1 Planting the Seeds of Truth

Nistangekwe Liz Akiwenzie, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Ongweh’onweh (Oneida) Knowledge Keeper/Cultural Educator

(Interviewed by Emily Pez and Srividya Natarajan)

Emily: We want to thank you for welcoming us to sit with you today. We’re very grateful. Could you begin by telling us about yourself, by introducing yourself?

Liz: I would introduce myself through my father’s language, which is Anishinaabemowin.

Boozhoo! Nistangekwe n’dizhinakaaz. Mizhiike n’doodem. Neyaashiinigmiing n’doonjibaa. Onyota’á:ka miinwa Nishnaabekwe n’daaw. N’da zhaaganaashii-noozwin Liz Akiwenzie.

What I’m saying in my father’s language is “hello,” and what my original name is: Nistangekwe, which means “understanding woman.” It doesn’t mean I understand everything; it means I’m always looking to understand. I also say that I’m from Neyaashiinigmiing, which is Cape Croker, forty miles north of Owen Sound [Ontario]. That’s where I was raised. My other name is my Oneida name: Day^ya Yut DoLa Doe, which means “she who reasons and she who sees both sides.” Both those names describe who I am, and where I’m from.

And then my English name is Liz Akiwenzie, which means really absolutely nothing. “Akiwenzie” isn’t even my real last name. “Akiwenzie” is colonized–it was supposed to be Kiwenzie, which means “old man listening to the earth.” But that’s not even my real name either because that’s not what my father’s real last name was. Elizabeth: it was always beyond me why my mother called me that, named me after the colonizer queen of all of Creation, especially Turtle Island [laughs].

I’m a mother of six children. I have three sons and three daughters. I have thirteen grandbabies, and a new great-grandson has come into my life. My oldest granddaughter is in Creator’s World. And I have adopted a new daughter and a new grandbaby has come into my life.

I’m a Cultural Educator. I’m a helper to my people. I have been doing this work for 40-some years. And I did it because I want to learn about who I am, never knowing where it was going to take me. I just wanted to find out: who am I? And what is my purpose? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life? So, I share those kinds of things. It’s important that people know who I am.

I could have all kinds of letters after my name. What’s the big deal? Means absolutely nothing. It just tells me I’ve learned something from some institution, but it doesn’t tell you who I am. My educators and my teachers were the Old Ones, both Nishnaabeg and Ongweh’onweh, and I’m grateful that I got to go sit with these Old Ones with my sister Victoria, who’s in Creator’s World.

This is not just about introducing who I am. It’s about sharing who I am, where I come from, who my family is. Who are my parents, my grandparents? That is a part of our cultural way of being. When we meet people, the first thing we’d ask them is, who are you? Where are you from? Who are your people? Who’s your parents? Who’s your grandparents? Who are you related to? Which community are you from? And I’ve been hearing that all of my life, so I’ve been very aware of always knowing about my mom’s family and my dad’s family and the community that I grew up in. I learned as a young adult that lineage is really important for our people, so it’s a little more than just introducing myself, as you can see.

Emily: Thank you so much for sharing who you are and the communities that claim you. Can you explain what it means to belong to the Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee (Ongweh’onweh) Nations?

Liz: Columbus came to our shores, and soon as he seen brown-skinned people, he called us “Indian,” and that’s how all of the colonization started. Oh, and they brought their crime, they brought their dysfunctional ways of being, they brought their disrespect to women and children into my homeland. They brought their grief. There’s a huge history of the disrespect of women and children in this country, and it still continues today.

But the history of this country, which is the history of the First Nations–the original history, the true history–was never told. We are not part of “Canada’s” history: the people who call themselves Canadians are part of our history. In our communities, in our schools, they taught us very little. We were just little prisoners in their schools and we had to act like little prisoners and stand at attention when they said. And they were mean to us: mentally, emotionally, physically, sexually and spiritually abusive. I don’t know what my siblings looked like when I was little, because in school it was pure survival. I have no memory, no picture of what my brother, my sisters looked like. And my brother was in the same class. That’s how terrified I was. That’s how terrified I was. That’s how much trauma I had by being in that school.

So education has not been kind to me. The educational institutions and the educational systems in this country was not about educating First Nations people. It was not about us getting smarter and knowing new information. Information was given to us so that we would become oppressed, so that we would have shame-based beliefs about ourselves.

And then when we had to go to high school, we had to go live in town with non-native people. It is still to me a miracle how I made it through high school. And I’m grateful that my sister was with me, and my other friends from my community, that we supported one another.

On Fridays, a bunch of us would be in detention. So we would just talk and visit, and ask each other, “What are you gonna do for this?” Or maybe we’d be laughing and having fun. And finally the principal and the teachers got angry because we were supposed to be being punished, because detention is for missing a class or not doing our homework or something. But it didn’t work, because we had a sense of safety from being with each other. We were just planning our weekend. So they didn’t know what to do with us, except to say, “Let’s get them to Grade 10, because they are not going to amount to anything anyway. The message was always that we were bad, we were stupid. They never told us that we could go to university, never told us we could go to college, never told us that we could fulfill a dream.

At that age, I didn’t understand it. I just knew I was treated different. I felt it, but didn’t have the language to call it what it was. I also didn’t have no adults explaining to us what it was either. But as I got older, I got into my cultural education, learning about our ways, learning about our medicines and our teachings, ‘cause our teachings is our educational system. Education isn’t just about an institution that’s gonna teach you what to think. In our cultural way of being, we teach people how to think, not what to think. These are two completely different educational ways of being in the world.

Our teachings is about living a good life, being interconnected to all of Creation. Our way of life is being kind and having integrity for all living things, because all living things have a spirit. All men and women have a spirit, all living things on mother earth have a spirit, from the smallest insect to the biggest mammal, to the trees, to the moon, to the sun, to the stars. They all have a spirit. They all have life. They all have purpose. So when I went to go learn my cultural ways of being, those are the kinds of things I’ve come to learn and to understand. That we have a worldview. We have a governance. We have a natural way of being on the earth that we learned from being connected to all of Creation. We have a natural way of taking care of our children, taking care of each other, taking care of the Old Ones, taking care of the water, taking care of the trees and the plant life, and the winged ones, the finned ones, the four-leggeds. Everything in Creation is all interconnected, and helps one another.

So my cultural education didn’t come to me until I was older. I must have been maybe about 21. And my dad started taking us to sit with the Old Ones, and we learned about the history, and learned about the teachings. And as I continued to grow and to go sit with the Old Ones, I start learning about residential school, and what has happened there. More of my relatives start learning about it. We start talking about it, and we start healing from what residential school did to us: to my father, to my grandparents, to my relatives.

Residential school [was] where my father was mentally, emotionally, physically, sexually and spiritually abused from the age of four because he was kidnapped from my grandmother. And he was taken to school hundreds and hundreds of miles away from his home, and was told, “Your mother doesn’t know how to take care of you. Your father doesn’t know how to feed you.” My Papa was a fisherman. He was a farmer. He had orchards on his land. He had a garden. So how disturbing it must have been to my father when they would say that about his dad, contradicting that my Papa did feed his kids. He did take care of them. He did house them.

And how did they get these kids to these schools? The government would send different authorities into Native communities. And some of my relatives were at gunpoint while they were taking their children. They were taken by plane, by trains, by boats, by automobiles, by trucks, by buses. That’s the kind of history that needs to be taught across this country. And now we have more of my relatives writing books about residential school, what has happened to our relatives. Those religious institutions and the federal government stole our land. And then they would say, oh, we sold our land to them. That is a lie. How can my people sell our land, sign our names to documentation, when we couldn’t read English, we couldn’t speak English? Something’s wrong with that picture.

That’s a narrative that they tell people when they come to this land. It’s not true.

You [Canadians] still benefit from what your religious institutions, your educational systems have done to my relatives. You still have the land. You get to build these big educational institutions. There is very few First Nations people, if any, that work in these institutions, and they don’t want us to be there. They’re doing the best that they can to continue to oppress us and to keep us silent.

Those days are over. We will not be quiet. Silence is violence. I’m not gonna feed that.

I will be the opposite. I will continue to share, to teach, to plant that seed of the truth in the understanding of what the Catholic institutions, the religious institutions, the educational institutions, the justice system, the health system, the government system, the provincial system, the federal system did: all the cultural genocide that they inflicted upon me, upon my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great-grandparents.

Vidya: It is important for us to know and acknowledge these truths about cultural violence. Can you explain why you shared who you are in Anishinaabemowin rather than in English?

Liz: I introduce myself in the language because I did not grow up learning my language. Because we weren’t allowed to. Even my dad who was a fluent speaker, and my stepdad who raised me, a fluent speaker, wouldn’t teach it. And I asked one time, “Dad, why don’t you teach us?” And he says, “Because I’m scared you’re going to get harmed.” And he goes, “And people will never hire you because you speak your language. And I’ve tried to protect you.”

And yet: our original language is the empowerment about who we are. Our original language is our identity in who we are, in how we create relationships with Creator, with all of Creation. Everything in the universe is through the language, because our language is a heartfelt language. So the little bit of language that I speak and that I know I share. When I speak my language, it just feeds my heart, my body, my spirit. It feeds my identity of being an Original Woman of Turtle Island. It makes me feel good in my spirit. It makes me feel good in my heart. It clears my mind. It makes me sit differently in my physical body when I can share the little bit of language that I know.

Language is important. My father went to a meeting in Ottawa, and we were asking for our cultural ways to be reinstated. He and my relatives were told by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, “If you can’t speak your language, you don’t have a right to come to this table and ask for your culture.” This is the political body, the federal government of Canada, telling us that. If you are not Nishnaabe or Ongweh’onweh People, or whatever–one of the First Nations People across Turtle Island–then you all come from a different place. You’re not from here. And how dare this country think that they can tell us what we can speak or not speak?

Speaking your original language, no matter where you’re from, no matter what you do, is important. And yous have to learn English while yous are here? I suppose so. But you’re not taught to learn our languages. Oh, how interesting that is, because English language is still a colonized language of Canada.

And I don’t believe people need to give up who they are. We were forced to give up our language. We were forced to give up our natural ways of being, we were forced to give up our natural foods, we were forced to give up the way that we live life. We could not practise our language or Ceremonies or Medicine. If you got an education, you were stripped of your identity. If you got a career or a job, you were stripped of your identity. If you stayed in the army, you got stripped of your identity. They had all kinds of systemic racist ways of stopping us to succeed. Even if you did get an education and tried to get a job, they wouldn’t hire you anyway. We couldn’t buy land, we couldn’t buy a house.

The educational institutions owe us big time, because they stopped us from succeeding. But that was also their political mandate–for us to never succeed. And to a certain extent, they still believe that today. Because if they did believe in empowering us, they wouldn’t put up so much barriers–we should be visibly noticeable in every college, in every university, but we’re not.

And my hope is that the language is coming back slowly. That’s the other part that the educational institutions owe us. We need to have our language speakers in all these educational institutions, and my people should be able to go there and learn their original language for free. They need to create that space for my relatives to learn the language, give us the financial ways so we can continue to bring our languages back. Because there’s several different languages. We don’t speak all the same language.

Emily: Have things changed for Indigenous students entering the education system in Turtle Island today?

Liz: Is it changing? It is changing at some level. But the message still is, to be colonized and to leave your identity and your cultural ways behind, because you’ll be more successful. Because more of the next generations are learning their language, learning their cultural ways of being, practicing their Ceremonies, picking their Medicines, dancing their dances, singing their songs, what we’re finding and what we’re learning is they are more successful in not giving up their identity to go get Western society’s education.

That is empowerment. That is land-based learning, which is our cultural educational ways of being. And that’s what’s going to empower my relatives. And then you’re going to see more of my relatives that will go get their doctorate, will go get their Masters. But they’ll pick and choose now, because now, today, we have more Native college programs. We have more university culturally-based programs. So my relatives will go take those programs because they’re culturally-based. They teach about empowerment. They teach about the historical impact. They teach about identity. We incorporate Ceremonies. We incorporate language. We incorporate our natural ways of being in the world. And it’s safer. Students are more happy by being in those kinds of environments. And they are getting their doctorate. When they get their doctorate–Gichi-Manidoo, look out, world!

I think if we had our own educational institutions, let all those other nations come to us, we’ll teach them to be good human beings. We’ll teach them about our cultural ways of being. And those other nations that come to this country will be able to connect, understand our natural ways of being in the world, because they have a similar belief system, a similar understanding. And how beautiful that would be. Yeah, we could teach each other each other’s language. What a wonderful, beautiful picture that would be for all human beings.

Emily: Yes, that would be wonderful! How do you feel multilingual or international students could relate to Indigenous Peoples or issues in Canada?

Liz: This other question about international students, what I just said is that when I sit with them and we talk about those things, they do get it. They do understand because it’s their life experience also. But they have never been given the opportunity to meet us, to sit with us and see us, to learn.

I think it’s important that international students tell us about who you are. Tell us where you come from. Tell us about your family. Tell us about your foods. Share your language with us. That’s what builds relationships. That’s what’s gonna build and feed the humanity from one human being to another. Because those other nations in the world, they have their story in their countries, in their homes, in their community, in their nation. Those things need to be shared, and who’s best to share them is these young people.They’re living it.

And I think if they sat with us and learned more about our ways of being and doing, they truly would understand the connection. And that we all have our songs. We all have our language. We all have our medicines. We all have our drums. We all have our dances. We all have our traditional regalia that we wear.

Colonized thinking is about power and control over other nations of people. It’s not about respect. It’s not about supporting the individual nations, cultures. If it was, this would be a different world for all of us to live in. But my message to other nations, the people that come to this homeland, they need to know about the Original People. Because this is my home. This is my land. I did not come from anyplace else. My children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren deserve to walk through this country and be safe, able to practice their cultural ways of being, to learn whatever it is that they need to learn, to be in any jobs that they need to do or to be a part of. They need to be more visible in the educational sector.

Vidya: How can we all–students and educators, multilingual and from Turtle Island–learn to sit with Knowledge Holders like yourself? 

Liz: As you can see, I can talk forever [chuckles]. This is all interconnected. That’s why I always tell people: ask me questions. The only way that students can learn about cultural ways of being is to just sit with–some people call them Elders, some people call them Knowledge Keepers, some people say Cultural Educators.These institutions need to bring more of those people in, a wide variety of the Original People of Turtle Island. You need to advertise it more.You need to go sit and to hear with your heart, your mind, your body, and your spirit. When you listen to our cultural ways of being, our cultural teachings, that’s how you’re gonna learn it, you’re gonna feel it. You’re gonna see it. You’re gonna honor and you’ll probably connect it to your own nation or your cultural ways of being. That is the beauty of my cultural way.

There’s a difference between hearing and listening. When we hear, you’re sitting there in your heart, your mind, your body, your spirit. When you’re listening, you’re only using your mind. You’re missing out on the whole other level of information when you do that. So that’s the difference between cultural learning and western learning.

So you ask me a question. Because when I’m talking, what I’m doing is I’m seeing it. I’m seeing it. I’m hearing it. I’m feeling it. So it’s just not about “What’s the right answer today?” Oh, that’s not how I know. I’ll never be like that. I can only honor the truth. And that’s it.

We as Native women are the life givers. We are the first teachers. We are the nurturers. We are the spiritual foundation, we are the leadership.

We have a belief that we plant the seed with each other. We empower each other. We stand each other up. We stand beside one another. We invite those other nations to come sit with us. We have no problem sharing. You can come and learn about the light and the love of being a good human being, and I would encourage you to go learn that in whatever heritage that you have, whatever nation that you come from. That’s what’s gonna make the world a better place.

We’ll continue to grow. We’ll continue to shift. We’ll continue to move. We’ll continue to build relationships.