Indigo – the sixth colour of the rainbow, is often referred to as the colour of the night-time sky, the dream time, when Aboriginal Peoples are more open to receiving messages from the Spirit World. This colour also refers to the “third-eye chakra,” which means “spiritual seeing.” Indigo refers to the skills required for spiritual or cultural literacy – the ability to interpret dreams, visions, or natural events, which are seen to be messages from the Spirit World – the sighting of an animal, the shape of a cloud, seeing a certain person at a particular point in time, and so forth.

Since time immemorial, Aboriginal Peoples have believed in a Spirit World, what we often refer to as our “unseen helpers” – unseen with the naked eye that is, but most certainly seen with the Spirit Eye.

We believe that Spirit speaks to us in imagery, thoughts, sounds, and feelings. Some cultures call this clairvoyance (images and visions), claircognizance (just a knowing, without even knowing how you know), clairaudience (hearing sounds, such as an inner voice or an actual voice, or even a certain song at a certain point in time so that it has a message for you), and clairsentience (feelings in or on the body – tingles, tiny tears at the corner of your eyes when you don’t even feel sad). My experience has been that we need to learn to recognize these, and to interpret what they mean. The effects of the Cartesian Era and a system that focuses only on that which can be validated by science has socialized this way of knowing out of a lot of people, not just Aboriginal Peoples.

At the Niagara Regional Native Centre, Jacquie Labonte gave Learners the option of participating in a sweat lodge. Approximately forty percent chose to do so. As they related experiences in the lodge to each other, they began to interpret the images they had seen. They began to understand that, for Aboriginal Peoples, many events in life are to be interpreted symbolically and archetypally. At one point, this group was considering doing a “dictionary” of the images.

Violet – the seventh colour of the rainbow, is often thought to be a healing colour. Some Aboriginal cultures understand violet to mean wisdom, the ability to understand things, to have true power (inner and spiritual), to respect, and to know in a holistic way. Violet refers to the holistic base to Aboriginal literacy, the way in which we integrate all of the above – facilitating spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical learning outcomes – striving for balance.