https://youtu.be/cRly-0wwl_g

We needed a guide to work on their lands so we would coordinate our work with our guide. He’d listen to our plans, nod, say “yes”, be agreeable, then when we went to implement he’d say “here’s what I’m doing”, which meant we’d change things at the last minute.

What we eventually learned was that he wasn’t saying, “yes, I agree with you and your plans”, but was saying, “yes, I am listening to you”.

As an aside, we spent five spring to fall seasons in the north (four of them with First Nations, one with the Inuit), and it was a rewarding experience as they shared their way of thinking and their knowledge with us.

One of our guides wouldn’t say a whole lot for most of the day, but then would open up at an evening campfire and just start telling stories, talking, and we’d sit like little campers listening and not wanting him to stop.

One of his missions in life was to teach the old ways to the young people because their parents had lost that connection when they were forced into residential schools, so they couldn’t pass on the knowledge to their children. His parents hid him every time the agents came to the village so he avoided the school.

That man had a wealth of knowledge passed on to him by his parents, and that is where we first had an inkling of the kind of negative impacts those schools had had and still had on their life–so much knowledge was lost for so many, so many connections to the land, to their history, to each other, were broken. We just had so much respect for him, it bordered on awe (he apparently liked us too because in our final year of work he heard we were passing through via the helicopter landing pad so he “stole” a truck to come out and chat with us for ten minutes). A remarkable man.

Sadly, tells you more about the state of American politics than you probably want to know…

Americans like things “simple”. There’s no rule, but the populace is culturally programmed to “only vote for whoever wins the primaries for the two biggest parties”.

A notable exception to this was the 1992 general election, where Ross Perot, running as an independent, won 19% of the popular vote.

(However, as we learned in 2000, winning the popular election does not guarantee winning the electoral college votes, which are what determines the winner…)

There was a post somewhere about how Trump has a big popular advantage over all the other candidates because he’s been on tv making decisions and acting “presidential” for the last couple of years… How does that factor in to his chance of becoming president? (I don’t know enough about the US system to understand whether winning the Republican primary means anything more than a marker on the racetrack.)

Or in other words, finally see if democracy is a good idea.