Kaitlin Curtice
Appearances
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Yeah. And we have things like missing and murdered indigenous women and relatives. We have our relatives that go missing all the time and it's not going to make the news. It's not. And a lot of times those cases are not going to be solved. And it's so painful to constantly be reminded of our history. invisibility, but also the ways we're sexualized in society as well.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
When I lead workshops, sometimes I have people write letters to Mother Earth and I tell them it's a define the relationship letter. And it makes people so uncomfortable because, well, one, it can bring up our childhood trauma. It really can. But also what is it like to actually acknowledge this as a relationship? And what if you filled up a whole journal of letters to Mother Earth and you said,
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I don't know where things went wrong. I don't know what happened, but I miss you. Or I never knew you. Who are you? How would that change even our climate conversations if we acknowledge this as a caring, reciprocal, beautiful relationship, a kinship? It would change a lot. I think it would change a lot if we were able to reframe that. But
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
America and the Christianity that many of us have grown up with was one of dominion and assault and violence. And so there's so much to undo. And I don't know, somehow I chose to be part of that. It's a tiny job you got.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Well, that the line that you quoted from my new book, this is my problem with the term resilience is that resilience is should be us choosing our resilience, not an oppressor saying you're resilient and then shoving you back down. And then you get up and they say, look, you're resilient. And then they do it again over and over again.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And so I share about that through this, also this lens of how we treat the earth. Look how resilient you are. You've lasted all these years as we continue to take from you, as we continue to hurt you, as we continue to harm ourselves and harm you. but look how strong you are. You just keep taking it and you keep getting back up again. And so you must be resilient because we say you are.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And at a conference a few years ago, I was on Pueblo land in New Mexico and I was the only indigenous person at this entire conference. And I took some time outside and the land just called to me. Now I had grown up in New Mexico. And so that place is really special to me for many reasons, but it was this moment where mother earth was like, I need you to feel something.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I need you to stop for a second. And so I sat on the ground and I put my hand on the ground and I just started weeping and I couldn't control it. And it was as if for just a second, she was like, this is how much it hurts. So feel it for a second because that's all you can handle as a human. Like feel this pain for a minute and then go on and do what you need to do.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
But if we stopped to actually feel that, to feel... The pain that mothers feel to feel some of the things that they have been put through. If we stop to acknowledge the relationship between our bodies and government and land and colonization, there's so much there. There's so much there to unpack. And I don't fully know always how.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
how to change it, this whole conversation between the micro and the macro. So in social work, you study macro, which is the big systems and the micro, which is the one-on-one or the everyday. And what I learned about humans is that we need both. We need the small moments to change the way we think and the way we process our world. And then we need
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
The macro, we need change on a larger level, but both of them have to happen. And I think about that a lot with the way that women are treated and the way that the earth is treated. There has to be the micro changes, the relationship change. And then we have to move to the systems and how they affect the earth and affect women all over the world. And they are connected.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Even if we don't realize it, they are connected.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Yeah. I love that you brought that up because throughout history, you see people or persons with power show the people below them, they have power. And then those groups fight with each other to gain scraps of power. That is what humans have done throughout history is to survive.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Yeah. And yes to what you were just saying. It's so hard. And I just want us to learn to be human together. That's what I want more than anything. And that really involves every aspect of who we are. When I was young, I learned how to balance a checkbook, but I never learned how to listen to my own body. I never learned how to engage with Mother Earth. And those are the things we learn.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
We fight with each other to try to gain any ounce of power to be close to the people at the top, because we would like to survive. And in doing so we brutalize each other. We hurt each other for centuries and centuries. And that is like such a painful reality of the human experience, but you're right. And that we're also doing that to the earth because we can. And if we grew up in
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
You know, in my Southern Baptist tradition, the language is always dominion, dominate dominion. That was the language. I never heard the term kinship growing up or reciprocity or mother earth, any of it, you know? And I see specifically within different faith traditions, some of that changing. And I see part of decolonization as some of that work of having those really hard conversations.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I spoke at a women's conference recently and I gave them like five ways to connect with the earth. One was researching the history of colonization because we have done these things to the land, to a being, to who she is. And that has affected our bodies. That has affected us. And so researching colonization, researching things like the doctrine of discovery.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
One of the other things I said to go on walks or to look out a window or to birdwatch, like some, any way of connection is connection and it is a point of healing.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
my family, we're a family of rock climbers. So we climb in a gym and outside. And it has been one of the most healing things I've ever experienced is to be by rocks and to be on land that we acknowledge and we ask permission and we spend time in these places and we're honoring the rock beings. We're honoring these beings that, you know, when you go to a river and you recognize like that water is,
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And that river has seen more life than any of us can even imagine. It has carried history on its skin. You know, like it has carried us. And these trees that we're staring at literally helps us breathe. But also they have carried stories. They've sheltered all these people. Like, isn't that so beautiful? And we are terrified as humans. Of a lot of things.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I think we're really scared of our humility. I think we're scared of that. And the power and the ego that doesn't allow us to sit under a tree and say, you're really old and really wise. I bet you could teach me a few things. That scares a lot of people to imagine doing that because what would it start to pull on? What would start to unravel?
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And I told these women at this conference to talk to their houseplants and they all giggled. I love it. I love it. You need to talk to your houseplants. Because these are beings that take care of us every day. They're sitting in our homes. They're bringing us joy. They're cleaning our air. What if we thanked them and watered them and said, oh, you're beautiful. Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And it's so funny and silly, but it would change something in us if we actively began to shift the way we think and examine our relationship to other beings. It really would.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
We come to a certain age and we're told, okay, here's how to be an adult. Here's how to enter the capitalist system that we have set up here for you to be successful. And right at that moment, that is a disembodiment because we're taught to sort of enter into that harshness of the world and lose the softness of who we are, even as kids. And So I was a sensitive little kid.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Can you please tell us that story? Yeah. We were out on a hike on Muskogee and Cherokee land. And you know how sometimes the sacred or God or Suga McCoy, mother earth, or your ancestors just kind of stop you in your tracks. And they're kind of like, Hey, let's notice something about your life on a grander scale than, than what you've been noticing. And I'd already been asking some questions.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I'd already been deconstructing some things and leaning deeper into aspects of my identity that I couldn't even fully name, but again, grasping for embodiment, trying to understand. And, you know, I will also say I, um, A part of my own trauma and journey was in being disconnected from the land and finding safety and things like television characters.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And some of these things I didn't do a lot outside. Like I would have rather watched a movie. A lot of people picture indigenous people and they're like, oh, you love to camp. And you love teepees and you wear fringe and you burn sage by your teepees. Let's not make assumptions. Some indigenous people don't like camp. And so there was a lot that I had not experienced.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And my partner, Travis, has always been someone who has loved being outside. He's always been adventurous in that way. And it taught me a lot in coming home to myself. I did it alongside him. And so we went to this spot that he had found to go hiking and my youngest, I was still breastfeeding. And so there was this moment where I had to stop and feed him. There's nowhere to sit down.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And so I, I turn him sideways and I'm just still walking and I just feed him while we're walking. And in that moment, the lens of my life sort of zoomed out, you know, you just zoomed out to see the whole thing. And, um, In our tribe, in the Pottawatomie tribe, we had a group of people in Indiana who had a forced removal. I'm sure many people listening have heard of the Trail of Tears.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
We had something called the Trail of Death. And it was in 1838. And it was a forced removal at gunpoint of a group of Pottawatomie people who were forced to walk from Indiana to Kansas. So walking to Kansas to a land they had never been to or known anything about it. It was just in that moment that I... I could feel the mothers and the women and the grandmas who were walking with their babies.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I could feel them in my own feet. I could feel their steps in mine and the trauma and the beauty and the glory of it. And the pain just completely like just fell onto me. And it was also this moment of asking, who are you and what are you going to do about it? And it was like this flip just switched on for me. And after that, it was a series of months of,
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
painful, exhausting realizations of coming to terms with my identity, of all of who I am, of coming to terms with all aspects of what I was processing and who I am as a mother. If I don't know what it means to be Potawatomi, then how are my kids going to know? And I don't want them to go through that like I did.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And so I want to continue to break through the trauma and the colonization that has been put on us. And I want them to know more than I knew. And so it just flipped a switch that day. And I got into our car and I just started journaling and writing. You know, just trying to remember and hold on to that moment. And it was really pivotal for me.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I was the baby of my family. My sister's nine years older than me. My brother's seven years older than me. My family moved a lot. My father worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So he was an indigenous police officer. And so I was born in Oklahoma. And we moved back and forth from Oklahoma to New Mexico multiple times.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I will say that a few years ago, right after I first started therapy, and it's so funny, even in therapy, I'm like, my parents divorced when i was nine and my dad left but it's it's okay i've forgiven him i love him like i'm good and my therapist was like that's trauma and i was like no it's fine it's just a thing it happened and it was hard but you know it's okay minimizing our trauma means
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
we're minimizing the strength of our inner children as well. We're minimizing who they were, you know? And so we're not trusting that they did the best they could to take care of us in those times. Like little Caitlin held me as best she could. And, um, Even though, you know, in young adulthood, I was so disembodied. I was so lacking in how to communicate well and how to love others and myself.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And then we ended up in Missouri, in this very small conservative town in Missouri. And so it was really interesting. But my childhood was marked by... By poverty, we lived in trailer parks. We lived in a lot of different places that were difficult. We ate commodity foods as an indigenous family.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
There are so many walls. But when I was when I just started therapy, I started noticing the pain that my body would tell me about. Like, oh, man, my lower stomach really hurts. I just like went to the most like, oh, my God. This is bad, you know, or I have abdominal pain. Oh, this is probably cancer. I went to the worst extreme. My lower back is hurting. I get these headaches.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I, you know, I just was noticing my body was like telling me things. And I went to the worst extremes, looking everything up. And then I had to stop and realize that. Maybe my body's just saying like, oh, this thing is really painful and you've been thinking about it a lot. So this is a trauma response. This is a stress response.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
It took me so long to realize that the trauma I've carried in my body since I was little still manifests in my adult body. And my adult body is still trying to tell me things just like my child body was trying to tell me things. And so stopping and recognizing that What if I went slower? And what if I stopped and learned to breathe and learned to listen to what they were telling me?
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
That's really actually very helpful. And I've gone through cycles of this. I'm still going through cycles of this. I'm still not very good at embodiment in the way that I think I should be good at it, which tells me. Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
We had all of those markers of poverty, but we also, my siblings and I would make like news shows and we'd make up commercials and we loved music. Our whole family loved music. We loved movies. We loved art. So it's always a mix, right? It's always a mix of these things that you remember.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And when I was young, I also just remember, I love to reenact the scene from Beauty and the Beast, the Disney cartoon, where she's like out in a field, like blowing the dandelions into the air. So I would just go into my backyard singing the same song over and over, waiting for the wind to take the seeds off the dandelion, which it didn't.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ,,,,,,,
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
So then you spend like two minutes blowing it out, getting... lightheaded, but I just kept singing. It was my life. And so having this interaction with magic and nature, and then it just kind of begins to get away from you or trauma enters. And then for me, I realized that television, these characters on these movies and TV shows that I loved were like my safe space.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I think growing up, I, I coped with them. I spent my time with them. I did my homework alongside them every day after school. And so these characters in my favorite movies and shows became the safe place for me. And that was up until eight. So we had lived in Missouri for a few years. My parents got divorced when I was nine. Then what happened? My parents' divorce, my dad is Pottawatomie.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Yeah. And if we pass anything down to... the next generation. What's so hard though, it's like Tricia Hersey's new book of the NAP ministry, Rest is Resistance. I bought that book for every woman in my family because we have all become a part of the cogs in the machine, you know? And so that is the scary question is,
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
If the systems are like this and we have been taught to be like this and the systems probably aren't changing anytime soon, then how are we supposed to resist that status quo? How do we do that? And what I have come to is that we keep having conversations with our kids and we keep giving them the tools they need and we let them have the day off when they need it.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And we tell them that it's going to be okay. I was so much the... the people pleasing and wanting to just make sure everything stayed okay everywhere at school, with my teachers, at home, at church, everywhere. I wanted to just keep things very smooth, no matter what my inner world was. And it's not fair for our kids to have to carry that. And it wasn't fair that we had to carry that.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
None of it is. And so trying to remind ourselves of that or finding these like subversive ways to rest and to care for ourselves and each other. It's not easy and it can be exhausting, but we can't give up on these conversations.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
So my Pottawatomie heritage is from that side of my family. And so my dad, it was abrupt. He just said, I have to leave. And he left. My brother and I were at home and he went, he told us. And it's like those out of body things when you're a kid, you don't quite understand, you don't quite grasp it, but I still have the memory of it, you know?
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Yeah, I love the idea of liminal space. Yes. I use that word a lot. Liminal, liminality, liminal space, the gray areas, the spaces in between, which is often the nuanced spaces, the spaces we don't want to talk about because we'd rather be on one extreme or the other. Can't put it on a meme, Caitlin. Can't put liminal spaces on a meme. No, that would just confuse everyone, wouldn't it?
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
I think of my... my life, this living space I live in that I exist in between those who came before and those who will come after. We exist in that. We can't escape it. It's who we are.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And not in just a linear way, but these cycles, the cycles of who our ancestors were, the cycle of our life now, the cycle of seven generations after us who will exist and who will have to reckon with what we've done and left undone, that whole idea.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And you're right. It is a very, this individualistic way of understanding things that were not like my ancestors were awful. They did some awful things, but like, that's not my problem. When instead, if we could actually say, I want to be a part of the healing, I want to be a part of healing, whoever my ancestors were. And we don't always know that. And that's okay. You don't have to know that.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
who your ancestors were and what happened. I want us to hold the vision of that. Whoever our ancestors were, whatever they did or didn't do, we don't know the ones that come after us. We don't know what they're going to look like or who they're going to be in this world or what the state of the world will be. But there's healing.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Our healing is directly connected to those who came before and those who will come after. And if we can experience it that way, doesn't it feel so much... Like, doesn't it give us, I don't know, it doesn't make it feel like it's all on me, but that I get to be a part of this fluid, moving space of resistance.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Because the other problem that I often find with, especially white people who want to fix things, like they want to fix it, they want to put the bandaid on and call it good or read the book or do the thing, is that I keep reminding people this is lifelong work. You're not going to be healed in a week. You're not going to be anti-racist in a week.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
You're not going to learn all of Indigenous history in the next two years. You need to keep reading and then keep reading more. Keep doing the things because the best thing we can give the generations after us is that we understood that it doesn't end with us, that we keep passing on that healing and that we pass on the healing to people who came before us in a way we don't understand it.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
So again, drop into your body and let it just be the truth and live into it and don't think on it too hard or you'll just burn out and explode.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
It's so interesting because I remember as a kid, when that particular trauma happened, what I wanted more than anything was to feel close to God, to feel close to myself, to feel close to my family, like some sort of safety to hold me. I remember just sitting in my room praying like, God, I need a physical touch right now. Is there a way?
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Is there a way you can just become real arms for a second and give me a hug? I'd really appreciate it. I had those moments. And it's so interesting now trying to practice embodiment, recognizing how my body all these years has given me signals. Our bodies give us signals. They're always saying something. And We don't learn how to listen to that. So my parents divorced. My dad moved to Oklahoma.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And so we did visitations with him. But it was hard. It was hard for me as a kid. I didn't feel connected anywhere, really. And so it really was just this continual severing. And then severing and grasping at the same time. You're losing things. You're losing yourself. you're losing pieces of safety and then you're, you're just grasping at the same time for anything.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And so a few years after that, my mom got remarried to my stepdad and he was at the time a Baptist pastor at this little church in our town. And so I grew up in the church. We grew up going to Baptist churches. Both of my grandmas on each side were Southern Baptist secretaries. It was a part of our life, but yeah, Becoming a pastor's kid is at a whole nother level. And it just is what it is.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And I was already like well into the people pleasing stage of my existence. So I was ready. Like I was ready to be the best, the best kid.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Yeah. The best little worship leader, the best specials music singer. I was ready. I was doing it all. So the church did become my safe space, but also my space of assimilation and pain and severing the the ties to understanding what it means to be Potawatomi and just in a family that doesn't know how to talk about it. Colonization has taken those healthy conversations from us.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
It's taken that presence away of figuring out who we are as indigenous people. So a lot of us have to find our way back again as adults. That happens a lot.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Yeah, that's the painful part of specifically that church culture is that I was safe. I was loved by the people in my church. I would never say I wasn't, but in that process, it was still colonization. It was still assimilation. It was still trauma. And it left me with all the residual trauma and disembodiment that I had. now have to heal and work to heal.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And that's the story of so many of us who have been through this in various degrees and trying to find our way home.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Yes, yes. Memorial Hall in our town was the big... biggish building where our true love waits rallies were held and it was always like the event but the purity movement as i experienced it was this it well it's connected also to the whole abstinence until marriage even in my public school we learned very christian things there's so many resources we could have had that we just didn't get um
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
So the purity movement, there was a popular book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye by a guy named Josh Harris. I remember laying in my living and reading this book and saying to myself, I will not kiss anyone until I am ready to marry them. My first kiss will be on the altar at my marriage and I will not have sex. All of the things. So you stay pure, right? You stay pure.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
If you're a girl, that means you dress appropriately and you don't show your shoulders because it's always on you. You're impure. Yeah. Anyone lusts after you. Yeah. And ironically, my name means pure. Caitlyn means pure. Oh, you were screwed from the start.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
It's horrible. It's a horrible thing. And your body is bad. And your body parts, you don't know how they work. No. It is so traumatizing. Not just for women either. For young boys, what they're taught about their bodies. It's so insidious, but... add on top of that being an indigenous young woman, but I wasn't connecting any of that until adulthood.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Now connecting that indigenous women's bodies, how they have been treated by America, by the government, the things that our bodies have been through. So to put that, that layer of colonization on top of it and woven throughout it is just such a Uh, I don't know. It just amplifies the grief and the violence. Yeah. I still have my ring. You still have your ring? Yes. I just can't get rid of it.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
You know? Okay.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
So the purity ring, you would buy it at a conference or in some cases, a father would give it to the daughter. It's not creepy at all. It's not, no. No, it's normal. And you would wear it? In front of the church even sometimes. Yes, you'd wear it on your wedding finger. So mine said, I am my beloved's, my beloved is mine. Oh my goodness. I love this so much. And I still have it.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you. We are delighted.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
There are times where I'm like, burning it would be fun. But I also just think... I need to keep it for a little bit. I just need to remember there's a lot about our child selves that we blame. There's a lot in them. We blame them for these things that they went through.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
There's just a softness I want to hold for her because she didn't know. She didn't know a lot. She didn't know that she had grief and trauma. She didn't know how to communicate the things she needed. Sometimes I just want those reminders. to be softer toward her and toward myself now.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Yeah, it's so painful. And I always point to Sarah Augustine and Mark Charles have both written on this extensively. Sarah Augustine, her book is called The Land Is Not Empty. And she writes specifically about this through a Christian lens as well.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
Men are given in the name of God the command to enter any lands that are deemed unchristian, are deemed not worthy of God, and they can take what they want. And so it came from a... called a papal bull. It was a document given by kings and queens or by royalty to allow these men, these conquerors to come and take the land.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
And so to have that as a basis of we will literally remove these bodies from this land. And if you already have a basis of not honoring land as a being, we don't honor land. Earth as Mother Earth, as a being. Sigal McQuay is what we call her in Potawatomi.
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
having a relationship with her, which I think is so much of the trauma, the collective trauma we carry in our bodies today, all of us is that we don't have a reciprocal relationship of care with the land anywhere, anywhere we step, anywhere we exist, a relationship with the earth. And so that doctrinal discovery gave permission in the name of God to do this, to, um,
We Can Do Hard Things
Ways to Be More Present: Indigenous Wisdom from Kaitlin Curtice (Best Of)
to cut up the land, to separate the people from the land. And it just has continued an ongoing colonization to this day. We know that. And whether we recognize it or not, we do carry it in our bodies, all of us. We all do. Naming that is really important.