The Problem With Cultural Gatekeeping: Mallory Rose (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Mallory Rose’s talk titled “The Problem With Cultural Gatekeeping” at TEDxAbbotsford 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone. Raise your hand if you’ve ever wanted to support Indigenous people and communities. Thank you. I ask this question assuming most people genuinely want to support Indigenous people and have good intentions for becoming allies. So thank you for clarifying that.

A lot of what I’m about to share with you is either specific to Indigenous people or specific to allies, but know that there’s a tremendous amount of similarities and connections between all people in this country, especially when it comes to our collective healing journey resulting from colonization.

So with that in mind, let’s begin. About 10 years ago, I had a conversation with one of my beautiful Anishinaabe cousins about dancing in powwows and attending cultural ceremonies. Now we’re both millennials, deep in the generation of the Indigenous pride movement and reclaiming our identity.

Historical Context

So it didn’t make sense to me why I was one of the only people my age from our community that was enthusiastic about cultural ceremonies and dancing in powwows. And I’ll never forget this conversation that I had with my cousin.

Now for context, in 1951, the government of Canada removed the ban on cultural ceremonies. So for the last 40 or 50 years, Indigenous children being raised in their communities have had the ability to be immersed in cultural gatherings and ceremonies.

Now, my grandparents’ generation and great-grandparents’ generation, unfortunately, were raised at a time when cultural ceremonies were illegal. So gatherings had to be done in secret or else they would be arrested or worse. But nowadays, we’re seeing entire generations of children raised from birth to be proud of their Indigenous heritage. This is me.

A Cousin’s Experience

So what happened? I asked her why she stopped dancing in powwows. She told me she stopped because she grew out of a regalia and she didn’t know how to make one on her own. Fair enough. Then she told me that a few years later, she attended a full moon ceremony in our home community of Oshkiigmong, Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario.

And it was the first and the last time that she went to one. Now, a full moon ceremony is a spiritual gathering for women to honor Grandmother Moon, to seek guidance from her, to pray to her and to connect with her and other women at the ceremony. My cousin told me that she was really nervous to go to the ceremony by herself. It was her first time going, but she went anyway.

The Impact of Cultural Protocols

And the only thing that she could remember from the ceremony was that she was harshly scolded for not wearing a skirt to the ceremony. And it was the only thing that she took from that event. Now, my cousin is a good girl who avoided anything that would get her into trouble. And this one experience left her feeling discouraged, disconnected, and afraid that she couldn’t possibly follow rules that she didn’t know.

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And ever since then, she didn’t want to do anything relating to our culture, out of fear of getting in trouble for not knowing the proper protocol. Unfortunately, in many of our Indigenous communities, the expectations are to know and follow cultural protocols, or else you could possibly be criticized, even if you’re making a genuine effort to reconnect with who you are.

Now, throughout my career as an Indigenous cultural educator and marketing professional, I have researched and polled thousands of Indigenous people to understand their journey of connecting and reconnecting.

Research Findings

And I’ve also researched thousands of non-Indigenous people to learn about what prevents them from cultural education experiences. Now, from the data that I’ve collected from people in my workshops, courses, and other surveys that I’ve conducted, whether someone is Indigenous or non-Indigenous, no matter what their background is, the patterns and themes are always the same. By far, the number one cause preventing people from cultural experiences are the rules and requirements for participation.

Now, a lot of the content that I create on my YouTube channel and in my workshops aims to bridge the gap between traditional Indigenous knowledge and everyday personal growth and development tools. So, one of my core missions is to connect traditional teachings with everyday experiences that can help with resilience and happiness. So, over the years, I’ve done a lot of research from some of the world’s leaders in growth and development, from Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, Jay Shetty, and many others.

Limiting Beliefs

Now, in Western terminology, these rules and restrictions that we live by are also known as our life blueprint that can create limiting beliefs in our minds. So, limiting beliefs are a state of mind or a belief that restricts you in a multitude of ways. So, someone who is wanting to become an ally but feels restricted could look like “I need permission from someone in order to learn,” or “To go to that event, I need an invitation from an Indigenous person to go.” And these are just a few examples.

There’s literally hundreds of these restrictions. For an Indigenous person who feels restricted from leaning into their cultural identity, it could look like “I need to look like a stereotypical Indian,” or “I need to be a member of my Indigenous nation and have a card to prove it.” And one of the biggest rules that restricts people is “I need my Indigenous relatives to teach me about my heritage, because we’re supposed to learn from our elders, right?”

Cultural Restrictions and Technology

I need to meet these requirements in order to get access to what’s behind the gate. And one of the strictest protocols that you’ll often see is the following. Until recently, you wouldn’t dare see cultural ceremonies, smudging, or any of the information that I have on my YouTube channel, mixed with technology, ever.

This photo is really special to me. Four generations of proud Anishinaabe class, my granny Susie, my granny Kay, my mom, and myself. And it’s special because it’s the only one I have, because of these restrictions that exist within our minds and within our communities.

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My granny Susie has always been supportive of my goals, whether it’s sports or business. But boy, did she warn me how mixing technology with cultural teachings would be. Unfortunately, though, restrictions prevent all people from experiences that are educational, celebratory, and ceremonial, which are all part of healing, and which is more widely known as reconciliation.

The Problem with Restrictions

Now, this is a problem because not only do these rules exclude people, but it’s worse than that. What makes it worse is that once we set these requirements on ourselves, it’s human nature to project those expectations on other people in our lives. And the biggest problem of all is that limiting belief mentality causes a spiral of negativity. And this can enter extreme territory of setting extreme requirements.

It can be really easy when you’re desperately trying to belong to not know where that healthy balance is. Fear of not meeting the requirements that we set for ourselves cause us to overcompensate in order to deal with the insecurity. An example of these extreme rules can look like, in order to be a proud Indigenous person or even a proud ally, “I need to show up to every activist fight and march,” or “I need to confront every racist person at every opportunity, I need to be an active gatekeeper.”

The Origins of Rules and Requirements

Pain and fear creates more hurt by attempting to bring others down through gatekeeping and judging other people who often share the same identity crisis that we do. So what do we do? How do we fix this? Simon Sinek reminds us to always start with why. So why are these rules and requirements there in the first place? Where do they come from?

Rules, order, and justification for belonging come from a lot of different places. But in this case, specifically, requirements for being a “real Indian” came from the government within the Indian Act, where the government created laws to identify who’s Native, who’s not, control us as a group of people, and to assimilate us into a society that they wanted. And from there, residential schools created even stricter restrictions on cultural identity, so children couldn’t know who they were because they were removed from their home environment and taught a new way to live.

Generational Trauma and Cultural Protectionism

For decades, our people have gotten used to keeping our culture alive out of necessity, and have gotten very good at it. Cultural protectionism was and has been a means of survival that has been passed down through generations, just as trauma, shame, and fear have also been passed down. This is often referred to as generational trauma. So what do we do?

Now that we understand why these rules and requirements exist, it makes it a lot easier for us to be compassionate towards gatekeeping when we see it, and understand the negative effects, and start to take steps toward healing and re-evaluating what rules we want to live by.

We’re becoming a more mixed and multicultural society every single day, so restricting access to cultural ceremonies based on background, blood lineage, or other rules is only going to guarantee the eventual extinction of Indigenous knowledge and ceremonial healing.

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Moving Forward

But what are we replacing these rules with? How do we know what to do? Remember that what we “should” do is always just our life blueprint telling us what is right and wrong, and you might need to hit the refresh button because it might be out of date, including removing the word “should” from your vocabulary altogether. But what else can you do?

In no way am I saying that you should pull out a phone at a ceremony, especially if a knowledge keeper has explicitly shared that you shouldn’t do that. But what you can do is listen patiently and actively to Indigenous people and communities in order to allow them to share their stories with their own voices. This can lead you to building respectful relationships with Indigenous people that are ready for reconciliation.

Fostering Inclusion

No matter what your background is, you might be wondering how can you be more inclusive when the world does require order and structure sometimes? Where do we draw the line? How can you think more inclusively, more love, more respect for each other when it might not come naturally? One teaching that helps me think more inclusively every single day is the following medicine wheel teaching.

One of the teachings of the medicine wheel, because it’s a system of teachings, is that all four nations or all four colors on the wheel represent all four colors of people or nations on Mother Earth. We all share the same future, we have a shared collective worth, and we’re equally responsible for taking care of each other. If you’re thinking, “No way, it’s too late, I’m set in my ways,” I’ve heard of so many stories of people updating their blueprint, changing the rules for themselves, and it’s worked wonders.

Conclusion

Just like my granny used to tell me, to be careful, don’t post too much online about our culture. I don’t know if she would admit it today, but now she loves collaborating with me on workshops and YouTube videos and trainings, because she knows the impact and she’s seen the emails of how accessing this healing can change people’s lives. Now, my final thoughts before I leave you would be to learn how your environment has created a blueprint for your life that is restricting you in any way.

And even though it might not seem like it sometimes, traditional Indigenous knowledge fosters inclusion, and that everyone is welcome around the circle, that we’re all equal, and we’re all connected. Chumagwetch.