Miskwaa zagai ganing anishinabeg o o ogemaawajig ishpenimago yeg minawaa Gicho ogemawajig. Excuse the typos in ojib.
Redlake is one of the only tribes which acknowledges their hereditary Chiefs. What does this mean to many other Ojibwe tribes? Nothing! Hereditary Chief today means that we can wear a picture of a chief on a shirt and that by wearing this symbol or trademark, it makes us more Indian or that we live a lifestyle of a Chief.
It's like the notion that Indians are sovereign. Tribes are sovereign, not individual band members of the tribe. The federal legislation and the systems in place do not allow us Indians to be SOVEREIGN INDIVIDUALS.
Many Indian communities do not want or can fathom the thought of possessing their own form of traditional government-THE GOVERNMENTS THAT WERE PART OF OUR TRADITIONAL CULTURE. NOT the modern-day current R.B.C.'s. If any of our communities cannot fathom the idea of a traditional form of government in their community, then you have to tell yourself that the belief system of many Indian communities has been compromised, compromised by the Federal Government. This compromised sense of thinking tells our sub-conscious that CHIEFS ARE OF THE PAST AND THEY ARE DEAD. Dead in the sense that, we believe in the power of money, but not the power of our Chiefs. If we could start teaching our children about Chiefs and that they are living, breathing, pay your bills type of people, we would have less depression, suicide, alcoholism, and drug use, to name a few. We are more than that, we are the vessels granted by the Great Spirit to guide our people and open their eyes to their selfish ways. It is to guide the people through this world pandemic and re-teach the people, that fear is not part of our genetic makeup and that "fear" is a brainwashing tool used by the Whitman. Chiefs are more than speakers, they are Spiritual beings, medicine men, and truth seekers to name a few. Above all, WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS FIRST AND FOREMOSTLY. We are appointed by the Spirits, not by humans.
However, we really shouldn't allow ourselves, in our own state of mind to identify with the Chieftainship values and code of ethics. These codes of ethics are in many ways - too hard to live by and go against many of our modern-day work ethics - and all of it's associated pyramid power structure, not to forget policy and procedure.
You cannot fully implement a Chieftain - a traditional way of life - even within the reservation - the working-ethical - a system in place, does not acknowledge or care about a person's feelings and or gender(yes women and men have teachings).
Most of the modern-day- working-class Indians(Anishinabe) cannot accept a hereditary Chief - Traditional form of work environment - due to the whole idea as inconceivable and that the white workforce has dominated the country since its inception. The whole working experience - from beginning to end is set up in western ideal practices. These business practices have not been challenged in tribal courts, because the courts are set up with the same system. We attend higher education and institutes, to study the professional business of the white world. Many of the experiences and ideas we learn at these facilities, we own, possess, and make them part of our own belief system. We then get hired by a tribal reservation and bring our new white driven policy and guidelines with us. Once we are finished with our probation period, we then continue the domination of the Chieftain - a traditional way of thinking, lifestyle, and culture. We assist in the process of eliminating the local traditions and beliefs with the blessing of our hirees, the tribes, or tribal councils.
EDUCATION
The modern-day education experience is designed to keep us divided, controlled, dumbed down, and institutionalized like a modern-day felon(did I forget to say religious ceremony for 12 plus years). Yet, we consider ourselves better off than the felon(haha). I mean think about it, freedom of speech is taken out of the school system - we have to raise our hands to speak, we have to be granted permission to relieve our bodily fluids. Indian boarding schools are still real, except we don't get beat, some teachers have become more clever than that, they repeatedly beat our souls and minds. I once heard that most teachers are control freaks. I, both as a student and a fellow employee, would concur with that statement. Tribal societies have failed our children and Grandchildren, by continuing to allow the learning curve to be one way and one way only when it comes to education. We have forgotten what our natural ways of learning look like, what it smells like, and what is healthy to our children's souls.
Some of us that have the luxury of attending higher education institutes attend a tribal specific class or program. What we fail to conceive in our own imagination, is that the poison is still there, the poison of the white rhetoric that undermines the whole school experience. Attending a tribal class or graduating from a tribal program is great but it still is a lie and reinforces the white system within our own professions and personal experiences. Except now, we have an Indian twist to our degree, professional functions, and our state of mind. Don't get me wrong, we have to be able to read and write and that's it. Think about it. Most of us experience our first set of lies when we attend head start, early ed. or kindergarten. If we have to take school supplemented transportation, we have to wait and we have to wait day in and day out. We make our children go out in below zero weather and think of it as normal. What does our culture say about this practice? Where are our elder's teachings and guidance during these early years of our children's programming? Whether we believe it or not, we condition, condition, condition, and assist in brainwashing our children's minds with white - policy-driven- ploys - tactics and lies. Do we not wonder why the graduation rate for Natives is still low? Have we not figured out that our youth have figured out the lies that manifest on the bus, the hallways, the cafeteria, with the other children and the whole infrastructure? Hmm. Hmm.
I guess you could say that if you like school, you are a good liar. Oh wait, you will become a great liar. YOu have to believe that school is greater than your Anishinabeg culture right? You have to believe that the culture is dull, has no ethics, has no discipline for time, and is just boring. Your new to the cultural experience, so then you hit up the local cultural people and start to mingle with the culture. It's a good thing to mingle but how far are you willing to go? Is the culture you are looking for just to implement a few Anishinabeg language and history classes in the local school? Is your cultural mingle driving your desire to resurrect the language? All good stuff but you see, the underline policies where education gets their funding is white rhetoric - white classism - white, white. I guess you could say it's white all the way from the queen and her conquest of vast territories. The modern-day school experience has destroyed our thirst for our culture and all of its traditional teachings. We have to start selecting culturally orientated people - that are 100%. This means many things and we have to be able to hear the truths and experiences that these people have retained by not fully being engulfed by white culture. We have to start brainstorming what our worlds looked like 200 years ago. We have to remember that learning the language is only part of the solution. Blah, Blah, Blah.
So, why did you attend higher ed? Did you attend higher ed. because you wanted to experience a new way of life? Did you attend because everyone in your family attended and it was the right thing to do? Did you attend because you wanted to make a better salary and be "better off?" I know it's none of my business but ask yourself this question; In a traditional/wholistic setting of long ago, didn't the Chief know everyone's business????
Jay Wadena
To be continued...
