Indoctrination

Last month I did something that made me deeply uncomfortable.

I saw a post on social media from someone I've known my whole life. A person woven into the fabric of my family's story. She shared a video she recorded while driving past a First Nations community I grew up close to, showing clutter in the yards, and captioning it with something about Elders being ashamed. The comments that followed were quick and unkind.

I sat with it for a bit. I am really not someone who embraces conflict. And the thought of pushing back publicly on someone so close to my family, someone I genuinely care about, filled me with turmoil.

But then I thought about who else might be reading.

I thought about Indigenous people and their allies scrolling through that thread, watching comment after comment go unchallenged. And the thought of that silence felt heavier than the discomfort of speaking. So I decided to say something. I tried to be informative without being accusatory. I tried to hold space for the history without losing my warmth. I was met with strong opposition. A very small number of people engaged in solidarity.

Afterward, someone close to me told me they had watched the whole thing unfold. So had a lot of other people, apparently. They didn't engage because it felt uncomfortable. It felt like conflict.

And then I heard something that shocked me: a mutual connection had told someone I care about that I had "drunk the kool-aid."

The phrase has been echoing in my mind ever since.

Last month at the our longhouse event, Len spoke about something that has stayed with me. He talked about the anger that often rises in people when they truly begin to understand the injustice First Nations peoples have faced — and continue to face. Not performative anger. Not borrowed outrage. But the real, felt thing that moves through you when the weight of history actually lands.

We've linked the recording of his message here:

VIDEO

"Our ancestors are watching each and every one of you, what you just went through and learned. Many of our ancestors went through that. Many of our relatives still live through that. Again, we got to experience that for just moments, just a few moments.

And I know that brings up strong and powerful emotions in many of you. Do not worry, you can use that. If that pissed you off, be pissed off, because then you're with us, you're on our side. Welcome. If you feel rowdy and feisty in the face of oppression, welcome to the club.

There's no such thing as good emotions and bad emotions. There is only a powerful state of emotion. And you know, to have these feelings, we're not accustomed to them in the Western world. We usually try to shy away from them, but you can use that. For those of you that work with Indigenous members, use it. Work with them like they're one of the little ones who were in the circle, or work with them like they're one of the ones that came back, or work with them like they were one of the elders or the matriarch of the circle. Because everybody is someone's someone, and you could be our someone. We invite you to be our someone, to be an ally and to have our back."

Is that drinking the kool-aid?

Before I go further, I want to pause on that phrase, because it carries more weight than we often give it. "Drinking the kool-aid" comes from the 1978 Jonestown massacre, when over 900 members of the Peoples Temple died in a mass murder-suicide in Guyana, many coerced or forced, children among them. The phrase became casual shorthand for blind, uncritical loyalty. But its roots are a real tragedy involving real people who lost their lives, many without choice.

I raise this not to scold anyone who's used the phrase lightly, myself included, but because language carries history whether we intend it to or not. A phrase born from coerced death has become a casual way to dismiss people who arrived at a belief through listening and lived experience. Those aren't the same thing.

I ask honestly, because I think the phrase tells us something important. "Drinking the kool-aid" suggests blind allegiance. It suggests surrendering your critical thinking to follow something uncritically. It is a way of dismissing someone's perspective without engaging with it.

But what if the perspective was arrived at carefully? Through listening, through learning, through sitting with people whose lives have been shaped by policies most of us never had to think about? What if the "kool-aid" is actually just... history?

There is something I want to name carefully, because it matters.

When I looked at who had engaged positively with that original post — the people who liked it, who cheered it along — some of them held positions of real influence in their communities. Educators. People responsible for the care and learning of children. Including, I noticed, a principal.

I don't say that to shame or threaten anyone. I say it because it connects directly to what we talk about here: cultural safety is not an abstract idea. It lives in the body of a child sitting in a classroom whose teacher privately holds contempt for where that child comes from. It lives in whether a student feels seen, or whether they feel like a problem.

What we believe, even quietly, even on our personal social media pages, shapes the environments we create. That is not a small thing.

And people see that. I see that. Others see that. First Nations folks, including ones who interacted on the thread...they see that too.

I am not always comfortable in conflict. I probably never will be. But I have learned that silence in the face of harm is its own kind of statement.

And I think about the people who watched that thread and felt they couldn't speak. I understand that. Truly. Conflict is hard, and the social stakes of pushing back on people we know are real. I don't think less of anyone who stayed quiet. I've done it too.

But I think there is something worth naming here: when we learn, when we sit in circle, when we watch Elders share their stories and feel something shift in our chests — that is not indoctrination. That is education doing what it is supposed to do. It is supposed to change us. Growth is supposed to feel like something.

If coming to understand the history of residential schools, the deliberate dismantling of Indigenous families and governance and culture, makes you angry — that anger is appropriate. If learning about the intergenerational reach of that harm makes you more patient with what you see in communities — that patience is warranted. If sitting with an Elder and really listening shifts how you see the world — you have not been manipulated.

You have simply learned something true.

I don't know what the right answer is for every moment when we encounter harmful narratives online or around our kitchen tables. Sometimes speaking is right. Sometimes it's not safe to, and that matters. Sometimes the most powerful thing is a private conversation, or a gentle question, or a hand on a shoulder.

But I do know this: the work of reconciliation requires us to be honest about what we actually believe, and to notice when our silence protects us at the expense of someone else.

Thank you, as always, for being willing to sit in the hard and the honest with me. 

🧡 Kim