Last Updated on March 18, 2025
It is my deepest desire that my children are given the opportunity to live a more Indigenous life than I did. It is for this reason that I’ve included my children in my research, both academic and informal. To do so I’ve had to transform the ways in which I conceive of and partake in research. I came to understand research as a process that allow us, as Indigenous peoples, to better understand our place within our communities. It is a journey of relating to, participating with, and coming to understand all of our relations. Research, as such, entails an active reconnection with the forces of the universe that colonial rule has sought to separate us from. For our family, this has meant rooting our research within traditional philosophies and within traditional webs of relations. By undertaking research of this nature, we are committing to the reassertion and rebuilding of traditional knowledge from its roots, its fundamental principles. We do this as parents with the hope that we will raise Indigenous intellectuals “who think within the conceptual meanings of our languages, who embody our stories, [and] traditions”[1]. In this respect, research has becoming more than just an academic practice. Research is an everyday practice of living in a longer Indigenous present.
I do not want my children to grow up as disconnected from our communities as I did. Cultures of resistance are built upon everyday acts dedicated to the revitalization of Indigenous families, communities, and nations. Revolution, in the sense of a wheel turning, is propelled by small, everyday acts, like raising children in a good way. As Corntassel reminds us, these acts can be lost in the broader discussions of resurgence. They are the unseen acts of renewal that unite long histories of struggle. They are meant to reclaim, restore, and reinvigorate.
As parents, we are responsible for creating the political and cultural contexts that will allow our kids to thrive as Indigenous children. Part of this has been a commitment to reside upon, as well as reestablish and maintain culturally relevant relationships with S’olh Temexw, the lands and waters that nourish our territories. We visit the ocean near our home as often as we can, giving thanks for all that it provides. We escape the city by hiding amongst the trees and visiting our relatives, sharing food and stories, experiencing daily the relationships that I missed out on as a child.
For me, this is what resurgence looks (and feels) like in my daily actions. Resurgence is about creating Indigenous worlds within the spaces that we dwell in our day-to-day lives. It is about parenting in a good way. It is about uy’skwuluwun, about being of good heart and good mind. I’ve learned that good relations require the presence of uy’skwuluwun. Growing up there were times in my life where my fathers just weren’t there. For this reason, I’ve approached fatherhood with the belief that my presence is one of the greatest gifts I can give my children. Just being there for my kids is so important to me. However, I’ve also learned that my being there, my physical presence, alone is not enough. Our relationships depend on the presence of love.
Hwunitumology and parenting
We currently live in a world out of balance. We live in a world of “too much”. There are so many distractions at our disposal. We get lost in our work, searching for jobs and for meaning. We wander the world inside our phones and this too muchness conspires to make being present very difficult. Sadly, it often takes conscious effort to live in the moment. Instead, we are left lost, wandering, and hungry.
The Hul’qumi’num term that we use the most to refer to non-Indigenous peoples, to refer to the settlers who came north into our territories during and following the Gold Rushes of the 1850s, is hwunitum, which loosely translates as “the hungry people”. These miners came empty-handed and they were starving. Our people took pity on these men, bringing them into the community where they were clothed, sheltered and fed, according to our traditions. However, no amount of salmon could suppress their appetites, for what they craved was gold, what they craved was land. Since the arrival of the hwunitum, Indigenous nations along the coast have been under attack.
In turn, my academic work has focused on developing hwunitumology, which is the study of colonial mentalities as they’ve manifested on S’olh Temexw, Coast Salish homelands. This land-based approach focuses not only on settler colonialism but also on the viability of Indigenous perspectives it seeks to eliminate and hold up alternative ways of seeing and being in the world, relying upon the conceptual meanings of our languages and stories. As such, I see hwunitumology as a culturally and politically relevant methodological tool for conducting research on S’olh Temexw, in both academic and community settings. Ultimately, hwunitumology is premised on an ongoing sovereign Indigenous presence on S’olh Temexw, including within urban settings, such as occupied Victoria and Vancouver.
This methodological approach has proven tremendously powerful in how we parent our children. When my daughter was young, we needed a narrative to answer many of the questions she had about the world. Eventually, I decided to share a number of hwunitum stories with her, telling her about a group of hungry people who have caused a great imbalance in our homelands. Rather than being a racialized term, I felt hwunitum was an ideal phrase because it serves to highlight colonial mentalities that both colonizer and colonized have come to embody. The insatiable hunger, both physical and spiritual, of the hwunitum went a long way in helping her come to understand the injustices that she saw all around her. She has taken ownership of these stories, referring to the hwunitum as “the greedy people,” telling stories and asking questions that help her better understand her place in this world. As a co-creator, she has shown me that there is room for her, and for all children, within Indigenous research.
Making research an everyday practice has allowed me, as a parent, to be much more present in my kids’ lives. Living in the moment allows us to connect with our children on their terms, whether being silly, hugging and cuddling one another, crawling around as kittens, or catching them when they fall (“skateboarder fall down, skateboarder get up” is a mantra in our home). This emotional presence has been a challenge for me as a father. Our children have taught me to be open and honest, to be vulnerable in ways I’ve never allowed myself to be. I’ve had to learn that it is okay to be upset, to be disappointed or frustrated – we all have these moments and being a good parent isn’t necessarily about avoiding these emotions and reactions. However, I’ve also had to learn to reconnect, rather than detach myself, an expression of dissent I learned from my childhood. We disagree and we argue, but then we come together again. I apologize for my actions, allowing them to hold me accountable, and I am always so overwhelmed by how forgiving children can be.
Hwunitum mentalities appear as though they are dead to love and the only way we are going to break free from these corrosive ways of thinking and being is to resurrect our nations by means of spiritual awakening. This begins with our families and how we choose to parent our children. A commitment to a spiritual life, to love, requires conscious practice and presence. This sort of resurgence requires a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act. It requires the type of integrity that uy’skwuluwun demands. We must also think and behave in ways that honour the principles of inter-being and interconnectedness, which nutsa maat embodies. We need to return to the gathering, sharing, and generous traditions of our ancestors and we must do this together, as a community of Indigenous nations. Liberation from hwunitum mentalities is a collective process and it requires ongoing, coordinated action. This politicization of Hwulmuhw principles of nutsa maat and uy’skwuluwun is often absent but are certainly needed in both our resistance and resurgence struggles.
Coming together to feast, our children beaming, ducking and diving between the legs of parents, aunties and uncles, who watch on with swelling hearts, we see the seeds of resurgence. Their laughter fills the air with the sweetest of sounds, uniting us in our love for each other and the diverse communities that we carry with us. It is in these moments that my ancestors would recognize me. In sharing stories, whether origin stories of our homelands or stories of resistance and resurgence, both past and present, we teach our children that Indigenous narratives are not just about oppression. Our stories are a testament to our resistance, resilience, and resurgence as Indigenous peoples. These convergences of resurgences have pushed us to continue to do what we do in spite of colonial attempts to reframe us. All of these events, whether fishing or harvesting from our homelands, feasting together, or raising our children are convergences of stories, experiences, and love. We come together with good hearts and good minds. We come together to renew and rejoice in our relationships. In an everyday kind of sense, this is Indigenous resurgence in action. It is our responsibility to work towards these moments and make them last, so that we can live a longer, Indigenous present.
[1] Simpson, Leanne. 2011. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, p. 31.
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