Supporting the youth

Sakej Ward :…As colonized people, our typical reaction is to feel ashamed of ourselves. So we must bring back standards of what it means to be a warrior. Like, if you’re calling yourself a warrior, these are our standards� We take you in and help you decolonize and be who you were meant to be. People in warrior societies are all at different stages of this process of decolonization, but when they come in, we tell them, �This is what it means to be a warrior.� For example, no alcohol or drugs. We have to cleanse that out of our systems. We don’t need to deal these inner demons; we’re busy dealing with other things.

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.