Q: My wife and I farm just down the road from a First Nations community. Most of the people whom we have met from there are great, and when they come over to help me on the farm we get along well. But I have trouble with what they call Indian time. It would be better if 9 a.m. meant the same thing to them as it does to me. I could hire a few more people to help if I knew that they were going to show up on time. What do you think?
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A: All cultures and all people have a concept of time. European people tend to be more precise. Nine o’clock means nine o’clock. First Nations people are often more general and 9 a.m. means somewhere around nine o’clock.
The distinction between being precise and being more general goes beyond the cultural disagreement on time.
I recall hearing an eerie noise coming from the trees while walking through a small First Nations community with a physician and an elder. The physician wanted to know what caused the noise. He was not satisfied until he figured out which trees were rubbing against each other to make it. He needed that precision.
The First Nations elder wondered what the noise meant. The physician and I did not pay a lot of attention to the elder, at least not until we were driving home and nearly got stranded in the middle of a severe blizzard.
The eerie sound meant that the wind was picking up and a storm was blowing in. Had we listened to the elder we probably would not have tried to get home in such hazardous conditions. We would have waited out a storm that was barely making its presence felt through some noise in the trees.
This whole cross cultural thing will only work out when we learn to recognize and appreciate the values of all cultures.
Considerable funding goes into building schools to teach First Nations children to think more like Europeans. But what I do not see are equally large funding projects giving Europeans the opportunity to help First Nations people recover the wisdom of their past. It must have been profound because through their traditional culture, First Nations people were able to survive hostile climates without central heating.
I understand your frustration when someone does not show up on time. But before you pass judgment, you might remember First Nations peoples who lived in traditional communities seldom had heart attacks. Nor were they caught up in a competitive and demanding atmosphere raising their children. Maybe they have something to teach us.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan who has taught social work at two universities. Mail correspondence in care of Western Producer, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or e-mail jandrews@producer.com.
