From One Raven's Eye

Page 7

Hello, ahneen, and tansi. Before you read another sentenced, run off and hunt down a pen, pencil, a cigarette butt...anything that will make a mark on paper. Okay,

all set? As you know we have been going over this and that in this particular corner of Windspeaker - still the AMMSA paper for over a year now. Therefore this week is the week for that test I sorta mentioned a column or so back.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. There is no need to panic and stampede off in a billow of snow. This test is to find out how much you know, not how much you don't. Also this memory check is designed with cheating in mind. In learning circles its called an open book test. Feel free to look back through any past columns if you have to. Or sit behind someone shorter and smarter. You can resort to the old reliable eenie-meenie-minie-mo-catch-a-bigot-by-the-toe method if you have.

This first part is called multiple choice. Underline, circle or smear over with that burnt out cigarette which every answer looks good to you.

1. Why do you never see Indians doing those jazzy beer commercials on TV?

a) because those bottles wouldn't show up well enough in our brown mitts,

b) because the advertising people who make them don't know we live around here?

c) because too many non-Native figures Indian is an Indian word meaning inebriated?

2. Ethnocentricity means -

a) going through life with one eye covered by the belief your people's way is the best possible way for everybody else?

b) a city near Oz where everyone is treated with total respect and equality?

c) a way of making electricity using ethnic types on stationery bikes?

3. If you are at a restaurant and these white people keep staring at you through during the whole meal, would you

a) eat as sloppily as you could?

b) hold up mirrors?

c) ignore them until they grow up and learn manners?

d) tell the waiter to go over and slap them for you?

4. Sixty-six per cent of inmates in the federal corrections system, prairie region are Native. We make up about three per cent of the population. There are lots of us in jail because?

a) We make three mistakes in a row, one legal and the other two being born poor and brown?

b) The lawyers, cops and judges are all Indians who know what's best for their brothers?

c) We all look so much alike they probably count us at least twice?

5. When do you think this country will have its first Aboriginal prime minister?

a) After a woman gets made one first?

b) Sometime after a certified Indian gets to be the minister of our very own affairs?

c) After the ozone layer burns away and excessive ultra violet rays from the sun turn the whole population brown?

The next part has what you call essay questions. You can either write out your thinking or talk it over with a friend. You are also allowed to nod like you know the answer without doing either of those first two things.

1) In Edmonton, if you pull in less than $12 thousand a year, or if you spend at lest a third of your monthly income in rent, then you are officially living in poverty. Are you yourself poor. Why are you that way? (Pssttt...here's a hint. If you figure its completely your fault, you're wrong already.)

2) In the old, old, old days a hunter, if he could support them, could have more than one wife. Some men these days still act like that tradition is still alive. If a married man can do that, shouldn't a wife be able to also? (If it looks like the answer might cause a fight at your house, go on to the next one right now.)

3) Despite enough economic, cultural and social problems to make even a grown horse cry, why do we still have that ability to laugh and joke? Are we nuts, silly from stress or still in possession of a strength that hasn't been broken yet?

This last part is known as matching. You draw a line from the word to its meaning on the other side.

money isn't everything because we are a circle minded people that makes sense our sandwich-making material should be that

way also.

Kids having this stupid idea that what is true for one or two is always true of the whole similar looking group also.

bannock instead of keeping stupid prejudices to yourself you go and actually act them out against the people you hold them about (i.e. in housing, jobs, hotels, etc.)

discrimination a gift they say is given to us to raise - by the time they finish getting taller, most of us are on our way to shrivelling up and getting smaller.

prejudice when you look at five-year old photographs at your smiling self and you see you're wearing the same teeshirt today as you were back then.

So how did you do: What are the answers you ask? Well that part of the test is for me. See, this whole paper way of talking is about communicating. While we try our best to have fun, there are also certain ideas being explored and fired around. If you got most of the answers, then I'm doing alright. If you couldn't get hardly any, well then I just have to do my work better.

Anyway, that's it for this week. Hope whatever personal testers and life quizzes you turn into, you can figure them out or at least five honest to heart guesses to.