Lead Article
Native Wisdom on Belonging
Martin Brokenleg
This is the first in a
series of four journal issues exploring the principles of Belonging,
Mastery, Independence, and Generosity that are embodied in the Native
American Circle of Courage. The author introduces the conceptual
background of this model of youth development and discusses the first
principle � Belonging.
Cultural Tails and Personal
Tales
Our worldviews are shaped by
our cultural and family attachments. Each of us drags around a cultural
tail a thousand years long, as well as our more personal family
tale. My Lakota (Sioux) grandfather was born in the mid-1800s and
did not see his first White man until after the encroachments of
Custer's cavalry. He proudly carried the name Brokenleg, which
memorialized an injury incurred in his job of training wild horses. Up
until his death at 99 years of age, he only spoke Lakota as he would
tell us, his grandchildren, stories of our culture before we were
subjugated by European settlers.
My father should have been
given his own special name, but, following the European patriarchal
tradition, he was given the surname of his father and the first name of
Noah. When he became old enough to go to school, he was captured and
hauled away in one of the trucks that came each fall to our reservation
from government or church sponsored boarding schools. The motto of
colonial education at the time was "Kill the Indian to save the
child." Thus, Whites thought they were rescuing these children from
savage families and bringing them to civilization as embodied in
militaristic boarding schools. These children, who had never experienced
force dealt out in anger by an adult, were beaten if they spoke their
native language.
The Europeans believed Indian
children were little primitives in need of socialization. In reality,
they had brought with them a very backward theory of child development,
one that assumed children were evil and had to be punished into
submission. In contrast, tribal peoples had already embraced many
democratic principles and had sophisticated systems of childrearing. The
goal of discipline was to teach courage instead of obedience. Elders
used respectful communications with children to instill the values of
being a good relative. In the words of a Lakota leader:
- The days of my infanthood
and childhood were spent in surroundings of love and care. In
manner, gentleness was my mother's outstanding characteristic. Never
did she, nor any of my caretakers, ever speak crossly to me or scold
me for failures or shortcomings. (Standing Bear, 1933, p. 46)
Anthropologists have long been
aware that North American tribal cultures had very different systems of
discipline than the coercive obedience and harsh corporal punishment
common in Western culture. At the core of the punitive mindset of the
latter is a view of the child as inferior to the adult. If one were to
say "You are acting like a child" in any European language,
this would be interpreted as an insult. In my Lakota tongue, this phrase
would be "You are acting like a sacred being," which is
certainly not a putdown. When an early treaty was broken by the U.S.
government, a Lakota chief remarked, "What would we expect from
people who beat their sacred beings!"
We Are All Relatives
In traditional tribal kinship
systems, the siblings of my parents would also be my mothers and
fathers, and the persons Europeans call cousins we would call brothers
and sisters. Most everyone with white hair was a grandparent. Similar
kinship models exist among tribal peoples worldwide, as reflected in the
African adage, "It takes a village to raise a child," and the
Cree belief, "Every child needs many mothers."
Noted psychoanalyst Erik
Erikson studied childrearing on our reservations to prepare a chapter in
his book Childhood and Society (1950). He was shocked to
discover that some Sioux children didn't even know who their
"real" parents were until it came time to fill out papers for
school admission. Lakota grandmothers did not share Erikson's concern
that shared parenting was destructive to a child. In fact, they were
more concerned about the poor little White kid who had only one mother – what would happen if that mother were too young, immature, or
overwhelmed by her own problems?
My aunt, Ella Deloria, was a
teacher and anthropologist who described the spirit of belonging in
Native American culture in this manner: "Be related, somehow, to
everyone you know" (Deloria, 1943, p. 46). The ultimate test of
kinship was not genetic but behavioral: You belonged as a relative if
you acted like you belonged. Treating others as kin forged powerful
human bonds that drew everyone into a network of relationships based on
mutual respect.
The Circle of Courage
In 1988 we were asked by the
Child Welfare League of America to make a presentation on Native
American child development principles to an international conference in
Washington, DC. We called our synthesis of this research on tribal
wisdom the Circle of Courage, and it has been the basis of various
publications, including our book Reclaiming Youth at Risk (Brendtro,
Brokenleg, & Van Bockern, 1990). We worked with Lakota artist George
Blue Bird, who created the art that illustrated these principles. The
Circle of Courage as reproduced here is a medicine wheel, The Circle of
Courage which is used by tribal peoples to illustrate that all must be
in balance and harmony. The art accompanying the Circle is reproduced on
the cover of this issue.
The
Circle of Courage portrays the four develop mental needs of children:
Belonging, Mastery, Independence, and Generosity. The various Native
tribes do have many differences, but these four principles can be found
in the traditional writings and practices of indigenous peoples
throughout North America. These values grew out of cultures with
structures markedly different from the structure of hierarchal European
society. Riane Eisler (1987) contended that the two basic models of
cultures are the Dominator and Partnership paradigms. The Dominator
culture was the traditional model that appeared throughout much of
European history. The Partnership model may well have existed in
European antiquity and is still seen in many tribal cultures that are
organized around more democratic principles. As is shown in Table 1,
these values are strikingly similar to the elements required for
positive self-esteem found in the research of Stanley Coopersmith
(1967).
A comparison of the values
found in these models is given in Table 1 and is then briefly
summarized:
TABLE 1
Comparison of Coopersmith Values, Circle of Courage Values,
and Traditional Western Values
Adler. M. (1985). Ten
philosophical mistakes. New York: Macmillan.
Brendtro, L., Brokenleg, M.,
& Van Bockern, S. (1990). Reclaiming youth at risk: Our hope for
the future. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service.
Coopersmith, S. (1967). The
antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Deloria, E. C. (1943). Speaking
of Indians. New York: Friendship Press.
Eisler, R. (1987). The
chalice and the blade. New York: HarperCollins.
Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood
and society. New York: Norton.
Standing Bear, L. (1933). Land
of the spotted eagle, New York: Houghton-Mifflin.
Martin
Brokenleg, EdD, (left, photographed here with Lee Loynes and
Larry Brendtro in South Africa in 1992) is a professor of Native
American Studies at Augustana College and dean of the Black Hills
Seminars, a training institute for professionals serving youth at risk.
He is a graduate of the Episcopal Divinity School at Cambridge and has
worked as a therapist with children and youth. 
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