Playing with Words

As I wait for the final results of COP 26, I have to find something else to write about to end the week. I am taking a course online and the subject yesterday was “Interiority” - not a word that I ever use. That sent me on a search which I posted on the course site - and I’ll share something of it here:

I'm going to have some fun with words.  I became curious about the term, "interiority", because before starting the course - or perhaps before reading Thomas Berry - it was not part of my everyday vocabulary.  Canadians, like me, straddle both British and American English.  I started with the hard copy of my Concise Oxford Dictionary published in 1982.  The word wasn't there.  I moved on to Collins British dictionary online to find this: "the quality of being focused on one's inner life and identity".  If the Oxford English Dictionary had allowed me to see when the word first entered the language, I would have gone there, but there is a paywall. Collins did help with a diagram. It showed brief use for the first time in 1778 - 0.07% - and then the word languished or fell off completely until 1978 when it took off at 0.33% use. But that’s not a very big number either.

I moved on to the American Merriam-Webster.  It had this to say: Definition of interiority
1: interior quality or character
2: inner life or substance : psychological existence

When we are little kids, using big words gives us a sense of authority and superiority - and it also makes us part of an in-group.  For me, one of the challenges of Berry’s New Story - is telling it in words that other people understand.  "Story" is a simpler word.  For more fun, I went back to Collins and tried translating story into French, German and Italian.  In each case it brings up a native word in the language histoire,  Geschichte, storia. When I tried the same thing with Interiority, this is what came up - intériorité, Innerlichkeit, Interiorità.  The German seemed to have a better word of their own. The others sounded as though they adopted the English one.

When we watched Robin Wall Kimmerer this week, several in the course commented on her warmth and simplicity as it comes through in the sound of her voice and her demeanor. It's isn't as though she can't use big words when she chooses to.  I've just finished two of her books, Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass. Her naming of mosses reveals a scholar who can joust with any biologist and win hands down.  For me, interiority has a cold and rather scientific sound - like an empty and sparsely furnished room.  But this playful research brought a phrase  that I can work with - "inner life" -  because it sounds as though it comes from the wisdom of the heart.  It still combines an adjective and a noun.  To spur myself and others to  act, I have to turn a phrase into a verb. The video for this section of the course on the global brain with the outline of the human body is also a big help in showing us what it means to live - both inside and outside our skins.

A good teacher once heard a student say, "I feel very creative".  The teacher asked "So what are you going to create?"  "Oh I didn't mean that I was going to do anything about it.  It's just how I feel today".

That's why I never use the word "creativity" either.  But "create" is a verb I like.

Progress not Perfection

This blog is becoming a site of qualfiers as COP 26 proceeds. Among the recent complaints are too many old white men, so here is a refreshing message from a different cohort.

The young East Indian CEO, Svanicka Balasubranian was watching it from home on her family’s farm, where over several decades, ground water has fallen by more than half resulting in crop failures. She recognizes the frustration of many with lack of progress, but has some wise things to say.

First, when we tell stories we have to stop painting them as black or white and introduce some nuance. Few stories in the media are as glamorous or positive as they sound in terms of generating results. She sympathizes with the young, but at the same time, their dismissal of every effort may not be helpful either.

Second, we have to become more holistic. Favorite agendas can blind us to the strengths of other options. Often the agendas - especially in their marketing efforts - are filled with self-interest. It doesn’t hurt when opposed groups like Nestle and Green Peace actually sit down together and see what they can come up with that might work for both.

Third, the silos long decried in the government and corporate sectors are just as evident in the stakeholders of climate change. There are no single silver bullet solutions, she says, To over-engineer one, may be a waste of time and energy. It is more like a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces needed for completion. What matters is accountability in particular situations. Solutions may indeed be local rather than universal and the point is how much positive small changes can happen.

Small measures can indeed have good consequences. You can see what she says about that in her TED Talk.

Profiles in Courage

Like all Canadians, I rejoiced in the return of the two Michaels amid all the news of depressing news of the hospitalizations and deaths of so many Canadians who don’t understand the value of vaccinations. I grew up in the middle of a polio epidemic which left some classmates unable to ever walk again. But for once there was real news.

No sooner than a couple of hours after watching Meng Wanzhou, the financial officer of Huawei depart, we heard the newly elected Prime Minister make an announcement of their imminent return to Canada after 1019 days of captivity.

I really didn’t know either of these men - but seeing the length of their incarceration every day in the front page of my newspaper kept them in focus. One of them was a year behind my youngest son in his high school. The latter noted that Michael Kovrig was serious even then. The stories of his walking 7000 steps every day in a small cell and keeping busy with reading anything possible, in spite of almost no visits or contacts with the outside world was inspiring. Many of us complained about a restricted life during the pandemic. The story of his wife, previously separated, but now doing everything possible to secure his release, was an added inspiration - and a pleasure to share her obvious joy.

Freedom to reject vaccinations - claimed as a violation of human rights - doesn’t seem the highest form of courage. Having faith that imprisonment as retaliation will ultimately end is a more inspiring example.

Ignoring History

I am disturbed when I read the morning paper along with everyone else. Why are people not getting vaccinated, putting themselves at risk along with others? Why are governments now promising to do something about the fallout of residential schools, when the evidence has been in plain sight for so long? Why are some so unwilling to face the truth about the outcome of the US election?

While we fuss about these issues, the historian, Timothy Snyder has some cautionary reminders. In a recent New York Times Article he reminds us that a war on history is a war on democracy. Dealing with the suppression of agriculture in Ukraine in 1932, he notes the suppression of the story of the Ukrainian people themselves - as many as 3.9 million of them died of suffering and starvation. The official story was the triumph of industrialism. Real history was suppressed and rewritten.

Snyder goes on to review the current attempts to rewrite the history of slavery in the US. Suddenly in some states there are new laws of what teachers may or may not say. One of the dangerous elements relates to emotions. Teachers are not to relate parts of the story that some might find upsetting causing “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.”

History, Snyder says, is not therapy. Becoming upset and dealing with it is part of growing up. It’s dangerous when becoming upset could call a halt to hearing the truth. Things become particularly upsetting when it affects groups - white Americans and African Americans, white Canadians and indigenous people or people of colour, respected leaders and things they said and did.

Snyder has strong words for denial. “When we claim that discrimination is only a result of personal prejudice, we liberate ourselves from responsibility.” he says. We have to face reality. Authoritarianism tries to shield us from that. By saying that we are not racist, we may think we have escaped. The only way to change the current situation is to face the past one honestly. That has to happen before anything changes.

Changing Places

One of the people we need to learn from is recently retired Senator Murray Sinclair. He appeared a few months ago to speak to the law students at UWO but the address that I found stunning was this one he gave as recipient of the Tom Symons Medal lecture series at Confederation Centre in Prince Edward Island.

Unless you like lengthy introductions, you will want to skip forward to the lecture itself entitled, Confederation - We could have done better. Indeed he is right. We could have - and we must - all of us.

Sinclair knows the power of story and tells his own brilliantly. He notes that in legal training, one of the lessons is to lose your imagination and focus solely on facts. He then moves to facts with the audience. He invites them to take out their cell phones and find their favourite picture of a child. He stops the lecture and suggests that the audience share a story about that child with the person seated next to them - and the audience does so with great enthusiasm. He calls them back.

He then says “Delete that picture - after all it’s only a picture”. The room falls silent. He encourages them to do so even more - “Go ahead -You still have the real child after all”. He then asks to have a picture of his own samll granddaughter mounted on a large screen behind him. “I can’t either” - he admits. But Canada did that to our children.”

The point hits home. In this lecture and in so many others he outlines the damage of cultural genocide. In his book, coauthored with the other tribunal leaders, What We have Learned: Principles of the Truth and Reconciliation. he elaborates on the definition:

“Physical genocide is the mass killing of the members of a targeted group and biological genocide is the destruction of a group’s reproductive capacity. Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized. and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement in restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated or destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmissions of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next.

In dealing with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things”. The stories relating to the schools follow and they tell the stories of the actions of all the schools. There is no excuse. All the religious traditions are implicated in the words of the survivors.

Later in the lecture he made reference to his personal story - which relates well to the announcement yesterday that Cowessess First Nation within the province of Saskatchewan becomes the first to control its child welfare system under Bill C-92; it empowers indigenous communities to reclaim jurisdiction. 83% of children in the province were from first nations as of last fall. The Eagle Woman tribunal there will help settle disputes,

Senator Sinclair’s father was a residential school survivor who suffered trauma from the experience which was increased when his wife died leaving him with four young children. He transferred the responsibility for them - including one year old Murray - to his parents in their sixties. “My grandmother connected every one of us with an auntie, with whom I went everywhere and learned from her. On the basis of long term results my grandmother proved to be an excellent child-welfare administrator.”

He also talked about his own lack of fellunderstanding of indigenous spirituality and the role it must play in his life, until he was counselled by an elder. That part of the video above is also moving and revealing. He told us of the importance of a name - and how his in his own language has prophetically given him direction as to how to live his life. His granddaughter has her own name story and we understand how fearless and true to that spirituality that is forming her. When asked to describe her grandfather’s occupation by a nine year old classmate when he visited her school - Senator Murray was not sure she actually knew - but she still had an answer - “He Sentaizes”

Thank the universe for Senator Sinclair - and even in retirement we hope he continues to Sentatize.