Letter to the Editor:  Find a way to restore wholistic health

Addendum to a keynote by Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux

One year ago, I was asked to do a keynote for the Chiefs of Ontario Health Conference. I covered a lot of ground, somewhat nervously because the message I was delivering was a personal challenge to everyone in the room. The most concerning response I received was a statement from a community member who said, “What I need is a strategy” because “80 per cent of the people in my community are addicted to Opioids!” Clearly, I had failed to deliver what I believed to be a very important answer. So, I’m going to try again, with the understanding that it is likely not what people want to hear. It’s not even what I wanted to hear, but I have had to learn and accept the challenge for change, too.

We all hope for a quick solution, a way out of pain or confusion, and we look for things that not only sound sensible, but puts the hard work, and sometimes blame, where we believe it belongs, somewhere else.

I spoke to the excessive sugars and ultra-processed foods in our diets, and their contribution to increasing systemic diseases and health problems; physical, mental, and emotional. To the need for a return to even a semi-traditional diet and to growing our own gardens, as our grandparents did. A return to whole foods, which are necessary to create and sustain wholistic health. I spoke to the many people in our communities returning to those teachings and reconstructing their understandings of medicinal herbs, foods, and natural remedies, and removing things like sugared sodas from their diets. We know even that one step, removing Pepsi and Coca-Cola from your diet creates rebalancing in blood sugars and weight levels. We can do this; this is one step forward in our mutual strategy.

I pulled up the research done by the Chiefs of Ontario, which demonstrated unequivocally that what youth and adults both wanted was a return to the teachings. That the need for language restoration, spiritual practices and ceremony, and history were all not only desired but essential to healthy minds, spirits, and bodies. We all want the same things when it comes to a restorative process, a “strategy” if you will, that will bring us together and contribute to a strong sense of connection and build a healthy nation.

There is a need for attention to be paid to instruction about love relationships and rites of passage. I spoke about the need for more attention to be given to the relationships our young people engage in, to the tumultuous circumstances many conceptions happen in, not love, not timeless understanding and support, but too often, drunken or high connections that do not produce a peaceful, quiet, and focused pregnancy. I spoke about the need for a sacred connection to each other and to the developing child in uteri. The need for post-pregnancy care, gentleness with the new mother, birth doulas, and instruction in childcare and post-birth connections. Equally important are safe, peaceful, protective, and loving fathers or alternative caring co-parents.

I spoke about trauma, intergenerational and contemporary. The need for a review and understanding of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). This is an older study but it’s still relevant for Indigenous peoples because we have not recovered fully from the trauma of seven generations of our parents, grandparents, and ancestors being forcibly taken from their homes and incarcerated in Indian Residential Schools (IRS). Day Schools and child welfare atrocities added to the intergenerational pain and suffering. The resulting breeches of knowledge, gender imbalance, and the huge inner pain we could not reach or heal despite our multiple attempts over the past 30+ years.

I spoke about the need to look within, that no psychologist or intervention from outside of our cultures and languages and ceremonies is going to heal us, that is our work. This is our work one day at a time, reaching out to each other and rediscovering feelings, and allowing the emergence of emotions to happen. It has often been said to me that if you cannot feel it, you cannot heal it. I understand that statement better than I ever have in the past and much of it comes from my grown children and their calling me out on my lack of connection to them as small children. I didn’t know or recognize that I, like those before me, had shut down my emotions out of necessity and out of observation of my own parents, and theirs along with IRS tormentors. Experiences in Indian Residential Schools had demanded our people ignore feelings and shut down emotions to survive.

I want to talk about Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN), an impact we have not fully considered or had time to explore. Our emotions and spirits and have been damaged over generations and we have had to shut down our feelings, our acceptance, and our understandings about those feelings. We have transmitted this “shut down” generationally and our people are hurting and disconnected, from each other, and from our children. So, our children seek out feeling and connection from somewhere else. They want to be seen, heard, understood, and so do we. To feel connection as adults, we drink it out, fight it out, and domestic violence rates stay high and intractable because we cannot locate, express, and share our deeper feelings with each other. Where are they? Buried deep within as we were shown, taught, or instructed through our family dynamics.

I am asking you to find a way to fully understand and accept this. I do feel we will keep failing and we will keep wondering and we will keep losing our children if we do not find a way to restore balance, emotions, spirits, and wholistic health to our people. It begins at home, with that child you are longing for, with those tiny individuals you are holding in your arms, with that child taken into care, with that partner you call lover, friend, and who holds your hope for the future.

It begins with sharing our life stories with each other, with our children, and understanding the historic family dynamic we came from. It is possible to heal and to create circumstances that awaken our emotions, that fill our children with feelings that will keep them safe, keep them sober, and grow our nations in a good way. Yes, we love our children, we love each other, there is no doubt about that, and we all do our best with what we have. Sometimes though, this isn’t enough, and we need help to mobilize our understanding of the necessary inner work required to break harmful family cycles.

We must recognize that the “strategy” we are seeking is long-term, developed and put in motion by each and every one of us, every single day. It is not crafted by consultants, by people perceived as more knowledgeable than we are, it is crafted through our inner work, the teachings, the ceremony, and the love, or silences we generate right at home. We are all affected, including me, and we can all take small steps forward in each area, beginning today.

Miigwech,

Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux
Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation
Chair on Truth and Reconciliation
Lakehead University, Orillia & Thunder Bay