Thread by @Cree8Dawn

Ok...

This will be a long one. It has been a while but I strongly feel this information needs to be understood.

These are the notes I made for a keynote address I gave at Yellowhead Tribal College on "Injunuity in Academia"

First and foremost...I do not claim to be the be all and end all authority on what I am going to share with you. There are other versions in other places. I am only going by what I know.

I have done this talk in front of the Elders who teach this. They felt it was good.

This speech had 4 main parts and I split them up for anyone who wants to consider this teaching.

Not everything I have to say is verbatim. My goal was to model integration and application of oral history and ceremony. Please forgive me for my mistakes or if I offend.

I am doing this in light of a movement of FN education to the provinces. I am also doing it in light of the push back against teaching of Treaty in Provinces like Saskatchewan. I am doing it because the "core" subjects funding is tokenizing culture and language.

Part 1: The Disconnect

I was raised believing that every human being that came into this world was intrinsically lovable. We were all beautiful and privileged in that we were human beings. We had a special and unique relationship with Creator and all his creation.

Because I was born Human, I have a purpose for being here. I will have to figure it out but I will have help. I have Rights as a human being...but if I claim those rights then I must also claim the responsibility. There are no rights without reciprocal responsibility. For

example: I have the right to be heard. If I want to be heard; I am responsible to listen. I take this right and responsibility very seriously. Even if I don't like you...even if I don't agree with you...I will listen. However, I have no responsibility to hear someone not

making any attempt to honestly listen. Without reciprocity and movement to a new understanding...it is not worth my time. I won't crack my skull open banging my head against a thick wall. I will go over, under, through or around. I move towards better...everytime.

I just felt a shift in the Neechieverse..."Ah-ha, so that's why my kokum/mosum/chapan does that!" Some of you will have never seen some of what I will talk about before but it will be very familiar.

It always bothers me when Elders stop talking...it means I stopped listening.

My first day of kindergarten...I was called a "squaw". I didn't even know what that meant.

My public school education taught me that there was something ugly and bad about me from day one. That being "Indian" was something I should strive to overcome. It held me back.

But...

That wasn't what I was taught by my beautiful Cree and Metis grandmother...I was taught through her love that my humanity was the only thing that mattered. She wanted me to be a good human being.

You spend more time at the school that dehumanizes you than you do with

with Kokum. It is important to spend time with those kokums and mosums if possible.
They have tools for survival. Never underestimate their importance. I have relied heavily on what she taught me before I ever went to school and found out what a squaw was.

PART 2: Pre-Indian Act Education

Before the forced education of the Indian Act, education was something that was the responsibility of women. It was the women who taught you to walk and talk. Who taught you the lessons around who you were as nehiyaw or denesuline or nitsitapi

It was important to know that language. That language came from the land. It let you know who you were and what your people held in highest esteem.

Everything stemmed from knowing that land and the language that developed around it.

As you got older, the women shaped you...

they made you go spend time with this person or that person until you found the thing that was yours and you mastered it.

No disposables.

A well rounded education that prepared you for life in this place. We had mathematicians. We had star mappers, navigators, historians

we had weatherpeople and people who knew so much about the plants and animals here that they could cure just about any disease known here.

The women made sure every generation knew everything that it needed to know to continue. We were not lost nor uneducated.

Part 3: The Treaty Right to Education in Treaty 6 Territory

So, I have heard this story told slightly differently in different places. Saskatchewan is slightly different from Saddle Lake and slightly different in Maskwacis again. They all have a stick called "Education"

The education requested in that stick was not the education that we received. No one would have ever agreed to having their children taken away from the mothers and women. They would never agreed to the loss of language, the loss of culture through the church and IRS.

I have spent much of my adult life trying to understand Treaty 6. Not just the text but also the Spirit and Intent...the ceremony and how that applies...TODAY! What I am absolutely certain of...is that on our part...the intent was mutual benefit and abundance.

Part 4: Understanding the Treaty Right to Education

So the first time I heard about the Sticks of Treaty Six...I did not yet know about Pre-Indian Act Education so I did not make the connection until after I heard it the 4th or 5th time. But one day sitting in a circle with

the Treaty 6 bundle...I allowed my mind to ponder on all those things that I knew about education both pre and post Indian Act. I was reciting over and over what each stick meant when I got stuck in a holding pattern. I jumped back and forth between the 4th stick and the 8th.

The 4th, 5th & 6th stick speak of our relationship to the earth, the water and the air...they give us the right to continue our lives as we always had. Many people have minimized these rights to just being able to hunt and fish...but the teaching around those sticks speaks to

that reciprocal responsibility with all those entities and creations. But even more important...it keeps our Indigneous education in tact. The relationship to the land forms the language...the language defines worldview and value structure. Our education was completely

entrenched in those 3 sticks. So why specifically negotiate a separate stick called "education"?

Simply, they wanted their descendants to have access to learning to read & write. They wanted to learn new technologies and acquire new knowledge but not at the expense of their

language, culture and unique humanity.

This is what I believe to be true with my whole being...

We are the first generation with the ability and capacity to live the wholeness of that Treaty Right to Education...but we are responsible to take it. It is our birthright but not

a guarantee. We must fight for it. They gave us everything we need...in those oral traditions and history. We go to battle every day in an education system designed to assimilate us.

We have forgotten how to make things connect because we stay in those boxes "society" put

us. Where we are and how we got here...were never intended for us.

So when you see me fighting for that Treaty Right to Education...it is because I know that it isn't just about "core curriculum" and meeting "provincial standards"

Some extremely forward thinking and wise

people; created a bundle & a history for us that we would not lose our way. Treaty education in this country is deeply flawed & lacking. But there is hope. If I can see this perhaps, so will others.

Fight for your Treaty Right to Education, the real one. The fullsome one.

ekosi