This article by Hannah Chapman is the second of two looking at our local response to the the murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests here in Aotearoa. Martin Brokenleg Lakota Sioux says that heart knowledge is the resilience of indigenous peoples that has helped us survive colonisation. Here is what they taught me. God designed and intended for you to be who you are. Whiteness is a construct that is wielded as a weapon of oppression and which requires you to sacrifice who you were in order for it to exist.
Those tables happened because the adults chose to create and occupy a space together , each bringing whatever they had for the wellbeing of all. Therein lay freedom. Decolonisation matters greatly, as does the future that lies beyond the deconstruction. What kind of future can you envisage? Where are you located in that future and what steps are you going to take next that will direct you towards that place?
How are you being a good ancestor now? Let the children listen to the stories that come easy and the ones that come hard. Kids can handle ambiguity and mystery better than many adults can.
Hold them when their feelings are big. Model too, what good listening looks like. Through story, give them opportunities to develop a resilience and strong heart of their own.
Learning flourishes imagination, and imagination, action. We need to be sure that our imaginings are rooted in our own soil so that the resulting actions have real meaning and consequence that can be sustained.
