Who am I accountable to?

 

Pictured here is a great gray owl, named Farley, who looked directly into my soul.  I met Farley when I recently visited the North Island Wildlife Recovery Center; he's a permanent resident of the center because he was hit by a car and is no longer able to fly.  I'm introducing you to Farley because he is directly associated with who I'm accountable to.  

Prior to a few years ago, I had never, ever thought about who or what I was accountable to, outside of my immediate family.  As I started to learn more about Indigenous ways of knowing I noticed Indigenous friends and colleagues speaking about entire communities they were accountable to.  Although I have historically worked in education and done a fair bit of community engaged work, I have not considered needing to answer to a broader community regarding my own behavior.  

I recently read Sae Hoon Stan Chung's chapter in New Directions for Teaching and Learning called The Courage to be Altered.  Chung (2019) discusses relational and place-based knowledge, and what it means to be a good ally to Indigenous people.  As part of a broader message about accountability, he asks the questions: Who am I?  Who are my people?  Where do I belong?  Although I have started to explore these questions in this blog, I'm going to do it again.  I feel intuitively that I have not gotten to the heart of things yet, and maybe this is preventing me from fully understanding the notion of accountability as it is conceived by Indigenous peoples.  

Who am I?  I was born a daughter to Gordon and Bette Mueller.  My paternal grandparents, Jacob and Anna Mueller (nee Brown), were settler Canadians with primarily German, English, Scottish, and Irish heritage. My maternal grandparents, Allan and Doreen Dignan (nee Laing), were setter Canadians with primarily English, Norwegian, and Scottish heritage.  Collectively, my family roots are about as white and European as they could be.  Having travelled through most of Europe as a young adult I now understand why some places throughout my journey seemed to sing to my heart.  I recall wandering through Fountain's Abbey near Ripon, England, where my maternal great-granddad grew up.  I had an overwhelming urge to lay down on the green grass and sink my whole body into the land.  It felt... right.  I had a close relationship with my maternal grandparents growing up, and I feel very much like I belonged to my Gran.  If there is anyone I felt accountable to in my youth, it was her - I consistently wondered (and still do) what Gran would have thought about my choices and life pathways.  

Who am I?  I am a parent, partner, scholar, teacher, artist, baker, yogi, hiker, witch, animal lover, intuitive, curious soul, loyal friend.  As I try to stretch my perceptions of who I am past my occupation, I notice that these are all things that I both do and am.  These are all things that I both think and feel.  

Who are my people?  Clearly, now I see that my people are tied directly to who I am.  Let me go back to my slightly-buried declaration that I am a witch (above).  Don't panic - I'm a good witch.  I haven't yet traced my lineage far enough back for conclusive evidence that I am connected to ancient Irish or Scottish celtic witches, but I feel it.  This doesn't just emerge from the ether - it is a part of who I am and who my people are.  But, I am still unclear about exactly who my people are.  My people are my family - my kids, my spouse, my closest friends.  However, I'm not sure who my broader community is.  As does Chung (2019), I wonder how my "tentative inquiries into the nature of identity...will be answered" (p. 15).  I wonder how I will find my people and what that will mean to me.  This inspires both hope and sorrow in my heart.  

Where do I belong?   I don't know.  Truly.  I have striven for belonging in some shape or form my whole life.  Perhaps I already do belong, but just haven't realized it yet.  In part, this is connected to land and all the extensions of land, which is why I mentioned Farley the owl at the beginning of this post.  Farley is a product of the land where I currently reside.  I'm an uninvited guest here.  In many ways, this makes me accountable to him - as a a good guest, as someone who is listening and responsive to the land, as someone who is concerned about reconciling the harm done to him by way of the colonial project that has ultimately displaced him and all his human and non-human relations.  Looking into the eyes of Farley the owl, irreparably harmed by colonization, I felt my need for accountability more deeply than I ever could have anticipated.        

I'm crying a bit as I type this.  I'm alone, so I think that's okay - I'm trying to avoid drawing attention from the real work that needs to be done in public spaces and my tears do no good in those spaces, perhaps they even do harm.  But while I'm alone I feel like I can indulge myself for a moment, in sadness about "how colonization treats and uses the natural world...[and] how colonization normalizes self-harm and self-oppression and promotes the belief that inequity is normal" (Chung, 2019, p. 19).  This inequity weaves its' way into our perceptions of where we belong and who we belong to.  It has distorted our (especially our settler Canadian) ideas about who/what we are accountable to and why.  It has prompted self-aggrandizement and a distorted individuality that is not productive for anyone.