The Post On Posts

After S was born I took a job working on "Canada's Action Plan Against Racism" because I wanted my work to be something meaningful so that I could explain to my little person why I left every morning.  I really enjoyed the intellectual challenge of this file as we tried to work through how to report and measure racism. 

During this time I read a lot and a trio of novels expressed the optimism of that period for me.

 

Nation by Terry Pratchett which explores the relationship between an island boy and a victorian girl both cut off from the worlds they knew as they both realize what they may have held as truths were not as clear cut as they thought.

Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead where a nomiclature specialist is brought in to rename a town and must struggle between it's past as a haven for free slaves or it's "future" as the next technology city.  While the main character's inability to see himself almost leads to his death.

 

 

Slave to Sensation (Psy-Changelings, Book 1) (Psy/Changeling) Nalini Singh In this series she explores a world made up of humans totally focused on their minds and shape shifters who are the embodied "other" with "animal" passions.  She uses this construct as a means to explore multiculturalism and the negotiation of difference.

 

These novels impressed me with their attempt to outline a post multi-cultural world that moved on to the negotiation of other kinds of differences.  I found these narratives fascinating as we tried to take intersectionality into account as we did policy and reported on progress.

 

Yesterday I read bell hooks' essay "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance", where she speaks to the comoditization of "otherness", where we consume other cultures to provide spice to our unrelenting white culture and that this consumption allows people to feel that they have moved beyond race (aren't racist) while not actually mutually and meaningfully engaging the other.  This also reminded me of some of the work I have read on the magic black person where the black character is only there to provide support to the white character and allow the white person to fufill themselves.

 

In both these cases the "other" is comoditized into something safely and easily consumed by the white viewer and may even be a nostalgia for the "pure" representation of the "other" prior to colonialization.  She notes that while this may allow the voice of the non-white "other" to be consumed by a larger audience overall it also denies voice to a specific person(s).  "Booty" was brought back by a white girl and white rappers bring the grit to us.  We can have the black culture without giving anything back into it or actually enaging with it.  bell hooks suggests that until we move beyond the comodification of the "other"  we cannot have healthy diologue as a society.  We need to get to post - comoditization.

 

It struck me that each of these three books could be easily read within this context rather than/or as well as being post-multicultural, in that they could be seen as post-comoditization allegories as well.  Is it this post -comoditization that makes these works feel post multicultural?  Which one comes first?  In Nation, there is literally no market as there is almost no on left alive.  In Apex Hides the Hurt, comoditization is so open and ludicrous that it a parody of itself and no longer a real thing.  In the Nalini Singh books there is a contrast between the shape shifters who are focused on family and protection of a way of life (wild and free from environmental degredation) where there is enagement in the market with the aims of supporting these outcomes vs the humans who create their children in labs and will quite literally sacrifice these children for the greater good or market outcomes.

 

This narrative struck me as also applying to the larger question of claiming indigenaity.  Indian are definitally a consumable "other" and have been since contact (savage dark beauty, indian princess, strong warrior).  What is our role to support healthy mutual exchange with the dominant group and how do we reclaim power when the interaction are clearly comoditization?  How do we stop them?  And more personally, where in my life am I "consuming the other"?   

 

 

The Year of Reclaiming

I have spent the last year learning to be/think/see from a Metis viewpoint.  The last piece of my puzzle were the Elders I met when I went to the Kumik.  Some government departments bring in Elders and have a special place where aboriginal employees can come together and speak to someone/smudge.  The Elders I met listened to my whole story.  Just saying it all out loud was pretty powerful .  For all the good and the bad, it is my story. 

I got the distinct sense that my story was not a new one and rather than focusing on my question about whether I could call myself Metis, they asked me questions about how I was coping in life overall given the stresses with Joel being sick and S being challenging to manage at times.  Their response was far more powerful than any words would have been.  I was as I was and there was not a lot to talk about there.

They answered my other specific questions about how to manage those older people in our lives who are being problematic without being rude to elders.  They said "sometimes you need to live in different teepees."  I asked about my feeling that I should be doing more to fufill my potential and they focused me back to what I was dealing with at home.  Those pressures need to be the focus for me now.

From that meeting I took the courage to "come out".  We went to our first Pow Wow.  We started doing circle times every week and putting down tobbacco every morning.  I tried to talk and read more to my children about their heritage.  I started learning Cree.  I learned to bead.  I have been reading a lot.  Thinking deeply.  We lost our cats and used the teachings of the ancestors to work through that with our girls.  We wrote their names into the middle of our circle with the other departed ancestors.  That was helpful to the girls to have that ceremony.  Every circle time we remember them and the others that have passed.  They are still in our lives.

I am going back tommorrow to meet with those Elders again.  That meeting is what really go me started with this blog, thinking about how much had changed over the past year, how much I have learnt and how much some focused listening by strangers opened a space for me to be brave enought to call myself truly... I am Metis (Ojibway).  I claim that.  I still need to learn so much about what that means, but that is the journey of life and I am trying not to rush that part of it.   Don't be afraid to reclaim your truth. 

I was "perfect" once

As a child I was performativly the "perfect person".  I had white blond hair, a few curls - but not too many, blue eyes and white skin.  I was perfect. I was valued for that and I knew it.  People gave me things, took me places, let me do things that I knew were the result of how I looked and nothing else.  I was stopped so that people could pet my hair or take my picture.  I was not given a chance to say no to these interactions.  I was an object for the appreciation of others.  I needed to be a "good girl" and was dressed in ways that supported that. My body was for the enjoyment of others and they would give me stuff for that.

The reality of my status as object became very clear as I became older, my hair darkened and I was not as pale skinned.  As a teenager begining to push out against the bounds of how I was supposed to dress, as I cut my hair and my body changed I lost that perfectness and the privalage that went with that. (Not to say I was not still very privalaged as a cis het white woman.)

As an adult, that experience really made it clear to me how fickle that outside appearance is and yet how much it really impacts how we live our lives and affects how people are responding to us. 

I think you see this too in the piece I came accross in the Native Appropriations blog where she was part of a piece on the NRP about the feeling indians might have upon entering higher education.   This is a great piece and I will speak to it in another post.  This article had a picture and apparently she did not look "Indian" enought to be able to speak to the issues that were raised.  In her blog she responds to this issue quite eloquently.  How we look, and a lot of that is out of our control, is being judged and disected by those around us and we are doing the same thing to others.    Kim Anderson in her book "A Recognition of Being" addresses this issue of being "indian" enough and describes it as being another kind of assimilationist practice, to make native people dissapear so that natives no longer exist and.....the indian problem is solved.  She speaks to the inciduousness of this, as it is protective liberals who are policing these self identifications.

I had a conversation with a collegue who on my mentioning that I have learning disabilities told me "not to limit myself" and you know what, I do have limits.  That doesn't mean I can't "dream big" and "succeed" but his telling me not to have limits didn't do nothing to make them go away and really was trying to take away my space to share my reality as a person with disabilities.

Don't let anyone make you dissapear.  Don't let them shut down the conversation.  Your reality, your voice is important.  Not to say that we don't benefit from listning to wise people who can see us in ways we cannot, but if the conversation is about stealing your space, as an indian, a woman, or a anything, don't trust them. 

On the Proclivities and Fashion of Dogs

I was one to mock dogs wearing coats, hearing the words of my grandfather about city people pampering their animals.  But it gets cold enought here that our dog needs one sometimes.  It is blue with trim.  We thought he looked like a failed high school jock in it.  Or failed at obedience school anyway.

We were surprized to get comments about how this colour of his jacket suggested that he was supporting one hockey team over another.  After several types of these comments and given that he appeared to be supporting the team from another city we knew we needed to do something.


 Around the same time I was reading about different aboriginal groups, including the Metis, who would make elaborate coats for their dogs and horses.  I thought this solution would allow me to 1. Connect to my culture 2. Ensure my dog was not supporting a sports team and getting us into conversations about it 3. Let out my gaudy side!

So I made him a coat which includes beaded fringe at the front, an applique with a moose on it sewn in with crystal beads in pink and yellow and a felt applique of flowers and leaves, with more beads.
 
Most of the comments the dog would get were when Joel and the dog walked me to work so the first day Snowey wore his "new" coat he gots lots of comments.  Mostly people were laughing or enjoying the gaudyness and happy little beagle.  We also walked by an couple of Innuit folks.  They were behind us for some time and the woman could not stop laughing, cause while the Innuit also make coats for dogs, they are usually for huskies.  The sight of such a small dog in that kind of coat was hillarious to her.  Without ever speaking I felt like we made a connection.  So all you urban Metis, let's bring back fabulous dog coats and make winter mornings a little more amusing.

Music Friday

My suggestions for this cold Friday is to listen to Samian.  His album Enfant De La Terre is haunting and raw.  What are you listning to right now?

Back to fat

Eeh-nis-kim.  Drawing 1832

I really like a certain type of order.  I went through the library catologue recently and made a list of all the books related to first nations people that I wanted to read.  I am now working my way throught this list and it has given me a lot to think about.  In particular, I am working through "A Recognition of Being" by Kim Anderson which has blown my mind and I will writeabout it once I have thought it through.  It is kind of overwhelming at the moment.

Picture of an Upper Thompson worman with Child. 1913
Note the photographer is  named, but the woman and child are not.

Yestersday I flipped through "Trade Ornament Usage Among the Native Peoples of Canada" by Karlis Karklins.  While this book is only from 1992 it seems really old fashion.  While the writer(s) is aware that indians are not all savages there is some ambiguity about them - they are not quite real people.  While that may be a quirk of anthropology it makes the book a little bit uncomfortable in some places especially where they are trying to describe some of the adornments that the writer(s) find a bit much for their "refined" tastes.

Ju-ah-kis-gaw, a Chippewa woman. 
1835 Painting

There is also an early note in the introduction section that "some sources are more reliable than others.  Observations made by experienced anthropoligist are obviously more reliable than those made by the average traveller."  Cause obviously the white male anthropologist would be completely unbiased and have no motivation to set the indian in a larger narrative of progress or redemption or anything.  They are just pretty great.  That said, the book has a lot of full colour pictures and close ups of clothing details that are interesting as inspiration when viewed with a bit of sceptisism.

 

What really struck me about this book though was how it challenged my steriotypes.  I guess I still have Pochahontas stuck in there deep cause I kinda thought these women would be reedy and slender.  Weren't all the Indians starving and barely getting by in their traditional lifestyles?  Wasn't that why the government and the church needed to "save" them?  As I looked through these pictures, there was a range of body types and recognizing that women who were painted may have diproportionately been "better off" or choosen as subject for other reasons, there were a noticible number of sturdy women.  It also struck me how these women look like my aunties.  It also provided me with another picture of beauty outside of the skinny white girls.

 

 

 

Perspective

My daughter R always gives me something to think about.  The other night she wanted to know if the ancestors and spirits could smell our farts.  Getting dressed this morning reminded me of her response to this pin.  She looked at it and asked "why does that fish have a bear on his bum?"

It is all perspective eh?  Asking the questions from a lot of points and really not just paying attention to the big bear but the little fish too.