CottiniAnika_Podcast

Annika Cattini, a psychology student, discusses her experiences and growth in understanding Indigenous ways of knowing. She reflects on her upbringing in a town with a high Indigenous population, where she had both positive and negative experiences. She admits to initially ignoring the negative opinions and perspectives on Indigenous people, but now recognizes the importance of acknowledging her privilege and position in society. Annika shares her journey in learning about Indigenous cultures, highlighting the significance of readings like Little Bear's paper on traditional knowledge and the Saskamous two-eyed seeing concept. She emphasizes the need for a nuanced understanding and support of Indigenous people, without appropriating their culture. My name is Annika Cattini. I'm a fourth year psychology student and this is my podcast. So I kind of wanted to start by just introducing myself and a little bit about me and my upbringing. So I grew up in a small town in Saskatchewan. When I grew up there was a high population of Indigenous people and so this had pros and cons. Through my upbringing, gaining perspective and opinions about Indigenous people, I had really positive experiences with like students and my peers and it really was a great opportunity for me to learn about that culture and that way of life. But I also was inherently exposed to a lot of really negative opinions and perspectives on Indigenous people throughout my life and I think it's always been really difficult to talk about because I don't like to perceive myself as like a racist person or like any sort of negative associations about, you know, I am a white person so I don't want to ever make someone else feel bad or like stigmatized and so it was something I always ignored I think for a really long time. I just didn't even want to talk about it. I was just like, no, like I had the best upbringing and like everything about my life was so good and like I didn't have one bad thought about Indigenous people but like that is just like such a... it was a way of life growing up like that's honestly like a lot of different things. You know, I had friends who were Indigenous and I heard about their experiences but I also saw and witnessed Indigenous experiences being really negative and seeing mistreatment from, you know, teachers or employees at stores or there was like a lot of different things and so I think being in a course like this, Indigenous Ways of Knowing and, you know, reading different papers and hearing these different aspects, it's really important for me to create a more nuanced worldview where everything's not so like black and white. I feel like lots of my life grew up black and white and I felt embarrassed to even think a thought about like a poor way to think about an Indigenous person even from someone else like no that couldn't even happen like a lot of denial I think came out of me because it was so uncomfortable for me to even think that like an Indigenous person could go through that so I didn't want to ever even like say those words because I was like I don't want to like make someone else feel bad but I do think it's important for me to recognize my position of power in society, you know, my social, political, and economic positions and how that is different from an Indigenous person and how I do play a role in this like nuanced kind of worldview of myself and other people so yeah I kind of just wanted to bring that up first before I kind of hop into things because it's really important for me to acknowledge like my position as a white person like I do live a different life and I live a life of privilege for sure within my you know social and political and economic position like throughout my life I've definitely been so blessed and like I have a lot of really great opportunities and I think for a long time I tried to like ignore that or hide that because I was embarrassed and like felt guilty about it but it's important to acknowledge those things so that I'm able to create different perspectives and understand my role in my life. So I first wanted to talk about my growth throughout the course. Kind of going into the course I kind of like I mentioned before I had some background knowledge about you know different Indigenous ways of knowing and being just through anecdotal evidence and having friends and having experiences with this these type of you know issues and different things going on and I also have taken an introduction to Indigenous Studies last year. I felt that that course was it was good like I derived a really great information from it I felt it was very analytical and I didn't get a lot of like it was it was an introduction course so there's not a lot of things that they can really do so I can't blame anything on that course itself I loved it I had Dr. Voss my prof and oh he's awesome I ended up taking a block course with him which was Indigenous Governance. That was a poly-sci class and I'm not a legal or like political person by any means but it was I really enjoyed it I felt it was a really great class for me to like get another perspective and this course too is just like another you know building block on my pathway to knowing and to learning and my academic and educational journey and understanding this is really important for me just to be a better like supporter and community member and being more knowledgeable and challenging different beliefs and understandings that I have of things and so coming into this course I felt like I was really challenged with learning a lot of different perspectives about Indigenous ways of knowing especially throughout the readings that we did and so one thing I thought was really important to highlight was Little Bear's paper which was the traditional knowledge and humanities one from a Blackfoot and so that one was talking about how oftentimes Indigenous people are seen as like uncivilized or like something of the past and not really having like a current position in things and so I thought that this was something that was really interesting because I have had this thought but I didn't really know how to like articulate myself or like I didn't really know if it was like appropriate to say that but I think it's a pretty common thing where it's like people oftentimes when they think about Indigenous people they either think about them as like something of a past or like some like a baby bird that just like needs to be like coddled I think people's perception on Indigenous people oftentimes is out of ignorance and so these readings were really important for me because oftentimes when I want to have different debates with people about you know challenging people's perceptions on Indigenous ways of life because there's some really nasty stereotypes I hear all throughout my life in my hometown it's kind of hard for me to create a defense to combat these thoughts because I have nothing really to say they're like well why do you think that and I'm like it just doesn't feel right and oftentimes your gut as much as it can be right doesn't really have a lot of like scientific rigor to it and so these readings especially this little bear one I love little bears papers he's such a good writer and so having this information is a really great place for me to start you know being able to support these different areas a little bit better and just developing a more complex understanding of Indigenous people and Indigenous ways of knowing. Another paper I oh I love I love love love the Saskamous two-eyed seeing paper I just oh my gosh I loved it so much and I especially loved this two-eyed seeing concept I felt that it was so applicable not just in the sense of like it made sense in the real world but like also anatomically it makes sense because when we try to use myopic vision which is just using your one eye you can only see things in like 2d like you don't have a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional perspective on life rather and I felt like that was so important because when we talk about you know using both eyes to see both perspectives and like integrating things is one we need both eyes to have a 3d world otherwise we're really 2d and I don't know if this is like if I'm portraying what I want to properly but like what I'm trying to say is like the world is meant to be seen as 3d and have nuance and have depth to it and when we aren't able to use both eyes to see and take in both perspectives it really creates just kind of stagnancy and no ability to see more complex like a more complex world I also felt this was really important for me to read because I've always had a really difficult time engaging with indigenous studies courses primarily because of like that denial and guilt feeling which I feel awful even talking about this because it's like I haven't had to go through these experiences and these negative impacts of colonization like I came out of it in a good position like I have I have a higher you know like not higher but like more like comfy I feel like it's like the word I want to use position in society because I am white so it's really difficult for me to engage in lots of these concepts I feel so much guilt and so I felt that I often times when I take in this information I feel like I need to just like trash everything I've learned so far in like my old life to be able to accommodate indigenous ways of knowing and I felt like lots of these readings especially this two-eyed seeing was a really great opportunity for me to see that nuance of like it's not for me like lots of these learnings I learned about like these different cultures and these like different aspects and like really great opportunities for indigenous healing like it's not for me and I feel like it's kind of like a cult like cultural appropriation for me to be like well you know the only way I can be a supporter of indigenous that you know like our four R's you know engaging in the four R's I need to like engage in that culture but that's I don't think it's inherently true like I think I need to more be a supporter and and understand that culture so I can better you know help support and be an advocate but I it's not my place to then like take over that because I almost feel like that's jumping into territory of like what colonization was all about just like taking and like overbearing in that white savior complex of like well in indigenous people can't handle their culture by themselves and like smudging for example is what I keep thinking of like they can't smudge by themselves like I'm gonna force myself into the situation because they can't do it and so I feel like that was really important for me to learn is like no this is not what it's about like I'm learning this to gain a new perspective and to learn about this culture but it's not for me to then take which I feel like is a common thing for white people to like to do but I'm just gonna take a quick sip of water and I will continue my thoughts okay so yeah kind of like I was mentioning it's really important for me to understand these things and understand things can coexist and I can create my own identity independent of this knowledge that I'm experiencing and I feel like this is also really important with respect to morals I'm in a moral psychology class and we talk about how you can't really be a moral person unless you understand yourself and your own identity and so I think a big part about being a support for indigenous you know respect and relationship building and all these different things do have a lot to do with morals in the sense of like the morality of like equal treatment and justice and you know creating these equal rights that's morals to me that's how I perceive morals and so I need to be able to understand myself first before I can you know support other people and engage in morals appropriately I'm just looking at my notes here to see what I want to talk about next so the next kind of thing I want to touch about or touch on is all about connection and relationship building I feel like this is something that I really really love to talk about it's one of the four R's so obviously it's something I need to touch on with respect to you know building relationships and I felt like this was portrayed really well in service Barry service Barry had some of the best quotes out of a writer I've ever seen I love Robin Wall Simmer like such a great author and so I pulled two that I really like to kind of start off this conversation about relationships the first one is always value people over things there's that old line that farmers like to spout without farmers you'd be naked hungry and sober but it goes both ways without good neighbors you'd also be alone and that's worse oh I'm so sorry that is so good it's so poetic I loved it so much it's like it makes so much sense because I really do enjoy social psychology although it's not my main forte I do like learning about it and it makes so much sense like we are social animals and we love being around people we love that validation of being other people and supporting connections and Kimber kind of just nails the what hammers the nail on the head I think I don't think that's the right thing but you know what I mean just in the sense that like it no one wants to be alone and like you know you need that relationship with neighbors and so I think that that was important for me to think about as a community member living in a place living around people you know using the word neighbor isn't like the direct person next to you but the neighbor of like people you go to the grocery store with and people you know you go to the swimming pool with like at the same time and understanding that having those connections is really important and something really mean of but meaningful to the human experience the other quote in service Barry that I absolutely loved which is a quick little one it says relationship and purpose and beauty and meaning which can never be commoditized I see a minute to let that kind of sink in I love this because the whole essence of the story was like about people overtaking and what Robin or Tim are trying to say is like some things just can't be taken like some things in life you kind of need to like earn them and you earn that through building relationships and building connections like those social relations that we create are something that you can never buy and as much as you want to sell that because it feels so good it's something you can't put a price tag on and you need to work on and and just like sweat through and get through it's all about relationship building and I feel like this lesson is really important for me because I'm from a small community and so relationships are super important relationships are super important to in the sense of just like being able to have people trust you I really want to work with people as I you know go into a professional career and I think it's important that building that connection is really something that people people often almost feel like they're entitled to it's like you're entitled to have people like you or maybe that's just like me talking like a white person I feel entitled to certain things but oftentimes I did like a feeling of like entitled to have people be friends with you but you have to earn that and it's something that you need to work on and build and that's really really important and that was also seen in Jagged World Views by Little Bear talking about how everything has interrelationships and everything is connected somehow and I really like that idea of just like everything is connected this kind of reminds me of something I heard earlier this year in another course and it was basically someone talking about how they never feel away from home because water it's always connected somehow and so if you can find water you can be connected back home and so I feel like that has to do with relationships not inherently the social relationships of other people but more relationships with like the land and you know particularly for me water water something I've always been really like drawn to especially living in Calgary it's like I love being around the river and I could never really like put my finger on it why but I really do think it's because in my heart I do realize like and recognize that it's a way that I can connect back home to my hometown in North Balfour and as awesome as living in Calgary is and there's great opportunities here I really do miss my home and like those connections that I build not just with people but you know with I can remember like my favorite place you know it's called Finlayson Island it's like a walking trail and like the amount of time I spent there just like debriefing and like clearing my head is so important to me and there's a river there and I always have just been drawn to being around water and connecting with the land in that way and building connections with things other than just humans although human relationships are really important there's other things that you can build connection with that you can derive very similar like feelings of pleasure and connection the next thing I want to touch on quick is everything I learned throughout this course related to different disciplines and areas of work specifically things that I've worked in particular the first one is social work so I'm a psychology student but this summer I actually worked as a social work summer student in my hometown in North Balfour so this was really important to me I wasn't working like as a typical quote-unquote like social worker it was in the domain of basically I helped different people in my community who were diagnosed with intellectual disabilities finding vocational and residential services within the community and so I kind of did notice like a reoccurring theme just like our different community members and how different community members you know acted different ways or you know we're stating it and when I'm saying an act that I mean like when I was trying to or like engaging conversation with them you can really feel some people have been hurt before and have been betrayed and that comes across oftentimes when trying to communicate people with people in these fields because it's like you don't really know they don't really know how they're gonna who they're gonna get or what kind of reaction they're gonna get and what I mean specifically is like lots of our indigenous clients did were a bit I would say aggressive because like that's not what I'm trying to say but like it had a little bit of yeah hesitancy to engage in conversations with me and so I think a way that I had to overcome that was definitely kind of relating to my last point was like building relationships and that's never easy people aren't just gonna automatically trust you and that was really hard for me to get over it's like no I promise I'm nice but it's like that's you know me saying I'm nice and like thinking I'm nice isn't gonna make someone inherently trust me so yeah I think that some different things I took away from this course number one was Hart's paper and explaining different ways to interact as a social worker and not just relying on like my white perspectives that I've maybe learned in school or like you know really Western oriented views on how to engage with people how to be a great social worker and I did notice that a lot with lots of my co-workers during this position was people had a certain teaching that they learned in school how many years ago and they held on to it death grip like that was the only way they could engage with social working and you know then they passed that knowledge on to me and then I was death-gripping this is the way that we engage with people in social work this is how we're taught and so it's important for me to read Hart's paper as well as just like understand that there's different ways that people interact with others and I also think I don't want to be a social worker I want to go into actually psychiatry is what I'm really interested in doing but even having this knowing this you know engaging in social work engaging with people I think it really I don't want to say easy one but like a simple one that I can put me right off the dome think that in these situations the four are so like you know building those relationships with people and you know having respect and that reciprocity all of those things you know are really simple mnemonic that I can uproot really quickly but the implications there are quite impactful and you know just having that time to build those relationships with people may just be that difference where we can create a solution we can work together to figure out what's going on in a productive manner the next thing with respect to my discipline with psychology so I'm a psychology student and I felt that a lot of indigenous ways of knowing and understanding about things were super applicable to psychology especially well actually at first I kind of was naive in thinking that it would only relate to social psychology and I was like oh that relationship building like obviously that makes sense social psychology relationship building one-in-one but there was actually a few papers we read that had a lot to do you know the neuroscience of things and developmental and adolescence development and on childhood rearing and attachment styles and I was like wow this is a lot more encompassing than I initially thought and that's something I was definitely naive to and I definitely fell victim to you know going back to Leroy's kind of topic we talked about first it's like people putting indigenous people in like a box of like infantilizing them and they're the kind of memories of the past and they can't create scientific rigor theories and ideas but I mean that's definitely something I fell victim to you know whatever the reason was that I just couldn't grasp that this course definitely taught me a different idea especially when like approaching different ways to engage in psychology in unique and you know really rigorous comprehensive theories and ideas one in particular was the wise teaching paper which was talking about different methods and treatments with respect to psychology and so this one I had a little bit more of a difficult time because I am very stagnant in my mindset with the westernized views of psychological treatment because that's all I've been taught and when you create like an emotional connection to something which unfortunately I have which is really weird like I have a really close emotional connection to psychology because I spent so much time you know thinking about these ideas and like really forcing myself to believe that this is what is right it was really difficult for me to engage with that reading but it is important for me especially because if I do you know get to go into the profession that is ideal for me and go into psychology and psychiatry I'm not just going to be working with Eurocentric westernized patients like the weird sample we talk about all the time in psychology and so it's important for me to understand there's different approaches and also understanding my scope and my limits I think learning about this too it was important for me to realize like it's not my place to take all of these indigenous teachings and then just like use them all because that's not my my scope of knowledge and so knowing when it's appropriate to engage with certain concepts such as the four R's and building those relationships but knowing when it's out of my scope and and referring people out and being like I think you would really benefit from XYZ can I refer you out I think that's another really important thing that I learned and then the final aspect of relationships in this course to professional career is education so I actually work as a substitute educational assistant in school system it seems like I'm really doing every job except for psychology right now but yeah I work as a substitute educational assistant and I typically like to work in the high school I find it's just like makes the most sense for me it's a lot less demanding than working in elementary schools working with kids is so demanding but I digress one thing and this is particularly in my home community that I work as a educational assistant but I get I work with a lot of indigenous students we have a really high indigenous student population at the high school that I typically work at and so I have noticed that there's been a few educational barriers just with respect to like learning and I think oftentimes people are told to implement different indigenous teaching in the ways of understanding into their curriculum and they just kind of check the box they don't really think about it any more than that furthermore I seem like the indifference is just in the schooling system of like how different students like are treated and I'm not saying that they're treated poorly but I do think that there's like different there's so many different layers to it and so throughout this course everything that I've learned is important for me just to kind of approach situations differently and work on relationship building with students and you know just keeping in mind when I'm working with kids that that relationship that I build with them is super important for them to you know build that trusting relationship with you know people in the education system because oftentimes it's easy to not be successful in education if you don't feel like it's an environment that is like going to support you in your learning journey so for me to be able to have that space to be able to potentially create that connection is really integral and important for me as well as passing on that knowledge to my family members all of my family are educators so being able to pass on these experiences that I've learned is also really important my final kind of wrap-up thoughts and moving forward implications things like that that I want to touch on number one is realizing that I don't live in the academic bubble as often as it was being in this course and learning all these different things and reading these really great academic papers understanding that that a lot of those are in ideal worlds and the real world has a lot of different constraints and variables and knowing that those are obstacles that I'm going to need to face while applying these teachings that I've learned throughout the course into the real life and creating plans to be able to adapt to that the other thing is that after getting this knowledge I definitely have a responsibility to pass it on in a way that is respectful and applicable so what I'm kind of thinking of in particular is I work in a lot of different positions where I am a role model and I'm a supervisor for things I work in a pool in my home community where I'm a supervisor I work as an educational assistant in my home community kind of like I mentioned before but all of those spaces are places where I am in a position of power and I'm a leader and so it's important for me to not only pass on this knowledge but also act in ways in accordance with this education so you know being respectful creating relationships and showing other people like this is how you do it this is how we all come together as one relationship build and learn about each other and grow together and also just like understanding my role in this decolonization process where I act as a supporter and I build relationships and I listen to others I think really often times it's easy you know I'm talking right now for 28 minutes now I love to talk but it's really important to listen to other and also just like engaging in this content beyond the scope of this course you know after I've learned all this stuff it's great but that was like the checkmark box it doesn't stop here I have to keep applying this knowledge throughout the rest of my life so yeah just a few takeaways is a great course I got to learn a lot about you know the the future with respect to like lots of times we learn about indigenous studies it's like we learn about in the past and this is a great opportunity for me to see like indigenous people moving forward and like all the great things that are happening in the research the resurgence all these really awesome things and being able to engage in reciprocity in a meaning thing or in a meaningful way and build different relationships so I hope that that made sense I really appreciated doing this I know I can talk a lot and become very tangential I'm sorry if I lost you for a second there but anyways have a great rest of your evening morning whatever it is and thank you for listening