When I think about my own relationship with my late father and the way he kept his children hostage during the years of his alcoholic rampage of his anger. So, loving males and caring about men is based on not just what they do, but on their willingness to change. The standards of how girls and boys are treated. My older brother loved our mother so much and when he saw our father violently attack our mother, he would hit our dad, who in turn beat him. For me, seeing both my older brother and my late mother being beaten was heart breaking.
It just was not just my mother, it was also my aunties, and not just my late dad's brother's wives. It was also my mother's sisters who also were beaten.
So, I can reflect and say that it was how they were conditioned in those Indian Residential Schools. Yet, it is a part of it. So, how do we save our brothers, fathers, uncles and lovers from this future of family violence or help them from themselves is and will be an on going question. The roles of men, patriarchy is to dominate over the weak. When both parents believe men are to rule the world and obey a powerful male, and for indigenous women, it was taught to serve men in those Indian Residential Schools.
My value and the values of my bother were different in how we expressed love. My late brother-in-law had a difficult time to tell his children that he loved them. My sister and his children told each other daily that they loved each other. This was a new way of raising children for both my sister and my late brother-in-law. I wish he were here so I could thank for raising his children to be adults who can express their love.
My niece moved to Ontario a few months ago, and this past weekend she went out to a birthday party. I immediately felt fear for her. I texted her asking her to be careful not knowing the history of how she got to this penthouse view. This morning she called me saying she was with a group of co-workers, a group of twelve individuals. She said that she had never seen such richness and how rich people live. She explained her host's dedication towards his job. This fear I have stems from my own insecurities. I was socialized into a system taught to me by my mother and aunties.
I know that this subject matter of male dominance needs more focus on this blog. This year about how I upkept a way of thinking or not wanting to understand my role in stopping violence against women. The notion that Nathan Chasing Horse manipulated so many indigenous women was my first inclination of how could any woman allow themselves to be oppressed. Yet, from the writing and the audiobooks I have listened to over these months and my own experiences about how I want or need to feel the love of a man. Its almost insane to talk or write about it. I say it, only because of the many women whom I've talked with regarding how we as women allow the love of any man into our lives as women. You wee, we as women accepted Nathan Chasing Horse's attitude towards us. We supported his male dominance only cause we refused to see what he represented to us.
Within our indigenous communities, and not just my community, but communities all over this world there are such behavioral attitude that is accepted. So, when I see Nathan Chasing Horse, I think he is a product of male dominance or shame of being powerless in pain. He was damaged in his past. He was so much violence like so many indigenous people that we chose not to see his perversions. I've seen him angry. I've seen him isolate himself. I've seen him thrive when his supporter are around him. It's his pain of a tortured lack of a personal bond.
This pain he used. Yet, this threat toward the vanishing of indigenous culture was saying we as indigenous people must change if we or if our culture is to survive. It's like a religious dogma of childhood trauma that we religiously think that we must create ritual. We who are carrying this childhood trauma created this false narrative before we met such a person as Nathan Chasing Horse. We have seen men such as hm within all our communities. Young men fathering many children without daring to stop and really take a look at what these men are hiding. We have to have the courage to look as such behavior and understand how this underlying attitudes these men have towards women is deadly.
If anything I have learned from within my own community, within my own family and within my own understanding of how I respond to love. Just as my later brother-in=-law took courage to tell his children "I love you!" on a daily basis was difficult, he did. Just saying 'I love you!' take too much emotional release or so it means to accept help or love from another. I've really had to look at my own misunderstanding of how I feel when someone tells me they love me. I started saying to my nieces and nephew that I love them by actually saying, 'I love you!' I tried to tell Nathan that I loved him. He just was not capable to expressing 'I love you!' as a means of loving another human being without any hidden agenda. I know this feeling as the decades flew by n my life. I've never allowed myself love.
It shut down decades ago and its taken decades to feel love. As much as I write about Nathan Chasing Horse I did try to help him. Yet, as silly as it seems now, I reflect back. I ask myself a question about he boys I knew whom I grew up with who like Nathan fathered many children. I ask could I say to them, 'I love you!' Could I have this same capacity to express this love of loving them for being in my love since childhood. When I reflect on two such men within my own community, I know who I trusted. I understand the humanism. The addiction of how they lived their lives and the children they abandoned. I see, and have insight, cause I've seen their lives and the outcomes of their families.. Not just their siblings, parents, grandparent and t lastly their own children.
I reflect and remember the conversations I've has with such men. From these two men and their wives or girlfriends, I see or saw them. I know only one of these men I could actually say 'I love you!' This man respected me! He would call me by my traditional name, 'Hapan.' It's this love I know we shared. This love we shared of knowing who we are, were and meant to be was a human connection. He was not prefect nor was I. I know he knew there were things in his own life that he wished he could have done better. I do miss seeing hm. I miss those came before me. I do miss this empty longing. It's this love that I thought Nathan Chasing Horse possessed. Instead he possessed the spirt of the other man who I grew up with my other childhood friend who fathered many children.
This other man's spirit was perverted like Nathan's behavior. He fathered many children. As I've mentioned I am explaining how two men can be both so different when one has the courage to heal and the other lives in denial. This man isolates himself today. He rarely shows his face in our community. When he was younger he even became a politician. It wasn't until after decades of historical sexual assault were seen as having justice for victim to get justice from such violent acts that women in my community started to find their voices. Its from sharing their stories that they started to have their sexual assaults committed by this one man that he could not hid who he was. The shame he brought upon his family here even had some family member change their last name, because he brought such shame to his family. A wedge was created between this family.
Even though I grew up with him as my neighbor, there was an underlying belief that we could get killed if we as women told our secrets. This man never attacked me, he did try once; however, I pushed him away, but least I forget he was there when i was sexually assault. He and anther childhood friend were both were there. Both fought against me when I took this historical sexually assault case making it public. One tried running me off the road with his vehicle while his wife sat in the passenger side of his truck. I did take hm to court and his license was taken away for a year. The other refused to attend court as a witness. Maybe, just maybe, his he had nothing to hide he would, or maybe its just wishful thinking back then that he loved me. Loved me as a human being loves another who need his support.
Because of my actions, within the following decade a dozen women came forward as a group to charge him with sexual assault
