We are not a convenient "other" waiting to destroy you

I am going to start with the thing bringing heaviness to my heart today.  Yesterday I shared my letter with you about changing the paradigm in my workplace around indian/metis peoples.  And I talked to several people and they agreed with me, but then a lot of time passed and recently when I followed up on this conversation I was told that I should join the visible minority employee network in the meantime, by two people.


Now, I may be missing something, but I am NOT a visible minority.  I am a metis person, which is quite distinct in even the government definitions.  I know this well having written many briefings on this issue for UN presentations and coordinated many working groups on the benefits/costs of changing this definition.  So those suggestions really made me think.  Now, I am a believer in intersectionality and sharing of issues across groups, but honestly, the issues of aboriginal employees are different as I understand them.  I can't see my walking into that context to push my agenda as being seen as a good thing.  It also made me wonder, are we just "other" indistinguishable from each other in this context?  Indistinguishable in our needs and histories?


Furthermore, yesterday as I was reading more in "Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods" by Shawn Wilson he mentions being told that he could not have any Indians on this thesis committee as they would be biased.  That made me so mad.  The assumption that Indians are all one and would not be discriminating enough to maintain the standards of the university and we are talking about Indian academics who have already done their time in the system - who are still suspect of savage communitarian behavior.


So white people can be unbiased towards everyone else, but the other will automatically be biased towards the "other"?  But then maybe that view is fair as we know how white men support other white men who are the right sort of person and went to the right schools and knows the right people.  We know how lighter skinned, thinner men earn more and get more promotions so maybe the fear is not of a special bias seen in the other but a fear by the dominant group that if the other gets a chance to make decisions they will treat the dominant group badly?  Or is this a need to keep Indians apart so that they can remain as a historical oddity to be brought out when convenient?


I guess this is also doubly insulting given the indian/metis values of fairness and respect where people are judged on how they act, not on what they look like or say.  What do you think about all this?