Theme Of Indigenous Autonomy In A Mind Spread Out On The Ground

Indigenous Autonomy in A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is a powerful memoir that tells Alicia Elliott’s story of growing up as a mixed-race Indigenous woman while connecting her personal experience to broader societal injustices. The 2019 memoir contains a series of essays exploring themes of race, generational trauma, mental illness, and the treatment of Indigenous people in Canada. This essay will look at the concept of autonomy in the novel, which is the quality or state of being self-governing. Elliot’s A Mind Spread Out on the Ground highlights how societal and historical factors limit the autonomy of Indigenous individuals. Socioeconomic circumstances, generational trauma, and systemic barriers are the

Elliott writes about epigenetics, the study of how a person's environment and choices can alter the genes of their descendants. To demonstrate this, she uses the Overkalix study, a study on the effects of environmental factors on transgenerational genetic inheritance. This study showed that people whose mothers carried their eggs during the famine season had a higher chance of early death. Elliott compares this to the starvation Indigenous people endured at residential schools. She comments, “Your decisions and traumas mark every subsequent generation after you, creating ripples in the future that can’t always be anticipated and can never be controlled. What does this mean for those who experienced starvation, malnutrition and other forms of trauma in residential schools?” (Elliott 108). This quote reveals how generational trauma still impacts descendants of residential school survivors because it affects their DNA. Therefore, the physical and mental health problems that Indigenous people experience are predetermined since the horrific experiences of their ancestors have altered their genes. In her essay “Dark Matters”, Elliott compares dark matter to racism in the sense that they are both all around us but people cannot see them. In a passage about residential schools, Elliott explains, “These stories filter through our families, told in actions more than words - each former student

Elliott writes about the Holodomor genocide in Ukraine and compares it to Canada’s genocide of Indigenous people. She argues, “First, remove the means for the people to independently look after and support themselves and their community. Next, force them to become dependent upon the very state that wants to destroy them. Withhold basic necessities. Wait. This is the exact tactic Canada used on Indigenous people” (Elliott 105). This quote illuminates how the structural genocide by the Canadian government caused Indigenous people to become reliant on them. Under those circumstances, their freedom, autonomy, and agency are stripped away. In her essay “Not your noble savage”, Elliott discusses how Trudeau pretends to be pro-Indigenous but his government is not doing enough for reconciliation: “True reconciliation with Native peoples requires Canada to stop its paternalistic, discriminatory policies and, most important, stop interfering with our sovereignty over our identities, communities, and lands. These are by no means easy or comfortable actions for Canadians to undertake, but they must be undertaken regardless” (Elliott 163). This quote highlights the importance of Indigenous people having freedom from governmental control. It asserts that they should be able to have autonomy and control over their identities, lands, and communities