Taiaike Alfred is a Mohawk academic who teaches at the University of Victoria. He is an uncompromising champion of declonization here at home and in the wider world. Recently he took part in a two-part dialogue at the Musqueam First Nation with some guests, community members and Elders. A transcript of the dialogues can be found on his home page. Here is one of the many interesting quotes, from a conversatio between Taiaike and Sakej Ward from the Burnt Church First Nation:
Taiaiake : It’s also important to remember that we as adults need to give our children a culture they can believe in. Rites of passage, ceremonies and so on are very important in this kind of movement. The youth need to have a culture they want to be part of . You know the Zapatistas in Mexico? A lot of people think of their struggle as the struggle against the Mexican government, but I think they’d say their main accomplishment was attacking violence against women and drug and alcohol abuse. And then they were strong enough to fight against the other things.
Sakej Ward : Before we talk about a political revolution we need a social revolution. We must bring back a value system that stresses community and people, because the Western value system is about the individual, greed and self-centredness. We have the ability to start thinking about building community again, and we have a social responsibility to do it too.
I will say it for as long as I live that the origins of true freedom and transformation, whether in the service of decolonization or healing or some other arena, lie within the personal and collective realms. Without this inner transformation of people and cultures, the external changes won’t occur. We remain complicit in our own imprisonment.
