My name is Margo Greenwood. I'm the academic lead for the National Collaborating Centre
for Aboriginal Health. It's the collaborating centre that supported the development of this
new book and we were really excited to do that. A lot of my teachers, my elder teachers have often
talked about, know where you've been Margo, know where your family has been so you can learn from
that and move forward into the future. So it's not only learning that but you take the strengths
of those teachings because a lot of the teachings are threaded through time.
They're anchored in your family and your kinship relationships but they're threaded through time.
Each generation learns those. Each generation teaches those and so they really are our strengths.
So I look back to see what was I taught? What are those values that I've been taught that will
allow me to live in harmony and balance? So that I'm just not looking forward in the world with
nothing, with no supports behind me or knowledge behind me but I have a whole wealth of history
and knowledge and family behind me that I take with me and bring to the future. Now I live that
reality so it may not look the way my mother lived it or my grandmother lived it but the
fundamental teachings of that are there but they will look different in contemporary reality.
So I reach my hand back for those teachings and learning and bring them forward because they're
going to help me to negotiate my current realities and live that in a good way. That's what I mean
by that. My grandfather and I think I wrote about it in the chapter he used to always say to me
because I would ask him he went to residential schools and you know all of the stories that
hear about residential schools he experienced and I said how can you to this day be such a
devote Catholic? How is that possible when you were over 10 years in residential schools without
ever going home? And that's when he said to me, Margo, he said I take what's good and I leave
the rest behind. So he took what was good in those days, took what's good in his own world, culture,
the way he was raised and knowledge and he put the two together. And I would be surprised if a lot
of people aren't doing that code shifting all the time because we don't live in the past the way
we used to. It looks different but what are those values that we carry with us? And how do we express
these things in these different worlds? And how do we be mindful and self-reflective? And that means
that we need to be really solid about who we are so that we can move back and forth and just flow
easily back and forth without losing either the richness of those environments. Yeah that's what
I think about. I remember once one of my teachers, early childhood teachers said told me the story
once and she said there was a little boy he was about four and a half maybe five and every time
his grandma came to the preschool and they would be having lunch you know special events right
and grandma would come and every time grandma came she would feed him literally feed him the food
and always the caregivers were like why is he doing that you know and they thought oh he's just
being lazy or he's this or he's that you know and then finally I think she she said that one of the
caregivers said how come you do that when your grandma's around? Why do you let her do that?
You know how to use a knife and a fork and a spoon because he was you know just about kindergarten
age? He said I do it because it makes my grandma happy. I think that's a powerful, powerful story
in the when I reflect on that about the absolute thoughtfulness and brilliance of that child.
He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly why he was doing it. I think we need to
allow children to do things to code switch to be who they are and not judge them and give them
those give them opportunities because then we learn from them. I mean what a beautiful value of love
for his grandmother. I mean just amazing and as an adult I would have said oh don't do that
and yet it pleased her heart. That's really important I think.
