I want to share with you something else and I guess I'm going to have to lose some of our stereotypes here. Okay, so what I want to do now is share with you a medicine wheel that I found very instructive about the way that stereotypes work, at the way that they harm, and the way that they are perpetuated. And then I want us to think a little bit about where we can intervene in the power that they have. But first, the I want to give acknowledgment to the Sioux lookout anti-racism commitity. Which is a group where I, who, who came up with this model and which I'm sharing now, and which I found very instructive. I first saw it in the 1990's. So basically we have our, our wheel. It's broken into four quadrants, and, we start in the east direction, in the eastern doorway, and we start with the stereotype. And so, the, the important thing to know is that this, what we're starting with is, ideas, abstract notions, right? And they, they circulate like currency in the culture. And they, they, The way before we are, before we are born physically, right. These ideas were already circulated, we are born into world that had these stereotypes all these items here on the table the notions that you share over, that you learned from culture, from popular culture. The Indians are lazy. Indians are drunks. Indians are spiritual, that they're close to nature. These, these all don't reside or come from us personally, but we learn that they are out there circulating. When we start to internalize and, and take these on as truths or things that we believe. Then we're moving into the southern doorway and we're developing attitudes of prejudice. Okay, so this is like the idea, quite separate from us, the idea that circulates out there. When we form an attitude that's based on the idea, we're developing a prejudice. And what this means really is that we are starting the generalization process. So I talked earlier about it not necessarily being about are stereotypes true or false. It's kind of the wrong question to ask, is whether, is this notion over-generalized. This is when we start to pre-judge an entire people based on an idea. So if you know, let's say Joe Big Eagle comes in through the door and we start to think that oh, well, he probably has these traits. We're making that judgement without knowing anything about him based on his membership in a, in a group, right? So that's, that's where the problem lies is forming the attitude that comes from those stereotypes. But it's still just in our head, right? It's kind of psychological, and ethic-, it's a big word I'm writing, discrimination. I need all the room in this quadrant. This is when we kind of add power to prejudice, and it's an action. So now we might assume certain things about a group, but it's still in, it's kind of internal, right? When we act on that toward a certain group or certain individual because of their membership in a group, then we're, discriminating. Power plus prejudice is dis, is a discrimination. And then we kind of, moving along this wheel, and I should have explained this a bit about the way medicine wheel works is that it's always turning, right? So these things are forming and developing. In the north direction there's kind of, the way the Sioux look at anti-racism, committee described it, is the actions of discrimination then lead to kind of an internalization, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy, or an external rationalization. What do I mean by these things? So, what I mean by the internalization of stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination becoming self fulfilling prophecy is when the indigenous person starts to believe those stereotypes themselves. So that's one of the impacts that these attitudes and actions have is that they lead to our own people believing these things about themselves, and then they become those stereotypes. And they provide fodder for the rationalization of the stereotypes, because, oh look, there is a, there is a drunk Indian, oh look, there is a lazy Indian. What I would like all of us to try doing is select one of those stereotypes that you share or that may be you are thinking about but didn't say aloud and try running it through this and see how It would manifest itself in this cycle. So I am going to take the last one that was up here which is all Indians are lazy. And when I am through this wheel and it's kind of a thought exercise. So we start with that idea this notion Indians are lazy. Who knows where that came from but it's out there. So it leads to this notion, this attitude that, that oh, well if you're an Indian and therefore you must be lazy, because all Indians are lazy. Then we get to the discrimination, how might that work? Well if I was, say in the HR, unit and I had control over the hiring of someone, I might not come out and say or even know be kind of conscious of it, right. It's not, it's not necessarily intentional but it might be operating in there that, between these two candidates, who are otherwise equally qualified for this position, and I know that the one seems or looks Indian and the other one seems or looks white, I might be more inclined to go with the white guy because he'll show up on time he's likely to value the work more, come in regularly, work harder when he is here because these things are operating below the surface, okay. So, I'm not saying that you necessarily know that these things are even happening, but they're, but these notions are so powerful and so ingrained and so naturalized, that he just seems more eager to work here. He seems like he's got a good attitude, and it leads to that, to the next, that north direction. How does it lead there? Well, for that indigenous candidate, if that happens to them multiple times, they're, they're pounding the pavement trying to get work and they're constantly getting the door closed, eventually they just give up looking. And they become one of the stats of the unemployed, or those on welfare, and become the source for that rationalization from some of our, we're speaking sarcastically, our favourite media outlets like to talk about. If they wanted to work, they would just go out and get jobs. That rationalization, which then fuels the continued circulation of that stereotype, so that the next generation coming in, we have a nice, vibrant, healthy stereotype about Indians being lazy because the media are reporting it, and we, we have certain people we can point to and say, you see, look, look at the stats, the stats support it. But without that broader context of understanding how these things are operating, we're not getting the, the full picture. Now I, I mention media because when we're doing any sort of teaching and learning work, or education work, where do we get our information from. From. And a lot of us rely on media sources to tell us what's going on. What is the news? For analysis of certain events, we look to our, our textbooks. If we're teachers and we're teaching from textbooks, and there's notions in there that are seen as accountable and trustworthy and truthful and they're probably rationalizing certain notions. Good example is the way that for, for a long, long time in history textbooks, conflict with Aboriginal people is described. So, if the, the indigenous group in question Was a military alli? They were usually described at that. They were described as allies. That language was used. If they were resisting then the fight was kind of described as a massacre or you know, described in these ways that remove kind of any sense of agency or autonomy from the indigenous people, but they are, they are merely allies or foes. And they fall into a kind of friend or foe categories, and help to serve a rationalization of that bloodthirsty and noble savage, they're one or the other, and there isn't kind of room for complexity. That's the other thing about stereotyping is it simplifies very complex processes. So instead of kind of understanding the complexities of what motivated certain groups to act in certain ways at certain points in history say, or current events. Instead we have to kind of understand that they are either good or either bad and how do they fit in one of those categories, and they get, become constructed like so and we see this with kind of more recent events. When, when things are reported, were, were they law-abiding aboriginal people, were they peaceful? And this becomes the way that it's discussed, instead of a more kind of complex understanding of this whole cycle. But are they going to report this whole cycle in their coverage of it? Probably not, but this kind of helps us to break that, break out of that and understand how we go from stereotype to the actions which then reinforce stereotypes. And it becomes this cycle that reinforces every step along the way. So when we do our education work you know, this is one of the questions that I, I like to ask people, and I want to put the question to you now is where in this cycle, just take a minute to think about it. Where in this cycle can we have the most effective intervention in breaking the cycle? So I'll ask you just to think about that for a minute and then we can have a little discussion, yeah. >> I think discrimination is, we control our actions, we don't control our thoughts, so if you have a stereotype in compulsive thought that enters into your head, you might know it's wrong. You might know it's bad, but you don't control that thought, whereas you do control your action. So I think that's the, basically. >> Okay. And the, and something I've heard too about actions is you can legislate against them too. So you can have, kind of, affirmative action policies, or you can have, you know, you can look at wrongful dismissal or things like that, where you can, you can have evidence about an action, whereas it's hard to have action about. Or I mean, rather evidence about a prejudice. It almost has to manifest itself at the action stage, right? Okay, over here there was a hand up? >> I was thinking you could rework the initial idea where, so like they think that he's gay. And so you start with finding those ideas, making them more real. More evidence based, and once you can use, look at things that are real then you can start to readjust what happens in the south gate, which is our attitudes, and those are truly the better actions. >> Mm-hm, yeah. I, I th-, I like that idea too, because, the stereotypes, like I said, are out there ahead of us, before us. So we, we have ki-, we have a bit of choice to question them, to accept them or to oppose them. I think some, you know, the, the simple way of looking at it is we can kind of wholeheartedly take that, that preferred stereotypical meaning, or we can wholeheartedly resist that meaning. But what I think is more likely is somewhere in between, we negotiate a meaning with that, and this'll to borrow some British cultural studies ways of looking at that. Is there another hand in back? No? >> Yeah? >> I like, I like the first comment about the fact that the point of discrimination right, because I think, I think that there is, there is complicity in there somewhere, right? But in terms of acting at like, changing the actions right, because even if, even if you, sort of, rationally know why the stereotypes are wrong. Right? Even if we teach students, you know, why the stereotypes are wrong and the students really understand that. They can be, they're so pervasive. Right? Like they're almost the backbone of like Western philosophy, the laws, like almost our whole culture, right? So, yeah. Like, they're going up. And when they do come up in our minds, and we are, we do recognize them, they can do that, there'd be that guilt, right? And that guilt can be so paralyzing, and so instead of being paralyzed by the guilt say, you know what, it's cool I felt it, let's just change that discrimination. I think that's really powerful. >> Mm-hm, mm-hm.
