What a D[Tr]ump; Human Culture is No Longer Sustainable

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Emerging from a place of horrible oppressive power, abuse, and neglect for most of my entire life I have reflected on ‘what is it that defines and drives who we are as human beings, and what is it exactly that makes us good human beings?’ With my life experiences and this question in mind I have deeply studied and thought through chemistry, psychology, anthropology, intersectional feminism, critical theory, Indigenous knowledge, and Indigenous Studies. Again, I was seeking knowledge of the human condition. Said another way, I was pondering ‘what differentiates human beings from the animal beings?’

In this journey I have come to rest my understanding that it was our thick dense cultural overlays that foremost defined and motivated human beings forward. All human groups had (some continue to have them) lovely thick dense cultural overlays that they relied on in becoming good human beings. Our thick dense cultural overlays consisted of cultural meaning systems and cultural entities that emerged from our mythological belief systems; and our cultural teachings on how to be moral, our cultural teachings our how to behave well, our cultural teachings on how to cook and what to eat, our songs and rituals of love and renewal, and … .

When I reflect, I have come to know that our economic system and strategies of nationalism have stripped people of our think dense cultural layers replacing them with a thin overlay that is thus non-sustainable in its ability to guide us in being the good human beings Creator wants us all to be. Essentially the ‘economic nationalistic paradigm’ that we all think and move through is harming us but we are so engrossed within it that most people are unable to perceive this reality of harm. As such in search for deeper meaning we race more deeply into the material world buying more stuff to the point that hoarding is now a common mental illness; and to the point that people today are more interested in sports and sports heroes versus value the depthful cultural teachings of their once profound mythological figures who taught them how to be good human beings.
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When I reflect, I have come to realize that the cultural overlay defining and driving who we are is no longer a thick dense collection of teachings, rituals, songs, and stories; rather it is a thin layer of economics and nationalism. I have come to understand that human agency has been tightly supplanted into a tiny non- sustainable black hole of existence; I have come to understand that human culture is no longer sustainable.
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But I had hope humans could reason. I should know better than to have hope over the power of economics and nationalism. Indeed, as the Anishinaabe philosophy teaches us ‘Humans are the most pitiful of Creation’.

Like the salmon who swim against the flow of the river, in my struggle against the flow of the oppressive hegemony, I will die.

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Lynn is an author, advocate, artist, and public speaker. Her work encompasses both anti-colonial work and the celebration of Indigenous knowledge. She challenges Canada’s practices, policies, and laws of colonial genocide such as the land claims and self-government process, sex-discrimination in the Indian Act, the continued destruction of Akikpautik / Chaudière Falls–an Anishinaabeg sacred place, and Canada’s lack of policy addressing Indigenous women and girls with disabilities who are bigger targets of sexual violence.

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