Exploring Indian Reality
Rupert Ross, 1992
I want to do a little bit of a book review of a book my
mother turned me on to. My mom seldom
reads non-fiction books. So when she
told me she was really enjoying reading this particular book I was
intrigued. The way she was explaining
the book to me this summer, it sounded like the kinds of ideas I had been
thinking about a lot lately. I kind of blew my mind. The book is
an attempt to explain to the non-native, Canadian majority, the fundamentals of
the workings of aboriginal culture. It’s
an attempt to bridge the apparent gap between two cultures. Written from the point of view of a white
lawyer from Ontario, it’s a personal account in dealing with aboriginal culture
in the justice system. Rupert Ross tries
to deal with disconnections in the cultural intercourse that ends up leaving
both parties in confusion. This book was
written more than 20 years ago, but I feel this is still a relevant book with a
topic essential to be understood by all people wishing to understand aboriginal
issues
Right off the bat I would like to acknowledge my clear
ignorance of the issue at hand. In fact
I feel slightly uncomfortable talking about this issue because I feel like I am
stumbling around in the dark. I am blind
to know what should be obvious to me, what sensitive issues I may want to
avoid. I hope in admitting my humble
amount of knowledge, I can hopefully be forgiven for any sensitive trespasses I
may cause in my writing. I’m ignorant
to even what words I should be using to refer to aboriginal culture
groups. Indian? Aboriginal? Native? The book is titled “exploring INDIAN reality”,
but this is now a small world we live in.
This is a multicultural community. We deal with the country of India and people
who are Indian who hail from said country.
For the sake of clarity, it would be just be effective not to use that
word. I heard it through the grapevine,
the word “Natives” is a little rude. So
Aboriginal sounds like the current politically correct word to be using. So that’s the one I will stick to for now. Also, I must mention that I don’t feel
entirely comfortable referring to myself as “white”, but I cant find a replicable
word for it at the moment.
Culture is your
operating system
This is the one thing that jumped out at me when I was
reading the opening few chapters. The
way that culture acts as the basis of your social blueprint is fascinating to
me. One of my favorite pet theories
these days is that culture acts like an operating system of a computer. Now, this book was written before the general
public had incorporated the concepts involving computers into their
lexicon. But this idea is vivid in this
book at least in my own eyes. The
operating system is the blueprint that a computer uses to interpret and filter
the code world into a uniform system so that people can move around the digital
world effectively. Likewise, culture is
the way our own mind takes the raw data of experience and human interaction and
processes it in order for the human being be able to move around the social
world effectively. Computers must all be
running the same operating system in order to effectively share information
properly. Because like humans, computers
operate using different languages of code.
Macintosh computers can interact somewhat with Windows computers, but it
is sometimes difficult to share certain files.
Perhaps similarly the way someone speaking Newfoundland English might
have trouble trying to talk to someone who is from South Africa.
Different models of
the universe
I think what Ross is trying to point out, is that the
cultural operating system of aboriginal culture is very different in
fundamental ways to that of white North American culture. Things we take for granted as first premises
of existence are not as concrete as we would like to think. The structure of Aboriginal metaphysics is
based on a different view of the universe.
The place that human beings occupy in nature is nearly polar opposite in
White and Aboriginal culture. This has huge
implications on the purposes of life and has a ripple effect all the way to the
shores of mundane interaction with other people.
A culture that is still relatively near in time to its
hunter-gatherer roots is going to have a different purpose than that of an
agricultural people. A hunter gatherer
operating system will be focused on the fundamentals of survival. In a land so harsh as Canada, the day to day
activities are going to be a matter of life and death. The cultural operating system is going to
create a lens for the human being that will make the decisions for life and
death of the group as first premise assumptions. Whereas in agricultural society, the lens
focus is elsewhere.
One of my favorite thinkers, Alan Watts described that the agricultural,
Judeo-Christian society has the idea of the “ceramic model of the
Universe”. Or the “universe as an
artifact”. Mankind’s place in the
universe is that of an alien. In our
view, humans are foreigners in a static and dead world and we are in some
fundamental way, separate from nature.
Because the world is an inanimate object, the world can be owned, taken
apart and controlled. We feel we have
the right to make the world as we see fit.
I have the feeling that since we developed agriculture, we had to
develop a cultural framework to deal with food surpluses, sedentary life and
ownership. Because of these new
problems, to effectively move around the agricultural world, human beings need
a fundamentally different set of metaphysical first premises than that of
nomadic, hunter gatherers.
So then, the aboriginal people of modern day Canada are the
inheritors of culture that is operating under a set of cultural assumptions
that developed in a nomadic, hunter-gatherer context. This may be why there is such a huge
disconnect with white culture. This may
be why there are so many problems in aboriginal communities. There is a malfunction in the way people are
relating to the sedentary reality of the 21st century.
When the Canadian government and justice system pushes
solutions to problems onto aboriginal communities, there is a misunderstanding
of the very cultural context specific conditions that these solutions work
under. The notions of crime and
punishment that white culture operates under, do not necessarily compute with
aboriginal culture. We take it for
granted that the natural reaction for wrong doing is punishment, yet this does
not seem to be the case in aboriginal culture, according to Ross. If there is an incidence of violence, instead
of focusing on punishing the perpetrator, there is a focus on discovering the
root problem that caused this act to happen in the first place. There is a more focus on healing and
forgiveness, instead of punishment and removal from the community as in white
justice systems. Things that come off
rude to one culture may be just attempts at being polite and cordial for
another. In the white Canadian culture,
it is commonly polite to maintain eye contact and be complimentary about
other’s achievements. Whereas showing
respect in the aboriginal social landscape is to be modest in talking about
others directly and not make too much eye contact.
Rupert Ross emphasizes that Aboriginal culture operates
under a strict rule of non-intervention.
This may be why there is perceived attitude of apathy in these
communities. This includes child
rearing. Instead of the commonly used
authoritarian way of setting rules and boundaries for young Canadian white
children, aboriginal culture uses a lead-by-example way of guiding young
people. Unfortunately due to the
advancement of mass media technology in these remote communities, young people
are beginning to emulate different social norms than their parents. Yet their parents have a different framework
and keep a more traditional way of socializing.
This is causing a widening gap between generations and causing a harmful
alienation of young people. These are
just a few examples Ross gets into in this short book.
Seeing through the
rules
What I learned from this book was not how to solve all the
problems in the aboriginal communities.
I learned that even to begin trying to solve the problems, we have to
stop talking past each other. Our
cultural systems do not fit well with each other to create a healthy discourse
for problem solving. Both sides have to
break down our own cultural norms and deeply question our first premises of
reality. We cannot assume what brings us
happiness and well being will be the solution in an environment and a culture
much different than we are used to When we rise above the cultural planes we
live in, we can objectively judge where our cultures will be able to fit
together well for co-operation.
It looks like I’m late to the party. I assume that the movement of “Idle no More”
was much to do with this very topic. But
I suppose I choose not to pay attention and hoped that aboriginals would be
able to deal with their problems themselves.
But I now realize it’s the responsibility to understand fundamental
culture difference on both sides. That
way we can try to progress to a time where there are no “sides” to be on.
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