things that are really difficult to give, that you receive back the equivalent of four times whatever it is that you gave.
The simple exercise my mother taught me was: “Whatever amount you work for, keep a small amount, enough to put food on the table, enough to get you back and forth to work, and give all the rest away. You make sure you continue to do that every year, and you’ll never have to worry for finding work. You’ll never have to worry about all the things that you need.” And I never have. I do this every year of my life, all the time. I give to my community, to my people, to strangers; everything that I do is with this way of living in mind. This is something that is needed in terms of how we are doing things in the world today. And this is something that needs to be understood deeply at the personal level.
It comes down to each person embodying this concept and practicing it without letting-up. It comes down to each person being human in this way.
It is my hope that in sharing these thoughts, that I share with each of you a part of the gift that I was given through community, family, and the land that I am from. I wish to extend my gratitude to those whose ideas, work, and resources were given to the idea of a gift economy.
Jeannette Armstrong is Syilx (Okanagan) from Penticton, British Columbia, Canada and is the director of En’owkin Centre dedicated to the revitaliztion of the Syilx Language and Culture.
The simple exercise my mother taught me was: “Whatever amount you work for, keep a small amount, enough to put food on the table, enough to get you back and forth to work, and give all the rest away. You make sure you continue to do that every year, and you’ll never have to worry for finding work. You’ll never have to worry about all the things that you need.” And I never have. I do this every year of my life, all the time. I give to my community, to my people, to strangers; everything that I do is with this way of living in mind. This is something that is needed in terms of how we are doing things in the world today. And this is something that needs to be understood deeply at the personal level.
It comes down to each person embodying this concept and practicing it without letting-up. It comes down to each person being human in this way.
It is my hope that in sharing these thoughts, that I share with each of you a part of the gift that I was given through community, family, and the land that I am from. I wish to extend my gratitude to those whose ideas, work, and resources were given to the idea of a gift economy.
Jeannette Armstrong is Syilx (Okanagan) from Penticton, British Columbia, Canada and is the director of En’owkin Centre dedicated to the revitaliztion of the Syilx Language and Culture.
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I look forward to continuing to learn about this rich culture. Great read.
Covid-19 has shown that we are all connected and we are all sailing in the same boat. "What Indigenous means to me is that everything that exists on the Earth is interdependent, an interdependence that must be understood. As an Indigenous person, I must have knowledge about it and I must be able to cooperate with all the other living things on the planet, on this land, so as not to make any one of them extinct or remove any one of them for my own need. In other words, to cooperate and to collaborate with every living thing so that they can live and I can live at the same level of health" - Jeannette Armstrong
My culture is historically oral as well, being descended from ancient Irish and then later Lakota people. To talk story face to face and especially intimately one to one is healing to one another and the world too. }:- a.m.
this brought forth tears. what a lovely and powerful way with words she has! my heart longs. so much to imbibe about how words shape thought - maleness and femaleness, swallower of giving, what 'elder' means ... so much gratitude.