What all do we need? re: Indigenous communities in crisis

[Seekerofsolace]

I don't feel I have as eloquent as words you all have, but I will try. I feel like the Native American community is closed to outsiders. I honestly understand why as the early inhabitants of America took so much from them. Being closed however, makes them isolated to everyone else. In the wild, when you isolate an animal from the pack or herd, it is more vulnerable. I think if the indigenous peoples become more open, the rest of the world can learn more about them and possibly want to help. Everyone I talk to says, "I feel bad for the Indians and what has been done to them..." They can use this sentiment and channel it to change things for the better. People want to learn about Indians, because up until recent years, they were connected to something advanced civilization had lost. The white man is not longer the enemy of the Indians in my opinion. There are many out there who are white on the outside but their heart wishes to beat Indian. These long to join a tribe and learn to be what their heart tells them to be. Only when both young and old generation learn to see with their hearts will we see real change. The 1% want us all to crave material things like them so we will spend our lives chasing after it. They do not want us to see with our heart.

[Mr Interesting]

Here in New Zealand we are luckier than most with our multi- culturalism and one of the reasons may have been we were too far away from everyone else and had such a small population for so long that there was quite a bit of working together but as time goes on those without the inclination to be money serving are finding it harder to find a place as valid, which if course it is, as those who use money to promote their validity.

I think you gotta have fun! Having fun and celebrating what you have lets people eventually realise that having less is not a real thing... it's an illusion, and when you have fun with what you have you learn it's all already inside waiting to get out... but you gotta protect that fun, keep it loose and not sell it off 'cause money will come looking to tie it up and sell it on for profit. So you gotta be hard and not move when that money comes saying it's gonna help.

The Wilcannia Mob

I heard this song on student radio years ago and it was a hip hop guy who went out to the outback in Aussie and did some stuff with kids. M.I. A actually used it later on and it seems to have started a flurry of 'let's do it to' stuff.

Indigenous Hip Hop Projects

There's all kinds of stuff. I'm workin' towards an Art Car parade and just recently I go a TV producer interested so it's all there waiting for us... we just just gotta make it FUN!


White boys gotta find his inner silliness!

[Gem]

In Australia it's possibly a worse crisis in Aboriginal Communities.

[Mr Interesting]

Yeah Gem, a friend of mine who's a psychiatric nurse who just inherited a half a million bucks has just taken a trip into the outback and has come back knowing within herself that she will find a way to get back there and help where she can.

Which is kinda problematic as she has a heart of gold and really seems motivated by a deep and abiding love but honestly she really is a bit of a space cadet. She told me recently of this, as she calls it, revelation and gifting from God, that she received out in the parched red lands, and while I was listening it was almost as if the insights she would be granted were spilling over me and I had to keep quiet as they were her gifts to find herself.

Meanwhile exactly where she lives now is entirely needful of the same coaxing to become and yet the more obvious problems in starker blacks and starker whites seem to enthral her whilst the realities around her dull beside such emotive and blessed deep troubles further away.

My Dad grabbed hold of the think globally act locally thing way early and gave it to me pretty much as soon as he got it and so I've spent at least a few decades coming to terms with the ramifications of that and understanding it as much as I can and I can see that this here thread constitutes the reality of it. That all of us from whatever part of the world we're in can see that the problem is endemic where the cultures meet and that our own definition of it, within our locality, can help to make others view of their problems hopefully less as a result of local conditions but in a wider sense of who we all are as people all over the world looking to a future where the heart of us all is held in greater esteem of it's truest values.

This Christmas was the 200th anniversary of the first sermon given to the indigenous Maori of Aotearoa (New Zealand) and was instituted by the Maori themselves albeit by one Chief who visited Australia and saw the preaching of Jesus and forgiveness as being a viable alternative to the cultural practice of Utu, which is a blood revenge and a part of a system of justice which was decimating the Maori internally by taking out it's best and brightest in long drawn out generational revenges which upheld the definitions of honour and prestige, and the Maori quickly became a record breaker in taking up the doctrines of Christianity to change within there own doctrines something which wasn't working out.

But this has had consequences further down the line as many of the valuable underpinnings of the cultural presets have been distorted and changed to suit the Christianity which was so instantly embraced to manipulate one undesirable trait which had taken precedence.

At the same time the concept of family has remained strong in the Maori culture even whilst the concepts of materiality have been held as far less important and have rendered their place in society somewhat tenuous as power brokers this honouring of structural basis has, by the sheer rigidity of it's being held, has defined our own multi-cultural society in ways logic could have never determined. But we're all starting to recognise this, that even whilst Maori have been sidelined in aspects of power where more deterministic ideals may have been applied there grounded stance in the family structure has had effects we are all starting to realise we'd be barren and starved of if they hadn't been there.

New Zealands small though and we've really had no choice but to live in each others pockets 'cause the option of sending all the original people into the back of beyond has never really been an option and tied to the fact we've always been on the very edges of earthly existence has also had a significant bearing on the matter.

I better stop now.

[Shaunc]

Where I am in Australia the indigenous people's lives have improved in my lifetime. Booze & drugs is the biggest problem facing their culture, but the young ones are making a much better go of it than their parents & grandparents. There's still a long way to go & in my town it's only about 10% indigenous anyway. There hasn't been a mission here in my lifetime, so generally speaking they live in town with everyone else. Unemployment would also be IMO their 2nd biggest problem followed closely by health.
If you go further west, some of the indigenous communities have been declared dry by the residents. At least the food & rent is payed before the income is taken into town to have a drink. It also cut down a lot on domestic violence & child abuse.
My experience, I might add is coming out of one town. It's a big country & not every town is like mine.

[Gem]

I think that this documentary explains pretty well where the harm was done, and touched on the depth of we're dealing with as a society. It would probably apply in principle to American cultures as well, but this film is about a people in Mid Australia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAOcfkcGDKA

[Mr Interesting]

That was a tremendous documentary and I will let a few more days pass and let it sit within me. I especially was drawn to his hands drawing the infinity symbol with such ease as he described a way forward by us all learning from each other... beautiful.

[edgarb]

I feel like we've lost our way. Forgetting who you are and why you're here.

Dependency on outside systems, while destroyed from the inside through the last 6 generations.

We need to admit our challenges and face them head on. Create a localized economy so we are self dependant.

Treat each other as brothers and sisters.

I don't have the answers. But I am seeking them out. I wrote a poem that shares some of my feelings about the inter-community wounds that tear me apart.

Tina Fontaine, a 15 year old Aboriginal girl under the care of a foster family, was found in Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Aug 17, 2014. She was found ‘by accident’ when divers were looking for another suspected body in the river, that of an Aboriginal man named Faron Hall. He too was found in the same river as Tina Fontaine, on that same day.

Poem for Tina Fontaine

As her body curved
Into the rocks
She saw another
Floating there
He looked like her father, or brother,
Her uncles…
He looked like someone
Who used to care.


Thanks for listening. Miigwetch.

After quite a lot of studying I have done over the years I will give u a short version of what my take is on this.

Ever since the hairy faced man stepped on to this land, the lives of the Indians have dramatically changed. The truth is very ugly and I do not wish to get into detail but it is fair to say the Indian was used and thrown away. (I mean even George Washington himself was known as "Town Destroyer" by the Iroquois.)

Between the hairy face turning the tribes against each other, Alchohol, boarding schools, the POW camps (reservations), and the inhumane mistreatment of the Indian, we are lucky that they were not ALL wiped out.

The sad and ugly truth is that American Indians have been trained to forget who they are and where they come from. Like Chief SittingBull said after his sundance. "if you set your hearts upon the goods of the white man, It will prove a curse to this nation".

In my opinion as long as the government has their hand in Indian affairs the problems will never change. The Indian must go back to the ways of the Grandfathers and Grandmothers. You must be responsible leaders and community members just as our ancestors were.

While that was a short version of what was on my mind I hope it helps you somehow.