All quotes from Renee's book
Indigenous
resilience should be seen as a culturally rooted, community-based response that
encompasses resistance and survival strategies as leading sources of strength.
Indigenous
worldviews arise out of deep and profound connections with an Indigenous
world. As Fitznor points out, “Being
Aboriginal itself does not mean that we necessarily work from Aboriginal
self-determination and knowings.” Accordingly, to acquire an Indigenous
worldview, and exist from this location, we must maintain reactions with our
land, language, people, ancestors, animals, stories, knowledge, medicine,
culture and spiritual environment. It is
only within the context of Indigenous communities that an Indigenous worldview
can be maintained.
Indigenous
knowledge production faces continued pressure to exist in a world that is only
comfortable if colonial institutions maintain control over knowledge, including
the power to verify legitimate knowledge.
Colonization
has caused multiple injuries to Indigenous people, and therefore many
Indigenous people experience trauma in a multi-traumatic context; thus living
in and with trauma is a common experience.
The
terms “parallel realities” and “multiple realities” are intended to replace
“psychoses” and “psychotic episodes.
