Indigenous traditions are not frozen in time any more than other people’s traditions are. Our peoples have been trading more than goods for thousands of years, passing along ceremonies, medicines, and ideas just as easily as copper and fish. We are capable of change and embrace it, as long as that change respects our reciprocal obligations to one another and to the territories in which we live. We do not need to look to Western liberal notions of individual equality that so often ignore our communal existence and insist land and resources must be thought of as property. Instead, we can look to the laws of our Indigenous neighbours if we need to review our traditions. It is precisely this approach that is being taken up by many women and Two-Spirit individuals in Indigenous communities as they pursue sexual health, revitalization of language and culture, and renewal of relationships with the land.
A focus on trans and Two-Spirit people as central to decolonization is incredibly important. The groundbreaking work of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) epitomizes this approach. NYSHN works with:
Indigenous peoples across the United States and Canada to advocate for and build strong, comprehensive, and culturally safe sexuality and reproductive health, rights, and justice initiatives in their own communities.7
NYSHN provides pragmatic, honest, and clear information on sexual health, as well as engages in the renewal and revitalization of Indigenous traditions related to all aspects of Indigenous health.
The barriers currently facing Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people are severe and informed by the history of colonialism. These barriers include the ongoing removal of Indigenous children from their families in numbers that exceed those taken by the residential-school system and the Sixties Scoop combined. While this cataclysmic interference has taken a devastating toll on the health of all of our peoples, colonially imposed gender imbalances ensure Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people bear the brunt of the consequences. The added marginalization experienced by Two-Spirit people can sometimes be overlooked because the social outcomes for Indigenous peoples are already, in general, very grim. To look at any of this solely through the lens of Western feminism is to miss the larger picture.
The imposition of colonial patriarchy has marginalized Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people through Indian Act governance systems, and by the Indian Act itself. As discussed in chapter 4, until 1985, when amendments were made to the Indian Act, an Indigenous woman or female-presenting Two-Spirit person who married a non-Indigenous man lost her legal status as an Indian, and was unable to pass on status to her children. In this way, generations of women and their children were denied their identities, and even their homes. The impact of the loss of legal identity is still being felt among Indigenous peoples through the struggle to reconnect with their families and communities.
Until very recently, Two-Spirit people were not recognized at all by Canadian law or society. In the eyes of Canadians, they do not exist; they are concealed by the gender-essentialized structures of colonialism, which have abolished their traditional places in Indigenous societies. So effective were Church- and government-led erasures of Two-Spirit people that reconstructing traditional Two-Spirit roles and ceremonies is often seen as peripheral to wider movements of resurgence. The work of groups like NYSHN reminds us that we must decolonize even our priorities as Indigenous peoples.
Structural erasures of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people have had a role in shaping their work as agents of resurgence. In a way, the overwhelming masculinization of Indian Act governance systems has ensured that Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people are less likely to be co-opted by colonial powers, and less invested in maintaining those colonial structures. Indigenous women have continued to exercise power through traditional (and often unpaid) ways, thereby maintaining traditional governance structures in many communities. Two-Spirit people have not necessarily experienced the same retention of traditional roles, however, and much work is needed to reconstruct and recentre our Two-Spirit relations within our communities. Acknowledging and honouring Two-Spirit people is vital to resisting resurgence based on gender essentialism that purports to “honour women” while simply recreating colonial patriarchal gender roles with a bit of Indian flair.
The deliberate exclusion of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people from colonial structures of power has meant that, almost by default, the work of these people is highly politicized, as it must happen outside those colonial structures. This is not to say Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people have no access to colonial structures of power. In recent years, there has been more inclusion of women, though not necessarily of Two-Spirit people, in Indian Act governance systems. Yet, one has only to do a head count of male to female Indian Act chiefs to notice this recent inclusion shamefully mirrors the “inclusion” of women in Canadian politics, which is tokenism at best.
Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people experience all of the barriers faced by settler women and LGBT people, as well as the barriers experienced by Indigenous peoples in a state defined by settler colonialism. These barriers cannot be sifted out and separated from one another.
Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people must bear a heavy burden as they work to reestablish and revitalize Indigenous sociopolitical orders, exercise sovereignty, and live resurgence; indeed, it can be very dangerous and draining work. It should not be necessary to work so hard to overcome barriers imposed by people who were supposed to share these lands as guests and, eventually, as kin, not as rulers. Nonetheless, to exist as an Indigenous woman or Two-Spirit person is an inherently political act. Simply resisting erasure is part of the work.
NOTES
1.Wesley Thomas, and Sue-Ellen Jacobs, “And We Are Still Here: From Berdache to Two-Spirit People,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 23, no. 2 (1999): 91–107, http://www.socqrl.niu.edu/forest/SOCI454/Berdache.html.
2.“Two-Spirit Community,” Re:searching for LGBTQ Health, accessed October 22, 2015, http://www.lgbtqhealth.ca/community/two-spirit.php.
3.Hamish Copley, “The Disappearance of the Two-Spirit Traditions in Canada,” The Drummers Revenge (blog), August 11, 2009, https://thedrummersrevenge.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/the-disappearance-of-the-two-spirit-traditions-in-canada/. This piece is excellent.
4.Part of this chapter was originally published in Issue 2 of Guts magazine; Chelsea Vowel, “Indigenous Women and Two-Spirited People: Our Work Is Decolonization!” Guts Canadian Feminist Magazine, Spring 2014, http://gutsmagazine.ca/issue-two/indigenous-women-two-spirited-people-work-decolonization.
5.There are few resources available on Two-Spirit identities and experiences. I crowdsourced some suggestions for those of you who want more to read than just this chapter:
Fiction
Thomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1998). Craig Womack, Drowning in Fire (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001).
Nonfiction
Qwo-Li Driskill, et al., eds., Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics and Literature (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011).
Qwo-Li Diskill, et al., eds., Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011).
Drew Hayden Taylor, ed., Me Sexy: An Exploration of Native Sex and Sexuality (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2008).
Alex Wilson, “How We Find Ourselves: Identity Development and Two-Spirit People,” Harvard Educational Review 44, no. 2 (1996).
Dana Wesley, “Reimagining Two-Spirit Community: Critically Centering Narratives of Urban Two-Spirit Youth” (master’s thesis, Queen’s University, 2015), https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/1974/13024/1/Wesley_Dana_L_201504_MA.pdf.
Video
Kelly Malone, “VIDEO: Journey of Indigenous Gender Identity,” ckom.com, November 8, 2014, http://ckom.com/story/video-journey-indigenous-gender-identity/447504.
Lydia Nibley, Two Spirits, Film, directed by Lydia Nibley (2011; Riding the Tiger), http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/f
ilms/two-spirits/. (Trigger warning for transphobic violence. The film deals with the murder of Fred Martinez, a 16-year-old Two-Spirit Navajo. It also discusses traditional/contemporary Two-Spirit experiences.)
6.Cree term for the Americas.
7.Native Youth Sexual Health Network, accessed October 22, 2015, http://www.nativeyouthsexualhealth.com/.
PART 3
Myth-Busting
13
The Myth of Progress
Since December 2012 and the rise of the Idle No More movement, there have been numerous teach-ins throughout the country. Some of them focus on the theme of reconciliation. Others provide necessary background to those unfamiliar with the causes of Indigenous discontent, while others attempt to provide possible visions for the future. Whether you agree with a focus on education versus a widespread series of actions, it is clear much work is needed to overcome some very pervasive and damaging stereotypes.
You never have to wait long for unambiguously racist opinions, depicting Indigenous peoples in an unflattering light, to be given a public platform. In fact, certain people in this country manage to make a living claiming to be experts on us while basically assuring Canadians that Indigenous peoples are inferior and broken in every possible way. I don’t like to provide a platform for this kind of thing, but this one chapter requires us to take a look at these narratives for a brief moment; so, my apologies in advance.
In January of 2013, a community paper in Manitoba, the Morris Mirror, ran an editorial by its editor-in-chief, Reed Turcotte, that likened Indigenous peoples to terrorists and decried our “corruption and laziness.”1 Not to be outdone, octogenarian Nanaimo resident Don Olsen submitted a letter to the editor of the Nanaimo Daily News in March of 2013, titled, “Educate First Nations to Become Modern Citizens,” detailing our supposed total lack of achievements and inability to survive in a modern world2 – that’s the really nice summary version; it’s a pretty awful piece.
Rounding out this vituperative triumvirate in July of the same year was Karin Klassen, a Calgary Herald journalist. She wrote an article that, in essence, defended the Sixties Scoop and suggested that First Nations peoples are culturally unfit to parent.3 Her entire defence of the wholesale removal of Indigenous children from their families was that adoptive and foster families meant well. This opinion piece was not offered by a random citizen, but was delivered by a seasoned, paid journalist. In her article, she ignored all of the research on the subject in favour of a kneejerk personal reaction supported by nothing more than her anecdotal experiences. At its very best, the article was an example of a gross lack of professionalism.
The Morris Mirror experienced significant backlash and, despite its claims to “represent the views of the local community,” local residents were quick to voice their disgust with the views expressed. In response, some businesses withdrew their ads from the publication.
The Nanaimo Daily also experienced negative publicity and lost ad revenue for its choice to publish Olsen’s letter. Unlike the Morris Mirror, the Nanaimo Daily offered a full apology and withdrew the article.4 By then, a number of people had published rebuttals to the letter, including a very detailed one by Danica Denommé, in which she highlighted Indigenous achievements and innovation.5 In contrast, the Calgary Herald did not apologize or withdraw Klassen’s piece.
In April of 2013, a British Columbia New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate resigned after some of her online comments about First Nations peoples came to light.6
You might be saying to yourself, “Well, self, don’t these examples show how there are now consequences for writing racist things? Now that papers know they can lose advertising, and people know they can lose their jobs or political positions, things must be getting better!”
If only that were true. Unfortunately, opinion pieces and articles like these continue unabated. Sometimes, they are presented somewhat more carefully, but generally still contain gems like this one from Conrad Black in June of 2015: “Despite everything, even the First Nations should be grateful that the Europeans came here”7 – this, after a discussion about residential schools. Sometimes, these pieces are so dripping with sarcasm and contempt it is difficult to read through them fully, like in a book review by Réjean Morissette, also in June of 2015.8 Morissette denies that Indigenous peoples lived in Quebec before the French arrived; but rather, were pushed there to escape the “belliqueux [warlike] Mohawks,” or under pressure from United States colonists, as well as coming to participate in the fur trade. This, of course, leaves Quebec’s hands clean – no colonialism there, since there were no Indigenous peoples to colonize!
To provide a more recent example of a politician losing their position for racist comments, a Conservative riding association director lost her position in 2015 for her social media comments about Indigenous peoples, including one targeting the recently crowned Mrs. Universe, Ashley Callingbull (nêhiyaw), whom she described as “a monster.”9 So, no, I wouldn’t exactly say things have gotten better.
The fact that people are able to outright dismiss literally centuries of oppression as though this could have no possible impact on events today, or claim that we somehow deserved to be colonized, or even flat out deny prior Indigenous presence (like Morissette) never ceases to astound me. How is this even possible? Clearly the first step, as exemplified by Klassen, is to claim good intentions negate oppression. Another tactic is to say, “Those were different times.”10
When dealing with these kinds of opinions, one tends to have to weigh the pros and cons of ignoring them, or providing an often emotionally exhausting rebuttal. Indigenous peoples and allies are often faced with putting in extreme effort to refute and educate, but it can feel like little progress is being made.
Media portrayals of Indigenous peoples in Canada
That feeling is unfortunately supported by extensive research. Anderson and Robertson’s Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers provides exhaustive evidence of how little the narrative has changed in the media since 1869.11 In fact, Anderson and Robertson assert in their introduction that, “with respect to Aboriginal peoples, the colonial imaginary has thrived, even dominated, and continues to do so in mainstream English-language newspapers.”12
The imaginary to which they refer is the way in which Canada has created an image of itself, based not so much on historical fact as on ideological interpretation. In doing so, Canada has necessarily had to rely upon an image of Indigenous peoples, which, as expressed by Turcotte, Olsen, Klassen, et al., portrays us as pretty much useless. Seeing Red was published in 2005, and I would have no trouble at all finding you hundreds of examples since then of exactly the kind of racist, patronizing, anti-Indigenous propaganda Anderson and Robertson meticulously catalogued.
How is it that so little progress has been made to overcome this narrative in 147 years? Certainly, the colonial myths that continue to dominate media discourse have existed for much longer than this. Yet, one would hope that nearly a century and a half of technological and social development would see a corresponding shift in mainstream attitudes. Instead, we see the same arguments being made year after year after year.
Of course, the idea that Canadian society is evolving and progressing is an important part of the colonial imaginary. The myth is that progress is tied to the passage of time, thus, things are always inevitably getting better. When Canadians consider the injustices faced by Indigenous peoples, those injustices are nearly always located in the past. The irony is that every generation has located such injustice in the past, and only rarely in contemporary contexts. Were this actually true, no injustice could have possibly occurred ever, much less be understood to continue today!
Canadians who do recognize historical injustice seem to understand it in this way:
Bad things happened.
Bad things stopped happening and equality was achieved.
The low social and political status held by Indigenous peoples is now wholly based on the choice to be corrupt, lazy, in
efficient, and unsuited to the modern world. (More on this in the next chapter.)
In other words, there is no history of colonialism and systemic racism that informs the modern view of Indigenous peoples, because that problem was supposedly solved at some point in the past. The “real” racism is in conflating “legitimate” dislike for Indigenous peoples (based not on race or ethnicity, but rather on the “bad choices we make”) with historic colonialism/racism “which is over.” In continuing to discuss colonialism and racism as present-day concerns, Indigenous peoples are engaging in so-called “reverse-racism and oppressing blameless settlers.”
Canada is hardly unique in this ahistorical approach. In the United States, slavery is also located in the distant past, and the belief that full equality was achieved, at some nebulous but definite point, is widely accepted (at least by settlers) as true. Thus, anti-Black sentiment is based not on race but on “true generalizations” of all the “bad choices Black people have made” since they became “equal.” To even suggest this view as untrue raises hackles.
At least the United States admits slavery happened; in Canada, many still seem to think there was no enslavement here, believing only that Canada was a shining safe station on a glorious Underground Railroad.13
Flip the narrative.
The fact is that what we all learn about Canadian history is wrong. Every single one of us, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, has been fed a series of lies, half-truths, and fantasies intended to create a cohesive national identity. What is most startling about this is that a great many people are aware of the errors and omissions present in our system of education and in our public discourse, yet there has not been a national attempt to rectify this.
That is not to say no effort has been made. The inclusion of events into the mainstream consciousness – events I only heard rumours about when I was in school – has been incredibly important. Acknowledging Japanese internment, the Chinese Head Tax, residential schools, and a host of other less-than-inspiring events and policies has certainly taken us beyond the kind of starry-eyed propaganda served up for a long time in this country.
Indigenous Writes Page 15