July 4th, 2021 - Writing is process. Writing is research. Writing is development. To write is to examine the finest details about society and culture. Writing in this age is to understand how technology affects us. Our behaviour, our moods, our thoughts, our influence. It is all a reflection of our world. 

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Creative writing is not normal work. It is both physical and psychological as well as political. For a writer's life, this means that our world makes us a writer. Just like other professions, most people do not choose their work, instead it is designed and automated by society.

For example at this moment in our advanced technological age, most people are being automated and influenced to do professions that is a result of current societal culture. Work that affects their psyche and their body. 

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We must question those who govern society's design. Are we designing professions that is healthy for our world? If economics is driven from the healthcare of its citizens, then the world we live in should be based on what is healthy for society and not what isn't. Automation of our world should not be based on what is a detriment for us for capitalist gains instead what creates healthier citizens and world. From what we eat, what heals our injury or keeps us sustainable, our choices even when we are not choosing, it should be based on what we find healthy. This means the access to our medicine, should be based on decolonized concepts. 

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This year there has been a debate to celebrate Canada Day, it is understandable why so many feel conflicted given our history on this land. Much of what Indigenous people want revolves around decolonized ideas that keeps our society healthy. For many Indigenous people, there still isn't a place where someone without a university degree, but has the experience and observations of society to be hired in places where they can help resolve some of the issues that Canadians face. 

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Many people who have faced challenges in their life, are the ones who should determine their own environment. For example, healthcare, someone should be in charged of knowing what is good for their health, without pre-conceived ideas based on colonialist mindset that keeps them from accessing medicine that is healthy for them. Much of the time they are not listened to. This has been a barrier to why there isn't many indigenous and indigenous-minded people in decolonized healthcare. When we think of healthcare, it is also about the homes we live in, how it is constructed or even our neighbourhood. 

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Seeing churches being burned, it is about the signifiers that they represent. For indigenous Canadians, it is a history of abuse in residential schools and the erasure of their indigenous culture as well as their contributions to this country hidden for a long time. All that was loss and colonized because of religion that was based on capitalism and creating wealth for empires. All affecting their healthcare for generations, their physical, emotional and mental health.

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For others, who have recently regained their indigenous culture, slowly rejecting the one that for generations their ancestors have been forced to adapt to, specifically colonized thinking about medicine and healthcare that has spanned now more than a few generations, it is a reminder of what has created a divided world of thinking. It brings us back to the time where temples that held our libraries were destroyed instead of churches. We must question what type of mindset that is being instilled in people that they are kept in controlled consciousness - a "maya." 

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In some of the decolonized Tamil sayings that I've heard like "We do not name our kids Maya which means dream or illusion" I've thought about this. I've questioned it in various perspectives. During this time some whose name is Maya or have named their kids Maya might have been offended of why I pondered about this small piece of information when doing research on colonialism, decolonized medicine and understanding our current matrix.

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Why did my ancestors pass this information to me and from what time does this originate? I like to think of it as from a time where ganja or medicinal marijuana was a normal part of our culture that kept the psyche of Tamils decolonized and awaken and not asleep in a Maya. The Maya is what is now known as The Matrix. A consciousness that is heavily colonized by so many groups and technology that keeps people unawakened to the design of the Maya that they live in. For colonized unawakened indigenous people, this is detrimental, and what has kept them controlled and exploited.

 

For women especially, it has kept them unaware of the structure and technology of society that controls their thinking and behaviour. Most importantly their health. Like previously before when Indigenous Canadians were forbidden from having a way of life that was healthy for them, instead to be replaced by another that created sickness, it is what is happening today for other people from colonized culture. Namely, their connection with ganja. A medicinal plant that heals when combined with other parts of traditional medicine like yoga, meditation, acupuncture, etc. 

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Much of their reluctance and their stigma around accepting that this plant is part of their culture or a medicine is due to the destructive actions and thoughts that is reiterated from colonizers. It brings me to my own experience of decolonized healthcare. 

 

For all the white and black people around me who have consumed marijuana freely, why is it when I decide to do so, I am subjected to the type of violence from being discredited, to having my experience with a medicinal plant become not about the healing but one where I have to think about politics. My psyche and body tortured by technology. 

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Why is it that I am not told about the medicinal aspects of this plants by those who consume it and have benefited from doing so. With all the effort to decriminalize and legalize this plant in a first world country, when it is finally safe to consume this plant, why has my experience not been about experiencing its healing properties and instead been tainted and destroyed by others' political interests. 

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It brings me back to the reason my ancestors pass on the information to me about being awakened in the Maya. A simple thing about the reasoning and significance about names. That was all they could say hundreds and thousands of years ago once their society became colonized and the medicine that would keep them awake in the Maya that others constructed would be taken away, criminalized, information on how to use it medicinally would be kept away so their people would become unhealed and asleep. 

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For so many indigenous Tamils, they would forget what can give them cognitive power, reasoning, creativity, and healing as well as understanding their controlled technological environments. Now as we decolonized indigenous history and medicine to understand the current controlled psyche that colonized people have, Tamil knowledge once again brings us back to the truth. 

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That what we know now as euro-centric history is largely based and built from an older civilization that had already understood medicine before it is what it is today. To this day those with Western degrees or people in the creative realm in literature or music or visual art, do not acknowledge that much of it is due to using ganja, a plant once originated from indigenous Asian culture. 

 

This is why today, we have resentment, violence, silence and supremacist thinking since the acknowledgment from where information have been stolen, looted and negatively appropriated and defiled is not revealed. 

 

What's worst when people whose ideas, culture, body have contribute to others' richness and control of society, are awakened, they are discredited so others don't have to pay or credit their "work" in contributing to our current civilization "advancement."

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It is not surprising much like before, colonialists are still colonizing with surveillance capitalism, rooted in stealing knowledge and land from indigenous people, and not being held accountable.

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More than ever now controlling the medicine that can let the people know that this is happening. Awaken them to the Maya. 

 

Like in old Tamil culture, now that I know my decolonized history, I stay awake, not asleep or a sheep. I stay unchanged and awaiting apologies from those who contributed to discrediting my life, taking parts of what would have build my credibility to those close to me so they could listen to what heals us.

 

I wish to those people who colonize my narrative with your corruption and greed that your bloodlines are extinguished of pain so you don't continue the violence on mine.                 

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