{"id":379,"date":"2021-10-01T14:36:19","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T18:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/ehunter\/?p=379"},"modified":"2021-11-08T21:43:38","modified_gmt":"2021-11-09T02:43:38","slug":"truth-reconciliation-day-decolonizing-our-wicked-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/ehunter\/truth-reconciliation-day-decolonizing-our-wicked-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny Ecology Part 1 – Decolonizing our \u2018wicked\u2019 stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Source: Ben Nelms\/CBC<\/a>) <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday was the first \u2018National Day for Truth and Reconciliation\u2019 in what is known as Canada. It was not like most holidays filled with an air of celebratory notions, but a day of deep sadness, tension and reflection on what is being described as genocide of Indigenous Peoples in this country with the lost lives and survivors of residential schools (Reuters, 2021). Therefore, making this day an important day to reflect on the power of stories. Specifically the power that stories hold for mass destruction, including colonization and ecocide<\/a>, as well as the power that stories hold for great transformation in society at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben Okri, an African novelist, describes this phenomenon as sick storytellers vs. healthy storytellers that have the power to make a nation sick or healthy (as referenced in Sium & Ritskes, 2013, pg. V). The \u2018sick stories\u2019 can serve to legitimize old paradigms and oppressive power structures. For example, I would argue that the Government of Ontario, and provinces like it, that blatantly ignored this day as a holiday are ensuring the maintenance of the dominant meta-narrative of colonial history as a \u2018sick story\u2019 that erases Indigenous stories and ignores the dark history of settlers. For as Sium & Ritskes (2013) argue in these kinds of meta-narratives, \u201cthe colonial controls the national (or in this case provincial) story, which characters are introduced and how they are constructed\u201d (pg. VI). In this way, stories are about power in so far as who controls the mainstream consciousness, and therefore masters over society’s beliefs, norms and values. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the \u2018healthy story\u2019 in contrast can be an act of \u2019creative rebellion\u2019 as a relational, political and sacred act that legitimizes the knowledge and voices of marginalized peoples, lands or even imagines new worlds possible outside the colonial realm (Sium & Ritskes, 2013). Take for example the seismic shift in the belief systems in Canada\u2019s colonial legitimacy and a pull towards Indigenous rights after the story of residential schools opened up a national wound with 1300 unmarked graves and the countless lives lost of Indigenous children (Mosby, 2021). Moreover, this example is also why some Indigenous scholars call for storytelling and oral traditions to be understood as legitimate forms of knowledge production, or epistemology (Iseke, 2013; Sium & Ritskes, 2013). For Indigenous Peoples in this country have been calling out the atrocities of residential schools far longer than when the news broke out about the unmarked graves, and their stories tell us about the inter-generational pain and suffering of this long-standing practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This gives pause for deeper reflection. Reflection on decolonizing the old stories that no longer serve us, such as stories that normalized residential schools. These are old paradigms that maintain our multiple and intersecting crises, from colonization to climate change. These are wicked\u2019 problems, which are described simplistically here as ‘dysfunctionality within a complex system\u2019 (Bunch, 2021a). Yet according to systems thinking, there can be rapid and far-reaching shifts, or \u2018threshold\u2019 surpassed, in a complex system that changes the entire system practically overnight (Bunch, 2021b). This can happen to belief systems too, or rather the stories we tell ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take for example the climate crisis and how this wicked problem has been framed, or what the dominant story is. For we know that climate change is a product of the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere from our reliance on fossil fuels, in which the science is \u2018unequivocal\u2019 (Masson-Delmotte, et al.<\/em>, 2021). However, there are \u2018two-eyed ways of seeing\u2019 this problem, as according to many Indigenous scholars, the climate crisis is merely another manifestation of colonization of both people and the planet (Goodchild, 2021; Gram-Hanssen, Schafenacker, Bentz, 2021). The former story frames the climate crisis in terms of a mechanistic worldview, in which the problem fits in the box of western science that reduces the world to the sum of its parts like a machine (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 2003). It\u2019s a worldview that for far too long has told us that we can solve this wicked problem with techn-economic solutions, while the maintenance of the colonial paradigm is sustained (Young, 2021). Yet, the later position re-frames the crisis as a symptom of a much larger problem, even perhaps larger than colonization itself, with the meta-narrative that severed the natural world with the human world (Kimmerer, 2014; Sium & Ritskes, 2013). In many ways, it is the ultimate story of Western ontology, that we are the masters of our \u2018own domain\u2019 in which we \u2018naturalized’ people, animals, plants and the entire biosphere into the domain for an elite empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence, colonization may have brought forward the mindset that has led us to the climate crisis, but it is this essential story of Man vs. Nature which is the Ontology that spreads sickness onto the world. If it is our time to return the gift, as Robin Kimmerer (2014) asks of us, then it is time to pay deep attention and foster deep relationships with the living world around us (pg. 20). This \u2018life-centered worldview\u2019 is a story of responsibility, restoration and reciprocity from the human to the more-than-human world (Ibid.<\/em>). So the question becomes how do we enact a story revolution that passes the threshold of our collective consciousness into an entirely new worldview? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Bunch, M. (2021a). Week 1: Class Recording (e-lecture video recording). E-Class:<\/em> ENVS 5081 Systems Thinking<\/em> (course). York University, Toronto, Canada.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    1. Bunch, M. (2021b). ENVS4523-5081 L2-Systems Thinking Concepts and History (e-lecture video recording). E-Class: ENVS 5081 Systems Thinking<\/em> (course). York University, Toronto, Canada.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
      1. Funtowicz & Ravetz (2003). Post-Normal Science. In International Society for Ecological<\/em> Economics <\/em>(Eds.). Online Encyclopedia of Ecological Economics. Retrieved from: http:\/\/isecoeco.org\/pdf\/pstnormsc.pdf<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
        1. Goodchild, M. (2021). Relational Systems Thinking: That\u2019s How Change is Going to Come, from Our Earth Mother. In Journal of Awareness Based Systems Change 1<\/em>(1), pp.75-103. DOI: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.47061\/jabsc.v1i1.577<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
          1. Gram-Hanssen, I., Schafenacker, N. & Bentz, J. (2021). Decolonizing transformations through \u2018right relations.\u2019 In Sustainability Science<\/em>. DOI:https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s11625-021-00960-9<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
            1. Iseke, J. (2013). Indigenous storytelling as research. In International review of qualitative<\/em> research 6<\/em>(4), 559-577. Retrieved from: https:\/\/go.openathens.net\/redirector\/royalroads.ca?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1525%2Firqr.2013.6.4.559<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
              1. Kimmerer, R. W. (2014). \u201cReturning the Gift.\u201d Center for Humans and Nature<\/em>.  Retrieved<\/a> from: https:\/\/www.humansandnature.org\/returning-the-gift-article-177.php<\/a> <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
                1. Masson-Delmotte, V. et al. (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis<\/em> (Summary for Policymakers, Working Group I). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. Retrieved from: https:\/\/www.ipcc.ch\/report\/ar6\/wg1\/#SPM<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
                  1. Mosby, I. (2021, April 1). Canada\u2019s Residential Schools Were a Horror<\/em> (Opinion). Scientific American. Retrieved from: \u200b\u200bhttps:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/canadas-residential-schools-were-a-horror\/<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
                    1. Reuters. (2021, September 30). Cultural genocide’ and abuse: Inside Canada’s notorious residential school system. Reuters. Retrieved from: https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/news\/picture\/cultural-genocide-and-abuse-inside-canad-idUSRTXHVDCQ<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
                      1. Sium, A., & Ritskes, E. (2013). Speaking truth to power: Indigenous storytelling as an act of living resistance. In Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2<\/em>(1), I-X.  Retrieved from: https:\/\/jps.library.utoronto.ca\/index.php\/des\/article\/view\/1962<\/a><\/li>
                      2. Young, A. (2021). Episode 232: Gopal Dayaneni on the exploitation of soil and story. In For<\/em> the wild<\/em>. [Podcast]. Retrieved from:    https:\/\/forthewild.world\/listen\/gopal-dayaneni-on-the-exploitation-of-soil-and-story-232<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                        (Source: Ben Nelms\/CBC) Yesterday was the first \u2018National Day for Truth and Reconciliation\u2019 in what is known as Canada. It<\/p>\n

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