How Indigenous survival offers a blueprint for everyone’s future

“My great-grandparents were named Alex and Maggie Meawasige. They were born on the north shore of what is currently called Lake Huron,” began Jesse Wente.

The Indigenous writer, speaker, and arts administrator made a personal connection to his subject matter in his closing address at Imagining 2080: A Forum on Canada’s Future, held at McMaster University in the fall of 2023.

Wente referenced his own maternal ancestors in urging people of all backgrounds to commit to a better future, free of the systems “that are hurting us, causing us to war, causing us to divide, causing all of this harm.”

He sees a model in the Anishinaabe conception of time.

“We believe that everything you do should consider impacts seven generations into the future.”

For Wente’s great-grandparents, that meant making decisions for their family on behalf of the community, requiring foresight and sacrifice. 

Not all the children 

In the early 20th century, Wente says that his great-grandparents were “keenly aware that their way of life was ending. They were already living on a reserve. They were beginning to see their traditional territory taken away.”

“Knowing that such seismic change was coming,” he says that his great-grandparents reluctantly yielded to the Catholic Church and sent their children to school “to learn English… and the skills needed to thrive in this new world.” 

But he points out, “not all the kids.”

“Five of the eight kids went to the schools. The youngest did not. That was both because Alex and Maggie realized that the schools were not the promise that they had held themselves out to be, but also because those kids were to learn something else.” 

What we need to do, at this moment, is protect what is most key for our [common] future and to remain hopeful.– Jesse Wente in his public talk,

By moving to a house just outside the reserve, and therefore beyond the reach of Indian agents and the RCMP, Alex and Maggie ensured that their youngest children could stay home.

“These kids would keep the language. These kids would keep the ways, the stories, the ceremonies, the knowledge.”

Knowledge and survival

His family was not alone in this practice.  Other Indigenous families, he notes, chose this preservation of the past in service of the future.

Wente says that he is descended from the children who went to the schools, learned English, and did not return to the reserve.

The practical side of that loss is that it fulfills his great-grandparents’ desire for their descendents to “learn things, in order to bring them back, in order to strengthen the community’s ability to survive in this new world.”

Speaking to an audience at McMaster University about the future, Wente pointed out that the ability of Indigenous peoples to survive may contain useful knowledge for others, in these perilous global times of war, environmental crisis, and instability.

“Our world ended. And we’re still here. And now we are all here. And perhaps it’s the time that we begin to lend this particular expertise in surviving the end of the world to this one.”

The future has already existed

To those concerned that the world is in an unprecedented state of crisis, Wente offered this observation from an Anishinaabe perspective: “We have already been here.”

He points out that injustice, the subjugation of one people by another, and the destruction of nature are all-too familiar realities for Indigenous people.

For Wente, the immediate path is clear: “What we need to do, at this moment, is protect what is most key for our [common] future and to remain hopeful.”

He believes that we can all take inspiration from the Indigenous view of time, and build a common future around “deep remembering,” of a time on earth before our ill-fated but destructive political and social systems.

He gives the example of the way humans interact with the environment.

In Anishinaabemowin — the traditional language spoken by his great-grandparents, and lost by half of his family under colonization — Jesse Wente points out that humans do not possess the earth.

“We understand that the land possesses us, so it’s very different. It means that actually we steward the land in a very different way.”

“The most important things to preserve are the human things: how we communicate, how we live, how we understand the world, how we dance and share with one another.” 

Ways to live and survive are available to all, he told the McMaster audience.

“The future that you’re imagining has already happened has already existed. What we need to do is remember that future. Remember what it was to exist before these systems that are harming us so much.” 
 

Listen to Jesse Wente’s talk, Remembering Our Future, by downloading the IDEAS podcast from your favourite app.

*This episode was produced by Lisa Godfrey.
 

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