Healing and Resiliency

The impact of Residential Schools and other forms of cultural genocide that were imposed on Indigenous people in the past continues to affect Indigenous communities up to this day. Although Indigenous people todays did not experience the terrible and traumatic events first-hand, they continue to feel the effects of the trauma because of the absence of healing process in the past generations. Indigenous communities continue to struggle today because of lack of representation, misrepresentation of the past and their stories and stereotypical views that are still persistent in today’s world. But despite of the collective trauma that Indigenous people has gone through, they remain resilient as they continue to work towards healing today.

“So gently I offer my hand and ask, / Let me find my talk/ So I can teach you about me.”

This is the last stanza of Rita Joe’s poem, I Lost My Talk. This poem, this passage specifically, stood out to me during the poem presentations in class. The poem illustrates the terrible impacts of residential schools, but rather than conveying blame and anger, the author suggests a path to move forward by bridging the gaps to understanding Indigenous people’s history and culture. She is gently asking for the opportunity to reconnect with her Indigenous background and regain what she lost so she can reclaim her identity and culture to teach others about Indigenous perspectives. This poem shows the resilience of Indigenous people that despite of what they have gone through in the past, they want to educate people about the past to increase understanding of the past and foster empathy for Indigenous peoples and their communities.

Although Indigenous people’s resilience is something admire and honour, it does not mean that they can easily get over what happened in the past. Tommy Orange has a strong opinion on Indigenous people being recognized as resilient. In There There, he talks about how Indigenous people has never healed from what colonization took from them. He stated, “don’t make the mistake of calling us resilient. To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived, is no badge of honor” (137). I think what Oranges is trying to say here is that Indigenous people are celebrated for being able to adapt to adversity when they should not have been put through those situations in the first place. In a way, labelling Indigenous people as resilient is trying to mask what happened in the past by expecting them to be able to just get over it or to be able to deal with the aftermath. I think this passage is something to think about especially how it is being used and in what context. Indigenous people continue to move towards healing, but Orange is suggesting that they should not be define by the pain from the past because their experience does not make them lesser people.

Orange, Tommy. There There. McClelland & Stewart, 2019.

I'm surprised that this post has not gotten more attention, Hazel. You've articulated a well rounded and sophisticated interpretation of how Orange could be viewing the praise that the Indigenous population receives for being resilient and how he believes they could more forward towards emotional and generational healing. The definition of what makes a person resilient and the philosophy of actually requiring it as a learned skill has been a hot topic in our education circle in the past week; should our focus as teachers be directed towards explicitly teaching the skills of resilience or should we be attemptting to analyze and solve the instances that create traumas that require children to be resilient from the source? This philosophical debate has merit to either side, but I believe that you are on the right track in pinpointing Orange's stance towards resiliency as seen through the West's patronization of Indigenous trauma by assimilation and residential schools. The Eurocentric improvisation of empathy by praising Indigenous survival does not actually celebrate Indigenous people: it reiterates their trauma. It reminds them that the atrocities and inhuman treatment that they were subject to were beyond their control. In my mind, Orange does not appreciate being praised for being resilient when he had no other choice but to survive. For him, the praise of surviving might convey that Indigenous populations are merely the pawns in the Eurocentric world's game of chess, always being prodded to move forward and sacrificed by another's choices.