I had a workshop and they said “what makes up your worldview?” I said “books” and they laughed.

The workshop was about cultural sensitivity and safety, learning about indigenous culture and how it's different to non-Indigenous culture.

The task was "list down 5 things that make up your world view".

I wrote Family, Friends, Teachers, Media, Books.

Other students in the class (it was a post-graduate course, so all the students there were 25yo to 45yo) wrote the first 4 things I wrote , but they also wrote culture, values, beliefs.

Then we all went around and everyone said their list out loud. When it came to me, I said what I wrote on the list.

And then the lecturer said, "books?"

And I said "yes"

Then he looked away immediately and then a student laughed out loud, then there was an awkward silence. It didn't help my self esteem.

But I said "because I read"

And then we moved onto the next task.

I didn't say this part at the workshop, but books shape my world-view because I read historical books written in a narrative way (e.g. Hiroshima by John hersey), and I read memoirs to learn about people's experiences (memoirs from the past and memoirs published in the present time).

Another weird thing that happened at the workshop is that the lecturer said "indigenous culture is spiritually oriented". So what would non-indigenous culture be? I said out loud, "material".

And the lecturer said "material?"

Then he looked away again awkwardly.

So I said "materially oriented"

And he didn't look at me again. And there was an awkward silence.

Then he clicked on the PowerPoint presentation to put the answer up, and the answer was "scientifically oriented"

So I felt so awkward. The workshop wasn't conducive to being culturally sensitive and safe.

But the reason I said materially oriented is because non-indigenous culture (I.e. western culture) seems to be all about the house, money, wealth, job, education, where you live (e.g. high socio-economic status), branded clothes, cars, perfectly curated instagram posts showing the highlights of your life.

Can you please tell me if it's worth my mental anguish? Are my answers incorrect? And if it's not incorrect, my answers are a little bit weird, right?