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Traditional Parenting
Traditions are the tools that a culture uses to define itself and to enrich, teach and heal. They are the functions that keep order, inspire, celebrate and show respect. Based in spiritual belief and a culture's understanding of how things should be done, they preserve the required order of life. Traditional parenting in all indigenous cultures was designed and evolved to support each cultures view of the world. It was the foundation of keeping the group together as a cohesive, interdependent, and healthy community.
The Basic Foundation of Traditional Parenting
A fundamental commonality among Aboriginal cultures is the concept that all living things, all elements, the earth, stars, sun, moon, animals, everything, are all related, we are all one, existing in relationship. This relationship is sacred and symbiotic meaning all things need all other things, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Elders teach us that we must show children that we are in this complex relationship at all times.
One way we do this by telling stories, and in those stories we give our animal relatives and our elemental relatives roles and names and have them interact with each other, with humans and with spirits. Another way is when we take something we need to survive, such as the life of a deer, a basket of berries, a strip of bark from a cedar tree, we make prayers and offerings and give thanks for the help. In these ways we make our relationships with all living things come alive in the minds of children.
We then teach them to seek out and to be aware of, all the ways they are connected to the whole, we help them see the connections as vibrant, always in flux and never as static. Paying attention to the conditions of these relationships is the next step, which lasts a lifetime. The goal is to spontaneously, willingly, connect oneself positively in these relationships and to help rather than hinder or dominate the natural flow and order of life. In this way we make our life supportive of the whole.
These teachings happen over time as our children explore the world and we pay attention to what they are relating to. This gives us opportunities to assist them in evaluating their relationships and thinking about ways to keep those relationships balanced and mutually nourishing. This is about friends, animals and elements, but it is also about the larger world of systems, ideologies and technologies. How are we in relationship with these larger ideas? How do we serve the greatest good in our relationship with them?
Common Elements
Traditional parenting for indigenous people of North America shared some common elements (of course variations always exist), such as:
- Children are a gift from Creator and hold central importance in the community, total respect is shown for the body/mind/soul of the child
- Belief in innate goodness and good intentions
- Trust in the child's instincts without burdening them with responsibility
- Respect for the child's personhood and full inclusion and membership in the community
- Simple acceptance of a child's feelings and emotions
- Close physical contact by way of baby carrying/family bed/massage
- Positive regard/listening/eye contact
- Teaching by example and gentle encouragement
- Patience in the belief that no matter how long it takes, a person will ultimately heal or learn/faith in the process of growth
- Mutual meaning (life is meaningful for the same reasons ie: each other, the group, family, spiritual practice, culture, mutual work and play)
- Community participation and responsibility in parenting
- Ceremony to mark the end of infancy/young childhood
- Initiation/welcoming the adult
The common elements listed above create a relationship between the parents, the mystery of growth, the child and the community that is mutually supportive. In that environment a child grows up to be compassionate, sharing, patient, reliable and loving. This is proven over and over again in observing indigenous cultures of the world.
Innate Goodness
Historically Aboriginal cultures did not question the innate goodness of a child. Children come from Creator, as we all do, and are born clean and innocent. A traditional, indigenous parent communicates, by the way they speak and interact with their children, that they believe them to be innately good. Not only good, but also capable, with sound instincts and the ability to learn. Traditional parents know that we are all an active part of nature and that nature is a mystery we can never fathom. Trusting in the mysterious process of growing gives the faith required in order to be patient and allow nature to do her work.
The idea of innate goodness is incredibly important. It is a concept one must believe before it can wholeheartedly be adopted into a parenting style, and when it is believed it must be seen that the truth is that you, the parents, are also innately good. It is our nature to be good and it is the nurture we receive that determines if we will be able to fulfill that potential.
Community Parenting
An important aspect that must not be overlooked is the element of community. Communities worked together to raise their children. Parents were not overtaxed and children had plenty of "aunts" and "uncles" to run to when in need as well as grandparents, siblings and cousins. A parent rarely had to worry about where their child was.
Aboriginal cultures also contained traditions that emphasized the sacredness of the community and human relationship to the whole. There are countless traditions from hundreds of cultures, such as The Sweatlodge, the Sundance, the Potlatch or Giveaway, the Pipe Ceremony and all the drumming, singing, prayer and ceremony that accompany them. These are all tools that served to maintain harmony, balance and connection. They satisfy the human need to express big feelings and to feel purpose.
Gifts
Many cultures felt that people were born with certain gifts and that is was the job of the parents and the community to take note of what they were and to help nurture them. A gift or talent was for the people, not the individual so much. To cultivate it would benefit all.
Adding Culture
You may or may not be aware of your own Nations traditions. If you are not, there are some things you can do to begin to add some culture to life such as:
- Thank Mother Earth for her abundance and for taking such good care of us at mealtimes or other special times.
- Greet also Father Sun, thank him for his light that nourishes Mother Earth.
- Learn about the Medicine Wheel. See if it is a tool that may help you in life.
- Learn about what the Sweat Lodge is.
- Tell the children that because Aboriginal people were utterly dependent on the Earth for providing all of their livelihood, they learned to thank her at all times for everything. If the people were going to pick berries, then thanks and an offering, such as tobacco or other special plant, would be made to the land and to the berry bushes for their gifts. Prayers were offered to the salmon for the gift of their lives, and also the deer, the sweetgrass (which is used as a smudge by many cultures) and so on and on.
- Use a smudge at the beginning of a special story or teaching time, this is the practice of cleansing oneself with the sweet smelling smoke of different sacred plants such as sweetgrass, sage, cedar and juniper. With the smoke of the friendly plants we send prayers to Creator and cleanse any negative feelings or energies we are experiencing or that are in our surroundings. We may feel down or sick or we are preparing to pray. We can smudge objects and spaces as well as people. It is a freshening and also a tool to slow us down in the moment and pay attention to where we really are in life, we give thanks in that moment. How to use a smudge.
- Teach respect for Elders and seek some out to come and tell stories, the ones who go before us in life have much to show us.
- Say "All my Relations" when you finish a story or teaching. Many cultures said this or it's equivalent to acknowledge the gift of whatever wisdom had been expressed and to also honour the basic reality of the complete connectedness of life.
- Cook salmon with hot rocks. This cooking method was used by coastal peoples. Rocks were heated in a fire and then dropped into baskets so tightly woven as to be waterproof. Clams and chunks of salmon were dropped into the boiling water. You can use a pot or ceramic crock.
- Tell stories from native traditions, such as the West Coast legends of Sketco the Raven, who did things like bring the Sun to the People, and he even became a seal for awhile. Your local library as well as BCACCS will have lots of books
- Play some traditional games, go to the BCACCS web-site, click on Library and Resources and type games into the search engine, there are five books available about children's games. You can do a web search and also check our Culture.
- Pay attention to the seasons and notice what the animals are doing. If you begin to become familiar with some Aboriginal stories about animals, you will see how we learn from their behavior, how they live together, their way of being in the world, how they have families.
- Have a Potlatch/Giveaway to celebrate important family days such as birthday, first menses, naming, marriage, births and deaths.
- Learn about local wild foods such as camas root, wild onions, wild garlic, wild ginger, pine needle tea, salmon, venison, berries.
- Learn also about the 3 Sisters, the staple foods of many North American First People's cultures - Plant some Corn, Beans and Squash a.k.a. the 3 Sisters!
- Tell stories without a book, perhaps just with a prop or two. Talk about how there were no books long ago and all stories and all history was told from memory.
- Attend a pow-wow or other cultural event, check out our events calendar.
- Adopt an Elder, (click here) to read about adult adoption among the Yequana. www.continuum-concept.org/reading/adultOrphan.html
- If you live in the Kootenays learn about the Sinixt Nation www.sinixt.kics.bc.ca and (click here) and the K'tunaxa Nation ( ) and ( )
The Pleasure of Parenting
Here is an excerpt from the book The Continuum Concept. The author Jean Liedloff is describing a group of Yequana tribeswomen in Venezuela bathing in a river:
"However many women and children participated, the bath had a quality of luxuriousness. Every move bespoke enjoyment, and the babies were handled like objects so marvelous that their owners felt constrained to put a mock-modest face on their pleasure and pride. "
Children, when they are cared for in a traditional way, become a real source of enjoyment and satisfaction, especially to Elders, but also to all the child's relatives and the community. Children are extensions of their grandparents and parents, they are funny, delighted and delightful, and their curiosity and playfulness are contagious. When relationships are healthy, children inspire a satisfying compassion and protectiveness in the adults in their lives.
There is an idea that colonizing cultures fostered about children that both Aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike are still suffering from. It is the idea that children are a nuisance and that the work of caring for them is one that can rightfully be held over their heads to make them feel guilty or bad. Another incorrect idea is that children are not born good and that they need to be forcefully shaped to be good by strict and oppressive parenting. Thoughts like these create separation. Aboriginal peoples traditionally held no such beliefs or feelings.
Physical Reprimanding
One thing that is true of all indigenous cultures around the world, is that in their traditional parenting, they are generally very gentle with their children. Corporal punishment has usually been learned from colonizing cultures.
In some cultures, striking children has been warned against in stories. The Mohawk tell the story of how Thunder fell in love with a human woman named Corn Row Woman. She came to live with him in the sky world until she became pregnant. Thunder's mother, Sky Woman, told them that Corn Row Woman could not give birth in the Sky World and that she would have to raise the child on Earth. She warned that no one must ever strike the child or it would be taken away to the Sky World.
Corn Row Woman gave birth to Thunder Boy on Earth. For many years all was well, but one day Thunder Boy displeased his grandmother, the mother of Corn Row Woman. The grandmother had never believed Corn Row Woman's story that Thunder had fathered her son. She struck Thunder Boy to discipline him but he then disappeared, back to the Sky World, never to return. His mother was broken hearted and sang to him whenever there was a storm or thunder, forever sorry.
Striking children teaches that might is right. This is dominance thinking, and anyone who is dominated, struggles with the power imbalance. It is important to realize that we as adults hold all the power. Even when it feels as if we don't, we truly do. It is easiest not to get into power struggles in the first place. We can foster an allied relationship with our children, instead of an adversarial one.
Kiyam
A Cree Elder relates how it was for her as a little girl. Whenever she was being naughty or making mischief of some kind, "my granny would take me and tuck me beside her saying 'Kiyam, Kiyam'. Kiyam means nevermind or 'it's alright'. She never got mad at me, just said 'Kiyam'. Her gentle guidance taught me to be good."
This same Elder tells parents who are having a hard time to remember how they felt as a child. She says the way back to being kind is to stop blaming others and to never blame your children. Take the time to heal yourself, take the time to figure it out and find the roots of your anger. We must explain things to children and help them to find the roots of their troubles by talking together. No matter how young, just try to speak at their level and fully involve your heart in the communication.
Changing Our Thinking
For many First Nations, Inuit and Metis, there is much pain, anger and shame about the loss of culture and tradition. Residential school, the removal of children into non-aboriginal homes, and the outlawing of religious and cultural expression added to the loss of the ancestral land upon which those traditions were supported has caused generational disruption to the continuum of traditional parenting. Take careful note that it was a parenting style that worked successfully for tens of thousands of years.
Healing is an important job now.
Finding the strength to give what was never given. Patience, empathy, unconditional support and love, respect, the benefit of the doubt, trust in our innate goodness, healthy physical closeness. The benefits outweigh the struggle of finding ways to give these things to children, and to each other as well.
Practical Elements and Realities
In order to give what was never gotten, we need to find ways to support a process of healing and change in our and our family's lives.
Some things that are important:
- Education, understand how our human nature works so that we can have informed and realistic expectations of our children and of ourselves. (explore this web-site to find lots of good information).
- Seek out relationships with healthy Elders.
- Healing programs.
- You may find the foundational support of a spiritual practice to be healing and strength giving.
- Ways to discharge our own feelings, a person you can call and cry or rage to, a support group, a personal practice like prayer, hiking, working out, meditation...anything to move your feelings.
- Either counseling or some form of psychological education so that you can begin to unravel the tangle of your own feelings. Elders, therapists, study groups, healing circles can all help.
- Measure your situation against what you lack, meaning that you realize you are parenting in less than ideal conditions such as lack of healthy community, poverty, systemic oppression, etc. Be gentle with yourself and assess your strengths and gifts.
- Make use of what there is to help you such as parenting courses and parent/child drop in groups. (Check out the link to the left for Aboriginal Support and Community Services)
Internal Comfort
Know, in your heart, that you are not alone, either in joy or in sadness, whatever your individual situation. Billions of mothers and fathers have gone before you, it is the most popular and important job on the planet! If you are having a difficult time, seek help. There are people who can be trusted and who want to help. If things are going well, perhaps you are in a place to open your heart and help another. The greatest compliment a Navajo can pay another person is "she takes care of her relatives"...
All My Relations, Madeleine MacKenzie.These links have some extremely good resources
The Continuum Concept, click here for our review.
www.continuum-concept.org
Raising the Children is an online educational tool for Aboriginal parents
www.raisingthechildren.knet.ca
Here are two really good articles on communication with children,
www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/parenting/communication.shtml
www.muextension.missouri.edu/xplor/hesguide/humanrel/gh6123.htm
This is a wonderful book, ask your library to stock it,
www.walk-in-peace.com/index.html
This site has many great articles on attachment parenting which is the non-aboriginal term for traditional parenting
www.awareparenting.com
This is a good article with some very interesting study results about physical touch and it's importance to our health
www.chetday.com/gentletouch.htm
Here are twenty ways to help with discipline
www.awareparenting.com/twenty.htm
Here's an article about discipline
www.parentingbookmark.com/pages/ArticleAL13.htm