It was really interesting when Chief Oren Lyons described his culture as a canoe. In their canoe, they have a hard life, but it's a simple one. But Western culture is a boat full of many people and cultures. The boat and the canoe are linked by 3 chains: peace, friendship, and how long it will last. In the book, an issue is described as being when people have one foot in the canoe and one foot in the boat. Just in the metaphor, I can see how this would be a problem because an individual who is straddling the two boats wouldn't have a sense of stability. But outside of the metaphor, why can't someone be in the boat and the canoe? With the lives we live today, it would be really hard to switch from the boat to the canoe. If we all continue living in the boat, our planet will keep getting destroyed. The best solution I see is for people in the boat to start straddling the canoe. It would be beneficial if we could all take indigenous knowledge and find a way to incorporate it into the decisions we make on how we're going to use our planet.
In this section, Jeannette Armstrong says how in her language, the word for bodies contains the word for land. From reading these two sections, I've thought it was interesting how indigenous languages reveal so much about their beliefs and principles. In Armstrong's language, every time she refers to herself, she is reminded that she's from the land and her body is the land. Chief Oren Lyons says that their greeting "skannoh" is the same word for health and peace. This shows how that in his culture, health cannot exist without peace. Similarly, Chief Oren Lyons says "You can't have justice without equity." I think indigenous languages are a good key into understanding their cultures because their language reflects some of their core principles.
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