For The Wild - ILLUMINATING WORLDVIEWS on Emotional Competency S1_1

00:00:00.000 over the past few months i have journeyed to the yukon in partnership with illuminating

00:00:14.180 worldviews illuminating worldviews serves as a space to examine the worldviews amidst which

00:00:19.920 we find ourselves and see how they actively shape the material realities of our lives

00:00:26.220 This project, rooted and colored by the land of the Yukon, makes space for questioning, examination, and future visioning centered in indigenous ideology and the sentiment of journeying.

00:00:39.300 In person and on the land, I had the chance to speak with incredible thought leaders with deep connections to the Yukon, all with a live audience in the beautiful city of Whitehorse,

00:00:51.240 except for the last event which was in dawson city though the series is deeply local it has

00:00:59.460 broad implications for our culture as a whole and i'm so excited to share it with you this series

00:01:04.860 was produced thanks to the generous support of the team at illuminating worldviews held by the

00:01:09.760 river collective and the northern council for global cooperation we are so grateful to the

00:01:15.380 organizers, speakers, and audience members who made this series possible, and also a very big

00:01:21.340 thank you to the land of the Yukon, the boreal forest, the rivers, the lakes. I am honored to

00:01:27.600 have been asked to be a part of this. In this episode, I'm joined with Dr. Lee Brown and Elder

00:01:36.660 Mark Wedge to discuss emotional competency and how we can regulate ourselves amidst all that

00:01:42.440 this world brings. Dr. Lee Brown is the former director of the Institute of Aboriginal Health

00:01:48.840 in the College of Health Disciplines and the Indigenous Doctoral Program in the Department

00:01:52.960 of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, where he wrote his doctoral

00:01:57.860 thesis entitled Making the Classroom a Healthy Place, the Development of Effective Competency

00:02:03.880 in Aboriginal Pedagogy. Mark Wedge has long been actively involved in economic and social

00:02:10.020 development, land claims negotiations, ceremonial leadership, and dispute resolution in his

00:02:16.320 community and throughout Canada and the United States. Mark currently sits on the Board of

00:02:21.760 Governors of UConn University, chairs the Tagish River Habitat Protection Area Steering Committee,

00:02:28.060 is a guiding elder of the Illuminating Worldviews Project,

00:02:31.220 and is leading his nation's treaty negotiations with British Columbia.

00:02:34.840 but you cannot do colonization with a natural heart it's our native belief that human beings

00:02:45.420 are naturally loving naturally loving people the real essence of decolonization is to regain our

00:02:50.640 heart. Okay, Jodi, thank you so much for inviting me here. Thank you all for joining us this rainy

00:03:07.500 evening. As I was sitting with these two gentlemen earlier, I was informed that tonight we are going

00:03:15.140 to be speaking about the divine nature of reality. So get ready. We're going in deep.

00:03:22.800 I actually thought it would be nice to start off with a quote from Dr. Lee to ground us in tonight's

00:03:29.880 many themes. Quote, humankind has gone through a suppression of the heart, which has caused a

00:03:37.660 split away from the values of interconnection. We educate the mind, but do not educate the heart

00:03:44.200 in emotional development. So gosh, that's a big one. And I want to break that down,

00:03:52.300 not just for those of you sitting there, but for myself as well. And I think to start us off,

00:03:58.120 I'm wondering if you, Dr. Lee, can offer us a bit of a background on what emotional competency is

00:04:08.100 and how the framework that emotion and reason are distinctly separate,

00:04:14.780 and that's become integrated into our earliest childhood education systems.

00:04:21.740 A person is emotionally competent if they're driving down the road

00:04:26.940 and somebody really upsets them and they do not go into road rage.

00:04:32.620 Tough room.

00:04:33.640 a person is emotionally confident

00:04:39.260 if they can choose

00:04:41.740 because emotions are always a choice

00:04:44.060 no other human being ever makes you feel anything

00:04:47.220 an emotionally confident person

00:04:50.200 can choose the emotion

00:04:52.500 that is healthiest for them

00:04:54.460 in the moment that they are in

00:04:57.320 an emotionally confident person

00:05:01.580 has the skill to change from one emotion to another

00:05:06.620 when that is something that they need to do

00:05:09.700 for their well-being.

00:05:14.360 So this requires people to have the capacity

00:05:16.620 to identify emotions,

00:05:19.520 to communicate them to others or within themselves,

00:05:22.800 to understand the feedback process of emotion,

00:05:26.080 to have developed emotional skills,

00:05:28.100 and to have, in this day and age,

00:05:33.380 undergone maybe a little bit of emotional healing

00:05:35.320 because for us as human beings

00:05:37.420 to return to emotional maturity

00:05:40.900 and get out of some of the insanity

00:05:43.780 that we're involved in on the face of the earth,

00:05:47.200 there's two things we have to do.

00:05:49.900 We have to heal ourselves of the past hurts

00:05:52.640 and we have to educate our children

00:05:57.100 from 1st to 12th grade

00:05:58.960 and how to be emotionally competent.

00:06:02.720 Right now,

00:06:03.960 the British Columbia educational system

00:06:06.340 is 98% cognitive.

00:06:09.820 And I think I can take a little credit

00:06:11.220 for the fact that it's 2% social and emotional

00:06:14.480 because it used to be 100% cognitive.

00:06:17.340 We educate the heart,

00:06:19.300 but we do not educate the mind.

00:06:22.380 We educate our children as if they are psychopaths.

00:06:25.180 we educate our children as if they are social paths

00:06:28.900 we educate our children

00:06:30.840 as if they have no emotional state

00:06:32.520 if they do have

00:06:34.900 an emotional state

00:06:35.800 in the school system they're often in trouble

00:06:38.160 they're often asked to leave the classroom

00:06:40.580 our children are pushed along

00:06:42.940 until they're pushed out

00:06:43.800 many come to school

00:06:46.980 the first day

00:06:47.480 many come to school the first day of school

00:06:50.500 as five or six year old children

00:06:52.880 have multi-generational trauma

00:06:54.360 I was one of those children that had multi-generational trauma.

00:06:59.560 And it's not dealt with.

00:07:02.700 There's no healing aspect.

00:07:04.680 I think it's time to think, and I do a lot of teacher trainings.

00:07:08.240 I just did a teacher training for 200 teachers in the community of Splat Senior,

00:07:11.900 in to be British Columbia.

00:07:14.260 And I know that teachers tell me all the time that the curriculum's full,

00:07:18.340 there's no room to do anything, there's no space, they're overworked,

00:07:20.860 they're underpaid, all that's true.

00:07:22.660 still I think it's time to think of the teacher

00:07:25.560 as a healer

00:07:26.120 we need some healing of the hurts that we've been

00:07:29.620 through, it's very hard to develop emotional

00:07:31.580 skills if you're hurting really badly

00:07:33.260 people are hurting

00:07:35.020 I was thinking

00:07:37.820 as Lee was talking

00:07:38.840 how the heck did I get into this stuff

00:07:41.040 whatever happened

00:07:42.780 I remember

00:07:44.660 at schools

00:07:46.500 I have a problem, I only speak half

00:07:49.760 a language

00:07:50.300 and that half the language is English

00:07:53.660 because I don't know Tagish

00:07:56.320 I don't know Tlingit

00:07:57.320 and I've worked with it

00:07:59.540 one of the things I asked Auntie Angela

00:08:02.220 and my mother Dora Wedge

00:08:03.860 just one summer

00:08:04.820 because I thought I'm going to learn

00:08:05.900 I'm going to learn a language

00:08:06.900 and I said 1.00

00:08:08.420 don't speak to me in anything but Tlingit

00:08:10.860 and they kind of joked and laughed

00:08:13.240 they said you're just trying to get out of work

00:08:14.920 but I did notice something

00:08:18.120 sometimes they would be stalking in Taggish

00:08:21.160 and somebody would walk into the room

00:08:24.180 and they would switch to English.

00:08:27.840 I thought, that's interesting.

00:08:30.720 Right?

00:08:31.700 And then later on, Mrs. Stenbratton,

00:08:34.060 bless her heart and soul, 0.99

00:08:35.400 who was the English teacher.

00:08:36.880 And in grade 12,

00:08:39.660 I went up for final exam.

00:08:43.060 You had to go up to the front of the class

00:08:44.580 and you had to get your exam

00:08:46.560 and go down to write them.

00:08:48.120 So I went up to get my exam and she looked up and said, who are you?

00:08:53.620 I said, then Mark, because I'm on a list.

00:08:58.140 He said, where have you been all year?

00:09:01.440 And I thought, I never missed a class.

00:09:06.100 And I think one of the things, that's why I don't speak Tagish and Tlingit today. 1.00

00:09:09.800 And I know Lee will talk more about that in terms of how we suppress a learning process 0.98

00:09:14.500 and how we build these things.

00:09:16.260 So I was going to be bold, and I decided I'm going to write the Minister of Education what I thought about, because I was graduating, I figured they can't kick me out of school now.

00:09:27.600 I don't know if anybody remembers Hilda Watson, who was then the Minister of Education.

00:09:32.380 So I wrote her a letter, and I said, Madam Minister, you might want to think about how we look at education of Indigenous peoples.

00:09:43.760 oftentimes we don't learn as individuals we learn as collectives we learn groups and we

00:09:50.380 learn these things and if there's something that you could do towards looking at

00:09:54.620 that kind of a learning process it would be great

00:09:57.680 i never got a response and that's not a criticism because i think the thing is is that what happens

00:10:06.600 a lot of times you know how do you how do you promote change and i think that's when we talk

00:10:11.460 about illuminating worldviews, stuff that Lee is doing,

00:10:14.280 some of this stuff, how do we start changing systems

00:10:17.440 that are so, and again, it's not a blame or anything,

00:10:20.520 but the systems have become so entrenched, right,

00:10:23.840 that you start saying to actually start changing

00:10:26.040 those systems, it's really hard.

00:10:30.300 Anyway, I think one of the things that helped me a lot

00:10:32.740 and started looking at, and this is where we were

00:10:34.160 in the last couple of days, we started talking about

00:10:36.040 these types of things of where a comment by,

00:10:38.800 one comment by a teacher that, right,

00:10:42.180 potentially stopped me learning my language.

00:10:45.960 You know, and it's not a blame.

00:10:48.080 It's just, you know, it was sort of,

00:10:51.140 but that's how I was emotionally immature

00:10:53.980 to be able to process that hurt

00:10:56.680 as I'm learning from my esteemed brother.

00:11:00.240 A word that I'm being reminded of

00:11:02.740 that you both spoke to is suppression.

00:11:05.260 And I would really like for us to take a moment

00:11:08.280 to maybe have a little lesson on the history of this emotional suppression

00:11:13.700 back to the Stoics.

00:11:17.560 And I think that could really help us understand how we came

00:11:21.240 or got to where we are now.

00:11:24.940 Well, I was the director of the Institute for Aboriginal Health

00:11:27.440 at the University of British Columbia for the last 10 or 12 years of my career,

00:11:30.700 and that was a wonderful job.

00:11:33.300 And before that, I directed a doctoral program with PhD students.

00:11:38.280 And during that time, the University of British Columbia decided to get a new model.

00:11:43.260 They paid a firm $400,000 to develop a new model for the University of British Columbia,

00:11:47.600 MOTTO, M-O-T-T-O.

00:11:50.960 And $400,000 got them four words.

00:11:55.660 Five, if you count UBC.

00:11:58.240 UBC, a place of mind.

00:12:04.020 Not a place of mind and heart.

00:12:05.380 not a place of mind heart body and spirit not a place of holistic and healthy learning

00:12:11.920 a place of mind a place that continues what one of our beautiful

00:12:17.980 Mi'kmaq sisters calls the cognitive oppression of mankind which you know when I went to do my

00:12:27.080 doctoral work I'd had a really great teacher when I was doing my master's named Dr. Daniel Jordan 0.99

00:12:34.520 and they had another great teacher named Dr. Donald Streets.

00:12:39.200 Dr. Jordan was the first professor of my life

00:12:41.460 where I lost track of time in the classroom.

00:12:44.580 It was 9 o'clock. Bam, it was noon.

00:12:48.260 Other classes was 9 o'clock.

00:12:50.320 Three hours later, it was 9.15.

00:12:54.960 And when I took the doctoral seminar

00:12:56.620 at the University of British Columbia

00:12:57.920 about 20 to 25 years ago,

00:13:01.920 you know, you have to read a lot of stuff.

00:13:04.520 One of the articles I had to read said,

00:13:06.840 you can do a PhD in education on any topic you want.

00:13:11.080 It said, this is what it said, accept emotion.

00:13:15.220 Don't make the mistake of studying emotion.

00:13:18.660 Emotion is not a valid academic topic.

00:13:21.080 That's an exact quote.

00:13:23.300 So I had to argue to do my PhD in emotion.

00:13:26.600 People didn't want me to.

00:13:28.080 Emotional education, making the classroom a healthy place,

00:13:32.580 educating the heart along with the mind.

00:13:38.840 I trace the suppression of emotion in education

00:13:41.860 back to a guy named Zeno, a Greek mathematician.

00:13:46.900 I like mathematicians.

00:13:49.040 I consider myself a mathematician.

00:13:52.580 I think mathematician is very important because,

00:13:55.100 I think math is very important because math is a symbol system

00:13:57.660 in which we understand the environment.

00:13:59.780 it. When people are good at math, the Earth is taken care of. People are not good at math

00:14:04.680 now, and Earth is not being taken care of. But anyway, I traced it back to Zeno. He thought

00:14:12.360 emotions were not good. He got some other guys that agreed with him, and they formed

00:14:16.640 an organization that changed the course of human history, the Stoics. They begin the

00:14:22.140 emotional suppression of the European heart, the colonization of Europe, the colonization 0.84

00:14:28.540 of the heart.

00:14:30.720 Zeno had some amazing students.

00:14:33.080 Plato.

00:14:34.540 Between Zeno and Plato, emotions went from

00:14:36.540 being not too good, and this is an exact quote,

00:14:38.780 the source of all evil.

00:14:41.280 The source of all evil.

00:14:44.020 Aristotle

00:14:44.440 said, there's no place for emotions

00:14:46.580 in the classroom.

00:14:48.440 He was also a student of Zeno.

00:14:50.780 For 2,000 years,

00:14:52.420 Europeans colonized themselves.

00:14:53.640 I'm not putting anybody down.

00:14:56.040 But you cannot do colonization

00:14:57.640 with a natural heart.

00:15:01.280 It's our native belief

00:15:02.180 that human beings are naturally loving,

00:15:04.200 and naturally loving people wouldn't do that.

00:15:08.260 It culminated with Descartes,

00:15:10.640 I think, therefore I am.

00:15:13.760 He didn't say I think and feel, therefore I am.

00:15:16.800 The exact quote is,

00:15:18.980 I think, therefore I am a man.

00:15:22.820 And if you do not think,

00:15:24.780 you are not a man,

00:15:25.680 which means that if you feel too much

00:15:29.520 you are not a man

00:15:30.640 the ultimate suppression of emotion

00:15:35.760 you know there was a TV show sometime

00:15:41.500 on the History of Canada

00:15:42.340 that's on the Knowledge Network

00:15:43.300 and it shows the historical incident

00:15:44.740 of a year of a Catholic priest

00:15:46.480 no offense to Catholics

00:15:47.480 of a Catholic priest going out 0.50

00:15:51.100 to a year-on village

00:15:52.060 and distributing dolls

00:15:54.560 to the children of that village

00:15:55.720 each doll had in it

00:15:57.040 a piece of a smallpox blanket.

00:16:00.180 I don't know if you know

00:16:01.220 what smallpox looks like

00:16:02.280 but it is a horrendous death.

00:16:04.940 Smallpox is a horrendous death.

00:16:07.500 That means there was a man 0.98

00:16:08.580 with what I consider 1.00

00:16:12.060 to be a colonized heart

00:16:13.200 that reached down to children

00:16:15.220 and gave them a smallpox doll

00:16:16.920 knowing that in three weeks

00:16:18.900 they'd be dead.

00:16:21.740 Who could do that?

00:16:22.740 who could do that but a person with a suppressed heart

00:16:26.280 I had that wonderful experience

00:16:29.000 15 or so years ago of being the keynote speaker

00:16:32.380 for the German Association of Psychiatry

00:16:34.880 a world association of German psychiatrists

00:16:38.480 who have an annual meeting

00:16:40.900 and I was a keynote speaker on Saturday night

00:16:45.260 on Friday night the keynote speaker was a woman named Joy DeGru

00:16:47.860 and she wrote a book called

00:16:51.700 Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. 0.98

00:16:53.960 I think that's the correct title.

00:16:56.000 And she said,

00:16:57.680 so many Africans were thrown overboard from slave ships

00:17:00.320 that the sharks began to follow the ships.

00:17:04.800 The pattern of shark migration to the Atlantic Ocean to this day

00:17:08.240 follows the pattern of the slave ships

00:17:09.880 from Africa to South America to Central America to North America,

00:17:14.540 including to Canada.

00:17:15.560 There were slave ships that came to Canada.

00:17:16.860 that means

00:17:19.260 that there was a human being

00:17:21.860 who could take another human being

00:17:24.360 sometimes still living

00:17:25.340 sometimes a boy

00:17:26.140 sometimes a girl

00:17:26.880 sometimes a man 1.00

00:17:27.720 and throw him over the edge of a slave ship

00:17:30.700 into an oncoming herd of sharks

00:17:32.920 who could do that

00:17:35.020 but a person with a colonized heart 0.52

00:17:37.980 the 30s of Descartes

00:17:40.920 came to

00:17:41.960 the indigenous people of this land

00:17:45.080 to a man named

00:17:47.560 I have a senior moment

00:17:50.320 to a book called

00:17:54.060 The Treaty of Seon Government

00:17:55.080 by

00:17:55.660 John Locke

00:17:58.540 thank you

00:18:00.680 that's my fifth senior moment today

00:18:02.660 I'm starting to get a little worried about that

00:18:04.160 he went around the east coast 1.00

00:18:08.760 looking at the Cherokees

00:18:09.980 I'm a Cherokee person

00:18:10.820 I'm an Iroquois person

00:18:11.860 looked at other Iroquois tribes

00:18:13.760 and he said

00:18:14.160 these people are entirely too happy.

00:18:17.400 Therefore, they are not.

00:18:21.280 In 1696, John Locke wrote in his book,

00:18:26.520 Terra Nullis, the land is empty.

00:18:30.460 There are no human beings here.

00:18:34.560 John Locke thought that they were not human.

00:18:39.140 They say in the churches of eastern Canada

00:18:41.500 and eastern United States in the 1700s,

00:18:43.360 every church had two books,

00:18:44.460 the Bible and the

00:18:45.160 tradition on government

00:18:45.920 by John Locke.

00:18:47.800 Ministers read from

00:18:48.780 the tradition on government

00:18:49.560 by John Locke,

00:18:50.600 the land is empty,

00:18:51.360 you can take the land,

00:18:52.180 nobody's here.

00:18:53.840 There's no human beings here.

00:18:56.640 John Locke also wrote 0.98

00:18:57.760 that it's a duty of Christianity 0.97

00:18:58.920 to suppress the hearts 0.98

00:19:03.620 of African people,

00:19:06.040 Asian people,

00:19:07.920 and Amerindians,

00:19:08.860 as he called us,

00:19:09.440 or Native Americans,

00:19:10.880 so they can be,

00:19:12.280 and this again is an exact quote

00:19:14.560 almost as good as an Englishman

00:19:17.160 if our hearts could just be suppressed

00:19:20.420 we could be almost as good 0.99

00:19:22.940 as a European

00:19:24.300 according to Descartes, Sino and Plato and Aristotle

00:19:26.760 and this came to us

00:19:29.480 in many native communities

00:19:31.380 through the residential schools

00:19:33.600 Canada sent a man named Davin

00:19:36.580 down to the United States

00:19:37.520 to look at our boarding schools

00:19:38.500 which still exist

00:19:39.280 then he came back and he wrote a

00:19:43.500 he wrote a paper to the Canadian government

00:19:45.480 and in the third paragraph of the first page

00:19:48.260 following the thinking of

00:19:51.380 John Locke and Descartes

00:19:53.600 he said in the third paragraph he said

00:19:56.880 the first duty of a residential school

00:20:00.000 will be to suppress the emotions of their ancestors 0.89

00:20:02.180 the first duty of the residential school

00:20:06.280 must be to suppress the emotions of their ancestors

00:20:08.680 and so we have been

00:20:13.200 suppressed

00:20:14.040 I have been suppressed in my life

00:20:16.540 I'm in recovery

00:20:18.020 the real essence of decolonization

00:20:21.580 is to regain our heart

00:20:22.940 to regain

00:20:25.220 our values and our emotions

00:20:27.540 but we need the schools

00:20:31.140 to bring the competency

00:20:32.200 we need every lesson plan

00:20:34.740 from first grade to twelfth grade

00:20:36.220 to have an aspect of emotional learning.

00:20:39.160 Imagine the kind of human being we could produce.

00:20:43.160 So, we as human beings, all of us together,

00:20:48.960 we are in the same boat.

00:20:52.040 We're in the same boat.

00:20:53.360 Our hearts have been suppressed.

00:20:55.740 Look what's happening in the world.

00:20:58.040 How many people were bombed today?

00:21:00.600 How many people were killed today in wars in different places in the world?

00:21:03.980 how many people are exiled and homeless

00:21:07.620 how many people are homeless in the city of Vancouver

00:21:10.140 so here's a statement

00:21:13.280 the sum total of a society's moral competence

00:21:17.720 is the emotional competence

00:21:20.120 of the individuals in the society

00:21:22.180 moral competence is an aspect

00:21:26.220 of emotional development

00:21:28.040 not spiritual development, emotional development

00:21:30.400 spiritual competence is spiritual development

00:21:34.420 Moral confidence is our ability as a society

00:21:36.760 to take care of each other,

00:21:39.100 ensure that everybody has a good diet,

00:21:43.180 everybody has good food, everybody has good housing.

00:21:45.840 There's more than enough for everybody.

00:21:48.160 There's enough money in the world right now

00:21:50.220 in American dollars.

00:21:53.040 Actual money in the world, I'm talking about money,

00:21:56.480 for every human being to have $3 million.

00:22:00.020 Do you have $3 million?

00:22:01.760 I don't.

00:22:02.560 it relates to our moral competency

00:22:04.920 some to our emotional competency

00:22:07.220 Stranded light

00:22:17.160 you lift your gaze

00:22:19.580 toward the sun

00:22:21.000 One eye bright

00:22:25.480 I see your eye

00:22:26.700 the other

00:22:27.460 black as the sky 0.99

00:22:29.220 the night your skin 0.99

00:22:31.360 Was on my skin

00:22:32.940 Breath in my lungs

00:22:35.620 You breathe a flower into me

00:22:42.000 That I cannot hide

00:22:46.160 From your name

00:22:54.340 From your mercy

00:23:01.360 Hold your breath now, hold my truth shut in your palm

00:23:17.880 Bound so tight together, fate finds a staying up night

00:23:23.800 The way is easy when the air is still in long

00:23:30.040 Come now climb the ridgeline at first light I feel the wind as it rises

00:23:45.040 From this country, from our bodies.

00:24:15.040 Casting shadows, casting doubt

00:24:22.540 In the harsh day, casks of wine your blood poured out

00:24:30.180 Love may I throw myself from the bridge

00:24:34.440 With the pines as my witnesses

00:24:36.620 If that would bring you back again 0.58

00:24:43.960 Take the flensing knife and place it on my tongue

00:25:13.940 Cut away the words I knew before we met

00:25:19.680 All speaking cast as a spell

00:25:22.540 We need a different tone

00:25:25.460 All singing rings a bell

00:25:31.060 Your voice could be the spring

00:25:33.840 If mine were the sun

00:25:36.100 In its rising

00:25:45.100 In its saddening

00:25:58.100 Flat and sweet memory call the heart

00:26:04.100 Just spare our lives, flesh remembers every word

00:26:11.140 If the hand of time had its way

00:26:15.840 This would pass with the day

00:26:17.740 But will you wait for me

00:26:21.320 When you've been set free

00:26:25.880 To the wind

00:26:30.640 CYCLUS EYES FOLLOW BEHIND

00:26:50.540 ALL DEATH IS BLIND

00:26:53.980 BREATHLESS WIND THE RIBS OF TIME

00:26:57.740 Tell me, was it the western wind that it lasted a sin or was it me?

00:27:07.740 Can't imagine that would make history

00:27:17.740 When every kiss became a petal

00:27:26.740 And every tear molten metal

00:27:32.740 You live on as nectar

00:27:38.740 Honey's scent in the water

00:27:44.740 And the spring is our daughter

00:27:56.740 I dream from every gloom.

00:28:08.820 Go ahead.

00:28:10.260 Mark, do you want to say a comment?

00:28:13.640 Yeah, I'll say a little comment.

00:28:16.160 What makes you cry?

00:28:19.360 You know, there's this guy called Premier Harper.

00:28:22.000 I don't know if people remember him.

00:28:23.600 and Premier Harper

00:28:27.200 because truth and reconciliation

00:28:28.560 and a lot of the work

00:28:29.860 that has been done

00:28:30.560 over the years

00:28:31.140 to start trying to look at

00:28:33.140 how do we correct

00:28:33.980 some of these things

00:28:35.240 so Ken decided

00:28:37.240 to do an apology

00:28:38.240 and I thought

00:28:40.440 I think I'm going to

00:28:41.420 stay home today

00:28:42.280 not go to work

00:28:43.600 because I want to watch this

00:28:45.040 and there's always

00:28:47.140 comments about

00:28:47.920 you know

00:28:48.280 was it sincere

00:28:49.140 was it not sincere

00:28:50.120 what not

00:28:50.560 but when I heard

00:28:52.320 that apology

00:28:52.880 I started crying. I started bawling.

00:28:58.860 And not for me so much.

00:29:01.800 But I thought, my mother had just passed away

00:29:04.520 a year or a half before that, and I thought she needed to hear that.

00:29:09.420 She's the one that needed to hear that. And what he said is,

00:29:12.060 we're sorry. It's not your fault.

00:29:18.180 Those are words that

00:29:20.220 Start a healing process.

00:29:22.060 And it sounds simple, and it can be however you define it.

00:29:25.600 But I think one of the things that happens is that when we start talking

00:29:29.660 and we start looking at truth and reconciliation,

00:29:31.540 we start talking about some of these things.

00:29:34.480 It's those kind of words that are healing words that begin to start,

00:29:37.940 I think, this development.

00:29:39.400 We've been talking about this.

00:29:40.980 What's the first step when you start trying to find your competency

00:29:44.960 as being a human, right?

00:29:47.720 And as we've been discovering and exploring,

00:29:49.780 is that emotions are one of the key beginning places

00:29:53.100 to regain your balance, to regain these things.

00:29:58.720 In about 1920, I think it was the Spanish flu,

00:30:02.840 one of the flus hit the Yukon.

00:30:06.820 And what happened is Uncle Johnny and Uncle Peter

00:30:09.300 were quite young then, took my mother and others,

00:30:13.360 and they went up to this place called,

00:30:14.760 we call it Black Lake or Monroe Lake.

00:30:16.580 and on the southern lakes

00:30:19.440 when the water is freezing up

00:30:22.140 or breaking up

00:30:24.340 you can't travel on the lake

00:30:26.380 it's really hard to travel by boat

00:30:27.940 and I think what they were doing

00:30:29.620 is they were saying

00:30:30.160 how do we protect our children

00:30:31.960 from being exposed to this

00:30:33.660 thing that was happening

00:30:35.680 they knew something was happening

00:30:36.920 with this epidemic that was happening

00:30:39.000 and part of the reason they did that

00:30:41.060 because at that time

00:30:42.880 you would be taken to jail

00:30:46.300 if you didn't let your children go to those schools, 0.98

00:30:48.860 if you kept them out of residential school, right?

00:30:55.100 And I think some of those things that you start talking about

00:30:58.360 is that, you know, and a lot of times, you know,

00:31:02.080 when we talk about intergenerational stuff and things like that,

00:31:04.840 I was up in Fairbanks, we were doing some meetings

00:31:08.020 talking about different things and whatnot.

00:31:09.960 And this young man came to me, and I was pretty young myself then,

00:31:13.460 and he started saying,

00:31:17.040 my parents abandoned me.

00:31:19.780 They left me.

00:31:22.040 I grew up in an orphanage.

00:31:24.620 I grew up in the streets

00:31:25.660 and he was angry at his parents.

00:31:29.620 And I asked him,

00:31:30.680 well, do you know what happened to them?

00:31:33.860 And he said, no,

00:31:35.120 because that's what some of our parents

00:31:36.700 were going through.

00:31:37.280 Do I go to jail

00:31:38.080 or do I save my children?

00:31:41.020 You know, do I,

00:31:42.380 you know, those were,

00:31:43.460 choices and and again that's just sort of what happened right that started this trauma

00:31:48.980 that leads towards suppressed learning process and that's what we've been sort of discussing

00:31:55.780 is that when you start talking about these suppressed emotions that block the learning

00:32:00.720 process and in the colonial structure i was the first one to graduate in my family my family was

00:32:08.620 so proud of me and it was a struggle for me to actually graduate from high school

00:32:13.240 you know, as we talked about.

00:32:15.120 My brothers and whatnot, as soon as they got to 15,

00:32:17.940 they could leave school.

00:32:18.760 They were gone.

00:32:19.420 I'm sure, you know, a lot of our, you know,

00:32:22.000 our parents were that, you know.

00:32:23.700 Once you could leave school, you were gone, right?

00:32:26.480 Because it's not a place you wanted to be.

00:32:29.720 And I think one of the things is that you start looking at this,

00:32:32.380 is this is part of all the stuff, right,

00:32:36.620 that we have to deal with.

00:32:39.460 And I'm so proud of, you know, a lot of teachers out here.

00:32:42.060 because i know you're not blocking through that emotional suppression we've started to move

00:32:46.540 forward right oh there's so much in what both of you have shared and i keep coming back to trying

00:32:56.240 to connect um the heart and values and identity and this is something that we were speaking about

00:33:05.540 earlier that i wrote down um from you lee instinct becomes emotion emotion structures our values

00:33:12.540 values become our identity identity is what we do in life and i i i'd love to follow that

00:33:21.220 train of thought a bit more um because i think it explains a lot of how we got here and how we

00:33:29.780 continue to make the decisions as a dominant culture here's the thing

00:33:35.620 instinct carl jung said when instinct becomes conscious it's an emotion

00:33:44.800 instinct is a natural reaction

00:33:48.680 if i come up behind you make a loud noise you're gonna go like that you're not gonna think oh i

00:33:56.000 should go like that there's no thought there's no feeling just go like that but then there is

00:34:01.560 thought and feeling so instinct becomes emotion and emotion structures as values

00:34:11.140 when dr jordan first got me into this in 1981 i um you know i might go to a lot of traditional

00:34:20.140 gatherings. I go to a lot of ceremonies. I'm a singer for a lot of ceremonies. I sing

00:34:27.760 in six different styles. And occasionally I'd have a nice moment with an elder and I'd

00:34:33.940 say, hey, how did the Indians used to teach emotion? How did we do that? They'd always

00:34:40.000 get this funny look on their face like, what are you talking about? It took me five years

00:34:46.080 to realize I was asking the wrong question. We didn't teach emotions. We taught values.

00:34:52.620 We had societies, like the Sundance Society, for instance, which if you wanted to be a part of it,

00:34:58.660 you had to uphold certain values. And those values were structured emotion. What do I mean by that?

00:35:07.000 Take, for instance, the value of courage. What emotion is in courage? Fear.

00:35:16.080 But there has to be something else to overcome the fear.

00:35:19.080 Possibly love for the people.

00:35:21.540 Caring, compassion, something.

00:35:23.240 Maybe more than two.

00:35:25.740 Every value is two or more emotions.

00:35:28.900 An emotion structure is identity.

00:35:32.280 Dr. Jordan said,

00:35:34.020 an emotion, a value, excuse me,

00:35:37.820 a value is a relatively enduring patterned use of energy.

00:35:42.940 And this devolves into our identity.

00:35:46.080 And to me, the identity has five aspects.

00:35:50.420 And it's very important in school to educate these aspects,

00:35:53.080 and we are not doing it.

00:35:55.000 The first aspect is body awareness.

00:35:58.020 How do you feel about your body?

00:36:01.160 How do you feel about your skin tone?

00:36:04.780 How do you feel about your size of your body?

00:36:09.000 How do you feel about being tall or short?

00:36:11.880 How do you feel about being gay or straight?

00:36:14.120 we should have

00:36:16.320 curriculums that ensure that every

00:36:18.280 child feels good

00:36:19.420 about their physical being

00:36:21.940 we need to educate

00:36:24.140 the self-concept to feel good

00:36:26.120 about our intelligence

00:36:27.040 how many emotions are there

00:36:29.240 I was doing a

00:36:32.220 teacher workshop one time I asked them to list every

00:36:34.060 emotion they could think of they came up with 32

00:36:35.880 teachers

00:36:37.120 there's about 450

00:36:39.460 so they're short over 400

00:36:41.960 emotions that cure the

00:36:43.920 they're teaching are never going to hear about so anyway the moment you begin to have a feeling

00:36:52.700 about how you're feeling you can start to work with changing your emotional state there's a lot

00:36:59.440 of people in our community native and non-native but especially in native community there's a lot

00:37:04.400 let me say there's a lot of guys in the community where i live they're angry they're angry all the

00:37:10.320 time. They're angry

00:37:12.300 at you, and they don't even know why. They're angry

00:37:14.340 at me, you know.

00:37:17.760 I was

00:37:18.280 counseling one around Lake one time,

00:37:21.440 counseling a guy, and he said,

00:37:22.540 oh, wait, he said, man,

00:37:23.980 I've been angry for 25 years,

00:37:26.760 and he didn't know.

00:37:29.720 And I said

00:37:30.420 what a counselor should say.

00:37:32.320 How do you feel about that?

00:37:35.540 You know,

00:37:36.120 how do you feel

00:37:38.220 about being angry.

00:37:42.040 And then you can begin to change

00:37:43.160 as we were sharing earlier.

00:37:45.440 Anger, there's no such thing

00:37:46.680 as a negative emotion.

00:37:48.960 It was the emotion you needed to time.

00:37:51.680 If there's something to be angry about,

00:37:53.620 such as an injustice,

00:37:55.020 then you should be angry.

00:37:58.600 Abdu'l-Bahal said to be angry

00:37:59.760 at an injustice is a virtue.

00:38:03.240 But if you're, the thing is,

00:38:04.960 if you're emotionally competent,

00:38:06.040 then you can do something very positive with that anger

00:38:09.060 you can make a change

00:38:10.020 but if you're emotionally incompetent

00:38:13.540 and your heart has not been educated

00:38:15.180 anger can be very destructive

00:38:17.700 and so

00:38:20.460 in the center of our being

00:38:22.920 we have self-determination

00:38:25.100 which comes from our volition

00:38:28.000 which comes from our will

00:38:29.560 how we feel

00:38:31.600 about what we can become

00:38:34.000 And here's an important statement.

00:38:37.760 All the emotions you will ever have in your life

00:38:40.460 stem from your movement towards

00:38:45.800 what you think you should be.

00:38:48.200 Not what I think you should be.

00:38:49.660 What you think you should be.

00:39:04.000 Sientes el color de toda flor presente

00:39:20.580 Tú sientes el sol de todo ser viviente

00:39:28.660 Siéntese el amor que maneja en nuestro vientre

00:39:38.020 Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh

00:39:58.140 Sienta el esplendor de toda luz consciente

00:40:03.480 Tu ser volador, el corazón, tu puente

00:40:11.480 Sientes el verdor de la propia fuente

00:40:27.480 Maracate, maracate, maracate, tete

00:40:31.480 Maracate

00:41:01.480 Somos, somos, somos tú y yo. Somos, somos, somos, somos tú y yo.

00:41:07.480 La bandera de la tierra, tú y yo.

00:41:11.480 Siempre viva, siempre viva, siempre viva, siempre viva.

00:41:15.480 Yo no creo que valga la pena vivir para ganar.

00:41:22.480 I think it's worth living

00:41:28.080 to do what the consciousness tells you that you should do.

00:41:39.580 And this is worth everything.

00:41:43.220 For life, for love.

00:41:45.020 What seemed to be mud, making them listen to what they have to say.

00:41:53.020 And in this world where so many people speak without saying,

00:41:56.020 they say they say things that are worth listening.

00:42:00.020 And I think that those voices will continue resonating.

00:42:03.020 It's like the love that is infinite while it's hard.

00:42:15.020 The utopia is on the horizon,

00:42:19.020 but I know very well that I will never reach her,

00:42:24.020 that if I walk 10 steps, she will get away from her.

00:42:28.020 The more I look, the less I find her, 0.99

00:42:31.020 because she will get away as soon as I approach her.

00:42:45.020 What is the utopia?

00:42:52.020 Good question, isn't it?

00:42:56.020 What is the utopia?

00:43:01.020 Well, the utopia serves for that.

00:43:06.020 For walking.

00:43:15.020 We'll be right back.

00:43:45.020 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:15.020 I wanted to reflect on how much sense it makes

00:44:40.840 that the colonial project wants us to hate ourselves.

00:44:45.020 um, wants us to be disconnected from the land. It's by design. And, and so I think there's a

00:44:51.220 lot of faults removed in that. Um, and it also reminds me of something we were speaking about

00:44:58.780 earlier, um, stress and illness and the biochemical reality of emotions. And that's bringing in the

00:45:06.600 body, uh, part that both of you just spoke with. So, or two. So I wonder if we could, um, close

00:45:12.900 out this segment of the evening by speaking to the biochemical reality of emotions and

00:45:17.820 and maybe discuss how stress and illness are connected in that okay here's a sentence that

00:45:27.420 sums it up then we'll talk i'll explain the sentence voice tone affects your muscle tone

00:45:35.200 Muscle tone

00:45:37.700 Affects your heart choice

00:45:39.840 Heart choice

00:45:42.160 Affects the reality of your bloodstream

00:45:43.800 The reality of your bloodstream

00:45:46.620 Affects the health of your kidneys

00:45:48.220 Your gallbladder, your pancreas

00:45:49.680 And all the organs of your body

00:45:50.980 Voice tone

00:45:53.660 Affects the way your muscles react

00:45:56.580 If I start yelling at you right now

00:45:59.220 And I haven't yelled in years

00:46:00.400 But if I was to start yelling

00:46:02.540 My body would go like this

00:46:04.060 the heart would start being a little fast

00:46:06.260 and say there must be danger

00:46:07.180 look at least start stressing up

00:46:08.640 we need adrenaline in the bloodstream

00:46:10.460 we need cortisol

00:46:11.380 there's 1400 biochemicals that the heart can choose

00:46:14.760 the heart can choose not the mind

00:46:16.480 and there's lots of professors at UBC

00:46:18.920 that would tell you

00:46:19.640 the heart's just a muscle

00:46:20.780 the heart doesn't do anything

00:46:21.660 but I don't believe that's true

00:46:22.560 whatever is being put in your bloodstream

00:46:26.320 of course it affects the reality

00:46:28.000 of every part of your body

00:46:29.800 and if you have multi-generational stress and trauma what happens when adrenaline goes into

00:46:37.500 the bloodstream and it's just one example of the hundreds that we could use if a guy comes through

00:46:42.280 that door right now with an ak-47 my body's going to start pumping adrenaline and what does

00:46:48.680 adrenaline do it shuts down my kidney function shuts down my pancreatic function shuts down the

00:46:56.200 function of my gallbladder. You got a guy coming out with AK-47, you're not going to be thinking

00:47:02.180 about going to the bathroom, and your bladder shuts down. And what happens if it's pumping

00:47:08.340 right now? When I'm not in danger, because I'm coming out of multi-generational trauma,

00:47:15.140 my kidneys are still slightly shut down. My liver is still slightly shut down. I'm not functioning.

00:47:21.060 I'm not a fully healthy human being

00:47:23.340 that's why emotional education

00:47:26.280 which we've just scratched the surface here tonight

00:47:28.620 that's why it's important

00:47:31.640 to create a human being

00:47:33.840 that is healthy

00:47:35.080 if you make healthy choices

00:47:37.800 if I can tell one more story

00:47:42.280 before we go into questions

00:47:43.680 one of the wonderful things I got to do

00:47:48.440 when I was director of the Institute of Forever Environmental Health

00:47:50.060 us have a garden at UBC Farm, an experimental indigenous garden, and in that garden they

00:47:55.520 had 68 medicinals, 68 medicines, and I often told my students that our first medicine is

00:48:02.160 water, our second medicine is food, and our third medicine are the plants in this garden,

00:48:09.660 the Indian teas, you might say.

00:48:12.880 I developed a youth program to bring youth in care to Vancouver Aboriginal Child and

00:48:17.140 Family Services, bring youth 0.63

00:48:19.200 in care to the garden. It's still going

00:48:21.180 on, even though I'm retired, that program is still going on.

00:48:24.120 But in my time there, I had

00:48:25.080 about 300 youth in care that I

00:48:27.100 brought to the garden.

00:48:28.880 The first thing I would do to them is I would take them over

00:48:31.100 on the first day to a grove

00:48:33.040 of juniper.

00:48:34.840 And offer a little tobacco to the juniper.

00:48:38.080 Because I wanted to

00:48:38.980 tell them what a tobacco offering was,

00:48:41.320 like Mark was saying.

00:48:44.200 And

00:48:44.480 then I'd say, because I offered a little

00:48:46.960 juniper, right? Tobacco, I can take

00:48:48.920 a little piece of juniper and I'd taste it.

00:48:51.380 All the kids would say, oh, can we taste it?

00:48:53.600 Sure. You just have to offer

00:48:54.880 a little tobacco.

00:48:57.080 Why tobacco?

00:48:59.160 Because tobacco is the

00:49:00.860 gold of the plant kingdom and has nitrogen

00:49:02.720 and every plant needs nitrogen.

00:49:05.920 So you're giving the plant

00:49:07.000 something it really needs. You're giving a little

00:49:08.820 tobacco, giving a little nitrogen.

00:49:11.560 And I would say to them,

00:49:12.800 this is juniper. We use it

00:49:14.820 for our first bath.

00:49:16.500 We use it for our last bath.

00:49:19.100 My girls asked me recently,

00:49:20.560 Dad, what do you want for your funeral?

00:49:22.960 I said, well, if you could, you know,

00:49:24.380 if you're up to it,

00:49:26.360 they'll bathe my body with jula per tea

00:49:28.080 and dress me for my funeral.

00:49:30.620 I would like that.

00:49:32.440 I felt really good that they were comfortable enough with me

00:49:34.620 that they could ask me that question.

00:49:36.620 There's a high level of emotional competency right there.

00:49:41.500 Hopefully that won't be right away.

00:49:42.680 But anyway, the point is,

00:49:44.440 here's the point

00:49:46.560 not one of 300 children

00:49:49.000 that came to the farm

00:49:50.040 that had been taken in care

00:49:52.640 some of them from the time of birth

00:49:54.560 for some of them this was their first interaction

00:49:56.680 with the native world

00:49:57.520 not one could identify one tree

00:50:00.660 and this goes

00:50:03.100 to what Mark is saying

00:50:03.980 we'd go to juniper

00:50:06.520 I would teach them about pine

00:50:07.860 I would teach them about balsam

00:50:09.100 and the medicine of balsam and pine

00:50:10.560 fur, the emotional medicine of fur

00:50:12.780 fur is a big tree for emotional health,

00:50:15.280 birch, cedar.

00:50:17.840 And for the rest of the summer,

00:50:18.840 when we go by the juniper's tree,

00:50:20.820 I'd say, what's that?

00:50:22.860 Juniper!

00:50:23.880 And what's it good for? 0.79

00:50:25.460 Kills germs!

00:50:27.520 And for the rest of their life,

00:50:28.680 when they see juniper,

00:50:29.480 they'll know juniper.

00:50:30.500 And here's the thing,

00:50:32.060 meaning brings health.

00:50:34.840 To walk around in the environment,

00:50:37.500 to have an educational system

00:50:39.140 that's unconnected to the environment,

00:50:40.820 we create children

00:50:44.020 for which the earth doesn't have a meaning

00:50:46.600 meaninglessness

00:50:48.400 brings sickness

00:50:49.420 so not only do we have to have a holistic curriculum

00:50:52.760 it has to be connected to the land

00:50:54.260 it has to be connected to the earth itself

00:50:55.860 there's so much going through my mind right now

00:51:00.840 but I do want to

00:51:02.740 share a bit of a story

00:51:03.700 a couple of years ago

00:51:05.220 we were watching the graduation at Yukon University

00:51:08.880 and there was a young gentleman from our community

00:51:13.580 David Gattonsby

00:51:15.540 and he was asked to give the valedictorian speech

00:51:19.760 and he started off

00:51:24.080 and he started saying, you know, I didn't want to come here

00:51:26.520 because I know it's going to be hard to actually get this Bachelor of Business Administration

00:51:30.760 I know it's going to be hard and I was scared

00:51:33.140 could I do it, could I do it

00:51:36.260 and he said you know after going through this he said it's not as hard as a four-day fast

00:51:42.440 a four-day fast is harder and scarier to actually do than a bachelor of business administration

00:51:49.500 and started thinking about that you know because um we have these these these processes and these

00:51:57.320 systems right that actually supplement these learning processes and do we teach spirituality

00:52:04.260 at the school. When Randall was there, he did have sweats

00:52:07.960 at the university, at the college then, right?

00:52:11.800 How are we incorporating? And I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about

00:52:15.980 spirituality. What does it mean, right? You know, to have

00:52:20.200 that dialogue. Because when we start stopping that, when we start forgetting

00:52:24.200 how to be honest and truthful and kind and these things,

00:52:28.120 right? Same with the emotions, we stop feeling.

00:52:31.480 So one of the things I'm struggling with, and I need your help with this, maybe I'll probably get in trouble, but I want to take, I'm going to have courage.

00:52:44.560 What was it?

00:52:45.660 Fear.

00:52:46.160 Overcoming fear.

00:52:47.180 Okay, overcoming fear.

00:52:49.360 Okay.

00:52:52.160 1969, what happened?

00:52:55.700 The eagle landed on the moon.

00:52:57.760 it was a huge scientific endeavor

00:53:01.660 people around the earth

00:53:03.500 cheered

00:53:04.960 to a lot of the indigenous populations

00:53:09.140 there are prophecies that when the eagle lands

00:53:11.420 on the moon something's going to start happening

00:53:13.340 this trail of tears

00:53:17.600 this colonization is going to start

00:53:20.380 on the east coast of Turtle Island

00:53:21.660 it's going to go to the west

00:53:23.620 then it's going to go from the south

00:53:26.840 to the north.

00:53:30.460 But so when the eagle lands on the moon,

00:53:33.260 it's going to change.

00:53:34.520 And there's much more to these teachings,

00:53:36.060 you know, that this is just sort of

00:53:37.380 the short version.

00:53:42.120 After that, when that eagle lands,

00:53:43.840 it's going to be a reversal of that process.

00:53:47.140 The healing will start from the north

00:53:48.980 and start moving south.

00:53:51.620 And then it's going to go from the west

00:53:53.360 and start moving east.

00:53:55.200 It's going to be the reverse of what happened with this colonial, with this hurt.

00:54:01.280 1969, there was something called a white paper.

00:54:05.040 Pierre Elliott Trudeau was asked, if Canada wants to be a nation, what do we have to do?

00:54:10.260 And he said, well, we have to repatriate the Constitution of Canada.

00:54:14.740 We have to get control of this.

00:54:16.100 To be self-governing, we have to have control of it. 1.00

00:54:19.320 And the question was asked, what are you going to do with the Indians? 0.98

00:54:21.480 because they were wards of the state under the Indian Act.

00:54:25.840 They couldn't vote, right? 0.72

00:54:27.520 They couldn't own assets. 1.00

00:54:28.940 They couldn't do a lot of stuff, just like women. 1.00

00:54:35.040 So in 1969, when this white paper came out, 1.00

00:54:39.040 there was a lot of discussion.

00:54:40.740 What do we do?

00:54:41.820 And this guy called Calder in BC said,

00:54:46.000 we have rights.

00:54:47.140 We're not just Canadians.

00:54:49.060 We have rights.

00:54:50.060 we have historical, we have rights

00:54:52.300 and went to the Supreme Court

00:54:53.480 and the Supreme Court said

00:54:55.840 yeah we have rights

00:54:56.760 and we don't know what they are

00:54:58.140 a delegation actually

00:54:59.340 who came from BC, Yukon

00:55:00.820 of indigenous people

00:55:01.720 went to see the Queen

00:55:02.560 the Queen in her wisdom

00:55:05.420 said you have to treat

00:55:07.580 to Canada

00:55:08.400 said you have to treat 1.00

00:55:10.780 these Indians fairly 1.00

00:55:12.420 like we have

00:55:13.220 so we said okay

00:55:16.060 so in order to get

00:55:18.100 that constitution going

00:55:19.340 they created this thing called section 35 of which nobody quite knows what it is

00:55:23.660 and one of the things that started was in the north and they said there's no province here

00:55:30.400 there's no provincial so they said maybe we could start a treaty and a modern treaty process is 11

00:55:35.420 yukon first nations became self-governing out of the eagle landing on the moon it started in

00:55:41.400 1973 there's a document called together today for our children tomorrow elders got together and said

00:55:48.180 look, we've got to start this process, right?

00:55:52.600 1992, first treaties were signed.

00:55:56.560 2005, last four were signed.

00:56:00.380 11 self-governing first nations.

00:56:02.080 Nobody quite knows what it means.

00:56:05.380 1981, the first treaties failed

00:56:08.360 because there was no self-government,

00:56:10.220 there was no land, and there was no cash.

00:56:12.500 And the elders said at that point in time, right,

00:56:15.320 self-government is not good

00:56:16.520 if you don't have access to capital.

00:56:18.180 right and so it was negotiated so when they took the second round

00:56:21.660 those things self-government became a part of it

00:56:24.440 right what's interesting is together today for our children tomorrow said we

00:56:29.160 don't want to do this alone we want to work with the governments to

00:56:31.920 actually walk in two worlds for that future

00:56:35.460 generation they said should be able to walk in two worlds

00:56:38.260 in this traditional knowledge the traditional worlds and the contemporary

00:56:42.680 world

00:56:43.220 and so far we've not done it in the yukon right because we've gone through you know

00:56:52.580 you know the queer report you know pierce mcdonald who's the premier went through and said look we've 0.59

00:56:59.880 got to do something about this then there was the other thing then the jeep process there's good

00:57:04.780 intention and don't get me wrong it's not about being mean or anything people are trying right

00:57:11.580 through this jeep process we started looking at okay what does the joint education action plan

00:57:16.140 look like right auditor general came out and said look at you're still yukon you're still not getting

00:57:23.020 the results that's required this is what two or three years ago audrey general's report first

00:57:30.560 nation school board what the elders said is when we started self-government is they said we need

00:57:37.260 to be able to determine, have self-determination for our citizens.

00:57:43.420 And so the way we set up a paramountcy of laws,

00:57:45.540 and I know these are legal terms, paramountcy of laws

00:57:47.840 that we can pass a law that supersedes Yukon's law

00:57:51.740 and Canada's laws for the governance of our citizens.

00:57:56.720 And we've done that.

00:57:57.700 We've sort of drafted a law.

00:57:59.120 But in order for that law to be drafted,

00:58:02.460 Yukon, as the government, has to vacate the field.

00:58:04.920 In order to do that, you have to have a program

00:58:07.020 service transfer agreement. I don't want to make this a course in

00:58:10.220 treaties, but it's important to know.

00:58:15.720 So I've been asked at various times to be an advisor to some of

00:58:19.080 these boards and whatnot. And I said,

00:58:21.700 you need to know if you want me to work with some of these

00:58:27.080 boards and committees, I'm going to advise them to actually look at an education act,

00:58:31.320 First Nation Education Act. Why am I going to do that?

00:58:34.460 1981 when we started working

00:58:37.380 we started talking about

00:58:38.380 how do we get emotional competency in school

00:58:40.660 we started another time

00:58:43.340 where we started looking at

00:58:44.300 how do we do this

00:58:45.740 and we tried to work with

00:58:47.080 we've met with ministers

00:58:48.360 I actually had a deputy minister

00:58:50.760 go down and visit with Lee

00:58:51.960 because Lee got to the point saying

00:58:54.220 I don't want to talk about this stuff anymore

00:58:56.300 I want to do it

00:58:57.340 I'll come and help you do it

00:58:59.120 but I don't want to talk about it

00:59:01.300 Thank you both

00:59:04.880 Lee and Mark

00:59:06.440 Thank you for listening to this episode

00:59:18.520 of For The Wild's collaboration

00:59:20.180 with Illuminating Worldviews

00:59:22.120 made by Ayanna Young

00:59:23.780 Erica Ekram

00:59:25.180 Julia Jackson

00:59:26.540 and Victoria Pham

00:59:27.740 The music from this episode

00:59:29.660 is from Cole Pulse's new album

00:59:31.440 Lands and Eternal

00:59:32.740 courtesy of Leaving Records

00:59:34.480 Carlisle Evans Peck

00:59:36.400 and Paloma

00:59:37.240 Thanks for listening

For The Wild - October 02, 2025

ILLUMINATING WORLDVIEWS on Emotional Competency S1_1

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