- Hello, my name is Rosemary Potter, and I'm the director of leadership programs for Continuing Education, Outreach & E-learning, a division of UW-Extension.  We're here today with members of the Academy for Leadership and Innovation, to hear the presentation of Chip Beale, a phenomenal presentation.  Chip Beale is director of the Multicultural Center at UW-Superior, and associate professor for First Nation Studies.  Please join me in welcoming Chip Beale.  (applause)  - I'm very, very glad that you have all decided to come to Superior.  We call this place the jewel of the north of Wisconsin.  And we don't get a lot of people that come from some of the southern areas of Wisconsin.  They think that the line, that the state line, is Highway 29.  You know right there in Eau Claire, that north of that is Canada.  And so it's really go that we're here, that we have the opportunity to share, and that I get a chance to share with you something that has basically changed my life over the years. 

 The presentation you're going to see today is called Walking in Two Worlds.  And I'll get my clicker here.  And the purpose of the presentation is the idea that there are people in the United States that live in one world, and they go to school, shopping, to work et cetera, in another.  And these are realities of the people that we are going to talk about today.  So the purpose of this presentation is to lay a foundation for change, both personal and institutional.  So the idea is that we're going to start with, where the only place that I believe, that we have actual control.  Many times we have the tendency to want to change "them. " It's always the "them" that we want to change.  We want people to fit in.  If we're professors, we like the idea of diversity. 

 I mean we can mark, we can check boxes.  We can fit affirmative action.  We can do all the cool things as long as those people are just like us on the inside.  And we like diversity of looks, but we have sometimes, a problem with true diversity that is within.  And so today we're going to look at some things that will help us all understand the value of the different.  The value of difference.  And we're going to start with, I believe, the only place that we really can, and that's us.  We've got to change us.  We've got to look at us, we've got to evaluate us.  Who are we? And we, I mean me too, and everybody that's in this room. 

 And we have the opportunity today to film this, and so I want to say that because of that, we're not going to have as, as interactive a program as I normally would have.  Normally we break into small groups.  We have question and answers, we do different aspects of small groups, large groups, and we do all kinds of activities.  But because we're being filmed today, we're not going to be able to do that.  So hopefully you'll get to get this on the flip side, okay? So. . .   Let's first look at the idea of ethnocentrism.  Now ethnocentrism is not a word we use every day.  It's not a word that comes in, you know, "What's your ethnocentric perspective on "what's happening on the news?" We don't use it, we don't do it that way. 

 But raise your hand if you know what the word means? Ethnocentrism.  Okay, we have a few, about half.  About half, and that's good because this is Leadership Wisconsin, so you are in the know, your vocabulary is huge, so, but the rest of you, I get to teach you, okay? And so the idea of ethnocentrism, here's a quote that I found.  It's "The view of things which one's own group "is the center of everything and all others are scaled "and rated with references to wit.  "Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, "boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, "and looks with contempt on outsiders. " And everybody else is outsiders.  So that's the idea now.  But I'm going to share with you a little bit about how that is developed.  Because that's what's so important.  Ethnocentrism is something that we all have. 

 We look at that and they say, "Well that ain't me, that's not me. " Because that's not politically correct.  I want to be politically correct, I want to be in the in.  But I want to share with you how that concept is developed.  And ethnocentrism, truly is the culmination, of all of the stuff, that we get that comes into us.  It's all of the stuff.  All of us have parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, extended family, we have buddies.  We have friends, we listen to the news, we read books, we listen to the radio, we listen to songs, we go to the internet, man, all of us get our news from the internet, 'cause we know that everything on the internet is true.  So therefore, or, or we could get it from other, you know, sources like cable news networks, like Fox News and MSNBC.  So we know that everything that's coming in is true. 

 So we let it come in and all of that stuff influences the way we look at the world.  Now when you look at, when you add pastors, spiritual leaders, elders to that, and then you add just people that, clubs and organizations and what they stand for, So as we grow up, all of these things come in.  All of these things come in to each one of us.  And that is way, it causes us to focus on our world.  That is ethnocentrism.  And that's how it got to be the way it is.  And your ethnocentrism is different from each person in this entire room.  So when you think about it, it's easy to understand but it's not easy to admit, because that reflects who we really are on the inside.  And so as we keep talking about that, is the idea that we believe that our view is superior.  Remember it said that we judge all others by our own view? That is the bar. 

 And that is, the bar is always superior.  So superiority is the foundation of the ethnocentric perspective.  And it's the belief that one's own race, religion, family, sexual orientation, et cetera et cetera, et cetera, is better than all others.  So as we continue, how society constructs and perpetuates the concept of superiority.  Now I picked this hippo and critter, and I'm going to let you read it yourself, but, "We are number one, you'll get a boot in your ass, "it's the American Way!" "This is just curiosity, "but what other countries have you ever visited?" "Hawaii. " That's supposed to be funny.  (laughter) But that's kind of the way we, that's part of the way society develops the idea, this idea of superiority.  Now we're going to start with some of the things that society does.  We're going to start with commercials.  Now I have a picture of, of my standard poodle, Teddy. 

 And so I wanted that picture up there so you could relate to what I'm going to do next.  Now there was an old commercial, an old commercial that was developed back in the 60s, maybe early 70s, but it was Kennel Ration.  Remember Kennel Ration? Kennel Ration was dog food.  Now Kennel Ration dog food started out and developed this, this jingle.  And everybody that ever heard the jingle could remember it.  Now how many of you ever heard it? Okay, all of you that have heard it, we're going to sing it.  This is group participation, here goes: My dog's better than your dog.  My dog's better than yours.  C'mon! My dog's better 'cause he eats Kennel Ration.  My dog's better than yours. 

 That's the dumbest commercial I've ever thought about.  What makes my dog better? Because he eats a certain kind of dog food.  Now, but the result of this stupid jingle caused Kennel Ration sales to soar.  And, because of a jingle.  Nobody looked at the ingredients.  They just, it was cool! It's that better than thing, okay? We want ours to be better than, so we flock to that kind of thing.  Just a second, my clicker is not staying together.   So, that's commercials.  Now school.  Now how many of you were athletes or are athletes? Okay. 

 How many of you were cheerleaders? Cheerleaders are athletes by the way, but for this I want to separate the two.  Now I want you to remember something.  I want you to remember homecoming week and pep rallies.  Homecoming week and pep rallies.  This is how society perpetuates the idea, even in school, superiority.  Homecoming week.  What we do on homecoming week is the cheerleaders would put banners up above the lockers, right? Remember that? They put banners up above the lockers.  Now they said all kinds of stuff.  Beat the something out of so and so, the cross-town rivals, we're number one.  Go Yellow Jackets, Yellow Jackets is our logo. 

 But whatever ours is, we're number one, go Yellow Jackets beat the Eagles, and that's what was going on and all of this all over, all over school above the lockers.  And then it came to the pep rally time.  Pep rally time.  Now the guys, all of the football players, would dress in their jerseys, see? They'd dress in their jerseys.  And then everybody would pile into the gymnasium.  Cheerleaders would be there, the pep band would be going, and they were, it was a festive, the cheerleaders were out there cheering.  And the guys would line up, and they're back there in their their jerseys and they're just kind of strutting their stuff, you know? And the coach is up there.  "We're ready, we're gonna get 'em.  "We have practiced long and hard for this game.  "We are, we're gonna go out there, we're gonna score. 

 "We're gonna score. " Soon the cheerleaders have led something going on, part of the stands that says, "We're number one! "We're number one! "We're number one!" And the guys are back there strutting their stuff, "You know, yeah, we're number one. " Now the funny thing is, your team may not have won a game in three years.  I mean it's crazy, but, but that's the way it is, we perpetuate, we teach, in the name of pride, superiority.  And so, the society perpetuates the concept of whatever ours is is superior to others.  Now let's keep going.  Now the next one, home.  Every Saturday morning, every Saturday morning in my neighborhood eight o'clock, somebody starts their lawnmower.  Starts mowing their lawn.  Lawns need mowed, you mow the lawn. 

 Then the next door neighbor gets out there and gets his lawnmower going, and they're out there, and you've got dueling lawnmowers going on.  And I understand lawns need to get mowed, but do they have to have all those criss-cross things out there and the lines and all that? Now that's done for one reason: because we want our lawns to look better than anybody else's in the neighborhood.  So we do that in our own neighborhoods.  Religion, what about religion? I mean religion, I mean I grew up, I grew up in Oklahoma, I'm an Okie.  Not only did I grow up in Oklahoma, I grew up as a Southern Baptist.  I mean we had 13 Southern Baptist churches in my hometown of 7,000 people.  And then we had Methodist churches, and we had one Catholic church, one Lutheran church.  We had some others, we had Pentecostal churches, we had Churches of God, we had all kinds of churches.  We're talking about the buckle of the Bible Belt where I'm from in Oklahoma.  And so, I want to share some things about my mom. 

 And when I do, my accent kind of turns Southern.  Now my mom called me "Chi-ip. " That was her name for me "Chi-ip. " I lived in the diphthong capital of the universe, and we'd double hit every vowel sound that there was, and so I was "Chi-ip. " Now that's not spelled C-H-I-I-P.  It's spelled C-H-I-P, but you always got to hit it twice, so it's "Chi-ip", my mom called me "Chi-ip. " And I'd met this really cute girl.  And I was about 16 ready to start dating, and I was talking to my mom.  You always talk to your mom, I don't know how that happens, it was the dumbest thing.  But I talked to my mom about how cute this girl was, and her first question was, "Now "Chi-ip" "where does she go to church?" I said, "Mom she's Christian. 

" "But where does she go to church?" I said, "Methodist church".  And she said one word, "See?" I said, "See?" "Yeah, I don't think you oughta go out with her, Chip. " "Why not?" "'Cause she's Methodist!" And I said, "Mom, she's a Christian, she goes to church!" "Yeah, but she's not Baptist. " Now that was revealing.  That was revealing that my mom felt that Baptist was the mark.  And everybody else wasn't quite as good.  And you're gonna hear more about my mom, as we go on today.  But that was one of the things, and I didn't go out with the girl, not even on the sly.  I mean, I only dated Baptist girls.  Until I got old enough to get away from my mom's voice, which I still haven't got away from my mom's voice, 'cause it still comes through every once and a while. 

 But okay if it's true about those, what about race? What about gender identity? What about sexual orientation? What about these things? Now there's another, I gotta throw a mom story in here, because this was another one.  Because I went to college at, a small liberal-arts college in Oklahoma.  And we didn't have hardly any diversity, except for Native Americans and we were very few.  And if you look at me, I am phenotypic White boy.  Now I'm Choctaw, Chickasaw and Cherokee from Oklahoma, member of the Choctaw nation, but my grandmother is full-blood Scotch-Irish, and she faded us out real quick.  And so I'm a phenotypic white boy, but I call myself a reverse apple, because I'm red on the inside and white on the outside.  So, but a situation happened because there was this African-American girl that was in my college and she was one of very, very, very few, and I thought she was the cat's meow.  I thought she was so cute, she was so nice, and she was Baptist! Mom not going to have a problem with this! This is a Baptist girl! So I go home and I say, "Mom I really met this cute girl. " And she says, "Where's she from?" I said, "She's from Coleman".  And she gave me that look. 

 "Coleman?" "And I said, "Yeah!" She said. . .   "What race is she?" I said, "Mom, she's African American. " "Now Chip.  "You don't date outside of your race. "  I said, "How come?" "The Bible says you're not supposed to. " And I said to her, "Where?" She said, "Now I'm not sure where.  "But the preacher preached on it, and he wouldn't "preach on anything that wasn't in the Bible. " I said, "Mom, you are a racist. 

" "Now Chip I'm not a racist.  " And then she said, "Think of the children. " I said, "Mom I just want to date her.  "I don't wanna have kids, I'm not gonna marry her. " She said, "Now you don't know that.  "You should never date anybody that you wouldn't marry. " Now today I agree with that, I mean I do, but I don't agree with everything else she had to say about that.  But here was what she said.  I said, "Mom, that's racist. " She said, "Now Chip just think of the children. 

" I said, "Mom, "how did we get to be like we are?" Now she said, "What do you mean?" I said, "How did we get to be like we are?" She said, "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. " I said "Aren't we Indian and White?"  She said, "Yes".  I said, "How did we get to be Indian and White?" "I'm not sure what you mean?" I says, "Well didn't an Indian person get together with a White person "and come together and the result was us?" And she said, "Well, yes, but Indians don't count. "  Indians don't count, why did she say Indians don't count? Because she was Indian.  And her ethnocentric perspective wouldn't allow for that to go on inside of herself, so she made excuses that it was okay for Indians and white people to get together, but it wasn't okay for Black people and white people to get together, because that would be wrong from a Biblical perspective.  Now I have no idea where that came from at all.  But later on my daughter, she said, "Now you need to be careful," because once she found out I was going to be a Multicultural Affairs Coordinator as my career, she said, "Now you be careful, "because your kids might want to date somebody "outside of your race.  "And you're going to have to pay for your mistakes. " Now this was when I was in the business.   My daughter went to UWS, walked into my office one day, she says, "Dad, "Abdi wants to ask me to marry him. 

" Or, "He's asked me to marry him.  "And I told him he had to ask you first.  And I was very honored by that.  But now Abdi's from Ethiopia.  And a wonderful, wonderful kid.  But you know what came into my head? "Now Chip. . . "  Her voice was just as clear in my mind as if it was the first day she said it, "Now Chip, think of the children. "  I had a moment that I had to deal with my mother's voice, because it was my ethnocentric perspective, and I didn't even know it. 

  So I dealt with it, threw my mother's voice out of my head, welcomed Abdi when he came to talk to me, I said I would be honored for you to be my son-in-law, and I put him through the mill, and asked him how he was going to treat my daughter, okay? But after that I honored him completely.  But it was, I didn't realize how, even the things I disagreed with were still influencing my life.  It still was there in my head.  So how about gender identity? Sexual orientation, oh I can tell you story after story about being a Southern Baptist and sexual orientation.  And, and, and the evils of homosexuality.  I can tell you all day long.  I mean I grew up, I was the music and youth director in a Southern Baptist church and I heard it from the pulpit all the time.  But there was always something inside of me that said there's something wrong with that.  There's something wrong, God is not like that.  God is love. 

 And of course I've always heard the idea, well you love the sinner, but you hate the sin.  Well that's piece of crap, honestly.  Because honestly, that's not what I, I knew that there was something wrong.  Well so I had to deal with my own homophobia.  I had to deal with my own mother's voice.  Through all of the sexual orientation stuff, the gender identity stuff.  And I am a student of getting better.  I'm getting better.  I'm getting less and less "ism".  I'm less and less of an "ist" every day that I work on. 

 So as we talk about this superiority is one factor in the foundation of racism and all other ism.  Racism, sexism, heterosexism, able-bodyism, ageism, are all alive and well in the United States, all of them.  All of them.  Could I possibly be a racist?  Now I've developed what I call the ism continuum.  The ism continuum is a place where we can honestly take a look at ourselves.  So I want you to look at this and see.  Now on the far left side, by design by the way, I did this on purpose, you have totally ist.  Far right, totally non-ist.  Now none of us are far left or far right, okay? We're somewhere in the middle.  Now I have a question, I just want you to raise your hands. 

 How many of you, if you, when you were dating age.  If you would have brought somebody home to your grandparents, your parents, your aunt and uncles, either of a different race, or of the same sex, and you introduced them, as your significant other, a person that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, how many of you in your family, person in your family, would have a problem with that? Raise your hands.  Everyone in this room raised your hands.  Now for us not to know that that influences us, that that flavors us, we're kidding ourselves.   It causes reverse-ist action in ourselves to where we look down on ourselves many times.  We look down on others.  But we have vestiges, I'll call them vestiges, we have vestiges of the isms in each and every one of us.  Now until we can honestly take a look at that, and find ourselves on this line honestly, then we can't go this way on that line.  And I'm not supposed to do that, but I did it.  We can't go to the right. 

 We can't grow because we're not being honest with ourselves.  So as we look at this I want us to, each and every one of us today, think about it.  Where are you on that line? And because once you establish that you are on the line, that you can grow, that you can get better, then tomorrow you can wake up better than you did today.  And the next day better than you did.  And less racist, less heterosexist, less sexist, less able-bodyist, less whatever the ist is.  And we can grow and get better.  So.   We're going to shift gears.  We're going to shift gears from the us, we're going to still look at us in this process, but we're going to shift gears.  And we're going to not focus as much on us as individuals, but us as a group, as we relate to others. 

 Okay now this next, the next question I'm going to ask is to you as an individual because it's important, but we're going to start looking at difference now.  We're gonna look at difference.  The privilege of being part of the majority culture.  What are. . .   If you consider yourself to be White, and I'm not asking that question.  If you consider yourself to be White, what does it mean to be White? Now if you, if you immediately have an answer, raise your hand, I'm not going to ask you for that answer, but raise your hand if you know exactly what you would say immediately.  Two people, third? And I, the classic answers are this: "I wouldn't have to go into a grocery store and be racially profiled.  "I wouldn't be stopped by police "because I'm driving while white. 

 "I wouldn't walk into a bank and wonder if I'm gonna "get a loan, because I'm white.  Or, "I wouldn't be buying a house and wonder if I "would fit into the neighborhood because I'm white. " Okay you follow what I'm saying? These are privileges of being part of the majority culture.  Whatever the majority culture is.  I'm using this one as an example because this group is mostly white.  In the United States right now white's the majority, and I know we're going toward a more multicultural world.  But I want to share with you something.   In 35 years when, "non-whites" are the majority, whites are still the majority.   Because there's no single, because African-Americans are different from Hispanic-Latino Americans.  Are different from Asian-Americans and are different from American Indians. 

 But we like to lump those all together in one little, nice little neat box and say, "All of y'all", the Okie's coming out, "All of y'all, "y'all have majority".  We're not in a racist society anymore, because we elected a Black President.  We use all of these clichés to excuse our own national, institutional "isms", okay? So mark it down, all of you that have been thinking that in 35 years the United States is going to have, the white's not gonna be the majority anymore, that's not true, because you can't lump all other groups together, you just can't.  So the reason I ask that, because why is it not, why didn't all of you immediately raise your hands when I asked do you have an answer to that? Because if we had a roomful of African-Americans in Superior, Wisconsin today, and I was to ask how many of you that are African-Americans, How many of you know what it means to be African-American? I mean, bam, the hands would go up, immediately.  Because, or if it were Native Americans, they would raise their hands.  Asian Americans raise their hands.  Hispanic, Latinos, they'd raise their hands.  Why do minority groups immediately know what it means to be their culture, their race, their racial cultural identity, but white folks don't? I would ask you that, but I'm going to answer it myself.  Because you don't have to.   You don't have to. 

 It's call the law of the majority.  When you're a part of the majority, there's a lot of stuff you don't have to do.  A lot of stuff you don't have to say.  There's a lot of stuff you don't have to watch out for.   That's privilege, that's privilege.   One of the privileges is the freedom to walk in only one cultural world.   You get up in the morning in one cultural world.  You eat breakfast in that same cultural world.  You go to work in the same cultural world.  Or to school or to the grocery store. 

 Then you come home, and you're back and forth between cultural worlds.  Now this works for all groups of, what I would call, not necessarily racial, cultural, but also any of the group that we could consider "other".  LGBT groups, same thing.  People with disabilities, the same thing.  I mean, a blind person is very very comfortable in their own home.  They know exactly where everything's at.  They don't, they don't even have to turn the lights on.  They don't have to use that electricity.  But when they step out of their home, it's a whole different cultural world.  And so able-bodied people, it's a privilege to be able-bodied. 

 And so these are all things that we take for granted many times.  But when you're the other, whatever the other is, you have to walk back and forth.  And that's not privilege.   Walking in two worlds is a requirement, to walk in two or more worlds, happens for most people of color every day.  Most LGBT people every day.  Most people with disabilities every day.  Most people, older people every day, aged people.  Now that one's becoming more and more real to me every day, I don't know why.  Twenty years ago I didn't think of it that way, but you know, I'm turning, I'm 63, just turned 63, so the age part is, I'm starting to relate to that a little bit more every day.  So it's the same, I say people of color but, because that's, that's my field. 

 But it's the same for all groups.  So we're going to shift gears, we're gonna talk about, value of difference, but we've got to see what difference, some major differences are.  We're going to talk about linear versus holistic, circular world view.  Because the U. S.  majority culture has a linear world view.   Most persons of color has a holistic, circular world view.  Now by the way, 80% of the world's population has a holistic, circular world view.   But what's the difference? Linear, now you may know, already know this answer, and you probably do.  But we're going to kind of just look at some things that makes a difference. 

 Catch words for linear world view.  Defined, divided, exclusive, encapsulated, measured, boxed, separated, individualized, allotted, parceled, fragmented, goals, objectives.  I could go on and on.  That's why all those dots are there because, the idea of linear, the linear world, is that we have made things more compact, more, more explainable, more definable, more understandable.  It's the reason that we even stereotype.  Stereotypes is a linear word.  Because we put people into nice little neat groups so we can understand them better.  So the idea of this is in the, is that we want to define the crap out of everything, and divide it all up to where we understand it a little bit better, and it'll fit into our nice little linear scientific world.  Now on the flip side of that.  Holistic catchwords: whole, inclusive, totality, boundless, limitless, synergy, the whole is greater to the, I love synergy, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 

 This group right here is bigger, better because we're together, than if we were all individual working separately.  That's a cool concept, timeless, beyond measure, expanse, and universal.  These are concepts that don't need defining.  Because by their words, when you're inclusive, that means everybody fits.  When you're talking about the whole, you're talking about everyone.  So the idea of holistic is where you look at the entirety.  You want everybody to fit in.  And you want things to be natural, easy, and you don't have to have that definition.  You see how they're actually polar opposites? So we have cultures in the United States that are, in this area, polar opposites.  Now some areas that these really are very, very ,very, real: time. 

 Wristwatch, if you have a nice wristwatch, what all does it show?  Mostly, oh just big numbers.  Okay, I wasn't supposed to ask questions, but I wanted, I just saw that watch and wanted to ask.  But many watches have seconds.  Some of them even have chronometers with thousandths of seconds, hundredths of seconds.  And some even have months, days, seconds, minutes, hours.  Some even have phases of the moon.  Some even have different time zones right on the front of the watch.  So that's a perfect example of what we've done, and linearized time.  But now on the flip side of that, what about holistic time? Anybody ever heard of Indian time? Raise your hands if you've heard of Indian time.  Now the classic definition, when I ask people, "Okay, what is Indian time?" Nobody wants to answer this question. 

 But when I finally get somebody to answer the question, they say this, "Um, well. . .   "Most people, well people who run on Indian time, "they're late, "always late. " I said, okay.  So you have a definition of Indian time as being late.  Now and African-American friend of mine, one of my best friends in the world, we were out at an event.  I said, "What time should I pick you up?" He said, "Eh, around eight, we're running on CPT. "  And I said, "I have no idea what that means. " He says, "Oh yes, you do. 

" I said, "Oh no I don't.  " He says, "Yes, you do. " He says, "The same as Indian time. " I said, "Well what does it mean?" He says, "Colored People Time".  I said, "What?" He said, "Colored People Time. " I said, "Isn't that politically incorrect? I would never say Colored People Time. " And he said, "When you're colored people, "you can say whatever you want. " He said, "My granddaddy said Colored People Time.  "My great-granddaddy said Colored People Time.  "My great, great, great grandfather "probably said Colored People Time. 

 "So I'm going to say Colored People Time.  "And it's the same as Indian Time. " And then I get to be around a lot of Hmong people.  And Hmong people have Hmong time.  And we all know about siestas with Hispanic, Latino, and things that move at a slower pace.  Here is the definition of Indian Time and all those other times: Things happen when they're supposed to happen.   Right on time.  Sometimes linear people might think that's late.  But I've been early several times, I was early today.  And I was running on Indian Time. 

 I got here when I was supposed to get here.  And I did it.  Got everything set up, ready to go.  Got my thought processes ready.  I'm ready, I'm ready.  That's part of Indian Time.  I didn't run on a clock.  I didn't have any idea what time my watch said it was when I got there.  I just knew I had plenty of time.  Birch trees give sap. 

 Right on time.  Native Americans know when to tap them.  Wild rice. . .   Makes the heads, and they get it exactly the right time.  What if they were three days early? They wouldn't get as much, and it would be green.  What if they were a week late? It'd be all gone, already in seed in the water.  Right on time.  So time, what about spirituality and religion? I love this one. 

 Native Americans have a concept that they say their worship place is out in the woods, out there, that they just worship God, and worship the spirit, worship the Great Creator, all over the place, and I understand what that's talking about.  It's everything that we see is part of Creation.  And that we're out there and we can, we worship the Creator all the time.  Native Americans lay tobacco down when they see something beautiful.  If they shoot a deer they'll lay tobacco down in, in honor of that animal that's given his life for the sustenance of their family.  And they lay this tobacco down in honor of the Great Spirit.  And the spirit of that animal.  And it's a 24-hour deal, you don't have secular times, and spiritual times, it's all together.  Secular and spiritual all come together.  The spirit world and the physical world, all together. 

 That's the idea of Native American spirituality, the kind of foundation of that.  With the honor and respect of the spirit world as we walk in both the physical world and the spiritual world.  Now. . .   In the linear world, I'm just gonna use, I'm an old Baptist, so I'll go ahead and say this.  Every church sign you see has times.  Sunday school starts at nine o'clock, worship service at 10 o'clock, or two worship services, 10 and 11.  Sunday morning, now I'm from Oklahoma, so we have church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night.  Then we have Bible studies throughout the week, and somebody, depending on how "spiritual" you are, you have a time that you can go to, and do this, okay? Now and so, and so in my growing up, I was part of a linear church system. 

 But I had a really cool opportunity to be the music and youth, the music director, the choir director for an African-American church in our town.  It was a Baptist church, but in the South, Baptist churches, you had Black Baptist churches, and you had white Baptist churches, which would allow Indians because they don't count.  But this would go on, and I had the opportunity, our churches, our two churches came together for a worship service.  Now the African-American preacher was going to preach, and I was going to do the choir.  So I practiced with this combined choir, and we were having a blast learning the songs for communion, we were learning, we did, we had a special, we were, we were rocking it, I was loving it.  And so time for church comes around and I walk up to the preacher and say, "What time do we start?" He said, "'Round 10. " I said, "Okay, we'll be ready at 10. " 10 o'clock shows up.  People coming in, relaxing.  People are shaking hands, visiting. 

 I say, "Want me to start?" "No, we're not ready, it's not time. " I said, "It's 10 o'clock. " "Nah, around 10, It's just around 10.  "We'll know what time to start. " So around 10:30, he says, "Time to start", I say, "Okay".  So we hit it.  And we had an opening song, and that church service and they started rocking.  And I'm lovin' it, and I am in my element.  I'm a rock 'n roll musician that just lovin' this.  And it's time for communion. 

 And we do the communion, we pass, joint communion, and then we have the offering.  Now we have an offering song, and we do the offering song, and the, African American preacher is down in front, and he's receiving people, and he's, and when the plates come forward, he looks in the plates.  He walks up there, looks in those plates.  And I kid you not, he says this: "Folks. . .   "God would not be pleased "with what you did not give.  "We're gonna have another offering.  "And this time I want you to please God. " And I'm there, what do I do? And he looks at me, I says, "What do you want me to sing?" "Sing that song you just sang, "that was gorgeous, do it again!" So we did it again, so we did it again, and this time, he looks down, he says, "The Lord is pleased. 

 "We have given out of our bounty.  "Thank you all. " And so, now this 10:30, we get out of church about one.  I had the best time in church I'd ever had.  But in a normal church, if we didn't get out at noon, or if it was 10:30 you gotta be out by 11:30, if it starts at 11:30 you gotta be out by noon, or you're gonna have roast preacher for dinner.  And that's the way it was in some of the churches that I had dealt with.  So we have linearized spirituality, we put it on a clock.  There's a place to worship, there's a way to worship.  There's a thing you do and a thing you don't do.  There's rules and not rules. 

 And so we've linearized the idea of spirituality and religion at the same time.  Now government.  Now government.  Native American governmental style is by consensus.  Consensus works like this: If we're all here and I make a statement, I say, "We're all gonna go out to lunch, and I'm buying.   "We've all gotta agree where we're gonna go.  "So let's decide. " Someone says, "Well let's go, I mean Burger King is "right over there, we can walk, let's go to Burger King".  "No, I don't want to go to Burger King, "I don't like fast food, let's go, let's go to Perkins. " "I don't like Perkins, Perkins sells breakfast "all day long, everything tastes like breakfast, "let's go to Grizzley's. 

" And so we can't decide.  Okay, someone says, "Well let's vote. " I said, "No, no voting.  "No voting, we've all gotta decide, "we've all gotta agree or we're not going anywhere. " Then someone says, "You know, "there's a really cool restaurant "in Superior called The Kitchen.  "It's just a downhome restaurant, "just like out of the 60s.  "Why don't we go there for a new experience?" People say, "Hey, I'm in for a new experience. " And everybody decides yes, that's it, so let's go to The Kitchen.  And so we all come into consensus.  Now democracy on the linear side is majority rules. 

 Same situation, I say we gotta decide where to go, majority rules, decide where we're gonna go.  This time Grizzley's wins by a 55% majority, and now we have 45% of the people that are now. . .   Potentially not happy.   Now I'm not saying we could ever have a consensual style government in the United States.  It would never work because we're just too big.  But the idea is a wonderful idea of where we all come together with the spirit of getting together and agreeing.  Majority rules always has built into it that somebody's a loser, right? Somebody's a loser.  So then the last one is education. 

 Now I want to make this statement.  Native Americans have the highest dropout rate of any ethnic group in the United States, bar none.  Bar none.   And there are some really interesting facts about this.  Because I'm a, part of my education is school psychology.  I have master's level in school psychology.  I didn't get the degree because I already had another master's degree and didn't need it, but I had to have all the hours, I couldn't get it just by getting it.  But in my training to be a school psychologist, we did intelligence testing.  One of the intelligence tests, because I was always interested in this, I found out that the Stanford Intelligence test, or the Stanford Abilities test, SAT, There were Native American three and four-year olds, their average IQs were above a hundred.  Now you know all of what that means. 

 That means that as a group, it's higher than the average in the United States.  Now but by the time they get in the fifth and sixth grade, the same Native Americans are below a hundred.  Now if you know anything about testing, that's impossible, unless the tests are culturally biased.   But I think it's bigger than that.  I think it's what we're talking about.  Native American have a holistic learning style.  African-Americans have a holistic learning style.  Many Asian-Americans have a holistic learning style.  And Hispanic/Latinos have a holistic learning style.  And those are the groups that the gaps are in the educational process. 

 You notice I said many Asians, There are some Asians that shoot the top out of the scores because they're linear also.  But in the groups that I'm talking about, it's like we put them into our educational system. . .   And they become like square pegs in round holes.  And we want them to fit in with us.  We don't do anything to help them fit in.  We don't do any cultural training.  We don't do any examination of learning styles.  We don't try to teach from their learning styles. 

 But we, we just teach them like we've always taught them, and if they make it they make it, and if they don't, they don't.  Because in the educational process when I was being trained as a teacher, I was taught to teach to the middle.  I was taught to teach to the middle.  And some are going to fail, and some are going to rock, rock the socks off of it.  But we don't have time to deal with all of those, all the ones that are not gonna make it.  The sad part is, those are the minorities.  When you look at the stats when it comes to. . .   Special education, there's far, far more minorities, and there's no, I mean there's no difference. 

 There's no difference intelligent-wise.   And I believe, now this is my own belief, this is not tracked, it's not backed up, not backed up by a bunch of research.  But it's my belief, that if we would somehow create some sort of cultural training to help them walk better in that other world early, then our retention rates would go up.  I believe that.  So those are the areas that I wanted to spend time on this part, and it's important to understand that so many times we have the tendency to blame the other for not fitting in.  And again, we got to start, to stop blaming, and start taking responsibility in making this world a better place for all people.  For all people.  Now let's go on and let's get into communication styles.  Verbal versus non-verbal, or high contextual and low-contextual.  High contextual is where there's a lot of the conversation, a lot of the communication is done non-verbally. 

 Low-contextual is where it's verbal, okay? Now our little thing is there, those are emoticons.  We can read those pretty well, the sad part is. . .   Expressions, non-verbals are not the same across cultures.  What is true in one culture is not true in another culture.  So we need, the basic thing here is we need to understand that there are different contexts of. . .   Communication styles, and that we need to understand that to better help the, everyone, the other, which includes everyone. 

 Now, minority cultures place more emphasis on the non-verbal cues, which is high contextual.  Majority culture, more emphasis on the verbal cues.  Now I'm going use an example here for this room.  We're going to use a gender difference because genders look at words and communication styles, by the way, women are much more high contextual than men are.  Men are more low contextual, more verbal.  Men are more verbal, women are more contextual, okay? Now were going to use a gender difference.  The word is "fine".  Now, ladies I want you to imagine yourself getting ready.  Much like the lady in the picture, she's looking at herself in the mirror.  You are taking the time. 

 You are making yourself absolutely, phenomenally beautiful for your significant other.  And you're getting ready.  And your significant other is sitting out on the couch waiting for you to get ready.  And so you come out, and you come out, and you turn around and you say, "How do I look?"  And the response is, "You look fine, let's go. "  Looking at some of your faces I can see that you don't want to go anywhere.  You're ready to go change or do something because you don't want to just look fine.   Same situation.  Same exact situation.  You're getting ready, you come out, and you do a pirouette and you turn around and you say, "How do I look?" And the answer is, "You look fine, let's go. "  Then all of a sudden, same words, different context. 

 And you're ready to go.   Now the guys.  I can go get ready.  I can spend my ten minutes getting ready.  Walk out and I really want to look good.  Now I say, "Honey, how do I look?" And she says, "Fine, let's go. " I say, okay.  I don't care! I mean as long as my socks have the same colors, you know? It's okay you know? And so it's a different world.  We, there are different ways and different contexts in communication styles even within the majority culture.  Does that make sense? Okay. 

 The next thing we're going to talk about is pause time.  Now different cultures have different pause times.  Now I had the opportunity when I first moved to Wisconsin, as a part of my University of Wisconsin-Superior position, I taught at Osceola Community College.  And part of their, they had a yearly event called Elders Day.  Now they had an Elders Day where elders would come in and they would tell stories.  They would tell stories about, about "winnibugu".  They would tell stories about where things came from, they would tell stories about their history, they would tell stories about different things and it was always in the winter where it was respectful, and the snow was on the ground.  And I was there for this event.  And I had this woman, young woman come up to me.  And she was, she had, she was, there with a real business look on her face, she says, "Sir", now she came to me because I look white, naturally. 

 And she said, "Do you think I could interview some people?"  I said, "What for?" "Well I'd like to do an article for a newspaper "about the Elders event.  "And I'd like to talk to some of the Elders. " "Well, yeah, I think that would be a good thing. " She said, "Well, what do I do? "I don't know what to say?" I said, well, get three questions ready that you're going to ask everyone, so you can get a good example, Walk up to them and ask them respectfully, "'May I interview you? "May I ask you a few questions "about what's going on here today?" Now if they say yes, then ask the first question.  And you've got three questions so go through this, and so she said, "Okay, I can do this, I can do this. " So she walks away from me, and goes to the nearest elderly lady, elder lady.  And I can see her ask her if she can interview her.  And I can see the response is yes, headshake yes.  Then I saw her ask the first question.  Then I saw her ask the second question. 

 And the third question.  No response from the woman, Native American elder.   She goes to the second person.  Same thing, same results.  She does it three times and she beelines it back to me, and she says three little words, "They don't like me. " And then she says, "I think it's because I'm white. " And I say, "No. "  And she says, "What, what did I do wrong?" I said, "I want you to do exactly the same thing, go back to some people, ask the same questions, same thing, this time when you ask the first question, after they say yes you can interview, shut up.  Don't say a word, I don't care how long.  You just don't say a word. 

 I said, "But do not go back to the same three people. "  So she started out, she went out, she asked if she could interview, they said yes, she asked the first question, I saw the response.  The second question, the response.  The third question, the response.  She went all over the room interviewing people, Got her chance to do her interviews and her article.  And she came to me afterward and she says, "Oh my God, what a difference.  What was the difference?" I said, "Pause time.   "Your pause time is different from their pause time.   "You were thinking that they weren't gonna answer you, "and you were uncomfortable with silence, "So you had to ask the next question because you were afraid "that they didn't like the first question.  " "Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

" I said, "No, that's not it.  "They were giving you respect by waiting "to make sure you weren't going to ask anything else, "So they could honor you by answering "in their cultural pause time. " So you have a culture clash here.  Bam.  Two cultures collide and it's all over pause time.  The average pause time for the majority culture is two to three seconds.  You ask the question, they respond, two to three seconds.  The average pause time for a traditional Native American is up to seven seconds.   That was about seven seconds right there.  Which can be an eternity if you're uncomfortable with silence. 

  So then I get all these questions.  "Okay, how do we know all the pause times?" I said, you don't have to know.  I said there are some that it's cultural to walk on each other's speech.  We would call that interrupting.  But interrupting doesn't sound like it's a very nice thing.  But there are cultures that they walk on conversations all the time and it's very culturally, it's totally culturally fine, and it would be very, very rude to wait.   So the question is, how do you know? You don't, and you don't have to.  You just ask the first question and wait.  That's all.  Because the pause time is going to take care of itself if you understand that there is a difference. 

  Making a difference.   Someone said a long time ago, ignorance is bliss.   I do these trainings, workshops, seminars, discussions, presentations, from one to eight hours, and there's so many other things that I could present to you of the value of difference.  Today I brought to you a few that you could see difference.  And understand difference.  And that you could actually use when you walk out this door.  Difference is a wonderful thing.  We always want to look at our similarities.  A lot of diversity trainings talk about there's more about us that are alike than there are differences, so let's major on the likenesses.  It ain't the likenesses that get us in trouble. 

 It's our differences.  And it's always the differences that we don't know how to deal with, because we always say, "Well what do I say, I'm afraid to say something, "I'm afraid to say the wrong thing, "I don't wanna sound like a racist and, "so I don't say anything. " Which makes you look like a racist.  And so all of these things happen, and so we just want to look at, let's just look at the things that we're alike in.  Because those are a lot more comfortable.  But that's not where we need to be looking.  We need to be looking at the value of difference.  We're on a team.  That team is better because of our diversity.  It's better because of sexual diversity. 

  Racial diversity, gender diversity, age diversity, ability diversity.  Because everybody can look at it from their own ethnocentric perspective and bring it to the table.  And that honor will make a better result.   Some things that we've learned today: we're no longer ignorant.   With that information comes responsibility.  We today, we in this group, need to take what we've learned, use it, put it in our toolbelt, walk out of this place, and make our individual worlds a better place.  Thank you.  (applause)  - Hello, my name is Rosemary Potter,