Brainwashed by the residential schools. This behavior compliments the conditioned hatred for ones culture/self. Instead of challenging the status quo, the oppressor is only seen in 'themselves' as opposed to seen in the oppressor from which you are alienated from. Thus "black on black crime" first nations people defensively detaching from their own culture etc. The reality is that getting back with the cultural roots is the cure for many of Canadas First Nations people trapped in the urban misery.
Cree community bans FNs spirituality
By Annette Francis
APTN National News
OUJE-BOUGOUMOU, Que.–An overwhelmingly Christian Cree community in northern Quebec has banned sweat lodges and all forms of First Nations spirituality.
The ban was imposed after a local family built a sweat lodge in their backyard with the help of a friend, triggering major controversy throughout Ouje-Bougoumou, which means, “the place where people gather.”
Redfern Mianscum said he built the sweat lodge to help people, but his dream was short-lived. The evangelical Christian majority in the community, which sits about 722 kilometres north of Montreal, turned against it.
The band council then passed a resolution against the all forms of First Nations spirituality, calling it shamanism, and had it torn down in early December.
“They see it as evil or something that’s not good and I heard somebody say that it is a form of witchcraft,” said Mianscum.
The lodge was built on Lana Wapachee’s property. She was going through a hard time and wanted help. To her, the sweat lodge was a God-send.
“It felt good to see them working together for healing for a moment,” she said. “Though I felt scared, I felt, what are people gonna say?”
Soon a petition started to circulate around the community calling for the sweat lodge’s removal.
The petition drew so much attention that the band council called a meeting which Wapachee said was rigged.
“There was a plan, a strategy,” she said. “They wanted…to take down the lodge and at the end of the general assembly, the community got up and they passed the resolution.”
The resolution said the Cree community’s elders did not want any form of “Native spirituality or practices” in Ouje-Bougoumou.
READ MORE
Cree community bans FNs spirituality
By Annette Francis
APTN National News
OUJE-BOUGOUMOU, Que.–An overwhelmingly Christian Cree community in northern Quebec has banned sweat lodges and all forms of First Nations spirituality.
The ban was imposed after a local family built a sweat lodge in their backyard with the help of a friend, triggering major controversy throughout Ouje-Bougoumou, which means, “the place where people gather.”
Redfern Mianscum said he built the sweat lodge to help people, but his dream was short-lived. The evangelical Christian majority in the community, which sits about 722 kilometres north of Montreal, turned against it.
The band council then passed a resolution against the all forms of First Nations spirituality, calling it shamanism, and had it torn down in early December.
“They see it as evil or something that’s not good and I heard somebody say that it is a form of witchcraft,” said Mianscum.
The lodge was built on Lana Wapachee’s property. She was going through a hard time and wanted help. To her, the sweat lodge was a God-send.
“It felt good to see them working together for healing for a moment,” she said. “Though I felt scared, I felt, what are people gonna say?”
Soon a petition started to circulate around the community calling for the sweat lodge’s removal.
The petition drew so much attention that the band council called a meeting which Wapachee said was rigged.
“There was a plan, a strategy,” she said. “They wanted…to take down the lodge and at the end of the general assembly, the community got up and they passed the resolution.”
The resolution said the Cree community’s elders did not want any form of “Native spirituality or practices” in Ouje-Bougoumou.
READ MORE
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