This has been an issue I have struggled with for the last several years. I remember turning 14 and discovering punk music, and subsequently riot grrrl and then realizing that if I believed in anything, it wasn't God or a religion, but it was feminism. That sounds silly, but I had never heard of anything before that aligned all of my thoughts together and displayed them so accurately. I remember blasting Kathleen Hanna and Allison Wolfe and Brody Dalle and just remembering the feeling of joy that there were women who existed who did not conform to patriarchal standards of women. They made music that was loud and angry and girly and sappy and logical and offensive.. and that was just it, they were multifaceted, real women. It really changed my life.
So I stepped into this new world of feminism and I kept reading and reading and reading. Everything I could get my hands on. I think it was the first time I was really intrinsically motivated to learn something that really mattered. Something that wasn't just superfluous and self-serving. Because while feminism could positively change my life, it was also about every other girl and woman. I was terrified of everything when I was 14 years old. I was so lost and confused and hated my body and who I was and feminism really changed the game for me. The next 3 years were full of learning and a confidence that I hadn't ever felt before.
But then feminism became a lot less clear for me. I began to notice that the adversities I faced were not the same as other girls. I had known since I was a little girl, in my head, that I was Métis on both sides of my family. My mother's side was less traditional, my father's side was more so. I never really understood what this meant. There is so much misinformation out there about what being Métis really is. I still think about 50% of the people I speak to seem to think it means you are "half Native". I just want to be quite cut and clear.. That is NOT what it means.
So I grew up with a mom with light skin but beautiful high cheekbones and wide eyes. A daddy who had dark skin and jet black hair. A Grandma whose hair never went grey even into her 80s. A family who spoke differently than any other people I had met. I just never knew what any of this meant.
It wasn't until after high school when I started working at a job that put me in contact with the Métis community that I realized they all looked and sounded like my family. They had the same accent and the same booming laugh. This is when everything changed for me.
I began noticing a variety of racially charged micro- and macro-aggressions aimed at my community and people. I remember my ex-boyfriend's mother ranting about how her daughter was acting out because she had a "Native" boyfriend and that she didn't want her daughter hanging around "Natives". I had just started seeing this boyfriend and I remember he cut his mom off to tell her that I was Métis and her response was "Well you're different honey, you're one of the few Natives that I like". Somehow this was supposed to be alright. I was constantly told I was "better" than my background, that I had risen above my pedigree. It was traumatic to be held up as the shining example that Aboriginal people are not oppressed but merely lazy and wanting everything to be given to them; "I mean look at you, you have good grades and a job and no criminal record" they would say. To suggest that I was representative of an entire populace made me feel sick. I felt like I was validating the opinion of bigots with each of my own personal successes.
I realized that most likely a huge aspect of my success was due to my white passing skin. I was able to navigate my way through school without facing very many direct macro-aggressions of racism.. without really needing to think about how I was different from anyone else. The only parts that I really noticed were things I was told I couldn't do because of being a girl, but I had feminism in my arsenal and fought back by getting good grades in school, pursuing equestrian sports and basically trying to show the world they were wrong.
About a year after I graduated from high school a new kind of feminism appeared on my radar. Intersectional Feminism. It all of a sudden became very clear to me how there are various forms of oppression and privilege and they intersect to give each and every person a different lived experience with their oppressions. I started reflecting.. a lot about my upbringing, my family, my privileges and my oppressions. All of a sudden my background made sense to me and I could not only see that my community was suffering but why they were suffering.
I grew up in a lower-middle class family. My parents could never afford their own house, we moved every few years to a smaller and less nice house. My parents couldn't afford to buy us things that other kids had. My parents made a lot of huge sacrifices to even allow me to ride horses. This is something I will always be grateful for. Horses have taught me intangible, incommunicable things about my humanity and my soul. It was the only place on earth where I felt truly accepted, grounded and simply human, but that is a topic for a whole other post. I swear my mom gave up any semblance of a life she had so that I could ride horses. Every night was spent at the barn, every penny had to be pinched so I could have one. I went to the barn and I rode and I learned and I felt safe for once. She realized the value of the life lessons learnt from horses and the esteem that would be implanted in my soul; this would help me succeed in all aspects of my life.
But this did not come without costs. My dad worked away from home, my mom spent a large portion of my childhood with severe clinical depression. She gave up University and any hope she had for her own future to raise me and my sister. I remember being taken along with her to a doctor's appointment when I was probably young enough that she thought I would never understand or remember the things that were shared in that white room. She told the doctor that she could never kill herself, only because she had to keep on taking care of her kids. She had to, it was her destiny and her burden, to handle by herself. I can never voice how grateful I am to my mother, knowing her struggles and how she faced them. As I grew older I also began to realize some other truths of our family. We have a history of alcoholism, mental illness and addictions. I never once saw my parents touch a drop of alcohol my entire childhood.. not a beer while watching the game or a glass of wine at supper. My mom faced so many days where she could barely get out of bed. My parents fought so often over my father's gambling addiction. They fought because the one thing that was the most important to us: Family, was impossible to uphold while facing the realities of poverty, bankruptcy and survival. My dad was never there.. I saw him a few times every year because the only way he could provide for us was to be absent from our lives. This was our reality; that in order for our families to physically survive we were faced with emotional and psychic collapse. My mother, who could have used nothing more than my father's emotional support, was deprived, because if he stayed with us we wouldn't have been able to eat or sleep under a roof.
It is really hard writing these things down. Documenting the very things I was so ashamed of my teenage years. The way I would feel sick to my stomach whenever a friend wanted to come over to my house. To show them that how we lived was not like how they lived. It was very emotionally straining, and it still is but for very different reasons now. I've begun to realize that the truth of our family's story lies not in my parent's decisions or actions throughout their life but because they didn't start out where their white counterparts did.
My maternal grandparents never owned a house. My paternal grandparents had 12 children. Neither families were affluent and both of my parents dropped out of high school. My mother was married to an abusive man before meeting my father. My father had also been previously married and divorced. Their stories are unique to them, but the theme is all too common within our community. I am trying to show that no matter how White I look, how rarely I experienced direct racism, it does not change the fact that I started in a more difficult place than my White peers. We have still not recovered from the centuries of oppression and persecution my family has faced.
I am caught in a weird place between being White and being Native. I am stuck in a place where I get white privilege from the colour of my skin but face so much explicit racism that a White person would never knowingly say in front of someone who is obviously Aboriginal. These are the people who smile and act polite to our faces but spew hate behind out backs without ever giving us the opportunity to defend ourselves. And I have often had to face them alone. Every time I get told I am "pretty for an Aboriginal girl" that I "don't look/sound/act Native" or that I am "Not a dark Native so you are different" I am reminded that 1. Being White is valued above my character and the proof that their stereotypes are wrong 2. That people have no clue what Aboriginal people even look like. Where people are most accustomed to seeing Cree and Dene First Nations people that they cannot even see that I am blatantly Aboriginal; my high cheekbones, my dark hair, my almond shaped eyes. 3. That because I am Métis, I am not as bad, because in their eyes I am at least partially White.
I am getting to a point where I am so uncomfortable with who I am. Not because I am ashamed but because I have disconnected from so much of my upbringing but feel out of place reaching out to Aboriginal communities. I feel as though I am somehow cheating. A white-passing girl, who came from a family that is infected with the systemic plights of Aboriginal people but who tried to raise their children as White people. As I grow up, I feel less and less connected to White philosophies and more and more connected to Aboriginal ones. I believe in ecological rhythms and the importance of Mother Earth. I do not believe in church, in God, in capitalism, in industry. I am an Atheist. I do not believe in a deity. But I do believe in something bigger than us. The Great Mystery if you will. This does NOT mean I am agnostic. I don't believe in heaven or hell, or an afterlife of any kind. But I know of our energy and feel reassured that the elements of my body will help create more life once I am gone.
While I am becoming more uncomfortable with who I am since discovering my Aboriginal roots, because I am being challenged to truly look at my identity, I have also been able to reconcile things that I never understood. Things that I was once ashamed of have become explicable. I feel more comfortable in my body. I no longer strive to alter my appearance with makeup and whiter foundation to cover up my Aboriginal traits. I have begun to stop reading White feminism and immerse myself in Aboriginal feminism. I am discovering new communities and safe-spaces and realizing that there are many other Métis people who share my struggle of feeling not quite Aboriginal but not quite White. Who came from families who tried to pass as White but couldn't quite climb out of the oppressions that the Aboriginal community faces. We are a unique people with a unique story and unique struggle but they are stories and struggles we can carry together.
I have written this piece for a variety of reasons. One is to delve into my own story and dissect it for my own personal purposes. Another is to show that even a white passing girl who grew up white cannot run from racism forever; it catches up with you. The third is to show that while my experiences are my own, I do share them with others. I stand here saying that even a petite, pretty Aboriginal girl with pale skin cannot hide from the toxic racism that plagues our country. Please consider this. I feel the weight and the pain from it on a daily basis. So please search deep within yourself and try to understand that what I feel is fractions of what the majority of the Aboriginal community face. That they come from somewhere so different from you that they may as well be from a different country. Our experiences are not parallel to those of White people and our endings are rarely ever as happy. So please consider why Aboriginal people are resentful, why they are poor, why they have addictions and why they are in jail. And please try to understand that as long as there are privileged people who are rich there will always need to be those who are poor. There will always need to be a group of people who are more persecuted and more abused. When we come from a country whose history has favoured White men for centuries, you have not given us the time or opportunities to catch up. You grow up with food in your stomachs and soft pillows and blankets to sleep on. Parents who kiss you and each other goodnight. You have nothing to worry about but school and pursuing a successful career. That is your privilege and please use it to educate yourself and to better the intentions of our entire society and how it cares for its Indigenous people.
-Kristy-nnn
