stories – Page 2 – Moontime Warrior

My ancestors survived colonization and all I got was this lousy eye twitch

August 20, 2016September 26, 2016Erica Violet Lee3 Comments

I have a medical condition called blepharospasm.

In my body, this manifests as a muscle twitch in my eyebrow that gets worse when I’m anxious or under stress. The twitching turns into headaches and irritation that make it difficult for me to focus while reading or writing.

My eye twitch developed over the past year, surely unrelated to the misadventures of being an urban Indigenous woman on the Canadian prairies, travelling to Paris for an international climate conference, and attempting to challenge the racist structures of academic philosophy.

Botox is the only treatment available for blepharospasm (no, my face is not expressionless and yes, I can still raise my eyebrows), but it is not a permanent solution. So every few months, I go into a clinic that specializes in cosmetic surgery and injectables for treatment. In my experience, the clinic serves a clientele of apparently wealthy, sometimes older, almost entirely white women.

As I hit my mid-twenties and note the already substantially different ways that academic men/all men interact with me as I get older, I should make it clear I’m not here to shame anyone who uses injectables or surgery for cosmetic reasons. Peoples bodies are their own, full stop. Furthermore, the chance to conform to certain expectations of femininity is crucial for avoiding increased violence for many people, something which ought to be recognized as medically necessary.

Still, the world of cosmetic surgery is a space where whiteness is upheld as the standard for women’s health and beauty (with the two often conflated), accessible only by the relatively wealthy.

An example of the type of posters I get to read while waiting for the doctor. Those “vaginal rejuvenation” posters especially amplify my twitchiness.

And so my colonial-trauma-eye-twitch brought me deeper into the wacky world of white femininity and cosmetic surgery.

The Procedure

It costs about $550 for my injections every 3-4 months, which is covered under the Saskatchewan health plan’s exception drug status. Even though the treatment is medically necessary, I’ve had trouble accessing the proper information and paperwork to get timely reimbursement, and I’ve missed treatments as a result because I couldn’t pay out of pocket.

In the office, the workers are kind, but I can’t help but fear that I will receive worse treatment because I’m a poor visibly Native woman asking for health care in a space not meant for me. I consciously dress as well as I can for my appointments in an attempt to lessen the impacts of racism on the health care I will receive. During my last appointment, a peppy young white woman walked in off the street into the fancy waiting room with bare feet and a hemp ankle bracelet, showcasing a carefreewhitegirl privilege which aggravated my twitchy eye even more.

why

Sometimes my eye twitch is a mini-manifestation of my body’s refusal to exist without complaint under a suffocating colonial order. I wish this acknowledgment made it a less exhausting and expensive condition to live with.

The Healing

Screen Shot 2016-08-20 at 7.14.29 PM

main offenders

The doctors, nurses, and office workers at the clinic are all very white-skinned, most with platinum blonde hair. As a result, I rarely leave an appointment without getting comments on my hair, my skin color, and my appearance in general.

Once, while laying back in the chair being examined for a condition that is likely a direct result of the stress of colonial trauma on my body in the first place, a nurse told me: “Your skin is such a beautiful color. It’s not brown, but just, like, the perfect tan.”

While this might seem like a compliment, it was also an attempt to separate my beauty from the fact that I am a Native woman. It was a statement meant to exempt me from the category of “brown-skinned”, as if pointing out my Obviously Indigenous appearance would be an insult. I wanted to tell her that my skin is not “tan”: it is brown, and my beauty exists because of my brownness and because I am Native, not in spite of it.

With Fanon running through my head and the doctor’s french-manicured hand maneuvering a giant needle around my eye sockets, I just mumbled, “oh thaaaanks!” and offered up the name of my favourite sunscreen when she asked.

(Is this #sisterhood???)

The remark led me to recall another incident, when I was in a similar-but-different vulnerable position with a white guy who also told me “your skin is such a beautiful color”. I wondered for the rest of that evening why – though I already knew the answer – he couldn’t simply have said, “you are beautiful”.

Native women aren’t allowed to be beautiful in the eyes of white folks, at least not in the same way as white women. Our long dark hair is a “beautiful” object of fascination in the same way they admire furs or hides. Our beaded earrings are “beautiful” magnets for white folks who can never resist grabbing at our ears without our consent, as if they expect we’re made of the same hard plastic as the little Indian dolls sold in Canadiana gift shops, and not of flesh that feels legitimate pain worthy of proper medical attention. Our skin color is “beautiful” as long as it is caramel or golden or tan and not brown while black isn’t even a possibility on their checklist of What Natives Look Like. Our features are prized as exotic objects, but to be deemed a beautiful subject in one’s entirety is still something generally reserved for white women.

Earlier this year, Billy-Ray Belcourt gave a talk entitled “Gallstones and the Colonial Politics of the Future”. He mentions how his doctor was shocked that as a young person, he had a condition that generally only occurs in older people (except in the case of Indigenous folks), linking it to the real impacts of colonialism on our physical health and on the health care we receive.

As the doctor empties a third needle into my face to temporarily freeze the colonial eye twitch I’ll endure the rest of my life, she chirps, “It’s great that you started this procedure so young: you’ll never get wrinkles!”

My Optimism Wears Moccasins and is Loud: On Paris, Heavy Metal, and Chasing Freedom

April 30, 2016December 8, 2016Erica Violet Lee5 Comments

Content Warning: sexual assault; Indigenous Feminist anger that cuts like the lead riff in “The Trooper”

My optimism wears moccasins and is loud.

My optimism sometimes wears moccasins and is always loud.

As a Nehiyaw girl growing up in a small prairie city in Canada, I got into punk, hard rock, and metal music early on. My “rebellious phase” was spent at the local goth club between the ages of 13 – 15. Fortunately, the rebellion never involved drinking or drugs or sex. I didn’t have my first drink until I turned 19; my first kiss (with a boy…) a few months earlier. My vice was loud music. I grew up with other Indigenous kids who loved and lived metal music, and I have yet to outgrow that love.

Paris and COP 21

bridge

On a bridge over the Seine for the #Canoes2Paris action led by Indigenous people

I spent December in Paris for the United Nations COP 21 climate conference. In the context of global climate catastrophe, metal is the only honest soundtrack.

“We’re standing here by the abyss / and the world is in flames”
– Ghost, “He Is“

Hey Brown Kid!: You are inheriting a world that the powerful, rich, and greedy are fucking up. You have no money. You are told at every turn that you have no power, no chance: so you might as well have a furious soundtrack.

climate march poster

a half-removed poster for the Paris December 7th climate march in a metro station

Metal isn’t (necessarily) all about nihilism. The alternative to giving up is tending to the anger and learning from it. The alternative is coming to the realization that anger is the only humane reaction to injustice.

The trouble with cultivating anger is that it builds up inside your body, and it can rip you into pieces. Indigenous youth understand better than anyone that the cost of built-up anger with no outlet is drugs, self-harm, and suicide.

There is a stunning Icelandic film called Metalhead (Málmhaus), about a young woman who lives in a small rural community and embraces metal music as a way to confront death and hopelessness. The final scene is iconic, and will turn you into a puddle of melting corpsepaint if you, too, have headbanged in your room to Symphony of Destruction. The film’s themes translate well into the current realities of so many Indigenous communities.

I remember once, an old môniyaw professor asked me to send him an example of “your people’s music” after a conversation where he assumed the only instrument we used was “simple drums”. I sent him Biipiigwan (yes, that’s Anishinaabemowin).

Loud music is a fantastic traditional medicine.

The Show

ghost1

[Ghost at La Cigale]

On December 7^th, I went to see a concert by one of my favourite metal bands, Ghost.

I have a history of traveling in the pursuit of loud music. Running away from the incapacitation of depression exacerbated by staying still – running toward loudness, speed, feeling, and life. I kept an eye out for other metal shows in Paris at the same time but was disturbed at the possibility of walking into a white supremacist metal show. Being a Brown or Black metal fan, anywhere (but perhaps amplified in Europe) means the risk of unwittingly walking into a literal neo-Nazi concert.

Ghost’s singer, Papa Emeritus III, adorns himself like a demonic pope draped in velvet (…stay with me, now) while the other musicians wear variations of dark cloaks and masks. The identities of the musicians are hidden.

The lyrics mock religion, wealth, and worship. Something about the ghoulish aesthetic resonates with me, unsurprisingly, given Canada’s legacy of church-run residential schools stealing Indigenous children from their homes. Metalhead has similar themes.

The concert was at La Cigale in the 18^th arrondissement, a short walk from metro station Barbès – Rochechouart. The show had sold out months earlier, so I walked around the venue to find a ticket scalper, preparing to struggle through a shady transaction in a second language.

I first saw him standing on the street corner, texting on his phone. One of the guitarists, who I recognized by his distinctive hair and his jeans – I think most musicians have that same pair of well-worn tour jeans. I walked up to introduce myself. Surprised that I had recognized him, we went into a bar nearby and had drinks.

I asked him how he was doing. He replied, “I’m fucking exhausted. We’ve been on the road for months.”

Explaining that I was in town for the climate conference, we talked about Sami politics and the environment. We talked about the similarities in landscapes and weather in Sweden and Canada; the isolation of small towns, the love of metal. Even in his exhaustion, he was kind and warm.

———

“It’s Paris, so they line up so neatly and always right on time.” No one in line for the concert recognizes him as he walks past; or if they do, they’re too Parisian cool to admit it.

Heading into the venue, I thought of the times I walked through graveyards in the middle of the night, with friends and a flask of red wine, listening to his music. I thought about telling him. I didn’t. I tried to be Parisian cool. (Cree taciturn?)

The After Party

“In the night / I am real”
– Ghost, “If You Have Ghosts“

The after party was at a bar called “The Mayflower” – the name of an infamous colonial ship. I cringed and laughed and complained. I drank absinthe and felt light on my feet, even though I had been dancing the whole night. Even though we were in a bar called “The Mayflower”.

That’s the thing about Paris. No matter how much I wanted to lose myself in the beautiful surroundings, I was unable to fully relax in such a hyper-colonial space.

Paris is a city that once had human zoos – where Black and Indigenous people were taken and displayed for the entertainment of gawking Europeans.

Paris is a city that displays colonial conquest in its museums, refusing to return ceremonial objects and even human remains to the Indigenous nations from which they were stolen.

So, forgive me for the absinthe.

I said au revoir and skipped off into the night, dancing over cobblestones to catch the metro home.

In Transit, 1

I saw this poster in the metro stations: a government advertisement promoting travel to Canada. The photo shows a vast, snowy white landscape with huskies pulling a sled. The caption reads: “Explorez sans fin / Canada / Keep exploring”. An advertisement of terra nullius – the notion of unoccupied, unused land which was invoked at contact to justify colonization of North America.

keep exploring

When I talk about colonialism, extractive industry, and climate change as having direct impacts on the bodies of Indigenous women, I don’t mean any of it as a metaphor.

———

There is something about the intersection of patriarchy and colonialism that gazes upon us in our moments of freedom and decides it will try to steal that, too. Europe’s history of colonizing (the Indigenous lands now known as) Canada is not something of the past that has vanished. Empire requires constant maintenance.

In the metro station, I was sexually assaulted.

When the man chose to randomly attack me he did it while I was in transit – on my way home from a concert by one of my favourite bands.

When he chose to attack me, I had just finished a drink with friends. I wondered if my blood alcohol content would be printed as a headline if I went missing.

When he chose to attack me, he became angry as I repeatedly pushed him away and refused him access to something that wasn’t his.

As I push the unwelcome white hands of this man away from my brown skin in a European capital, I push back on terra nullius.

In my refusal / I am real

All those times I said NO, yet he still doesn’t seem to understand – his doctrine of discovery is worthless on the surface of my skin. I was here first, and here I remain.

Yelling “no” in his face, the words hit my throat hard, the same way it would feel a few days later to yell “no” at rows of gendarmerie – French riot police – lined up with their rifles and shields to protect oil companies.

I ran up the steps and hit the emergency call button. I was too flustered to work my way through any intelligible French, so the man on the other end did not understand me. My attacker ran away. (Later, when I tried to report it to the police, no one spoke English so I was turned away. The next time I went back with friends who spoke fluent French, but the station was closed.)

I exited the metro station, expecting him to attack me again from behind every corner of the winding tunnel. I gripped my phone with its dead battery and thought about how best to use it as a weapon.

———

In response to the extent of gendered and sexualized violence we faced on the streets and in the conference centre alike, some members of our group suggest we do not roam the streets alone; that we implement a buddy system.

In response, I hop on a train to Belgium the next afternoon, alone, without telling anyone until I am across the border.

In Transit, 2: Antwerp

[On the train from Paris to Antwerp]

You are cast out from the heavens to the ground
blackened feathers falling down
You will wear your independence like a crown

– Ghost, “From the Pinnacle to the Pit”

I am happiest when I am moving; something to do with the histories of migrations in my blood.

One of the hardest things to learn as a young Indigenous person is slowing down. How do I force myself to be patient in the face of constant devastation? Why would I slow down when I might not get the chance to grow older? So, the speed of the train hurtling out of France and that loud, fast music in my headphones feels like freedom.

Upon arrival in Antwerp, I realized I had absolutely no knowledge of the Dutch language. The sudden, total immersion was frightening and exhilarating.

[Antwerp]

I navigated my way to the show at Muziekcentrum, where I was on the guest list. 13-year-old me would think I was so cool. I danced unabashedly, learning quickly that Belgian metal crowds are apparently very polite and barely move.

The show was magic; the loudness was medicine.

Ghost 3

[Ghost]

I wanted to stay and say thank you. Thank you for your music. Thank you for helping me find freedom and anger in the face of devastation. But I had to catch a train back to Paris.

Just keep moving.

Travelling Home

[reclaiming transit: in the République metro station – thanks to Katie for helping me with this photo]

“I can feel the thunder that’s breaking in your heart /
I can see through the scars inside you”
– Ghost, “Cirice“

As Indigenous women, how do we talk about sexual violence in a way that allows us to own our vulnerability? How do we prevent our stories from becoming consumed by colonial voyeurism in nations that thrive on making us vulnerable? I want to confront how violence against Indigenous women is presented as disconnected individual narratives, blaming women who put themselves “at risk”, rather than as a systematic necessity for the maintenance of settler colonial states.

Just as understanding histories and impacts of colonization is relevant to understanding Indigenous people, sexual violence is a devastatingly usual story in the lives of Indigenous women. But it is never our only story. Iskwewak (Indigenous women) are not reducible to narratives of conquest.

I read an interview where Henry Rollins says, “My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.” My optimism wears heavy boots, sometimes moccasins, sometimes bare feet, sometimes skipping on cobblestones, sometimes on the prairies; my optimism is fucking loud. Raining Blood loud. War Pigs loud. Forever My Queen loud. Am I Evil loud.

I dream of Indigenous women and girls being safe & free in our own bodies and wherever we go in the world. But “safety”, in the context of global climate catastrophe, means cultivating enough anger as motivation to destroy extractive systems that will kill us unless we kill them first.

Surviving as a Native girl, daring to walk down the street alone at night: that’s a revolution. Listening to heavy music and dancing and drinking and being angry and loud, refusing to let violence rob us of wanderlust: that’s my revolution.

One day we’ll get that freedom. Just keep acting it out until it’s real. Just keep moving.

The Queen’s English

April 2, 2016August 14, 2016Erica Violet Lee

Shame is the reaction requested when they look you in the mouth and say,

“lost her language”,

but I know language well enough to pinpoint each time it’s lost instead of stole,
and that shame alone cannot build homes or sustain bodies.

So I speak the Queen’s English, every day

and you must admit it’s fun to watch her squirm

as I roll her words on my wild tongue like they’re chokecherries

the way my fingers expand those sentences into shapes she doesn’t recognize/can’t read

Break into her locked cupboards to devour greedily the literatures, philosophies;

get drunk and daring on the poetries
all of those nice, proper words that linger on my lips a bit

too

long. as if they liked it there (imagine the audacity)

Send me to bed early with no supper

I’ll keep playing with colonizer’s languages

bringing pleasure back to written letters weaponized to rip through flesh like mine

see those syllables m e l t at the touch of my nehiyawiskwew softness

(imagine the audacity) brown softness

in a world of borders
and sharp corners

strawberries

holding strawberries in Italy

I’m concerned for your academic career if you talk about this publicly

February 5, 2016August 20, 2016Erica Violet Lee29 Comments

What truths would be written if academics weren’t afraid of losing their jobs?

What truths would be written if you followed through, in practice, the type of sovereignty and decolonization you theorize in journals?

All the times I’ve heard some version of “I’m concerned about your academic career if you talk about this publicly”: that’s not concern for me.

I knew about the systems, I knew the stories about these men. We all do. We all do, because academic aunties gossip. And academic auntie gossip saves lives.

But still, I irrationally believed I was safe, or somehow exempt.

Even after, in second year, that time I got out of that ethics professor’s car, downtown, at night, in the middle of winter, and walked home rather than sit beside him after he joked that his seats recline all the way, if I was interested.

Even after, in third year, that time your fave scholar put his 50-something-year-old hand on my thigh under the table at that conference.

I’m not talking about “complexities” or “relations” or even sex; I’m talking about a fundamental failure to comprehend power and consent.

Like last week, a friend told me about the question he heard from a colleague:

“So are you sleeping with her?”, he asked, “she’s your student, right?”

because he can’t imagine any other reason why a professor would be friends with me.

“Well be careful, that kind of thing will stick to you” (even after he replied “no”): brotherly advice.

No, it won’t: but your words will stick to me.

That’s how patriarchy works, don’t you get it? The risk will never be theirs. Just get that tenure, bro. Just keep a handle on that funding, bro. Then you’ll be safe. Academics: we look out for each other, bro. The risk will never be theirs.

The risk is mine, for daring to believe I could stand on stages and give keynotes alongside men with PhDs.

So: these men talk. But so do women.

“Don’t take a ride with him. I’ll pick you up at the airport before your talk”:

I’m thankful for academic aunties who have saved my life all those times.

and

I’m angry that academic aunties know to offer rides because they didn’t have anyone to do the same for them, when they were me.

Believe her when she tells you not to take a ride with him. Believe her.

All the times I’ve heard some version of “I’m concerned for your academic career if you talk about this publicly”: that’s not concern for me.

Fuck any academic career that comes at the price of my safety and bodily sovereignty.

Fuck any academic career that requires my silence.

Fuck any academic discipline that shelters abusive men.

Academic aunties save lives.

Believe her.

For Cindy, For Ourselves: Healing in the context of colonial gender violence

April 2, 2015September 6, 2016Erica Violet Lee7 Comments

Today is April 2^nd, 2015 and across these lands, gatherings will be held for Cindy Gladue.

Cindy Gladue was an Indigenous woman, mother, and sex worker. The man charged in her murder was recently acquitted after a dehumanizing trial involving the showcasing of Gladue’s intimate wounds as evidence. Just today, it was announced that the Alberta Crown has launched an appeal. For those of you unfamiliar with the case, I suggest articles by Sarah Hunt and my dear friend Naomi.

In helping to organize the Saskatoon event and communicating with organizers across the country, I am reminded that the women and two spirits organizing these actions are the same women who organize everything in our communities. The women who carry the burdens of so many and often find ourselves exhausted. The ones who are on the frontlines, who never step back from “the work” because the work is our lives and the lives of those we love.

During the past weeks, I’ve walked around feeling like I am a bubble made of delicately blown glass, ready to burst into pieces. One version of a common refrain I hear from other women and two spirits is “I am very sensitive to this stuff”. “This stuff” being the extreme colonial gender violence responsible for Cindy’s murder. “This stuff” being the systematic, deliberate devaluation and dehumanization of Indigenous women responsible for Barton’s acquittal. I think that there is no shame in feeling too much in response to “this stuff”, but perhaps that the shame belongs to those who feel too little, or to those who encourage us to stop feeling so much.

How do we heal from colonial gender violence? How do we heal from the violence when it is still ongoing? How do we heal from something that has never left us? How do we heal when we are constantly being retraumatized, even by those who “mean well”?

One of the things I find myself particularly sensitive to recently are projects that aim to deconstruct gendered colonial violence by naming and “reclaiming” slurs. While I think there are certain cases where this works well (#NotYourMascot), most times, I think that men sharing articles proclaiming “We Are More Than (insert violent gender slur here)” only serves to reproduce this discourse.

Judith Butler writes of the violence of derealization, noting that if “violence is done against those who are unreal, then, from the perspective of violence, it fails to injure or negate those lives since those lives are already negated.” Violence against the unreal, the less real, the inhuman, is normative, and thus not considered violence at all. Physical violence is the embodied manifestation of what is “already happening in discourse.”

The same can be said of the media placing so much emphasis on the exact measurements of the wounds in Cindy’s body. Who do these words serve? Certainly not Indigenous women, or Cindy’s family, who do not need these measurements repeated to know first hand the reality of violence. This discourse serves only to desensitize the settler public to violence against Indigenous women while retraumatizing those of us directly impacted. Avoiding articles that do these things is one way I heal right now.

Even discourse around Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women are often hostile spaces for women, two spirits, and particularly, sex workers. Walking to a MMIW gathering a few months back, I ran into some young women who work in my neighbourhood, and invited them to the gathering for snacks and discussion. At the meeting, comments like “make sure you know where your daughters are”, “teach your daughters to dress with respect for themselves”, “if you know a woman who is working the street, call the police and they will help her” were thrown around and I felt sick, and as the moderator of this panel, did the best I could to challenge these statements. Our movements for MMIWG2S are nothing if they are violent toward sex workers and view certain Indigenous women’s lives as more mournable than others. This is part of the impetus for the #MMIWG2S hashtag, which points at the erasure of violence toward girls and two spirits.

On the other side of the fence, I had a conversation with a white canadian friend the other day and I was distressed by the communication boundaries between us. This friend is an intelligent, well-educated man, a bit older than me. He noticed I was tense and unhappy and wanted to make sure things were okay, a kind gesture that I wish people made with such sincerity more often.

I tried to explain the exhaustion of being the only Indigenous woman student in my classes, studying racist and sexist philosophers and watching it all go unchallenged unless I am the one to challenge it. I tried to explain the anger and sorrow that I bring into every class, knowing that my body is one marked as disposable, and being asked to put that aside in my analysis of the coursework at hand.

I watched him nod and squint, searching my face to understand, but the difference between us seemed to make it impossible for him. “At your age, I felt invincible. I was naive, I guess. But you know, you don’t have to live life feeling like you’re constantly pushing up against a wall. You seem so angry.”

What could I say in response to this? How can I allow myself to be vulnerable (and therefore open to both potential healing and potential violence) with someone who cannot see the blood soaking the soil beneath his feet?

I just smiled, knowing that it is precisely in “pushing up against the wall” that I make space for myself as Indigenous in a colonial world. Being two-spirit and a native woman means that I exist as transgression of borders, and the warm breath that fills my body is material evidence that the canadian colonial project has failed, oh, as hard as it tries to destroy me. Resistance forms the bonds in my DNA strands. The rage and sorrow and discomfort I feel are not things I want to wish away. The rage and sorrow and discomfort are the logical and correct reaction to the violence that Indigenous women are faced with.

In that moment, I did give up a struggle: the struggle to make him understand something he’d never experienced (and in fact, something he as a settler benefits from not understanding) and suddenly, my vulnerability turned into a warm blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

Organizing around the Cindy Gladue case has taken on a distinct feeling, separate from other MMIWG2S events I’ve been a part of.

We do this work now for ourselves and for our sisters. The gatherings planned for today are not to raise “awareness”, to get media attention, or to spend endless energy convincing settlers that our lives are valuable. These gatherings are a chance for us to cry and scream and heal. They are a chance to be around others with whom we do not have to try to explain what we are feeling, because they already know that rage, that sorrow, that endless struggle so well. These gatherings are a chance for us to celebrate our strength and our resilience, even when that takes the form of endless tears. These gatherings are a chance for us to remember that our overwhelming emotions are not weakness, but the truly human response to outrageous injustice.

We do this work to embody the belief that the lives of Indigenous women, two spirits, and sex workers are mournable.

We do this work to heal our communities.

We do this work to heal ourselves.

We do this work for Cindy.

Artwork credit: Erin Marie Konsmo

Change(d) The Name: Challenging “Savage” Stereotypes and Native Sports Mascots

May 10, 2014February 21, 2016Erica Violet Lee1 Comment

Change(d) the Name

(Originally published in RezX Magazine, May 2014 in a condensed form. Online now, print copies available soon!)

It has been a month since Saskatoon Public Schools voted to change the name and logo of my high school’s sports team, the Bedford Road Redmen. It has been nearly two decades since the last request for a name change was shut down in 1996. It has been only one week since I lost yet another high school friend who said she would be a “proud Redmen” forever, regardless of how many Native classmates found it offensive.

Indigenous people are not the only groups subject to the mascot treatment, but it certainly seems a bit more absurd when other groups are the focus of the “honor”. Take for example the Coachella Valley “Arabs”, or the Pekin “Chinks”. Why do these seem so strange, while hundreds of Native mascots in North America are normal?

The Pekin Chinks 1971 “Chink and Chinklet”.

One argument our group dealt with countless times was: “It’s just a name, it’s just for fun. Don’t you people have bigger issues to deal with?”

If it were only about a high school sports team name, the backlash against us would not have been so violent.

When the University of Regina cheerleaders took pictures of their “Cowboys and Indians” party, one depicting the girls dressed as “cowboys” playfully aiming their fingers as guns at the girls dressed as “Indians”, it was about more than just a party.

When you walk into a store at Halloween and see overpriced costumes like “Sexy Squaw” and “Indian Princess”, while Indigenous women remain the group most likely to face sexual violence in the US and Canada, it is about more than just a costume.

And, far from being just a name, the Bedford Road “Redmen”, Washington “Redskins”, Moose Jaw “Warriors”, and Chicago “Blackhawks” are products of white supremacy; stories told about us while excluding our voices. While it seems like a small issue on the surface, challenging inaccurate depictions of Native people is a big step toward a better life.

At Bedford, the Redmen logo was used for sports, while a diamond-shaped emblem was used for academics. This is why I don’t accept the claim that Indigenous people are only “warriors” or “braves” to be an honor. The relegation of Indigenous people to the realm of the physical has its roots in centuries of European philosophy.

The use of Indigenous people as sports mascots is frequently justified by using so-called positive stereotypes: Indigenous people are brave, they are warriors, they are skilled hunters, and they are in touch with the land – the sort of characteristics possessed only by non-human animals and primitive groups of humans. The sort of characteristics that make the best sport mascots.

The thing about “positive” stereotypes is that they are still stereotypes, and thus, still function to deny individuality to members of marginalized groups and keep them marginalized. Thought of as lacking any individual agency or autonomy as slaves to our genetic predisposition as animalistic, savage warriors, we are unable to transcend the physical and denied access to rationality. We are turned into “beasts” – unable to self-govern, non-industrious, and dangerous. Perpetuating this view of Indigenous people insures that the invasion of land and assuming ownership of resources is justified. Residential schooling is justified. Injustice, cruelty and disregard for our lives is justified.

Refusing to put up with racist sports team names, mascots, and logos is a declaration that we are more than disposable stereotypes with tomahawks in John Wayne stories where the injuns always lose. We are teachers, students, lawyers, writers, artists, musicians, workers, and activists. We are capable of doing well in schools and universities while still holding on to our traditional knowledge – recognizing that the two are not incompatible, and that Indigenous knowledge ought to be (and already is) present in Western academic institutions. We are members of unique communities and we are individuals.

The hardest part of this work is listening to the stories of Aboriginal youth who dare to speak out against stereotypes, and faced ostracism as a result. In January, a student from Oskayak High School (and a dear friend of mine) stood up at Bedford Road’s basketball tournament with a sign that said, “We are people, not mascots” (I painted that logo, by the way, and cringed while doing it). He was booed by hundreds of Bedford Redmen basketball fans before being escorted out of the school, demonstrating that there is a certain type of “red man” that is acceptable (a cartoon) and one that is not (a living person with a voice). To me, that is a real warrior.

On May 31, Bedford Road will be having a sale of Redmen memorabilia. In response, a teacher said, “Isn’t it sick that they are profiting off of this one last time? That logo is like a swastika to me. It is a symbol of hate.” It would be a nice gesture if Bedford uses the proceeds of the sale toward Aboriginal educational initiatives. The name and logo are gone, but the damage is not undone.

I still have my Redmen gym clothes. I will not sell or destroy these little pieces of racism, but keep them in a drawer as a reminder that as Aboriginal peoples, we still face stereotypes from those who refuse to see us as individuals, but there is always a way to overcome. That there has to be a way. We convinced Saskatoon Public Schools to change the name after they realized we wouldn’t give up, âhkamêyihtamowin: perseverance. Even after so many have predicted our demise, we are still here. Now it’s time to tell our own stories.

Good Philosophers Don’t Have Anxiety Attacks: on mental health, race, and belonging in the classroom

March 27, 2014February 21, 2016Erica Violet Lee18 Comments

“When Canadian society says we’re sick that’s like a psychopathic killer complaining to someone he’s tried to strangle repeatedly that she should do something about the marks on her neck and see a psychiatrist about her recurrent nightmares and low self-esteem.” – Richard Bull

Last term, I confided in a professor that I was struggling with anxiety attacks and depression. She seemed understanding.

A few weeks after the class ended, I learned that she had brought the issue up at an informal departmental gathering, telling grad students and professors that anxiety is often an “excuse” used by students who want an easy ride.

I’ve been treated for depression since I was 13 (I’m 23 now), but I had never dealt with panic attacks before last term. Before I had a panic attack, I didn’t understand how they worked. I assumed that a panic attack was something attributable to not having enough discipline over one’s emotions, or something that only occurred during particularly traumatic events.

Seemingly out of nowhere, I had trouble going in to her classroom. I would stand outside the door, pacing back and forth – working up the courage to enter that I knew would never come – sometimes for nearly an hour. Inevitably, I would get upset with myself for not being able to do something as stupidly simple as opening a door and walking into a classroom. “Just do it”, I told myself aloud, but my body would not move. How comical and strange for any onlookers, or for the students on the other side of the door who had no idea of the struggle taking place right outside the classroom. My inability to overcome this predicament using the “rational” part of my brain (a mortal sin for a philosopher) left me frazzled, and though I tried to stop it, I would always start crying. It was obvious then, as soon as my inner turmoil had manifested on my body in the form of smudged eyeliner and puffy eyes, I absolutely could not enter the classroom. At this point I would give up, go home, and be entirely useless for the rest of the day.

I would never feel comfortable entering a classroom, or meeting, where I can’t afford to show any extra vulnerability if it was visible that I had recently been crying. It is important to me to feel “put together” at school. I take pride in my appearance; it helps me feel confident and capable when I think I look confident and capable. Tanisha C. Ford has an in-depth discussion on the politics of style for women academics of color here. It is apparent that as Women of Color in universities, even as students, we are held to rigorous standards where we are expected to constantly prove that we are worthy of being academics. Presentation, performance, and adornment are certainly a part of this.

I’ve earned a reputation of competence around my school as a senior level undergraduate, but my earlier years were different. As a young Woman of Color (and a visibly Native woman, to boot), not much was expected of me. At my school, 50% of Aboriginal undergraduates drop out in their first year. As the Native woman in a classroom full of white students, studying a white, male dominated discipline, I am aware that my presence is constantly scrutinized. I become the representative for all Native people, and anything I do wrong is attributable to my genetics. If I enter a classroom late, if I answer a question incorrectly, if I misspeak, if I don’t speak, if I speak too much, if I get a bad grade, it’s not just a personal failure but a failed responsibility to break stereotypes and represent all Native people everywhere in a positive way.

…No pressure, kids.

Working with high school and first-year undergrad Native students, I know this pressure is a common source of stress. I, like many others, am the first in my family to graduate high school, and go to university. I am proud of this achievement, but it makes me fear any type of perceived failure to the point where it is often paralyzing. This fear was a major source of my discomfort in the classroom. Well, that, accompanied with a healthy dose of racism.

One of the risks about being in a philosophy class is that you have to be ready to talk about personal, political issues – particularly in an ethics course. Generally, I am not someone who is afraid of standing my ground in these discussions. However, I lost count of the times I felt alienated during discussion in this particular class. I got tired of being the only one challenging casual racism in the pseudo-anthropological musings of my peers on issues of cultural relativism, ex. “Well you know, for the tribal people of X, cannibalism and Female Genital Mutilation are morally acceptable practices. Do you still agree that morals are culturally relative?” that became a near daily occurrence.

At the end of the class, our final essay assignment was based on the following thought experiment by Bernard Williams, from “A Critique of Utilitarianism”:

Jim and the Indians

Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of them several armed men in uniform. A heavy man in a sweat-stained khaki shirt turns out to be the captain in charge and, after a good deal of questioning of Jim which establishes that he got there by accident while on a botanical expedition, explains that the Indians are a random group of the inhabitants who, after recent acts of protest against the government, are just about to be killed to remind other possible protestors of the advantages of not protesting. However, since Jim is an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guest’s privilege of killing one of the Indians himself. If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occasion, the other Indians will be let off. Of course, if Jim refuses, then there is no special occasion, and Pedro here will do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and kill them all. Jim, with some desperate recollection of schoolboy fiction, wonders whether if he got hold of a gun, he could hold the captain, Pedro and the rest of the soldiers to threat, but it is quite clear from the set-up that nothing of the sort is going to work: any attempt at that sort of thing will mean that all the Indians will be killed, and himself. The men against the wall, and the other villagers understand the situation, and are obviously begging him to accept. What should he do?

After the professor read this aloud, I sat there with every muscle in my body tensed, wishing for the class to be over so I could leave. The worst part, of course, was that no one objected or even questioned the use of this thought experiment – not even me. I didn’t have the patience to explain why it’s messed up to teach an unnecessarily racialized, stereotypical story that deprives Indigenous people of autonomy, in a classroom where you have one Native student, in a discipline that struggles with inclusion of People of Color and women at all levels.

I had become convinced that I was not welcome and that I did not belong in this classroom, maybe not even in philosophy, and “Jim and the Indians” solidified that thought in my mind. I was rendered voiceless. This is a feeling I wish I could share with the professor who told my peers and colleagues that my anxiety was a made-up excuse; who believed that I just wanted it easy.

The rate of suicide in Canada’s First Nations youth is ranked among the highest in the world. Regardless of intelligence, effort, or rationality, I found myself incapable of finding a place to belong in this classroom, as many school-aged Indigenous youth and youth of color do, and furthermore, I was shamed for my depression and anxiety. I still struggle with anxiety, and though hopeful, I recognize that it is something I will likely have to work on for the remainder of my life. I know I will be in situations in the future where I am faced with more “Jim and the Indians”-style content, and I hope I will not be afraid to challenge it.

I choose to share my experience because as Native youth, we need to be open and supportive of each other regarding our struggles for wellbeing. We need to take initiative to recognize and correct unsafe educational environments, and constantly remember that we belong at the university, regardless of the violence that tells us otherwise.