Honoring Indigenous Cultures and Histories | Jill Fish | TEDxMinneapolis

Summary

Jill Fish, a Tuscarora Nation member, discusses the impact of settler colonialism on indigenous narratives and identities. She shares her personal journey and challenges the deficit model of psychology, proposing a reconceptualized ecological systems model that centers culture and history. This model promotes a cultural-strengths-based perspective, encouraging society to acknowledge and validate indigenous histories and cultures.

Takeaways

• 🌍 **Land Acknowledgement**: Jill Fish begins by acknowledging the Dakota people's traditional homelands and the historical injustices they faced, setting the stage for a discussion on settler colonialism.
• 🏗️ **Settler Colonialism Defined**: Fish explains settler colonialism as a global phenomenon where a dominant group erases indigenous narratives and replaces them with their own.
• 📚 **Narratives and Identity**: She emphasizes the importance of narratives in shaping identity and understanding one's past, present, and future.
• 🚫 **Eradication of Indigenous Narratives**: Fish points out the erasure of indigenous narratives in favor of settler narratives, which denies indigenous people their right to exist.
• 🧐 **Personal and Cultural Survival**: Jill shares her Tuscarora Nation's history, including their survival and perseverance despite colonization and forced assimilation.
• 🏡 **Cultural Displacement**: She discusses the personal impact of cultural displacement on her own life and the broader implications for indigenous communities.
• 🔪 **Psychological Impact**: Fish reveals the deep psychological effects of the deficit model, including self-harm and a sense of invisibility within mainstream society.
• 🎓 **Educational Disparities**: She highlights the stark educational disparities faced by Native American youth, including lower graduation rates and underrepresentation in higher education.
• 🌟 **Cultural Strengths Perspective**: Fish introduces the ecological systems model and proposes a reconceptualized version that centers culture and history, moving away from a deficit perspective.
• 🔄 **Reconceptualizing Models**: By repositioning the chronosystem and macrosystem, Fish's model integrates culture and history into all levels of analysis, challenging the status quo.
• 🤔 **Self-Reflection and Change**: She concludes by encouraging the audience to reflect on their own roles in perpetuating or challenging settler colonial narratives and to work towards a more inclusive society.

Q & A

What is the significance of acknowledging the land and its indigenous history?

Acknowledging the land and its indigenous history is important because it recognizes the historical injustices and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism on indigenous peoples. It also helps to understand the context in which indigenous narratives have been marginalized and the need for their recognition and preservation.

What is the concept of settler colonialism as described in the script?

Settler colonialism is a process where a dominant group displaces an indigenous population, taking over their land and resources. It involves the erasure of indigenous narratives and the imposition of the settlers' own narrative, leading to the marginalization and oppression of the indigenous people.

How does the script define narratives and their importance?

Narratives are defined as tools that help people understand their identity by telling them where they have been, where they are, and where they might end up. They are crucial for cultural preservation and self-understanding, and the denial of indigenous narratives can be seen as a denial of their right to exist.

What challenges does the speaker face as an indigenous person in a settler society?

The speaker faces challenges such as cultural erasure, alienation, and a lack of recognition of her history and culture. She also experiences personal struggles like self-hatred and mental health issues, which are exacerbated by the deficit model that portrays indigenous cultures as inferior.

What is the deficit model mentioned in the script?

The deficit model is a psychological framework that views individuals from different cultural groups as lacking or deficient compared to the dominant culture. It perpetuates the narrative that indigenous cultures and histories are inferior, leading to negative self-perceptions and societal marginalization.

Why is the ecological systems model significant in the context of the script?

The ecological systems model is significant because it provides a framework for understanding how an individual's development is influenced by their interactions with their environment. The speaker uses this model to critique the deficit perspective and to propose a reconceptualized model that centers indigenous histories and cultures.

What changes does the speaker propose to the ecological systems model?

The speaker proposes to move the chronosystem to the core of the model and to bring the macrosystem from the outside to the second level. This reorganization is intended to center indigenous histories and cultures in the analysis of development and experiences.

How does the reconceptualized ecological systems model challenge the deficit perspective?

The reconceptualized model challenges the deficit perspective by forcing an acknowledgment of the historical and cultural factors that shape the experiences of indigenous people. It moves away from viewing individuals as deficient and instead focuses on the ways in which settler society is deficient in meeting the needs of indigenous people.

What is the cultural-strengths-based perspective that the speaker advocates for?

The cultural-strengths-based perspective is an approach that acknowledges and validates indigenous histories and cultures as strengths rather than deficits. It encourages a shift in paradigms to create more inclusive spaces and institutions that respect and integrate indigenous narratives.

What questions should individuals ask themselves to move towards a cultural-strengths-based perspective?

Individuals should ask themselves whether their spaces, actions, institutions, and classrooms are structured around settler society, whether they are working to shift paradigms to be more inclusive, and whether they are correcting inaccurate histories and stereotypes. They should also question their own cultural and historical knowledge and its influence on their present-day actions.

What does the speaker mean by 'settler society'?

Settler society refers to the dominant society that has been established by settlers on indigenous lands. It is characterized by the imposition of the settlers' culture, language, and norms, often at the expense of the indigenous population's culture and history.

Outlines

00:00

🌍 Acknowledging Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure

Jill Fish begins by introducing herself as a member of the Tuscarora Nation and acknowledges the Dakota people's land upon which the audience is standing. She explains the harsh reality of settler colonialism, not just in the U.S., but worldwide, where settler populations dominate and erase Indigenous narratives. This erasure denies Indigenous people the right to exist and highlights the single-sided settler narrative that shapes history. Fish emphasizes how narratives shape identity, and the dismissal of Indigenous histories results in the denial of their existence and culture.

05:02

💔 Struggles of Indigenous Youth and the Deficit Model

Fish reflects on her personal experiences of alienation as an Indigenous youth, which led to self-harm at age 12. She shares how her Tuscarora culture was marginalized in mainstream schooling, and how this isolation led to feelings of inadequacy. The psychological concept of the 'deficit model' explains how Indigenous people are viewed as deficient because of their cultural differences. She recounts personal encounters with racism, poverty, and stereotyping, showing how systemic issues create disadvantages for Native youth, as evidenced by high suicide rates and low graduation rates.

10:03

🌿 Reimagining Development Through the Ecological Systems Model

Fish introduces the ecological systems model by Urie Bronfenbrenner as a framework that examines how an individual’s development is shaped by their environment. She explains the different levels of the model, from the individual to broader societal influences, and how these systems interact to impact development. She argues that mainstream systems often ignore Indigenous culture and history, pushing them to the margins. Fish advocates for incorporating these elements more centrally, especially in understanding the lived experiences of Native American people.

15:04

🔄 Reconceptualizing the Ecological Model for Indigenous Perspectives

Fish describes her efforts to adapt Bronfenbrenner’s model to better suit the Native American experience. She proposes shifting the chronosystem (history) to the core of the model and centering the macrosystem (culture) as the second layer. This restructuring ensures that Native American culture and history are foundational to understanding development, rather than being marginalized. By doing so, she moves away from the deficit perspective and emphasizes the importance of cultural strengths in development. Fish calls on society to recognize the failures of settler colonialism and to create more inclusive spaces for Indigenous people.

🛠️ Building Inclusive Spaces for Indigenous Narratives

Fish concludes by urging society to challenge the exclusion of Indigenous histories and cultures from mainstream frameworks. She encourages reflection on how educational institutions, actions, and societal structures are shaped by settler colonialism, often to the detriment of Indigenous inclusion. By recognizing the culture and history of Indigenous people, society can move towards a strengths-based perspective. She emphasizes the need to educate oneself about the land they stand on and Indigenous histories, as well as to correct inaccurate portrayals and stereotypes.

Keywords

💡Settler Colonialism

Settler colonialism is a form of colonialism where a group of people from one nationality move to another territory and establish a new society, often displacing or subjugating the indigenous population. In the script, the speaker discusses how settler colonialism has led to the erasure of indigenous narratives and the imposition of a dominant settler narrative, exemplified by the historical displacement of the Dakota people.

💡Indigenous Narratives

Indigenous narratives refer to the stories, histories, and cultural perspectives of indigenous peoples. The speaker emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and honoring these narratives, which are often overshadowed by settler narratives. The script mentions how the speaker's own Tuscarora history is a part of her narrative that is seldom acknowledged.

💡Deficit Model

The deficit model is a psychological framework that views individuals from different cultural groups as lacking or deficient compared to a dominant cultural norm. In the script, the speaker describes how this model was applied to her and other indigenous individuals, pathologizing their culture and history instead of recognizing their strengths.

💡Ecological Systems Model

The ecological systems model is a theory in developmental psychology that examines how individuals develop through their interactions with their environment. The speaker discusses how she adapted this model to better understand and represent the experiences of Native American individuals, placing greater emphasis on cultural and historical context.

💡Chronosystem

The chronosystem is a component of the ecological systems model that considers the role of time and how changes over time affect development. The speaker proposes moving the chronosystem to the core of the model to highlight the importance of historical context in understanding the present experiences of indigenous people.

💡Macrosystem

The macrosystem in the ecological systems model refers to the broader cultural, societal, and ideological patterns that influence development. The speaker argues for repositioning the macrosystem within the model to center culture and history, particularly indigenous cultures and histories.

💡Cultural Strengths Perspective

A cultural strengths perspective is an approach that focuses on the positive aspects and resilience of a culture, rather than viewing it through a deficit lens. The speaker advocates for this perspective to counteract the deficit model and to validate indigenous histories and cultures.

💡Tuscarora Nation

The Tuscarora Nation is an indigenous group that the speaker identifies with. The script provides historical context about the Tuscarora people's migration and their experiences with European colonization, illustrating the importance of indigenous narratives.

💡Haudenosaunee Confederacy

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, is a group of six nations, including the Tuscaroras. The speaker mentions joining this confederacy as part of her ancestors' history, showing the resilience and unity of indigenous peoples.

💡Mainstreaming

Mainstreaming refers to the process of integrating minority or special needs students into a regular educational setting. The speaker describes her experience of being mainstreamed into a predominantly white school, which led to feelings of alienation and a negative impact on her self-esteem.

💡Settler Society

Settler society is a term used to describe a society established by settlers in a new land, often at the expense of the indigenous population. The speaker discusses how settler society perpetuates colonial dynamics and fails to meet the needs of those outside of a settler history or culture.

Highlights

Acknowledgment of Dakota people's homelands and the historical injustices they faced.

Introduction of the concept of settler colonialism and its global impact.

The importance of narratives in shaping our understanding of identity and history.

The erasure of indigenous narratives in favor of settler narratives and its implications.

Personal connection to the Tuscarora Nation and the speaker's dedication to research in psychology.

Historical account of the Tuscarora people's migration and the Tuscarora War.

The resilience of the Tuscarora people and their survival despite historical adversities.

The speaker's personal experiences of cultural erasure and alienation in mainstream education.

The psychological impact of the deficit model on indigenous youth.

Statistics highlighting the disparities in education and mental health among Native American youth.

A call to action to question societal structures rather than indigenous deficiencies.

Introduction of the ecological systems model by Urie Bronfenbrenner.

Critique of the ecological systems model for reinforcing a deficit perspective on Native American experiences.

Proposed reconceptualization of the ecological systems model to better represent Native American experiences.

The significance of placing the chronosystem and macrosystem at the core of the model.

The potential of the reconceptualized model to shift from a deficit to a cultural-strengths-based perspective.

Questions to consider for acknowledging and transcending settler colonial past.

Closing remarks and the call to action for a more inclusive society.

Transcripts

Translator: Ivana Krivokuća Reviewer: Peter van de Ven

[Speaks in foreign language]

Good evening everyone,

my name is Jill Fish, and I'm from Skarú:rę' Kayeda:kreh,

the Tuscarora Nation.

Before I begin,

I want to acknowledge that the land that the call center is built upon,

the land that we're all standing on,

are the traditional homelands of the Dakota people,

that for you all to exist in the city of Minneapolis today,

the Dakota people had to experience genocide, displacement,

reservation confinement and assimilation

so that colonists could take their homelands

and turn them into yours.

And this is settler colonialism.

It's not unique to the United States or even the Americas.

You can see instances of it all around the world,

where a settler population presumes racial and ethnic dominance

over indigenous population

and through their settler tactics erases the indigenous populations' narrative

to replace it with a narrative of their own.

So when you build a nation off of this narrative,

you see one history, one story - it's that of the settlers.

And this is a problem because narratives are a tool for us as a people

to understand who we are.

They tell us where we've been, where we are,

and future possibilities for where we might end up.

So when you fail to acknowledge indigenous narratives

in favor of settler narratives,

the narratives of conquest, of exploration,

of taming a continent -

"In recent years and even decades, too many people have forgotten that truth.

They have forgotten that our ancestors

trounced an empire, tamed a continent and triumphed

over the worst evils in history." -

you're denying indigenous people the right to exist.

How do we as indigenous people

honor and transcend a past that is seldom acknowledged,

and when it is, it's our plague, not our perseverance,

a culture not seen as thriving, but as long-lost?

This is a question that I ask myself a lot.

I've dedicated my research in psychology to it,

and as a therapist, I've spent many times helping others

meaningfully integrate their past and their present.

It is deeply personal for me.

My past goes all the way back to the 15th century.

That's when our people, the Tuscaroras,

came together to reside around the Great Lakes.

Over time, my ancestors migrated

to the North Carolina region, United States.

And that's where they lived in the 17th century

when European colonists began moving into our territory,

raiding and capturing people from our tribe to sell into slavery.

These settler acts of violence ignited the Tuscarora war.

And during this war, in one moment,

nearly 1 000 Tuscarora men, women and children

were killed or captured at their stronghold Neoheroka.

In this particular moment, this particular act of violence -

it started my ancestor's journey back to the Great Lakes region.

And this is where they would join the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas,

Cayugas and Senecas in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

That is a 1 300 mile journey by foot and by water,

through forests and through mountains,

while some of my ancestors carried the remains of those relatives

lost to danger and sacrifice.

And we survived.

Our present-day community is an area of land given to us by the Senecas.

The Tuscarora reservation is where I was born.

It's where I was raised in community,

with my culture, my language, my beliefs and my traditions.

It's even where I was educated through the sixth grade.

So not only did we survive - we still exist.

Our narrative has persisted for more than 300 years.

How many of you knew all that

about my tribe, our migrations, our present-day community?

Go ahead and take a look around

and see how many people are raising their hands.

This is how it often feels for me, as a Tuscarora women in settler spaces -

all these people looking at me, but not truly seeing me.

This is how it felt when the sixth grade ended

and my reservation no longer had the resources

to continue our education there,

so we were forced to mainstream in a school in a nearby town.

I went from a cohort of less than 30 Haudenosaunee students

to being trust into a cohort of over 300 predominantly white students.

It was all these people looking at me,

but not truly seeing my history or my culture.

This is the first time I cut myself.

I carved the word "hate" into my arm.

And so there I was, this 12-year-old Native American girl,

already hating herself.

And it wasn't one event that led up to this moment of heartache for me

and many others that would follow it.

It was a process, one that took my humanity

in all its richness and complexity,

and instead of calling it a strength,

stripped it away bit by bit, and called what was left a weakness.

We call this the deficit model in psychology.

It's more than a framework for understanding

the psychological experiences of those from different cultural groups.

It's a worldview, a belief system,

one that perpetuates a very specific narrative.

And the narrative is this:

not only is my culture and history seen as different from yours,

but it's for that reason that I'm deficient.

And this narrative became apparent to me

throughout all my mainstreamed experiences.

I was immediately forced to trade in my Tuscarora language and culture courses

for French and US history.

I had peers spit on me and make fun of me for being poor,

while I had parents of friends, who I did make,

forbid their children from coming over to hang out with me.

On top of that, school administrators contacted my parents,

threatening them to have the police come to my birthday party

to monitor it for drugs and alcohol.

This was all because I was from the reservation.

And while it's true we didn't come from a lot of money,

and addiction was certainly present in my family,

these things are not because I'm Native American.

It's because settler society

is an extension of the colonial dynamics that this nation was built upon,

and seeks to oppress in the present just as it did in the past.

I didn't know this then,

so at 12 years old, it left me feeling alienated and unwanted.

This is how a lot of Native youth feel.

For suicides, Native youth between ages of 10 and 24 years old

comprised 35% of completed suicides, compared to 11% of whites.

For a high school education,

Native Americans have the lowest high school graduation rates

across the nation, in comparison to every racial and ethnic group.

And as for a college education,

one percent of Bachelor's degrees awarded go to Native Americans.

That's one percent, whereas 68% go to whites.

And so tonight, I want to know:

when are you all going to stop asking

what's wrong with indigenous and Native youth,

and start asking what's wrong with our society?

What would it be like if instead of stripping away

the historical and cultural contacts

that are so central to our sense of selves and ways of being in the world,

that we use them as the foundation from which all our experiences

can and should be understood?

Can you imagine what that would do for our development?

I sought out to answer this question

when I became the first in my family to pursue higher education.

And when I became a PhD student,

I came across a model of human development

that took culture and history into consideration.

It's called the ecological systems model

by developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner.

The focus of the model is on an individual

and their interactions with their environment,

and how those interactions impact their development.

The model is widely used in psychology, but it's also used widely in our society.

People use it to structure educational programming around it

as well as community programming.

This is what the model looks like.

At the core of the model you have the individual,

you have their traits and their characteristics.

If we were to think of my experiences as an example for this model,

this is where I would go.

We would place me at the center of the model.

At the second level of the model, there's the microsystem.

The microsystem refers to environments

that the individual is directly involved in,

that impact their development.

For me, microsystems included my parents, my peers and even the school.

And at the third level, we have the mesosystem.

The mesosystem refers to interactions between environments

that we identified at the microsystem that impact my development.

A perfect example of this would be the school contacting my parents

and threatening them with the police.

That's an interaction between two microsystems

that had an impact on me.

And at the fourth level, we have the exosystem.

Similar to the mesosystem,

the exosystem also refers to interactions between environments,

except this time, one of the environments does not directly involve me,

so it has an indirect impact on me.

An example of this would be the parents of the friends that I made

who forbid their children from coming over to play with me.

I didn't know those parents,

I wasn't involved with them in any sort of way,

but through their decision,

they had an influence and an indirect impact on my development.

At the fifth level of the model, we have the macrosystem.

And the macrosystem refers to trends seen

in the previous environments in the ecological systems model.

So these can be trends in norms, ideologies, opportunity structures,

but this is where we capture culture.

And past the sixth grade,

my culture was no longer the center of my development.

It was effectively moved to the margins.

If culture was discussed, it often wasn't mine -

it would be the culture of mainstream society, of settler society,

so that'd be settler societies, language, beliefs, norms.

Decades later, apart from the original model,

a final layer was added to the ecological systems model.

It's called the chronosystem.

And the chronosystem is the third dimension of the model,

so it cuts across all the other layers of the ecological systems model.

This refers to consistencies or inconsistencies seen over time

throughout the model.

So this is where we would capture something like a personal history

or even an ancestral history.

The unfortunate thing is you can see that it's situated underneath the model.

It's hidden underneath there,

so it makes it really easy to overlook these historical pieces.

It was also developed at such a later date

that people would often refer to the earlier version of the model,

which doesn't include the chronosystem in it, so again, it's overlooked.

The ecological systems model had all the components I was looking for,

but in its current condition,

it didn't tell me anything new about the Native American experience.

In fact, as I used it as a framework

to understand the research literature in Native American psychology,

I found that it encouraged the deficit perspective,

because when you place the individual at the core of the model,

it allows researchers who use the model

to use the individual as the point of analysis,

and then it allows those same people to situate problems in individuals

and the communities that they come from,

overlooking all the other factors at the outside of the model.

And because my ancestors didn't pave the way to resistance for 1 300 miles

for me to settle for the status quo,

I decided to go back to the drawing board with the ecological systems model

to rearrange it, to reconceptualize it

so that it made more sense for the Native American experience,

and before using it in my own research in our communities.

And so what I did was I took this 39-year-old model,

and I proposed to do two things to it.

I proposed to take the chronosystem and then move it to the core of the model.

It would still be the third dimension,

but it would also now be the starting point of the model.

And then the second thing I proposed to do

was to take the macrosystem from the outside of the model,

to move it to the inside.

It would now be the second level of the model.

Everything else would remain the same,

so it'd be followed by the individual,

the microsystem, the mesosystem and the exosystem.

But this move to put the chronosystem and the macrosystem at the core,

it accomplishes so many goals.

By putting the chronosystem at the core of the model,

we're laying the foundation

from which all the other remaining layers of the model can and should be understood,

that any consideration of the present-day experiences of Native American people

must be grounded in the past.

And then by taking the macrosystem

and putting it from the outside of the model

to the second level of the model,

we're moving to center culture and development,

so we would be centering Native American ways of being and knowing

instead of pushing it at the margins, which is common in our experiences.

And then by taking both the chronosystem and the macrosystem

and putting it at the core before anything else as discussed,

we are inextricably connecting culture and history

into the remaining levels of the system,

making it impossible to ignore the role that culture and history play

in our development and the present-day experiences of native people.

Adopting the reconceptualized ecological systems model

moves us away from the deficit perspective,

because it forces you to acknowledge

that settler colonialism has created long-standing incongruencies

between native people and settler society in the present day.

It challenges you to look beyond the individual

to the culture and history of the individual,

and how these things interact with the culture and history

of settler society.

It begs the question:

does settler society support or constrain indigenous histories and narratives?

It also moves you towards this place

where you can no longer contribute to the narrative

that natives are deficient.

You have to acknowledge that settler society is deficient

in meeting the needs of people

who don't come from a settler history or a settler culture.

(Applause)

That society does not equally integrate indigenous histories and cultures

into its framework.

Adopting the reconceptualized ecological systems model

will also move you towards a cultural-strengths-based perspective,

where by leveraging the chronosystem and macrosystem,

you can begin to acknowledge and validate indigenous histories and cultures.

But to do so, you have to start by asking yourself several questions.

Are the spaces you create, are your actions, are your institutions,

are your classrooms structured around settler society

to the end of excluding indigenous histories and cultures?

Are you working to shift paradigms

so that these spaces shift to be more inclusive?

Are you actively correcting for inaccurate histories,

negative stereotypes and the degradation of indigenous histories and cultures?

There are over 567 tribes in the United States.

Are you familiar with the cultures and histories of those

whose land are you standing on?

And to that end, are you familiar with your own culture and history

and how that influenced you in the present day?

Ask yourself these questions,

and this is how you can start to acknowledge and transcend

your settler colonial past.

Yawa. Thank you.

(Applause)