Respons(A)bility

Respons(A)bility: Weaving words of responsibility through story
By Mariel Belanger
Nsyilxcn language edited by Sienna Belanger-Lee

The Look
This is an Auntie (anti) essay’ following my stream of consciousness as I call for faculty to engage better ways of being and doing to protect the future incoming students whose experience is threatened by internalized policies that cause harm while the word ethics is made a metaphoric wash rag in a kitchen that uses too much bleach. The fabric is breaking down, which means the methodologies are no longer working. Coming back to ‘higher education’ as a mature student has me feeling like I need to do some housekeeping here. I use a lot of metaphors in my writing and will bring them to life in digital visual formats throughout this interactive story. Follow the many links and ponder thoughtfully when prompted. When an Indigenous auntie gives you side eye watch out. You are certain to not get what you’d like but hear everything you need.
In this telling I will address the demoralization that occurs when the Indigenous student is made teacher of pan Indigenous epistemology benefitting privileged white faculty and student fragility. This auntie will include Youtube links and land-based exercises while I unpack three occurrences of how course content is often handled and how I am affected as a bipolar Indigenous student. I discuss my understanding of duty-of-care through the research of Dr. Dorothy Christian as featured in Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Jo-ann Archibald et al as personal responsibility, taking precautions to predict what could be happening for others when applied to the understanding of performance theory as course work. If issues of diversity formulas, cultural appropriation and insensitivity are causing me strife, they are devastating my young peers and I can’t have that.

Authors Note
Throughout this telling, I create poetry from text found in the Anthony Mattina Colville Okanagan Dictionary (1991), and then my daughter, Sienna, edited it for linguistic consideration. I choose poetry because when written it resembles how Wendy Wickwire edited Harry Robinson’s oral storytelling in speed and tempo as seen in Write It on Your Heart: The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller (1989).