From One Raven's Eye

Page 7

Ahneen, tansi and howdy once again. Three things have been on my mind off and on this past week: my hat, TV and ethnocentricity. Because winter is closing in, my lid gets more and more useful all the time. You know a person loses 90 per cent of their body heat through their heads, eh? Sticking your fingers in your ears or talking less won't help. Neither will a winterized headband with earflaps sewed on. Of course, you could wear one all summer too. In case of rain, sun, woodpeckers and seagulls.

Well, okay, about TV, that subject kinda worries me. Not like some parents who let their kids watch whatever is on there. They also don't care that their offsprings' eyes start to go a little square. Like most things, you end up doing what you believe in.

What bothers me is that the kids' minds, and more importantly their imaginations, are in danger of always being in black and white and not the vivid colours of actual life. Both minds and imaginations are like muscles. The more you use 'em the stronger they get. Plopping down in front of a TV set is like watching someone else lifts weights. Your own parts slowly turn to mush. Cartoons and movies are the visual effect of some other person's imagination at work.

Sure, there's educational stuff on there, but have you ever had to rip the channel changer from the kids' mitts because you thought he was watching that stuff too much. Come to think of it, what was the last really useful thing you learned watching TV? How to fall asleep with our head wobbling around?

What about television and our brown and round eyed view of stuff?

At our house, we watch anything with Indians in it. There are shows where Indians interview Indians, sing gospel, act in adventure type shows, documentaries and specials. You ever notice how we come out gray on a non-colour set? There used to be a show called Junior Rangers with an Indian named Joe Two Rivers. The actor who played that part is Michael Zenon. To this day, watching that program in black and white, I still don't know for sure if the guy is an Indian or not.

What I refuse to watch, even in cartoons, are the ones of big nosed Natives, wearing shorts with flaps, the kind who dance around calling out like turkeys. Do you think watching that puts a negative picture of your kids' mind of how we are, or how we were in the past? Or do you figure that at a young age kids just think of themselves as kids and so can laugh innocently at the dumb savage? What about when they begin to discover their cultural role? Will those once harmless pictures creep up in their heads then? What about if these are reinforced by non-Natives around who still laugh at Indians because all they've known is the TV version and not the real life kind? Will what started off so funny end up kind of sad? Don't ask me. When this is happening on the screen I'm in another room being mad.

Probably what it comes down to is what and how much you believe. If the kid grows up in a good, strong-in-their-culture home there isn't too much television can do to make their thinking and feeling on that go wrong.

While we are into the area of believing, we can slide on into this thing called ethnocentricity.

There is a guy named Howie Meeker who works on hockey broadcasts. He is always saying stuff like "Gosh darn it, if he's put the puck along the boards, finished his check, there is no way in tarnation that puck would've ended up in the net. "Mr. Know It All," my friend Brian calls him. He waves his arms around like there is no other way to do things than how he says. Don't people like that just bug you.

Do you ever walk along a street, staring around at the traffic, the buildings, and say in your mind, sheesh, can these people ever make a lot of things. Heck they even put a man on the moon. Pretty soon they'll have people flying up there on their holidays. Before they got here, there was no such things as the wheel, or steel, horses or hockey. Does that mean that compared to themwe are just dumb or what?

There is no doubt that a technological and scientific way they know more than us, but guess what ... they don't know everything.

Why in their society are more and more people getting poor? Why do the old often go hungry or other people are raising kids because mothers have to work just to make ends meet?

We, on the other hand, had no jails, nobody went hungry while others ate. The old had a vital role as teachers and in raising up of kids.

In the field of caring for each other, it was us who are way ahead. These days though, because of their my-way-or-the-highway thinking, they mostly refuse to admit that. You don't need a university degree to find ways to keep kids in your community. Yet they refuse to give us the money to run our own programs to make this possible. Our common sense and cultural knowledge doesn't meet their standard. Maybe those know-it-alls refuse to give us a fair shot because they realize their fully qualified results have been nothing to brag about.

But you know that ethnocentric thinking can be a very nearsighted way of seeing, especially when it comes to ourselves. It's hard to admit there are times when we aren't perfect either. Like men who refuse to change a diaper or let a woman learn to run a skidder.

You ever notice the lid on my head in that picture up there. Notice that it isn't a cowboy or a baseball cap like many of us are prone to wear? Do you figure that this newspaper job is maybe getting to my head? Nah. This hat is the Indiana Jones Kind. This is for people for whom crossing the street can be an adventure. And always ready for action brand because, as all of you full time Indians know, any darn thing can happen any damn time.

Well, okay, I wear it because its cheap and it fits. Wearing those others make me look either like Roy Rogers or Reggie Jackson.

Anyway, that's it. Meegwetch until next time.