This is the underlying premise to Sherii Mitchell’s Sacred Instructions.
Mitchell begins by explaining how we got to this place, using her tradition of having been raised on the Penobscot Indian Reservation.
She attributes a quote to Hiawatha: “We have all been fed a great lie, the lie of war. It makes us see danger where none exists; it causes us to distrust our friends, and to label the unknown as our enemy. This great lie causes us to shun the sources of our survival and to embrace the causes of our death.”
Rather than viewing conflict as inevitably leading to violence, Mitchell encourages us: “System-wide transformation must be preceded by personal transformation. Personal transformation is assisted by a willingness to view conflict as an opportunity for healing and growth. When conflict comes up we must be willing to choose new ways to respond to it, in order to break the cycles that we’ve established around it.”
Much like Moses leading the nation of Israel through the wilderness for forty years, Mitchell says conflict will re-emerge again and again until “all the layers attached to it are healed.”
One of the essential elements of conflict resolution, says Mitchell is good communication. “Learning to communicate effectively and compassionately minimizes misunderstanding and increases empathy… the main goals are kindness, necessity and respect.”
She describes the use of talking circles and decision by consensus, traditional tools used by Native peoples.
Part of this process, using Native tradition, is to seek balance. “When our rights are not balanced with a solid sense of responsibility, we lean toward dependency and begin blaming others for the problems that we face… We point fingers, accuse, and condemn all those who are refusing to do what we ourselves have failed to do. When our demands aren’t met, we become increasingly angry and lash out in response to that anger.” Cautions Mitchell, “When we demand something for ourselves that we are not willing to ensure for others, our demand loses all of its power.”
Most importantly, Mitchell reminds us, “If we truly hope to create change, we must stop forgetting that we have the power to make change happen.”
For Mitchell, from a Native perspective, this is in direct opposition to colonization, which she defines as “the act of appropriating or forcibly overtaking a place and exerting control over it.
"When we talk about colonization in the modern day, we are addressing the lingering systems of control and the insidious patterns of thinking that colonization brings… One of the names used to describe colonizing practices today is ‘progress.’
What others describe as systemic dysfunction, Mitchell attributes to colonization.
“Colonization is like an infection,” she writes. “It moves in and infiltrates the entire system until the whole body is contaminated… Colonization is deeply unsettling. It disrupts the cultural identity and sense of belonging of those being colonized. It then attempts to separate them from their core values and beliefs, to break them to the will of the colonizer. It then forcibly imposes its own values and ideologies onto those being colonized.”
A few sentences later, Mitchell offers an antidote.
“The most effective way of overcoming the impacts of colonization is to embrace the wisdom of our own cultural traditions and familiarize ourselves with the cultural values that guide those traditions.”
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| Sherii Mitchell/Photo by Michael Sacca |
Like Robin Wall Kimmerer, in Braiding Sweetgrass, Mitchell proposes a reconnecting with nature.
“Reconnecting with the Earth is fundamental to decolonizing our relationship with life. Colonization undermines our capacity for self-determination and self-sufficiency. It does this by taking us away from the gifts provided by the Earth and making us dependent on the trapping of the colonial economy,” which is based on extraction and profit from nature. Seeing the earth and its resources as being a means of business and not life.
Mitchell describes colonization as being an unnatural outgrowth of a paternalistic society that severely diminishes the importance of the feminine.
“The patriarchy took over the roles of the women and handed them to the men, while also denying the men the benefit of the women’s wisdom. Without the participation or guidance of the women, our societies became increasingly more imbalanced.”
Notes Mitchell, “[O]ur natural state of well-being requires balance between the feminine and masculine elements of our being. The heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. The heart informs the brain how to take action that manifests in our physical body, just like heart-based wisdom on the divine feminine is meant to inform the divine masculine how to act out in the world. This is the balance that we all need.”
She continues, “The patriarchy shifted men away from their role of protecting life, and turned them toward the protection of material items. They taught them to value these material items more than they valued life. The patriarchy also distorted the role of the feminine by leading her away from the true power that she holds within her heart and spirit and convincing her that the only power that she could attain was the power held within the patriarchal structure. The only way to change this reality is to change our perceptions. We have to look at the underpinnings of the patriarchy and withdraw our consent from its systems… This involves shifting our cultural values away from those defined by the patriarchy and moving them back toward more spiritually and emotionally balanced ways of being.”
Mitchell makes a case for a communal focus versus one based solely on individualism.
“Communal living is based on group philosophy. The central goal is to provide for the needs of the entire group, rather than the desires of individuals. Communal living allows for human connections to solidify and a sense of belonging to take root… Communal living is also both cost and resource-effective. There is a lot less waste in communal living.”
Contrasting this with an individualistic way of life, Mitchell observes: “In the modern marketplace, competition reigns supreme. Businesses constantly work to undercut their competition, often in cruel and cutthroat ways. Those who win at this game seem to have very little sympathy or empathy for those less fortunate.
“In times long past, the skills of all members of society were allotted some value. Though that value may not have been applied evenly, they still provided individuals with some opportunity to barter their skills to meet their basic needs. Today, the disparity between the haves and have-nots is stark, leaving many within our society unable to sustain themselves with any type of dignity.
“When competition is connected to the ability to survive, the cost to those who can’t is death.”
Mitchell speaks to the social media-driven frenzy to be viewed as correct, untethered to facts.
“Possessing accurate information, speaking with honesty, and acting with integrity are less valued than a powerfully stated opposing view. It doesn’t matter if your opposing view is based in fact, so long as you state it emphatically. Because there is very little consideration given to the accuracy of what is being said, people are easily misled and quick to anger when challenged… Rather than having the humility necessary to learn the truth, people arrogantly and often angrily attack those who challenge them. The goal is to be viewed as right; actually being right is secondary. This position is very self-serving and dangerous.”
Much of this arrogance, notes Mitchell, may stem from a colonial educational system "which promoted the notion that the establishment knew more than we did... We have to teach our children to become fully integrated beings who can function in harmony with one another and the world around them."
“Our people have a great deal to share with the world,” writes Mitchell. “We have a long history of connection with one another, having lived together in the same place for more than thirteen thousand years. This has taught us how to relate to one another. We also have a long relationship with our homelands, our waters, and the beings of the natural world that share this home with us. We have an unbroken tie to the life that we spring from and to the ground that we will return to one day. It is all of these things that are encompassed in the values that we live by and the way of life that it offers. We have faced genocide, termination, removal, separation from our young, ecological attacks, and countless other atrocities, but we are still here. We believe that we are still here because we have followed and honored our way of life.”
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