Self Esteem and Lost Generations

 

My inquiry into the relationship between Indigenous American and Eastern spirituality offers me the Medicine Wheel, a holistic symbol of peaceful interaction between all living beings on Earth.  It complements the Eastern teachings of the nature of causality, continually changing and conditioning each other in its interconnections in the web of life.  

I use these teachings to introduce our humanity, fallibility and vulnerability - the impermanence and the dance between chaos and order - into my work in modern organizations conditioned for competition and perfection in the “machine metaphor”.    

This is because we have been “educated from birth to compete, judge, demand and diagnose” according to the founder of Non-Violent Communications, Marshal Rosenberg.   Naturally, it breeds negativity and inevitable conflict.    

I weave Eastern and Indigenous American wisdom together to facilitate Conflict Resolution training programs as I invite participants to cast a reflective mirror on self first, in dealing with “difficult people”.  There is no magic-bullet or a 3 step process to deal with a difficult person, as we have no control over anyone else’s emotions, but we do have control over ours.  That is emotional intelligence.  

At the same time, we know that we do influence each other’s moods and emotions through the ether and that too requires self-awareness, mindfulness and relationship intelligence.

Emotional, relationship and social intelligence can be developed through mindfulness practices and traditional rituals. This goes to our spiritual journey, to be centered and grounded and self-aware for self-mastery - to be skillful in our daily interactions. We acknowledge and accept our differences and realize that conflict is normal and even neutral, as it is we who will energize it with our emotional response.     

A Revelation

As I was getting to know the participants of the December 2014, Conflict Resolution course in Ottawa, it was serendipitous to have a First Nations participant, Tracy Lavallee, a Plains Cree woman in the program.

She experienced a revelation as we focused on self-mastery to work through the connection between a healthy self-esteem and the way we approach conflict.  Self-esteem is one of the five fields of Emotional Intelligence[i].  She was intrigued by the origins of our foundational self-esteem through nurture of our parental and familial love.  

Nature also plays a part, through our physical and biological health and well-being, to varying degrees.  The “Atma Shakti”[ii] - the power of self - the inner strength and resilience that we bring to life from birth also complements nurture from those significant loved ones.

Self-esteem is defined as how we value ourselves, perceive our value to the world - how valuable we think we are to others through the feedback we get. Self-esteem affects the way we live, how we trust ourselves and others in our relationships. 

Self-esteem defines our self worth and confidence, develops from a foundation of unconditional love and compassion, the nurturing first, from our Mother or a loving caregiver – the touch, the voice, the nourishment from breast milk and then the care of the extended family in safe surroundings – all this is an intrinsic part of the nurture that balances with nature.

Low self-esteem - feeling unworthy, incapable and incompetent - is debilitating and can keep us from realizing our full potential.  Low self-esteem can perpetuate itself even to progeny and the cycle can continue.  So the root causes of low self-esteem can be a lack of love, nurturing and acceptance in early stages of our lives into our late teens and it continues.

Tracy and I inquired into the implications when this critical nurturing is taken away, as when the First Nation-Aboriginal children were being removed from their homes and placed in residential schools.

For Tracy, this learning was empowering as Aboriginal communities are judged and stereotyped for their waywardness.  She saw possible root causes for the disconnect, despair and the inner violence stemming from a lack of this basic human need for familial love, which, for the most part, was denied when children were plucked away to the residential schools.

Tracy's Story

Tracy related her heart wrenching story of the capture of her own mother and aunt by missionaries while walking home and taken away in a cattle truck.  Her mother never spoke of this traumatic experience and she pondered on how those scars would have affected her mother in the way she would struggle to nurture her own children. 

Tracy, as a result, spent most of her childhood with her grandparents, who were also scarred by the experience, but gave her the love and attention.

Tracy’s aunt had been open to share how she, the younger of the two, remembered vividly - clinging onto her elder sister in terror as they were driven away.

I can only imagine the trauma of this experience and how this would spiral into a deep sense of despair.      

Tracy found her confidence to earn a law degree and find balance in her life, yet dismayed by much of her people being stuck in a cycle of despair. Gaining this insight about self-esteem enables her to articulate some of the possible root causes for their plight. This empowers Tracy to seek more focused ways to continue her good work for transformation, even as mainstream Canada judges Aboriginal people at a very superficial level without realizing the deeper causes.    

As Canada learns this different history and builds bridges of empathy and understanding, these root causes for the current situation for many communities – the lack of confidence, the self abuse and a lack of direction for many, cannot be ignored.

Empathy for Feelings and Needs

The way to build bridges of understanding is through empathy. We accept that an entire society’s emotions have been scarred.  

Many emotional needs would have been deprived for these stolen generations – the need for affection, acceptance, belonging, closeness, community, companionship, compassion, connection, comfort, empathy, inclusion, intimacy, love, nurturing, respect, security, safety, stability, support, trust, warmth, choice, freedom, independence, privacy, physical well-being, peace of mind, harmony and more. 

Imagine the feelings that would have arisen – feelings of despair, anguish, fear, loneliness, melancholy, sorrow, exhaustion, anger and the violence that would have resulted in these young minds, leaving them perplexed and confused.  

How can we expect their self-esteem to be in tact?.  

How can we then judge them on the same scale?.

There would have been some who had the inner strength to cope in resilience.  Some may have even thrived when they had caring teachers and administrators in these schools.  We realize these are few and far between from the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Building Bridges with Empathy

Building bridges without prejudice, we acknowledge the past, but not to feel guilty, as it was then, with a dominant culture of the colonist, the misguided notion of Manifest Destiny, the racial superiority, led them to believe that the Natives were savage heathens that needed to be saved.   

That was then, and now in an interconnected, globalized, more enlightened world, we take positive action to build bridges, make amends to reconcile.  To do this with authenticity, we have to build trust by communicating empathy.

For a multicultural and a plural Canada, which welcomes immigrants to its circle in the same Aboriginal spirit the Europeans were welcomed in the 16^th century, the Medicine Wheel symbolizes the harmony and connection, for peaceful coexistence of such diverse cultures.  It helps us to find a balance between a focus on the individual, material and hierarchical to one in community, aligned with nature in the living system of the circle. 

The power of balance then comes with amity between our rational, emotional and spiritual intelligences, as we make amends to reconcile a past that developed through domination of one over another to a new enlightened path based on mutual respect for mutual benefit.

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[i] Five Fields of Emotional Intelligence – Self Esteem, Listening, Self Expressing, Coping with Anger, Self Disclosure – Sage Training Australia – Robert Vanderwall

[ii] Atma Shakti – in Sanskrit is Power of Self or our Spiritual Energy