Secwépemc men have fallen in status among people. In a matriarchal society, males have become people who seem to not know their value in society. They leave a lot of their responsibilities to the females. This is a real issue among a society that holds their males in high regard and respect.
Traditionally, a male is brought up to respect people, women most of all. A male is brought up to respect everything he traps, hunts, fishes, and uses. More importantly, to respect himself. It is these very trainings (to respect) that a lot of male Secwépemc lack.
This missing lesson does not happen due to a number of reasons. A male child raised by a single mother with no father figure around. The child may have a lack of positive role models. A child may have a father who has addiction disease.
Let’s look at how it effects a generation of people. You look at how we are doing as a nation of males. We do not know how to respect ourselves that we do in fact deserve happiness. We do not respect ourselves in how we treat others. We do not respect other males. We do not respect the things we eat or use.
I’ll expand on these a bit. A lot of men do not respect themselves because they do not give credit to their own ability to persevere and succeed in a lot of the things they do. Encouragement may not have been an everyday occurrence. Doubt was though. Loneliness was as well. Not having the mental or emotional strength to trust yourself to get through things let a lot of men believe they were incapable of being strong let alone stable. They do not respect themselves in that they have the ability to hurt people in different ways: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. They use this ability to push people away. To give themselves a false sense of strength and pride.
A male should treat all females with utmost respect in any circumstance. A female is meant to be held in higher esteem than males. Females are much more intelligent, empathic, sympathetic, and willing to put in the hard work as any male. I don’t mean this as a slight to the male population. It is that women have more responsibilities than most males. They are entrusted to carry the next generation with each pregnancy. This is another reason that women are held in higher regard than males.
Where do Secwépemc boys, young men, and men turn towards when there has been no one to look to when they are searching for a foundation to rebuild their identity in society? Usually a group of men (father and his brothers) that would pass their pride, knowledge, and respect to the next generation. The issue here is that two generations of sons did not grow up around their fathers and uncles. They grew up with older boys who bullied and settlers who chastised and abused their egos. These boys did not have any support for this trauma. The boys held in a lot of things they should be able to talk about. When the boys returned home, their fathers did not know how to console and help them through their feelings and traumas. Letting these thoughts go and replacing them with something positive was not introduced to them. Instead of being replaced with positivity, they would tell themselves these feelings and traumas over and over again. When you tell yourself something repeatedly for years, you start to believe it. Then you have no confidence. You have no respect for anyone, more importantly for yourself. You feed yourself addicting substances or fall into a depression that would more often lead you to suicide. Suicide was a major epidemic during residential school ages and a long time after.
In order to rebuild our positive outlook on men, there needs to be a respect from both males and females. Treat men as people. Not failures, losers, no-good, lame boys. They are men. They may not have had right of passages that young men usually get but that does not mean any person (male or female) can belittle a man because he did not receive a right of passage for getting older. Everyone makes mistakes and matures differently. If a man has failed you, it is not your fault, and more importantly, it is not your place to “make a man” of him. A true Secwépemc person only tries to make someone better through humility, never through name-calling or shaming. The important thing in this step is to treat a man as a person, not someone less than a person. You learn to respect yourself the more you treat others as people no matter their circumstances.
The next step is how to help young people who ask you for help in becoming better people. Or direction on what it means to be Secwépemc. What it means to be Secwépemc is to always make a person better than yourself. That when they teach someone else, that they teach in a way that makes someone else better than their own selves.
Humility. Hard-working. Respectful. Supportive. Community-driven. These are core qualities that make a Secwépemc man. Work on these qualities and you will be well on your way to becoming a better person in general.
The next step is connecting to people. The less you connect to people the more likely it is you will not treat them with respect. The tendency is that you will become more selfish by repeatedly refusing to connect with people. Connecting is taking an interest or caring of an issue that involves another person’s life. Being social helps with anxiety and depression. You’ll also find that when you’re alone that your emotions are heightened more than usual. So, connecting with others helps your emotions from becoming too extreme. The most important factor is that you become more generous and humbler. A person may think they have it bad but after hearing another person’s story their problems aren’t as bad as others’. Here is where one can learn to never put themselves above others no matter the circumstances. If you are able to help another, take the chance to do so. If someone asks for help, it means that they trust you to not boast about it ever. Trust is a privilege. Therefore, should be taken with the utmost respect.
Almost every Secwépemc man I know are hard workers. Society puts a lot of merit on how a man works. If he is hard-working, he will be respected as a man. For every job I have had, I have worked to my best ability and respect. I treated every person, male or female, with the utmost respect. I did not look down on anyone who worked for me or with me. I looked at myself as the person with the least stature or rank. This way I work better to allow myself to be promoted for deserved pay raises. People always look how you treat people. People will always follow someone who shows respect to everyone at the workplace. Therefore, show that you are willing to work and treat all employers with respect. Show up on time as much as possible. Show respect to co-workers in all departments. Show up to work diligently. Be careful of people and companies that do not treat you with respect.
This is where self-worth comes in. You must know and believe that you deserve at the very least to be treated like any other person. With respect and the knowledge that you are a human being. Self-worth comes from the habit of being treated normally. A lot of men who went to residential school were not treated normally so they may not know what being treated normally feels like. Therefore, they hardly have any self-worth, if any at all. This is important for growth for a lot of Secwépemc men. Having self-worth will allow you to grow and have a place in our traditional life and contemporary life. Having a place of belonging will allow one to feel at home and build an identity. This can also be looked at as self-love.
Being respectful is very important in Secwépemc culture. I would say that it is 2nd most important after humility. To treat everything and everyone with due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others. This also explains how to respect yourself. You are allowed to have feelings, wishes, rights, and traditions about anything or anyone, even yourself. It is the moment you feel you do not deserve any feelings or rights that you begin down the road of feeling less than human. A road that leads to self-pity and self-destruction.
Support and community-mindedness are similar. They mean to help others in some capacity, whether it’s through giving food, time, effort, and/or thought. You want to offer others’ support because you understand where they are or been. You can offer them a path to follow. You can offer empathy, sympathy, and/or presence for comfort. You offer what you can to the whole community to ensure that no one is doing worse than yourself. A great leader will have the least number of materials because he can replace them after making sure her or his community has them. If you can help others’, you have become a leader in the community for the time being.
Embrace yourself. Embrace others’ view of you. Embrace that you are a person in the community.
le7esksw7ecemp 