235 Cree counselling texts (Muehlbauer, 2016 citing Bloomfield 1930; Kâ-Nîpitêhtêw 1998). In one comprehensive account of Cree counselling texts, the importance of "care and love with which people should treat one another" is emphasized by Cree Elder Emma Minde of Maskwachis (Alberta) relating her lived experience in a way that constantly demonstrates both these values and how to enact them with “practical competence.” I believe this competence is succinctly described as follows We were very careful, we had our own teachings, our own education system — teaching children that way of life was taught [by] the grandparents and extended families; they were taught how to view and respect the land and everything in Creation. Through that the young people were taught how to live, what the Creator's laws were, what were the natural laws, what were these First Nations' laws...the teachings revolved around a way of life that was based on their values. Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 6 [emphasis added] Interdependence is not merely a theory, but a lived, practice of carefulness that includes how we speak and what we say. Compassion is a crucial requirement for ‘okimâw’ or a real leader, both among women and men (National Centre, 2020 interviewing Elder Jimmy Myo). To be a compassionate leader meant that you “would help others and watch over children” (Myo, 2020). Again, there was a sense of ‘realness’ attributed to these leaders that was distinguished from ‘pretend’ leaders or those put in place through the Indian Act: “People like this lived amongst us who were not necessarily Chiefs and cared for (watched over) all children that were not necessarily their children” (Myo, 2020). A crucial role of ‘okimaw’ or a real leader can be summed up in a single statement: “Okimâw should be thinking about the children.” This compassionate care for children extends to all Cree social organization. Compassion is necessary for both miyo-wîcêhtowin or ‘good relations’ and miyo-wîcehtowak or ‘harmony’ (Myo, 2020). Social organization in Indigenous communities is often represented as a circle, 236 with children at the centre, followed by Elders, then women, and finally men. (Anderson, 2016, p. 135). Everyone’s first responsibility is to care for the children, and so, arguably, if we are going to reclaim this social organization, then "caring for children is the first truth" to be embraced (p. 139). Again, this emphasis on children represents a wholistic view of what it means to be sovereign: "If we are going to talk about homeland and coming home, we have to provide a place that is warm, where our children are safe and our grandchildren are safe" (p. 139 quoting Maria Campbell). In terms of kinship, all parents are expected to exercise compassion towards their children: “In fact, kâ-pimwêwêhahk asserts…this is the purpose of children coming into the world” (Muehlbauer, 2016, p. 86). Sometimes a leader’s commitment to compassion was expressed as to one’s people, more generally. On September 11, 1885, Cree/Saulteaux Chief Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear) after being wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced for his supposed role in inciting violence during the 1885 Northwest Resistance, he was asked if he had anything to say. His speech focuses not on his own fate but asks that others have ‘pity’ or exercise compassion towards his people as he did. His conviction seemed to trouble him most because he was now “useless” to his people. He states: “I have tried to do the right thing for my people, Pity them! Pity them!” (sicc.sk.ca & TheCanadianEncyclopedia.ca). Similar to the recitation of the ‘good deeds’ by Cree Elder Emma Minde generations later, Chief Mistahimaskwa provides his own life as a lived example of his compassion. He states “There is no one here (in court)…who knows all the good I have done” and he lists his generosity, friendship and openness “to any visitor or stranger” as part testament to his goodness. Clearly, he is reinforcing that you can’t be a leader without compassion for others. 237 Within the Cree understanding of leaders also existed the okihcitâwiskwêwak or clan mothers or warrior women (McAdam, 2015). Compassion was also integral to their role: “ochitowiskew is like the Okimâw (Chief), who had compassion and cared for the people” (Myo, 2020). In speaking of néhiyaw law, half of these laws are said to belong to women, and the ochitowiskew also “have the right to talk about Nehiyaw law in its entirety and what it means” (Myo, 2020). Further, the ochitowiskew were regarded as speaking “with great knowledge and were understood with clarity” (Myo, 2020). This emphasis on the ‘right’ to speak and the effectiveness of their speech ‘performance’ further denotes that the clan mothers followed the norm of compassion when they spoke. This commitment to compassion as a mark of leadership has also been expressed by other Indigenous peoples, with RCAP (V4. 1996) noting that Elders “are caring and are known to share the fruits of their labours and experience with others in the community” (p. 110). Strengthening interdependence has meant actively making yourself more vulnerable and trusting you will be taken care of. In a way, actively embracing your vulnerability is akin to ‘walking your talk’ or showing that you truly believe in the conscious care of creation and its regenerative power. These types of practices included kîhikosimowin or ‘fasting rituals;’ the pakitinâsowin or ‘giveaway’ ceremony; and, mawimoscikêwin or a type of ‘prayer’ (Muehlbauer, 2016). The common denominator in these practices is that “the actor surrenders control, either through loss of bodily power (fasting), loss of all possessions (giveaway), or surrender of mental volition (mawimoscikêwin)” (p. 84). The reason these practices are deemed as central to life is because “The only way to have life is to acknowledge this dependency, this vulnerability and to act as a vulnerable creature” (p. 85). These practices also strip life to its ‘essentials’, with spirit being the bare ‘life’ on which one can depend in all these contexts. In 238 addition, the more vulnerable a living thing makes themself, the more respect they should be afforded because he/she/they more fully embody a great spirit and therefore greater knowledge of life. By renewing one’s interdependence and vulnerability through practices that involve the body, mind, emotions and spirit, you remind yourself and others of what is essential to maintaining life. A story told by Cree Chief Thunderchild when he is an old man (Ahenakew, 1923;1973) further illustrates the great value placed on making yourself vulnerable by relinquishing control and making yourself dependent on others. The stories told in the chapter “Truce Making and Truce Breaking” are about great acts of peace-making by both Crees and the Blackfoot, who were at war for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before negotiating a Treaty (Ahenakew, 1973; Dempsey, 2010). In the latter half of the 1800s, despite entreaties by Crowfoot, the greatest Chief of the Blackfoot, the Bloods (one of the collectives of the Blackfoot Confederacy) refuse to make peace with the Cree. Amidst this volatile and dangerous context, a younger Thunderchild (not yet a Chief) and other Crees were being protected by Chief Crowfoot from a nearby encampment of Bloods after they attempted to attack the Bloods. Without any prior explanation in the story, Chief Thunderchild’s friend, whom he jokingly calls ‘grandfather,’ wakes up early one morning and tells them they should go to the Blood camp. And so they do, walking boldly up to the Blood Chief’s tent. This act of making themselves vulnerable resonates emotionally with the Blood Chief, whose anger dissipates when he sees his enemies, the young Crees, walking towards his lodge. He says “I thought that I could never be friendly to the Crees, for they took the lives of two of my sons. But these have killed the anger in me. They will be my sons” (p. 33). The Blood Chief then gives Chief Thunderchild and his friend excellent horses, and the clothing and ornaments 239 that had belonged to his sons, as well as other goods. He also invites them to live with him in his camp. Thunderchild and his ‘grandfather’ then return temporarily to the camp of Crowfoot and tell what they have done. Chief Crowfoot is greatly impressed by their actions: “Your hearts are stout,” he says. He then warns them not to return to the Blood camp, as there are other, greater, Blood Chiefs who are still angry. But Chief Thunderchild and his ‘grandfather’ do go to live and stay with the Blood Chief until they move camp. In hindsight, Chief Thunderchild says simply “It was not easy to do that” (p. 34). With this story, Chief Thunderchild demonstrates how making yourself vulnerable to the point of possible death was greatly valued by the Blood Chief, resulting in not only peace but the regeneration of their own lives and possibly others. But the exercise of care is not a matter of negating power for equality’s sake but is connected again to a wholistic understanding of the balance that is necessary to ensure life, which is also akin to following the Creator’s laws. In being compassionate to others, you actively help to regenerate the life of other entities while being attentive to your own interdependence. So-called ‘power’ not connected to progenitivity would be patently unethical and may be better characterized as ‘force’ because it would lead to the loss of life, and inevitably to one’s own eventual loss of life. In a sense, compassion or ‘kitimâk’ may be regarded as “something in the weaker that calls to the stronger...[so that] To direct one's mind in a kitimâk- way is to recognize one's own power and to find a responding aspect in the creature considered” (Muehlbauer, 2016, p. 87). The Cree language recognizes this aspect in others by identifying both the state of being in need of ‘kitimâk-‘ or compassion—'kitimâkisi-’ and the act of “having it directed towards them (kitimâkêyimiht)” (p. 87). 240 Cree people understood that the reciprocity or regeneration of care depends on changing structural conditions. Reproduction or action/reaction without compassion is not necessarily connected to progenitivity. In fact, directionless reproduction is potentially destructive. On the flipside, compassion that does not address unequal structural relations of power is akin to charity that does not meaningfully change the conditions for life to flourish. The Cree language or our mother’s tongue is telling us to get real by living our interdependence through conscious care for all life now. Ultimately, the paradigmatic narrative and linguistic norm of compassion is akin to a mother’s caring and careful words to her child. 6.7 Conclusion Although a view of the land as okâwîmâwaskiy denotes a particular type of relationship to the land as our mothers, rarely do we explore the nature of what mothering means from a Cree perspective, as well as how the land and mothers may be intimately interrelated by more than rhetoric or metaphor. In this chapter, I looked at the idea of ‘balance and harmony’ as conceptualized according to Cree concepts of gender, kinship and animacy and applied to motherhood. A ‘grounded’ approach to gender that is ‘understood from within’ and in a specific ‘language and tradition’ (Ladner, 2005, p. 72) reveals diverse and conflicting understandings of gender and maternalism within shared Cree contexts. This debate is not over whether we should return to our traditions, but how we return to our traditions in a way that is wholistically life-affirming. It turns out that the debate over okawimawaskiy concerns not the value of ‘balance and harmony’ but how they are interpreted by contemporary iterations of ‘tradition.’ Our traditions are largely formulated from our understandings and interpretations of our narratives and languages, including and especially their spiritual aspects. 241 I tried to approach this debate over okawimawaskiy not as one of conflicting traditions, but as one of varying perspectives with the potential to inform one another and our own understandings of Cree approaches to normatively grounding ourselves in our lands. Specifically, I examined how the theories of genderlessness, plural genders? and gender complementarity / balance compete with mother-centred accounts of Cree relationship and structure. While both of the latter theories have restorative elements, neither effectively deals with the deep twisted roots of gender and sexual violence now embedded in Cree narratives and communities. Cree narrative and linguistic representations of mothers, motherhood and mothering contribute to gendered and sexual violence when they uncritically adopt a binary view of creation. okâwîmâwaskiy may be a neologism, but she/they/he is necessary to re-emplacing mothers and motherhood as part of a restoration of the egalitarian circle of Cree relationships and their trans nature. What is ultimately being restored is a holism where gender and sexual diversity are valued as part of life. Given the silencing and disappearing of mothers through linguistic and narrative hetero-patriarchal gendering practices, okâwîmâwaskiy is acting to balance the Cree language and narratives by maternally regendering Cree relationships. Arguably, a similar process of restoring balance is taking place with the invented term ‘Two-Spirit.’ As a relational word bundle, okawimawaskiy is working to linguistically and narratively revitalize our spiritual and kinship relations by restoring the place and power of mothers and motherhood within nêhiyaw tâpisînawin and at multiple sites. Integral to the process of old/new knowledge co-creation is a precise understanding of how the world is named and narrated. Patriarchal naming has resulted in the discounting, degrading and concealing of maternal and 242 gender diverse terms in the language, which over time can reorient the entire ideological context of the language. Narratives co-created without the presence of our mothers cannot move us in the direction of a wholistic ethic of care. The patriarchal gendering of our spiritual and kinship relations have displaced our mothers and grandmothers, but okawimawaskiy seeks to re-emplace them within not only our contemporary contexts but in our âtayôhkêwina, âcimowina and nêhiyaw itwêwina. Our survival, our lives, depend on her continued and caring presence. 243 Chapter 7: Conclusion: keyam! A Cree Apology 7.1 Introduction kayas69, when I first started university, I was drawn not only to the field of political science but to political philosophy. In particular, the texts of ancient Greek philosopher Plato, featuring his teacher, Socrates, appealed to me. Looking back, maybe I liked the stories of Socrates because he seemed nêhiyaw in a lot of ways. Like nêhiyawak knowledge-keepers, Socrates preferred orality over the written word—and refused to write down a word of his philosophy. With the humility of Cree kêhtê-ayak or ‘Old People’ who preface a story with ‘namôya mistahi ê-kiskêyihtamân or “I do not know very much” (McLeod, 2007, p. 15-16), Socrates never considered himself knowledgeable; instead, he insisted his only wisdom was that he knew he knew nothing of importance (Nails, 2020). Though his philosophical endeavours were emulated by the young men of Athens, Socrates refused to take payment in the accepted Greek tradition of the ‘sophists’ who were in the business of teaching others how to be wise. He also refused to put himself on a public pedestal as a statesman or align himself with Athenian democrats or oligarchs (Nails, 2020). His ‘Socratic dialogue’ method of question and answer conversation apparently had no singular purpose, but unfolded based on the context and the dialogue partners (Haroutunian-Gordon, 2014). At any rate, Socrates unsettled the settled way of doing things, and eventually made enemies of powerful men in Athens. Even Plato, who went on to immortalize and valorize Socrates as the central figure in many of his written philosophical texts, was regarded by 69 This is a traditional way of starting a story. It refers to a time a long, long, long, long, loooong ago or oftentimes to the time before Earth came into being. 244 Socrates as one of those “young men of the richer classes, who have not much to do” (Plato, 1909, p. 9). Similarly, nêhiyâwak leaders, many of whom are unelected and unpaid, have continuously challenged the authoritative truths of dominant society and resisted the settled power of the Canadian state and its dominant political and economic actors. Like Socrates, nêhiyawak leaders of movements like Idle No More and Iskwewuk E-wichiwitochik have tended to question the dominant norms of their day or ‘the opinion of the many.’ But there is one story of Socrates that especially resonates with Cree and Indigenous narratives in that it is personal, pedagogical, place-based and ethical. This is the story of ‘The Apology of Socrates’ written by Plato. In an ironic Cree-like twist, this story is not an apology at all, but is quite the opposite. Similar to today’s unwarranted criminalization of Cree and Indigenous land protectors, Socrates is charged, convicted and sentenced to death for what his author, Plato, clearly means to show are unjust charges. Rather than agree with his accusers and apologize, which would have spared him his life, Socrates accuses his accusers: “Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives” (Plato, 1909, p. 26). As the story goes, Socrates calls himself a ‘gadfly.’ And what’s a gadfly? In literal terms, it is an annoying insect that awakens the nervous system of a horse, but in Socrates’ case he is calling himself a philosophical gadfly that awakens the consciousness of people by stinging at their accepted norms and beliefs. But just as a horse does not like getting stung by a gadfly, most of us do not like being woke from our unconscious adherence to the dominant status quo. We prefer to sleep comfortably like powerful wîhtikowak. 245 In his reading of The Apology, philosopher Michel Foucault regards the text as particularly significant because he sees Socrates as embodying a type of self that can inspire a new ethics in late twentieth century Western philosophy. This is a self that seeks to ‘take care of yourself’ rather than to ‘know your self,’ He locates the care of the self in this passage: In Plato’s Apology, 29e, Socrates presents himself before his judges as a master of epimeleia heautou.70 You “preoccupy yourselves without shame in acquiring wealth and reputation and honors,” he tells them, but you do not concern yourselves with yourselves, that is, with “wisdom, truth and the perfection of the soul.” He, on the other hand, watches over the citizens to make sure they concern themselves with themselves (p. 148). Intertwined with Socrates’ un-apology are three important premises, which are noted by Foucault: 1) Socrates “mission” in life comes from “the Gods, and he won’t abandon it except with his last breath;” 2) Socrates does not seek a material or worldly reward for his work, but performs it out of “benevolence;” and, finally, 3) Socrates believes that this approach to life is “useful for the city—more useful than the Athenians’ military victory at Olympia—because, in teaching people to occupy themselves with themselves, he teaches them to occupy themselves with the city” (p. 148). So with this concept of ‘care of the self,’ Foucault identifies an autonomy that comes not from an external code or human artifice but a morality rooted in a divine autonomy that eschews worldly rewards for a greater good. This act of taking care of one’s self is more useful than virtually any other accomplishment or victory to the life of the community or place. Specifically, Foucault defines the care of the self in terms of "those intentional and voluntary actions by which men [and Two-spirit, women and sihkos] not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek 70Drawing on various translations noted in the original source, Foucault interprets this as meaning “to take care of yourself; to take “care of the self”; to be concerned, to take care of yourself.” 246 to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre" (1986, p. 10). In effect, both philosophers identified the need for an insurgent turn towards caring for one’s self that attended to making one’s life ‘excellent’ or into an ‘oeuvre.’ Foucault (1994) then goes on with his exhumation of how this concept of ‘care’ of the self was overtaken by ‘knowing’ the self through antiquity and Christianity, resulting in “different forms of care” leading to “different forms of self” (p. 149). The result was that ‘taking care of the self’ became instead a relation of dominating one’s self in a process of ‘self-renunciation’ in service to ‘knowing yourself.’ The problems with this for the modern political subject are, first, the idea that “we should give more care to ourselves than to anything else in the world” is equated with immorality; and knowing yourself or the ‘thinking subject’ is elevated as the necessary precursor to all knowledge production. Previously, the ‘self’ was ‘the soul’ as an element of the divine in each body and so in Greek antiquity a man would take care of himself by ‘examining his soul’ (Foucault, 1994, citing Alcibiades I, p. 151-152). For Foucault, the modern political subject is now devoid of the idea that “the subject needs to care for him- or herself in order to receive and understand truth” (Lefebvre, 2016, p. 519). Worse yet, at a certain point in Western history, “care for individual life” became “a duty for the state” (Foucault, 1988, p. 147). The problem was and is that the relation of the state to individuals is not governed by an ‘ethic of care,’ but by the rise of “modern political rationality” or “reason of state” which results in an entirely new relation for dictating human self-understanding (p. 150-151). Under this reasoning that arose in the 16th century, it is ‘the state’s preservation, the state’s expansion, and the state’s felicity’ that matters” (p.148). The relationship between the state and individuals is one whereby “Individuals are viewed in terms of their utility and effect in strengthening or weakening the state,” which demands various ‘moral’ behaviour in 247 a citizen: “sometimes what he has to do for the state is to live, to work, to produce, to consume; and sometimes what he has to do is to die. […] All of the citizenry is politically marginalized by the state itself, because all that matters is their “political utility”” (p. 152). In many ways, government does not serve people, but instead seeks to strengthen its own power. The state has become an end unto itself that collectively oppresses its own citizens. It is oriented towards coldness and uncaring wîhtikow violence. We can also situate Socrates’ (née Plato’s) and Foucault’s notions of ethics within practices of theorizing or a theorizing practice that draws on a grounded, wholistic orientation. Socrates engaged in dialogue with people from all walks of life, regardless of gender, age, class and whether they were a slave or free person (Nails, 2020). Socrates meticulously searched his grounds or the Athenian marketplace and public spaces looking for people with which to be in dialogic relationship. Similarly, Foucault’s (1988) self-described methodological approach is one of ‘theorizing practice’ or attempting “to analyze a real situation in its various complexities, with the goal of allowing refusal, and curiosity, and innovation” (Foucault, 1988, p. 13). Another succinct way of understanding his approach is as a “philosophy [that] aims to free us from habitual forms of thought and action in the present, enabling us to experience with thinking and acting differently” (Tully, 2008, p. 72). Of course, Foucault sought to identify the elements that constituted a field of experience, namely “a game of truth, relations of power, and forms of relation to oneself and to others” (Foucault, 1984, p. 387). Through applying critical thought to experience, he came to understand the situated and specific (grounded) relationships between practice and thought, and the potential of focusing on grounded relationships for freeing us from unthinking adherence to common practice. 248 In effect, not to put too much of a reductive spin on it, both Socrates and Foucault were concerned with the dominance and violence of a ‘virtue’ or an ‘ethics’ that oriented one towards a concept of ‘good’ relations devoid of caring for one’s self that is in dialogic relationship with all others present in our contexts. While adopting a decontextualized ancient ethics was not Foucault’s aim, he did believe that in the concept of the care of self lay the seed of a new ethics that could ‘inspire us’ rather than ‘diminish us’; or that would establish a morality based on “an inner necessity” grounded in experience that stirred us to action rather than a morality that exists outside ourselves as a “sense of duty that weighs us down” (White, 2014, p. 494-495). I believe it is this “forgotten possibility of ethics” that concerned not only Foucault (White, 2014, p. 492)71 but Socrates. In a sense, critique or critical questioning is itself a type of morality that promotes the transformation of the self by more fully accounting for all types of relationships and contexts. Critique becomes potentially self-transformative at the point it exposes the limits of recognizability and intelligibility or ‘the epistemological and ontological horizon within which subjects come to be at all” (Butler, 2005, p. 17). The ethical question of giving an account of yourself arises at these limits as we tread onto uncommon ground by being propelled into dialogue with ‘others.’ Occupying this ethical terrain risks the unrecognizability of our own self: since to question the norms of recognition that govern what I might be, to ask what they leave out, what they might be compelled to accommodate, is, in relation to the present regime…to become an occasion for posing the question of who one is (or can be) and whether or not one is recognizable (23). 71 As White (2014) notes, Nietzsche (1887) was also concerned with this type of ethics, although he referred to it in the unfortunate language of a ‘master morality.’ 249 Neither ‘we’ nor our ‘cognitive categories’ remain unchanged when ‘we enter into a knowing encounter with the world. Both the knowing subject and the world are undone and redone by the act of knowledge’ (Butler, 2000, p. 19–20). Though we consider ‘ethics’ largely an internal act, we can only be ethical when we opt to be wholistically present at “the ethical site” that lies at the “limits of intelligibility, at the point where we negotiate with what is outside our frames of knowledge” (Stark, 2014, p. 95). Given the risk to our settled concept of our self that engaging in such dialogue entails, brings us back to the importance of embodying care as a counterbalance to not being able to know or embracing the great mystery of life with care. Nêhiyaw author Edward Ahenakew’s (1923) concern with the ethics of taking care of one’s self arose during a time when nêhiyawak were forced to make sense of a Western knowledge system while the rope of colonization was being drawn ever tighter around their necks. Ahenakew constructs the character of ‘Old Keyam’ as a symbolic embodiment of the plight of the first generation of Cree people to be confined to ‘Indian’ reservations. But this character is also an examination of how Cree people can continue to care for themselves. Through an implicit dialogue between Old Keyam and the third person voice of the narrator, Ahenakew examines competing and conflicting Cree, Western and colonial values. There is clear resistance to the colonial systems that are increasingly stripping Cree people of their capacity to determine and develop themselves on their own terms. As I showed in Chapter 4, Ahenakew evaluates colonization in terms of its capacity to regenerate the life of Cree peoples in a way that maintains a balanced relational autonomy. But with the character of ‘Old Keyam’ there is also an emphasis on the need to take care of one’s self. The word ‘keyam’ is translated as ‘I do not care.’ Ahenakew describes the ‘assumed demeanor’ of ‘Keyam!’ or not caring as prevalent among nêhiyawak, when “in fact they do care 250 greatly" (p. 7). Although an old man, Keyam is not really afforded the Cree reverence traditionally granted to old men, because he ostensibly lacks the valuable knowledge that younger generations now need to make their way in the world. So he too masks his hurt and disappointment at his displaced status as “an inferior and garrulous successor to the Old Men” in keyam or seeming not to care (p. 52). It seems strange that Old Keyam would react with a feigned sense of uncaring, unless, Ahenakew wants to underline both the significance and the extreme hardship of taking care of one’s self in the face of colonial violence that seeks to destroy what it means to be Cree. The naming of the main character of his text reveals a specific insight into Cree subjectivity: it is not the uncertainty or unknowingness of how the Cree self may unfold that is problematic, but instead the real danger is not caring for one’s self. Multiple nuanced meanings are brought to the néhiyawéwin word 'keyam.' The word functions both as a type of collective Cree ethic that denotes "stoic indifference" or "assumed indifference" (p. 85), but also is described as a virtuous autonomy that is indeed indifferent to worldly cares. The invoking of ‘keyam’ becomes an ethical weakness or strength depending on the context. Against the backdrop of Indigenous political organizing to establish a national "League" or a collective Indigenous political voice to further a consciousness of Indigenous nationhood, 'keyam' is an obstacle, because it breeds resignation to one's fate (p. 85). But in the context of an oppressive permit system, such "assumed indifference" is often the only means to endure the humiliating process of being forced "to ask or beg for a permit to sell one load of hay that he has cut himself" (p. 101). Ahenakew suggests that while indifference to life’s circumstances can be a strength, one must always continue to engage in a higher care of the self. 251 Ironically, it turns out that Old Keyam is a true successor to the Old Men because he epitomizes Ahenakew’s concept of care of the self. This is shown in two instances. First, Keyam shows that he can readily embrace the limits of human knowledge with a valorous indifference. Returning to Socrates’ Apology, Keyam states “There was once a very wise man who said, 'He is wisest among you who has found out that in truth his wisdom is worth nothing at all.' Now our Cree language can say all that in one word, in the name that you have given me: Keyam" (p. 108). Here, Ahenakew is affirming a Socratic care of the self and the Cree propensity of taking care of the self over knowing the self. Secondly, in the final pages of the book, we find out that Keyam turns out to be a carrier of the red-stone pipe-stem. Such carriers epitomize “courage, mercy, love for others, reverence towards God,” as well as the practice of "speak[ing] words of deep thought" (p. 108). 7.2 Telling the same story, only different In this concluding chapter, I have chosen to briefly create linkages with Socrates (née Plato), Foucault and Butler or to bring them into the circle of my understanding of Cree views on the regeneration of a wholistic ethics. I am explicitly adding their voices to those of all my relations. I am not citing these highly valued Western philosophers as an indirect plea for you to value nêhiyaw, Cree or Indigenous knowledge systems (although I wouldn’t put any indirect route past sihkos as she’s not afraid to get dirty), but to further illustrate how Western and Indigenous philosophers can walk and learn together in shared spaces of ethical relationality and beingness. As it turns out, Western philosophy does indeed have its own weasels or sihkosak in the sense that Cree, Anishinaabe and many other Indigenous people understand the weasel or sihkos. 252 When I refer to these Western, critical philosophers as ‘sihkos,’ I mean that they too are constantly researching for ways to cut the cords that bind us to a cold, alienating, uncaring, wîhtikow self. This is the self that remains embedded within dominant Western institutions of self-governance. They too have also identified ethics as a key site for restoring balance to one’s self and co-creating a harmony of political voices. Ironically, growing up on the Okanese First Nation in the File Hills of Treaty 4 territory, I would often hear that the problem with moniyaw72 was that they were unethical. This was common knowledge intended to explain why things were the way they were and how nothing would really change unless moniyaw changed their ethics. But I also heard Elders say that the root of overcoming any problem was for nêhiyawak to live ethically and then they would talk about the need to restore balance and harmony by taking care of ourselves, each other, animals and all of Creation. It is both strange and fitting that I have ended up at virtually the same ethical site from which my education began. I think it is because I have learned a little bit about how to tell the same story, only different. In my constant researching inside, outside, under and over, and in-between this collection of leaves, I have tried to theorize what taking care of yourself means from a nêhiyaw point of view. I believe this ethic of caring culminates in a concept of the self grounded in wholistic, relationship with okâwîmâwaskiy or the ‘land as mother.’ This a type of care akin to a mother’s conscious care that is extended to all living things in Creation, including a care for all human and more-than-human life. It values the presence of all life it finds in real, living and natural contexts, presuming that every living being has their own knowledges to share and new ones to 72 Cree language colloquialism for ‘Europeans’ and European-descended settlers living on iyiniw ministik (North America). 253 co-create with us. Harmony is achieved when we all engage in conscious care (Dumont, 2005). This tracking has largely been a process of recollecting and recreating through an overarching method of storywork that draws on Cree narratives, language and lived experience. As part of this process, I have relied on endlessly fertile Cree imagery, characters and concepts to help me represent Cree and Indigeneity knowledges as accurately as possible. Of these, the concept of a bundle is perhaps most significant. I eventually came to understand okâwîmâwaskiy as a sacred bundle of Indigenous thought, action, spirit and feeling that carries the stories, prayers, poems and histories of our mothers. okâwîmâwaskiy functions as a bundle linguistically, rhetorically and in real life to weave together restorative meanings of land, spirit and motherhood in an act of creative, caring continuance that seeks to wholistically restore life. In the process of recollecting this word bundle, I have also been disentangling the twisted branches of binary and colonial patriarchal gendering from Cree kinship relations to help restore the place of our mothers and mothering. But of all the strands that I wanted to recollect back into our understanding of okâwîmâwaskiy is the significance of spirituality to how we understand C/creation or sources of life and how we conceive of life-orders and life-ways. Spirituality is what makes wholistic connection possible or that enables us to become whole and a collective whole. I tried to connect spirituality with care in multiple ways. First, I connected spirituality with care in the Cree concept of Compassionate Mind as told by nêhiyaw Elder Louis Sunchild to maskwachees educator, Albert Lightning (1992). Compassionate mind is the embodiment of a conscious care that connects the individual to their proper place in all of Creation. As part of Compassionate Mind, Cree peoples generally understand that they must strive to speak with compassion, which 254 includes careful choice of words, a controlled voice, and careful representation of the hearer’s perspective. I characterized the problem standing in the way of revitalizing a wholistic Cree ethic grounded in okâwîmâwaskiy as a wîhtikow. This conceptualization enabled me to better understand the ultimate problem of colonization as a serial destructive force that undermines the theory and practice of a wholistic self. I drew also on the story of sihkos or weasel, who was able to destroy the wîhtikow with her indirect and multiple methods of grounded searching. sihkos is simultaneously a story, symbol and method. Virtually every element of her being is paradoxical in that she occupies the poles of every category in which she is placed. Though born with an inherent and unprecedented vulnerability as nature’s smallest carnivore,73 they have become largely invulnerable to differences in ancestry, climate and geography, making weasel species of ‘least concern’ to conservationists on every continent they inhabit. Sihkos is also the only creature of which I am aware for which Crees have a story of her killing the wîhtikow. sihkos’ teaches us about achieving balance through wholistic, grounded presence. In elaborating on the implications of my researching and possible future research, I am going to leave you with a story of an okimaw or a Cree concept of a leader who truly embodies and lives the concept of the self that I have been theorizing. 7.3 A Care Crusader One leader that epitomizes this care is Cindy Blackstock. A Gitxsan scholar and children’s advocate who grew up in northern B.C., she found her calling early in life—in the process of working as a child protection worker for the B.C. government at the age of 21. 73 Imagine being born the size of a chipmunk but still being forced to survive as a predator. 255 Working to keep Indigenous families together, she noticed how difficult the systems made this task. One reason was that there was little financial or other support for preventing the break up of families; instead, Ottawa spent little on services that supported the well-being of indigenous children at home, which resulted in more children being sent to foster homes, often with non-indigenous families. Her purpose was clear: to help the children. Since then, she’s been unwavering in this purpose. She started a non-profit foundation in 1998 to advocate on their behalf, the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society, and pursued a higher education that would make her more effective in this mission. Building off her social work degree, she obtained a master’s and a doctoral degree (2009) that focused on the inequality in Canada’s child welfare system and its incongruencies with Indigenous ways of being and knowing. She continues to educate herself to help children, as she is currently pursuing another master’s degree in jurisprudence in children’s law and policy at Chicago’s Loyola University. How has the Canadian government responded to this care crusader? The government spent $5 million on surveillance, following her every move on social media and twitter, in a bid to discredit her testimony against them at a Canadian Human Rights Commission (Diebel, 2016). Here, she would make the case that successive Canadian governments have racially discriminated against Indigenous children by chronically underfunding Indigenous child welfare services. Her organization quantifies the gap at between 20 to 30 per cent less. Before that, she was the strong and unwavering voice behind the government’s adoption of Jordan’s Principle, including working to have it implemented. The government continues to resist her efforts to compel they follow through on their professions of ‘care’ with real action. At the Human Rights Commission, the government 256 ironically argued that you can’t quantify care and that the matter is more “complex” than straight accounting of funding allows. From Blackstock’s perspective, it comes down to outcomes. The reality is that “this proven gap (in funding) is widening, not getting smaller,” and points out that in 2016, indigenous kids are three times more likely to be in foster care than they were during the worst period of residential schools” (Diebel, 2016). What is remarkable about the nature of Blackstock’s caring political activism is that she regards herself as intimately connected to Indigenous children—truly putting herself in their situation. This action reflects the wholistic orientation of I am you and you are me. In describing the effect of the child welfare system, she quantifies it from the child’s perspective, noting that the 163,000 children in ‘care’ of the government, spent 66 million nights away from their families. Like a child, she measures the effect of the child welfare system in ‘sleeps.’ This capacity reflects a highly developed moral imagination to put herself in the place of these kids who lie awake wondering when they will see their families again. In addition, she regards herself as interconnected with these 163,000 children in a relationship of kinship. Specifically, she caringly describes herself as their mother, noting that she is: “Single [with] no kids, except the 163,000-plus that I’m honoured to work with on equity issues.” When we listen to others or when we are in wholistic dialogue with another, then the ‘boundary’ between what we often consider ‘separate’ ways of being, such as ‘Indigenous and Western,’ can become spaces of ethical relationality and shared beingness (Ermine, Sinclair, & Jeffery, 2004). 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Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Political Science
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Arneil, Barbara
Lightfoot, Sheryl R.
Okâwîmâwaskiy : regenerating a wholistic ethics
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