kaa-waakohtoochik: The ones who are related to Each other

Walking with Wisdoms

Indigenous researchers that have provided pathways for ethical research herald responsibility as a crucial component in frameworks and processes (Kovach, 2021; Smith, 2012; Wilson, 2008). Responsibility does not end with the inquiry but is carried forward as we walk with what we have learned. Walking with wisdoms positions responsibilities as central in honouring the relationships formed through the research. I learned early on from Elder Reg Crowshoe that what matters is not only what you came to know, but how the information is internalized and utilized for healthy and respectful relationships in the future.

One of the questions from the assessment of stories is: How will I/they be a good relative and responsible to the story and the source of the story? Sometimes I am too strict, thinking I can do more than I am capable and am quite hard on myself in not allowing myself grace when I make mistakes. Mi’kmaw scholar Sylvia Moore (2017) shares a conversation she had with Ojibwa educator and scholar Sandra Wolf, “‘we learn as children that mistakes are sacred because they remind us that we are not the Creator and we can’t take responsibility for everything that happens. We must learn from our mistakes” (p. 56). Wisdoms are birthed from moments of suffering, making mistakes or merely moving through difficulty. I remember a few days after my mom died, I was laying on an air mattress in the spare room of my house; I had just woken up and was crying with feeling this deep profound ache. As I laid there however, I also felt this immense sense of love all at the same time; that moment and experience has stayed with me because I learned that suffering can co-exist with lightness – to me – those are when we are being imprinted with wisdom. Elder Crowshoe teaches that struggle guides me in my life and pedagogy, he tells me that it is our stories of struggle where we can see what we need to learn and understand. I have certainly struggled in this process, but I know that struggle and ease are co-dependent and reliant on one other.

This doctoral inquiry has been two-fold: a) facilitating an inquiry through an oral knowledge system and b) inquiring into Métis practices of the urban-born-raised generation. A large feat undoubtedly but one that I could not turn away from. Although ambitious in nature, support for this work made the endeavour seem manageable and achievable. Walking with wisdoms and employing responsibilities in the future apply to the methodology and the research questions. This dissertation offers wisdoms to others who might take them up in their respective contexts and continue the work that is greatly needed. Here, I will share how the wisdoms from both inquiry and stories have sparked responsibilities for me.

Responsibilities to an oral system

I was fortunate to begin teaching with Elder Crowshoe in an Indigenous relations program before I started my post-secondary teaching career. Having a previous career in early childhood education provided me with teaching experience however, learning alongside Reg offered me an ‘education’ that I did not receive in any post-secondary course. Learning through the niipomakii (chickadee) model (see link for reference) of education gifted me with the ability to simultaneously craft my own pedagogy while learning through an oral knowledge system. Stepping into my first undergraduate course, I carried the teachings from the niipomakii (chickadee) with me and employed the values and principles of that education system to create a learning environment for my students.

The greatest learning that I carry with me from learning in an oral knowledge system is the ways in which differing systems validate knowledge. I believe this is something that needs to be heavily considered and acknowledged in academic institutions. Particularly when we have many institutions across Canada now employing Indigenization strategies in their respective places. The tension between the two knowledge systems, one written, the other oral, creates an unnecessary dichotomy that only hinders the building of mutually beneficial respectful relationships.

The question I carry with me from first sitting with Reg is how will I be an omahkatski (older relative) to an oral system.

Responsibility is inherent in acquiring knowledge. As seen in my video struggling to align written and oral systems it is difficult but possible to shorten the distance between Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. As I walk with wisdoms, I know that my responsibilities are tethered to the system that allowed me to facilitate and validate this inquiry. Already, I have begun work to bring forward knowledge and understanding of an oral system to the places where I work. I see individuals and institutions alike, trying to bring content into courses or processes without understanding that Indigenous knowledge is a system, not just information and content. As articulated in wisdom seeking through an oral system, the systematic nature of orality needs to be acknowledged and understood alongside any curriculum brought into academia. Not only do we need to deconstruct how we teach, but we also need to deconstruct how we assess knowledge and information.

As an educator, I have witnessed the erasure of a unified mind/body/spirit (Meyer, 2013) in learning which privileges cognitive content-based delivery of information, also deemed as the “banking system” (Freire, 2009). Cree scholar, Willie Ermine (1995) posits, “Western education systems that our children are subjected to promote the dogma of fragmentation and indelibly harm the capacity for holism” (p. 110). Mestizo scholar and educator, Gloria Anzaldua (2015) affirms, “Leaving the body reinforces the mind/body, matter/spirit dichotomy…the last thing you want to uphold is the Cartesian split…If el conocimiento (knowledge) that body is both spirit and matter intertwined is the solution, it’s one that’s difficult to live out, requiring that knowledge be lived daily in embodied ways” (p. 135). We ask students to show us what they have memorized or generalize information they can regurgitate not necessarily what is alive in their experiences and how that relates to larger questions of relationality and creating a world that is just for all beings.

Unifying the mind/body/spirit (Meyer, 2013) to explore and deepen one’s relationships within intricate sets of human and more-than-human systems (Ermine, 1995) that are indelibly interconnected (Deloria, 1999) is a way to center ethical relationships at the helm of learning and knowing. Part of the solution embedded in the aliveness of our experiences is “kinectics, the act of doing, [which] isn’t just praxis; it also generates and animates theory within Indigenous contexts, and it is the crucial intellectual mode for generating knowledge” (Simpson, 2017, p. 20). Of course, knowledge is culturally driven and is dictated by what the children need to know and perpetuate in order for culture to survive. This is true for academic institutions in Canada, wherein political parties that are in power, ultimately decide what is and is not learned in schools. Although post-secondary educators have flexibility in what they can teach, there are still rules and policies in place that restrict how knowledge can be validated. Sylvia Moore (2017) reminds me, “the role of Indigenous educators is to challenge schools as agents of colonialism and carve a place for our own traditions as legitimate subjects of curriculum, but on our own terms” (p. 65).

A literature review of orality reveals that there is little research that has been conducted that provides direction and guidance for engaging with and through an oral knowledge system for learning and assessment in post-secondary classrooms. The core text I relied on along with the teachings from Reg was Maracle’s (2015) text, Memory serves oratories. This provocative book does provide guidance to theorizing orality and outlines an ontology that points to assessing oratory. However, within those teachings she leaves space for nations to find their own local-specific processes of knowledge and assessment. Connective pedagogy: Elder epistemology, oral tradition, and community (2013) is an excellent resource that illustrates the principles of orality, the key role of Elders in learning, and the overall importance of orality within Indigenous specific learning contexts (Christensen & Poupart, 2013). However, the text does not specifically address student assignments and assessment processes for oral learning models in a broader post-secondary environment for all learners.

One article in particular, ‘Assessing Anishinaabe children's narratives: An ethnographic exploration of elders' perspectives’ provides promising insights into assessing children’s stories from Elder’s knowledge and understanding of storytelling (Peltier, 2014). They identified that non-Indigenous formulas to assess stories and deciphering what makes a good story is often not equivocal to the ways in which Indigenous worldviews determine good stories. For this reason, Sharla Peltier (2014), conducted a research study to have Anishinnabemowin speaking Elders listen to stories of children subsequently creating “elder codes” (p. 181) that would demarcate a good story from their cultural perspective. This project allows educators to view storytelling from a culturally relevant perspective which is different from a western academic assessment of literature and narratives. This is helpful for storytelling; however, the validation of stories and information is still left without academic scholarship.

Through this dissertation, I strived to establish a process by way of an oral knowledge system on how to assess stories for information and understanding. I sought to actively challenge the western education system that places written documentation and assessment at the helm of validating knowing while offering ways that we can learn, document, and assess differently. The process that I articulated for assessing stories is not mine however, it was taught to me by Elder Reg Crowshoe to which I created my own interpretation of the teachings. Working with Elders to learn about the systematic process of sharing and validating knowledge is essential if we are serious about honouring Indigenous knowledge in institutions. Educational institutions need to consider how we are bringing students into relationship with knowledge and how we are teaching them to assess and carry that knowledge into their everyday lives. I am responsible for bringing what I have learned into spaces where I teach in order to propose a process that can align western and Indigenous knowledge systems beside each other (for example, see Bouvier and MacDonald, 2019, and Bouvier and MacDonald, forthcoming). As I continue to rely on the third perspective to inform my own pedagogy, refining it in my own practice exposes students to possibilities and broadens their understanding of learning and assessment.

 Living Metis in the city

This inquiry was held accountable to these questions: how do Métis individuals born and raised in urban environments practice, affirm, and express their Métis self-understandings in the city; how do our self-understandings situate within a collective; how do they contribute to individual and collective well-being; do these self-understandings enable us to live well and flourish in the city? Through the stories of six fellow Métis kin, I came to understand the complexities that are held within our experiences as urban-born-raised Métis as the culmination of the ancestral legacies, our own lived experiences, and the cultural continuity of the future. The research questions posed particularly, how do individuals practice their self-understandings in the city, was evident however, the process to arrive at this insight was not cut and dry nor straightforward. I have experienced a great deal of contemplation since these insights and have garnered responsibilities from this very aspect of the process. The responsibilities that are drawn from the insights include, creating spaces, exposing the mundane, building resiliency, relinquishing shame, and living our language. Moreover, I extend the discussion into relationships beyond our Métis community to the kinships in Treaty 7 and how these kinships are important to Métis practices in the city.

Creating Métis specific contexts

 “There is so many things in the city that you can do to reconnect, it’s not about where you are, it’s about what I take, what I hear” (Charmaine)

Our research circle discussed the role of gathering, as Métis, to form a shared purpose and sense of belonging. As Charmaine shared above, where we are does not necessarily matter, but what transpires in that space allows us to connect and affirm relationships. My Métis kin have showed me that through our practices, we are constantly becoming Métis, it is never a stagnant process. This equates to places too. I think to the buffalo brigades that my ancestors would travel with. Setting up temporary homes was part of prairie life; the temporal way of living was not less meaningful than being sedentary as families and kin would be there with them creating Métis places wherever they went. The challenge for those of us living in the city, and for us, in the city of Calgary, is that we are no longer in a Métis specific places with only Métis kin insulating us. Of course, the historic Red River Settlement, the birthplace of my ancestors, was diverse in demographics however, there were communities within communities. With over 1.4 million residents extending over a large land base, finding Métis community can be difficult. Growing up with my father in political positions with the Métis Nation, I witnessed the power of Métis gatherings, and the role Métis specific contexts play in bringing people together. Later, with my own experiences as President for the Calgary Métis Local 87, I too felt the value of place for Métis gatherings and events. I learned from my Métis kin in this inquiry though, is the need for those contexts to have purpose.

Purpose can be something sustained or momentary. My doctoral inquiry, for example, was a momentary process, endured over numerous months for the purpose of exploring and understanding Métis practices in the city that express self-understandings. The circle never stayed physically solidified but was always recreated whenever we got together for the same purpose and with the same individuals. The city, in its vastness, forces us to create these places together. For us in the circle, this specific context was important for individuals to practice telling their stories and to share thoughts and feeling that they never had before. More importantly, practicing sharing with others that may understand their experiences was a key aspect in the efficacy of the shared experience. For our group, explicating the mundane bringing those practices to the forefront our own purview was a purpose that came upon the group. To reach into our experiences to assess our day-to-day for meaning in practices solidifies that process of becoming. Although our families may not have spoken about these ways of daily living, they were continued through generations.

From the onset of our first circle together, I felt the responsibility of creating these future places but I am stalled in thinking about the purpose, dynamics, and ethics of that this entails. I am intrigued by the question, how do Métis place-make in the locales they live? Thinking back to my sentence in the earth kinships section, '“when people dwell in a place overtime, they make sense of who they are through the making of that place” this provokes a curiosity to explore how Métis have contributed in making this place, Calgary, as to have a sense of who they are. I am cautious though as the ethical parameters alert me in questioning - how do we make place in a territory that is not ours, what agreements, if any, do we need to establish to do so?

In our last gatherings, we discussed the appropriateness and timing of disseminating this research. Then, we were not ready to share any information to the larger community. Now, as the kin have had the opportunity to review the dissertation, I can now share this knowledge with others with hopes that it allow others to have relationships with the stories that have been told and perhaps from there, spark their own discussions and places of story and self-understandings will take form.

Tapping into our resiliency

“That’s what I see here, a space where you can build resiliency, a space you can go and say I am a part of the space, its real, I can take guilt, shame, frustration off and be who I am, that what build resiliency, that’s so important when you talk about what’s going to happen after your doctoral work, it has to be maintained somehow, and maybe that will come out of your work” (Reg)

Connectedness to land and more-than-human beings and the ways in which we solidify those relationships in the urban environment is crucial to our self-understandings as Métis. All individuals in the research circle discussed their relationship with the city and feeling connected or disconnected, or both at times, to the natural environment. I was drawn to pay particular attention to the practices with land which were mostly conducted on individual levels. Through the work of Flaminio et al., (2020), the authors affirm the importance of gathering in Métis specific spaces, but also for the purposes of learning from land, sharing women’s teachings, and building community. Métis people rely on large kinship systems to formulate who they are as a cultural body. As Métis scholar, Chris Andersen (2014) stresses, we are a People with a distinct origin story, which sets a criterion for who is and is not Métis. My point here is that we are a collective, and we are Métis because we belong to a collective with a shared historical narrative. Living in cities does not betray this reality, it only challenges us to see ourselves as part of community that may not be visible. Flaminio et al., (2020), in their research study affirmed that Métis women, “learned that our identity as Métis women is interconnected with visiting together with Métis women and that visiting together positively impacts our wellness as Métis women. Métis women expressed that by bringing them together, they felt a sense of community with women” (p. 62). Well-being is consistent with community therefore, practices in the city that nurture and renew our relationships with land and other beings need to be facilitated within a collectivity as to promote a sense of togetherness. Like the outcomes of their research, this inquiry also illuminated the need to us to move from individualized notions of identity to a collective shared identity. Practices in the city need to focus on the strength of our kinship responsibilities to land and how interactions with our natural environment can bring Métis together to learn and nurture stronger relationships with all beings. Our ancestors were able to adapt to new circumstances because they had cultural knowledge harvested from our environments and a sense of community. The city is no different, as a ‘new environment’ we need to rely on the inheritances of our ancestors and the contemporary community for resilience and well-being.  

Laying down the shame

“That I am open to myself and being okay with my past and with family and what they’ve done, I used to feel ashamed” (Charmaine)

A key component of resiliency is being able to engage in difficult conversations that may have been silenced or ignored for a long time, even possibly for generations, and re-story them so that the difficulties become less and less strenuous on our relationships. Our research circle shared with each other that many of our conversations were the first they had experienced. An unintentional impact of the inquiry was the possibility of healing to occur for individuals and families. The inquiry was not designed or geared toward promoting healing among individuals however, Métis kin discussed that the opportunity to share in the group allowed them to articulate difficult aspects of their lives and in turn come into a different relationship with those experiences. Okanagan scholar, educator, and activist Jeanette Armstrong (1996) states, “The Okanagan refer to relationship to others by a word that means "our one skin" (p. 463). For Armstrong, this includes our ancestors that have come before us, and current human kinships that are sharing in this life together. Without family and community, “the person is said to be ‘crippled/incapacitated’ and ‘lifeless.’ Not to have community or family is to be scattered or falling apart” (p. 465). Without our human kinships in these intimate circles, we risk experiencing lifelessness, or soul atrophy. Soul atrophy, as I discussed early in the dissertation, occurs when we are out of rhythm with who we are, with our truest self and as Armstrong (1996) points out, without our human kinships.

In a healthy whole community, the people interact with each other in shared emotional response. They move together emotionally to respond to crisis or celebration. They "commune" in the everyday act of living. Being a part of such a communing is to be fully alive, fully human. To be without community in this way is to be alive only in the flesh, to be alone, to be lost to being human. It is then possible to violate and destroy others and their property without remorse (Armstrong, 1996, p. 469)

Interacting in a shared emotional response induces a sense of safety so people can lay down their shame and other hurts and to engage in the world in full and lively ways. Métis individuals, families, and communities have and continue to suffer through colonization and the legacy of assimilation and genocide (Logan, 2015). Our people have witnessed and endured atrocities that still haunt them and will continue to do so until we, as a community, interact with a shared emotional response. I can see these ghosts in my own family and the relationships with the unresolved emotions was not healthy. Reg, during one research gathering, spoke about ghosts, “emotions and thoughts are ghosts [they] have protocol, and we have to respect them with those protocols and if we don’t, they’ll get the best of us”. My inquiry was not the place to take on this task, but I believe as a community, discussions pertaining to the implications of our experiences with colonialism and the trauma that still exists in our families and communities needs to be addressed so that we can live and thrive.

Living Michif through Michif

As I have articulated elsewhere in this dissertation, from the first gathering of our research circle, I knew that responsibilities were being pressed upon me. This part of the inquiry has been the hardest to settle into; mostly because I am overwhelmed with the large tasks at hand. Stories that have been gifted to me during this research journey need the care and attention they deserve. However, I am reminded – again – that I am not alone in this journey and at the very core of this work is bringing people together for a shared purpose and to continue to build our connections to ourselves, each other, and all beings in our city environment.

First and foremost, the role of language in creating and affirming who we are as Métis is essential. Although I have stated in the heading, living Michif in the city, we are all diverse in our linguistic heritages. With Michif, Cree, and Bungee speakers in our circle, I acknowledge the need to assert diversity within the Métis community as a large entity. Michif is at risk of becoming an extinct language. In the city of Calgary, there are programs that individuals can learn Treaty 7 languages, as well as Cree. Organizations have tried, over several years, to have Michif speakers host language learning sessions but the sessions are often short lived and not consistently available. One organization, Métis Calgary Family Services, has incorporated Michif into their preschool and kindergarten curriculum for many years, but nothing beyond that exists in Calgary. I can speculate why this might be, but more research to understand the environment and climate of Calgary is needed to make specific determinations as to the reasons why Michif is not being taught consistently in Calgary. We know who we are by the language we speak thus, generating language speakers is essential for the continuity of Michif worldview and identity. No one in our group could fluently speak Michif except for the Elders in our circle. In Camperville, Manitoba, there is success in building second generation speakers through the Mentor-Apprentice Program (MAP) (Mazzoli, 2020) where individuals are in an immersive experience with fluent language speakers to acquire linguistic capabilities. There are challenges to reinvigorating language speaking efforts, specifically with the low number of fluent Michif speakers. “With about 100–150 speakers, mixed Michif is thus nearly extinct, and research projects on the language should take this critical situation into account in setting up their research goals and methodologies” (Mazzoli, 2020, p. 59). This information is not new to me as I accounted for this in my master’s thesis in 2016. Since then, I have embarked on my own language learning journey however, my acquired skills seem irrelevant if I do not sustain my efforts. My dad was a Michif speaker and I owe it to him to do all that I can to help with the sustainability of our language.

Kinships in Treaty 7

Living in cities, outside of Métis territories, has implications on how we enact ourselves as visitors in other nations lands. Southern Alberta is not our ancestral territory, but part of the large geography that Métis people relied on to form alliances, extend kinship systems, trade and sell goods, and acquire food sources (Loyer and Voth, 2019). Although I am a born and raised Calgarian, my ancestors are not from this place therefore I have an obligation to act as if I am a guest in someone else’s home.

Southern Alberta does serve a long history for Métis through kinships, settlements, land scrip, and relationship with buffalo. When the Métis homeland map was released by the Métis National Council in 2018, controversy arose and the map was called into question (CBC news). The map, and its designation of what is Métis homeland, was a topic in many of my conversations especially when the land to which I reside is not Métis. Individuals were very vocal with their opinions of the map and rightfully so. A possible benefit caused by the release of the map, I believe, is that it became clear that critical conversations are needed between nations and communities that dwell and interact together in urban environments. Specific to Métis communities that are in territories of other nations, discussion is useful in determining how we can live well together. Living as Michif, Métis, means living our values which include wahkohtowin. The imposed dichotomy of First Nation and Métis people have caused long time riffs in places where kinship relations used to exist (Innes, 2008). Instead of seeing ourselves segregated from our relatives and kin, we need to acknowledge that many of us come from the same lineage and it was the tactics of the government that divided us in the first place (Fiola, 2015; Lawrence, 2004; Logan, 2015). Métis Peoplehood, is cinched together by the act of making relatives, people-people relationships (Andersen, 2014). The practice of making relatives is a process that is within Métis self-understandings and transcends the boundaries of city and is invoked as we reside in other’s territories.

Currently, the city of Calgary is the home to Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA) Region 3 main office, as well as the Métis Nation of Alberta Local 87 Centre, both arms of the Métis Nation of Alberta. The inquiry did not discuss membership to these political organizations in their stories nor any political activities they participated. Growing up in the Métis Nation of Alberta and having most of my community experiences at events hosted by the MNA in Calgary, I might be blind to see a different Métis community in the city. Is the MNA synonymous with community in this context? If we are not conceiving political organizations as pods for our becoming, what is the community we are creating and reaffirming for our collectivity. Research on urban experiences of Métis people is important to expand the understanding of Métis identity. Research on the collectivizing of Métis community is equally important to grow our conceptualization of how Métis commune, gather, and organize in the city (see Hancock, 2021 for this discussion).

Belonging to Calgary means honouring the relations of this territory and renewing those relationships on a regular basis. Learning from Reg in the oral knowledge system, while knowing the natural laws that come from this place, informs me that as a Métis, to practice who I am, is to honour the teachings of the people of this place. Having Reg and Rose Crowshoe guide the methodology of this inquiry was a small way in which I can be a good relative to my kin in this city. Understanding ourselves as Métis in this territory was not a direction the research took; practicing our own stories of our Métisness was most prevailing. There is a great need for research to be conducted, in Southern Alberta, that illustrates the kinship systems that exist between the Métis and the Nations of Treaty 7 (Devine, 2010/11; Hancock, 2021). The inquiry of this research scratched the surface in understanding our day-to-day practices in our Métis contexts and much is desired to understand our practices and how they are further informed by the traditions and customs of this place.

Conclusion

Cities can be carnivorous places; they can consume and encourage us to conform and assimilate into mainstream society (Burley 2013; Campbell, 2019; Logan, 2015). This causes feelings of disconnect and not belonging. Moreover, Métis historicity specifically, is a story of diaspora (Fiola, 2021; McCall, 2012) caused by colonial violence. Before 1885, and more significantly thereafter, some of our people fled their homes out of fear of being Métis and sought refuge away from our homeland. Particularly for us living in Calgary, we are acutely aware of our displacement. This displacement is felt in knowing we are in other nations territory, but also, that the Métis history in Calgary is only coming into the purview of understanding the city as inclusive of Métis historicity and lifeways. Cities are places of reconnecting and practicing our Métis self-understandings, but more work needs to happen to bring other Métis together to share in stories of resilience, everyday practices, and how we can act as a collective community that promotes the health and well-being of Métis in the city of Calgary and other urban environments. Métis educator and scholar, Robert Hancock (2021) calls to Metis researchers, “we can understand ourselves and recognize each other as Métis through a collective memory of dispossession of our homeland, and we do not have to delay our project until we have returned” (p. 49). The stories of our research collective are indicative that we have an inherent right to belong, we always have, and we always will. The Métis principle of wahkohtowin – being in relationship with a living universe reifies this. We are, kaa-waakohtoochik: the ones who are related to each other.