Taking Back Our Spirits Quotes

“The colonial regime has been surprisingly, and some might say suspiciously, responsive to Indian politicians demands to the right to govern their people. To that end, the regime has transferred the responsibility to administer many programs to Indian bands, programs that the regime’s bureaucrats once administered, such as education and social welfare. Thus, rather than granting Indian people the right to self-determination, the colonial regime has merely devolved the responsibility for administering pre-existing programs. Worse yet, the regime expects Indian governments to deliver these programs with little or no infrastructure, no training, and with smaller budgets than its Indian affairs bureaucracy itself has received to deliver the same services. Thus, the colonial bureaucrats have set the stage for Indian governments to fail.”
― Jo-Ann Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing

“n other words, to cure the settlers from the pathology of colonialism, Indigenous people must make public the alternative collective myth that comprises our truths, and to heal the wounds or colonialism has inflicted on the Indigenous population, we must hear our truths in the national collective myth.”
― Jo-Ann Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing

“By writing the stories of their lives, stories that articulate Indigenous truths in the form of alternative collective myths, Indigenous writers not only fill in the gaps in the collective method of the dominant, colonial society but also correct many of its falsehoods. These gaps and falsehoods have functioned as weapons to continue to injure the collective esteem of Indigenous people. By making public another story, Indigenous autobiography calls into question the veracity of the national collective myth to address the pathology of colonialism. There is pathology inherent in living in a position of privilege, ignorant of the price that others have paid for those privileges, and believing that those privileges have been earned and are deserved. If settler society persists in maintaining their ignorance of their societies foundation of unearned privilege, their society will remain sick.”
― Jo-Ann Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing