16 minute read
Being Indigenous in Canada – Chelsea Vowel
BEING INDIGENOUS IN CANADA
with Chelsea Vowel
Chelsea Vowel is Métis from manitow-sâkahikan (Lac Ste. Anne) Alberta, residing in amiskwacîwâskihikan (Edmonton). Mother to six girls, she has a B.Ed, an LLB, and a MA, and is a Cree language instructor at the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta Chelsea is a public intellectual, writer, and educator whose work intersects language, gender, Métis self-determination, and resurgence. Author of Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada, she and her co-host Molly Swain produce the Indigenous feminist sci-fi podcast Métis in Space, and cofounded the Métis in Space Land Trust.C
She has been published in the Huffington Post, The National Post, and The Globe and Mail.
It is important that our magazine lends a voice to those who are doing important work in the community.
Chelsea is one of those people whose posts on her website and Twitter handles cause you to reflect upon how the content you are reading is changing your views and perceptions. It takes courage, post after post to be courageous and true to one’s core. This is the refreshing voice that Chelsea brings: a reminder that all voices are important, essential, and true. We feel very honoured to have had a chat with her.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I am from the Métis community of Lac Ste. Anne, and grew up close to Lake Isle, west of Edmonton. My mom is Métis and my dad is Ukrainian and probably Irish. Growing up I was a metal head who loved fantasy and science fiction novels, and adored Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek the Next Generation. I wrote terrible stories and even worse poetry.
I am a first-generation University student and had no guidance or people to help me through, so I made a lot of expensive mistakes. I knew early on that I wanted to be a teacher, and that I wanted to work with Indigenous youth. After I earned my Bachelor of Education, I began teaching in Inuvik, where I also had my first two daughters.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the academy. I keep coming back even though we do not always get along. I pursued a legal education
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and worked in Aboriginal law for a bit before deciding it was not for me. I spent some time in Montréal where Métis in Space and Indigenous Writes were born, then concocted a plan to get my family back to my homelands. That plan involved convincing my co-host, Molly Swain, to also endure another degree program, for which I am forever grateful. I am not sure I could have done it without frequenting her karaoke sessions and pep talks.
I just want to say that there is a special kind of joy in living within one’s traditional territory, and after being away a few times over the years, I will never take it for granted.
How important is having a voice to one’s survival in Canada in 2021?
The Idle No More movement really highlighted for me how having a voice, rather than having people speak for you, can change the narrative so much more quickly than any kind of state-sanctioned efforts. For the first time, social media allowed Indigenous peoples direct access to media outlets, and to the public, in a way that had not been possible before. We were able to push back against claims that used to go unanswered in forums, and grassroots people were organizing, educating, and agitating.
There is a lot of focus on how this benefited wider Canadian society and expanded an understanding of the issues Indigenous peoples face, but in my view, the more important benefits were the relationships formed between Indigenous peoples across vast geographic spaces. Indigenous youth, particularly LGBTQ2+ youth, were leading, and continue to lead, cultural resurgence efforts, rooting themselves in their specific Indigenous cultures while also holding colonial institutions accountable for ongoing violence.
Given that Indigenous peoples throughout the world are constantly “disappearing” in the colonial imaginary, having our own voices is a powerful reminder that we are not going anywhere.
Have you ever been asked if you were Canadian enough? How did you respond?
I am white looking, and on the Prairies at least, there is this assumption that Indigenous peoples all identify as Canadian, so this is not a question I am asked, I’m rarely othered.
However, after living in Montréal for a number of years, in Haudenosaunee territory, I began to re-evaluate my acceptance of the label “Canadian,” because the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) so firmly and eloquently asserts their own sovereignty.
There is a fair amount of Métis nationalist rhetoric that names us the “first Canadians” because we emerged as a unique people on the Plains, post-Contact.
Tell us about the importance of protecting and preserving Indigenous languages in Canada?
It is vital to remember that the Métis, like other Indigenous peoples, never accepted Canadian sovereignty over us. General Middleton brought cannons and Gatling guns to Batoche to force the issue, hung our leaders, scattered our people, and brutally punished us and our nêhiyawak allies for generations. How did this make us Canadians? How could it?
I stopped identifying as Canadian over ten years ago. I am an otipêyimisiw-iyiniw (Métis person), and I am a part of the Métis Nation. I may have legal citizenship as a Canadian, but I do not accept Canadian sovereignty. Stating that does get me a fair amount of criticism, as you can imagine, and understanding this would take a much longer conversation.
Tell us about the importance of protecting and preserving Indigenous languages in Canada?
As an educator, and one who is decidedly passionate about Indigenous languages, I feel very strongly about this issue. Protecting and preserving does not go far enough. These are languages, within which are embedded whole worldviews, that exist nowhere else in the world. Indigenous languages come from the land, quite literally, and when those languages are destroyed or suffer vocabulary shrinkage, we lose vital information about these lands that sustain all living beings.
The fact that Indigenous languages are still not prioritized on our own lands is unconscionable. Our languages are not dying, they have been deliberately brutalized for hundreds of years, stolen, and beaten out of children until very recently. All part of Canada’s nation-building efforts.
Restoration must be the goal, and that means pulling out all the legislative and financial stops to bring
our diverse Indigenous languages back to full health. Minimally our languages require Constitutional protection equal to English and French. I am more ambitious. I believe all peoples living in these lands should learn an Indigenous language, whichever is traditional to the territory one lives in. Anything less simply perpetuates the harm that continues to be done.
As parents, how do we pass on the culture to our children when in some cases we do not know the culture or there are repressive parts of the culture we would like to walk away from? I am not necessarily asking about Indigenous culture here.
There are entire generations of Indigenous people who have been violently disconnected from their communities and cultures. Cultural disconnection is also experienced by people of many other backgrounds. The totalizing nature of mainstream white, Anglo culture is incredibly difficult to counter. It is there in every aspect of our children’s lives, even inside our homes in the media they consume and the online interactions they have.
Even for children raised in culturally connected households, there is no guarantee that child will embrace their parent’s culture(s). As parents, we know that sometimes the knowledge we pass on does not bear fruit for a long time, and we may even experience our children rejecting their culture. I say this because our efforts are not in vain, âhkamêyimotân, we must persevere!
Reaching out to others from your cultural background is especially important if you do not have the knowledge yourself to pass on to your children. Child-rearing is not meant to happen in isolation, and I have found that for many people, parenthood sparks that desire to reclaim one’s cultural roots.
However, cultures are never frozen in time. If there are aspects of any culture that harm us, whether those things are a result of the influences of white supremacy and colonialization or not, we are not required to enforce those traditions. So many of our own Indigenous youth feel alienated from their ceremonies and cultural spaces because of rhetoric that reinforces the `oppressions they face, especially as LGBTQ2+ people. I do not need to know if these teachings are original or introduced. My priority is in asserting the humanity of all people, and we need to centre those among us who experience the most marginalization.
What is settler colonialism and how damaging has it been to us and our children in 2021?
Settler colonialism is the physical occupation of land as a method of asserting ownership over that land, and its resources (and even people). Many people misunderstand this to be a historical event, something that happened a long time ago, and that no longer applies. Yet Canada continues to assert its existence, and its right to exploit lands and resources, even in those areas where no legal basis for this can even be interpreted to exist.
Canada is obviously not the only settler colonial nation state, and while there are some legal, geographic, and historical differences between each of these nations, there is much more in the way of similarities. Settler colonialism implicates us all in various ways, but at its root, it creates a hierarchy within which some people are afforded more humanity than others. This tends to be couched in the language of “rights” rather than a baldly asserted hierarchy, but the outcome is the same. Some people “have the right” to (or if we are pretending today to be a meritocracy, some people “deserve”) the fundamentals of life, and others do not.
The last year and more has not changed this, it has merely highlighted the ways in which this hierarchy operates. When a society’s existence is based on genocide, chattel slavery, and theft, that rotten foundation contaminates and infiltrates everything it encounters.
You wrote recently about social media burnout, how are you feeling now? Do you see a future without isolation? That was a vulnerable piece, and I am happy you shared it.
Social media was a huge part of my life for well over a decade. I am a part of Generation X so I remember life pre-internet. I feel like I learned more online than in all my years of school, specifically from Black, Indigenous, and people of colour. I mean, until I was online, I had no idea there was any Black history to know here in Alberta, and that was in my 30s! In a noticeably big way, younger people have been my mentors as much as my Elders have been.
I will not say that nothing online is real. Some of the most enduring relationships I had were sparked online; it is how I met my partner, and his support has honestly made everything I do possible. My growing sense of alienation could potentially be me feeling like I am aging out of what social media can do for me, and what I can contribute in that way. The incredible isolation we have been living through made me more vulnerable to the kinds of nastiness I had become accustomed to ignoring, it began to impact my health severely and negatively. I had a nightmare last week, where I was trying to convince myself to get back on Twitter. I will not be doing that.
At this point in my life, I want to work more slowly, and more relationally, in person. I still have so, so much to learn. I have tuned out most social media for half a year now and weirdly, I do not miss it at all. This pandemic has brought home for me how important it is to have those personal connections close to home, not just across the country via the internet. I need to focus on the people I am building with, rather than on the opinions of people who are not in my life at all.
In many instances the police force disproportionately targets and kills Black and Indigenous people - when you reflect on the history and the present-day realities of Indigenous people, what changes would you like to see?
I want it to stop. Period. The Prairies has the largest proportion of Indigenous peoples incarcerated anywhere in Canada, and Black people are also vastly over-represented in these carceral institutions. Things are not getting better. In fact, you can check the stats and see that once the Residential School system was finally disbanded, incarceration rates of Indigenous men, women, and youth, skyrocketed.
Prior to the 1960s in Canada, Indigenous peoples only represented 1 – 2% of the federal prison population. Now that representation sits around 27%, while we are 5% of the population. It’s even worse on the Prairies! In Manitoba, Indigenous men make up 15% of the population, but 74% of the prison population! Black people represent 3.5% of the total population in Canada, and double that in incarceration rates.
It all starts with those interactions with police, and it is not a mystery. We have study upon study, Auditor General’s report upon report, inquests, inquiries, even Royal Commissions pointing out how systemic racism plays out. We cannot pretend not to understand the situation and yet here we are, still trying to convince a wider society that being called racist is not, in fact, more horrible than experiencing racism.
It goes back to what I said earlier about the way in which some people are afforded more humanity than others. This is not a problem that is
impossible to solve. Instead, Canadian mainstream society is constantly re-affirming a decision to remain ignorant about the systemic issues at play and refusing to overhaul (or just scrap) things.
Can you share what you have learnt about the journeys of ancestors?
Every generation has had its struggles, its heartbreaks, its joys, its triumphs. Knowing my ancestors made time to fiddle and stage kitchen parties, even when we were being burned out of Road Allowances, reminds me to make time for jubilation.
I want to assert, as so many other Indigenous folks have done, that we are post-apocalyptic peoples. Indigenous peoples, globally, and I want to be very explicit here and include Black people, have experienced multiple world-ending events. Yet we continue to exist, and yes sometimes, even thrive. The strength of our ancestors, the profound love they have passed down to us through our languages, our ceremonies, our communities, whether we are connected or not, is our birthright. We don’t have to earn it, we don’t have to beg for it, it is ours.
In nêhiyawêwin, the Cree language that is spoken by nêhiyawak (Cree) and Métis alike in this territory, the word for “my ancestors” is nikihciâniskotâpânak. It’s also the exact same term for your descendants; it denotes a generational linkage rather than a linear progression. I am someone’s kihci-âniskotâpan: someone’s descendant, but also someone’s ancestor. Things might look somewhat different for me right now than they did for those that came before, and those that have yet to come, but I guarantee you we have more in common than not.
What books are you reading now? What books do we need to read to learn more about Indigenous culture?
I have found myself absolutely inhaling trashy thrillers, about two a week, since the pandemic began. The stories are sordid and full of mostly white, middle class, messy people making terrible decisions, and honestly it makes me feel a little better about my own life and the relationships I have. The books have all blended together in my mind though, and if the Libby library app I use did not keep track of what I’ve already read, I’d easily re-read something without even noticing.
I am a huge wimp, and never wanted to read these books before because they scared me, but now I think I have a better understanding of why scary things (fictional or not) appeal to so many people. In a way it forces me to take stock of things and recognize they could be a lot worse. Let my life be simple, please!
In terms of books to read to learn more about the vast diversity of Indigenous cultures, there are honestly so many now. Take your pick. Just make sure they are written by Indigenous authors; no one needs to give cultural frauds any more oxygen. It does not have to be an academic publication; Indigenous authors have branched out into every genre you can think of. It is important to remember that we are hundreds of distinct cultures, and what you learn about a specific people will not necessarily help you when it comes to another people.
Is there a secret you to managing your time and family commitments?
I do not bring work home. What that means, now that I have literally been working in my home since March of 2020, is when I step outside of my office, I am trying to focus on my family. If I forget to do this, my youngest children remind me very quickly, because when I am done the workday, they immediately use me as furniture.
I had to learn this early on, when I was a single mom trying to make it through law school, and to be honest, things have not slowed down. I struggle a lot with my ADHD, and to remain functional, I have developed certain organizational habits. Knowing I have a limited number of hours to get everything done that needs doing is a mighty motivator. My little sweet alarm clocks ensure I do not get to make up sleep lost if I’m burning the midnight oil, and it only takes a few times stumbling around like a zombie all day to realize the worth of getting myself back on track every time I want to zone out. I have not perfected my techniques though; every deadline remains daunting.
Underneath it all is my belief that what makes life worthwhile is not how hard you worked on whatever project or deadline. It’s the relationships you build and maintain over your lifetime. I sell my labour to support my family, but my life with my family is the whole point. If I do not leave this world a little better for generations to come, what was any of it worth?
