Ideas - How Indigenous survival offers a blueprint for everyone’s future: Jesse Wente

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

The future we want has already existed — we just need to recover it, says Jesse Wente. In a talk, the Anishinaabe arts leader explains how the best of this past gives everyone a blueprint for a better future. "We are evidence that cultures can withstand global systems change: adapt, and rebuild." *This episode originally aired on June 21, 2024.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Welcome to Ideas, I'm Nala Ayed.

Imagining 2080. That was the name of a conference held at McMaster University in the fall of 2023. It marked the culmination of an initiative called the Future of Canada Project. Delegates from various fields gathered at McMaster to discuss what Canada could be like in the year 2080. They were asked to both imagine and map out, quote, deeply aspirational futures for the country around issues such as climate, technology, trust and reconciliation. Welcome to the final keynote and final session of the summit. It is my tremendous pleasure to introduce our final speaker, Jesse Wente. The closing address at the forum was given by the current chair of the Canada Council for the Arts, a writer and broadcaster who

was the founding director of the Indigenous Screen Office. My name is Jesse Wente. I'm a father and broadcaster who was the founding director of the Indigenous Screen Office. My name is Jesse Wente. I'm a father and a husband who lives in Toronto, and I'm Anishinaabe Ojibwe. My family comes from Chicago on my dad's side, and Gnabijing Anishinaabek on my mom's side, and I am Bear Clan. Jesse Wente's aspirational future envisioned different forms of nationhood from what currently exists, and better ways of being for all people informed by the best parts of the Indigenous past. Here is Jesse Wente's talk at Imagining 2080. It's called Remembering Our Future.

I'm often asked to speak the ideas of truth and reconciliation, social justice, and Indigenous sovereignty. But lately, like at this gathering, I've been asked to think about and speak to the future. These requests I find very fascinating. I'm not really a futurist, or at least I wouldn't really classify myself as one, but I do really think a lot about the future, and I'm always trying to act with the future in mind. That is the Anishinaabe way. We believe that everything you do, you should consider its impact seven generations into the future.

So as you can imagine, that requires a lot of thinking about what we do and how it's going to impact people in the future. It also strikes me that perhaps this request is because for Indigenous people, especially when I think about requests to think about the future in this moment with what's going on in the world, it strikes me that perhaps we're being asked because we do as a community have some experience in both long-term planning and apocalypse preparedness and survival. We are, after all, post-apocalyptic. Our world ended and we survived and we're still here. And now we are all here, and perhaps it's the time that we begin to lend this particular expertise in surviving the end

of the world to this one. That would certainly align with one of our Anishinaabe prophecies around what we should be doing and why we might even be having these sorts of discussions in this moment. And I say this not to be depressing, surprisingly, but rather hopeful, as we are proof that cultures can endure the most systemic of ongoing attacks and not just survive, but begin to thrive again. We are evidence that cultures can withstand global systems change, adapt, and rebuild. We are evidence of the power of memory and remembering, as that is both what preserved us and now what we must preserve. Even as our

ancestors watched their world end, they prepared for the future. They imagined what it would be, and then they did things to ensure that what they imagined could be realized. So I want to tell you a story. It's a personal story. It's about my family, my community, my people, my nation, but I think it has some relevance to today. So my great-grandparents on my mom's side were named Alex and Maggie Miowoski. They were both born in the late 1890s in communities on the north shore of what is currently called Lake Huron. I was lucky enough to meet them when I was just born. They, in fact, demanded to meet me.

They demanded my mom and dad take the six-hour car ride from Toronto to Ganabijing so that they could meet me. They had had a dream of my birth. They dreamt of a young boy, a baby, being blown down the Serpent River into the community by the wind. So they asked to meet me, and there they gave me the name Nodin, which is on my birth certificate, and it means wind in our language to signify the wind that blew me into the community. I'm the only one of their great grandchildren to have a name like this. In fact I'm the only one of their family to have a name like

this. Their children, they did not bestow a name like this on them. Alex and Maggie spent most of their lives where they had always been. Maggie was the midwife and medicine woman for the community, and Alex served as chief for a time, but was also mostly a trapper, mostly beaver and minx. They had a small farm. They lived off the land pretty much exactly as their ancestors had done for, well, as my grandmother would put it, ever, forever. Although now they sold their furs to the Hudson's Bay Company as opposed to trading them with other nations. Alex and Maggie had eight children, my grandmother Norma among them. Now, it's important to keep in mind that Alex and Maggie, despite being very traditional people, were also keenly aware that their way of life was ending.

And that their children would not live in the same way that they had and their parents had and that entire line of their family had lived. They were already living on a reserve, something that was unimaginable to their own parents. They were beginning to see their traditional territory taken away, the hunting grounds, which extended well beyond the reserve lands. And this is even before, this is actually long before the uranium mines would poison the river for two generations. poison the river for two generations. So what did they do knowing that such seismic change was coming? And I have to say, I think a lot about what our folks did when they knew. Because you have to understand, First Nations people really did know that our world was ending. We understood. So what did we do?

First, they sent their kids to the school the church wanted them to. They wanted their kids to learn English, because they understood, even though they did not speak English, that the world was going to speak English, and that their kids must know this language. So they wanted their kids to learn the skills needed to thrive in this new world, but not all the kids. And this is important, okay? Five of the eight children went to the schools. There were two schools in Spanish, Ontario, St. Peter Claver School for Boys and St. Joseph School for Girls. You can look them up in the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation

if you want to know the history. That's not really what this talk is about, but just know that bad shit absolutely happened there. Five of the eight kids went to the schools. The youngest did not. That was both because Alex and Maggie realized that the schools were not the promise that they had held themselves out to be,

but also because those kids were to learn something else. So some of the kids didn't go to the schools. Alex and Maggie made sure they kept their language. They in fact moved the family off the reserve, just across the street, but it was enough of a move that meant that the Indian agents and the RCMP didn't come to collect the kids at the school year. These kids would keep the language. These kids would keep the ways, the stories, the ceremonies, the knowledge. Yes, some were sent to learn the new ways in order to bring that knowledge back to the community. Others were kept so that they would learn the traditional ways to keep them and protect them in this new world for when we would want them again. Ours was not the only family that did this.

Ours was not the only community that did this. Ours was not the only community that did this. In many ways, a lot of our communities did this exact same thing. There's a painting at the Canada Council offices at a gallery there by an indigenous artist, and it's called The Kids That Didn't Go, The Kids That Were Left Behind, or Kept Behind. And it's this really evocative image of an Indian reservation with a single kid sitting on top of the hood of a car. This is the exact story I'm telling to you. This is why we still have our songs. This is why we still have our dances, our stories, even our languages,

so attacked for generations, but they persist and indeed are making comebacks all across Turtle Island. When my great-grandparents and those like them made these plans, made these decisions, and took these actions, it was with the knowledge that they would not live to see their future realized, right? Although I have to say, I can see the evidence of their work now all around in the family. So there's a part of my family, the family of the kids that didn't go to the schools. Those are the folks in my family that still live in the community. They still speak Anishinaabemowin. My cousin Steve, who's of my grandmother's generation, he's my cousin, but he's, I think, 28 years older than me. But he's of my grandmother's generation. He's my cousin, but he's, I think, 28 years older than me.

But he's of my grandmother's generation. He is a language holder. He teaches the language in the community. He teaches the kids how to live a traditional life. And there's a whole branch of my family, of the Miwasagis, who are still in Serpent River, living as close as they can to the old ways in this world. Then there's the other part of the family, of which I am a part, the part of the

family that did go to the schools, whose ancestors did go there to learn these new ways. And that part of the family did not go back to the reserve, which was, of course, the intended outcome for the schools, but I have to say was also somewhat the intended outcome of my great-grandparents. They wanted these children to go out into the world to learn things in order to bring them back, in order to strengthen the community's ability to survive in this new world. So those kids went out, and that side of the family, well one of them is standing in front of you who does this work. My sister, she's a partner in an Indigenous law firm and she sues the government every day. That's what she does and she wins. Every day she wins. The rest of my family is likewise engaged. My aunt, she started the Indigenous Arts Program at OCAD, Bonnie Devine.

Another aunt is in risk management for a large not-for-profit organization that serves our communities. We've all done, fulfilled exactly what my great-grandparents were imagining. We all left the community and it meant a huge sacrifice and I can't say it's not without pain right because I miss my language even though I don't know it. I miss so much of these things but it has meant that I have fulfilled exactly what they wanted. I've learned a whole bunch. I've learned this new language frankly better than most people who were born into it.

I've learned all of these skills in order to help my community. This is not a story that is my family's alone. It is a common story, a common relationship for so many people, families, and communities. If you ever wondered why Indigenous people can still round dance, this is why. ever wondered why indigenous people can still round dance, this is why. We understood that our world was ending and we made plans for what to do after. It was always understood that we would still be here, the people would still be here, even if our way of life was not. So how do we exist, persist in those conditions? And I don't think that it is so foreign for us now to think that we can also begin to make plans. Plans that will come to fruition long after we are gone. Certainly that's how I've imagined my existence.

So for example, I started something called the Indigenous Screen Office in 2018. I was the founding director. The Indigenous Screen Office is a funding body for storytelling on screen for Indigenous people. It had been the dream of our community to have this since the early 1990s because Australia got an Indigenous Screen Office in like 1993. and the day after a bunch of us started advocating for one here so it was it was took 25 years of advocacy to get this screen office in and we established it in 2018 at the time that I started it just to give you some idea like so many things in Indian country it was funded to fail so my first budget was $2355 000 annually there was one staff me as the founding director that was it when i left my job there which was always the plan the budget was 17

million dollars in four years so that's what they're they're currently doing now when i was talking about this and i would especially when I was talking to the government about why we wanted this and what was the point of this, I definitely told them a story about what the point was. It's not the real story, but I'll tell you the story I told them, which was the story was around us participating in this large economy that we've been largely locked out of in Canada. It was about us telling stories that we think are much needed.

It was about us being a sovereign people, having equal quality with French and English. So why they have funding for movie and TV projects. Why shouldn't we have funding for movie and TV projects? The history of it is that our stories are told by other people on this land. And that, if you have gathered, hasn't really benefited us that much. These were all the arguments that I talked about. Economic participation, all of this stuff. And I believe in all of those things. Those are all really valuable things. That is not at all why I started the Indigenous Screen Office. That is not the goal of it. And if you ask Carrie Swanson, who runs it now,

she'll list everything I just said. And then if you catch her, especially if she's with Indigenous people only, then she'll tell you the real reason of what we're doing, which is sovereignty. That's it. Full stop. Now, the name I gave it at the time was narrative sovereignty, because that's a little less threatening to the state. If they just think it's about stories. But of course, the state, the Canadian state and most states, colonial states like the one we exist in, and these colonial systems, one of the advantages we have as people, okay, especially for those of us who are still connected with sort of a different understanding of the world, is that these places run on quarterly reports and annual reports, right?

But that's not actually how we work. If we wanted to write a report, it would be called a generational report because I believe we work in generations. That's how I work. So the whole idea of like, well, I'll sell narrative sovereignty now because I can sell that now.

It'll be bought. They'll fund this thing, which they have. They don't need to know the longer goal. They're not going to be alive to see it anyway. But I need to know what we're doing and the people that work there in our community needs to know what we're doing. And the people that work there in our community needs to know what we're doing. And the whole point is,

if over time, Indigenous people tell our own story, then non-Indigenous people will begin to realize that we are still sovereign, and that is what is owed to us. And that over time, it will bend. Because storytelling is how Canada exists right and occupation but that's how it exists it tells the story of its existence we can tell a different story and come up with a different sort of existence and the reason I named a talk remembering our future

is because for Anishinaabe we have a very different understanding of time and how time works and so what I would say is where we are now in the world with everything that is going on we have already been here if you're worried about what's happening in Israel and Palestine it's important to understand that that happened here that happened. We're just a few hundred years after it happened. So the present we're in is just something we've actually already experienced, which is to mean we shouldn't despair

because the fact that we are here is evidence that we survived that calamity. It also means that the future has already also existed, if you understand what I mean. The future that you're imagining has already happened, has already existed. What we need to do is remember that future, remember what it was to exist before these systems that are harming us so much, particularly in places of settler colonialism, which is much of the world.

We need a deep remembering, a remembering so deep that most people don't even understand what I'm saying. But I'm talking blood level memory, where you have to really think well beyond your life, your parents' life, your grandparents' life. We need the deepest of human memories in this moment. And that memory will allow us to remember the future we're all thinking about right now. The systems we have here on this place now that are hurting us, that are causing us to war, causing us to divide, causing all of this harm,

they didn't always exist here. They didn't always exist, period. They're actually very new. And so for some communities, like say for First Nations people, this deep remembering is actually fairly easy because it's not so long ago for us to remember when none of this was like this. I can remember, even though I didn't live it.

I can remember. I remember it in the songs and in the dances and the stories. All that stuff that my great-grandparents made sure our community preserved is now the way we remember how to get back to where they were. Do you understand? It's a path. They led us a path to the past so that we may build the future. The solutions to the systemic issues we face

lie beyond the systems that created them. This is also why we must remember deeply. We will not resolve the issues of capitalism through a new marketplace. That is not what will happen. What we have to do is deeply remember what it was to exist without capitalism. What we have to remember, deeply remember, is what it was to exist without patriarchy. Not that hard for Anishinaabe. We are a matrilineal culture. It was not that long ago that the women were the decision makers in our communities. We can remember this very much.

Here's the trick. All of you can remember the same things because these are all memories that you also have deep inside. These systems did not spring up when creation happened it took eons of time for us to develop these systems whole civilizations have come and gone before these systems happened so you too can do this deep remembering it's there you can't solve the issues of colonization by colonizing others we actually have to end the whole notion of colonization. We won't escape capitalism through markets, as I said. We must remember what it was to exist

beyond these things in order to escape them now. This is another reason why I've invested so much time in storytelling, and particular storytelling from people who are not part of the mainstream, other voices. Because it's when the storytelling can happen, when we can hear another person's vision of the future, that we can actually begin to, wait a minute, that works. I'll tell you a quick, and it seems so trite, but I'll give you an example. Years ago, I did an exhibition around Star Trek, thrilled. As a lifelong Trekker, I was just so over the moon. And so we were putting together this exhibition on Star Trek. And one of the things that struck me about it, right, is that one of the writers, the first time we as a human species saw an iPad or a cell phone was on Star Trek in 1967. And it was actually a woman

writer who wrote that particular episode. So we all watched as this person pulled out this thing and like did all this stuff and scanning human bodies and doing all this fancy stuff, none of which existed at the time, right? This was a few, they were painting us a vision of the future. none of which existed at the time, right? This was a few, they were painting us a vision of the future. But the reason why that story was so important is because I don't believe we ever actually get to this if we don't have that vision. Because it's, the reason it's sharing is the writer,

she did not know how to make this. She knew how to write a great piece of television. So she did that. But someone watching that show, someone who heard that story, well, they did know how to make this. So they made it. So one of the reasons storytelling is so important, one of the reasons why we need to hear stories not just from the people who've been telling stories for a long time, but from the people who have not been telling their stories, is that that allows us to imagine a very different future than the one we're in.

That allows us to imagine something we couldn't even conjure at the time. And when we share it, it means someone else who does know how to do the thing will do the thing. Right? It doesn't have to be us. Just because I dreamt up the iPad like they did on star trek does not have to be them who creates it and makes it a reality so the importance of storytelling and storytelling that exists and comes from a place that is beyond this time now that engages with that deep

remembering that that has a as a knowledge of systems beyond this. That's the stories we need right now so that we can begin to imagine and remember what it was to live in a different way. Remember what it was to live as a community all together, not separated into separate communities or different identities, but all together. What it meant, the obligations that we would have to one another, right? All of these things, we need to remember all of them. You're listening to a public talk by Jesse Wente, writer, broadcaster, and arts administrator here on Ideas. We're a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas.

Find us wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you got to know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighborhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401,

check out This Is Toronto wherever you get your podcasts. at your podcasts. Here is the second half of Jesse Wente's talk at the Imagining 2080 Forum at McMaster University. The writer and arts administrator envisions a better future for all, built on Anishinaabe ways of being.

That's because he thinks that our current systems are clearly harming us. But he sees solutions if we can develop a different relationship with time. That's why he's called the talk, Remembering Our Future. For those that have suffered the most under colonization, I do think we tend to have these memories closer at hand. It's why I agree to do these sorts of talks,

why I do all this work. Because again, I'm honoring my great-grandparents here. This is what they wanted me to be doing, and so this is what I am doing. And then the other thing I would say in terms of, because there was a lot of conversations around hope in my session and around how we hope. And I guess here's what I say around hope as a First Nations person

and as a person who's been, if you know anything about my career, deeply critical of this place and its systems and all of that sort of stuff. But I believe in Canada in the end. And how could I say that, considering how it's done to my family and all that stuff? And the reason I believe in Canada is because Alex and Maggie believed in Canada. That's why they prepared.

They didn't prepare just for their community. It was a preparation for this new nation that they understood that they were a part of. They were preparing so that I would be here to do this for you, because they understood that this was going to be necessary. They understood that the systems that they were going to be carrying weren't going to be sustainable systems. So they understood that we were going to have to this is why we have the seventh prophecy that prophecy is we had a deep understanding that we would have to come back to here that you would end up asking us to come in your spaces of learning to talk about this because you need

you needed to tap back into this knowledge so they preserved it for this moment for this moment going forward so the reason i hope is because they sacrificed so much to make sure that we could be here and they believed in canada that it worries me that canadians don't believe it as much as those that have been hurt the most by it first First Nations people have sacrificed more for this country than any other community. We have given everything to this country. I think what we need to demand or what we want back from the future of this country is for that to be worth it. That's the challenge I would say to everyone here is how can in 2080 we could you make it worth it to my family for everything we have gone through I have an idea about how you could do that

when my grandmother went into her school my grandmother started attending St. Joseph's School for Girls in 1933 when she was six years old so when my grandmother went into the school she only spoke Anishinaabemowin. The family only spoke our language. When she came out, she never really spoke the language again. So that's why I grew up in English. That was two generations ago. What if we thought of that two generations from now, which is actually before 2080, believe it or not. So we wouldn't even get there.

But what if we could imagine that in two generations my family will be fluent again? Could we imagine that? Because when I was asked, one of the prompts I was given for this was sort of imagine, vision, what does 2080 look like? And the first thing that came to mind actually wasn't a vision. It was a sound for me. And the first thing I heard was this conference in 2080.

And it was entirely an Anishinaabe moan. Everyone here, everyone, not just the Anishinaabe, everyone spoke our language. To have these discussions in our language, which is a very different one than English. It sees the world very differently. It doesn't really have possessions in the same way that English does. It doesn't really even have verbs. It has states of being, our language, right? And why is that to me maybe the most hopeful future? Well, one, I think it's incredibly achievable.

Like so achievable, I had dinner with a guy the other night who could achieve it. He's an Anishinaabe language teacher. He's already developed a system that's being used at universities all throughout the region. I said, could we have our communities be fluent by 2080? And he's like, we could have it by 2050. 2050. 2050.

Now, if everyone here could speak our language, then we could start to talk about the worldview. We could start to understand our relationship to this place and each other in a very, very different way, right? Because the first vision I had when I thought of 2080, and I heard a lot of conversations around, you know, the 2080 I envision is for my children, which is great. I mean, I have teenagers. I guess they'll still be around in 2080. I don't know. But that's not who I envisioned it for, to be honest. I envisioned

I envisioned 2080 for the tree and the lake, who are also my kin. I envisioned what it would be for them to be at the table, as we like to say, with the rest of us. What would that look like? And here's the thing. I think that vision, I think the language came to me first

because that vision is best seen in Anishinaabemowin. English doesn't do well with the idea of the land because it wants to possess it. Anishinaabemowin has no such ideas in it. We understand that the land possesses us, so it's very different. And so in that rubric, the idea that we would plan for the future means that actually we steward the land in a very different way. The thought experiment I usually use for this is ask people to think about

the difference between a mountain and the train that goes around the mountain. What is more real, the mountain or the train? I would suggest that the mountain has seen a million modes of transportation pass by its in its history and it knows that the train is just the latest the mountain is the lake, the air

the sky, they're more real than anything we can do and Anishinaabemowin centers that for us The air, the sky, they're more real than anything we can do. And Anishinaabemowin centers that for us. It centers us in a place of humility and understanding. No matter what I can do or say to you today, the mountain will still be more real than it. Because it'll be here long after my words have left.

It will always be here. And for us, one of the things we need to deeply remember is what it is to live in a similar timeline to the mountain if you understand what I mean which is to say that if you think of the mountain and you think of us in relation to the mountain

well the mountain is going to be here way longer than us, it was here way before us so what is our relationship to it? Who cares for who in that situation? Does the thing that's going to be here forever care for the thing that's only going to be here a short time? Or does the thing that's going to only be here a short time, are they obligated to care for the thing

that's going to be here forever? And of course the answer is that one. We are obligated to care for our relations because they are going to outlive us and why should we think that they should care for us when we are going to be here like that so we need to deeply remember what it is to live in that that way and so in that way. And so in that deeply remembering, we can actually build the future. We can imagine a future that is utterly different than when we are. And I would encourage us not to be precious around the things that we have constructed to support and instead focus, like my great grandparents did, on what is most important to preserve in this moment. Is it

the building or the systems? I'm going to say it is not. It is not those things. The most important things to preserve are the human things. How we communicate, how we live, how we understand the world, how we dance and share with one another. Those are the things that no matter what happens, no matter the venue, because remember the round dance, we used to do it outdoors. We can do it inside now. It's not about the venue.

It's not about the where, the construction of things. It's about those most human things. So if we were to think now in that sense, what is it that we want to preserve? What is it that is most dear that we protect? Is it the systems? Or is it how we want to preserve what is it that is most dear that we protect is it the systems or is it how we live together is it the government that's only been here a short time or is it the idea of no it's community relations right relations is the way we would put it should should govern us. It's really deciding what it is that we will need in 2080

and protecting that in these moments. And what I'm suggesting is none of it is the tangible stuff. None of it. It's all the intangible stuff. And it may require that we hide things, that we put things away, that we keep the one kid home for this moment, and we teach them something different. There's a lot of talk about kids and the future. One of the things to consider is that maybe some folks from outside our community, maybe now's the time, maybe we've come back to a time where we need to keep the one kid home to teach them something different. Yeah, we need a bunch of the kids

to know how to do world changing. We will also need a lot of kids to be able to remember what it was, to remember all of this. So is that what they're getting in the schools or is there a different venue for them to learn? And should we be scared if they're not going to get an education? is a ba going to mean in 30 years have you

thought about that why are we so clinging to that what's important and let's cling to that like my great-grandparents did and like our communities did as i dream of a future for the trees, for the water, for my non-human kin. I dream of a future where Canada means something very, very different and acts very, very different. It's the vision my grandparents had of this place, one of shared humanity, shared resources, of learning from one another. Because they always thought that, yes, they would send their kids to school to learn from this new world. They always knew you'd come calling back to have me come back so you could learn from the old one. So what I really want to encourage

is that this deep remembering, that the future we want has already existed in the past. We just have to dig into our memories to remember it. Then we have to remember what it was to build that and start doing that action now. And we don't need to rely on the institutions or systems or governments or any of that to do any of this work. My community did it in exact opposition to those forces, right? They didn't get permission from the government.

They would have been arrested if they had been known they were doing this, right? That was real resistance. That was saying, we're going to plan for the generational future of our community against the wishes of the most powerful outside of the systems meant to control us we are no different than them we're the same we can do the same now and i think we should do the same now because we're at a moment, we see it all over the world, it feels all tense and it feels precarious. It is. But again, we have been here before.

We will get through this. What we need to is, at this moment, protect what is most key for our future. And to remain hopeful. Because I don't think we can live without hope. Hope is literally the only thing that allows us to live, I think, other than air and water. And I hope for them that we'll still have them. But I think if we can remember deeply,

we can recall that where we are now is both familiar, and in that familiarity, we can figure out how we survived it and how we move forward. I want to stop there, but I will say in my language, for listening, I say it four times to acknowledge all four directions, and I want to thank you very much for having me here today. It's been a real privilege. From November of 2023, a talk called Remembering Our Future by writer, broadcaster, and arts administrator Jesse Wente. Thank you to Kaylee Wiseman, Anne Elizabeth Sampson,

and the organizers of the Imagining 2080 Forum at McMaster University. I had the opportunity to connect with Jesse Wente again in the aftermath of his talk. You talk in your lecture about the deep responsibility that you feel around helping your community and being one of its voices in the wider society, as your great-grandparents had intended. Do you remember when you first felt that responsibility profoundly growing up? I remember a conversation my mother and I had. It was probably around about the time I started attending a private school, a private boys' school here in Toronto. You know, I think the way my mom framed it was that I was currently and going to lead a more privileged life than many in my family and many in my community. And that with that privilege came an obligation to turn back to my community once I had sort of accrued enough experience to make it, you know, learned as much as I possibly could, uh, to then bring that knowledge back to help

my community as best I could. And that's very much, I think the same message, uh, she received. And it's, I think very much what my great grandparents, Alex and Maggie Miyawaski, what they were, what they sort of had in, in mind in terms of the direction of the, the family. So I think that's, um, you know, I think that's the sort of lineage. And that's probably the first time that I became aware that I was, you know, that there was a circle there that needed to be made whole at some point. Yeah. I wonder from that point onwards, Jesse, whether you ever felt that responsibility feeling heavy.

Yes. Yes. I think in recent years, I have found it maybe too heavy at times. too heavy at times. Now, some of that is, you know, self-imposed, you know, in terms of my own thinking and feelings and sort of navigating and what some of that has just felt like, you know, so I don't know how much of that is real, but then some of it is just real. And I think, I don't think I'm alone. I think anyone who, however they come about it takes on sort of leadership positions, especially for communities that, uh, have been, you know, forcibly marginalized or gone through what my community has gone through. I think there's a lot, there's a lot to be done and there's a lot of pressure that you can put on yourself to do as much of it as you can. And, you know, where I am at this point in my life, I would say is I'm, I'm beginning to

heal, I guess, from some of the efforts that it took to, uh, try to assist my community in the best way that I could. And, and, you know, for me, that meant, um, often being in colonial spaces and in places that were sometimes hostile to our existence. And so, uh, you know, that, that has taken its toll. I would be the first to admit. So, yeah, I think that burden can be hard. But one of the things I've learned, certainly through this journey, is that one of the key things about leadership is when to know to step back, when to make space for other leaders to do some of that work, and also to recognize that we sit in circle at a drum with each other. And if we are all beating the pulse, it can be okay if one of us holds their drumstick back for a little bit and takes that space for themselves to take a break,

because others will continue to beat the drum. So that's a lesson that I've also learned. But yeah, it has not been without its challenges. I can only imagine the weightiness of being told that, especially as a young man. When you think back to that time, were there moments in that early phase of your life that you recall that really cemented that sense of cultural mission for you? Like, is there an example that you can give? Not maybe a specific example. It was something that came over time. some of my time when I was at CBC, and just realizing that, you know, my community,

meaning Anishinaabe folks, or if you want to take it larger, First Nations folks, you know, that we weren't present in the creation of sort of storytelling, um, in this place, both in terms of telling stories, but also in terms of being thought of as people who might receive stories, uh, who might take them in. Um, we were really, you know, in those early days, it felt often invisible and forcibly made so. And so the lack sort of, you know, I was a film critic for so many years now, right? And I was someone who watched when I was a film critic and I was working at film festivals and doing all that curation. You know, I was watching 1,500 movies a year

and I did that for 20 years. Wow. Right now I'm watching all of these stories and especially until relatively very recently, right? The vast majority of that time, I'm not seeing stories that reflect me or my community or are my broad community. Like they're just not there. They don't exist. And I'm, I'm having to interact with all these other stories. And it just became a sense of, well, I really want to see some things that feel closer to me. I want to be able to feel about a movie or a story the way I know other communities do when they get to see themselves reflected. I wanted to move closer to the decisions of what films get

made, who gets to make movies, what, like who gets to tell stories, like how does that work? Um, and so that became a very intentional sort of thing. And luckily, it's a path that many before me have taken, and we were able to just build on that. So I think it was not necessarily one incident. It was more just this feeling of absence during my day-to-day work. Yeah. Moving on to the ideas that you addressed in your talk specifically, I want to talk a little more about the Anishinaabe way of seeing time. Why is the far future such a big consideration in that way of thinking? I would, you know, there would be more learned people

than me to ask about that uh nala but from from my understanding it's because of the land um so i think so what i would say is like an understanding of time as experienced by the land as opposed to as experienced by humans. Right. Because we have a very different experience of time, just like we have a very different experience of time of like animals, a fish or a bird or an insect that may only live for 24 hours, right? That's whole life cycle, right?

And what we would call a day, but for its life, right? So there's all sorts of different experiences of, of time. And I think the, the notion of that elongation or that sort of future is an acknowledgement that the land right exists in a time that we actually really struggle, especially currently. Um, uh, but, I think humans in general, because we don't live in the same sort of understanding of time as the land. And I think for a lot of First Nations, and certainly my understanding of Anishinaabe, part of the goal is to try to align yourselves

with the understanding of time that the land has. And if you're the land, so if we think of a mountain or a lake or an ocean, what does it really consider a month to be exactly? What does it consider one of our lifetimes to be to it? Like not much, right? Like very minimal. And if you ground yourself in sort of that sense of time, then what we're doing here, like what we're supposed to be doing and what our obligations and responsibilities might be to both time and the things that sustain us here in our existence here, um, I think shifts a bit, right? I think one of the challenges we have globally and certainly here on these lands these days is we exist. We, we want to make everything exist in human time, right? We want everything, we want to bend it to us. And the reality is that's sort of not how the land works, right? The land doesn't understand that. And we can see that. We see the evidence of that all over the place. And so I think more and more for Anishinaabe,

but also just humans in general, because I don't think it's distinct to Anishinaabe, this understanding. I think it's just an older understanding. The more we can grasp our responsibilities in the time that the land understands, which would mean that we are not the center of it. And if we situate ourselves then, well, what should we be thinking about how we approach, you know, the, the, the McMaster talk was about this idea of 2080, right? Which is what, 55 years, I guess, 56 years from when you and I are speaking. Again, if I think of this from the land's point of view, that's tomorrow, probably not even, that's like later this hour, if not five minutes from now that really shifts the way you

look at things doesn't it for me it it it does and it shifts the it shifts what we should be up to like what what we should be thinking around how we exist together and what we should be doing. And it puts into context some of the challenges that we face, right? It doesn't make them easier, to be honest, right? If we think of them, it makes them what they are. But it also gives us a sense that whether we face them or not, us a sense that whether we face them or not, the time of the land will continue. And so that, I think, should give us all the impetus to start moving in a different way to come more in alignment with that, because shouldn't humans want to exist in the same way that the land does forever? You even say in your lecture that even non-Indigenous people without those memories of the past have access to that deep remembering. Can you tell me how? Sure. I think it just requires a deeper journey into your own memory, into your own past, into your own understanding of time. And the reason I say that is because for First Nations people, my community, it's not that long ago that I can talk to my mom and hear about some of the old ways. My mom. like that's, this is not, not all it's very close

for, I think lots of other people, it's more distant to remember before this. Right. And for some, they may remember other systems that were just as bad or, you know, it may take even longer to find freedom, you know, to find that space where you can truly remember what it was to be fully human and not beholden to systems, but rather have systems that serve you in that remembering, maybe as far back as you may have to go to find that place, it's probably worth noting the length of that journey and all of the barriers that separated you from that. Because that might give you the indication of the systems that are, A, collapsing, right, that we talked about earlier, And also the systems that we may not want to regenerate, that we may want to seek, that that's the solution we're actually seeking for in the past is what was before. What can we rely on before? And how can that then inform what the after, you know, how can that help us construct and plan for the after that we all want, and the after that will bring us closer to the understanding of this place that the land has for itself. Writer, broadcaster, and arts administrator Jesse Wente.

Writer, broadcaster and arts administrator Jesse Wente. His memoir, published in 2021, is called Unreconciled, Family, Truth and Indigenous Resistance. This episode was produced by Lisa Godfrey. Web producer for Ideas is Lisa Ayuso. Technical producer, Danielle Duval. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly. And I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.