Transcript - Indigenous Mindfulness
MLK Tribute
Multicultural Center, SMSU Portland State University Dr. Michael Yellow Bird, Professor Department of Social Work Humboldt State University
Arikara Engaged in Ceremonial Mindfulness in Traditional Earth lodge
Colonialism: a system in which a one people claim sovereignty over another and assert social, political economic, and spiritual domination over the colonized. It motivated by beliefs and values of the colonizer are superior to those of the colonized.
(Not a mainstream topic in Social Work; mainstream in Indigenous Studies)
Chosen Race Defiled Race
“Kill the Indian, Save the Man”
The biopolitical and geopolitical management of people, land, flora, and fauna with the “domestic” borders of the imperial nation. This involves the particularized modes of control – prisons, minoritizing, schooling, and policing. For Indigenous Peoples it is Indian boarding schools, Federal Indian Law, Western education, BLM, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Plenary Power of Congress, Reservations, Indian Child Welfare Act, Baby Veronica, and more.
Forms of Colonialism
(Exploitation colonization): the expropriation of fragments of Indigenous worlds, animals, plants, and human beings, extracting them in order to transport them to – build wealth, the privilege, or feed the appetites of – the colonizers, who get marked as the first world.
Bakken Oil Fields
Foreign family units move into a region and reproduce. An imperial power oversees the immigration of these settlers. This colonization leads to depopulation of the previous inhabitants, and the settlers take over the land of the previous residents.
“In order for settlers to make a place their home they must destroy and disappear the Indigenous Peoples that live there.”
(In LA it is the Tongva: (Warfare was not frequent for and robbery, murder, and incest was rare. They did not believe in evil spirits, or any concept of a hell or devil until Spanish missionaries. Porpoises and owls were highly esteemed and were never killed. introduced boys to manhood through fasting, hallucinogenic rituals and trials of endurance).
The settlers are generally viewed by the colonizing authority as racially superior to the previous inhabitants, giving their social movements and political demands greater legitimacy than those of colonized peoples in the eyes of the home government.
“Settlers are not immigrants. Immigrants are beholden to the Indigenous laws and epistemologies of the lands they migrate to. Settlers become the law, supplanting Indigenous laws and epistemologies.”
Indian Civilization Act of 1819
Removal Act of 1830
Ex parte Crow Dog 109 U.S. 556 (1883) Indian General Allotment Act (1887) Indian Boarding Schools (1887 – present) Indian Relocation Act of 1956 United States v. Lara, 541 U.S. 193 (2004), Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl,570 U.S.(Baby Veronica, 2013),
Indigenous Peoples (other 1%): folks, laws, beliefs, values, etc U.S. government, states, and religious groups (poverty, put on reservations, removed from prime territories, destruction of resources and exploitation of the labor of people, poor health care and education, privileging white For US (98%): wealthy and lack of living wages (poverty); removing poor folks from their neighborhoods; 50 million without health insurance; gender inequalities in wages; exploitation of foreign labor (sweatshops); control of the food chain by multinationals; substandard education in poor communities; privileging the super wealthy (1%), etc. For the Planet: Global pollution, dumping, hydraulic fracking, climate change, Nuclear disasters, GMOs,
Decolonization
When the United Nations was established in 1945, 750 million people almost a third of the world's population lived in Territories that were non-self governing, controlled and dependent on colonial powers.
In 1960 The General Assembly adopted, in the
Declaration on the Granting of Independence to
Colonial Countries and Peoples. All people have a right to self determination and colonialism should be brought to a speedy and unconditional end.
Decolonization is an unsettling process since it involves the repatriation of Indigenous Peoples’ lands, lives, and rights; The colonized are freed from the colonial control and the colonizers return to their own lands. (This has not happened in the USA). (At right: Sovereignty ceremony)
Definitions Decolonization
“Decolonization is an unsettling process since it involves the repatriation of Indigenous Peoples’ lands, lives, and rights; the colonized are released or freed from the colony/colonized and return to their independent status. Colonizers return to their own lands.” 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. 1-40). ( Source: Tuck & Wang in Decolonization is not a Metaphor” in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society (Vol. “…the restoration of cultural practices, thinking, beliefs, and values that were taken away or abandoned (during the colonization period) but are relevant and/or necessary for survival and well being. It is the birth and use of new ideas, thinking, technologies and lifestyles that contribute to the advancement and empowerment of Indigenous Peoples.” (Source: Yellow Bird, 2008, Indigenous Social Work, 2008,
Ashgate Press)
Decolonizing Social Work recognizes the limitations and imperialist frameworks of Western social work that must be contested on behalf of populations that have been victimized rather than helped by these approaches (Source: Decolonizing Social Work , Gray, Coates, Yellow Bird,, & Hetherington, 2013, Ashgate)
Decolonization is the intentional, collective, and reflective self examination undertaken by formerly colonized peoples that results in shared remedial action. Such action traces continuity from “traditional” (pre-colonial) experiences even as it embarks on distinctive, purposeful, and self-determined (post-colonial) experiences. The key to decolonization is community emancipation from the hegemony of outside interests (Wilson & Yellow Bird, 2005). press, p. 23). ( Source: “A Community-Based Treatment for Native American ‘Historical Trauma’: Prospects for Evidence-Based Practice” in
(International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2008). The Mass: (the colonial lands and resources and the main political, security, and financial institutions). Traditional approaches focus on this area. Social work is involved in the area of security (i.e., justice systems) but rarely in Indigenous land and resource rights, protection, and repatriation, or support of political sovereignty. The Mind: (freeing postcolonial culture and thought from dependence on western ideas, philosophies, beliefs, theories). More recent approaches in decolonization focus on this area – decolonizing the mind, i.e., neurodecolonization (Yellow Bird, 2012, 2013). This is an area that social work that may become involved in, but the tendency is to engage in the use of colonized, Western methods. The Metropole: (The Empire). Decolonization involves freeing the metropole from its tendency to inferiorize and dominate other peoples and territories.
Privileging and actively supporting the sovereignty, well being, spirituality, and land rights of Indigenous Peoples Recognizing the social work practices, approaches, and theories in the United States developed from “Western,” Imperialist paradigms, in many instances, are not relevant to, or supportive of, Indigenous Peoples values, beliefs, culture, and rights. Working with Indigenous communities to implement traditional practices and philosophies into the contemporary context for the purposes of healing and community empowerment. Maintaining a commitment to tribal sovereignty, the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, The Rights of Mother Earth
Encourage the growth of new beneficial brain networks that enable us to:
- Train our attention to: Engage in level of optimistic thinking that enables a believe that colonialism can be overcome; Develop the courage to confront it; Cultivate the creativity needed to use novel, effective approaches to change it.
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In order for decolonization to be successful it must first begin in our minds Creative, healthy, decolonized thinking, actions, and feelings, positively shape and empower important neural circuits in our brain, which in turn provide us with the personal resources, strengths, abilities we need to overcome colonialism. Unconstructive, negative thinking, feelings, and behaviors dampen and short-circuit our brain’s creativity and optimistic networks, and increase our susceptibility to stress, failure, complacency, and fear. The more we engage in negativity or distraction the more we strengthen our unproductive neural networks.
Spiritual movements and traditional ceremonies of Indigenous Peoples have been a major form of successful resistance to American colonialism (which is why they were so viciously attacked and outlawed by the forces of American Colonialism):
Sun Dance Ghost Dance Big Drum Long House Smoke House Dream Dances Medicine Lodge
After only 11 hours of practice (30 minute sessions) positive structural changes took place in the white matter of the brain, which boosted brain connectivity (Posner, et al, 2010)
45 minutes of practice per day for 8 weeks changes brain structures associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress (Sarah Lazar, et al, 2011) Reduction in Stress – decreased gray matter in amygdala
Conflict-related Insula: Mindfulness meditation activates the
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insula, which is associated with interoception, the sum of visceral and
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gut
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feelings that we experience at any given moment, Is a key region involved in processing transient bodily sensations, thereby contributing to our experience of
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selfness
’”
The temporal parietal junction becomes activated during meditation.
This area is associated with the ability to perceive the emotional and mental state of others.
This brain area is more active in meditators than non-meditators, even when they are not meditating.
Singing to the Sacred Cedar
Arikara brain on happiness, joy, optimism, feelings of well being
Orbital Frontal Cortex Internal reality check of how we come across to others. It biases us to have an overstated evaluation of our skills, intelligence, personality, and health; mostly, because we do not call upon this part of the brain to evaluate our “true” capacities. Referred to as the “above-average effect,” (the less activity in this area the more we see ourselves through “rose-colored glasses.)
(Jennifer Beers and Brent Hughes , University of Texas )
When a person is taught to believe that they are the right color, have the right values and beliefs, live in the greatest country on earth, and that they are from an exceptional class of people, they will have even more difficulty engaging this brain region– Consequences: they will lack the ability to mindfully and honestly critique their privilege, culture, beliefs, values, and their nation’s failures and weaknesses
D = OBF
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cp Where: D is the event of decolonization. OBF a A o Mc is the optimal brain function intellectual activities such as unbound creativity, genius-level problem solving skills and performance, enhanced memory, optimism and concentration skills, superior critical thinking capacities, deep awareness, and a “rage to master” (Ellen Winner, 1996). The “a” subscript refers to the activities needed to produce optimal brain functioning. that is needed for progressive is the awareness of the many forms and processes of oppression among Indigenous Peoples due to the colonialism. Requires understanding the mind and brain functions of the colonizer. is the motivation of oppression of the culture to progress from their present state
D = OBF
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cp C S o rt R pc SC c B n S cp is the ability to change the relationship with past and present trauma represents the oppressive strategies conditions.
that are consciously pursed to overcome and survive is the restoration of past cultural beliefs, language, ideas, and technologies that were taken away or abandoned but are still useful in the present is the conscious suspension of culture during critical times (such as invasion by a group bent on destroying the culture) is the birth of new ideas, beliefs, thinking, and technologies that can be adapted to the present culture is the suspension of past cultural practices that led to oppressive situations within the society during pre-colonial period