Leaving the Comfort Zone

Richard Atleo, in his book Tsawalk, writes about civilizations completing phases of growth, and likens the resistance to change or transformation to the reluctance of individuals to leave the comfort zones of womb, home, and immediate family as they mature and encounter institutions and ideas outside their infantile experience.

He specifically denotes the exhausted model of the colonial enterprise, and remarks on how it has changed the natural environment and the spiritual capacity of both indigenous and colonial peoples.

The need to make a spiritual connection in order to advance has him concerned that great harm might take place as we struggle to get unstuck from this unworkable arrangement of relationships. Given the degree of dysfunction and disharmony we live in, I suppose it is inevitable that individual sacrifices will have to be made.

(Professor Atleo, an associate scholar of CWIS, is the first aboriginal to earn a doctorate in British Columbia.)