Gabrielle Weasel-Head and the spirit of learning

By Laura Mushumanski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

(ANNews) – There is this understanding that we, the two-legged ones, cannot get to the healing without pain and suffering, that suffering is inevitable. We all must experience suffering; it teaches us empathy and kindness. Both healing and suffering are our own sources of continuous learning.

For Gabrielle Weasel-Head , a Blackfoot Scholar and Associate Professor at Mount Royal University, healing came with insight into, “that inner-voice that you try to silence — just try to listen to hear. She holds your best self, she leads your best self… it’s there, you just got to listen.” These words that Weasel-Head shared was the advice she would gift her younger self.

“Inner knowledge is unending. The magic of living is constantly being played out [in the] quiet moments of clarity.”

Life lessons and ways of walking in the world for Weasel-Head gifted her another chance at life; she chose the responsibility to make the most of the gift she was given and the blessings that come along with life. She learned about her own distinct identity, that who she is, is a gift from Creator, and an understanding that confidence is seen as sacred.

“We are who we are, nurture our confidence in life… and always try to learn from experiences.”

As a teenager, Weasel-Head noticed how her teachers taught her “how [I] don’t want to be in life.” Pregnant at 16, while previously attending day schools, she internalized racism and stereotypes; she was ashamed of being native and visible looking. She eventually learned that both oppression and racism are psychological and spiritual violence, attempts to break the spirit of a person. Then at the age of 21, and for the following 16 years of her life, Weasel-Head’s relationship with alcohol became a violent lifestyle, denying who she was by trying to fit in with society, “although I had everything inside of me, I just couldn’t see it.”

At 29 years old, the start of Gabrielle’s tipping point into a different way of being, she was encouraged to apply to attend University. Studying English Literature, she noticed oppressive learning within her field of study — there was violence, scientific racism, operational racism — illusions of how one narrative can impact a person’s way of thought and life.

“How did I get through that? — but you do.”

After bouts of encountering narratives around being Indigenous and the effects of violent learning environments, she ended up in a graduate program where she could do her own original research, “we teach who we are.” This led to her coming into an Indigenous healing centre as an Indigenous researcher, becoming a part of what was happening to her Blackfoot relatives while taking a lot of time to build relationships with the people. Over time they trusted Gabrielle and this is where things shifted for her.

One day Weasel-Head was “hungover as hell,” wanting to ask people for a drink, when she started to ask herself, “what am I doing here?” — realizing that the only difference between the people she was working alongside within the healing centre and herself, was that she paid rent. This is when Gabrielle made the decision to quit drinking alcohol.

The next chapter of Weasel-Head’s life was the gift at another chance at life. She started researching how traumatic experiences affect the brain — both neurophysiological and theoretical. This led to Gabrielle understanding that the spirit of knowledge is completely removed from academia. “Things are reduced to two-dimensional and applied in University, regardless of spiritual understandings.”

“The way knowledge is understood,” she said, “is done so in a way that it takes away our power… You are a powerful person if you walk in balance: emotional[ly] regulate. The way we treat the land and waters is in alignment with ourselves [and] requires constant interaction.” Weasel-Head’s research ignited her inner fire, “The way the flame burns, where it starts or maybe where it starts in my heart, [in my] senses.”

The spirit of learning for Gabrielle is rooted in understanding to, “keep going, you continue to become wise by moving forward in a source of continuous learning. We got to create the conditions through our own [efforts], by bringing things back to who we really are.”