Screaming matches dominate council meetings

DEAR AUNTIE
By J’net AyAy Qwa Yak Sheelth Cavanagh

Dear Auntie:
I was recently elected to council, and while I feel very proud to serve my community, I am having regrets about putting my name forward in the first place. Every council meeting is a screaming match. Nothing gets done without tensions boiling over. This is not how I was taught to behave. I was taught to listen more than talk, and speak quietly and deliberately, knowing that each word has the power to help or do harm. I feel sick to my stomach every time I walk into the band office. I’m thinking I’m not cut out for a political position.

Signed,
Not Up For The Challenge

Dear Not Up For The Challenge:
Congratulations on taking up the challenge to be a leader for your community. Leadership roles will reveal a whole side to how our Indigenous communities continue to struggle with being forced to use a foreign governance system that contradicts traditional customary laws. Indigenous leadership takes courage.

One elder I met in my travels described how our leaders risk a bullet in the back from the white man and arrows in the chest from our own people. The Western hierarchy carries an attitude “Might is Right” that Indigenous communities have been forced to endure and learned to replicate.

Residential school formed power-over relationships with authority structured around who has power and who does not. Keeping our people in a state of being cared for was a Eurocentric way of dismissing and denying traditional approaches to raising children and bringing up respectful community members.

Leaders were not elected in traditional times. This was part of what the Indian Act imposed on our communities. I was astonished to learn from university the first “chiefs” in Indigenous communities across Canada were white men to teach the uncivilized Indian how to govern himself.

Imposing a uniform one-size-fits-all governance model was an attempt to replace diverse leadership customs among Indigenous nations in Canada. This may have involved leadership roles passed on through your family. Another example would be that nations had leaders appointed by grandmothers.

The Council Meeting screaming match where nothing gets done reflects how poorly the residential school system raised our children.
This all points to divide and conquer tactics of how the Indian Act has systemically created and reinforces a situation constructed to get Indigenous peoples to forget their savage ways and not work together. This sad and dysfunctional state stands as a reminder of how torn apart our communities have become.

However, your traditional knowledge can support your leadership journey and go a long way to rebuilding relationships. Perhaps you have, or can organize, an Elders Advisory Circle to explore cultural options for conducting meetings. If you have the budget or opportunity to seek funds, perhaps hire a facilitator and host a Teambuilding Retreat to develop a strategic plan and establish a code of conduct with Elders input. This can blend traditional and Western models for council meetings. This kind of retreat can be a way to revisit traditional values of respect and good behavior that results in positive action to better the community.
Lovingly, Auntie.

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