“You are stupid.” “You are a failure.” “You will never amount to anything in life.”
Young people often hear such messages from others – to the point that they begin to believe these words and feel that way about themselves, according to Ray Buckley, a Native American storyteller and United Methodist layperson from Palmer, Alaska.
“I meet many young people across the world who describe themselves this way, and the sense of some youth in our communities is one of despair,” Buckley said during a workshop focusing on both “names of derision” and how names are sacred during Youth 2007, a July 11-15 event sponsored by the United Methodist Board of Discipleship.
Buckley said he frequently talks with young people who have been told all their lives that they are worthless, that they won’t graduate from high school or college because no one in their family ever has, that their future is to become alcoholics, and that there is no way out of the situation in which they live.
“Part of the problem is self-esteem, according to Buckley. After 60 percent of native people in Alaskan villages died from a flu epidemic in the early 1900s, the message brought by missionaries was that it was God’s judgment against native religions and native things. The message changed the way native people spoke about their culture or their traditional beliefs” —Ray Buckley
Does anyone know whether this is what the missionaries said? Or whether missionaries were a decisive force in wounding Alaskan natives’ culture and self-esteem? Did those same missionaries make it to far away places like Baffin Island, where indigenous people also have a high suicide rate?
A Native American. I was born in this country as were my parents. Does this make us Native Americans? Native, in Maine
#1 – Most of the trouble in this world is caused by people who have, frankly, too much self-esteem.
There is too much focus on self-esteem and not enough on accomplishments. There might be a reason one is failing in school NOT related to self-esteem. That needs to be explored. Plattitudes like, “you are valuable even if you can’t pass the class” only leads some to not try harder.
The real world will offer a few surprises for those with high self-esteem but little in the way of life skills.