Education, Faculty of
Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Brant-Birioukov, Kiera Kaia’tanó:ron
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
University of British Columbia
The reader is invited to join a journey towards kanenhstóhare (ga nunhs doe ha ray). This dissertation traces the process of making Haudenosaunee lyed corn soup, to propose that a curriculum of renewal can be conceptualized through Haudenosaunee thought. The journey is guided by the pursuit of the research question, What value can kanenhstóhare bring to a curriculum of renewal? As a contribution to the Canadian conversation of curriculum studies, this dissertation seeks to consider the complexity of Haudenosaunee thought as an invitation to renew the learner through the journey of lyed corn, as it experiences estrangement (leaving the familiar behind) and homecoming (the iterative remaking of home). The field of curriculum theory has existing calls for the renewal, disruption, and interruption of the learner’s consciousness; yet it fails to account for the risk it poses to learners in such an estrangement from self, and the need to reintroduce oneself following these transformative moments. Kanenhstóhare, drawing upon a Haudenosaunee consciousness, calls for learners to lean into such discomfort, darkness, and grief, as a journey into the unknown. Rooted in a foundation for Haudenosaunee thought, I introduce the overarching threads of Kayanerenhkó:wa (The Great Law of Peace) (ka’nikonhrì:io, ka’sathsténhsera, and skennen) as three methodological moments (autobiography, educational theory, and traditional teachings). Following the journey of corn, we move towards sowing the seeds and braiding the corn to dry, where I theorize how coloniality poisons our collective minds and limits the possibilities of a curriculum of renewal. Lyed corn is a result of vigorous and corrosive boil to transform and renew the corn. Therefore, renewal in a theory of kanenhstóhare, is sought by leaning into a boil for estrangement and is rinsed and reintroduced back into the world through a homecoming. The dissertation concludes with positing the serving of the soup, to offer a conversation for a curriculum of renewal and the future of Haudenosaunee thought in education.
KANENHSTÓHARE: THE EDUCATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF ESTRANGEMENT, HOMECOMING, AND INDIGENEITY by Kiera Kaia’tanó:ron Brant-Birioukov B.A., University of Ottawa, 2014 B.Ed., University of Ottawa, 2015 M.A., University of Ottawa, 2017 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Curriculum Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) March 2022 © Kiera Kaia’tanó:ron Brant-Birioukov, 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Kanenhstóhare: The Educative Implications of Estrangement, Homecoming, and Indigeneity submitted by Kiera Brant-Birioukov in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum Studies Examining Committee: Dr. William Pinar, Curriculum & Pedagogy, UBC Supervisor Dr. Jan Hare, Language & Literacy, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Anne Phelan, Curriculum & Pedagogy, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Cynthia Nicol, Curriculum & Pedagogy, UBC University Examiner Dr. Cash Ahenakew, Educational Studies, UBC University Examiner Dr. Susan Hill, History, U of T External Examiner iii Abstract The reader is invited to join a journey towards kanenhstóhare (ga nunhs doe ha ray). This dissertation traces the process of making Haudenosaunee lyed corn soup, to propose that a curriculum of renewal can be conceptualized through Haudenosaunee thought. The journey is guided by the pursuit of the research question, What value can kanenhstóhare bring to a curriculum of renewal? As a contribution to the Canadian conversation of curriculum studies, this dissertation seeks to consider the complexity of Haudenosaunee thought as an invitation to renew the learner through the journey of lyed corn, as it experiences estrangement (leaving the familiar behind) and homecoming (the iterative remaking of home). The field of curriculum theory has existing calls for the renewal, disruption, and interruption of the learner’s consciousness; yet it fails to account for the risk it poses to learners in such an estrangement from self, and the need to reintroduce oneself following these transformative moments. Kanenhstóhare, drawing upon a Haudenosaunee consciousness, calls for learners to lean into such discomfort, darkness, and grief, as a journey into the unknown. Rooted in a foundation for Haudenosaunee thought, I introduce the overarching threads of Kayanerenhkó:wa (The Great Law of Peace) (ka’nikonhrì:io, ka’sathsténhsera, and skennen) as three methodological moments (autobiography, educational theory, and traditional teachings). Following the journey of corn, we move towards sowing the seeds and braiding the corn to dry, where I theorize how coloniality poisons our collective minds and limits the possibilities of a curriculum of renewal. Lyed corn is a result of vigorous and corrosive boil to transform and renew the corn. Therefore, renewal in a theory of kanenhstóhare, is sought by leaning into a boil for estrangement and is rinsed and reintroduced back into the world through a homecoming. The iv dissertation concludes with positing the serving of the soup, to offer a conversation for a curriculum of renewal and the future of Haudenosaunee thought in education. v Lay Summary Kanenhstóhare posits how estrangement (leaving the familiar behind) and homecoming (the iterative remaking of home) invites the renewal of relationships with the self, others, community, and the land. This research considers education through the teachings of kanenhstóhare, the Haudenosaunee practice of making lyed corn soup. Corn is a sacred property in Haudenosaunee society. More than simply an ingredient, it is believed to be a teacher, who nourishes the spirit, mind, and body. A kanenhstóhare theory proposes the possibilities of transformation by considering three separate but interconnected strands: 1) autobiography; 2) traditional teachings; and 3) educational theory. With the intention of interrogating settler epistemic privilege, kanenhstóhare seeks the educative possibilities of Haudenosaunee thought as an educational theory and methodology for renewal. vi Preface This dissertation is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, K. Brant-Birioukov. vii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................................ iii Lay Summary ............................................................................................................................................................... v Preface .......................................................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures .............................................................................................................................................................. ix List of Supplementary Material .................................................................................................................................. x Kanyen’kéha Glossary ................................................................................................................................................ xi Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................................... xiv Dedication .................................................................................................................................................................. xvi Chapter 1: SETTING THE INTENTION ................................................................................................................. 1 “Edge of the Woods” Ceremony ............................................................................................................................... 1 The Beginning of the Journey .................................................................................................................................... 3 Kanenhstóhare for Renewal ...................................................................................................................................... 9 Overview of Dissertation ......................................................................................................................................... 10 Corn as Provider ..................................................................................................................................................... 11 Corn as Matriarch ................................................................................................................................................... 14 Corn as Teacher ...................................................................................................................................................... 17 How to Read this Dissertation................................................................................................................................. 19 Chapter 2: PREPARING THE FIELD .................................................................................................................... 22 Soil as Foundation................................................................................................................................................... 22 Kayanerenhkó:wa (The Great Law of Peace)..................................................................................................... 23 Strand One: Autobiography .................................................................................................................................... 26 Ka’nikonhrí:io (Good Mind) .............................................................................................................................. 27 Autobiography for Kanenhstóhare ..................................................................................................................... 28 Faceless .......................................................................................................................................................... 28 Indigenous Autobiography ................................................................................................................................. 30 Storytelling Protocols .................................................................................................................................... 32 Strand Two: Educational Theory ............................................................................................................................ 37 Ka’sathsténhsera (Power/Strength) .................................................................................................................... 38 Understanding Educational Theory .................................................................................................................... 40 Currere for Purposeful Self-Study ...................................................................................................................... 41 From Indigenized to Indigenous Theory ............................................................................................................ 43 Strand Three: Traditional Teachings ...................................................................................................................... 47 Skennen (Peace) ................................................................................................................................................. 48 Protocols of Traditional Knowledge .................................................................................................................. 50 viii Conclusion: The Strands of Kanenhstóhare ............................................................................................................ 51 Chapter 3: SOWING & BRAIDING........................................................................................................................ 53 Where Life Grows .................................................................................................................................................... 53 Honour the Land, Honour the Mind ........................................................................................................................ 54 The Complicated Conversation of Coloniality ........................................................................................................ 58 Settler Epistemic Privilege ...................................................................................................................................... 62 Strangers in the Water ................................................................................................................................... 64 Braiding to Transform ............................................................................................................................................. 66 Chapter 4: THE BOIL, ESTRANGEMENT ........................................................................................................... 70 Estrangement for Curricular Renewal .................................................................................................................... 70 Estrangement ........................................................................................................................................................... 72 Visitors in the Garden ......................................................................................................................................... 77 The Ruminator’s Agenda ................................................................................................................................... 78 The Provocateur’s Agenda ................................................................................................................................. 80 The Traveller’s Agenda ...................................................................................................................................... 81 Kanenhstóhare for Estrangement ............................................................................................................................ 83 Oshontawenko:wa (The Great Darkness) ............................................................................................................... 84 The Missing Threads .......................................................................................................................................... 87 Wake’nikonhkwenhtará:on ...................................................................................................................................... 88 Finding my Mind on the Ground ........................................................................................................................ 89 Blackberries ................................................................................................................................................... 91 Yah teskatatyenté:ri ................................................................................................................................................. 93 Chapter 5: THE RINSE, HOMECOMING............................................................................................................. 96 Homecoming for Curricular Renewal ..................................................................................................................... 96 Home/Coming or Coming Home? ........................................................................................................................... 98 Pacific Spirit ................................................................................................................................................ 100 Home ..................................................................................................................................................................... 101 On (En) Revitalization ........................................................................................................................................... 104 Katatenà:tons ........................................................................................................................................................ 108 Chapter 6: SERVING THE SOUP ......................................................................................................................... 111 Serving with Two Hands........................................................................................................................................ 113 A Curriculum of Renewal ................................................................................................................................ 113 Imagining Kanenhstóhare Education ........................................................................................................... 114 Language Re-vital-ization ........................................................................................................................... 120 Thó’k Nikawén:nake .............................................................................................................................................. 123 References ................................................................................................................................................................. 125 ix List of Figures Figure 1 – Cornelius (1996, p. 40), "Haudenosaunee Cultural Components" ................................ 5 Figure 2 – Jake Thomas Learning Centre (n.d.,), “Katsian:ionte Hanging Flower” ...................... 7 Figure 3 – K. Brant-Birioukov, (May 2021), “New life emerging. Corn shoots in mounds” ...... 55 Figure 4 – Parker (1912, p. 615), “Various forms of the sky-dome symbol as employed in Iroquois moose-hair and quill embroidery.” ................................................................................. 56 Figure 5 – Hill (2017, p. 24), “Haudenosaunee Sky Dome designs." .......................................... 56 Figure 6 – Wahiia Victoria Ransom (2018), "Untitled” ............................................................... 57 Figure 7 – K. Brant-Birioukov (December 2020). Visiting the end of The Point on a winter’s day. ................................................................................................................................................ 64 Figure 8 – Kanatsiohareke (n.d.), "When the corn is harvested it is hung up to dry before being prepared for use.” .......................................................................................................................... 68 Figure 9 – Jeff Thomas (2021), “Bert General, Smooth Town, Six Nations Reserve, 1980” ...... 69 Figure 10 – A curriculum for estrangement based in the literature .............................................. 78 Figure 11 – B. Lazore (n.d.), "Skywoman" .................................................................................. 86 x List of Supplementary Material Kanyen’kéha Glossary audio file (.mov) xi Kanyen’kéha Glossary In addition to the archived .mov file, the audio recording of each word is available online at this link. 1 The time stamps in brackets [0:00] refer to where the word can be found in the video. [0:06] Eksá:’a Translates to “girl,” or “young girl.” [0:17] Haudenosaunee The Six Nations Confederacy (also referred to as the “Iroquois” by the French, and “League of Nations” in English) is comprised of five autonomous First Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga), and was later joined by the Tuscarora in 1722. It is one of the world’s oldest democracies, founded upon the principles of harmony, unity, and peace, brought to the warring nations by the Peacemaker. Haudenosaunee means “The People of the Longhouse.” [0:30] Kanatsiohareke Kanatsiohareke Mohawk Community is a small community on the bank of the Mohawk River in their ancestral lands of the Mohawk Valley, New York. Established in the 1990s, the formation of Kanatsiohareke fulfilled the prophesy that Mohawk families would one day return to their ancestral homelands following their forced exile following the American Revolution. [0:44] Kanenhstóhare White corn that has been lyed, or “washed,” which then becomes lyed corn. It is also called hominy corn. Lyed corn is a transformed kernel of white corn that has been boiled in a corrosive alkaline solution, which shells the outer shell of the kernel to reveal a soft, puffed, and nutrient-rich kernel underneath. It is the basis of Haudenosaunee cuisine and diet. [0:57] Kanenhstóhare Nikanon’tarò:ten A soup made of lyed white corn (see “kanenhstóhare” above). Each Haudenosaunee community has a different version of soup. Tyendinaga’s lyed corn soup is the most minimalist, with lyed corn, white potato beans, and a meat (often pork or venison). [1:17] Ka'nikonhrí:io The principle of having “a good mind,” from the Great Law of Peace. [1:31] Kanónhsa Translates to “house.” It is also the name of a restaurant that Kiera’s father and grandmother ran on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. [1:43] Kanyen'kéha The ancestral language of the Kanyen’kehá:ka people, also known 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK2ThQPeFHs xii as the Mohawk language. The western dialect is shared by speakers of Kenhtè:ke and Ohswé:ken (spelled as it is above, Kanyen'kéha). The eastern dialect is alternatively spelled Kanien’kéha. [1:56] Kanyen’kehá:ka The Mohawk Nation. [2:10] Ka’sathsténhsera The principle of strength or power, from the Great Law of Peace. [2:24] Katatenà:tons Translates to “I introduce myself.” [2:37] Kayanerenhkó:wa The Great Law of Peace. [2:51] Kenhtè:ke Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, a Kanyen’kehá:ka First Nation and reserve in southern Ontario. [3:04] Onenhakén:ra Dried white corn. [3:32] Oshontawenko:wa Translates to “The Great Darkness,” referring to a time in the Mohawk Creation Story when Yotsi’tsishon falls through darkness from Sky World to Earth. [3:36] Otsì:tsya Translates to “flower.” [3:58] Ronontano The husband of Yotsi’tsishon in the Mohawk Creation Story. He was the Guardian of the Tree of Light, also known as the Celestial Tree. [3:19] Sayórhen'ne’ Translates to “it dawned again” [4:28] Sewá:ko Translates to “I arrived home,” or “I have returned home.” [4:41] Skén:nen The principle of peace, from the Great Law of Peace. [4:53] Thó’k nikawén:nake, táhnon ó:nen éhtho Translates to “That’s the end of the words, and that’s it.” It is a common phrase spoken at the end of a story. [5:11] Tyonnhékhwen The Three Sisters (corn, beans, squash), meaning “They sustain us.” [4:12] Wake’nikonhkwenhtará:on Translates to “my mind is on the ground.” It is a common phrase in Mohawk to refer to depression, mourning, and grief. It derives from the Mohawk Creation story when Yotsi’tsishon falls from Sky World to Earth. The imagery of a “mind on the ground” stems xiii from her head-over-heels free fall, while also capturing the sentiment of depression/mourning when one’s mind feels heavy and low. [5:24] Wakyé:was Translates to “I am searching in vain.” [5:38] Yah teskatatyenté:ri Translates to “I do not know myself anymore.” [5:53] Yakón:kwe Translates to a “female human” or a “female person.” [6:06] Yethi’nihstenha tsi yonhwentsyate Translates to “Mother Earth.” [6:22] Yotsi’tsishon Sky Woman, the first woman to make the journey from Sky World to Earth in the Mohawk Creation Story. She was the mother of Yotsitsionte, and the grandmother to twin boys, Tahroniawa:kon and Sawiskaron. Her name means “Mature Flower.” [6:33] Yotsitsionte Daughter of Yotsi’tsishon, Sky Woman, and mother to twins Tahroniawa:kon and Sawiskaron. She died in childbirth, and in her sacrifice offered the gifts of tobacco, corn, beans, squash, strawberries, and wild potatoes. Today we call her Yethi’nihstenha tsi yonhwentsyate. xiv Acknowledgements This dissertation was supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the University of British Columbia, and the Verna Kirkness award. May we begin by bringing our minds as one, to honour the gifts of life. I offer my thanks for humanity, and the many lives that have touched mine – some of whom are listed below, but so many more who are not. I offer my thanks to my ancestors who walk with me every day. I offer my thanks to our mother the Earth for her constant and unwavering love. I offer my thanks to the water for nourishing my body and mind. I offer my thanks for the fish life who cleanse our waters. I offer my thanks to the plant life, our life sustainers. I offer my thanks to our Three Sisters for being my greatest teacher. I offer my thanks to the medicines who are waiting for us to remember our ways so we can begin to heal. I offer my thanks to the trees who remind us of the symbol of peace. I offer my thanks to the birds whose song reminds me that each day is beautiful. I offer my thanks to the four winds who refresh us. I offer my thanks to our grandfather the Thunders for the cleanse and protection they bring each year. I offer my thanks to our brother the Sun for being the warmth that embraces us each day. I offer my thanks to our grandmother the Moon for the gift of life, balance, and being the light in the darkness. I offer my thanks to the stars who guide us home. I offer my thanks to the Four Beings who guide us in their wisdom across the generations. I now turn my thoughts to Shonkwaia’tison who created and prepared everything we need to live. We bring our minds together so we may thank him. Let it be in our minds. If I have forgotten anything, may you help me to right this. I must also begin by thanking the person who made this possible, my supervisor, Dr. William Pinar. Bill, being a student of yours will forever be one of my greatest treasures. You have taught me to trust in myself, to question it all, and to write a new rulebook when the old one doesn’t suit me. I can only aspire to become as gracious of a mentor as you have been. My supervisory committee, Drs. Anne Phelan and Jan Hare. I pushed myself because I knew the best would be reading it. Thank you both, endlessly, for being my coach, agent, and number one fan in a sport I didn’t even know I was playing. My immense gratitude to my external examiner, Dr. Susan Hill, for bringing this work to the standard it must be for our communities. Thank you to my community, Kenhtè:ke. You raised me to be a proud Onkwehonwe woman, who knows that her roots are strong enough to handle whenever the wind blows. Nyá:wen. Mom and dad, Gail and Greggy. I have no words to express the love, adoration, and gratitude I have for both of you. I’ll allow Joni Mitchell to say it for me, for she wrote, Part of you pours out of me / In these lines from time to time. This dissertation is yours. My brother, Rohahiyo Jordan Brant. You carry the weight of the language on your shoulders. I hope to contribute but a sliver of the incredible work you do every day. My grandparents, Boiney and Gram. You are my inspiration to begin. You are my motivation to keep going. You are my light to guide my way. Thank you. xv Thank you to those who inspire me, including my Kwe cheerleaders, Drs. Amber Shilling and Shannon Leddy. And thank you to those who are strangers but not estranged: Ernest Hemingway, Bob Dylan, and especially Lin-Manuel Miranda whose genius inspires my daily writing. To writing like we’re running out of time. Lastly, my heart and future, Anton. You made every word possible. From your morning trips to make sure the garage was warm enough for me to write in the middle of winter, to moving across the country (and back!) to inspire a Ridge Road girl’s dream – thank you. I am because I am loved by you. xvi Dedication For my brother, Jordan. xvii The Law is in the Seed Karoniaktatie Alex Jacobs (Mohawk), 1992 The Law is in the Corn the people of the southwest say this… to be there with the morning star in that sacred time… to talk to corn, to hear it talk in the wind in the language of movement…what to do. Out here at the Eastern Door, we say, it is the Original Instructions, but also that a sacred thing happened when we were given the Great Law for we had forgotten the Original Instructions… when crooked men arise and become dictators, murderers, thiefs, cannibals… The people would take the seed and move to plant their Corn in a new place, once again under the shelter of the Tree of Peace, This is called Democracy, it is in the land, it is in the seed. The Law is in the Corn The Law is in the Seed. 1 Chapter 1: SETTING THE INTENTION “Edge of the Woods” Ceremony The weight of your footsteps crunches the fallen branches below. The rustle of the cattails reveals a small rabbit hopping past the path in front of you. The cattails are a good sign – this means you are close. A clearing in the woods is visible up ahead. Through the clearing, you can feel the early morning heat from the amber rising sun on your hands, and soon, your face. The anticipation builds as you approach your destination. A great journey still lies ahead. But first, you must wait here. In this very spot. You are but a guest here. And a guest waits at the edge of the woods. Welcome, my friend. Allow me to introduce myself first: Kiera Kaia’tanó:ron iónkia`ts. Wakathahión:ni. Kanyen’keha:ka niwakenwenhtsió:ten. My name means she is precious/invaluable. I sit with the Wolf Clan. I am Haudenosaunee2 from the Kanyen’kehá:ka3 Nation. My family is from Kenhtè:ke,4 known today as Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. This is where I was born and raised. This is from where I speak to you. From my home. Kenhtè:ke is the place of the cattails. My grandparents are Ronald and Deanna Brant of Tyendinaga, and Doug and Lola Doxtator of Tyendinaga and Parham, respectively. My parents are Greg Brant (but you might know him as “Greggy”) and Gail Brant (neé Doxtator) of Tyendinaga. They raised my brother, Jordan, and me 2 Six Nations / Iroquois Confederacy [0:17], click here to listen 3 The Mohawk Nation [1:56], click here to listen 4 Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory [2:51], click here to listen 2 on the Ridge Road on the rez. My partner is Anton Birioukov. No, he’s not from here. He’s a guest, like you. Follow me. There is much to discuss. As a guest here, you will be given the best we have to offer. We will feed you, clothe you, and give you the best seat in the house. We might not have much, but whatever we have we will offer it to you. It is our job to make you feel welcomed. To feel “at home”, if you will. But do not forget you have responsibilities, too, henh? Come on – keep up. I’ll bring you all the way in in - straight into the centre. We do this to welcome you. To show you there is nothing to hide. But we also do this to protect ourselves. You are a stranger, and trust must be earned. Don’t take offence – we expect you would do the same. You will be watched. Watched closely. It is impor - - wait, pardon? Tosah. Shhhh. 3 Don’t ask so many questions. It is your job to observe. Make meaning from what you see, hear, feel around you. When you ask too many questions this tells me you are impatient. When you speak, you have the opportunity to teach. When you listen, you have the opportunity to learn. As I was saying, it is important that I met you at the edge of the woods. This means you respect that this is my community, and you must be welcomed here first. This also means I am your host; I am responsible for you here. I must meet you where you are at. It is my responsibility to bring you from the periphery into the centre. But you are responsible for your own actions, too, henh? Okay, here we are. Let’s begin, my friend. The Beginning of the Journey You have had quite the journey, and there is still much left to do. But what kind of host would I be if we didn’t first settle in with a bowl of kanenstóhare nikanon’tarò:ten5? We always begin with corn soup. We always begin at the very beginning. For the Haudenosaunee, everything begins and ends with the land. When we speak of Haudenosaunee knowledge, this does not come from, nor does it centre the human experience. 5 Lyed corn soup [0:57], click here to listen 4 Our life span is short and self-centered. Haudenosaunee knowledge, stories, and thought derive from our most constant life force: the land (Hill, 2017). And the land begins with Creation. We, as fallible human beings, attempt to transmit the stories of Creation that our ancestors passed down to us. This is our responsibility. To tell these stories and follow the original instructions we were given when Creation was new. Aronhiaies Herne, Bear Clan Knowledge Keeper (Akwesasne) once told me that it is the responsibility of all of Creation to remember its original instructions, as to how we should live in this world in a balanced, good way. We as humans are the only beings that have forgotten these original instructions. The deer remember. The beaver remembers. The thunders remember. We are the only beings that have forgotten what it means to live in balance. The Haudenosaunee do not have such things as “inherent rights”, only “inherent responsibilities.” We must remember our responsibilities. Our responsibilities come back to us in our stories. Responsibilities for Haudenosaunee people are comprised of multiple facets of identity, community, ancestral knowledge and practices, governance, socioeconomic protocols, and relationships with kin, land, and ancestors. In thinking about the possibility of representing these responsibilities in a Haudenosaunee-specific curriculum paradigm, Cornelius (1996) offers the following graphic as a representation of the varying and interwoven responsibilities unique to the Haudenosaunee: 5 All threads of Haudenosaunee cultural identity are interwoven throughout this work, however explicitly or implicitly. Namely, however, this work most heavily relies upon the teachings of plant/seeds, the ceremonial cycle, the Great Law, the Mohawk language, and the Creation Story, which will reveal themselves throughout the journey. Together they comprise a Haudenosaunee curriculum of renewal. Now, beginning with the Creation Story is a natural place to begin. Creation tells us where we come from and reminds of us the responsibilities we are to uphold along our journeys. Telling the full story of Creation takes many days, weeks, or months even. One is rarely sat down and told the full story. Many will never hear Creation in its entirety unless it is intentionally sought out. You must be prepared to take the bits and pieces that you can and put them together yourself. I will give you the part you need to hear today. May you remember this part and put it together with another part of the story, whenever you hear it, whomever you hear it from. I will tell you a portion of the story as I understand it from hearing it over the course of Figure 1 – Cornelius (1996, p. 40), "Haudenosaunee Cultural Components" 6 my life, and most recently from the teachings of Aronhiaies Herne, Rick Hill, and Doug George-Kanentiio. Our part of the story begins with Skywoman, Yotsi’tsishon6. Yotsi’tsishon lived in Sky World. During the time of the great flood here on the earth, she became pregnant. One day she fell from a hole in the Sky World. When she entered the earth’s hemisphere, she was caught by geese flying in a “V” formation and placed safely on the back of Turtle. When she arrived, she gave birth to her daughter, Yotsitsionte7. Yotsi’tsishon raised her daughter with the traditions of both the Earth and the Sky World. Eventually her daughter grew, and she was told not to walk west. But she did walk west, and she became intertwined with the West Wind. Then she fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke, she found two crossed arrows on her stomach. She was pregnant with twins. When she gave birth, the one twin was born the natural way, but the second twin came out of her armpit. This killed their mother. Yotsi’tsishon, now a grandmother, was heartbroken to have to bury her daughter. When they buried her, she became a part of the land. She became Yethi’nihstenha tsi yonhwentsyate.8 Tobacco grew from her mind. Corn grew from her breast. Strawberry grew from her heart. Beans grew from her fingers. Squash grew from her stomach. Wild potatoes grew from her feet. 6 Mature Flower [6:22], click here to listen 7 Hanging Flower, Little Part of the Flower [6:33], click here to listen 8 Our Mother the Earth [6:06], click here to listen 7 Figure 2 – Jake Thomas Learning Centre (n.d.,), “Katsian:ionte Hanging Flower” With this, she gave her children everything they would need to survive. According to Chandra Maracle, gardening connects us to our ancestors and our Mother Earth for our first grave was a garden (personal communication, February 2021). We call her our Mother Earth. She supports us still through these gifts. Today, the Three Sisters continue to sustain us. In our language, we refer to all fruits and vegetables as tyonnhékhwen,9 for they are our life sustainers. But tyonnhékhwen is often used simply to refer to the Three Sisters because they are the basis for our sustenance. When we grow the Three Sisters, we grow them together – intertwined in the garden. They can grow separately, but they grow strongest together. Corn, with its long, tall stalks provides a sturdy post for the beans to wrap itself around. Beans provide nitrogen which fertilize the soil for healthy growing conditions. It also acts as a stabilizer for the corn stalks when strong winds come. Squash, with its prickly, wide leaves takes care of the ground. The wide leaves keep the ground cool and moist. The prickly stems on the squash vines keep critters away. Once harvested, the Three 9 Life Sustainers, or the Three Sisters [5:11], click here to listen 8 Sisters together make a balanced diet – compensating in nutrients for what their sister could not provide in terms of protein, carbohydrates, and vitamins. Corn is particularly sacred – not more sacred, but she10 has is the most responsibilities. In our Creation Story, she is the eldest of the Three Sisters. Corn must be planted first, so it has time to be established enough for the beans to climb for support. Squash is planted last, so it doesn’t shade out the growing seedlings. All Three Sisters are planted into the same mound of soil. When we plant, grow, and eat the Three Sisters we are reminded of Yotsi’tsishon and her daughter Mother Earth. We are reminded of Sky World. We are reminded of the gifts left for us. We are reminded of our inherent responsibilities to honour the beings that give us life. In this physical world, there are two beings that give life: mothers and plantlife. Our mothers bring us into this world and nourish us from their very bodies. They are our first home. Once we are born, we are sustained through plantlife (and by the animals who in turn are sustained by the plantlife). We are all sustained by the original life givers, mothers and plantlife. Diné poet, Stacie Denetsosie-Mitchell (2021), exemplifies this reciprocal interdependence between mothers and plantlife in her words, My mother said that you and I are of the universe the moment we are born. Which is why, when my umbilical cord formed dry, She folded it into Mother Earth’s sun warmed skin. And she said, "I am gifting you to the earth, She will care for you, and you for her, as our people have done for generations. And in this Diné way you will always know your way home." I am fluent in this natal knowledge, fed by wind shaped sandstone and corn pollen tassels waving at dawn. And in this way, 10 In this dissertation, I will use the pronouns “she/her” to honour the fact that she is a living being (alongside her two sisters, squash and beans). 9 I am a Diné woman. 11 While Denetsosie-Mitchell speaks of the Diné interrelationship between mothers and plantlife as represented by umbilical cord, in my nation of the Kanyen’kehá:ka people this interdependence is best exemplified by corn. To honour corn is to honour life. Corn is a teacher, in that she undergoes a transformative estrangement from herself in order to find herself renewed on the other side – this, we know as, kanenhstóhare.12 This dissertation is rooted in this principle: to consider the educative possibilities of kanenhstóhare. Through the pursuit of my research question, What value can kanenhstóhare bring to a curriculum of renewal? this dissertation seeks to attend to the transformative journey of kanenhstóhare through the process of making Kanyen’kehá:ka lyed corn soup. Kanenhstóhare for Renewal A call for renewal is an invitation to awaken the subconscious, interrupt mundanity that deprives imagination, and provoke the learner to question all that is taken for granted. Driven by the desire to make the strange familiar, and to make the familiar strange, such an invitation embraces the possibilities of a curriculum that defamiliarizes dominant curricular narratives and enhances oppressed, silenced, or erased narratives (Kaomea, 2003). A call for renewal is central to kanenhstóhare. Kanenhstóhare seeks the possibilities of estrangement and homecoming as renewal, as grounded in Haudenosaunee thought. Estrangement is a call to leave home, and homecoming is the iterative remaking and revitalization of home. Together, estrangement and homecoming inculcate the renewal of self. In kanenhstóhare, a renewal of self transpires in 11 Shared with permission from author, Stacie Denetsosie-Mitchell. 12 Lyed white corn [0:44], click here to listen 10 relation to place – such as through immersion with estrangement, reconstructing relationship with land, as well as conceptualizing the sacred space of imagination. Imagination, for Sheridan and Longboat (2006), can be viewed as the seventh sense within a Haudenosaunee consciousness. They state, “like everything Haudenosaunee, imagination has a place because imagination is a place, and because everything is connected to everything else, the encounter with imagination is a living communication within a sentient landscape” (Sheridan & Longboat, 2006, p. 369). Bound no more to the limitations of what one considers familiar, kanenhstóhare seeks to inculcate an iterative making and re-making of home, in that renewal is continuous – limited only by one’s commitment to imagine a new reality. As your host, I hope you stay with me on this journey into the clearing. Side by side, we’ll seek the possibilities and limitations of renewal within kanenhstóhare together. Overview of Dissertation Let’s start with the big picture. Collectively, the introductory chapters of Setting the Intention (Chapter 1) and Preparing the Field (Chapter 2) will lay the foundation to consider the overarching research question of this dissertation, What value can kanenhstóhare bring to a curriculum of renewal? Chapter 1 will lay the foundation for introducing kanenhstóhare and the significance of lyed corn (and of corn soup) for the Haudenosaunee peoples, by introducing Corn as Provider, Corn as Matriarch, and Corn as Teacher. Next, Preparing the Field (Chapter 2) begins with the teachings of soil and of Kayanerenhkó:wa (The Great Law of Peace). The teachings of the Great Law of Peace inform the methodological strands of kanenhstóhare, the three strands being: 1) autobiography for a good mind), 2) educational theory for strength/power), and 3) traditional teachings for peace. Next, Sowing & Braiding (Chapter 3) 11 will position the growing process inviting us to rethink the land within which kanenhstóhare grows. In the Canadian context this discourse grows amidst the legacy of coloniality, resulting in a curricular discourse that is enmeshed with settler epistemic privilege. It is in the principles of braiding of autobiography, educational theory, and traditional teachings that we may begin to engage in kanenhstóhare for renewal. A curriculum that calls for renewal is prefaced upon two iterative moments: estrangement and homecoming. The Boil, Estrangement (Chapter 4) will take up the concept of estrangement for renewal, as the pursuit of encounters with the strange to provoke the limits of familiarity. In a kanenhstóhare discourse, estrangement is informed by a curricular call for renewal (as a curriculum that provokes, interrupts, or dislocates the learner), as situated in a Haudenosaunee context of immersion, grief and loss. The Rinse, Homecoming (Chapter 5) considers the need for a curriculum that attends to a revitalization of self to live a meaningful and grounded life after estrangement. Homecoming is intended to bring the subject back into relationship with the estranged world. In conclusion, Serving the Soup (Chapter 6) will focus on the implications of kanenhstóhare as a methodology and theory. It will seek to reconcile a reflection upon writing through kanenhstóhare as a dissertation, and how Haudenosaunee and non-Haudenosaunee learners alike may benefit from kanenhstóhare. Corn as Provider Corn, a gift of spiritual and bodily importance, is the crux of Haudenosaunee identity and culture. It connects us to culture, language, and land. Ryan Decaire, Mohawk language teacher and scholar from the University of Toronto, speaks of the significance of corn as a connection to 12 our ancestors. Just like the revitalization of languages, corn relies on humans to sustain and propagate it: It’s a connection to our ancestors because there are people who planted that corn for thousands and thousands of years. They had a connection with the Earth and that’s still with us today. It’s similar to how we all have a belly button: we’re constantly connected to our mother, and to their mother and their mother…which goes back to the Earth. Corn’s like that, it connects us to who we are, to our identity; we have helped to propagate it. It reflects that relationship between human beings and the Earth. Because corn doesn’t grow if you let it grow on its own. It grows really well when connected with human hands (Decaire, 2020). We see the presence of corn across various lifecycles, such as the lifecycle of the seasons, and the lifecycles of human beings. For the seasons, corn is honoured in two ceremonies each year: the Green Corn ceremony at the end of summer, and the Harvest ceremony in autumn. In the human life cycle, we see corn ever present at every stage of life, including births (the beginning of a physical life), weddings (the beginning of two lives coming together as one), and funerals (the end of a physical life and the return of spirit to the Spirit World). Additionally, it is eaten at every ceremony and festival throughout the year – and just about every day in between, too. Corn is sustenance of course. When it is prepared correctly, it has all the nutrients one needs to survive. White corn is the primary corn grown by the Haudenosaunee. Natural onenhakén:ra13 has very little nutritional value; it demands undergoing the lying process. It is only once it becomes kanenhstóhare that the full potential of corn is actualized. Kanenhstóhare is most often enjoyed in three forms: corn bread, corn mush, and – the focus of this dissertation – kanenhstóhare nikanon’tarò:ten.14 The significance of corn soup to Haudenosaunee people is limitless. Where kanenhstóhare is the crux of this dissertation, the process of preparing kanenhstóhare 13 Dried white corn [3:04], click here to listen 14 Lyed corn soup [0:57], click here to listen 13 nikanon’tarò:ten helps to articulate the context, method, and pedagogical implications of kanenhstóhare. I could have used corn bread and corn mush as the basis for the methodology (they follow the exact same process for lying corn) – yet corn soup is the most familiar epicentre for daily Haudenosaunee socialization. In this way, drawing upon the methodology of corn soup invites all readers into a roundtable conversation (as in, around the dining table, if you will). Corn soup is in so many ways synonymous with Haudenosaunee identity that I could literally write a book on it – so I suppose I will settle with writing a dissertation. When I tell Haudenosaunee people that I am writing a dissertation about corn soup, the first response is laughter because it is so universally understood as being fundamental that it has become a stereotype – as the saying goes, “As American as Apple Pie,” I think our equivalent would roughly translate to “As Haudenosaunee as Corn Soup.” But once the laughter subsides, their brows become furrowed and the sincerity of the notion of studying corn soup in order to study Haudenosaunee thought sets in. I am deadly serious. To study the teachings of corn soup is to study Haudenosaunee thought. I have always been skeptical of using metaphors in my writings because there are so many risks involved. One of the slipperiest challenges being that metaphors can reduce complex intricacies and specificities of a knowledge system to a simple image. Another risk of using metaphors is that it can compromise the inclusion of certain concepts because x, y, z doesn’t fit with the metaphoric images spoken to in a, b, c. If we cling too tightly to an image or symbol for the sake of simplicity or equivalence, this is dangerous. Particularly at a time when the complexity of Indigenous knowledge systems needs to be understood more than ever in our anthropocentric era; Indigenous thinkers have a responsibility to attend to the complexities. Considering these risks, I proceed. Not because I think I will navigate these challenges any better 14 than others who use metaphor in their writing, but because I do not see the inclusion of corn soup imagery to be a metaphor at all. I do not speak metaphorically when I say that Haudenosaunee thought is corn soup. I speak very literally. When we use metaphors, we do so to speak of one thing and to represent it through something else entirely – yet I do not envision the metaphoric comparisons of Big Mama Thorton’s “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time” equivalent to the honest possibilities of speaking through corn soup. To be clear, I am not speaking about corn soup, but through corn soup. Corn as Matriarch Our teachings, values, protocols, culture, language, and ethics derive from corn. These corn-based principles are then embodied in the production and consumption of corn soup. When a socio-cultural object informs the worldview of a people, it moves from being simply a “socio-cultural object,” and becomes a tenet of Haudenosaunee ontology. The centrality of corn to Haudenosaunee survival is well-studied. Recognizing its immense significance early in colonialism, there were at least two major attacks on Haudenosaunee villages, 100 years apart from one another (1585 and 1687), that sought to compromise the military strength of our communities by specifically targeting corn (Cornelius, 1999). To destroy the corn is to destroy the Haudenosaunee. Depleting food supply would indeed affect any population of military people, but the biggest impact of targeting corn is how it would impact the social and political heart of Haudenosaunee communities: the matriarchy. Any conversation about Haudenosaunee thought would be moot without a thoughtful consideration of the matriarchy. The implications as a matriarchal people are deeply entrenched 15 across the social, economic, political, and cultural composition of Haudenosaunee society. The unique structure of Haudenosaunee matriarchy has had an immense influence in Western feminism and women’s suffrage (Bassett, 2018; Wagner, 1996, 2011). If one were to study even but a small facet of Haudenosaunee society, it would reveal its ever-present roots as a matriarchy – for our sake, let’s simply look at the Three Sisters. The assigning of gender-like qualities to “inanimate” objects is not unique to the Haudenosaunee. Certainly, we have the feminine une table in French, or la masa in Spanish. We also see gender-assigning discourse in the Russian language, where my Russian husband reminds me that if I drop a fork (feminine) at dinnertime we can expect a female visitor, but a knife (masculine) means the visitor will be male. The Three Sisters, however, are not a simply grammatical categorization for objects which are animate/inanimate or masculine/feminine. The insinuations of the Three Sisters as a story and way of living are representative of the Haudenosaunee notion that the world was created by women and that our daily lives must be structured around the honouring of women. It is of no coincidence that the historic corn fields were the women’s domain: planting and tending were done by the women (Johansen & Mann, 2000). Haudenosaunee historian Susan Hill (2017) referred to the gendered separation of territories as the “clearings” and the “forests”. The “clearings” in their entirety are the domain of the women – including not only the gardens and fields, but any cleared land where families live (Hill, 2017). In turn, politics, births, unions, naming, and the daily governance of the people are the responsibilities of women. Men fulfill their responsibilities by defending the clearing in their domain of the “forest.” The forests represent their duty to hunt, fish, and to tend to the matter of warfare in order to protect the clearing. 16 In contrast to a Euro-Western image of women tending to domestic duties such as cooking and gardening as a means of reinforcing submissiveness and socioeconomic dependence on men, the responsibility of Haudenosaunee women in this respect would be the antithesis of subversion. For a Haudenosaunee woman to run the home, the village, and the community, this denotes women run the social, political, and economic spheres. Women, as Clan Mothers and political heads of the Haudenosaunee communities, are also bearers of lineage. The Mohawk Clan system is comprised of three clans (Wolf, Bear, Turtle) that are passed down to children through the mother. Haudenosaunee women hold the power, literally and figuratively. It is the responsibility of women and men, both fulfilling their duties in the clearings and the forests respectively, to uphold Kayanerenhkó:wa.15 As women of great political power, it is also believed that women great possess physical and spiritual power. Women have a more innate connection with all living beings, due to their physical and spiritual rhythm with the moon cycles through menstruation. We call the moon our Grandmother Moon, for she is our grandmother, Yotsi’tsishon, who continues to take care of women and all life. This teaching comes full circle in the practice of Haudenosaunee women menstruating into the garden beds, because it is a life giver (mothers/the ability to be a mother) giving back to a life giver (plantlife) at the moon time of the original life giver (Yotsi’tsishon). I love the power of this image to underscore the juxtaposition between the stigma associated with women’s menstrual blood as grotesque and offensive, which is revered in a Haudenosaunee context. I share all of this to contextualize the way in which conversations of kanenhstóhare, and the teachings and protocols I will share, are profoundly gendered. As Hendry (2011) suggests, the relationship between knowledge and gender is interwoven across the history of curriculum, 15 The Great Law of Peace [2:37], click here to listen 17 teaching, and pedagogy. Although I write from the perspective of a Haudenosaunee woman, I am confronted with how Haudenosaunee teachings, protocols, and responsibilities can be misconstrued without sufficient context. Corn is the manifestation of the Haudenosaunee matriarchy. This is not to suggest that Haudenosaunee thought is not confronted by misogyny, but that this is a turn inward to the sociopolitical context of the Haudenosaunee matriarchy, of which is immensely different from the Euro-western context of popular feminism (Banet-Weiser, 2018). Tensions between a Haudenosaunee matriarchy and the structural patriarchy of Euro-Western Enlightenment will present tensions that I must attend to, as they arise. If we take, for example, the practice of Haudenosaunee women fulfilling their responsibilities in the kitchen or the garden, we must interrupt our inclination to read this as a negative, submissive act. I will try my best to bring you into the clearing, my friend. Corn as Teacher Having introduced corn as life sustainer, spiritual provider, and a vital thread in the Haudenosaunee matriarchy, I come to the crux of this dissertation, to discuss corn as teacher. I propose that reading corn as teacher can be taken up in a myriad of ways, but namely I use it here as a Haudenosaunee methodology and as a theoretical framework for educators and educational researchers. In seeking kanenhstóhare’s possibilities as an educational experience, I will simultaneously rely on the methodological process of using kanenhstóhare (kanenhstóhare as methodology), as I seek the value of its possibilities as discourse (kanenhstóhare as theory). I will use both and attempt to articulate both. I am interested in the educative possibilities and 18 impossibilities of kanenhstóhare. Guided by my interest to seek experiences which are educational – here I am informed by philosopher and social educator Dewey (2007) in saying that not all experience is inherently educational: Experience and education cannot be directly equated each other. For some experiences are mis-educative. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience. An experience may be such as to engender callousness; it may produce lack of sensitivity and of responsiveness (Dewey, 2007, p. 25-26). Here, experiences can be mis-educative in that they may numb or reinforce assumptions. Thus, I seek experiences that provoke meditations, provocations, and ruminations that incite a temporary vacillation – a pause, a hesitation. Such cause for pause does not always result in a shift in perspective, but it at least invites it. In reflecting on Dewey’s (2007) understanding of educative experiences, I am struck by its initial contradiction with a First Nations worldview of educative pedagogies. Traditional Indigenous pedagogies, according to Miller (1996), are premised around the “Three L’s” – looking, listening, and learning. The implications of the Three L’s are to suggest that the adolescent educational journey of Indigenous youth is premised around submissive and patient observations, all while resisting the urge to interject with unnecessary questions or commentary. Simultaneously, it risks the connotation that mere passive observation is inherently educative (looking + listening = learning) from an Indigenous worldview. While I agree with Miller’s overall impression of a pan-First Nations framework of education – insofar as observation, informal mentorship through modelling, and lifelong learning are valued – I fear it is an oversimplification of the complexities of Haudenosaunee epistemologies. I would disagree that Haudenosaunee education is merely looking, listening, and learning; particularly for our most highly educated individuals, such as Clan Mothers, Chiefs, Wampum Belt Carriers, and 19 Storytellers. There is nothing passive about their educational journey to become an intergenerational knowledge and protocol carrier. An educative journey which “engender[s] callousness” (Dewey, 2007, p. 26) would be indoctrination. Conversely, indoctrination into the status quo is not the agenda of Haudenosaunee epistemology. Instead, our most educated are those who certainly are disciplined enough to look and listen but are also complicating their own role in the continuum of transgenerational knowledge negotiation from historical knowledge to modern knowledge. In turn I would argue that Dewey’s definition for educative experiences would be congruent with a Haudenosaunee learner who values experiences which challenge, transform, and renew the subject, as this dissertation will suggest. A kanenhstóhare theory posits, I suggest, how estrangement (leaving the familiar behind) and homecoming (home as renewal) invites the transformation of relationships with the self, others, community, and the land. This research considers education through the principles and practices of kanenhstóhare. A kanenhstóhare theory proposes the possibilities of renewal by considering three separate but interconnected (braided) strands: 1) autobiography; 2) educational theory; and, 3) traditional Haudenosaunee teachings. Whereas a curriculum prefaced on settler epistemic privilege presents Indigeneity as the stranger, this research considers how Haudenosaunee thought can interrupt settler epistemic privilege whilst benefiting all learners. Into the unknown, this research theorizes estrangement and homecoming as both a theory and methodology for renewal. How to Read this Dissertation 20 As your host, I will not take you by the hand and tell you, “You need to know this, and you need to know it in this way.” I cannot guarantee what you find or learn in here. I can only try my best to communicate how I understand the possibilities of seeing kanenhstóhare as an educative experience. With a focus on experience, this dissertation will attempt to be immersive over being descriptive. Using autobiography, I hope to bridge multiple traditions of which I saunter through on my journeys. These journeys will include a walk amongst Mohawk Creation Stories, traditional teachings, curriculum studies and curriculum theory, psychoanalysis, and storytelling. I do not envision this work as walking in “two worlds,” as I have heard before. I am not Mohawk and theorist, or Mohawk and writer, or Mohawk and autobiographer, or whatever other type of dichotomous duality that may be claimed; I am a Mohawk theorist, Mohawk writer, and Mohawk autobiographer. This is simply my world, which is informed by as many worlds as the lives and realities I encounter. Yotsi’tsishon, Sky Woman from our Creation Story, was forced to raise her earthly daughter with the principles and practices of both Sky World and Earth. She truly walked in two worlds. I, fortunately, only walk in one. Another facet worth addressing in the reading of this dissertation is the use of Kanyen’kéha16 language. To help with reading, you will find the Glossary of Kanyen’kéha Terms at the beginning of this dissertation (p. ix-xi). It is integral to use the Kanyen’kéha language for a variety of reasons. The primary reason being it is the language of which Haudenosaunee thought derives from. English translations, as with any second language translations, are insufficient to communicate concepts and the relationships between concepts. Secondly, it promotes language revitalization. The choice to engage with concepts in the Kanye’kéha language as a learner myself has incited an intentional space to stumble over the 16 Mohawk language [1:43], click here to listen 21 words that I still find foreign at times. The extent of my Kanyen’kéha language education was in forty-five-minute language blocks from grades 1 to 8 – this was still more than my father received who attended the same on-reserve school thirty years before me. This is an opportunity to enact the reclamation of our ancestral language, and additionally support its use by Kanyen’kéha and non-Kanyen’kéha language speakers.17 Lastly, it is simply the right thing to do. To speak of Haudenosaunee thought, of its teachings, and the implications of these teachings, I am already taking it so widely outside of its context. There is also so much lost in translation, the least I can do is grapple with the most fundamental of concepts in our language. Yes, it will be cumbersome and awkward, particularly for non-Kanyen’kéha language speakers, to read and engage with. I acknowledge the cost of this, in that I might lose some readers and the nuance of concepts along the way. Haudenosaunee lawyer, Kayanesenh Paul Williams (2018), defended the use of Kanyen’kéha language and protocols in his writing, when he wrote, “It’s complicated. It’s important. It’s right. You’ll get used to it.” (p. x). Together, we’ll get used to it. 17 I am indebted to my brother, Jordan, for supporting this journey. As a fluent Kanyen’keha language speaker, and adult immersion teacher, he is the reason I could do this work in the manner of which it should be done. 22 Chapter 2: PREPARING THE FIELD In kanenhstóhare, the second moment requires the preparation of the field. Gain a lay of the land. The field is comprised of life: rocks, fungi, worms, snakes, and of course, a lot of soil. This is your time to be critical of the process that is ahead of you. Decide what, when, where, and how you will plant. Your success will be a direct reflection of your ability to understand this land. This stage of intentional gathering and planning is essential to a bountiful harvest. But first, you must have an intimate understanding of the soil you will work with. Soil as Foundation The soil is alive. We know this. We have always known this. It breathes, it eats, it regenerates. The soil sustains me, and when my life in this physical world is complete my body will return to the earth to sustain future generations through the soil. I am of the soil and will return to the soil. Rick Hill (2021), Haudenosaunee educator and historian, shares these ancestral teachings, When you think about the earth, the soil, it’s nothing more than everything that lived before – all the plants, the birds, the animals, the trees, the bushes, and people, my ancestors put into the ground. They become the soil, they give life to the soil. This is why our people say there’s a spirit in everything, there’s a spirit in the ground, in the stone, in the tree, a spirit in the animals. Because it’s that spirit that makes the Earth come alive (Hill, 2021). From the soil is where our journey begins – the foundation for life. From the soil, our ancestors lived, contemplated, theorized, and passed on teachings that they deemed to be necessary for living a good life. As the foundation, let us first begin by understanding the soil from which our conversation grows. The soil, as it pertains to Haudenosaunee thought, is the foundation of the consciousness. The source from which a knowledge system stems. For the Haudenosaunee, knowledge derives 23 from land and our relationship to land. This intimate knowledge derived from land, however, is not just merely an abstract concept of loosely applied principles. No. There are clearly defined laws, protocols, and ethics that lay the foundation for living a good life.18 Such a formalized system of Haudenosaunee ethics and protocols would be understood in terms of Kayanerenhkó:wa, the Great Law of Peace (also commonly referred to as simply, “the Great Law”). This section on Preparing the Field will begin by articulating relevant and foundational aspects of the Great Law of Peace. Next, I will suggest that the Great Law can be honoured in a kanenhstóhare methodology as three methodological strands, each strand fulfilling their distinct but interrelated roles. I will introduce and outline the three methodological strands. In the concluding section I will speak to how these three strands each fulfill a unique role in the kanenhstóhare process. In this chapter, these concepts are introduced so as to be braided in Chapter 3: Sowing & Braiding. We begin with the soil as the foundation for kanenhstóhare, because it is the foundation for life. From this soil the corn grows, and the kanenhstóhare process begins. Kayanerenhkó:wa (The Great Law of Peace) 19 The Great Law of Peace is the oral constitution of the Haudenosaunee peoples. The Great Law can be divided into two distinct parts, the legislative articles (the form and rules of 18 Living a “good life” is a common Mohawk phrase – likewise as is living on a “good path” and having a “good mind.” I use it with intention here (in all its ambiguity), to suggest that one lives a fulfilled life. When preparing for the journey to Spirit World, we believe that one is asked two questions as they cross to Spirit World: 1) “Were you happy with your life?”, and 2) “Were people happy because you lived?” With this, to live a good life is to live a fulfilled life that nourishes the lives of others along the way. 19 The Great Law of Peace [2:37], click here to listen 24 government), and the narrative (how the Great Law came to be known). The narrative is more than just a “story” – it is inseparable to the vision of the Great Law which is to create a society premised on peace and reason (Williams, 2018). The Great Law does not govern in terms of unilaterally imposed laws but governs in that the principles are the responsibility of all Haudenosaunee people to uphold, from the ground up. The laws of and for the people. The Great Law of Peace was a message given to the Haudenosaunee from the Peacemaker. Prior to the formation of the Five Nations Confederacy (today the Six Nations), the nations were five autonomous First Nations whose only relation was a lot of bad blood. The Peacemaker came at a time when there was constant warring and violence amongst the divided Five Nations. In this era, our ancestors lived in constant mourning wars – bloodshed that is guided purely by retaliation, evoking an endless cycle of eye-for-an-eye carnage. There was no conceivable end in sight. The Peacemaker was born on Eagle Hill in Tyendinaga, who took his message of peace to the people who “yearned for peace, but did not know how to get there” (Williams, 2018, p. 146). It took him five years to spread his message across the warring nations, but eventually all five sovereign nations agreed to bury the hatchet20 under the Tree of Peace. At the base of the Tree of Peace, the tree has four white roots that grow in all four cardinal directions (north, east, south, west) to ensure that all peoples of any nation can find their way back to peace (Hill, 1990). This was the formation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. In his message, the Peacemaker asked all people who listened to join him in his vision of making relatives out of strangers (Williams, 2018). 20 The common phrase to “bury the hatchet,” meaning to end a feud or violence, originates out of the Great Law of Peace and formation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. 25 The message of the Peacemaker can be divided into three overarching principles, designed to lead humanity on a good path: skennen,21 ka’sathsténhsera,22 and ka’nikonhrí:io.23 The three principles are interpreted differently across the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, but the intent is universal: to keep the mind, body, and spirit on a good path. Just as the Great Law is the foundation for Haudenosaunee thought, it too is the foundation for kanenhstóhare. In kanenhstóhare, one is guided to seek renewal – a new of seeing and being in the world, so as to live a “good life.” In a kanenhstóhare methodology, I propose that there are three methodological moments by which the Great Law could be actualized: 1/ autobiography, for a good mind 2/ educational theory, for strength/power 3/ traditional teachings, for peace In the following sections, I will provide further insight into the each of the principles of the Great Law (a good mind, strength/power, peace) and illuminate the ways in which three corresponding concepts (autobiography, educational theory, traditional teachings) form the basis for kanenhstóhare. As we continue our journey to the clearing, however, I must first attend to some protocols. I need to clarify that in the representation of three Great Law principles corresponding with three methodologies is not done with the intent of “assigning” one principle per methodology. As a Haudenosaunee theory, kanenhstóhare is premised on the Great Law – therefore, skennen, ka’sathsténhsera, and ka’nikonhrí:io are foundational to Haudenosaunee thought, and are embedded across all facets of a Haudenosaunee theory. These cannot be 21 Peace [4:41], click here to listen 22 Strength or Power [2:10], click here to listen 23 Good Mind [1:18], click here to listen 26 compartmentalized. As Hill (2017) warns, there are “dangers” in compartmentalizing Haudenosaunee knowledge, because it is premised on being a complete entity. “When one removes a segment of it, that portion ceases to be what it is within the context of the whole” (Hill, 2017, p. 16). As such, any “ensuing discussions” that take place in academic scholarship are “limited representations of the original” (Hill, 2017, p. 16). Whereas the intent is not to assign one principle per methodology, it is generative to articulate the ways in which each principle fulfills a distinct, but interconnected, value in the Great Law. Hence, each principle can be actualized through these three methodological moment – and beyond. As it pertains to kanenhstóhare, I envision these principles/methodologies as individual strands in a braid. Although separate, they cannot stand alone. Only once braided together are they complete. Strand One: Autobiography Guided by the principles of the Great Law, I am in pursuit of a good mind through self-study as an act of critical autobiographical writing. As but one strand in the braid, the autobiographical components of this research study will be braided to interrupt to create space to inculcate estrangement and homecoming through self-disruption. To interrupt the self, I must relay the self. I must be accountable to the self. As with psychoanalysis, to heal, the past must first be laid bare – seek the unconscious thoughts, desires, and memories. Not just seeking to (re)member but to seek what is forgotten. This interruption, through myself and for myself, then invites a return to the more authentic self (however elusive an “authentic” self is). Revealing the self in an unflattering, but renewed light. This Strand One: Autobiography will articulate the meaning of ka’nikonhrí:io, and its implications for Indigenous autobiography. Next, I will position the significance of 27 autobiography for kanenhstóhare by situating the proposed reclamation of the oxymoron of Indigenous autobiography and outline protocols for an Indigenous autobiography, including storytelling and translating oral Indigenous knowledge. Ka’nikonhrí:io24 (Good Mind) According to the principles of the Great Law, ka’nikonhrí:io is kind words and actions. Ka’nikonhrí:io roughly translates to a “Good Mind,” but it is also sometimes translated to “righteousness” – as in, seeking a moral or unselfish mind. As it pertains to the Great Law, Mohawk Knowledge Keepers joined to write the Akwesasne Notes in 1978, who defined righteousness as the honouring of all living beings: “The principles of Righteousness demand that all thoughts of prejudice, privilege or superiority be swept away and that recognition be given to the reality that the creation is intended for the benefit of all equally” (Akwesasne Notes, 1978, p. 11). Hence, a Good Mind is comprised of thoughts, words, and deeds that uplift, not disparage, others. It is a personal and collective responsibility. This responsibility includes dismantling the anthropocentric hierarchy of humans as superior to other living beings. Wellness and kindness are interconnected with our relationship to the natural world. As Sheridan & Longboat (2006) wrote, “to the Haudenosaunee, the Good Mind and land are inseparable for neither is possible without the other” (p. 378). Land is integral to well-being. To promote cultural wellness models, many of our Haudenosaunee health care practices are predicated upon the principle of ka’nikonhrí:io. There are many techniques, both formalized and informalized, that we use to inculcate ka’nikonhrí:io, including sweats (in a sweat lodge 24 Good Mind [1:18], click here to listen 28 ceremony), fasting, healing and sharing circles, traditional medicines, unburdening and cleansing ceremonies, and physical relaxation processes (such as meditation and healthy sleep hygiene) (Brant, 2009). These methods seek to help the individual find a balance across their physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. To belabour this point: a Good Mind is dependent upon a holistic context of body, mind, and spirit alignment (Brant, 2009). A Good Mind is not based upon a myth that one must seek a pure or superior conscience; rather, it is grounded in the principle that humility, generosity, and kindness are aspirational and attainable human virtues. Autobiography for Kanenhstóhare I turn to autobiography as a form of self-study – to interrupt the self – whilst offering an autoethnographic study of contemporary Haudenosaunee experience. In pursuit of a Good Mind, I seek to interrogate, ruminate, and meditate. Autobiography as critical self-study must first begin with honouring my fallibility and interpreting these moments as educative. My fallibility, and pursuit of humility, is captured by the story of the faceless cornhusk doll. Faceless The Haudenosaunee peoples are governed by the pursuit of ka’nikonhrí:io, the pursuit of the Good Mind. When we have a Good Mind, we do good to others. A Good Mind starts with a balanced and fulfilled spirit, which in turn produces good thoughts and good words. You must protect that mind. Continuously. Corn reminds of this pursuit of ka’nikonhrí:io. Our stories tell us of a time when corn was given the responsibility to care for the children. She was to entertain the children and keep them safe. To do so, she made a small doll out of her dried husks for the children to play with. The children were overcome with joy at the gift. Corn soon began to overhear the aunties in the village talk about the beauty of her corn husk dolls. She took this to be a likeness of her own beauty. She would find herself catching her reflection wherever she could – stopping for a moment to admire her beauty. Then she began to spend less time with the children and more time at the water, where she could stare for hours at her own reflection. The 29 Creator heard what was happening and tried to speak to corn three times about his concern for the toxicity of this practice. Her vanity was tainting her good mind and her ability to take care of the children. She would not listen. After the third warning, the Creator realized he must help her to understand the graveness of her vanity. When corn went down to the water to admire herself as usual, she was terrified to realize she had no face. Today, when we make corn husk dolls, we still do not put faces on them. This reminds us that we are all created equal; no one is more valuable than the other because of their physical appearance. We cannot succumb to our vanity because it compromises our ability to do good in the world. Humility is the most valuable quality. This is the story as I understand it of the faceless corn husk doll.25 In writing autobiographically, I am hyperconscious of my responsibilities as an Indigenous autobiographer. I seek to meditate, write, study, and question my lived experiences not for the sake of vanity but of critical self-understanding. In viewing writing as an act of humility, I was weary of producing a self-centered journal of memories to dramatize, or to “self-theatricaliz[e] (Pinar, 2012, p. 46), my subjective experience. I took heed of Doll’s (2017) warning to make (re)membering purposeful: “One cannot dwell in memory for the sake of memory alone” (p. 4). Hence, these autobiographical threads are grounded in the pursuit of a Good Mind by laying bare the truth and seeking those experiences that prove to be of value for study – in other words, not everything is here. My autobiographical vignettes were written over two years (beginning at the writing of my doctoral proposal in summer 2019). The inspiration for writing autobiographically came life from around me, such as memories that were provoked by what I was reading, Seers and Knowledge Keepers who shared knowledge and stories, and teachings that came to me in the garden. Many of my stories were recorded in two soft covered black notebooks that I carried 25 There are many versions of this story. If you wish to hear other versions of the story, you can find Seneca Elder, Ronnie Reitter, sharing her story online here; Mohawk storyteller, Kay Olan, sharing her teachings here. 30 with me. Many stories were also recorded using the Notes app on my iPhone and Macbook. The Notes app could capture fleeting phrases and ideas on my phone, and the same app would “speak” to my laptop so I could pick up and resume the thoughts more thoroughly once at my desk later. Evernote was also a notetaking app I relied heavily upon, primarily when I was inspired to translate any handwritten stories from my notebook onto the computer to edit. “Blackberries” was one such an idea that began in my notebook with doodles and phrases, that once transcribed onto Evernote became a story I couldn’t leave until it was completed. Less than 10% of what I wrote as autobiographical vignettes are included. Although every written line had its value in my journey, only a portion I deemed to be necessary for study and inclusion as part of the kanenhstóhare process at this time. There is kanenhstóhare as a personal act, as healing and renewal, and there is the public kanenhstóhare that may serve in the renewal of others – it is the latter of which I serve in this dissertation. These autobiographical origins of kanenhstóhare are not new to Indigenous peoples. Kanenhstóhare is grounded in a tradition of being an Indigenous autobiographer, who is bound by traditions of storytelling and life retelling. In pursuit of a Good Mind, I will speak to the tradition of Indigenous autobiography. Indigenous Autobiography In its etymological sense, the literal meaning of autobiography is incongruent with an Indigenous26 sense of being in the world. Wong (1992) argues that Indigenous life narration is difficult to be describe using the term autobiography, wherein auto-bio-graphy (self-life-writing) 26 I speak here of an Indigenous North American perspective, but there are many parallels with global Indigenous conceptions of self-narrative/autobiography. 31 does not encapsulate the communal concept of self, the fluidness of life and identity, and emphasis of orality over written word. Although commune-bio-oratory (community-life-speaking) or auto-ethnography (self-culture writing) are appropriate alternatives to describe community- and culture-based life narratives, I join Wong (1992) and Reder (2010) in their thinking that it is far more pertinent to extend the use and definition of autobiography. The field of autobiography can no longer perpetuate a narrow interpretation of self, narrative, and (re)telling. As I will argue here, in pursuit of an Indigenous autobiographical practice, I will argue that despite its contentious history, Indigenous autobiography has been and will continue to be a purposeful practice in Indigenous storytelling. Prior to the 21st century, the only published auto/biographies of Indigenous peoples were undertaken by White historians and anthropologists. Alas, this is not to say that Indigenous peoples do not have a tradition of the practice of autobiography – although this misconception has been argued (Bataille & Mullen Sands, 1984; Krupat, 1985). Early missionaries thought it to be of the utmost importance that accounts of Indigenous experiences and languages were written down, as the death of the Indian seemed imminent at the turn of the century (Rivett, 2017). Hence, with looming anxieties over the dying Indian, there was the birth of White-interpreted, White-translated, and White-published auto/biographies. Considering these accounts, modern historians have argued that Indigenous autobiography has emerged only as a result of colonization and “Euramerican pressure,” with “no precontact equivalents” (Krupat, 1985, p. 21). Assuming no pre-contact precedent, they suggest that Indigenous autobiographies “are not a traditional form among Native peoples but the consequence of contact with the white invader-settlers” (Krupat, 1985, p. xxvii). Indeed, without textual written accounts prior to European contact, autobiography in the Euro-Western sense is “not an indigenous form” 32 (Bataille & Mullen Sands, 1984, p. 1). Yet, there is indeed a longstanding tradition of Indigenous autobiography, as grounded in stories and storytelling protocols. Storytelling Protocols I come from a long line of storytellers. Or, as my brother has put it, “We come from a long line of bullsh*tters.” Storytelling in Indigenous communities is understood and studied far and wide (Archibald, 2008; Cajete, 2017; Iseke, 2013; Pratt, 2019). Mohawk people are no exception. We live as storied people. In turn, this means we can also speak and write in a storied manner – all we have are the stories of our people, our relatives, or neighbours, our friends, and of ourselves. At times, we speak through cyclical metaphors to a fault. We start a story and we cut to three different stories in between. We don’t consider these to be “tangents” – they are all part of the story. Story isn’t only how we speak of the world, but it is how we understand our world. When my father was diagnosed with organ failure, he was told he would need a transplant to live. Testing for comprehension, the doctor spoke sharply, “Mr. Brant, do you understand what I just told you?”, and my father responded, “Sometimes she gets snagged in the weeds - you gotta pull hard. Sometimes she breaks free. Sometimes she snaps.” The doctor, dumbfounded, looked to my brother with a panicked stricken face. My brother smiled, and translated for the doctor, “He understands just fine. It’s just how he speaks.” For my father, his diagnosis was a lot like fishing. Sometimes your fishing line gets caught in the weeds and reeds under the water. You only have two options when this happens: cut the line and move on, or try to save it. If you choose to save it, you hold your pole firmly and pull the line back as hard as you can, yanking and waving it about, trying to unsnag the tangled fishing hook. Sometimes it breaks free from the weeds, and you reel it back in to go about your fishing again. Sometimes the 33 jerk of the motion just snaps your line in two. The hook is gone, lost forever in the weeds that claimed it. But at least you tried. My dad wanted the fight. He had to try; he had to pull hard. That’s exactly what he did. My brother and I watched the finest fisherman we ever knew in the finest fight we ever saw. This is how we understand our place in the world ourselves: as storied. When I write autobiographically, and use story to communicate with the reader, I write from the tradition of my family and my ancestors. I don’t really have much of a choice, however, because I can’t write any differently. Growing up I was a Johnny Cash fan, and once read he was complimented on his signature slow, steady voice, to which he responded, “I’d sing faster if I could.” Please know, my friend, that I am no writer like Johnny Cash was a singer, but this is simply to say that I’d write differently if I could. And yet, the blending of oral tradition with the written word is a delicate practice that requires tending to. There is power and purpose in traditional oral storytelling protocols. Every story told comes with a set of conditions and protocols to be honoured. Writer and storyteller Thomas King (2003) warns us that “once a story is told, it is loose in the world. So you have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories you are told.” (p. 10). This underscores the immense responsibility inherent with telling and receiving story – this is especially heightened when receiving oral teachings. There is the “synergistic action” that transpires between the storyteller and story, insofar as the storyteller “gives breath” to the story in such a way that cannot be captured nor replicated through text (Archibald, 2008, p. 112). A pedagogy of emotion is made possible when the storyteller, the audience, and the story itself experience the story together in person, as the story unfolds in real time (Brant-Birioukov, Ng-A-Fook & Llewellyn, 2019). In the written word, the tangibility of this storytelling synergy is compromised. Particularly when Indigenous stories are meant to be living – they live through the 34 storyteller, and the listener, who each have responsibilities to make meaning from the story and relay it as they had heard it. When a story is written down, however, the integrity of the story is compromised when it becomes a static transcription (Archibald, 2008). “Sitting in the now of story,” Kovach (2009) warns, “can never be captured through transcript” (p. 102). The responsibility to listen to and learn from story is also compromised, because the exclusiveness of the story is no longer at the forefront – the urgent accountability to listen well and listen now is dissolved. Indeed, there are risks of the story’s nuance being lost in translation when we move from orality to text. In addition to risks with the static permanence of the written word, mentioned above, there are also translation issues with honouring the unique vibrancy and characteristics of the storyteller whose voice brings a story alive. Take, for example, the stories of storyteller Harry Robinson (Okanagan, Lower Similkameen) which were recorded by a friend Wendy Wickwire, who published Robinson’s stories in the book Write It on Your Heart (1989/2006). In attempt to preserve “the nuance of the oral tradition,” Wickwire placed Robinson’s words in poetic lines to “mirror as closely as possible Harry’s rhythm of speech” (Robinson, 1989/2006, p. 16). Like the orality-to-text translation of Harry’s stories, we also see this practice in Elder Tom Sakokwenionkwas Porter’s book, And Grandma Said…(2008), where editor Lesley Forrester recorded Porter’s stories and presentations over a year. In transcribing these stories, however, Forrester struggled to translate Porter’s words into text-friendly readership; whereas his Mohawk speaking pattern quicks were “eloquent and charming” when spoken, they became “cumbersome and often confusing in writing” (2008, p. iii). Yet, the vision to write the teachings into a book was inspired by a dream Porter had, where his late grandmother came to him and told him this should be so. Unencumbered by the limitations of translating these ancestral knowledges into 35 text, Porter persisted, to honour the words of his grandmother who said the book is to be “for our people. Our young people need grandmas. Our younger generation, they need to know things, and nobody’s telling them…” (2008, p. 3). The benefit of written stories provides a wider audience for the storyteller; particularly in a time where colonization has so greatly interrupted the natural process of oral knowledge transmission. Indigenous autobiography is therefore confronted by these impediments, and some additional challenges as well. I understand some of these limitations to be centred primarily at the crux of moving from storytelling as oral knowledge to written knowledge, including the above-named challenges such as the loss of synergistic relationship between the storyteller, audience, and the story; the static permanence of text, leaving stories and teachings out of context; and the risk of losing the nuance and unique characteristics of the storyteller to view the story as living through the teller. For this dissertation, I am confronted by these challenges particularly as I face writing down Creation Stories. I take full responsibility for their limitations – of which are likely numerous, particularly in their shortcomings for the lack of diversification in versions and interpretations of some of the stories shared. But I persist, as those Haudenosaunee writers before me helped pave the way, to navigate these challenges in pursuit of writing my own story as it is intertangled with ancestral stories as oral knowledge, and now written knowledge. This leads me to consider the next challenge of writing as an Indigenous autobiographer: the tradition of autobiography, and its perceived incongruency with Indigenous identity. As discussed above, story, storytelling, and narrative are central tenets to Indigenous cultural expression as grounded in community. The communal context of story is central to the transmission of ancestral knowledges. Barnes (2013) understands story to become a moment of 36 “pedagogical witnessing,” insofar as it “functions to link a series of acts in community where knowledge is shared through revisiting the past” (p. 568). What then, does this mean for Indigenous autobiography to become situated in a tradition that is often grounded in an ego-centric practice of writing one’s life story? How can this be congruent with a collective and culturally constructed sense of Indigenous selfhood? Life narration, Reder (2010) posits, is indeed an Indigenous practice, which occupies a particularly crucial role in reclaiming experiences of colonization from an Indigenous perspective. Pushing the boundaries of self-life-writing, however, the practice of autobiography can be viewed as an historical and contemporary practice in Indigenous communities. Presently, there are many more prolific Indigenous autobiographers whose lived experiences are much richer than my own – stories of recovery (Elliott, 2019; Maracle, 1993; Wagamese, 2009), courage (Joe, 1996; Monture-Angus, 1995), and emancipation (Sellars, 2013; Thistle, 2019; Watt-Cloutier, 2015). Their work (and the work of so many others not named here) precedes this dissertation and is instrumental in reclaiming autobiography. In naming this practice as Indigenous autobiography, I seek to reclaim autobiography as a traditional and contemporary practice, wherein the phrase “Indigenous autobiography” is no longer considered an oxymoron. Indigenous autobiography is implicated in a communally constructed sense of self. As Reder (2010) argues, our sense of linearity must also be disrupted, to challenge our presentism and how we conceive events as historical/contemporary (Reder, 2010). To (re)member, to (re)tell, and to (re)live the past in an Indigenous way is to do so in relation with all living things that once were, that are, and that may be. Above all, Indigenous autobiography is guided by the intent to unsettle the familiar so as to bare the uncomfortable – or, to seek estrangement, as will 37 be explored in Chapter 4. This is what guides kanenhstóhare in pursuit of writing autobiographically for a Good Mind. Strand Two: Educational Theory To guide this work in a purposeful dialogue, I turn to Strand Two: Educational Theory, to engage in a generative exchange across space, time, contexts, cultures. I seek to author my experiences through autobiography in Strand One, while it is here in Strand Two where educational theory guides this research to serve as an educative agenda – not a nostalgic one. Engagement with educational theory provides the footing for autobiography to engage in a dialogue, rather than a monologue. The purpose of writing the autobiographical vignettes is to use allegory to construct theory; examine my own estrangement and homecoming processes in the context of kanenhstóhare. In drawing upon educational theory, I engage in a dialogue with others to consider kanenhstóhare as part of a broader conversation. For Britzman (2003), constructing theory is premised on a life that is studied and examined. Without educational theory, kanenhstóhare may be a book of musings and memories, but it fails to be purposeful if it were to lose sight of dialoguing with others. Study cannot happen in a vacuum. It is in the theoretical intersections between kanenhstóhare (as grounded the tradition of Haudenosaunee thought) and the broader fields of educational theory that brings it life; namely, psychoanalysis, curriculum theory, and philosophy. In the teachings of ka’sathsténhsera (power/strength) one does not find power in isolation – like writing a book of memoires for one’s personal self-gain – but finds purpose in the wisdom of others. 38 This Strand Two: Educational Theory will begin with a consideration of ka’sathsténhsera, including its meaning and definition within the Great Law. Next, I will position the significance of ka’sathsténhsera for kanenhstóhare by positioning the significance of educational theory for dialogue, as a means of intersecting different traditions of thought to engage in a meaningful conversation across divides (not succumbing to them). Ka’sathsténhsera27 (Power/Strength) As a principle of the Great Law, ka’sathsténhsera is roughly translated to “power/strength,” but also “reason/reasoning” – I’ll explain. The principle of ka’sathsténhsera suggests that we are stronger, more powerful together. To understand the nuanced meaning of ka’sathsténhsera, we must return to the origins of the Great Law. Recall that the Peacemaker called upon the five warring nations to surrender – surrender not as a means of capitulation and defeat, but to be humbled by the weight of humanity; we are meant to be united and honouring of all life. In other words, surrender to the fact that humanity is stronger together. Ka’sathsténhsera also emerged from the premise that Haudenosaunee peoples have always been students of philosophical reasoning (Mohawk, 1992). As John Mohawk (1992) wrote, “In our world the law came about when the people who had the weapons said, we put our weapons away in order to sit and do the thinking” (p. 28). In our philosophical pursuits, our minds come together as one, as the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen28 invites us to do. 27 Strength or Power [2:10], click here to listen 28 The Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen (roughly translates to “The Words to Come Before All Else”) is the Mohawk Thanksgiving Address, in which all events begin by offering our thanks for the many blessings we are surrounded with in the natural world. The phrasing to “make our minds one” is central to bringing our minds together to do good work. For example, we see this in the phrase: Akwé:kon énhska entitewawenon:ni ne onkwa’nikonhra táhnon teyethinonhwera:tons ne onkwe’shon:’a. Etho niyohtónha’k ne onkwa’nikón:ra. (“We will make our minds one and give thanks to the people. Now our minds are one.”) 39 If ka’sathsténhsera is new to you, my friend, please allow me to clarify a common misconception. Bringing a people together to seek “power” should not be done with the intention of obtaining military or political power. Here, power is not to be used for the control or manipulation of others (oral teachings by Aronhiaies Herne, 2020). Instead, power is found and sustained by a people who are morally, ethically, and intellectually strong. This is where the principle of “reason/reasoning” is also a factor in ka’sathsténhsera. The teaching is premised on the human ability to reason. If we are to join minds and unite affairs, we can only do so as rational beings: “We cannot negotiate with irrational beings…thus the first principle that will bring us the POWER to act is the confidence in the belief that all people are rational human beings and that we can take measures to reach accord with them” (Wallace, 1946, p. xvi, emphasis in original). Grounded in the basis that all minds are rational – or at least have the capacity to be – ka’sathsténhsera opens the possibility of cross-cultural dialogue because it is founded upon the premise that all minds (however different from yours) deserve to be heeded. I see educational theory as being a vital thread for cross-cultural29 dialogue in kanenhstóhare. If we see the consequence of diversity as being power, not division, this then situates the value of cross-cultural dialogue. In this work I write of Haudenosaunee thought as a distinct knowledge system and find it pertinent to draw upon international scholarship where it is fruitful to think of the parallels of Indigenous thought more broadly. Indigenous thought – in contrast with Euro-Western thought – is indeed a post-colonial term. Indigenous thought is a homogenous term which emerges as a product of coloniality. Prior to colonization there would have been greater divides than similarities across diverse Indigenous epistemologies in the Americas. In a contemporary settler colonial landscape, however, parallels are warranted. I use 29 And, perhaps more robustly, cross-ontological, cross-temporal, cross-epistemological. 40 this term sparingly, however, to avoid perpetuating a pan-Indigenous consciousness, yet use it purposefully when the consequence of colonization upon Indigenous nations and their knowledge systems warrants parallels and in turn depth in its international scholarship beyond the limited scholarship available in Haudenosaunee thought solely. In this sense, Indigenous thought has been hierarchized as inferior from Western thought within the colonial discourse (Maurial, 1999). Hence, to consider the premise that all peoples are capable of rational thought is to then acknowledge the validity of Indigenous thought. Moreover, that in fact these knowledge systems – however diverse or divergent – are stronger together. A bringing of minds as together is not to “overlook, or render invisible” the unique social and historical contexts of these knowledge systems, as Donald (2012, p. 45) warns. But it is an invitation to consider the power that lies in the complicated conversations in speaking across the previously irreconcilable chasms of Indigenous and Western thought. Together, we reason. Together, we are more whole. I think of the Three Sisters best embodying this teaching of ka’sathsténhsera; each can grow by herself, but they grow best together. There is no common meeting ground across these ontological divides – so let us meet at the edge of the woods, and being our journey from the outside-in. Understanding Educational Theory Using educational theory is valuable in kanenhstóhare to recognize the diversity of traditions, voices, ethics, and lived experiences beyond my own. Educational theory creates a conceptual space for Indigenous and Western thought to co-exist in a theoretical dialogue between two seemingly irreconcilable knowledge systems. Whereas autobiography offers 41 personal reflections and insights, it is the diversity of experiences and perspectives offered by Indigenous and Western educational theory that make kanenhstóhare educative. Bound in conversation, theory informs the interrogation of what we consider to be our individual limits of strange and familiar as subjects (Biesta, 2016). Isolated from dialogue, I am bound by my own limitations of what I consider to be strange/familiar; whereas an engagement with educational theory incites a sense of curiosity to interrogate my egocentric interpretation of the world. The term educational theory can have two uses: theories that are educational, or theories of education (Rocha, 2020). For Popkewitz (2014), educational research has “never operated without theory” (p. 13). Drawing from a variety of disciplines in the social sciences (e.g., psychology, history, sociology) – even emerging with its own subfields within educational research (e.g., psychology of education, history of education, and so on) – theory in education is united by one common goal: “to bring what is strange and not understood into the domain of understanding” (Biesta, Allan & Edwards, 2014, p. 5). Theory plays a significant role in both educational research and practice – but what theories we should use and how we should use them is a complex and ever-changing debate (Biesta, Allan & Edwards, 2014). By framing theorization as “a form of engagement with and intervention in the world” (Britzman, 2003, p. 69), I seek to draw upon the conceptual method of currere as a means to “intervene” in the world. Currere positions kanenhstóhare to employ critical self-study, in dialogue with Indigenous and Settler theorists, to seek the renewal one’s engagement in the world. Currere for Purposeful Self-Study 42 As a means of taking “myself and my existential experience as a data source” (Pinar, 1994, p. 20), autobiography and educational theory are bound together through the conceptual method of currere. As a form of self-study, the method of currere demands autobiographical study to understand educational experience in four steps/moments of study: the regressive (the past), progressive (the future), analytical (understanding the significance of the regressive and progressive), and synthetical (holding these moments in suspension to re-mobilize the present) (Pinar, 1994, 2010, 2012). The purpose of critical self-study is not to simply get stuck on the first phase of currere – but to inculcate a skepticism about our past, our fears, and hopes for our futures. To bring this self-consciousness into our relationship with the world. Currere seeks to use allegory to “reactivat[e] the past so as to render the present, including ourselves, intelligible” (Pinar, 2012, p. 50). It is based on this notion of rendering ourselves “intelligible” that I am most interested in; what purpose might self-study serve in a kanenhstóhare discourse? How does interruption (the self) and dialogue (with others) work in tandem to bring about a new consciousness? What relationship exists between estrangement and homecoming, as not only a literal journey, but a conceptual renewal of consciousness? The autobiographical method of currere for Grumet (1981) arouses a “deep suspicion our most cherished and most comfortable ideologies” (p. 122). It is in this method of currere that autobiography can be purposeful. For practitioners of currere, the four steps invite memory and futurism into conversation through educational theory. Mary Doll (2017), concerned about unhinging the ghosts of our pasts, writes, “We must come to know the threads that lead us back to the uncovering of our monsters, lest we thrust them out onto the world” (p. xiii). Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy reactivate the past to heal; heal the relationship with the self and with others. Drawing upon the primarily Settler-dominated currere method, I will consider 43 the regressive, progressive, analytical and synthetical moments in my educational journey, in pursuit of the inquiry: “what has been and what is now the nature of my educational experience?” (Pinar, 1994, p. 20). If I were to do autobiographical narrative writing alone, I might be left with merely a memoire of lived experience. A memoire may be of interest to my future kin, but aside from its anecdotal value it serves very little purpose. Turning to currere, this self-study becomes strengthened by the wisdom of others that I could not find alone. Bringing our minds together as one, ka’sathsténhsera offers a strength to kanenhstóhare as an Indigenous theory that could not have been possible by myself alone. The future of Indigenous theory, however, must be couched within a context of moving away from Indigenized theory towards Indigenous theory. This history must be positioned to understand the context of which kanenhstóhare emerges from. From Indigenized to Indigenous Theory Trailblazers of Indigenous academia patiently carved out a space for Indigenous knowledge in an era when Indigenous thought was deemed too primitive and lacking scientific rigour for worthwhile study (Semali & Kincheloe, 1999; Knopf, 2015). Indigenous and Settler-ally scholars took what they could, little by little, making concessions when necessary. When Indigenous knowledge first sought a seat at the Ivory Tower table in the twentieth century, it was done at the same time Indigenous children in Canada were still being removed from their communities. Residential schools operated under the ideology that Indigenous thought was morally and intellectually inferior; it was a criminal offense to think, act, and be “Indian.” Whereas Indigenous educators and activists had been active in the dismantling of Euro-Western 44 discourse since the 1960s, the prevalence of Indigenous knowledge in the academy did not become pervasive until the 1990s, when Native Studies scholars advocated for the “Indigenization of the Academy” (Knopf, 2015; Mihesuah & Cavender Wilson, 2004). The intent of such Indigenization is to critique Western Eurocentric Modern reason, and in turn reclaim the dismantled fragments of this knowledge system with Indigenous reason, culture, and experience. Early calls for Indigenization urged against “going native,” cautioning against a complete pendulum shift to reject Western thought and exclusively promote Indigenous thought (Alatas, 1993). Alatas (1993) warned against this retreat into “nativism,” in that a complete rejection of Western theories and methodologies would mean a failure in acknowledging the realities of “academic dependency that link core and peripheral social scientists” (p. 308). Such extremist thinking would run the risk Indigenous scholars failing to secure funding or seek research partnerships, as required by dominant academic practices. Driven by the need to seek intersections between Indigenous and Western thought, critical theory emerged as favourite discourse-of-choice for many Indigenous scholars. Whereas the origins of Critical Theory lie in Marxism, the Frankfurt School, and distinct philosophical/political traditions of kritik, it has become diluted (not unproblematically) to encompass any discourse that is “critical” of society and culture, such as feminism and postcolonialism (Thompson, 2017). For Opaskwayak Cree scholar of critical theory, Shawn Wilson (2008), he is interested in the discourse of critical thought as a means to provide alternatives to “one fixed truth” (p. 36). Wilson draws upon the paradigm of critical theory as an established foundation for which to interrogate positivism and post-positivism. Nehiyaw scholar Margaret Kovach (2009) shared a similar affinity for critical theory, claiming, “as long as decolonization is a purpose of Indigenous education and research, 45 critical theory will be an allied Western conceptual tool for creating change” (p. 48). Métis scholar Rheanna Robinson (2016), also drawn to critical theory, attends to the intersection of Indigenous theory and critical theory in her research. “We live in a dual world,” she argues (p. 123). For Robinson (2016), both critical/Indigenous theories can be held in conversation with one another, suggesting that critical theory is the framework for liberation and decolonization, while Indigenous theory provides the cultural basis to weave Indigenous culture into research, such as through the weaving of Indigenous/Western knowledge through the research praxis of Métissage. Whereas critical theory has emerged as the tree trunk holding Indigenous theory grounded in the academy, its many branches have helped to further incite conversations of Indigenous knowledge in the academy. Such offshoots include critical race theory (Dunbar, 2014; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), and tribal critical race theory (Brayboy, 2005). However necessary for Indigenous knowledge to seek this life raft in the unforgiving waters academia, I argue that this is no longer needed, and is gravely compromising the future of Indigenous theory. No matter how critical one is of a discourse, one must continue to centralize the very ideological facets of which one is trying to escape. To critique Western society and ideology, I must then preface this conversation on Western society and ideology. I fear that this vortex of the critique continues to centralize Eurocentrism and the experience of (de)colonization, wherein Indigenous thought can only, at best, be a decontextualized side dish to the main course. If the best we can do is amend, defend, or critique, where does this leave energy for Indigenous thought to be valued for its own sake? I fear this elusive chase of the critique has left us with a wolf in sheep’s clothing; critical theory guised as the most fruitful future of Indigenous theory…we can certainly do better, henh? 46 As for Indigenous critical theory, its discourse suggests that Indigenous scholars can be critical, radical, and transformative, but only insofar as it remains tethered to Euro-Western thought. Even the most radical of critical theory concepts, like decolonization, cannot inform the future of Indigenous theory. Skeptical of “decolonization,” Haudenosaunee scholar Sandra Styres (2017) describes decolonizing as a needle in her brain, wherein “decolonization, while desired in principle, is a process that, by its very nature, is continually (re)centring colonial relations – the hamster caught in a never-ending wheel of repetition and replication” (p. 34). If the reasoning is premised in sustaining itself, it is the most basic cyclical illogical fallacy of reasoning: it can never escape itself. For Paraskeva (2020), in a call to end the contradiction of the epistemic matrix of critical theory, argues, “Critical theory was never able to criticize its reason, its inability to act, and to perceive itself beyond the Modern Western Eurocentric matrix” (p. 10). Eurocentric reasoning has led to an anthropocentric crisis on earth, in our global economy, and in our minds (Paraskeva, 2020). “The reason that produced and developed the crisis cannot be the reason that will help us to get out of the crisis,” Paraskeva (2020, p. 11) argues. By rejecting the premise of critique, we can then begin elsewhere. We can begin with Indigenous thought. This study is an attempt to consider how Indigenous thought can be constructed as theory, methodology, and framework, on its own terms. No “Indigenization” or “decolonization” necessary. To be clear, however, I am critical (no pun intended) of the limitations of Indigenous critical theory, not of Indigenous scholars who have used critical theory and its derivatives. It was necessary and had its place. It is common for scholars to criticize a line of reasoning as if it was doomed from the beginning – unnecessary, illogical, waste of time, and, well, just wrong. In practice, Indigenous knowledge systems are not predicated on throwing the baby out with the 47 bathwater; our reasoning is grounded in a growth mindset. Failure is necessary. I’m not proposing that we “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” so to speak. It is maybe just time we buy the baby a new bathtub altogether. The Indigenous scholars who came before did the heavy lifting – this labour was not done in vain. When I imagine this gradual, patient carving of space for Indigenous thought in the academy, I can’t help but picture Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption (1994): a Stephen King character who spent 19 years patiently tunnelling his way out of the Shawshank State Penitentiary. Little by little, he chiselled his way to freedom with a tiny rock hammer. He worked so slowly, no one noticed. And then, one day, he was free. Tunneling a way out of the matrix of critique was necessary, and now we are in a privileged position where Indigenous thought can stand outside of the knowledge systems from which our thought does not derive from. No more concessions or negotiations. We can speak of Indigenous thought on its own terms – and, finally, can engage with Settler thought as an equal, not as a dependant. For kanenhstóhare, Indigenous thought is not included in its methodology – it is Indigenous thought. Such Indigenous thought is premised upon ancestral traditional teachings. The final strand, Strand Three, will consider the implications and protocols surrounding traditional teachings in a kanenhstóhare discourse. Strand Three: Traditional Teachings Bringing Indigenous teachings into the academy is precarious to say the last. Manipulation, exploitation, and violation have characterized the Indigenous research experience; over-researched, undervalued (Smith, 2012). This historical legacy of exploiting Indigenous 48 knowledge is coupled by epistemological tensions between Indigenous knowledge and the Western Eurocentric knowledge traditions of academic discourse. Indigenous researchers in the academy are continuously confronted with ethical dilemmas. Grande (2014) has referred to this dilemma as a “Sophie’s Choice moment,” where “one feels compelled to choose between retaining his or her integrity (identity) as a Native person or doing research” (p. 234). Many Indigenous scholars have attempted to negotiate the Indigenous ultimatum of academia, whereby they no longer wanted to check their Indigeneity at the door. In the pursuit of skennen, I seek to ground this research in traditional Haudenosaunee teachings to ground myself in Haudenosaunee thought as a Haudenosaunee researcher, without compromise (but not without tension, as explored further). This Strand Three: Traditional Teachings seeks to hold space for Haudenosaunee traditional teachings as a valid data source for constructing a kanenhstóhare theory. It will begin with the meaning of skennen as framed by the Great Law, and lastly will conclude with the implications of skennen for traditional teachings and the protocols to be attended to. Skennen (Peace) The three principles of the Great Law are omnipresent in Haudenosaunee thought, culture, and identity. None more important than the last. However, the pursuit of peace, skennen, is perhaps the most prevalent in our daily lives. For the Haudenosaunee, peace is not merely the absence of war, violence, or strife (Akwesasne Notes, 1977). Peace is a way of living, thinking, being. Peace is the law; the law is peace – we use the same word for both. It is the pursuit of, and state of being, for all that is just and good. 49 According to Settler historian/anthropologist who studied Haudenosaunee thought, Paul Wallace (1946) warned that translating skennen into English is problematic. He concluded that any term in the English language is “too abstract to catch their way of looking at it,” except to describe it as “a way of living life, characterised by wisdom and graciousness” (p. 34). Because of its elusiveness, the use of skennen has been translated in a variety of contemporary ways. For example, upon the arrival of missionaries, skennen was used in Biblical translations for concepts such as “noble,” “the Lord” and the “Great Good” (Wallace, 1946). For contemporary Haudenosaunee people, it is likewise defined as “tranquility” and “soundness of health” (Williams, 2018, p. 218). If I were to define skennen for myself personally, the closest I could describe it would be in fleeting moments of physical, mental, and spiritual wholeness; the warm touch of a newborn baby, the taste of food prepared by a loved one, or the stillness of an early winter’s morning. Skennen is found in these moments of rest, but outside of these moments and in pursuit of these moments. Achieving a perpetual state of skennen would be to tap into a metaphysical vibration of complete attunement with all living things. Skennen is not the rejection of fear, grief, or strife, but it is living amongst life’s anxieties and still choosing to radiate light. Fundamental to Haudenosaunee identity, the pursuit of peace is a personal and collective societal endeavor. Compromising another’s skennen is a heinous act; likewise, allowing another to compromise your skennen is also of weak moral character. It is so fundamental to one’s daily life as Haudenosaunee, that its significance can be studied in the most basic greeting phrase: “Shé:kon, skennen’kowa ken?” Roughly, this common phrase is the Mohawk equivalent to “Hello, how are you?” You will notice our root word, skennen (underlined) is prominent in this phrase. Hence, its literal translation is, “Hello, are you at great (big) peace?” To which one can 50 respond, “Yes, I am at great peace,” or, “No, I am not at great peace.” This is to say, being at peace (and hence, seeking peace) is the most revered state of being. To ground my work in the teachings of skennen is intended to contribute to my personal pursuit of skennen, to contribute to the skennen of others, and to uphold the ancestral teachings of skennen to benefit all living beings. As it pertains to kanenhstóhare, traditional teachings will ground this study in the language, protocol and knowledges of Haudenosaunee thought, without seeking to appropriate the complexities of a Haudenosaunee knowledge system which cannot be articulated through such a medium. The intent is to not speak about Haudenosaunee thought, but through it. The braiding of traditional knowledge within this study will inform a recentring of ancestral knowledge, to justify calls for legitimacy of Haudenosaunee thought as a complex, valid, and valuable knowledge system from which theory can be derived. Protocols of Traditional Knowledge Traditional knowledge encompasses ancestral truths about the world that have been passed down through generations of Haudenosaunee peoples. Haudenosaunee peoples have always been philosophers. Our commitment to reasoning, justice, and righteous living led to the creation of one of the most successful democracies in the world (Fenton, 1998). The irony prefacing this research, however, is traditional Haudenosaunee knowledge is grounded in two practices that are absent from this research study: orality and Kanyen’kéha (the Mohawk language). As a written dissertation in the English language, the authenticity of traditional knowledge is compromised. I am playing host in a home other than my own. When it concerns our ancestral knowledge, its most authentic form is in its original language – English translations can never encapsulate nor replace Mohawk knowledge as it is understood in the Mohawk 51 language (Monture, 2014). Haudenosaunee scholar Taiaiake Alfred (1999) wrote that writing in English is a necessary evil to convey message, but this does not absolve us of our responsibilities to our communities. The translation of this traditional knowledge in this research is more than a transcribing a second language, but an ideological negotiation between two discrete knowledge systems. The negotiated status of this traditional knowledge is why I proport to work with traditional teachings. I cannot claim to speak to traditional knowledge, as I cannot speak to the entirety of a knowledge system that is so greatly decontextualized in this work. Hence, this work draws upon traditional teachings, of which comprise traditional knowledge when it is grounded in its context. Traditional teachings are ancestral morals, lessons, values, and protocols which comprise Haudenosaunee thought. Haudenosaunee thought cannot be replicated outside of its lived context, however, as it is survived in its context of culture, language, and community. A description of these teachings will be imperfect. My intention is to provide enough detail for it to be understood and inform its lived Haudenosaunee context, or as a foundational primer outside of its Haudenosaunee context (such as an introduction for Settler peoples or Haudenosaunee people seeking to reconnect with their ancestral knowledge). The primary teachings for this research draw upon the teachings of the Great Law, Creation Stories, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and the nuance derived from Kanyen’kéha language. Other sources for traditional teachings will derive from traditional knowledge sources, such as oral story, dreams, and spirit messages. Conclusion: The Strands of Kanenhstóhare 52 To ground this work of kanenhstóhare, we begin with the soil as a foundation. The soil of this work, and of Haudenosaunee thought, is founded in the Great Law of Peace. I have laid out the three principles of the Great Law, good mind (ka’nikonhrí:io), strength/power (ka’sathsténhsera), and peace (skennen), and articulated the methodological manifestations of these principles through autobiography, educational theory, and traditional teachings. 1/ autobiography, for a good mind 2/ educational theory, for strength/power 3/ traditional teachings, for peace The possibility of kanenhstóhare lies in its ability to renew. The following chapters will take these three strands to braid together, to seek the limits of estrangement and homecoming as grounded in autobiography, educational theory, and traditional teachings, for the purposes of renewal. 53 Chapter 3: SOWING & BRAIDING The third moment of kanenhstóhare is spent immersed in the field. Sowing the garden is an iterative process of planting, weeding, watering, and harvesting. You will rely on both local, traditional knowledge that has been passed down, and new knowledge that you have picked up along the way. Sometimes these teachings will contradict one another. Rely on your intuition when you do not know the answer. If disease and other natural disasters have not compromised your crop, you must prepare for the harvest. Knowing when to harvest is a skill. When has it grown to its peak potential? When has it reached maturation? Once the corn has been harvested from its stock, the husks of the corn are shucked upright. These husks are then braided together. The braided corn is hung to dry in the rafters over the winter. In the spring it will be dried and ready for lying. Grab your gloves and let’s begin. Where Life Grows Understanding the soil as foundation, it is time to sow the seeds and watch new life grow. Corn is resilient and hardy. It does not need pruning or delicate fertilizer. It is a direct sow seed. It can withstand extremes and grow despite hardships. It has survived and thrived in soil that is poisoned; alas, it is poisoned, nevertheless. For a pure thought to take root and grow in contaminated soil, it may indeed grow, but it will still emerge as a contaminated thought. This, to me, is how Indigenous thought has survived amidst colonization. It has survived because it is inherently resilient, adaptative, and enduring. Until we attend to the slow poisoning of our thoughts, however, our collective minds will continue to be poisoned. This is how settler 54 colonialism has operated for centuries – contaminating the minds of all, posed as a necessary evil. For kanenhstóhare to be actualized in all its complexities as a legitimate curricular discourse, framework, and methodology in Canadian curricular discourse, we must first attend to the source of the poison: coloniality. The legacy of coloniality (as I will explore further), is like the environmental devastation of a landfill: leaching into the soil, to poison all that grows from it. This contaminated soil is the land from which a kanenhstóhare grows from today. Whereas colonization is but the visible landfill above the ground, the greatest pollutant is found below the debris. The imperceptible leach that poisons unbeknownst to many of us. This chapter will first attend to the Haudenosaunee teachings which surround sowing corn, and corn’s physical/spiritual properties as intertwined entities. Next, the chapter will outline the way in which coloniality permeates our education systems as the contaminate of the soil and all life that grows from it. In positioning the legacy of coloniality in education, this chapter will argue the implications of settler epistemic privilege as it is survived in the Canadian curricular discourse. Such settler epistemic privilege must be interrupted by a subjective reconstruction of experience and what we consider to be knowledge. Kanenhstóhare is posed as one means of such subjective reconstruction. Honour the Land, Honour the Mind A thought is a lot like a seed. It grows from in the conditions in which it is planted in. The seed of the corn embodies the Haudenosaunee ontology of a life between two worlds: Earth and Sky World. Our physical existence is but one aspect of our lives. The other aspect of 55 existence is the spirit. The spirit can also be understood as the consciousness – it is one’s Figure 3 – K. Brant-Birioukov, (May 2021), “New life emerging. Corn shoots in mounds” intangible, individualistic sense of self that survives outside of our physical bodies. Implicated in the physical/spiritual duality of life is also the ever-present duality of life/death (or, life/after life, if you will). The sowing of corn is a continuous re-articulation of this duality. According to Haudenosaunee scholar, Bomberry (2013), the germination of seeds is an honouring of spirit, The Spirit World or the germination stage of life is an understanding that all people who move into the Spirit World (i.e., who pass away) will always have a spiritual presence. Therefore, to plant the seeds, we must first recognize our Ancestors and Elders who have gone on before us. In relation to human life, we give thanks to our Ancestors and continue bearing children to carry on new life (p. 255). Corn is this connection between the physical/spiritual existence of all life. This is represented in the sowing of the seeds, where corn is sown and grown in the image of the dome of Sky World. The Three Sisters are the only seeds sown in these domes – domes being raised mounds of dirt. 56 The dome is like an incubator, a womb for the seeds, just as Sky World is our womb (Martin, n.d.). The image of the Sky World is represented by the sky-dome. It is a repeated pattern in Haudenosaunee artwork. In its most basic iteration, the sky-dome consists of a semicircle resting upon two parallel horizontal lines. The dome is symbolic of Sky World, and the horizontal lines represent the Earth (Parker, 1912) – see Figure 1 (below). The more ornate the pattern becomes, the more teachings that are represented in the symbol. In the ornate Sky World image below, Figure 2, the lattice pattern at the bottom represents the water under Turtle Island, with the earth life and vegetation above, and the sky-dome of the Spirit World on top (Hill, 2017). Most representations of the sky-dome include the celestial Tree of Life. The Tree of Life plays a significant cornerstone in our Creation Story, to be discussed in detail in Chapter 4. For Martin (n.d.), the celestial tree emerging from the sky-dome is also representative of the first shoots of corn emerging from its mound in the spring. Figure 5 – Hill (2017, p. 24), “Haudenosaunee Sky Dome designs." Figure 4 – Parker (1912, p. 615), “Various forms of the sky-dome symbol as employed in Iroquois moose-hair and quill embroidery.” 57 Haudenosaunee artwork continues to honour the repetitive pattern of Sky World imagery. In Wahiia’s artwork (Figure 3, below), her piece captures the spirit of the Corn Husk Doll. In her 2018 piece, “Untitled,” the viewer will notice various representations of the sky-dome surrounding the corn husk dolls. Dome upon dome. Mound upon mound. Where all life begins. Figure 6 – Wahiia Victoria Ransom (2018), "Untitled” When we honour the land, we honour the mind. It grounds us, quite literally. Life is meant to be lived amidst these dualities – the body and spirit – not necessary between them in a state of purgatory, but among these tensions. Alas, there is no room for spirit in our contemporary consciousness as citizens of Turtle Island. In fact, there is very little room for even honouring of the body. In a settler consciousness, the body is owned by the neo-liberal market for economic 58 prosperity. Dwayne Donald argues that the Canadian curriculum is predicated upon the character of homo economicus, in that “faith in and worship of the market is considered the primary purpose of humankind” (Donald, 2019, p. 111). We poison our mother for the sake of a dollar. As we poison her, we too must live in the consequence of her contaminated aftermath. The soil, just like the mind, has been eroded and corroded by the legacies of coloniality. The Complicated Conversation of Coloniality Our Canadian youth become products of the Canadian education system as early as four years old. The Canadian curriculum is a contested space for Indigenous thought (Donald, 2019). In a study by Whitlow et al. (2019), most Haudenosaunee youth learn of their Haudenosaunee identity, culture, and history from their families. Non-Haudenosaunee youth, or Haudenosaunee youth who might not have the option to learn of their cultural identity at home, need experiential learning opportunities to engage with Indigenous thought in meaningful ways. The reality, however, is Haudenosaunee culture is often left to the discretion of the teacher, which is poorly delivered, if at all (Bomberry, 2013). This shortcoming is not due to malicious, ill-trained teachers, but benevolent, well-educated educators who reproduce the objectives of a settler colonial curriculum they are mandated to reproduce. Canada is a settler state. It is a settler state in that it was colonized through the displacement, (re)settlement, and continued occupation of Indigenous lands. The continued occupation of Indigenous lands by non-Indigenous settler peoples, and therefore the continued displacement of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, is what Canada is sustained upon. Settler colonialism is comprised of the physical and intellectual colonization of Indigenous lands. The physical colonization includes settler bodies that continue to occupy Indigenous lands. 59 While the intellectual colonization is comprised of a consciousness of assumed rights (sans responsibilities) which are tied to Indigenous lands. Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernandez (2013) claim that this assumed settler right(s) in a settler state justifies the project of replacement. The project of replacement is premised upon the justification of settler identity/occupancy to replace Indigenous identity/occupancy. This legacy of settler colonialism in the Canadian curriculum is pervasive. The consequences of settler colonialism are visible through prejudice, racism, and discrimination, evident in Canadian textbooks (Carleton, 2011; Clark, 2007; Kirkness, 1977); province-mandated curriculum expectations (Lamb, 2015; Lorenz, 2017), and the normalization of Eurocentric Western knowledge as universal and commonsense (Battiste, 2013; Donald, 2009, 2012). Due to the pervasiveness of settler colonialism in curricular discourse, the mere presence of Indigenous thought in curriculum appears suffocated under Eurocentric hegemony. Any presence of Indigenous knowledge appears conditional; labelled as “Indigenous knowledge” (as compared to simply “knowledge,”); regarded as an alternative; or, deemed illegitimate until it legitimized by Western Eurocentric thought (e.g., such as Social Emotional Learning, Land-based Learning, or Student-Centred Learning). This intertangled web of Indigenous/Western knowledge seems so greatly bound together in a settler colonial discourse, it seems easier to throw our hands in the air and simply say the knowledge is “colonized.” However, greater nuance is needed here. Indigenous knowledge cannot be colonized because it is knowledge that is derived from land. Although land is used as a primary means by which colonization is pursued, land itself cannot be colonized. The land cannot cede under the rule of a crown, monarchy, or some other sovereign – it abides by the natural laws of the universe. Therefore, the knowledge as a living 60 entity derived from this land remains there. It can be sought, understood, and revitalized once again, so long as we have the wherewithal to make meaning from the land. What is encumbered by the legacy of settler colonialism, or coloniality as I will explain below, is consciousness. Whereas Haudenosaunee thought is the knowledge that has been derived from the land (e.g., the knowledge system, and ways of knowing), Haudenosaunee consciousness is the mind of which interprets thought (e.g., the mind, and spirit, that seeks to understand the knowledge system). To put it differently, the grip of coloniality encumbers consciousness. Coloniality is the institutionalized memory or legacy of colonialism (Paraskeva, 2020). Yet, it is not simply the residue of just any colonial relation, but specifically the colonization of the Americas (Maldonado-Torres, 2007). Maldonado-Torres (2007) explains: Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such nation an empire. Coloniality, instead, refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breath coloniality all the time and everyday (p. 243). Coloniality emerges not as an addendum to colonialism and postcolonialism but is the tie that binds historic colonial system of power with its contemporary legacy. Coloniality accounts for “the entangled, heterogeneous, and mutually constitutive relations between the international division of labor, global racial/ethnic hierarchy, and hegemonic Eurocentric epistemologies in the modern/colonial/capitalist world system” (Grosfoguel, 2003, p. 4). The assumed universality of Western Eurocentric knowledge has deep roots in the fabricated construct of race (Quijano, 2000, 2007). Race stratification legitimized segregated social relations and the hierarchical division of labour, which consequently “contaminated the structure of production, reproduction, 61 and legitimization of knowledge” (Paraskeva, 2000, p. 77). Knowledge, encumbered by coloniality, is therefore not knowledge, but colonial knowledge. It becomes the benchmark against which other knowledge systems are vetted against, becoming a self-perpetuating hegemony of universality. This de/legitimization of knowledge is what Grosfoguel (2010) calls epistemic privilege. Grosfoguel (2010, p. 30) argues that the invisibility of Western epistemological hegemony maintains the assumption that “all ‘other’ traditions of thought [are] deemed inferior.” Namely, Grosfoguel traced the characterization of non-Western thought as historically deemed “barbaric” (16th century), “primitive” (19th century), “under-developed” (20th century), and “anti-democratic” (21st century). Consequently, contemporary Indigenous knowledge and intellectual contributions continue to be defined as inferior, purporting it lacks objectivity, rigour, and validity (Grosfoguel, 2010). Kanenhstóhare does seek to centre coloniality in its inception. Kanenhstóhare is not defined by coloniality, nor is it dependent on the success of decolonization. It exists, it is whole, it is legitimate. This fact remains so with or without acknowledgement from Western Eurocentric measures of validating knowledge. Haudenosaunee thought does not need to be validated like a parking ticket. Yet, coloniality is in the soil – its toxic leach is an impediment to the possibility of kanenhstóhare to be grown and known outside of Haudenosaunee consciousness. The poison of which we might call settler epistemic privilege permeates the soil of which we stand upon in Canada. The land has a way of healing itself, but we must stop its source of contamination for this to happen. 62 Settler Epistemic Privilege In Canada, epistemic racism, and in turn epistemic privilege, is presupposed by settler colonialism. Whereas epistemic privilege is indeed multifaceted and evident throughout all Euro-Western curricular discourse, the legacy of settler colonialism is what defines coloniality in a Canadian context. This may be understood as settler epistemic privilege, which is maintained by a consciousness that upholds Indigenous alienation and settler capitulation. Settler epistemic privilege in the Canadian curricular discourse is sustained on the assumption that settler consciousness is the rightful, natural way of thinking and being Canadian. Settler consciousness is then privileged in our curricular discourse because it is deemed of most worth. When settler consciousness is perceived as the natural way of thinking and being, it is Indigenous consciousness that is foreign, alien, Other, to these lands. Indigenous consciousness is then rendered as supplemental for its anecdotal value. Indigenous alienation is thus the perception that Indigenous peoples are the outsiders, strangers in their own home. Settler capitulation is then made possible by Indigenous alienation, wherein a settler consciousness requires the shedding of migrant/settler status to assume a pseudo-Indigenous status. A settler consciousness necessitates an ideological surrendering of (re)settlement from elsewhere. In other words, it requires a capitulation of immigrant status, however recent or far back the (im)migration may have been. Whereas many Canadians today identify as immigrant and refugee Canadians – whether they be first-generation, second-generation, or otherwise – the immigrant/refugee experience is not what sustains settler epistemic privilege. What does sustain settler epistemic privilege is when multigenerational immigrants whose ancestors historically immigrated claim to no longer be from elsewhere, but from here. When there is no 63 acknowledged elsewhere-ness, then there is an assumed, singular here-ness. This discourse then purports, “I am of here. I am from here. This is my land.” Canadian identity presupposes settler identity, and in fact Indigenous identity is incongruent with being Canadian at all. Settler epistemic privilege incites a hands-in-the-air renouncing of settler (im)migration and the necessity of colonization as a precursor to Canadian identity. The consequence is claiming a pseudo-Indigeneity is that settler identity undermines authentic Indigenous relationship to place; instigating a relinquishment of Indigenous relationship to land. Indigenous relationship to land, and the right to claim title to their land, becomes a mirage. A mirage that is visible only during Olympic opening ceremonies and other commercially beneficial exploitations of Indigenous presence. The curricular implications of a settler epistemic privilege are the way in which Euro-Western thought is rendered “normal, natural, necessary, objective, values-free, and commonsensical,” in Canadian classrooms (Donald, 2009a, p. 337). Whereas Euro-Western knowledge is naturalized as the mainstream knowledge, Indigenous knowledge is rendered as supplemental. Supplemental, or add-and-stir knowledges, however, are insufficient conductors for changing a discourse (Battiste, Bell & Findlay, 2002). Take, for example, historical discourse of Indigenous communities in Canada. Well-intentioned textbooks are increasingly seeking to incorporate Indigenous “contributions,” and yet even modern textbooks continue to present Indigenous narratives only in relation to the White settler society; where Indigenous peoples are often portrayed as a trope rather than as complex and fluid communities (Clark, 2007). One such trope is the myth of Indigenous primitivism, where stereotypes of the noble savage and “cultural backwardness” are reproduced (Battiste, 2013, p. 32). Such deeply entrenched epistemic ignorance in curricula cannot be transformed by tokenistic gestures alone (Kuokkanen, 2007). 64 Until the layers of Whiteness, Eurocentrism and settler colonialism are radicalized, even the most well-intentioned curricular choices will be dominated by the consequences of settler epistemic privilege. There is still much to be known about the lands and waters we think we know. Strangers in the Water As the days drew closer to summer, the sun would set a little later each day. We knew that once the sun hit the tree line, it was time to head out. After a hearty dinner of corn soup at home, my dad and I would pack up the truck and head out. It was springtime on Tyendinaga, and this meant one thing: fish spearing season. In my dad’s three-sizes-too-big chest-waders, we would set off. I would sit in the truck with layers (upon layers) of clothes – in part for warmth, and in part to help make the chest-waders fit a little more snug on my 4 foot frame. On our way to the water, we would bounce around the unpaved, gravel roads in my dad’s ’03 red Chevy truck. Our destination was nearly always the same for spearing: The Point. Less than 3km away from my childhood home, and my great-grandfathers cabin where we live today, The Point holds great significance to who I am as a Haudenosaunee person. The Point has been the ancestral hunting, fishing, and spearing grounds of my ancestors for generations. As a family, it is where we would spend our springs spearing, and our summer evenings “working on a case,” as my dad would say. The Point is where my husband asked my dad and brother for my hand in marriage. The Point is the first place of solace I found after my dad’s passing. Figure 7 – K. Brant-Birioukov (December 2020). Visiting the end of The Point on a winter’s day. 65 The Point is created by a small peninsula, a stretch of land that juts out into the Bay of Quinte (creating “the point” itself), which created two small inlets on either side. These inlets are where fish retreat to spawn in the springtime. Once the sun sets over the bay, the temperature drops; the land becomes still. Similar to fly-fishing, spearing requires one to wade into shallow water. No matter how many layers you have on, that moment when you first step into the bay is a particular type of chilly dampness that sticks with you until morning. That damp, early spring air will forever remind me of my father, and the lessons that the land has taught us. In the darkness of late twilight, you have but three guides to navigate your spearing. The first guide, if you’re lucky, is relying on the light of the moon for basic navigation (e.g., will I trip over a fallen tree?). Second is a strong flashlight, to help you to spot the eyes of the pickerel staring back at you. And lastly, which is key if the moon is behind the clouds and the water is too murky for the flashlight, you need sharp hearing to detect splashes of hungry fish skimming bugs from the surface. This one night that I remember so vividly, there was a “whopper” of a fish, as my dad would say, who was particularly active. We could hear his impressive leaps as he splashed about to catch his evening dinner. Dad and I silently nodded to follow the sounds of this great splash. As we approached the side of the cove where the Big One was waiting to be found, we pointed the flashlight towards the water, scanning for the eyes of our fish friend. Just as the ripples in the water were settling below our feet, we heard it again splash! – but this time, the sound came from behind us; the side of the cove we had just come from. As we set out in the opposite direction, we heard it once more…on a different side of the cove yet again. We played ping-pong in the water for the better part of an hour, trailing this illusive splash in the dark. Eventually, we found ourselves face to face with an unexpected friend sitting on a protruding log. In the beam of the flashlight, eyes glowing back at us, was tsianì:to30 – slapping his wide tail on the surface of the water. He smacked his tail hard and loud to assert his territory to these guests in his home. His tail was the source of a reverberating echo that bounced throughout the cove. Dumbfounded, we slowly broke into a fit of laughter as we came to a very embarrassing realization: we had spent our evening chasing a beaver around a cove. Better yet, our furry friend wasn’t even moving as we had mistakenly heard – the sound of his splash! was simply carried across the Point and across the bay, echoing in a way that disoriented our navigation, thinking that its source was changing locations. We swear beaver had a laugh at our expense that night. We went home emptyhanded that evening – with nothing to show for it but a story. The sounds we heard were an illusion. Our expectations obfuscating our perception. This land we thought we knew so well still carried mysteries and realities beyond our reach. We still had so much to learn about the waters wherein we stood. 30 Beaver 66 Settler epistemic privilege maintains a settler consciousness through curricular assumptions, choices, and ideologies. These curricular assumptions uphold the position of the perfect stranger (Dion, 2009) where Indigenous peoples can be studied from afar. For Canadians studying Indigenous thought from afar, this reinforces the safe distance from personal implication where the learner is simply a “respectful admirer or patronizing helper” (Dion, 2009, p. 58). Settler epistemic privilege not only denies diversity of thought but denies implication in colonization and the responsibility to do something about it. To do something about the poisoning of our landscapes. In the perfect stranger, it is settler consciousness that is the host in their home, and the Indian who is the stranger. Interrogating the concepts of what we consider to be our individual limits of strange and familiar communities might serve to deconstruct our understanding of and possibilities as subjects (Biesta, 2016). Whose familiarity and whose strangeness do we subscribe? On whose terms do we speak? How little do we know about the waters wherein we stand? Braiding to Transform Will you hold the end of the bundle while I braid? Robin Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass (2013, p. ix) As we prepare to braid, I must ask you, my friend, the same question Kimmerer (2013, p. ix) proposes to her readers: Will you hold the end of the bundle while I braid? Braiding binds us together in relationship with one another. Bound but distinct. The teachings of braiding sweetgrass have taught me much about the world. Three individual, separate strands bound together by tension to make something new. A single strand under pressure can be easily broken. A braided bundle of strands will bend but not snap. They are stronger together – but, alas, they 67 remain distinct. Robin Kimmerer (2013), provides a powerful visual of the act of braiding sweetgrass: A sheaf of sweetgrass, bound at the end and divided into thirds, is ready to braid. In braiding sweetgrass – so that it is smooth, glossy, and worthy of the gift – a certain amount of tension is needed. As any little girl with tight braids will tell you, you have to pull a bit. Of course you can do it yourself – by tying one end to a chair, or by holding it in your teeth and braiding backward away from yourself – but the sweetest way is to have someone else hold the end so that you pull gently against each other, all the while leaning in, head to head, chatting and laughing, watching each other’s hands, one holding steady while the other shifts the slim bundles over one another, each in its turn. Linked by sweetgrass, there is reciprocity between you, linked by sweetgrass, the holder as vital as the braider. The braid becomes finer and thinner as you near the end, until you’re braiding individual blades of grass, and then you tie it off (p. ix). Braiding invites reciprocity, bound together by the space between the tension, the intersection of differences. Braiding as a curricular pedagogical practice has been taken up by Indigenous scholars, such as through métissage. Métissage is a curricular theory, praxis, and textual practice, guided by autobiography and personal narratives (Blood, Chambers, Donald, Hasebe-Ludt & Big Head, 2012). Métissage relies on collaboration and collective authorship, wherein multiple authors work to “collectively juxtapose their texts in such a way that highlights difference (racial, cultural, historical, socio-political, linguistic) without essentializing or erasing it, while simultaneously locating point of affinity” (Chambers et al., 2008, p. 142). Drawing upon the metaphor and practice of braiding, personal narratives are often interwoven with another’s narrative, as a literary and aesthetic braiding that pluralizes experience. “Creating texts of métissage,” Donald (2009b) suggests, “can provoke a collective wondering regarding the connectedness of history and memory” (p. 100). Such collective re-membering is more than a mosaic layering of stories; it is a provocative and “purposeful juxtaposition of mythic historical narratives” (Donald, 2009a, p. 5). It positions Indigenous and settler peoples in relation with one another – in all of its complexities. This requires an active restorying of narratives and 68 relationships, wherein the storyteller/listener are expected to “examine the routes of their own interpretations – to see themselves implicated in the stories told,” by holding the past, present and future in tension without succumbing to resolving or assimilating these narratives (Donald, 2012, p. 547). Braiding for corn is implicated amidst these teachings. Once corn has been harvested, the ears of the corn are mostly shucked off, leaving only a few husks on. The remaining husks of the corn are then, one by one, braided together to form large braids which are hung to dry.31 Corn may then be hung on the walls or from the rafters (Figure 7), or draped over other fences and structures. Figure 8 – Kanatsiohareke (n.d.), "When the corn is harvested it is hung up to dry before being prepared for use.” In early anthropological records, anthropologists described our corn harvesting and braiding seasons as “husking bees,” where the corn would incite a congregation for the community to engage in a “long season of merry industrial gatherings” (Parker, 1910, p. 31). Braiding was a time for our community to gather, and engage in a frenzy of swapping stories, singing, dancing, and speculating about prospective mates for the children (Onion, 1964). As an extension of such 31 To see the varying process of Haudenosaunee braiding, see Oneida style corn braiding corn here and Mohawk style corn braiding here. 69 husking bees, the moment of braiding in kanenhstóhare is a time for us to converse, braid, yarn, and become attentive to the tensions. I hope you aren’t wearing nice pants today, my friend, because this is about to get very messy! Figure 9 – Jeff Thomas (2021), “Bert General, Smooth Town, Six Nations Reserve, 1980” Considering the landscape of epistemic privilege in a Canadian curricular discourse, I wish to engage in a braiding. This braiding will transpire amongst the tensions of story, place, grief, loss, healing, and identity, on the terms of a Haudenosaunee consciousness. Story as presented through autobiography, while inviting the reader to braid their own métissage of story as we become lost together in a journey of estrangement and homecoming. Practices such as land acknowledgements are increasingly interrupting this discourse of settler epistemic privilege; and yet, the terms on which we speak continue to be primarily centered in a settler consciousness, with a sprinkle of Indigeneity here and there. Let us consider the implications of a curriculum of renewal on Haudenosaunee terms. Let us head deeper into the clearing. 70 Chapter 4: THE BOIL, ESTRANGEMENT Lying corn, also known as “corn washing,” is a dangerous but necessary moment in kanenhstóhare. Lying corn requires a series of vigorous boiling with an alkaline solution comprised of calcium hydroxide – which can be derived from lime, hardwood ash, or lye. Lye is a corrosive chemical, if used improperly can cause burns and scarring. The lye solution breaks down the proteins in the corn and transforms the corn into a soft, nutrient-rich kernel. This process, called nixtamalization, is a moment of estrangement for the corn. It loses itself in the immersive boil. It is, however, necessary for dried corn has very little nutritional value. The transformed lyed corn is so nutritionally rich it has sustained generations of Haudenosaunee communities and continues to do so today. Estrangement for Curricular Renewal Much of the foundation for schooling in Upper and Lower Canada was established by the same architects of the Indian residential schooling system, including John A. Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson, and Duncan Campbell Scott (Ng-A-Fook, Ingham & Burrows, 2017). As an impediment to agrarian and industrial colonial economies, Indigenous thought was perceived as the antithesis of settler, colonial objectives for confederated Canada. As the Dominion of Canada expanded westward and northward into Indigenous lands, the need for formal schooling grew. As the immigrant population rapidly increased in the mid-nineteenth century, standardized curricula and regulated teacher training formalized the colonial objectives of what would become the common public curriculum (Ng-A-Fook, Ingham & Burrows, 2017). Thus began the institutionalization of settler epistemic privilege in colonial Canada. The standardization of 71 curriculum purports a settler capitulation of identity and responsibilities, as argued earlier, espousing: “I am of here. I am from here. This is my land” as the ethos of Canadian curriculum. The legacy of the curricular settler discourse has resulted in its ideological insiders and outsiders (Donald, 2012). The insider/outsider binary, Donald (2012) argues, is maintained by the epistemological assumptions articulated (or not) in the mainstream curricular discourse. Euro-Western social standards and knowledge systems dominate the insiders of Canadian curriculum standards. Here, we see and hear the stories of the racialized White settlers who founded Canada despite the inconveniences of its unruly terrain and even more unruly Indians. In turn, since the inception of schooling in settler Canada, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit perspectives have been the archetypal outsiders in Canadian classrooms (Battiste, 1998, 2013; Dion, 2007; Kirkness, 1977; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013). Whereas the knowledges of the insiders dominate the curricular discourse, the knowledges of the outsiders “have been actively excluded from meaningful participation in Canadian public institutions like schools and universities” (Donald, 2012, p. 44). Meaningful participation in the Canadian public education system may include, at a minimum, Indigenous voice and experience being represented in the core curriculum. Yet, this is indeed at the very minimum. Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015, there have been unprecedented strides in updating the core curricular discourse to be more inclusive of Indigenous perspectives. In the nine years since the publishing of Donald’s (2012) work, there has been a shift in the landscape of curriculum studies, funding priorities, and educational initiatives to improve the standards of Indigenous education in Canada. The genesis of many educational initiatives is in direct response to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), such as calls for greater Indigenous community engagement and required course instruction (Hare, 2020). Since 72 the release of the TRC’s Final Report and Calls to Action, the concept of Indigenous and non-Indigenous reconciliation is “fast becoming a vehicle for expression, concern, attention, and action in educational spheres” (Hare, 2020, p. 19). Under diverse initiatives to increase the public knowledge and awareness of First Nations, Métis and Inuit realities, there has been a particular focus on the legacy of the Indian residential schooling system. However, promising the new inclusive initiatives may appear, the institutionalization of settler epistemic privilege remains unabated. When Indigenous initiatives are framed as convenient addendums to the status quo, little more than tokenistic gestures can be accomplished. What is required is an immersive estrangement from settler epistemic privilege. As Dion (2007) is concerned, settler Canadians view themselves to be the “perfect stranger” to Indigenous peoples – but who truly is the stranger? How is it that one can move from stranger to welcomed guest? In fact, it is often Indigenous peoples who are often regarded as strangers in their home. The settler consciousness is overdue for a vigorous boil to transform such falsities about Indigeneity, settler identity, and the limits of Euro-Western thought. In a kanenhstóhare discourse, corn washing is a series of boiling to transform. It is a moment of estrangement to renew. Estrangement invites us all to reconsider how little we know about the waters wherein we stand. Estrangement Inspired by the invitation of curricular theorist Hongyu Wang (2001), I am struck by the possibilities of exile and estrangement for renewal. As I use the concept of estrangement, I draw upon the sentiment of ostranenie32 (Russian: остранение), coined by Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky (1917/1990). The Theatre of the Absurd and writings of Leo Tolstoy inspired Shklovsky to consider the role of art and language in making the familiar seem strange, or 32 Ostranenie translates to estrangement or defamiliarization (Berlina, 2005; Bowker, 2012) 73 perhaps more aptly, absurd. Shklovsky cites a passage from Tolstoy’s War and Peace, where Tolstoy described an opera as a stage “covered with flat boards,” with men and women who “sang together, and everyone in the theatre began to clap and shout, and the men and women onstage, who had been pretending to be lovers, were bowing, smiling, and spreading their arms” (as cited in Berlina, 2015, p. 165). Not unlike fresh eyes of a child, estrangement incites a play of strangeness to displace the mundanity of the commonsense. Play is to “return sensation to life itself, to reinvent the world” (Boym, 2010, 207). Boym (2010) has described estrangement as a “creative awakening” (p. 207): “Estrangement is an exercise of wonder, of thinking of the world as a question, not as a staying of a grand answer” (Boym, 2005, p. 587). Wonder, imagination, and creativity are critical elements in inculcating an aesthetic or psychic distance. As a literary technique, estrangement consists in “not calling a thing or event by its name but describing it as if seen for the first time, as if happening for the first time” (Shklovsky as cited in Berlina, 2015, p. 163). Whereas ostranenie has been taken up in art, poetry, and the language arts, I am inspired by the sentiment of what estrangement could offer education: identifying tools, or “devices” (Shklovsky as cited in Berlina, 2015), to render what we have experienced before to be seen as new. Estrangement for curricular discourse may then be the pursuit of encounters with the strange for renewal. Reflecting on the concept of estrangement as ostranenie, Berlina (4 October 2016) draws a distinction between how she uses the two concepts, in that estrangement seeks an estrangement from life (“disconnection”), whereas ostranenie seeks a renewed sense of wonder (“reconnected”): “If you are estranged from your wife, it’s the opposite of ostranenie. You are disconnected from her. With ostranenie, you are reconnected by your sense of wonder” (Berlina, 4 October 2016). In this sense, my use of estrangement is certainly more closely aligned with 74 Berlina’s use of ostranenie than estrangement, for the purposes of kanenhstóhare. Estrangement, however, has its own context aside from the Eurowestern context of which it primarily emerges from. It has unique particulars when contextualized within an Indigenous context. Estrangement in an Indigenous consciousness has some congruent parallels with the settler and international perspectives mentioned above, coupled with many nuanced departures. The journey of estrangement would be remised if not for accounting for spiritual departures and bodily metamorphosis. Perhaps you know what I am speaking of, friend? Shapeshifters. Shapeshifting is the process by which folks who possess great powers can resolve the ego so greatly as to shed their physical form and assume a new physical form – often that of an animal.33 Shapeshifting, also sometimes referred to as skinwalking, can be used for good medicine to heal others, or bad medicine to hurt. Some medicine people can walk in two worlds – the physical world and the spiritual world, through this form of shapeshifting estrangement from the self. For some, this dual living shapeshifting gift is diagnosed as schizophrenia, with both positive and negative consequences for these gifted individuals (McPherson, 2016). Shapeshifting may be viewed as a voluntary estrangement from self, whereas there are many other instances of forced experiences of estrangement for Indigenous peoples, with detrimental costs. Estrangement in kanenhstóhare offers a new way of living and being in the world. Using the term is not without its many limitations, however. Prefacing this term is also the contentious Indigenous experience of forced estrangement. For over 150,000 Indigenous children and their families, they were subject to state-sponsored removal from their families during Canada’s 33 For the Haudenosaunee, the teachings of shapeshifters are protected knowledge. I cannot speak much more to the specifics of shapeshifters, except to nod to those shapeshifter stories some Haudenosaunee folks might be familiar with, such as the Deer Woman or the Flying Head. 75 Indian residential schooling system. Whereas the last residential school closed in the 1990s, the child welfare system continues the legacy of familial estrangement, removing children out of their homes and placing them in primarily non-Indigenous homes. 34 According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s (2018) report, “Interrupted Childhoods,” Indigenous children make up only 4.1% of the Ontario population under the age of 15 yet represent approximately 30% of foster children. Indigenous children are over-represented at all points of child welfare decision making,35 and in turn are more likely to experience disproportioned severance of traditional family systems. “This severe proportionality,” concluded the Ontario Human Rights Commission (2018), “is a continuation of Canada’s colonial past.” (p. 17). Indigenous youth caught in the cycle of the child welfare system are at a higher risk of losing their cultural connection, and places youth at risk of early involvement in the criminal justice system and homelessness (Nichols et al., 2017). Whereas estrangement is taken up as a voluntary and constructive process in kanenhstóhare, it must attend to its contentious context for Indigenous communities in Canada. Upon first reaction, estrangement indeed has negative associations, including an estranged relationship from one’s parents, or a separation from a spouse. Familial estrangement is described by family sociologists as “distressing,” “isolating,” and “shameful” (Span, 10 September 2020, n.p.). Outside of familial spaces, estrangement also evokes feelings of social isolation, alienation, and antipathy. What, then, does estrangement in particular offer education? For one, I am indeed very interested in the dislocation, isolation, and anxiety-inducing sense of separation that such a psychic distance of estrangement demands. In a vigorous boil, there needs 34 Less than 44% are placed in Indigenous foster homes (Nichols et al., 2017). 35 For example, Indigenous children are 130% more likely to be investigated than White children, and 41% more likely to be transferred to ongoing services, and 168% more likely to be placed in out-of-home care during an investigation than White children (Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect, 2013). 76 to be room to turn up the heat and allow for the toxins to be expunged. And yet, the term is indeed imperfect. Estrangement is not intended to evoke a violent and involuntary rupture from home, place, and identity – it is to be voluntary, productive, and enriching. Estrangement confronts and is confronted by loss, but it is guided by a sense of wonder for a renewal of home. In this sense, residential schools and the child welfare system are not examples of estrangement; simply, they are examples of assimilation, systematic removal, and extinguishing the spirit. They are not examples of the possibilities of estrangement, as spoken by kanenhstóhare. This begs the question, still, why the term estrangement? Initially, I sought a Kanyen’kéha word for the term – and you will see this chapter relies heavily upon Haudenosaunee-specific concepts as expressed exclusively through Kanyen’kéha – yet I am struck by the need to pursue the term estrangement as it best resonates with the essence of what I seek to accomplish with encounters to leave home (so as to return home renewed, as is explored in homecoming). Moreover, the negative discomfort associated with the term nods to what is expected from the subject to engage in estrangement. Estrangement is not pleasant, but nevertheless necessary. There is no attempt to shy away from this discomfort. Just as the lye demands. The intention here is not to “Westernize” or translate Kanyen’kéha concepts, but to seek a common ground to speak upon (not without contention, but at the intersection of this tension). I see estrangement as the means to speak within, across, and amidst many cultural divides. It is imperfect, and yet so richly imperfect. Moreover, the concepts of estrangement/exile are taken up in conversations across curriculum studies, as it most heavily draws upon art, poetry, and psychoanalysis – and yet, only on occasion does the term estrangement itself appear in the literature. It is the intent of estrangement that is captured, albeit through different language. These conversations in the literature will now be considered; 77 followed by a discussion of the particulars, conditions, and language used for estrangement from a Haudenosaunee consciousness. Visitors in the Garden The literature and conversation around the intent of curriculum for estrangement are prevalent and widespread; so much so, it became apparent there are (at least) three separate agendas. These three agendas being: 1) The Ruminator, 2) The Provocateur, and 3) The Traveller. These three agendas, and corresponding identity profiles, emerged out of the personification of curriculum, based on whom I would likely encounter in my garden to share teachings of estrangement. Together, we would walk through the garden, and speak of estrangement from their divergent yet complementary vantagepoints. The danger of creating these three distinct categories will fall short of creating three definitions of curriculum of estrangement. There is much overlap. There is much eliminated. The intent, here, therefore, is not to separate these conversations, but to demonstrate the spectrum (and diversity within this spectrum) of these conversations. This is needed to highlight the fact that there are differences, for this spectrum is taken for granted; hence, there is overlap, certainly, but there are also differences to be attended to. The purpose of creating these three categories is to demonstrate the range of concepts, language, and questions that these agendas seek to answer in the united pursuit of estrangement These are not meant to be exhaustive, but introductory. Examples from literature will be used to demonstrate the three. This conversation will then be followed with the particulars of kanenhstóhare for estrangement, and how Haudenosaunee knowledge, story, and language may introduce a new way of enacting renewal through estrangement. 78 Figure 10 – A curriculum for estrangement based in the literature The Ruminator’s Agenda Inquire, Investigate, Wonder In a call for renewal, estrangement for The Ruminator is most commonly in pursuit of inquiry, investigation, and a genuine curiosity of the world to see it anew. The Ruminator seeks to study the world to render it intelligible, and to make the taken-for-grantedness visible. Perhaps even problematic. The agenda for The Ruminator is to seek a curriculum that inspires the subject to study the self, to self-inquiry to reconsider what is normal or commonsense. Estrangement for The Ruminator is to become the stranger to oneself and community through inquiry. The language of the stranger is often sought through such methods as critical reflective practice (Joseph, 2007), to wonder and question (Greene, 1973), to use narratives as mirrors to the self (Miller, 2005), and autoethnographic inquiry for community building (Smith, 2021). 79 As seen by the above graphic (Figure 9), the role of the stranger is not unique to The Ruminator as the stranger is also evident in the agenda of The Traveller. What I will describe here, then, what is most unique to the pursuit of the stranger as it aligns to inquiry, investigation, and curiosity (the primary agenda of The Ruminator). For Greene, an investigation into rendering the everyday problematic is a necessary educative shift. “The everyday,” Greene (1973) invited, “must be rendered problematic so that questions may be posed” (p. 11). The stranger looks inquiringly on the world from a “stranger’s vantage point” (Greene, 1973, p. 11). For Kristeva (2002), moving towards estrangement as poststructural feminism, the stories we construct of ourselves work to “estrange oneself from oneself and to make oneself a smuggler of this continually recaptured strangeness” (p. 254). For the oppressed who are involuntarily cast as the stranger, however, are confronted by a challenge to embrace the possibilities of accepting the possibilities of strangerdom (Block, 1998). As a stranger, the subject is an active and relentless sceptic of their biography, experience, and relations. Like a stranger away from home, the local commonsense assumptions are not so intuitively commonsensical – the stranger is susceptible to questioning to seek an understanding of why things are so. As an act of introspection, the subject is invited to critically examine the principles that underlie how we think, act, and influence others (Greene, 1973). Some poets, like Carl Leggo (2004), might argue that living poetically incites a meditative introspection so as to embrace the stranger: “as a poet I grow more and more enamoured with the echoes of wonder and mystery and strangeness and fantasy that I hear when I attend to the words and world all around me” (p. 33). In this sense, even if one cannot speak in poetic prose, it is living poetically that can incite a play with estrangement. John Steffler (1995) contends that “poetry is first of all a state of mind. Before it’s a verbal structure, it’s a way of perceiving and 80 interacting with the world, including oneself, one’s own life” (p. 48). This is to say, The Ruminator need not speak, interject, or interrupt in order to disrupt familiarity. Estrangement for The Ruminator begins with the self as stranger. The Provocateur’s Agenda Provoke, Interrogate, Jolt The production of doubt and healthy skepticism inspires The Provocateur. Their intention is to “select shocking material” that “jolts” the learner to rethink given assumptions they hold about the world (Doll, 2017, p. 48). Like The Ruminator, The Provocateur pursues the interruption of hegemony. Unlike The Ruminator, however, they seek that which provokes, evokes, and may even shock one into alterity. For The Provocateur, the language of confrontation with the new (English, 2013), unsettling narratives (Ng-A-Fook & Milne, 2014), radical renewal (Dion, 2009), awful thoughts (Britzman & Dippo, 2000), and shocking us away from the sentiment of sameness (Doll, 2017) are common objectives. The agenda of The Provocateur is to, quite literally, provoke the learner out of parochialism. Estrangement for The Provocateur is the interjection of strangeness that shatters the familiar. Whereas The Ruminator asks us to turn inward to render the world anew, The Provocateur trusts in the necessity of aggravation to render the world anew. For Ng-A-Fook and Milne (2004), autobiographical writing provides an outlet for working through unsettling narratives (as we see with The Ruminator); but The Provocateur believes that purposeful life writing is necessitated by a provocative stimulus to interrupt hegemonic narratives of, say, settler colonialism: Part of decolonizing the explicit, implicit, and null school curriculum involves 81 learning how to remember the narratives that inform our understandings of Canadian history. It requires coming into contact with alternative historical narratives that we can juxtapose as complementary and competing versions of what and how our differing individual and collective histories are remembered (p. 93). Likewise, for a curriculum that seeks to interrupt racism and heteronormativity, the ethos of The Provocateur may be preferred. Psychoanalytic theory, for Britzman (1996), might help us to interrogate how the unconscious interferes with – or maintains – heteronormativity of subjects, self, and curriculum. Queer theory in curriculum studies calls upon subjects to interrupt, excavate and renarrate the notion of heterosexuality as apolitical or asexual (Sumara & Davis, 1999). Engaging with the spaces between the conscious/unconscious, known/unknown, and certainly of familiar/strange helps the Provocateur to utilize provocations that incite, engage, outrage, and delight the subject through a curriculum that renews. The Traveller’s Agenda Distance, Dislocation, Uncouple Estrangement for The Traveller is inspired by the possibility of encountering the strange on a journey to/through elsewhere. The possibilities of space, distance, and dislocation from the familiar inspire the journeys of The Traveller. The Traveller shares a fascination with The Ruminator with the possibilities of the strange/r. Whereas The Ruminator is inspired by a curiosity of the world to study as to reveal the strange, The Traveller indeed may turn inward as well, but is primarily driven by possibility to journey to encounter the strange. The journey is enabled through distance, whether it be physical distance (Wang, 2004) or psychic distance (Pinar, 2011). In the physical journey away from home, for example, one returns home from their travel abroad as “renewed” (Wang, 2004, p. 5). Perhaps, even returns home to find they 82 have become a stranger to themselves, their family, their community (Wang, 2004). Estrangement for The Traveller is a journey, seeking a dislocation from one’s isolated presentism towards alterity. In pursuit of constructing a psychic distance, the subject seeks a social transformation afforded only through a conscious uncoupling of familiar and strange. Decolonization may be on the itinerary of The Traveller, for they seek the “deconstruction” and “reconstruction” as a “form of liberation from colonial imposition” (Battiste, 2004, p. 2). Likewise, as Tuck and Yang (2012) caution, “Decolonization is not an ‘and’. It is an elsewhere.” (p. 36). Liberation, hence, is sought in a journey to elsewhere – suggesting the prominence of place, displacement, and distancing. Pinar, acknowledging the “bad rap” of distance, still advocates for the possibility of “temporary exile, to undergo estrangement from what is familiar and every day and enter a third space, neither home nor abroad, but in-between a liminal or third space” (Pinar, 2011, p. 17). For some Travellers, the journey to the Third Space is viewed as a meeting ground across ideological and cultural divides (Aoki, 1986/2005, Bhabha 2004, Wang, 2004). The Third Space need not become the pursuit of seeking a neutral meeting ground. The journey to/through the strange may suffice in creating a psychic distancing enough to dislocate the familiar, so as to incite the production of doubt and stir imaginative thinking. Hence, the aesthetic experience may also find itself home in the language of The Traveller, as Greene (2001) offers the arts as an invitation to “uncouple” from the “mundane” (p. 39). Immersive involvement is key to “bring to life” the subject, through losing oneself so as to become “absorbed” in the arts as valued educational experiences (Greene, 1984, p. 128). Immersed in the journey, The Traveller seeks estrangement as a departure from the familiar towards an encounter with the strange. 83 As visitors in my garden, each guest would offer new perspectives on estrangement – together, we would meet, converge, and dialogue for the purposes of renewal. What each visitor falls short of, however, is articulating the grief, distress, and darkness of estrangement. If exile, distance, dislocation, uncoupling, interrogation, or critical self-inquiry are necessitated to instigate estrangement, what pain will the subject undergo to employ such an upheaval of self? How is it that Haudenosaunee thought, missing from the above Settler-dominated narratives, could further articulate the demands and risks associated with estrangement for renewal? This section shall attend to these questions. Kanenhstóhare for Estrangement Oshontawenko:wa, Wake’nikonhkwenhtará:on, Yah teskatatyenté:ri Lyed corn is, by definition, lyed. Using dried corn, it must be transformed through a vigorous boil with a strange agent, designed to corrode, erode, and transform. At its core, kanenhstóhare is centralized around immersion for the purposes of renewal. Kanenhstóhare is inspired by the language of The Ruminator to become curious of the world, where the subject is compelled to incite critical self-reflection, meditation, and introspection to uncover. Likewise, kanenhstóhare is compelled by the ethos The Provocateur to provoke and jolt the subject out of the normalization of settler epistemic privilege and the assumed vapidity of Indigenous knowledges. And lastly, it is indeed congruent with the intentions of The Traveller to seek the consequences of renewal through a spatial exodus. Kanenhstóhare is informed by their agendas, while remaining to be something else entirely. These visitors will join us on the remainder of our travels together. 84 The journey to estrangement is a reoccurring teaching in Haudenosaunee thought. The term kanenhstóhare (lyed corn) is the consequence of the teaching that corn is not meant to be left in its original state – it is destined to be transformed through the lying process. Lyed corn emerges on the side as forever transformed, where it has new uses and reached its fullest possible self. But before we can begin to speak of renewal of corn – we must attend to the lying process. To be given the gift of lyed corn, it must go through lye washing: a sustained simmer of boiling water with a foreign, corrosive ingredient. It is immersive. It is dangerous but necessary. The language of Haudenosaunee alterity is also expressed by the celestial journey of Yotsi’tsishon in the Creation Story. Her painful transformation occurred during her journey between Sky World and Earth. This route between Sky World and Earth is the same route all spirit takes twice in their lifetime: coming to Earth when we are born and returning to Sky World when we pass on. The journey to alterity, modelled from the language used to describe Yotsi’tsishon’s journey is used today as a common metaphor for someone experiencing great pain, grief, or transformation. The teachings recognize that pain, however real, is temporary, and one will find oneself on the other side as renewed. Let us consider the possibilities of kanenhstóhare for estrangement. This can be expressed through three concepts: Oshontawenko:wa, Wake’nikonhkwenhtará:on, and Yah teskatatyenté:ri. Oshontawenko:wa (The Great Darkness)36 We don’t often speak of the Great Darkness. 36 “The Great Darkness” [3:32], click here to listen 85 When it comes to the retelling of the Haudenosaunee Creation story, it often begins after the Great Darkness.37 The shortened version begins with Yotsi’tsishon falling from Sky World, who is caught by flying geese who placed her gently on Turtle’s back. In fact, my own version of the Creation Story in the introduction also began there. It’s where we like to begin. She fell, but then she was caught. There was darkness, but now there is light. I was once lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see. 38 We like these stories. The rainbow after the storm. The clarity after adversity. But this isn’t where any of our stories truly begin. Or end, for that matter. Allow me to right these wrongs and begin with the Great Darkness. Before her life on Earth, Yotsi’tsishon lived in Sky World. This was before the duality of the world we know today – there were no seasons, there was no life because there was no death, there was no day because there was no night, there was no joy because there no pain. It was, however, very consistent and therefore was not unpleasant. In Kanyen’kéha, it is described as, “ratinakere ne èneken, nène yah tehatiyenteri nène tayonhshentho’, ne oni nène taya’iheye (they were living in a place above, and they did not know what it was to weep. And they did not know what it was to die)” (translation by Amber Adams, 2020, p. 113). In Sky World, people were as happy as they could be without knowing sadness and loss. Great changes were taking place in 37 Beginning the Creation Story after the “great fall” erases a significant part of story (about one third of the whole story). Haudenosaunee scholar, Amber Adams (2020) notes that the familiar narrative of “The Woman Who Falls from the Sky” is a truncated version of the original and complex story. This erasure of the story, and focusing on life after her fall to earth, began in the seventeenth century when Jesuit missionaries wanted to rewrite significant portions of the Haudenosaunee Creation Story to align with the book of Genesis more closely (with a focus on good/evil that occurs once the twin brothers are born later in the Creation Story, mirroring the narrative of Cain and Abel). The complete Creation Story still exists and is still spoken but is largely unknown in its entirety by many Haudenosaunee people. 38 The familiar verse from English poet, John Newton’s (1779) hymn, Amazing Grace; capturing the universality of the light after darkness. 86 Sky World, however. These changes culminated with the greatest rupture to Sky World, which was the fall of Yotsi’tsishon through a hole in Sky World, down into the Great Darkness. The shortened story of Yotsi’tsishon’s fall is typically portioned into four acts: 1) Yotsi’tsishon was pregnant in Sky World. Because of her pregnancy, she craved the fruits of the great celestial tree. Figure 11 – B. Lazore (n.d.), "Skywoman" 87 2) Arriving at the base of the celestial tree, she realized the roots of the tree had been pulled out – and the tree lay on its side exposing a big hole that revealed the Great Darkness below. 3) She was pushed by her (unnamed) husband. 4) She fell into the Great Darkness below. She fell towards Earth, where she was caught by flying geese and placed on Turtle’s back. Such a condensed version might appear like this description: Sky Woman, who was pregnant, fell through an opening in the sky, grasping at plants as she fell, and eventually, after a long descent, landed on a giant turtle’s back – thanks to the air animals who, seeing her falling, flew up to her and brought her gently and safely down. (Styres, 2017, p. 175) So very much of the story is truncated and missing here. Not only is it disingenuous to the integrity of the story, but the listener cannot wholly appreciate the Great Darkness without its context. The birth and life of Yotsi’tsishon prior to the fall is special and worthy of study.39 There is not enough space to do justice to it here. There are at least three significant events worth naming however, that transpired prior to the fall. While they are rarely acknowledged in the truncated version of the Creation Story, they are indispensable to its context (White, 2013). These three missing threads are: 1) the first death of Sky World, 2) the marriage between Yotsi’tsishon and Ronontano, and 3) the premonition of dreams where the Celestial Tree is uprooted. The Missing Threads 39 Yotsi’tsishon was born with a “veil over her face” – which is the rare phenomenon when babies are born with a caul. Like many cultures around the world, for the Haudenosaunee this is a sign that they are destined for greatness. 88 The first death of Sky World marks a great change. The beings in Sky World had no concept of loss or death. Death was an unknown. When a man fell ill and prepared for his death, he had to explain to his family what would transpire upon his passing, as the first of its kind. The deceased man varies between storytellers, most often being Yotsi’tsishon’s father (Adams, 2020) or her uncle (Herne, 2020; Rice, 2013). Yotsi’tsishon had been the first to cry, to grieve, and to carry out the funeral rites of her late father/uncle. Upon his passing, he spoke to Yotsi'tsíshon from the afterlife about her upcoming betrothment to Ronontano, the Guardian of the Celestial Tree. He knew great changes were occurring Sky World. Soon, Yotsi’tsishon was married to Ronontano and was carrying his child. The Celestial Tree, also known as the Tree of Light, was the source of light and life for all of Sky World. The tree which he protected was also the very tree of which was uprooted and Yotsi’tsishon fell through. Moreover, her husband had been having reoccurring dreams that she would fall through a hole into the Great Darkness below. This fall, then, was no accident: it was to be fulfilled. As soon as she was impregnated with the child of Ronontano, a great transition had already begun in Sky World. The uprooting of the tree marked a “renewal of the world,” in that Yotsi’tsishon had “broken through the womb in the sky and her life-giving essence poured down to the Earth, resulting in the birth of life in the world below” (Rice, 2013, p. 38). The significance of the Great Darkness cannot be understood without adequate context. Spiralling into grief, and toward a new life, so begins the great fall into darkness. Wake’nikonhkwenhtará:on (My Mind is On the Ground)40 40 “My mind is on the ground” [4:12], click here to listen 89 Yotsi’tsishon’s great cosmic fall began in the Pleiades and lasted the entirety of the Milky Way. We don’t know how long she fell for, because when one is in such immense disorientation and depression, one has no sense of time. She might have fallen for years, decades, generations even perhaps. We don’t know. But what we do know is that, in pure darkness, she fell. She fell violently, swiftly, and intensely. Haudenosaunee writer, Kaitlin Debicki (2020), poeticizes the terrifying first moments of Yotsi’tsishon’s fall: I am overcome by intense fear and panic as I try to figure out what is happening. I am falling. Acting on instinct, my arms and hands grasp desperately at anything that might save me. My fingers claw at earth, and roots tangle themselves in my hair, around my arms, and in my clutching hands. I can’t breathe. It’s dark and I can’t see what’s happening. Suddenly I sense the air open around me and I can no longer feel the damp, dense closeness of the earth’s pressure. I am free-falling in cold air now, plummeting so fast that the air hurts me, ripping at my body and piercing my ears. Darkness takes me (p. 93). During this great fall, she experienced what no one before had ever experienced: darkness, loss, loneliness, and grief. In the Kanyen’kéha language, we describe this great fall as wake’nikonhkwenhtará:on,41 meaning “my mind is on the ground.” The imagery of a mind-on-the-ground evokes a head over heels freefall. We use the same word, wake’nikonhkwenhtará:on, when one is mourning or suffering. For it evokes the sensation when the mind and spirit are so low and heavy that they drag on the ground. This darkness is both a literal and metaphorical estrangement from the world. Finding my Mind on the Ground 41 “My mind is on the ground” [4:12], click here to listen 90 As a child, I had heard the Creation Story countless times. The significance of the Great Darkness was always lost on me. This fall was not a floating feather gracefully cascading to the earth, as my childhood imagination had conjured. I pictured it to be a Disney princess moment: where a delicate woman cascaded down from the heavens and was gently received on the backs of flying birds. However, stories change over one’s lifetime – actually, the story itself doesn’t change, it’s the listener who makes new meaning of the story with each iteration. A teaching from Knowledge Keeper and storyteller Aronhiaies Herne is that each time you hear a story, you take what you need to from the story in that moment (Herne, 2020). The first time I heard the story of Yotsi’tsishon’s fall as an adult was immediately after I lost my father. I realized this great fall is certainly not a Disney moment but describing the downward spiral of depression. While I had experienced loss in my adolescence, I had certainly no means to understand grief. Fiction and film clouded my impression, where I believed grief to be quiet moments of sorrow. A tender hand on the casket to say goodbye. A silent sob under the breath. And after this momentary sadness, your grief is transformed into moments of nostalgic remembering that bring a soft smile to the face. But grief is nothing like this, of course. My grief broke me. It shattered the clay pot that I was made of, into small, unsalvageable slivers and shards that blew away in one swift gust. With the sudden loss of my father, my world turned grey. A heaviness sat on my chest, leaving me breathless for months. A month following our loss, I wrote, “Feeling winded – I was knocked to the ground and struggle to catch my breath” (21 November 2019, personal diary). Re-reading Debicki’s (2020) passage above, “I am overcome by intense fear and panic as I try to figure out what is happening…” I question if she is narrating Yotsi’tsishon’s fall at all, or those terrifying moments of early bereavement. Disoriented, I watched myself from above, grasping at whatever I could bring down with me as I spiralled into darkness. 91 Searching for a way out, I wrote daily. I dreamt of solace and received messages of healing. I went for walks and the occasional run when I found the energy. I watched my grandparents, who lost their son, manage to find the grace and strength to get out of bed each morning. Wakyé:was. I thought. I am searching for something in vain. I didn’t know what I was searching for, but I searched. I suppose I searched for answers, trying to comprehend how the world kept spinning after mine stopped. I was angry at the audacity of the universe to take a man who is loved and still needed here on Earth. I moved in slow motion as those around me spoke in tongues. As I fought to keep my head above water, I eventually sought counsel I didn’t know I needed to find in Yotsi’tsishon’s story. The story of the Great Darkness is a story of grief, loss, and transformation (Herne, 2020). A woman who lost everyone and everything she ever knew, and still managed to find herself on the other side. She did this alone. She did this pregnant. Alas, I wasn’t Yotsi’tsishon. I hadn’t lost everything. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t bringing new life into the world that needed me. I just needed time. I needed time to heal. I needed time to find the strength to see the legacy of Greggy that lived on. I needed time to realize I need not punish myself for seeing beauty in a world that continued without my dad. In an early session with my grief counsellor, he encouraged “One day you will find a strength you didn’t know you had,” and I snipped back, bitterly, “I don’t want to be strong. I just want my dad.” But we aren’t afforded such privileges in life. And as far as blessed lives go, I am blessed of the blessed. And if Yotsi’tsishon did as she did, under the circumstances she was handed, I realized I really would be fine – I just had to learn how I would carry myself differently in this world. Blackberries There used to be blackberries here. But not the sweet, ripe, summer berry that you might know. It was the invasive kind. The invasive species that was introduced by outsiders, killing everything Native in its path. The sweet juice hiding its nefarious intentions. 92 Alcohol was the biggest lie I was ever told. Addiction was the biggest lie I ever told myself. At first, my relationship with alcohol seemed benign – almost welcomed. Like the invasive blackberry bushes that grew around our home in Vancouver, I would welcome the arrival of the blackberry each summer. Until I watched the power of its invasion. I watched the thorns and vines wind their way into a path of destruction and depletion. “I like blackberries,” I had convinced myself. “They’re nice for pies. You can’t have company over and not have pies.” I told myself I had no choice – I had to learn to live with it. But inevitably, my addiction would reveal its thorns, snarling like a rabid dog’s teeth before it strikes. The true threat of an invasive species is the helplessness it evokes. Leaving you to feel as though you can only hack back its inevitable damage. Manage the destruction at its best. Let it consume you at its worst. So that’s what I did. I managed its destruction. I’d trim and prune the branches back, keeping it manicured so the neighbours didn’t question its appearance. Sometimes I wouldn’t notice its regrowth. Other times I would see its crawling return, its slow burn, almost imperceptible as rolling fog. Until it consumed it me once again. What shattered me most about my alcoholism was its expectedness. If I drank around new friends, I would feel a heightened self-consciousness; feeling the judgement with every drink. “She’s Mohawk, you know,” they would whisper, if only in my paranoid subconscious. Failing to control my drinking, I felt as though I failed. I failed to break the stigma that every Indigenous woman carries. I failed myself, sure, but I mostly failed them. All of them. And that destroyed me. Alcohol became my pharmakon – my poison and my cure. The encroaching vines found the cracks in the foundation long before I even noticed anything was wrong. One of the most challenging battles I had with this addiction was knowing how deep the roots went. Four generations deep, at least. When my hero had succumbed to the thorns that now threatened my home, an irreparable part of me died, too. But regrown in the loss of my father was an opportunity. A new life waiting to be seized. A life that had been denied to the generations before me: sobriety. I wish I could say it was an inspirational montage that ensued my decision to become sober. When I pictured sobriety, I envisioned spliced together images of a woman on a mission, pouring all the booze in the house down the drain - or whatever people do when they make the decision to never drink again. For me, however, the image was simply of weariness. A deep bone-aching exhaustion. I was just so goddamn tired. I found my mind laying on the ground, and I surrendered by lying down beside it. I was exhausted from the thorns that poked, and prodded, and scratched at my skin until it drew blood. I couldn’t bear the prospect of raising another generation of children who grew up to repeat the cycle. And so, I crawled on my hands and knees until I reached the roots of the blackberry bush - and I pulled. I tore. I ripped each and every fucking bush out of the ground. One by one. Stopping only when I was left with exposed earth, depleted of its nutrients from years of abuse. Eventually, the land will heal itself. Grass will regrow. Life will return. But for now, it is still very much raw. 93 One day I will sit with my grandchildren on either side of me. Together we will look out on the land our ancestors protected for us, and I will tell them the story that begins, “There used to be blackberries here…” Yah teskatatyenté:ri (I don’t know myself anymore)42 It is common in Kanyen’kéha to receive new names across one’s lifetime. This is especially so as one experiences great changes, such as following a rites of passage ceremony to become an adult. Just as we might hear (or say ourselves) statements such as, “I was a different person then,” or “That was in a different lifetime,” the changing of names honours the metamorphosis occurring between the psyche and identity. In the telling of the Creation Story in Kanyen’kéha, as compared to its telling in the English language, there are significant arcs in naming. In English, we simply refer to our heroine as Sky Woman. In Kanyen’kéha, however, her name changes throughout the Creation Story. Different storytellers use different names, however, but some of the most common naming practices for Sky Woman begin with her as an infant, where she is sometimes just referred to as eksá:’a 43 or otsì:tsya44. Following the loss of her uncle/father (the first death in Sky World), she is the first person to ever grieve. Upon his passing, her late relative gives her the name we most commonly know her by, Yotsi’tsishon45. Upon her fall through the Great Darkness, however, her name changes once again. Some narrators refer to Sky Woman during her fall as yakón:kwe.46 This shift in naming honours the moment she experiences this great upheaval, she is recognized as fully human, fully a person. “She is a fully realized human being for the first time at the moment she faces catastrophe, and she faces it alone.” (Adams, 2020, p. 116). To linguistically attend to yakón:kwe even further, the 42 “I do not know myself anymore” [5:38], click here to listen 43 Female infant/child [0:06], click here to listen 44 Flower [3:46], click here to listen 45 When a flower is fully formed, meaning “finished flower” or “mature flower” [6:22], click here to listen 46 Female human/person [5:53], click here to listen 94 prefix yako- is used to refer to a group of people of varying genders, or multiple persons whose gender is unknown. Here, although referring to our single female actor, the prefix yako- pulls the listener and all of humanity into the journey, by referring to her in the most inclusive way: she is no longer the singular she, but the prefix suggests they/she/all, where the audience is “invited to adopt the only remaining perspective in the narrative world – hers – in this moment” (Adams, 2020, p. 117). She becomes all of us – and she becomes fully herself. She lost herself to find herself. Transformed, renewed, and whole. This is the journey of kanenhstóhare. Corn, as the manifestation of an Earthly connection to Sky World, is indicative of the necessity of a life that lives amongst estrangement. From a Haudenosaunee consciousness, all beings are meant to undertake processes of renewal. We must not truncate or sidestep the experience of estrangement. This is dangerous but necessary. In moments of estrangement, we lose ourselves. We search for something in vain. Like a stranger away from home, we grieve parts of ourselves that we might never reclaim. Students of renewal, inspired to rethink their relationship to the world, may first experience Oshontawenko:wa, Wake’nikonhkwenhtará:on, or Yah teskatatyenté:ri. They may lose parts of themselves in the boil – but in faith that transformation awaits them. Just as new parents, feeling the joy of new life, must also reconcile the part of themselves that existed before parenthood. The bereaved mourn the loss of a loved one and must seek new meaning of life on the other side. It can be much more pleasant to live life with the wool pulled over our eyes; alas, it is no way to live at all. Estrangement within Haudenosaunee thought is prefaced upon leaning into immersion, grief, and loss as part of the process of renewal. Curricular calls for renewal are common invitations put forth by curriculum theorists who envision the need for an education that incites 95 estrangement. What they do not adequately attend to, however, is the experience that estrangement demands. When we speak of renewal, we focus on being renewed as a past-tense. With a focus on completion. Attending to estrangement means embracing the discursive and disruptive process of renewal. When, as kanenhstóhare invites, we should additionally attend to the disorientation, grief, and experience of wakyé:was that are enmeshed with estrangement as necessary to renewal. We cannot will meaningful transformation into existence. It takes sitting in the boil, with that which can corrode, but also revitalize, that offers a new way home. 96 Chapter 5: THE RINSE, HOMECOMING After an immersive boil, the process of lying corn is not complete until it is rinsed clean. Once the corrosive agent has fulfilled its responsibility, it must be rinsed. The lye must not be carried forward nor consumed. It is ready for rinsing once the corn has doubled in size and the “eye” has separated from the kernel. Rinsing must be thorough, through continuous cycles with clean water. It will then be reintroduced in the world. Homecoming for Curricular Renewal In curriculum studies, calls for a curriculum that interrupts, provokes, dislocates, and leaves us to wonder more about the world are increasingly commonplace. The objectives are designed with the intent of interrupting the curricular common sense. Grounded in a Haudenosaunee consciousness, the possibilities of kanenhstóhare for estrangement are congruent with the objectives of interrogating the strange/familiar binaries (as explored in Chapter 4). What is often absent from part of these calls for renewal, however, is how the learner is to reconcile the implications of estrangement. If indeed estrangement is engendering a new consciousness, how then does the subject live meaningfully after such transformative experiences? Arriving home from vacation, one may feel briefly rejuvenated only to return home to find it exactly how they left it. The laundry was never folded. The unreturned phone calls blink on the machine. One may slide right back into the monotonous routine without missing a beat. Alternatively, returning home from a prolonged exile (as estrangement demands), the subject may return home to fail to see how they can even function in their former home. The unfolded clothes no longer fit. The once familiar voices on the answer machine sound like strangers. If left to flounder, how does 97 one come “home”? How is it that the moment of homecoming can serve as an educative as estrangement? When attended to, homecoming may indeed be as purposeful as estrangement. Moreover, it may prove to be even more demanding. Homecoming is healing. It is the thawing after the freeze. Mandell (1995) shares the anecdote of homecoming as a painful thaw: “The actual frostbite doesn’t hurt, it numbs. What hurts is the thawing process” (p. 190). Amidst the possibilities of estrangement, the implications of estrangement / homecoming as iterative sides of the same coin need to be considered. If we accept the necessity of estrangement as opening possibilities for transformation, we must then also be prepared to articulate the reconciliation of post-estrangement. A revitalization of worlds, old and new. Completing the cycle. In practice, the making of kanenhstóhare requires both the vigorous boiling and the thorough rinse. The rinsing of the lye is how the corn completes its transformative cycle. Christine Zachary-Deom (2018), Mohawk Chief from Kahnawake, describes the traditional process her mother followed, using hardwood ash in lieu of the modern-day lye: My mother used to gather the corn kernels and put them in a big pan. Then she added sifted wood-ash and water. And it became like grey wood-ash water, thick, you would never eat it! You cook it for about 2 hours than [sic] you empty the corn in a pale [sic] of clean water. You keep washing the corn with clean water over a sifter until the kernels become bright white and very soft. As a rinse, it is more than a cleanse of the toxins. The rinse is integral to the renewal because it delivers the subject back into relationship with world. It is reintroduced. Perhaps not quite healed, but healing. Never finished. It is what makes kanenhstóhare as a means for moving forward. For living. Observing what brings the estranged back into relationship with all living beings underscores the purpose of kanenhstóhare; in that an engendered consciousness must be purposeful for living a good life, a whole life. A life where the vitals are stronger than ever. The 98 subject finds themselves living more authentically in a revitalized relationship with home. In the Kanyen’kéha language, homecoming may be expressed less by sewá:ko47, as a return to homestead, but rather more by sayórhen'ne’48. The arrival of dawn. The first sign of the light after darkness. The breaking of a new day. Home/Coming or Coming Home? Homecoming is a journey with no roadmap or milestones. A journey to reconcile alterity; to dwell amidst the strange. It is iterative and multi-faceted. It is a full revolution to pursue a revitalization with the self, community, and the land. Estrangement without homecoming is unfinished – leaving the subject in a state of purgatory, between two worlds without a means to move forward. Homecoming as a journey has been similarly described as an odyssey. For Mandell (1995), homecoming is a difficult path to traverse insofar as it is an “odyssey that calls one closer and closer to home” (p. 152). As part of the imagery of the homecoming, O’Donoghue (2011) suggests that Heidegger’s use of homecoming, too, is best described as an odyssey. In a typical hero quest – much like Homer’s Odyssey – the archetypal hero undergoes a three-step sequence of departure, initiation, and return. The hero is “called” to leave home, completes an initiation process, and is finally compelled to return home after a yearning to be where they most belong (Campbell, 1949 as cited in O’Donoghue, 2011). Homecoming-as-odyssey is not congruent with kanenhstóhare. It is not a return to the past. The two primary principles of homecoming-as-odyssey for Heidegger is homesickness and homelessness (O’Donoghue, 2011). Kanenhstóhare is not, and cannot, be informed by either of these concepts. 47 I have arrived home, I have returned home [4:29], click here to listen 48 It dawned, again [3:18], click here to listen 99 Homesickness is driven by nostalgia. It is a yearning to return to what was. Attuned to its many shades, Svetlana Boym (2001) explains nostalgia as a form of hypochondria of the heart, Nostalgia (from nostos – return home, and algia – longing) is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy. Nostalgic love can only survive in a long-distance relationship. A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two images – of home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life. The moment we try to force it into a single image, it breaks the frame or burns the surface (xii – xiv). Here, the naming of nostalgia is a longing for a past that cannot exist simultaneously in the present. As Boym (2001) suggests, nostalgia is caught between a fantasy and memory. Ravaged by nostalgia, homesickness is then longing for a home that is no longer survived or relevant. A homecoming that is dictated by homesickness is driven by a yearning to return to the past. Similar to kanenhstóhare, homesickness is a consequence of displacement. Nevertheless, kanenhstóhare diverges from homesickness in that a kanenhstóhare homecoming lives amidst the past, present and future – not bound by a yearning to return, but acknowledging where one has come from, with a present mindfulness, and forward-looking gaze. The subject in kanenhstóhare seeks to engender a new state of home. The second concept in the odyssey is homelessness. Homelessness is driven by the symptom of the “oblivion of being” (O’Donoghue, 2011, p. vii). That is, homelessness is an existential crisis caused by the devastation of nihilism (Weller, 2008). Feeling a loss of purpose – a loss of home – in the world, one desires a homecoming. Kanenhstóhare for homecoming may resonate with symptoms of homelessness, in that the subject in their head-over-heels fall feels purposeless. Yet, in the context of an odyssey, the symptom of homelessness calls the subject to return home. Homecoming in the context of an odyssey is a coming home. The subject desires the comforts of familiarity and returns to said familiarity. Moreover, the practice of coming home suggests that one can then arrive home, and eventually be past tense: came home. Having 100 arrived, the odyssey is complete. Homecoming in the context of kanenhstóhare, conversely, is a home/coming. It is interminable. An iterative process of making home, reconciling home. One does not suspend living for a destination (e.g., “I can begin to live again once I return home”) – instead, one lives amidst the coming. One makes home amidst the coming. Pacific Spirit Friday, September 13th began as a particularly uneventful day. I went for a morning run in Pacific Spirit Park near our apartment before I went into the office to write. I remember it was a Friday the 13th because I texted my dad, sending him good thoughts because he was a terribly superstitious man. “Hey kid,” my older brother whispered on the other line. Although he was only three years older than me, Jordan has always been my unwavering rock. “Kid” has my nickname so long as I can remember, and it’s still his term of endearment for me when things get rough. I had a handful of trails that I would run in Pacific Spirit, but that morning I took a new route out of boredom and curiosity. As I wound my way through the new cedar-lined trail, I found my pace picking up. My usual jogging pace closely resembles a Sunday afternoon saunter – in other words, I’m painfully slow. But on this day, something was different. My legs felt strong and light at the same time – I felt like I was floating more than running. In the ancient Smoke Dance, it has been said by the Old Timers that the finest dancers could do the dance so fast that it looked like their feet weren’t touching the ground. Damn, I snickered to no one, this must be the divine intervention that our ancestors felt! Sooner than expected, I came upon the familiar bench that marks the end of the trail on the east side of the park. I stopped there to catch my breath. Hoping to not lose this burst of unprecedented momentum, I decided to not rest long. There is something promising about this trail, I thought as I looked at the trail behind me. I turned back around and began running home the same way I came. But this burst of energy didn’t last long. Almost immediately, my legs began to burn, and my lungs strained as they failed to keep up with me. My pace dropped to a near walk. I struggled to keep up with the speed I amazed myself with only moments ago. I stopped and looked at the trail ahead of me, and then behind me, and then ahead again. A disappointing reality hit me: I was running uphill. An uncontrollable laugh broke through my overworked lungs. No wonder my initial pace was at an unprecedented speed, as I had been running ever so slightly downhill! Apparently, my record speed was less divine intervention as much as it was basic principles of gravity. If I hadn’t stopped at that bench to return home on the same trail, I never would have known what caused my "record-setting" speed. Maybe I would have run that trail many more times, pleased with my ability to improve my speed on this trail, not knowing the real reasons that lay underneath my feet. “I’m just getting into the office. Can I call you back later?” I answered, pulling the laptop out my bag. I no longer know that version of myself who spoke those words, with what followed. “It’s dad, Kid” he said. “It’s not good.” If I hadn’t looked back, I maybe never would have known. Now I know. 101 Kanenhstohare is not odyssey because it is not dictated by homelessness or homesickness. It is, indeed, however, a journey home. And journeying is sacred. It is sacred because it demands relationship with place and coming to know place through risk and deviation from the known. Styres (2018) articulates this move from familiar to unfamiliar as a sacred journey: Trusting in the sacredness of the journeying process ensures that we will traverse the uncertain waters and arrive safely to the other side where we will find that what was once unfamiliar and uncertain territory is now filled with all that we can now know and connect to that serve to make this new place familiar to us. It is a place enriched with new knowledges and greater awareness and understandings because of this learning experience. Journeying is a place where our stories intersect and become interconnected with other stories—layers upon layers (p. 29). Kanenhstóhare is constructed upon a journey home as it is the intersection of layered stories and travelling through uncertain territory in pursuit of these stories, as Styres suggests above. Home is caught between land and imagination. If land is sentient (Styres, 2017) and imagination is sentient (Sheridan & Longboat, 2018), perhaps home, too, is sentient. How I create relationship with home, where I find it, and who I allow to make/re-remake it with me, are questions we need to ask ourselves. What room does my home have for coloniality? For trauma? For the known/unknown? Home As a child, my dad and grandma Dea opened a small local restaurant on the rez. They called it Kanónhsa.49 With a small daily menu, they specialized in comfort foods: soups, stews, casseroles, and sandwiches. From what I can recall, they were only opened for lunch. Their 49 House [1:31], click here to listen 102 clientele was mainly teachers at the on-reserve school. On the weekends they served the community, and Monday to Friday they exclusively took orders for the staff at lunch time. I have such vivid memories of staring at the classroom door as it neared noon, waiting to catch a glimpse of my dad who would come to drop off a soup and grilled cheese during his school deliveries. As more of a hobby than viable business, the restaurant didn’t last any longer than 12 months. My grandmother still has the plates they used at Kanónhsa. Whenever I eat off the plates, I am reminded of the memories of Kanónhsa. I recall helping my technophobic dad making menus on WordPerfect. Or carefully serving bowls of corn soup to patrons, with a two-handed, tongue-sticking-out kind of focus of a ten-year old. Or making a special delivery of venison stew to Chief and Council, of which spilled in the trunk of my mom’s ‘96 Honda Civic…in the dead of winter. It froze to the carpeted trunk liner fabric. This is home to me. Not the building, nor even the image of the restaurant. It is the memories that live on, the recipes I inherited, the food that will nourish my family for generations to come. Home is not simply an artifact of the past but that which informs who I am and how I carry myself in the world. It is very much a dwell-ing: the place my body, spirit, and mind dwell. Ever shifting. As Di Paolantonio (2018) expresses the temporality of remembering, we must also learn to forget by creating distance by “judging between the right time to forget and the right time to remember” (p. 54). I remember, I forget, and I live amidst it all. It is home because I take responsibility for it – I am bound by a sense of accountability and pride. Home is a fluid space where the entire being is seen, nurtured, fulfilled, and welcomed. It is perhaps a space of perpetual skennen, transcendental peace. Home is remade along with the subject. While home need not be a structure, it can be tied to place; perhaps it is even necessitated to be mindful of its place-ness. Home is made in relationship with land, premised upon understanding and 103 reciprocity. To understand land is to study it. To hold conversation with it. To converse with others about it. To create reciprocity with land is to humble oneself before it.50 To give more than one takes. To protect it. Understanding the significance of land for homecoming, what implications does this then have for one to return quite literally “home,” such as a childhood home or ancestral homeland, to inculcate a home/coming? We have seen this for the Haudenosaunee. For the Mohawks, we experienced a forced exodus from our ancestral homelands in upper state New York. Following the defeat of the British and Mohawk allies during the American Revolution, the Mohawks attempted to remain in our traditional territory of Mohawk Valley, New York. Our families, however, grew weary of pressures and violent retaliation from American patriots, and decided a flee to British territories north of Mohawk Valley would be necessary (Porter, 2006). Forced out of our homeland, families were divided amongst re-settlements in what is today Tyendinaga (Ontario), Ohsweken (Ontario), and Akwesasne (Ontario/Quebec). With no choice but to evacuate, our ancestors prophesized a homecoming for Mohawks once peace had returned. When we left two hundred and some years ago, our old people said: ‘Some day we will return. Some day our children and great-grandchildren will go back to the Mohawk Valley and they will rekindle the fires and the fires will burn bright again. And The Great Law will be reinstated, the Clan System will be reinstated, the Four Sacred Rituals will be reinstated again, the wonderful thing the Creator gave to us will be reinstated again. One day they will go home’. That’s what I heard when I was a boy.” (Porter, 2006, p. 40) The return of Mohawks to the homeland was to be a “closure of a circle; of leaving and returning, of ending and beginning” (Porter, 2006, p. 11). In the 1990s, the prophecy was fulfilled when Elder Sakokwenionkwas Porter led families back to re-establish a permanent 50 I use “reciprocity” from a Haudenosaunee context of the term. Whereas the common Western use of “reciprocity” is likely to suggest co-dependence or mutually beneficial give-and-take, a Haudenosaunee perspective on “reciprocity” is likely to indicate fulfilling a collective responsibility. As in, “I fulfill my responsibilities to you, so that in turn you can fulfill your responsibility for others.” 104 settlement in Mohawk Valley. The new community, Kanatsiohareke51 Mohawk Community is a year-round, permanent community of multiple Mohawk families. Together, they communally live off the land, converse, and conduct business in Kanyen’kéha, and follow the seasonal calendar of Haudenosaunee ceremony. The (re)planting of the Three Sisters in the valley between the ancestral mountains made this circle complete. On (En) Revitalization Whether Indigenous, Settler, or visitor, one seeks a revitalization of the self in relationship with land. Land incites homecoming. Land is the living force that connects us to the past, present, and future. It is the eternal home of our ancestors, it nurtures the bodies of all living beings, and will be the only consistent thread that binds us to future generations. Land fosters a revitalization of self by engendering a new consciousness. Revitalization – to (re)vital-ize how one carries oneself and rediscovers their place in the world. Homecoming is revealed after estrangement. Rethinking the linearity, here, the “order” of these moments is not so much important, as it much as it is determined by estrangement precipitating homecoming. Kanenhstóhare is a provocation to trouble whose waters wherein we stand, so one can fully come to make home in these waters. For one to simply seek the rinse before the boil, the cycle is not complete. A homecoming does not need to be a dependent upon a physical return home. It is prefaced on a revitalization of home. Indeed, the physical returning to a located place can foster the “closure of a circle” as expressed by Sakokwenionkwas Porter above. Although fruitful as it may be, a return to physical places and spaces of “home” is not a necessity. The subject can 51 Translates literally to “The Place of the Clean Pot” [0:30], click here to listen 105 experience homecoming – through understanding and reciprocity with land – without the need to attend to anywhere else other than the immediate spaces one occupies. Yet, a physical return as with Mohawk Valley can indeed sanction a homecoming if estrangement, or exile, was involuntary and traumatic. The land is a keeper of memories. If involuntary estrangement is tied to place, the trauma impregnates the soil. Trauma keeps the spirit captive to the land. The spirit remains stagnant, buried below the surface. Demanding to be unburied, cradled, and carried home. For some, the healing of intergenerational trauma may be reconciled through land. The body holds onto the trauma of our ancestors. To investigate the origins of food and the foodways of the African Diaspora, Black writer, sommelier, and host of High on the Hog (2021), Stephen Satterfield found his homecoming in a visit to Benin, West Africa. In seeking the origins of African American cuisine, Satterfield visited “The Door of No Return” memorial to enslaved Africans who were taken from the slave port in Ouidah, Benin. In the documentary, Satterfield became overcome with emotion as he stood barefoot on the trail that marked (and was marked by) the last time most enslaved West Africans made contact with the soil of home. His homeland return fulfilled a homecoming for his ancestors. Settler colonialism, however, marks an intergenerational trauma not with a “homeland” but on the soil of Indigenous peoples. It is the unmarked, unresolved trauma of settler colonialism that fosters settler epistemic privilege. A curriculum that fosters an estrangement of self from land must also foster a homecoming of self through land. In a call for a curricular renewal of the self, estrangement is that which dislocates a consciousness that is premised on settler epistemic privilege. Settler epistemic privilege propagates a curricular fantasy of settler-as-learner, while also subsuming one’s identity of settler-as-being. In other words, a curriculum riddled with settler epistemic privilege informs the student in the classroom in addition to the 106 human in the broader world. How they carry themselves in the world might not always be dependent upon what they learn in the classroom, but it certainly has many opportunities to. In turn, an estrangement/homecoming which interrogates settler epistemic privilege has the possibility to transform the whole being. Kanenhstóhare is the intersection of food, land, ancestors, and identity, where the subject is called home to imagine it anew. The breaking of a new day. In reflecting on my time in Pacific Spirit Park – amongst the many times I jogged the trails, or took after dinner walks with my husband, or offered tobacco to those in need – it became my space to exercise my Indigeneity as a visitor to xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territories (Vancouver). As a Haudenosaunee in voluntary exile from my homeland for education, I craved a connection to land that I struggled to find in an urban centre. Amongst the cedars and call of the Northern Flicker, Pacific Spirit became this home that I needed. I talked and it talked back. We conversed daily. We grew together. But for the Musqueam people, Pacific Spirit was not meant to be. In 1984, the Musqueam Indian Band had submitted a land claim disputing the endowment lands of the University of British Columbia. Despite being in the midst of the land claim, however, the City of Vancouver moved ahead with the opening of Pacific Spirit Park in 1987, with the tagline: It is the gateway to the Pacific and a Spiritual ground to becoming one with nature. Perhaps there should be an asterisk following the tagline: “ * except for the original peoples to this land.” Justification for the park came from then Premier, Vander Zalm, who stated the formation of the park was a necessity: “We can’t stop the province. We can’t stop doing things. We can’t stop prospering or trying to create jobs, or opportunities, or parks for people. It’s all a part of governing and moving ahead” (Amos, 23 April, 1989). Indeed, 107 Indigenous presence and sovereignty is marked as an impediment to the greater good; namely, an impediment to the progress of the province. The creation of Pacific Spirit Park, however, was the antithesis of progress for the Musqueam nation. Gail Sparrow, former Chief of the Musqueam band, spoke of the forced dislocation from their ancestral lands: Traditionally we don't think of it as Pacific Spirit Park. It's Musqueam land. It's a Musqueam village site. We occupy it. We live there. We never moved from there. We were relocated to reserve allotments from all these areas and pushed into the 400 acres that we have (as quoted in Nair, 21 April 2019) For the Musqueam nation, whose traditional territories far extend behind the 400-acre reserve land that the community has today, Pacific Spirit is yet another reminder of settler capitulation and Indigenous alienation. A settler capitulation in regards of the sentiment, “We can’t stop the province” as quoted by Zalm – as if the devastation and exploitation of Indigenous lands is the cost of doing business. This is to suggest it is our (read: settler) land, and you (read: Indigenous) just happen to live here. Indigenous alienation, hence, rendering Indigenous peoples as the ultimate impediment to progress, job creation, and “moving ahead.” Pacific Spirit, then, cannot be my home. I was but a guest on Musqueam land. In my own home/coming, however, I can live amidst this history. I can speak to this land through my ancestors, while ensuring Musqueam ancestors are spoken to first. My own estrangement to the land began as I learned more about the history of the place. Of the protests and settler refusal to honour treaty. My estrangement continued as I began to grapple with my own protest of the lands – I had convinced myself that I could not participate in a landscape that precipitated the forced exile of Indigenous peoples. My home/coming, however, began to take form as I learned more about the Memorandum of Understanding (2006) between the Musqueam nation and the University of British Columbia. My home/coming continued as my plane touched down in Vancouver, after I had to say my last goodbye to my dad in Ontario. Upon my reunion with 108 Vancouver, I sought solace in the forest. There is one tree, that is the strongest tree I have ever known, where I buried my pain. It carried it for me when I could no longer. I offered so much tobacco at that tree it genuinely wouldn’t surprise me if I return in 10 years’ time to find a tobacco plant growing there. This relationship matters because it healed me – but I must also carry the responsibility of the Musqueam and the needs of the local peoples foremost. My home/coming continues, however, as I sit and write today. I write from home – which is also dad’s home. In fact, it was also his dad’s homes, and his dad’s dad’s home. From where I write now, I am looking out the west window in his tiny cabin (which we all affectionally call, “The Shack”). The evening is nearing dusk. Day’s end. He dreamt of the day when I would return home – “I think we’re going to stay out West, dad. We won’t be home anytime soon!” I was adamant, as I rushed him off the phone as I had done many times before. He must have known. He brought me home. Yet, I am still bound in a home/coming. Katatenà:tons (I introduce myself) When a new life is brought into the world, they must be introduced. For newborns, because it is first the responsibility of the mother to carry this life into the world, it is then the responsibility of the father or the sister’s brother (uncle) to introduce them to their new home on the Earth. Here are the words of Bear Clan Elder Sakokweniónkwas Porter, describing the introduction ceremony: So the father, most likely the father, and the uncle, maybe both, together will take the baby. As soon as the baby’s passageways are cleared, you know the nose and the mouth and everything, and before they even give him a bath, they take that little girl or baby boy. And they will sit somewhere and hold that little baby. 109 And the man says to the little baby, “I’m your father. And this is my name. And this is the name we give to you. The women chose this name for you.” And you’ll tell him the name. And then you’ll say, “Takia’tison, my Creator, I wanna give you my love, my greetings and my thankfulness, that you send this, my little baby, here to be born, safely. First, I thank you, my Creator.” And then you say, “Creator, this is the name the women chose for the baby. And Creator, I wanna introduce you to the earthly name now.” Then you start with the Opening Prayer.52 You know how they start with Mother Earth. You hold your little baby. And you say to the baby, “I wanna introduce you, my daughter or my son. This earth is your mother, our mother. And she’s gonna give you all the things you need to live, all your life. And so as you grow up to walk, to become a man and to have children yourself, you will develop this good relationship with your mother. And you will respect her.” And you will say, “Mother Earth, this is my baby’s name.” And you tell the Mother Earth what your baby’s name is. You finish that and then you talk to the Water, the rivers that quench the thirst of life. And you say to the Waters of the World, “This is my baby’s name. I want you to have a good relationship. You will be interdependent with each other, for the rest of his life” (or her life). And you do that to the Trees, to the Medicine, to the Wind, to the Sun, to everything that contributes to that little baby’s relationships. You introduce him. It’s called introduction or welcoming the baby (p. 251-252). In the Mohawk practice, a welcoming is an opportunity for (re)introduction. Newborn babies rely upon their family to introduce them to the world. Once one can introduce themselves, they are expected to do so. The essence of katatenà:tons53 is a common practice in Haudenosaunee society. An introduction is not an individualistic act. A thorough introduction means one is positioning oneself in relation to one’s community: your name, your family, your clan, your land, your nation. Ones response to Who are you? is so deeply contextual and fluid. In the context of estrangement, a (re)introduction may be necessary to ones’ community upon homecoming. What could this mean for a subject to consider a reintroduction to land? Or community? Upon estrangement, the corn is rinsed clean and brought into the world anew. Following its metamorphosis, corn receives a new name: onenhakén:ra to kanenhstóhare. It must be 52 Referencing the Mohawk Thanksgiving Address, mentioned earlier (p. 35). 53 I introduce myself [2:24], click here to listen 110 reintroduced into the world. Just as I must, too. In those moments of yah teskatatyenté:ri54, we must trust that we can find ourselves on the other side. Transformed. Renewed. Whole. And so, we must begin, once again, with an introduction. 54 I don’t know myself anymore [5:38], click here to listen 111 Chapter 6: SERVING THE SOUP There are many variations of corn soup, and everyone has their own preference. But the traditional Tyendinaga-style corn soup requires a great batch of lyed corn, traditional white beans, and pork. You always make corn soup with the community in mind. Someone might stop by unexpectedly, or there might be someone up the road who needs a good serving or two for their family. Making corn soup is not a solo act. It requires many hands and will fill many bellies. How will your corn soup serve to nourish others? Kiera Kaia’tanó:ron iónkia`ts. Wakathahión:ni. Kanyenkeháka niwakenwenhtsió:ten. My name is Kaia’tanó:ron, but everyone calls me by my English name Kiera. I sit under the protection of the Wolf Clan. I am the daughter of Gail Brant (neé Doxtator) and the late Greg Brant. I am a Kanyen’kéha learner. I know I am a learner because there are words that ring like home in my ears but tastes foreign in my mouth. My heart understands what my mind cannot not. I realized this fact at my father’s funeral. My brother, Jordan, spoke of dad in the language. “Ne káti skén:nen aetewanonntonyónhseke ne Rakeni’kénha raorihwà:ke…”55 he began. I didn’t realize until much later what he said, and how my brother spoke of what a great man my dad was; he is. But, still, it healed me. This healed me because it spoke the language of my heart – the unknowable place in my being that walks with my ancestors. It was a place I arrived at only after losing myself. I never would have imagined I would write a dissertation about the loss of my father. Or sobriety. Or laying bare the Creation Stories. Or my coming to relearn the language I have felt 55 “So is the time that we may now think peacefully about my late dad…” 112 estranged from for so long. Thank God I didn’t know this before because, if I’m perfectly honest my friend, I never would have done it. If this dissertation was laid in front of me, I would have walked away. I never would have wanted to undergo such an estrangement from myself – let alone to task myself with writing about it for others to dissect. Initially, I refused to share the journey of the loss of dad. Losing dad in the midst of my doctoral studies, I coped by seeking a compartmentalization between what was my research and what was my personal life. I didn’t need anyone to know our story because it was deeply personal for my family. I did not want it to be a spectacle. My dad is a deeply private person. He defines humility. To write of it, I thought, would be to exploit it. Until I began to write of corn. She asked me to engage in estrangement and homecoming. She asked me to open myself up to lay bare the ghosts of my past. As I learned from corn, her teachings became so intertwined with my own simultaneous estrangement and homecoming it became disingenuous to separate it. The immersion of kanenhstóhare became a full circle experience. I wrote “Blackberries” for myself over the course of many months to process my own struggle with sobriety. It didn’t have a happy ending then. In committing to my own journey of kanenhstóhare, I was confronted with the reality that I had authorship over my own story. I saw my story exposed on the page in front of me. I felt overwhelmed by the fact that I controlled how it would end. So, I wrote two endings. I composed one version that was an honest depiction of the path I was on; marked by darkness and numbness. My great fall. The other version was a far scarier path I could take; one of recovery, healing, and accountability. Seeing the two paths I could take articulated the struggles my spirit had refused to acknowledge. Once written, the decision then became easy. Well, not easy, you see. But it was obvious. And so, I kept the version I needed to see. And I lived it. 113 I have no doubt that corn has saved my life. This is kanenhstóhare. Serving with Two Hands We have arrived. I know you can’t stay long, but before you must leave, let us sit together. If you will, allow me to serve you some soup to enjoy together as we share stories of our journey. Just as I had done at dad and grandma’s Kanónhsa restaurant, I will try my best to serve the soup to you with focus and care. Or, with “two hands,” as my mother would say. As we reflect upon our journey to the clearing, I’d like to return to the question that sent us down this path: What might be the educative possibilities of a kanenhstóhare discourse? Kanenhstóhare is an articulation of educational thought through an immersive experience in Haudenosaunee ontology, cosmology, ancestral teachings, and the Kanyen’kéha language. Through the language of the corn – a central tenant of Haudenosaunee consciousness – the possibilities of a curriculum of renewal are considered. Kanenhstóhare is not a metaphor for education; it is a way of articulating the nuance of Haudenosaunee thought and experience in relation to educative immersive experiences that transform. Corn is our eldest teacher. She grounds us in the complex knowledge of the land, reminding us that land is not a theoretical concept too abstract to understand – sometimes folks really overcomplicate what land is. It is simply dirt. It is simply soil. But the fact that is perhaps not so simple, is that everything begins and ends with this soil. A Curriculum of Renewal 114 At the beginning of our journey, I spoke to the intent of a call for renewal. A call for renewal is an invitation to reimagine the curricular discourse we consider to be of most worth in our Canadian context. Curriculum studies is concerned with what knowledge is of most worth (Pinar, 2012) – hence, a call for renewal is intertwined with the objectives of curricular renewal. With many competing demands on our Canadian classrooms, the inclusion of Indigenous thought in the curriculum is often rendered as supplemental, or as a reconciliation initiative which is limited to a day of wearing orange shirts with little attention elsewhere in the academic year. Yes, these narratives are important. Yes, these initiatives can have an immense impact on Indigenous and settler students’ consciousness of Indigeneity. But they also risk the compartmentalization of Indigenous thought to being pigeon-holed as damage-centered narratives (Simon, 2013; Tuck, 2009). This is to say, there is immense risk in reducing Indigenous curricular discourse to historical artifacts or victim narratives. Indigenous thought is much more. A curriculum of renewal is grounded in an invitation to awaken the subconscious, the interruption of mundanity that deprives imagination, and provoking the learner to question what we take for granted. The journey of corn from onenhakén:ra to kanenhstóhare is the basis for the immersive experience through estrangement and homecoming to seek renewal. In seeking to articulate the implications of kanenhstóhare, I consider two of the following: a preliminary envisioning of a kanenhstóhare education model, and the role of Indigenous languages in the re-vital-ization of the learner. Imagining Kanenhstóhare Education56 56 I am attempting to avoid the term “schooling” here. Schools/schooling is suggestive of the Western settler schooling model used across North America, whereas “education” models aim to be more inclusive of the growth, development, and well-being of youth in fluid contexts outside of a classroom. 115 Recognizing the shortcomings of mainstream public schooling in North America, many Indigenous communities have sought alternative schooling structures to educate their youth. Seeking a schooling structure that would decentralize power structures, standardized testing, and an overreliance on technology, some Indigenous schools are turning to Waldorf education models in favour for its focus on a child’s imagination, creativity, connection to nature, and holistic learning (Indigenous Waldorf, 27 July 2016). Waldorf education, with its child-centred learning approach, has offered the promise of educational “reform” for many Indigenous communities (Muñoz, 2016) – including two alternative Haudenosaunee schools. As Mohawk immersion schools, Skaronhyase’kó:wa Everlasting Tree School (Six Nations, ON) and Tsi Tyonnhéht Onkwawen:na Language and Cultural Center (Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, ON) place the Mohawk culture and language at the centre of their daily operations. Their overall ethos, structural planning, and vision for the schools, nevertheless, are “Waldorf-inspired” (Indigenous Waldorf, 27 July 2016; Skaronhyase’kó:wa Everlasting Tree School, 2021). Without undergoing a comprehensive study, such as Dr. Joaquin Muñoz (2016) had done of the Lakota Waldorf School, the rationale for pursuing a Waldorf-inspired pedagogy for Haudenosaunee schooling is unknown to me at this time. In informal conversations with parents/architects for the Skaronhyase’kó:wa Everlasting Tree School, however, it was thought at the time that Waldorf was a recognized model of schooling was the most valuable alternative, as it was at least congruent with a Haudenosaunee ontology and provided a clear and credible structure that was accredited (personal communication, February 2021). Whereas the daily student experience is in Mohawk culture and language, I’m struck by the notion that the schools are foremost grounded in the philosophies of German educational philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Steiner’s movement of anthroposophy has indeed made possible the return of schools where 116 Mohawk children can be educated in their culture and language, which our communities have not seen since the residential schooling era. The impact of these Waldorf-inspired schools cannot be understated; they have been vital lifelines for articulating a new schooling model for our communities, our families, and certainly for our children.57 However, what if we were prepared to move behind this? What if kanenhstóhare were to fill the bellies of our communities once again? A return to land-based ontologies in a Haudenosaunee consciousness may provide a framework for an education system that does not need to be congruent with Haudenosaunee thought; it is Haudenosaunee thought. The Akwesasne Freedom School, offering an alternative outside of Waldorf-inspired, centres Mohawk language immersion and ceremony as its primary curriculum and ethos of operations. For White (2009), in reviewing the Akwesasne Freedom School’s impact on Mohawk identity, its structural roots lie in Mohawk identity first and foremost. Consequently, such as act of “self-determination” in this schooling model became a space where youth were “free to be Mohawk” (p. 241). As with kanenhstóhare, it is not an Indigenized or decolonized schooling model, it is rooted firmly in a Haudenosaunee consciousness. Any such implications of a schooling system – or educative experiences more broadly – would then be derived from such a consciousness, above any other system, model, or theory. Kanenhstóhare is bound by the braiding of traditional teachings, educational theories, and autobiography – hence, it would leave plenty of room to engage in the intersections and tensions amongst German (Steiner) and Haudenosaunee thought. And yet, a curricular vision and 57 As I am writing this section in June 2021, I have been brought to (happy) tears as I see photos of the end-of-year ceremony for two sweet little girls who are finishing another year at Skaronhyase’kó:wa. Their mom, a friend of mine, had posted pictures on Instagram of the ceremony, where her two daughters are wearing their regalia, moccasins, and are beaming with pride. I cannot understate the significance of what these schools have done and continue to do for our communities. 117 pedagogical practice of kanenhstóhare is not congruent with a Waldorf-inspired school. A kanenhstóhare discourse is is grounded in the teachings of the land. It is grounded in our Creation Stories. It is grounded in our unique consciousness of renewal and commitment to living a life of skennen, ka’sathsténhsera, and ka’nikonhrí:io. However congruent our teachings and practices may be with Waldorf, or any other non-Haudenosaunee theories of education, it’s limitation will remain to be this: settler schooling models are not grounded in a Haudenosaunee consciousness. And perhaps this is perfectly fine – but I am struck by the possibilities that might lie in imagining something more – much more. Imagining a kanenhstóhare schooling model is bounded only by our imagination. In my narrow-minded imagination, I envision a school year structured around the seasonality of the land (which, for Haudenosaunee peoples, also coincides with our seasonal ceremony calendar). Students learn of their responsibilities as stewards of the land from the best teacher available, the land herself. Educators (stressing the plural, not the singular “educator”) are diverse their expertise and experience, honouring the strength of ka’sathsténhsera and power in diversity. Quantifying a students’ intellectual mastery of subject matter would be called out like the objectionable act it is: abhorrent. How could a learners’ sense of self, selflessness, and placefulness ever be objectionably measured and placed on a report card? Unlike Waldorf schooling, a kanenhstóhare classroom would also center the development of a child’s sacredness, rife with nurturing their spirit and spiritual development. Estrangement and homecoming in relation with land would also be a fundamental tenant, such as through Territory Acknowledgements. An increasingly common practice across educational institutions is Territory Acknowledgements (also commonly “Land Acknowledgements”). Whereas this has always been 118 a practice for Indigenous communities, it has become a staple for many settler peoples to demonstrate an acknowledgement the of the ancestral, traditional Indigenous nations at events and gatherings. This is an important practice, for this demonstrates respect for the “traditional custodians of the land,” and acknowledges the longstanding relationship between Indigenous nations and their ancestral lands (Hare & Davidson, 2015, p. 244). A relationship that has never been surrendered, but indeed forcefully severed, through colonization. A primary limitation to the current practice, however, is the performativity of a script-like Territory Acknowledgement. When the act of acknowledging First Nations, their ancestral relationship to place and land, the history of colonization, and ones coming to create relationship with place becomes a memorized script, it ceases to have substance. Secondly, this performance can consequently reinforce the inevitability and benevolence of settler colonialism. As Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson (Robinson et al., 2019) warns, when territory acknowledgements become too universal without naming the specificity of relationships, histories, and personal implication, its default can invite a collective occupation. The practice ceases to be an acknowledgement without positionality and implication. On this, Robinson (2019) writes, “What foundations are you (perhaps inadvertently) reinforcing? What ground are you occupying, and inviting others—your students, your colleagues—to occupy? Foundations are equally reinforced by refusals to refuse” (p. 21). As an invitation to occupy, the practice of territory acknowledgements becomes a welcoming. A welcoming to Indigenous lands. A welcoming to lands of which are not yours to welcome – except, of course, as we experience Territorial Welcomes from the First Nations themselves. In thinking about immersive educative experiences, I am curious about the implications of Territory Acknowledgements that cause an estrangement and homecoming for the speaker and 119 audience. What might a Territory Acknowledgement look like, sound like, feel like, if it caused grief, loss, dislocation, while also facilitating a more genuine home/coming to create a deeper relationship with place based on a tension of coloniality? It might sound something like Clint Burnham’s (2010) poem: I’d like to acknowledge that we are on stolen land. I’d like to acknowledge that we are on borrowed land. I’d like to acknowledge that we are on overdue land. I’d like to acknowledge that we are on pickpocketed land. I’d like to acknowledge that we are on empty land. I’d like to acknowledge that we are on full land. I’d like to acknowledge the knowledge of like to acknowledge you like me acknowledging. I’d like to acknowledge that we are trespassing on someone else’s property if that someone else had property and if we are who we think we are and not, in fact, perhaps also someone else’s acknowledgement. I’d like to acknowledge I meant that. […] I’d like to acknowledge I was sober for four years and I’m not now, I mean I’m not drunk right now but I have the occasional drink or maybe more than the occasional drink but I’d like to acknowledge I don’t like it when someone reads a poem about being drunk or getting cleaned up and they’ve got the details about puking on their tits or that blinding feeling in their head when they’re suffering the morning after and I’d like to acknowledge this is getting way too personal, even for me, so I’d like to get back to acknowledging we are on stolen, native, indigenous, Indian, injun, skimo, chug, métis, first nation, halfbreed land, we are on native land, on native carpet, on native subflooring, on native foundation, on native weeping tiles, on native tarmac, on native sidewalk, on native dirt, on native leaf mould, the good mould, on native mud in our backyard, on native holes in the ground where our fence was ripped up by the landlord not the landlord guys working for a guy working for the landlord maybe they were native I don’t know I didn’t ask them we’re on native highway of tears on native land on home and native land and I’d like to acknowledge the acknowledging that we are on stolen, ripped off, colonized, unceded, conquered, begged, borrowed, stolen native land doesn’t make a damn bit of motherfucking difference and I’d just like to acknowledge that (Burnham, 2010, p. 39-41). There is no hiding behind such a Territory Acknowledgement, for neither the speaker nor the listener. There is no placating of settler colonialism, or erasure of the realities of Indigenous experience on land, or the removal of self-implication and positionality. Kanenhstóhare did not make Burnham’s (2010) poem possible – but it might offer a space for where such truths can 120 flourish. A kanenhstóhare discourse may serve Territory Acknowledgements which are not designed to appease all visitors at the beginning of an event to feel good about reconciliation before they completely forget about it. We might remain attentive to the limitations, however of kanenhstóhare’s locatedness. Kanenhstóhare is grounded in a Haudenosaunee consciousness, however, and it not intended to become a pan-Indigenous framework for educational discourse. Just as we must avoid universal Territory Acknowledgements, or any other universalization of Indigeneity, kanenhstóhare is not intended to become a default. Yet, just as Jo-Ann Archibald’s (2008) storywork can be grounded in Stó:lō storytelling traditions, and Dwayne Donald’s (2009) colonial frontier logics are grounded in his experience as a descendent of the amiskwaciwiyiniwak peoples, there is room for diverse Indigenous and settler peoples to join on a common ground, so long as there is attentiveness to its specificity for Indigenous nationhood. In turn, there must be a heightened attentiveness to Haudenosaunee protocols, and its applicability for bringing together diverse perspectives while not compromising its specificity for Haudenosaunee protocols around teachings, language, and history. As with the journey of our sister, corn, a learner in kanenhstóhare is encouraged to depart from the familiar on their journeys to renewal and are supported in this risk taking – learners are encouraged to embrace the grief, darkness, and sense of loss that transpires in this estrangement. They are then welcomed home, in whatever iteration it is found – and, above all, are encouraged to (re)introduce themselves once they have arrived there. Language Re-vital-ization Indigenous language revitalization holds promise for all learners. In Canada, all but 5 of approximately 60 Indigenous languages are endangered, and the remaining are vulnerable. 121 Consequently, there is an urgency to ensure the transmission and survival of ancestral languages for future generations. In response to this crisis, many Indigenous communities have undertaken initiatives in language revitalization education. The scholarship in the literature, and the discourse that informs the curricular pursuits of language revitalization schools, are forced to rely upon settler theories of Second Language Acquisition. To date, the Canadian scholarship on Indigenous language revitalization has been focused on the pragmatic implications of how programming can facilitate language revitalization; such as the study of immersion schools (Morcom & Roy, 2017), language nests (Chambers, 2014; McIvor, 2005), and digital technologies (Galla, 2016). With this established foundation of Indigenous language methodology, the field is now in need of a conceptual framing so as to develop effective theory that will inform the teaching and learning of endangered languages (Hinton, Huss & Roche, 2018). Whereas the field of Second Language Acquisition is informed by a variety of theories, most notably sociocultural theory (Lantolf, 1994, 2000; Lantolf & Pavlenko, qu) and Krashen’s theory (Krashen, 1982, 1998), the particulars of Indigenous languages are not adequately met by the generalizations made in the field. Contemporary Indigenous culture and identity is informed by both traditional teachings and the legacies of colonization (Hinton, 2011). The loss of any language signifies a loss of culture and collective identity; however, the loss of an Indigenous language severs an irreparable tie with ancestral kinship, ancient knowledge systems, and relationship with the natural world. The need for language revitalization is well recognized in Indigenous communities, but what is less understood are the implications of language education on language learners themselves. Language education benefits not only the language itself – the tangible measurement of new speakers being created – but also the intangible transformation that language acquisition can 122 have on an Indigenous learner. Language and identity are innately intertwined; therefore, could this process of coming to speak one’s ancestral language transform ones’ relationship to self, others, ancestors, and land? Such a transformation, however, cannot be articulated by non-Indigenous linguists and theorists. Only a theory grounded in Indigenous culture, language, and identity can articulate the implications of Indigenous language education. Kanenhstóhare articulates how estrangement and homecoming can be embodied in education. Indigenous education can facilitate estrangement when the learner is forced to confront “the strange” – for example, a student who is immersed in an Indigenous language can become disoriented, because foreign (“strange”) languages can distort one’s auditory senses and ontological perceptions. The student then engages in a homecoming with this new knowledge, where the learner then must reconcile this new way of seeing the world with what was once familiar – to use the above example, returning “home” to your first language, having to grapple with this new bilingualism. The learner then finds themselves transformed in their thinking, which has repercussions on ones’ sense of identity and relationships with others. You cannot un-see or un-learn such transformative knowledge. Second language acquisition creates opportunities for all learners to enter “the strange world of unfamiliarity” (Aoki, 2004, p. 253). Upon study, and immersion, slowly but surely the new language “sheds its unfamiliarity” as you enter deeper and more meaningfully “into another perspective of the world” (p. 253). Here, as Aoki speaks of Second Language Acquisition, it inspires me to think about the portals and potentials of language, culture, and perspective in a curriculum of renewal. What might be the benefits of Indigenous language as a discourse-disturber in the classroom? For settler students, struggling with the language of Kanyen’kéha (or any other Indigenous language) poses a unique opportunity to embody an alternative 123 consciousness. For Indigenous learners, particularly those reclaiming their ancestral languages (for example, Mohawk students relearning the Mohawk language) they are they are confronted by the legacies of settler colonialism that resulted in this reclamation process, whilst navigating the pressures, sacrifices, and isolating experiences of self-transformation amid their language education. For Indigenous peoples, transmission relies on every generation to sustain ancestral languages and the knowledge embedded in it (Norris, 2006). Indigenous language revitalization begins one word at a time, offering the resurgence of a language and the revitalization of the self, ancestors, and ancestral ways of knowing that will otherwise be lost. Thó’k Nikawén:nake There is a saying we use at the end of a story: Thó’k nikawén:nake, táhnon ó:nen éhtho.58 In concluding a story with these words, it is not meant to be as exhaustive of a statement as, say, the ever popular: “The End.” Unlike The End, it isn’t meant to be a phrase to end a story at all. In fact, as a very literal people, we truly just mean That’s all I have to say on that matter right now, or perhaps even less definitive, I spoke some words, and now I’ll finish speaking. There is much more to be said. There are many more people who must speak on this matter, as well. But our journey together has alas come to an end. In this journey, this dissertation sought to consider the educative implications of a kanenhstóhare theory. Kanenhstóhare, the Kanyen’kéha word for lyed corn, is taken up through the process of making lyed corn soup. We began with an overview of the significance of corn to the Haudenosaunee. The origins of corn as provider, matriarch, and teacher, are traced back to 58 “That’s the end of the words, and that’s it” [4:53], click here to listen 124 our Creation Story. Next, I posited the significance of the Great Law of Peace in relation to the teachings of corn. The implications of these teachings result in the creation of three strands: the pursuit of autobiography for a good mind, educational theory for strength/power, and traditional teachings for peace. Together, we considered the legacy of settler colonialism, as the threat of coloniality in poisoning our collective curricular consciousness. Driven primarily by a settler consciousness, the Canadian curricular landscape is contaminated by what I call Settler Epistemic Privilege. In suggesting the need for a braiding of tension and intersection, I drew upon the teachings of braiding the three strands to facilitate an estrangement and homecoming. Estrangement is taken up as a call for renewal as an engagement with the strange, while homecoming (or, home/coming) is an invitation to reconcile this renewal with living a good life. A leaving home to inculcate a new home. The limitations of kanenhstóhare, as it pertains to this dissertation, are most evidently the need to listen to our Elders and Knowledge Keepers on these teachings. This is my interpretation, and this is an issue. Teachings come to us through multiple voices, over many generations, from different points in our life. I am not an authority on these teachings. I have sought counsel to honour our protocol – but protocol goes both ways, and may you honour these stories by seeking them from others as you are able. As you leave the clearing to continue your journey, may you walk gently knowing what you now know. Ó:nen, my friend. Thó’k nikawén:nake, táhnon ó:nen éhtho. 125 References Adams, A. M. (2020). 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Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Curriculum Studies
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Pinar, William F.
Kanenhstóhare : the educative implications of estrangement, homecoming, and Indigeneity
Text
Moving Image