Artist and Peacebuilder
An interview with Polly Walker
Introduction
Dr. Polly Walker is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. She works in mediation and in conflict transformation with both indigenous and non-indigenous people of the northwestern U.S. and in Australia. She chooses to work with these groups partly due to her Cherokee Indian and Anglo-American descent. Polly Walker sees herself in a role of both participant in and messenger to the peacebuilding process in the realms of ritual, ceremony, and storytelling. Her work and her unique contributions to these realms are a way to bridge between the indigenous worldviews and the worldviews of peacebuilders who can take the lessons of ceremonies and pass them on to a wider audience. I wanted to interview Dr. Walker because of her work with indigenous people. I am also part Cherokee and have not had much opportunity to learn about this part of my heritage. My hope was that through talking with her I would gain a greater understanding of the world experience of North American Indians as well as indigenous people in Australia, who suffered colonization in similar ways.
Walker came to this field while working in education in New Mexico. While there, she worked with Mescalero Apache Indian students and their particular challenges, which helped her form an awareness of indigenous issues. She was able to participate in a one-year academic program which allowed her to study and do research in Australia. In Australia, she noticed the depth and breadth of conflict with indigenous people there, and learned that the issues they face – like those of indigenous people in the U.S. – are a result of colonization.
Understanding colonization requires knowledge of the power dynamics inherent in conflict. A conflict in which one side has the power is an asymmetrical conflict, and one where the power is balanced is called a symmetrical conflict (COEX250). Colonization introduces asymmetrical conflict. Walker points out that the difference in power among the people she works with applies to both worldview issues and cultural skills. She says that colonization is responsible for the unequal treatment of indigenous people, and that it is up to western people (the colonizers) to make these conflicts symmetrical. There is an onus for western people to level the playing field. How do you create space for those [indigenous] views to be expressed in a way so they aren’t distorted? Ceremonies are powerful places for that to happen.[1]
Walker explained to me that the goal is not for indigenous people to create all of the process and the rituals, because the conflict transformation needs to occur with everyone involved. While there is conflict in indigenous groups, there is also conflict amongst the Anglos whose ancestors committed violent acts against indigenous people, and whose own history involves racism. In talking with Walker I gained a clearer understanding that resolving these conflicts amongst a community of both indigenous and non-indigenous people requires that all community members be involved in the conflict transformation process.
Walker feels that the strongest aspect of what she learned that year in Australia is that conflict resolution actions involving indigenous people need to include an indigenous worldview in how to resolve conflict. Lisa Schirch defines worldview as a dynamic lens through which people understand their world. Schirch believes that this “lens” is constructed through the use of sense, emotion, perception, culture, value, and identity (2004, p. 38). Walker’s discovery that conflict transformation attempts have often been done through a western lens is also reflected in Schirch’s book (2004, p. 37). This means that those attempts at dealing with conflict are structured in a way that makes sense to the dominant social groups of Australia and the United States – the same people who colonized the land.
Walker said that the western view tends to separate art from reconciliation, but it’s important to know that indigenous art, such as ritual is not separate from peacebuilding, religion, politics, or any number of aspects of peoples’ daily lives. In Cherokee ways of knowing, she said, it’s an illusion to remove oneself from something happening and to view it as though it has no impact on one’s life. This is reminiscent of a quality of disinterestedness, in which one can look at art without bringing one’s personal history, the function of the art, or the source and message of the creator into account (COEX250). An indigenous worldview would be that failing to recognize interconnectedness means refusing to acknowledge the truth and turning from one’s responsibilities.
Later, back in New Mexico, Walker participated in a mediation-type workshop called “Peacemaking Across Cultures,” which purported to address conflict cross-culturally. The mediation was brilliant if one is ingrained in western-style thinking. But we got to talking during the coffee breaks. There was a Laguna, a Pueblo, and myself, a Cherokee, talking. I asked if they had to go to the elders with this (the workshop), what would it look like. The answers that came from that discussion led her to consider the role of ritual ceremonies more significantly. Walker realized that people need to tell the stories of their experiences in their own ways, and her focus turned to the storytelling aspect of rituals. Walker believes that all people, not just indigenous people, have a deep understanding of things at the level of living in the world. She believes that the process of creating and participating in rituals are ways to share this way of knowing amongst the planners and participants.