This great conversation on Indigeneity is from a couple of years ago and it just keeps being relevant. Being Indigenous is an analytic, not an identity. We need to talk about that.
Patty (00:00:01):
You're listening to medicine for the resistance
Patty (00:00:04):
Troy was so smart last time, and this could only be better with Joy here.
Joy: God we're in trouble. Hey, it will be a smart show.
Kerry: (00:00:20):
Couldn't be more perfect.
Joy! Oh yeah.
Patty (00:00:24): Just so much happening, right? Like this has been bonkers in Native Twitter.
Joy: Oh, I know. I don't either.
Patty: Because we had the list right? Where everybody was kind of losing their mind about the list and then some anti-Blackness that was happening as a result of the list.
And then, you know, and then kind of, I saw what was trending was seven days of fighting in Palestine and I'm like, no, that's, let's talk about seven consecutive days.
Kerry: It's been like, what, how many, how many hundreds, you know, almost a hundred years we're coming up to now?- like stop it!
Patty: And then we're talking about global indigeneity, right? That being Indigenous is more than just living here in North America, which is something that, you know, I've kind of been unpacking for myself over the last year. Then there are conversations happening, you know, who is Indigenous, in Palestine and the Levant area.
Patty (00:01:37):
Um, and then what claims does that give them to land? You know, and what, you know, what claims does that give them? Um, and do we rest our claims on land solely to being Indigenous?
I mean, even here, it's all migrations, right?
The Anishinaabe started and then we moved east and then we came back and there are tribes that exist now that didn't exist then. You know- like the Metis, right?
They didn't exist at the time of contact and yet there are distinct Indigenous people and what's there.
So all of these conversations are so complicated.
And then into the midst of these complicated, you know, difficult conversations, of course, rides Daniel Heath Justice's voice of reason and recognition into these conversations.
So I can't think of two people that I would rather have this conversation with, for Kerry and me to have this conversation with, than with Troy and Joy.
Troy: (00:02:51):
Exciting to be back and, uh, and to meet, to meet Joy online, at least.
Joy (00:03:00):
Yeah, it's my pleasure. I remember watching you, um, I guess a couple of months ago when you're on and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like, just totally blown my mind. And I said it to Patty and she's like, yes, let's do a show. I'm like, yes, let's do it. Let's figure this out because yeah, it's a lot!
Kerry (00:03:21):
I agree. There's so much complexity. We're talking about Palestine and we're talking about these roots; where do we put roots down?
What is Indigeneity? What are all of these spaces?
I was thinking about Burma or AKA Myanmar.
And that brave stance that young woman-I'm not sure if you guys heard about it- at the Miss Universe pageant, held up a sign saying,
‘Pray For Us.’
We are being persecuted or we're being killed, I think the message said. Once again, it made me think about how precarious, you know, our spaces are, how the colonial system has this rinse and repeat way of creating, um, the same kinds of spaces.
These genocides that are created all the waves through, um, the way of being.
I was thinking about China and the Uyghur tribes, the Muslim Islamic based tribes that are being, ‘rehabilitated’ we have no idea to the scope and scale.
Kerry (00:04:38):
I have been fascinated recently with North Korea. Just the very existence and structure of how North Korea even exists in this realm. All of these pieces led me back to this idea that the reality, maybe I'm posing a question for all of us.
Where do we begin?
When we think about breaking this question down, you know, um, the right to be forced off of our lands, this space of, of the massacre, that seems to be such an integral part of the bloodletting. That's such an important, integral part of why we take over the land.
And then finally, how the resources, because I noticed that we touch certain places, you know, we protest about certain places, more so than others. because resources are advantageous to more so than for some of the colonial structures that exist?
And it makes it advantageous for us to take a moment's movement in those spaces versus others. I just, I've been very sad this week.
I had to step away because of all of it. As you mentioned, there's been so much!
I'm just going to breathe now….. (laughter)
Troy (00:06:06):
I don't even know where one can start.
We have you have to start, I guess, where we are.
As you pointed out, what's going on in Palestine has been going on, you know, it’s 73 years since the Nakba stuff started and it's been going on since then, although the roots go back even further than that.
So, you know we can't that didn't just start this week and we didn't just start relating to colonialism this week, the four of us. And, uh, we didn't just start relating to genocide and racism either this week.
So I think we're all situated in ways that give us insights into these topics, but also blind each of them in different ways too. So it's good to know.
When I was a kid, my dad got a job in Beirut in Lebanon, and we were there before the civil war and our house was just, just up the hill from the Palestinian Palestinian refugee camps.
Troy(00:06:54): So it was a lot of the kids I played with before that were there before I started school. And then I did first grade in Beirut.
Some of the kids I played with were from the refugee camp.
Then later when we came to this country and just the blatantly anti-Palestinian bias of the media was a real shock because you know, these are people who were kicked out of their homes because somebody else wanted it.
And, uh, and of course, Lebanon wasn't doing a great job of taking care of them either. It was, you know, that was a big shame was that all these refugees are treated, treated so poorly in the, in the countries that took that they, that they went to.
Troy (00:07:30):
But you know, those little kids are my age- they're in their fifties now, and they've got kids and maybe grandkids and there are their generations that have been born in exile.
And, uh, meanwhile, now we have this thing going on in Israel itself, where Arab Israelis are being targeted by Jewish Israelis and some vice versa too. It's just street fighting between us. We're not even talking about Palestinians, we're talking about different groups of Israeli citizens based on their ethnicity and their religion. Yeah, it's interesting.
Joy (00:08:06):
Cause I live on social media and so just watching the discussions going on on Twitter.
And it's interesting to see a lot of the activists for Palestine, which is great, but they kind of like, I've seen some memes where it's like, oh, just give you know, Canada, this part of Israel, this part of Canada or the US I'm just like, I'm like, okay, friends, no, we're not going to be doing this. Right. Because we're talking about colonization, but I'm surprised by how little, a lot of the activists understand that they're currently living in occupied states.
Like, I'm just like, wow, like really like Canada, US you know, I'm, I've been quiet about for most of the weeks. I'm just like, okay, you know what? I'm just going to let people have their space, but I'm like, come on.
Joy (00:08:54):
Like, you know, like, and I'm watching like Black and Indigenous Twitter, we're just kind of saying, yup, that's the playbook. There's the playbook check, check, check, check. And we're like, we know this, we've been through this, we've done this, you know, for, you know, 500 years on this continent. Right. And so, and in many places much longer. And so I'm like, okay, let's, you know, I'm finally, I said something I'm like, okay, you know what?
We need to kind of understand that this is a global issue. And that, you know, we are still currently occupants working in occupied states as it is, and sort of state of Canada, the state of us, right. Mexico, you know, and as you see, like, you know, with the countries that are supporting Israel, you know, a lot of them have like a huge long, giant history of, you know, occupation and colonialism and genocide behind them.
Joy (00:09:42):
And it's just like this isn't a surprise folks. And so, I mean, but it's good because I've had a lot of great conversations with people who did not know this. And so I'm kinda like, okay, let's educate, I'm kind of prickly about it, but I'm gonna, you know, do this in good faith.
And so, and I mean, it's just been, you know, like Patty said a week because, you know, I'm coming off a week of serious anti-Black racism within Indigenous communities as is too.
So it's like, okay, that's, what's up now. Right. It's a new type of, you know, I don't know, uh, fall out of hatred, fall out of genocide, fall out of colonialism. It's just like, okay.
And yeah, which way is it going to, you know, smack us in the head this week? It just kind of feels like that. I'm just like waiting for what's going to happen next week is going to be something else. So it's been a yeah. Interesting two weeks, I guess.
Patty (00:10:38):
Well: I think some of it is that we don't have a solid understanding of what Indigenous means say, particularly in Canada because of the way we use the word.
Um, you know, uh, yeah, we, we just, we don't have a really solid understanding of it.
So that's where I'm gonna kind of punt over to Troy. So, you know, if you could kind of give us that global, you know, that because not everybody also thinks of themselves as Indigenous, right?
Like not all countries have that same kind of history where they would have a settler Indigenous kind of binary
. I hate binaries, but, you know, because they're, they're never, they're never that clear and distinct, but if maybe you could kind of help us out so that we're at least working from the same understanding, at least in this conversation.
Troy (00:11:24):
I mean, but the thing is I hate to jump in and say, this is what Indigenous means, because, because Indigenous is a contested term and it's, it's, it's used differently in different places, geographically, but also in different contexts.
And, uh, um, you know, I guess, I guess what I got some, some attention for on Twitter a few months back was basically for, for putting up other people's ideas, who I, that I teach in the classroom about, you know, Indigeneity isn't is not an identity, it's analytic.
And it has to do with our relationship to land our relationship to settler-colonial states.
And that our identities are, you know, in my case, I mean, in other cases, other Indigenous nations and cultures, uh that's. And so we have, you know, Indigenous, there are 5,000 Indigenous languages in the world. Um, if each of those is a different cultural group, then we're dealing with a lot of diversity. 90% of human diversity is Indigenous.
Troy (00:12:18):
So it's hard to say any one thing about all Indigenous people are this or do this because it was less, we've got most of the world's cultures and, and, and get then as, as, as, as Daniel Heath justice was, was reminding us on Twitter, uh, you pointed it out Patty to me today.
And it was, it was worth looking at again, is that it's not just a political definition either because our relationship to the land is because it's everything. It's not just, it's not just political, at least for, for many of us, it's not. And, uh, for many of our cultures, we derive our very personhood, our peoplehood, our, or you know, our spiritual identity is all connected to, to, to land and water.
So, yeah, I mean, what, what, what Indigenous is Canada from a double outsider in the US I'm not Indigenous to the US but I've lived here for a long time.
Troy (00:13:03):
And I, I kind of, I kind of am like another settler in the US in the sense that I've been here for much of my life, whereas Canada is, is, is a place I observed from the outside.
But it seems like in both the United States and in Canada, Indigenous is often used primarily domestically to refer to groups that are Indigenous within the borders of the Canadian settler state or the US settler state.
Because, there are so many different groups and, and what other, you know, what terms is, what have, we can say native American or Aboriginal or first nation. So rather than just listing all the, all the many hundreds of nations, people might use that term, but then, you know, there's, there are Indigenous peoples in all over the Pacific and in much of Asia and in much of Africa and even, even a few places in Europe.
Troy (00:13:47):
And it has to do with this colonial relationship where we about the Sam.
We have a really deep connection to Sápmi, our land and water. That is which we, you know, our, in our, our way of viewing it, it's animated.
We ask permission from the water. When we take water or do we ask permission from a place of a piece of land before we build a house there.
The settler states, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia came in, came in in recent time, historically, you know, within the last 500 years came in and extended their borders through our land and claimed it as theirs.
And then there was all the boarding schools and all that stuff. Those are similar histories, uh, because there's sort of a similar playbook that comes from, that comes from a certain way of looking at the world.
Troy(00:14:37):
That land is something that isn't a dead object that we can just buy and sell and parcel up and own. Coupled with the idea that with the will to take that land from other people.
People who are first nations of Canada, the US and Australia, New Zealand have experienced that.
Indigenous Northern Japan, I've experienced that it's, I wouldn't say that the, I knew and all the many different, uh, Aboriginal nations in Australia and the Maori of New Zealand and all the Canadian first nations, and then the new it to the Métis and all the native Americans and Alaska natives and, and, uh, Kanaka Maoli in the US are all the same. We're not, we're so radically different from each other in so many ways, but we share this, we share this, the important art, a similar way of relating to our land and water.
Kerry (00:15:23):
That brings up for me a question when, you know, first of all, Troy, you're always so brilliant. And when you put it out there in the way that you just did, I'm like, wow, it's a vast, vast space!
And then when you put the number on it at 90%, I went that's everybody pretty much, you know? Um, but what also comes to mind then is, is the word indigeneity serving us or Indigenous serving us and, and this, um, and the movements that all of us as a whole, as, as you know, a group like, just does it, it's served to be using this word in particular and then leaving it to be open to interpretation or not?
Patty: Traces of History, by Patrick Wolfe, because he looks at the way race is constructed differently in different places, right? It is like when we talked with your friend Marina about how Blackness is constructed in Brazil. and how it works in North America and how it works in different places because it all works.
Patty:(00:16:37):
It works differently but for the same purpose. So, you know, and I think indigeneity, it works differently in different places, but for the same purpose, it works, you know, colonialism works to sever us from the land to sever us from each other, you know, to sever our relationships. I'm just writing, you know, it was just writing a bit about, you know, the Cree understandings of kinship networks and how many mothers, you had one that's tied up in the language, right? Like your, your mother's sisters are also your mothers and then your father's brothers are also your fathers. And then their spouses are also your mothers and fathers. Cause if they're married to your father, then that, you know, like these kinds of intricate webs of relationships and those things all get severed, you know, and our connection to land because, you know, the colonial powers are very mobile.
Patty (00:17:26):
They're moving around all over the place. So they're moving us around all over the place. And then it's like, I'm reading this book right now that Kerry had recommended, um, Lose Your Mother, um, about, you know, she had heard that the author's trip home to Ghana and, and, and how heartbreaking it was because you go looking a for home and realizing that that's not home. And I just finished Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall. And she's talking about real, you know, having to come to terms with her seeds may have been, you know, left Africa, but her roots are here this is home. So then that's easier than thinking about being Indigenous and diaspora not having that same connection to land, but having that kind of fraught relationship with colonialism, I don't know. And I'm thinking too about the ways that we do find even, you know, tomorrow night, we're going to be talking about refusing patriarchy, because everything exists in opposition to colonialism, right?
Patty (00:18:26):
Like indigeneity to a certain degree. We weren't Indigenous before the colonists got here. I was Ojibway.
Joy's ancestors were Lakota, Troy's were Sàmi. Like, you know, like we were ourselves, we didn't have this collective identity that placed us in opposition to another collective identity.
We were ourselves. And if you were our enemies, chances were we called you a little snake. That seems to be what we call everybody.
So whatever identity, it's like, you know, identities, you know, existing in counterpoint to a binary that just doesn't work. It doesn't work for anybody. And so people have to keep, but that doesn't fit. I just keep thinking about how we keep identifying ourselves in opposition to something. I don't know that that serves us, but I don't know what the alternative is because we do need some things, some kind of coherent way of thinking about ourselves in opposition. And I think that's okay to exist in opposition to something that should be imposed. It's so intense.
Kerry (00:19:29):lt really does. Patty. I know for me, in particular, it's so interesting how some of the ways that you and I, outside of this space, how some of these very similar thoughts, um, I, I've almost been having the same kind of process going on in my own mind about how do I relate to my being this as a woman of diaspora you know, a Black woman that has been just kind of left here or plumped there, the point here, I guess, I don't know. Um, and how that interrelates to my, being this, to being whole, and also relating it back to the colonial space that I have had to adjust to in my thinking, um, I've been doing a lot of study recently on a man named Kevin Samuel's.
And he's been, uh, approaching this topic from what we would have considered a 'Menenist' standpoint, but there were some arguable facts in the way that he was breaking some things down that has caused me to have to question how I stand in my feminist.
Kerry (00:20:52):
Because I kind of consider myself a bit of a feminist in my feminist stance and how this itself has become a way that we have created diversion and division between ourselves as men and women, the idea of the masculine and the feminine, and then how that exists in the non-binary or binary space. Like, so what I'm, what I'm getting at is all of these different isms, all of these, these structures that have been created really feed into our way of being separated and with the separation, it allows the system to keep feeding itself. I almost feel like we have to start examining the liminal spaces that exist, trying to find the commonalities, but at least allow for our specialness, that individual part of who we are to stand. Because as you mentioned, Patty being Ojibwe versus being Cree I feel there's such beauty there, right? And like, I know that I believe that when we, when we just classify it under one thing, it, it helps, but it doesn't do that make sense?
And I'm really just caught in that right now. Like I know that I've been trying to process that and do we need some radical acceptance that goes along with that understanding we are different and special. And that specialness is what makes us unique and rich and full in the space of our togetherness.
Troy(00:22:39):
This is, I love this conversation because just like last time as I'm sitting here listening to this, I can do so many ideas. This phenomenon that we have, whether it be as Indigenous people or as members of any of our Indigenous nations or as racialized other, or as women, or as LGBTQ or as whatever group or groups one belongs to, and then being treated as a member of that group. If I define myself as Indigenous, then I'm defining myself in opposition to colonization and I'm erasing all kinds of other important things. Defining oneself in opposition to patriarchy is opposing something, but we have to post these things. I think like you said, petty, and we can't, there's also a sense, a certain degree to which we can't, you can't help it. I mean, I was thinking of Franz Fanon and his essay on the fact of Blackness and when he was growing up in the Caribbean, he really didn't think of himself as Black.
Troy(00:23:28):
That was sort of an abstract, weird thing. He thought of himself as educated from the privileged classes and, and to a certain degree as French. And then he goes to Paris to study and he's walking down the street and this little, little girl was holding her mom's hand and points and says, look, a Black man. And, um, that's when he, you know, realizes that he can't escape. He is Black and he can't escape it because people won't let him escape. That's, that's not that he's always identified or interpreted as that. And if we're interpolated as, as women or as or as Indigenous, or as whatever, whatever groups we may, we may be identified as we can't just pretend that we're not. I mean, we can't. And so I think, like you said, petty, sometimes it's worth fighting. Um, I can tell, I go back to the story.
Troy (00:24:18):
I always liked to fall back on stories, but in my own existence, you know, my mom's white American, and she went over to Norway and married my dad and us, I was there for a time. And then there's been in the US for time and in the US you know, I grew up speaking both English and Norwegian. I speak English pretty much without an accent. I look white and I get a lot of white privilege in the US as long as I don't mind people not knowing anything about, my Indigenous culture.
I have a much different situation than my Sàmi relatives and began to feel like maybe I shouldn't be calling myself a hundred percent Sàmi.
And then I go back and experience vicious anti-Sammi racism directed at me. And there's nothing that secures you and your own.
Troy (00:24:57):
There's nothing that secured me and my Sàmi identity as much as being harassed for being Sàmi than being threatened physically. That just makes you I guess I am, because it's not fun. And I would rather not be in this position right now, you know? Um, and, and, uh, I think that's one of the reasons for these alliances, but they also are alliances Indigenous. These, these are, we're a bunch of different groups that have a common cause and can learn from each other and help each other have awesome glasses. I kind of noticed that
Joy(00:25:41):
I was kinda thinking about like, you know, I'm like, this is the resistance like we're resistant. So cause I always liken it back to like, you know, some sort of weird um, you know, thing, but solidary, it's interesting, since we weave through this topic, I'm thinking about like, you know, indigeneity and land. And I saw a point, but, um, Carrington Christmas a few days ago. And so, and she mentioned that you know like not all Indigenous people are tied to land because many of us are in cities and urban centers. So what does that look like? And so when I saw, um, Daniel's, uh, tweet, you know, his chain, I was kinda like, I need to trouble that for a little bit because a bunch of us are removed from land and relations too, but at the same time, it's like, what does that relationship look like within cities?
Joy (00:26:28):
Um, so I just wanted to say that before I forgot that, what does solidarity look like? Oh my gosh. Um, I can't even think of one way it looks like, because again, like when we have like Indigenous, we talked about Indigenous as the overall say within North America and I that for sake of brevity, right? Like you have like, you know, Black Indigenous people, you have, like, I know a guy who's Cambodian and he's Indigenous. Right. And so it was like, what does that look like? How do we manage that? And these folks that I'm referring to are like, you know, Indigenous to North America. Right. And so it's like, so when I see discussions about like, um, what does, you know, kinship look like? What do relations look like? What does it mean to have a relationship to the land? It's like, what does that mean for a Black Indigenous person who didn't necessarily have that kind of a relationship for various reasons, whether it be slavery, whether it be, um, racism, right?
Joy (00:27:25):
Whether it is being chased off the land, you know, as say, some of my relatives were right. And so this is the thing. So it's like, how do we address solidarity when we don't even when we tend to think of Indigenous as like, you know, first nations, um, 18 in you, it's right. And just like one shape or form, you know, kind of brown veering towards the white sort of thing.
Right. And so in Canada, at least. And so, and when we're far more likely to accept someone like Michelle Latimer, no questions asked, but then when I kind of stroll up and say, Hey, I'm Indigenous.
Or like, Nah, you're not right. And so you're from Toronto and your hair is curly. It's not now, but that sort of thing. Right. And so solidarity, I mean, I can tell you, what does it look like based on the past couple of weeks, and I'm sure we'll get into that, but you know, it doesn't look like a list.
Joy (00:28:19):
It doesn't look like, you know, a supporting list who, you know, are largely Black Indigenous people or even run by people who are largely anti-Black. Right. And so, um, but yeah, it is a wide and varied topic from being a political analytic to like, you know, having a relationship to land, to having relationships with our relations. Right.
And so I couldn't even begin to start thinking about what that looks like, but I do resonate with Kerry's point with just kind of like, you know, having those separate identities, but, you know, still coming together for that resistance to, and so, because we need to kind of have, you know, those differences because someone who was Anishinabek has a different relationship to Atlanta, someone who has Lakota. Right. So it's, you know, and me as someone who is Lakota and living in Toronto, it's kind of like, okay. And I kind of meander through these spaces. I'm like, should I be having this relationship with the land? Like, my people are like way out in the Plains, but here I am, you know, it's kind of like patching through what it is because we've been shifted around by colonialism taken away. Sorry. That's
Patty (00:29:28):
The reality of it really is Troy living in the Pacific Northwest, which is about as far as he can get from Sàmi land. You know, I finished all, I've talked about this now that you have massive territory, I'm still within, there's not a big territory. It's not big, it's not Ojibwe. Right.
My people are Northwestern, Ontario. It's a 24-hour drive to get up there. Right. I can be in Florida by the time I get there and not among Black flies, you know, but, but in terms of relocation, right?
Like in the US relocation was government policy that went beyond boarding schools, they were shutting down, you know, in the allotment period, they shut down reservations. They were moving people into cities, you know, kind of getting them off the reserve and moving them into, you know, from, you know, from the Midwest into the city.
Patty (00:30:26):
So you're certainly not alone in terms of being a Plains, Indian living, living, living in a city. And I think that's, you know, where the writing of people like Tommy Orange is so valuable, you know, that kind of fiction where he's writing about urban Indians. That's 80% of us. That's 80% of us who are living in cities far from our home territories. You know, I see, you know, people who are saying, you know, you know, they're Ojibwe and they're Lakota and they're may, you know, like they've got this. And so then who are we? Because we didn't grow up in these kinship networks to tell us who we are. We grew up disconnected. We know, because like you said, Troy, from the time I was little, I grew up in my white family. But from the time I was little, I was the native kid.
Patty (00:31:15):
I was the Indian, even though I was surrounded by white people, you know, grew up in a blizzard, like, Tammy Street said, you know, growing up in a blizzard, the blizzard of whiteness, um, you know, um, you know, kids didn't want to play with me because of my skin colour, which, you know, as bonkers to me as a little, you're not playing with my skin colour. Oh, I dunno. This is a story outside of, um, you know, so other people impose that on me. So I couldn't run away from it. If I wanted to, when I got to high school, I let people think I was Italian. Cause that was easy here. And we talk about passing privilege. Um, but passing contains an element of deceit and deception because when you're passing, you're not telling people who you are, you're deliberately withholding that information. You're allowing them to think that there's some, that you're something that you're not. And you know that, and that's corrosive. And yet you, you know, this idea of being Indigenous is freaking complicated and it doesn't need to be colonialism just ruins everything.
Patty (00:32:19):
So what would the refusal look like? Because that's also what I'm thinking about because tomorrow night when we're talking about patriarchy, I started off talking about resisting patriarchy. And then I changed my mind to refusing because to me that sounds riff. We talk, we've talked, we've talked about the politics of refusal, which is just, you know, I'm not going to engage with that anymore. I'm just going to build this thing over here. I'm just going to refuse to deal with that because that does not speak to me, does not help me. That does not contain my life. What would it look like to exist as Cree, Lakota, Black, Sàmi, Ojibwe and refuse colonialism? What would that look
Patty, Kerry, Joy, Troy (00:33:07):
[Laughing ] existing in opposition to it?
Kerry (00:33:14):
This is the new train that my brain is going down. Well, you know what? I love it.
I think you're onto something. Um, as we, you, you, you brought back that reminder of the politics of just simply deciding not to engage. And for me, this conversation is bringing up so many different things.
For example, Troy, when you mentioned going home and hitting such resistance when you go back, you know, you can't deny being Sàmi. It makes me think about when I go home to visit my mother's family in Antigua, it is Black, you know, the way that my cousins and my aunties and all of my people back there exist that every teacher they've ever had is Black. Every storekeeper is Black, all their doctor's lawyer, everybody is Black and dark skin Black.
Kerrr (00:34:18):
You know, there has been very little mix on that small island. The sense of being in your note is so radically different. I have realized in my time then what it is for me, I, I know my Blackness, I'm a Black woman and I have a lived experience that makes me guard in that space. Right. Whereas when I am there, it just is, and you live and you exist in that space. And it gets me thinking about this idea of just not engaging.
What would it be if I could potentially create a space like that here? So for me, this boils down to being able to connect and create an economic basis. So where I can shop in stores that are, you know, Black West Indian, you know, just my culture experienced in those well Browns. And we also know that that economic power makes a difference.
Kerry (00:35:25):
I think I read a statistic recently that in North America, um, Black people, the money stays in our community for about six hours before it is extended out into other communities. So the dollar does not cycle, even though we are one of the powerhouses for an economic base, our dollar is so strong. And not only that we normally create culture, you know, uh, Black women, you know, we, we, we kind of build some of that creativity, but that panache, comes from North America.
Um, it comes off the backs of us. And so partly when I think about how we, how maybe we can disengage in some ways, it is about that. It's about creating our own little nuggets, you know, creating our own little niche spaces that allow us, afford us to tap into our own uniquenesses as who we are, and then share, but really starting to create those spaces
Kerry (00:36:30):
So, um, for example, as I said, I think in particular, we still have to exist in the system. So to me, it is coming into the self-awareness of that uniqueness, creating, the economic basis for that, for me, I think that's fundamental, especially in my community, we just don't hold on to that dollar. Um, creating some of that economic base by our shops, create shops that are, are, are, or economic foundations, like grocery stores in our communities. We know we have food deserts and most of the communities that we exist in by our own grocery stores have outlets, especially that focus on our, um, image. We don't control our Black image, nobody like that is controlled by others. If we could get our own.
I think it's happening more with social media, with people being able to hold their YouTube channels and creating our own sources of who we are, how we want to be seen. But for me, that's where it begins two things, money, and also, um, controlling our image. I think those two will be powerful,
Troy (00:37:46):
Powerful. And I think, um, I really, like we said, even when we're in the midst of our refusal we can't you know, it's one thing to refuse colonialism. It's another to pretend it doesn't exist. Um, because I'm, you know, I'm either going to increasingly sort of psychotic and just detached from reality or, or I'm going to have to, you know, do take specific measures, like invest in investing in communities, um, take control over our images, those sorts of things, which are, which are still, there's still acts of resistance with our acts that are focused, not so much on negating the oppressor as on empowering ourselves. And I think, I think, uh, yeah, I mean, it's harder for, for, and I'm not doing it all alone. There's so much, like a mentor for so many Indigenous people who are living away from our, from our native land.
Troy(00:38:36):
Uh, I can't, I can't live, I saw my life surrounded only by Sàmi people here and no would, I want to, I'm so enriched by living by so many around so many other people, but I can certainly make an effort to, to include and celebrate and, develop and engage in Sàmi culture in my life.
And so, and tell me so many ways of being and knowing. Um, and it's so much easier now that we can talk to people every day back home too. But, uh, but, but the part of it is also taking that same way of relating to two people and to place and relating to the people around me and the place that I am at. Not in a possessive way, because this isn't my, this isn't my land. I'm on, I'm on now, y'all planned here. This is, this is their land, but I can relate to the land in terms of respect and in terms of a living relationship with a living entity.
Troy (00:39:24):
So it would be different if I'm back home. This is like, this is where, this is where my ancestor’s bones are for the last, you know, for the last 20,000 years. And, uh, that's not here, but, but it's still, it's still, you know, a different way of relating to that. And then I think this is back where the Indigenous people are so important because knowing and working with and interacting with Indigenous people here keeps me Sàmi, even though they're not me.
I was only interacting with settlers and with other, with other non-Indigenous people too. But if I never interacted with other Indigenous people, you could disassociate it. Then it comes all down to you as an individual, as opposed to being part of communities. And so there are different types of communities. They, you know, could be a relationship with people as a kind of community even if you're not part of, part of the group of that group.
Patty(00:40:15):
Want to hear more about that? How relationships with other Indigenous people keep you Sámi
Troy (00:40:22):
Because, uh, I, and this works much easier for me than it would for my half-brother because my half-brother, his mother is from South Asia and he would never be, he would never be seen as white, um, a white person who speaks English, American, English fluently. If all I hung out with were, were white English-speaking Americans, I would be, I could be still very much participating in this sort of inner negotiation of part of who I am and this sort of alienation of by saying, yeah, I'm just one of you. And knowing that there's something that I'm suppressing, something that I'm cutting off and that sort of inner injury, but I would also just be having that culture reinforced all the time, because those become the cultural norms, those, those become the exceptions. And if I'm also hanging out with a non-people of colour who are, who are not Indigenous, but, uh, but then especially Indigenous people who, who have analogous relationships to their place, uh, they're not the same people don't relate to, to, to this land in the same way as, as we, um, uh, markdown may relate to our mountain valleys and our coasts.
Troy (00:41:30):
Um, but there's some, there are some analogies, there's some, there's some, some patterns that I recognize and there's also more humour than I recognize. And I recognize what it's like to be in a group that is at home and is viewed as outsiders by the majority of the population that lives there. It's like we're sitting right here where we belong and you look at us like we're outsiders. And I see that in, in my native friends here, uh, and my native colleagues and, uh, and that's like, yeah, I, I know what that's like. I get that.
That's, um, that's a shared reality, even if it's from two different places. And so, and then having other types of relationships to place other types of relationships to people and community is reinforced by the people around me, other, other ones than the sort of relationship of domination and ownership and, and alienability that I can just sell this land and buy other land and that sort of thing that makes those things less automatic. It's a way of making sure that I don't just sort of slip into, this colonizer mindset or colonized mindset.
Patty(00:42:33):
It goes back to some of the things that have popped up in the chat about feeling kind of disconnected because you know, their relations are so scattered. Um, yeah, I'm going to have to sit with that. That's really helpful. Thank you.
Joy(00:42:53):
It feels similar because, again, how many Lakota is in Toronto? Right. And so, and just being, and I mean, if we're going to pan indigenize, you know, the sense of humour, certainly, you know, something we share, you know, across the world, it's like, yeah.
Colonialism, ah, right. And so we were able to laugh at our misery so well. Um, but yeah, I really, I relate to that and feel that, and it's, it's about re I mean, it's kind of veering into another topic, which is about relations and such. Right. And so, and again, going back to what Kerrington said, saying like, you know, um, my Indigenous community is also an urban community and its many communities. Right. And so I'm paraphrasing really horribly, but I can't remember the tweet, but nevertheless, right. Like, and she's like, who's someone to call that invalid because she is Mi'kmaq. And I believe she lives, she doesn't live in Ontario somewhere. I can't quite pinpoint where, but, um, yeah. So it's like relations and what keeps us, you know, um, Indigenous or Lakota or Sàmi, even when we're far from
Kerry(00:43:53):
I was thinking Kerry, about what you had said about controlling our image. Cause I was having conversations recently about, um, both social media and about our presence on social media. Um, because of course, we don't own these things. I mean, we're here.
Like we can all share that Trump got bounced off every social media platform in existence, but another one of my native friends just got another 30-day suspension on these books. So we can all laugh about it happening to Trump, but we know that it's more likely to happen to us.
You know, the, you know, the algorithms are not set up, you know, for those who live in, you know, in opposition to colonialism the things we say, like what happened with, you know, um, the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls posts on Instagram. I don't think, I, I don't think there was any benefit to Instagram to deliberately silence those posts.
Patty(00:44:48):
But what I think is more likely is that there was, it hits some kind of algorithm. It didn't stop to consider the context of these posts because it's just an algorithm. And so then, because there was some commonality, it bounced all of them and that's what happens, right? Like you set up a rule and that's all these things are right. You set up a rule that affects you, you know, that's everyone equally, but it's not everyone equally. It never is who sets the rules determines. Uh, you know, and so, and when we do these things like on social media and, uh, you know, we're also in a sense performing, performing indigeneity for, for clicks and likes and views. And you know, we're performing a hype of ourselves. That's palatable to the people that are going to pay money for it. So it's a two-edged thing like, like Joy, I live on Twitter, I am very much out there.
Patty (00:45:43):
You know what I think about it because, you know, I've got a book coming out next year. And so I want to make sure that I have a big reach. And so then you think about that, well, how now am I not performing things that are authentic, or am I, you know, so what I'm, you know, you're kind of constantly balancing all of that stuff because it's right. It's a space that we assert ourselves in.
And I think we should be there. I'm not arguing against it obviously. Um, but we also need to be careful about it. And particularly right now in COVID most of my conversations with Gary, when I'm talking about Indigenous things, I'm lately quoting social media people. If people that I know on Twitter, I am not quoting the women in my drum group because we never see each other.
So my local community is becoming more and more remote and my soul. And then there's, we lose the accountability of our communities because I mean, we can Twitter mobs, we can take each other down all the time, but that's not real accountability.
Patty (00:46:44):
We can rail against the writer of the list all day long, but that's not real accountability.
Real accountability happens in the relationships that we form in the
Kerry: I think you said a lot, you settled it. I like you're in my head, like what you were saying, because I too have been very much thinking about that, thinking about my image, thinking about how I am showing up on social media. I'm not a Twitter connoisseur like most of the three of you are. And I was really thinking about why, why I think I shy a little bit away from Twitter is because I think it's so polarizing. You've got, you know, those 140 characters to speak your mind and make that point. And it's a remedy that has to, well, you hope it's riveting and captures the imagination and then it moves on.
Kerry(00:47:56):
And so for me, that flow getting out there means you've really got to be in that larger-than-life space and, and keeping ourselves balanced there. And that's the thing about what I believe social media has done. It is this beautiful space that allows us to be out there to get our points across. But I just got a shadowban, funnily enough, on Insta.
Yes, I'm a cool kid, but the cool kid got put in jail for a minute, simply because I was doing a post that was about Black women and trying to empower them. And I, I'm still not sure what in the algorithm, didn't like what I was saying. And I know I touched controversial stuff, so there's an intimacy and sex coach. I talk about some things, but, for whatever reason, I was really careful about this particular post as I put it up and it got shadowbanned for me, what that taught me or what, I remember being sobered by was the fact that we have this platform to be able to speak our truth and our minds and, and create all of this wonderful stuff.
Kerry (00:49:12):
But it really can be controlled by the very fraction that we are choosing to resist. And so that in itself means we have to conform to it. And I remember wanting to stop my feet. I'm the youngest child, and I so wanted to go into temper tenure mode over this one. Um, but, but it, it was sobering in that as well. That as much as, um, we talk about wanting to resist, so I'm going to bring it back to that, that idea of resistance and being in it. I still have to conform to some degree, to show up, to be able to use this platform, to move my voice forward. And, and I find that just a real cognitive dissidence for myself, you know, I wish we owned a Twitter platform. Do you know what I mean? Because that's where true freedom lies. I almost feel like, you know, we're, we're just getting a little lone of this space and when, when whatever, and whoever is ready, it all just comes crashing down.
Patty: And then let's not talk about women, the AI, oh, go back to the list. Right. Who's going to gatekeep who gets to be a member.
Joy (00:50:27):
It's interesting. Right. Because you touched on two things, you touched on the rules. Right. and rules applying to everyone equally. Right. And so, and when we think about what indigeneity is, you know, the rules don't apply to everyone equally because it's like, okay, well I need to see your pedigree. And it's like, well, that doesn't happen for Black Indigenous people.
Like I don't have, you know, like slavery. Right. And so, and you know, birth certificates, like so many of my family, were not allowed to have birth certificates, you know, until fairly recently, like in the last hundred years, so that's not happening. And of course, and you mentioned it before a patio, I think last week that even just proximity to Black people at a certain point meant that you were Black, whether you were or not. Right. And so a lot of Indigenous people were labelled Black.
Joy(00:51:17):
Right. Because I don't know if they looked at a Black person at one point or another. And so this is a thing, right. And so then we have a gatekeeping list. You have the gatekeeping Twitter, which, you know, I still am very much in love with, but nevertheless it is, you know, it is a loan space and I mean, and again, and you have people who are, you know, okay, well, I'm going to make a list off of these rules that don't affect everyone equally because we're, I'm angry about the Gwen Beneways, or I'm angry about the Michelle Lattimer's or whatever, but it's like, but then, you know, I'm also kind of racist on the side too. So, you know, and it's like, the rules don't apply. They can't possibly, like, if you're trying to find a Black person's, um, what's the word I'm looking for a family tree on ancestry,
Joy(00:52:04)
It's not going to happen. Like I looked, I tried for my own family. Right. And so, and a lot of it is still oral and, you know, it's interesting cause Daniel had a thread about, uh, lower this, uh, today.
And so I'm like, but again, what does the law mean to different communities, right? Like for white communities, like, yes, you had an Indigenous ancestor, like, you know, 400 years ago that, you know, is that lore not right. As opposed to like, you know, a Black family, you know, and I'm speaking largely to my experience with this, um, Black American. Right. And so, you know, is it lower because that's all we had, like, was it guarded more closely? Was it, you know, held more, um, carefully, right? Because again, then you had the community connection that also how's your community, uh, accountable. That is the word I'm looking for because it was a very tight-knit community.
Joy(00:52:58):
And so someone would say, oh no, that wasn't your grandparent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And so it's really interesting to kind of look at the rules and the gatekeeping and just how they change based on, you know, your skin colour. Like it is just, and you know, these rules that were created by white people that say, you know, you are one drop Black, you are, you know, you're not Indigenous, right. Because we want to get rid of you and we want to create more of you. Right. So yeah, my mind is being bent again, but I don't know where it just took us. I'm sorry.
Patty(00:53:32):
You were also talking about relationships and the way certain relationships were constructed to serve the needs of, you know, the way certainly, you know, communities were split apart or concentrated in certain places and pushed aside where either, because you have family law would be different in a history where families were disconnected over and over and over again, who's holding that collective knowledge. When you, you know, when like in losing your mother where you know, her great grandmother gets, goes off with the family and then winds up getting sold for gambling debts and never even had a chance to say goodbye to a spouse or children, child that might, that may have been back, you know, on the plantation, does, oh, gambling debts, your, I guess, I guess we're selling you, like, how do you hold collective memory?
Kerry: I love that because also what comes up in that is the collective memory becomes so rooted in the space of the trauma.
Kerry (00:54:29):
Yeah. And, um, I found after reading that book after reading Lose Your Mother, that I had this wistfulness about making the space of it, right. Because we all, most of us Black folks, um, hold out this dream of, you know, putting our feet, planting our feet, especially in Ghanian soil and, and going to the slave castles.
And knowing that this might've been the last space of our ancestry. And in this book, when she counts her version of what happened in that space, you know, there were some, some holes for her, you know, some real charts came up about how, while this was the story of her coming, this was a place of where she came from. Her family's story of slavery being a slave was an erasure, of who she was.
And it got me thinking Patty, and Joy and Troy, it got me thinking about my own family history.
Kerry (00:55:33):
And so recently I've been talking to my mother because all of my aunties and uncles, you know, of my family, especially my Antiguan family, they get a little bit older. And, um, I recognize how they have been the gatekeepers of this history. And they ensured that our legacy as a family was, was whole and real, you know, they got us together. They would tell us these stories. And as they're getting older, I'm seeing that my generation, especially with COVID, are a little more disconnected, like my cousins. And I, even though most of us were raised together. Um, you know, I'm noticing this, we're not getting together in the same way. And so one of the things that I'm playing with and realizing I'm feeling called to is, is to take some reclamation that I think one of the ways that we can offer resistance is in the reclamation of that history.
Kerry(00:56:39):
Um, I really want to do some, um, you know, recordings of the stories that my, my mom tells and my dad, sorry. I'm like, well, yeah, my dad too, I would love to do my Bajan side, but my dad tells get the stories of my aunties and uncles and what I thought was so interesting when I mentioned it to my mom, she said to me, you know what, Kerry that would be amazing because I don't know very much about my father, her father, my grandfather's history. They are, um, they came from Haiti and I think it was my grandfather's mother that immigrated from Haiti over to Antigua. So all this time, I thought we were originally Antiguan in that space and come to find out that it's not necessarily that I got that Haitian blood in me too. And so what would it be?
Kerry(00:57:35):
And I think there's, there's some real power in us being able to do that, too, to take it back as much as we can, even if it is just from that oral history, that oral history is powerful, you know, um, in losing your mother's today, uh, um, mentioned that you know, we all want that root story. I remember reading Alex Haley's roots when I was nine years old, it was one of the biggest books I ever read up until that, right. 1,030 pages, I think it is. And I remember reading that story and it was just like, for me, I was like, how did he know all of that? And that's one of the spaces that sparked my curiosity of wanting to know. And so I think there's a responsibility if we can to know that truth and to try and gather it. And that in itself is a powerful way for us to offer resistance in this space as well. Yes,
Troy (00:58:39):
Exactly. A thousand times. It's a, it's, um, it's a way its resistance, but it's not resistance as focused at the colonizer or the oppressor. You have to claim stories. what could be more empowering than that than reclaiming your stories. This is our modernity. Um, some years ago, I got into an argument with a senior faculty member at, uh, at, uh, at the University of Oslo. And I was just a junior faculty member at a tiny college in the Midwest of the US and he was talking about Indigenous people having, you know, so many Indigenous people haven't experienced modernity. This is our modernity is being alienated, being fragmented from. Who, who has experienced that more than the African diaspora of being, being alienated, being, being cut off from, um, that's our modernity. And, uh, to fight that by reclaiming and by and by and by owning our own cultures.
Troy (00:59:31):
And it's a, it's a really important thing for me to do that because there are, it is a living language and there are people who are native speakers and when I can have conversations with them without having to go to in a region, that's going to be, you know, a really important moment for me right now. It's more than I can read what people write because I can take my time and parse it out and stuff. Yeah. But, um, but I also think that we need to, you know, our cultures are all changing too, and we need to own the things I'm, I'm working with. I've got a colleague, uh, his name is Caskey Russell he's clean cut. And he and I are both big, big, uh, soccer football as we call it everywhere else in the world, fans working on a book on Indigenous soccer.
Troy(01:00:12):
And this was like, um, because, uh, it's not that the way that we do different things, you know, we, we talk, we have people teaching Indigenous literature, Indigenous novels, Indigenous films, um, uh, we, certain Indigenous cultures did have writing before colonization. We saw that I wasn't among them. We didn't have writing, uh, before, before colonization. And so it was the colonizers who taught us literacy, but we have our own literature. We have our own, our own stories and our own sensibilities. And I think we can do that within cities. We can be who we are and be doing new things to it, as long as we have those connections. And I think those stories are still out there. You've got to record those stories. You've got to keep them, and it will be not just for you because that's going to be a resource for so many people.
Kerry (01:00:57):
Speaking on that point. One of the things that I realized is how few stories come out of the West Indies. You know, I started kind of digging around a little bit and I think there's only one book that I know of that talks about, uh, an Antiguan family that, uh, trace back their history of one of their relatives and the, he could, and I think he had been a slave, like one of the last slaves or just out of it. And that's one book. Like I can't find very much, um, in that space. So to me, I recognize there's an opportunity, uh, for it. And, maybe there is a book or two here. We'll see,
Patty: I'm talking about your book or would just be me. Okay. This has been really good. This has been really, really good. I am always so grateful for you guys when you spend time with them.
Troy (01:01:52):
Thank you so much for inviting me back and Joy it is a pleasure to meet you like this.
Joy (01:01:58):
It's nice to meet you too off of Twitter. And so I'm sure you just watched me ran like most people. So
Kerry(01:02:05):
Whenever I do dip, Joy you, give me joy!. I love it.
Patty: One of the things I learned recently is that caribou and are the same animal, which I had no idea. I don't even remember how I learned that. Um, but it just kind of blew my mind that caribou and reindeer are the same, which makes Troy and I kind of cousins because I'm caribou clan. So that was on Twitter now, you know, see, I did not know that and right there in front of them, um, but then I saw that caribou and reindeer are the same animals. And that was the first thing I thought I was an animal that does really well
Patty (01:02:55):
Up north and who come from up there learning to live with them.
Patty (01:03:00):
Well, it makes sense. Right? You tip the globe in different parts of the world, look related, you know, you can see it. There's no reason why the globe has to be this way. It's really neat. And when we went up to Iqaluit, um, the one fellow that asked me, he asked me if I was Ojibwe. And I said, yeah. And he says, yeah, we look alike because we are men used to kidnap your women all the time.
Joy (01:03:23):
There's that Indian humour,
Patty (01:03:28):
That was just so weird and random. But anyway, thank you guys so much. This has given me so much giving me so much to think about these episodes are always like masterclasses
Kerry: 'till we meet again. Cause I'm sure we will. Somehow
Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
You can find Medicine for the Resistance on Facebook and the website, www.med4r. com.
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You can follow Patty on Twitter @gindaanis and at daanis.ca.
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Global Indigeneity