Rory Taylor ’14 is a Ckiri/Chahta journalist covering Indigenous politics, policy and the intersection of race, culture and society. He currently lives on the territory of Ngāti Whātua Orākei in Tāmaki Makaurau and is pursuing a Master of Indigenous Studies at Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau (The University of Auckland).

He writes here about his thoughts on Blake’s Lexicon for Pluralism. Teachers and administrators developed the resource in 2018-19 to provide a common set of terms to support and deepen the school’s Commitment to Pluralism.

My first experience, emotion really, when I encountered the Lexicon of Pluralism was memetic. This made sense to me. Any material I receive from Blake as a recent alumnus recalls my experience there. It was a significant chunk of my adolescent life and certainly was a defining force in putting me on the trajectory I am today. The Lexicon felt different.

Inherently I knew why, but it took a bit of time and discussion to accurately articulate what that particular reflection was calling upon in my memory. I spent three years at Blake’s Upper School, from 2011 to 2014. I had grown up, slowly, to this temporal experience an Indigenous son of south Minneapolis. I remember feeling at the time that my experience at Blake was purely an academic and athletic one. Any cultural bereavement I felt was to be soothed in the friendly confines of my own home and, to an extent, in my own neighborhood. This changed during my last year at Blake when I signed up to take an elective English course: Native American Literature.

Taught by the only Indigenous teacher I had ever had and, to my knowledge, the only other Indigenous person in the Upper School at the time, the course was nothing short of catalytic in my own academic journey. For once, it felt possible that bridging divides in my academic and cultural life could happen and that my own experience, my community and our success and problems were worthy of serious study. It put me on my current path as a Fulbright Scholar getting a Master of Indigenous Studies at Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau (University of Auckland). I will always be grateful to Blake for that opportunity.

Yet, the class itself was not always the smoothest sailing. Oftentimes, I could feel and hear my classmates stumbling over definitions, much less concepts and worldviews as they related to Indigenous peoples. This is not to begrudge those students, nor is it unique to Blake. Throughout my various educational experiences, public and private, domestic and abroad, a lack of knowledge about Indigenous peoples is a common thread. But the experience I had still disappoints me. How could so many of my peers — many of whom had spent a significant portion, if not the entirety, of their education at Blake — be so woefully unprepared to discuss anything related to Indigenous peoples, especially when the institution itself stood on Indigenous land?

This, to me, is why the Lexicon feels relevant in a unique way. I can feel the seedlings of Blake’s wider community trying to make sense of the implicit questions answered by it. Who is “we”? What is our collective history? What is our responsibility to each other? I’m hopeful that the Lexicon can be useful as a starting point. I’m hopeful it can help us recognize how we all come to interact with the world around us, how we inhabit the space that we do, and how we recognize and appreciate the land we stand on.

Mostly, though, I’m hopeful the Lexicon can be a space of action. I’m genuinely grateful for the education I received at Blake. I also recognize that as an institution striving to provide valuable, relevant and global education it failed me, disappointed me, in a number of respects. But that does not have to be the prevailing standard. Understanding is part of that journey, certainly. But ultimately what makes the difference is action. For me, that looks like offering Dakota/Anishinaabe language classes for students. It’s acknowledging the traditional inhabitants of the lands on which the various campuses sit. It means recruiting, funding and retaining Indigenous students from local tribal and urban communities. These are just a few resolutions, and they are primarily centered around one particular community with which Blake engages.

Yet, for all that, I know Blake is capable of it. So in the same way that Native American Literature was catalytic in my own academic journey, I’m hopeful that, perhaps, the Lexicon of Pluralism can catalyze us all into a more plural, a more diverse and a more valuable educational community.