Listening Woman

Listening Woman

The fifth clan mother teaching is centered around stillness, silence and listening. This clan teaching, as described in, The Original 13 Clan Mothers, by Jamie Sams, emphasizes the art of being in a state of complete awareness. Sams writes, “we will never learn or expand if we do not listen to what is being said” (Sams, 1993). Listening Woman challenges us to be observant listeners, inviting us to pause and truly listen to everything around us. Listening is not limited to verbal communication but includes the act of listening to the movements of what is also happening within us. Our ears allow us to capture sounds for interpretation, but using our hearts allows us to be attentive to deeper connections.

In teaching and learning, the deliberate practice of listening to our own thoughts, beliefs, and practices, in relation to the context of settler and Indigenous relationships, can be a first step to engaging in meaningful conversations. Building authentic and meaningful relationships is a requisite to reconciliation, and one way to start the journey is to sit with self and to listen to our own moral mappings.