#actuallyindigenous | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rileys-archive · 2 months

Text

diaspora is survival : let the dystopian morning light pour in

this is an edited version of an autobiographical essay i submitted for my pan-african geography class where the prompt was

"Using the excerpt from Stokely Carmichael’s Ready for the Revolution as a model, write a short autobiographical essay describing your own experience of “diaspora as survival.” How, in other words, did you end up here in Vancouver and at UBC? While you should describe as much as possible the migrations of your own family, you should also try to include references to those important historical markers of labor, history, race, colonialism, migration, and gender that are referenced by Carmichael." the purpose of me publishing this essay on tumblr is so i can cite it for another class, michael if ur reading this i hope u enjoy it !! i omitted some details i wasn't comfortable posting on the internet (aka not doxxing myself). also if the capitalization seems funky, it's intentional !!

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.

[Notes of a Native Son – James Baldwin]

I’ve always been a bit of historian, how could I not when my own history, my own stories, have been hidden from me. To be Indigenous in a country that treats my people as a history, as no longer present, means being a historian of my own culture is a form of resistance. It doesn’t fit with the settler colonial canadian logic for my people to have a history or culture. Everyday I resist this occupation by remembering, by recreating, and continuing anishinaabek ways of living. And if Audre Lorde says, “the personal is political”, then much of what I write (both for academic purposes but also creative projects) will involve the politics of being a disabled Afro-Indigenous queer/two-spirit person living in an occupied state. Simply put, I write as a Nakawe, a citizen of Tootinaowaziibeeng, in Musqueam territory. I write from the belly of the beast and it can hard to avoid the drops of acid on these pages.

How do you know your history? I’m not saying “ask your mom to cite her sources” but how do you know if what you’ve been told about yourself, your family, community, etc is true? I don’t believe one’s truth and what is fact are the same, at least I haven’t lived a life like that. Thus I’ll start where life starts, with the one who brought me into this world. I was born in oskana kâ-asastêki to my two adoptive parents and my biological mother tracy-lynn. I was adopted at birth, many who aren't familiar with the foster care system (the modern way canada monitors Indigenous children’s whereabouts, since the final residential school closed in 1996) would think that being adopted at birth was a good thing, I don't know if it was. You're likely wondering where my biological dad is… well that makes two of us. During conversations with her social worker she admitted to not knowing the father and regularly having casual sex with men of different ethnic origins, naming white, Indigenous, Black, and Filipino. Thus my adoptive parents (Tracey and Arlon), assumed I was Filipino based on my looks. Although strangers did occasionally throw Black microaggressions towards me, older white women wanted to touch my black curls and I was a girl who wanted to be ‘polite’.

For the first 18 years of my life, it was my truth that I was Filipino. The guilt of my lack of connection from my Filipino friends eventually brought me to study the language as a teenager. Wanting to know what region of the Philippines my father was from lead me to doing a DNA test around age 18. Discovering the truth, for a short period of time, resulted in a what felt like a cultural crisis. I finally felt comfortable in one of my ethnic backgrounds (comfortable enough to get a tattoo of the Philippines flag within a knife, image above) so realizing the rarity of situations like this and not being able to find help online terrified me. After learning basic Tagalog, growing up with Filipino friends, and even embarking on a double major of History and Asian Studies, I had found myself in a very strange circumstance. You can find thousands of articles giving advice on how to come out as gay or transgender (as I had done so at 11 and 12 myself), but nobody really comes out as African. Honestly, I was scared that people would think of me as a liar or fraud. Like the pretendian equivalent of being Black. If the truth came to light, people would think I was intentionally lying about my race. At the same time, I was scared that if I said I was Black, but provided no proof, I was just some annoying leftist trying to claim a marginalized identity. It felt like being called to fight in a war where I'd lose on either front.

As strange as it sounds, I can’t imagine my life without my queerness. Growing up with two older siblings that came out as queer before me allowed 11 year old me to develop language to understand myself and others. If I weren’t queer, I don’t know if I would’ve been introduced to philosophies of identity and history. Gaining a sense of self, a sense of pride in who I am and the communities I’m a part of, was integral to me discovering feminism at a young age (roughly age 13), leading me to learn from Black and Indigenous feminists/communists, many of whom I cite today in teacher education. The most important life lesson being queer has given me is that I don’t need to “know” myself, know what exact labels and identities suit me at any given moment, I just need to live. For example, I don’t inject testosterone because I feel at my core I’m a man (I don’t) or because I feel a need to prove my masculinity in a biological way (I don’t), I do it because I like the way it makes my body look. In a very Gen Z way, I decided to fuck around and find out. Thus when I had my cultural identity crisis, I realized I could just identify as mixed Black/Ethiopian/African. In the same way there’s no “true trans” person, there’s was no way for me to “truly” be African. I just am.

As mentioned, I learnt about social justice issues and movements relatively early which was integral to my own identity development. Through learning from revolutionaries like Kwame Ture who stated “We're Africans in America, struggling against American capitalism. We're not Americans” and “a fight for power is a fight for land. [...] Our land is Africa. America's not our land, it belongs to the American Indians and we have a right to stand and take a moral struggle with them.” I felt empowered to describe myself as Afro-Indigenous, to bring my two sides together as one whole. Diaspora is survival can mean a lot of things at different times & places but here, it meant a member of the diaspora empowered another diaspora to take up the family name of African, within my mixed background. The name survived its travels. This is my favourite term for a few important reasons. Firstly, I’m acknowledging the lands I’m from. Both the ties I have to Africa as a diaspora and Indigenous reflecting my Turtle Island upbringing. Secondly, I’m not identifying with a colonial state as terms like Indigenous Canadian or Black Canadian would suggest. Lastly, I’m not playing into the settler idea of blood quantum. A soul cannot be divided into percentages.

It feels wrong, embarrassing even, to say I envy the classmates of mine who have the privilege of being one call or text away from a family member that can answer simple questions. I only know what someone, I assume a social worker, felt was worthy of documenting. I didn’t learn that my maternal grandmother’s brother roger was forced into multiple residential schools from tracy-lynn or her mother rita, I learnt from a fucking hydro company. How colonial dystopian is that? Hydro Manitoba did a study of the land they intended to put pipelines through, consulting the nation which neighbours my own. My nation is Tootinaowaziibeeng First Nation, physically within Treaty 2 territory but a signatory of Treaty 4. I’ve lived most of my life on Treaty 4 land, i.e. the land stolen from the Métis (michif), Cree (néhiyaw), and Ojibway (anishinaabe). My adoptive dad Arlon is a descendant of the first British & French settlers in the region and he didn’t know which Indigenous peoples lived on the land that makes up our family farm-turned-acreage until I told him. To him, the land was always in the family and was empty before, owned by the canadian government that gave it to his family. As a socially anxious young adult he was set up on a dinner date with my adoptive mom, Tracey. She was also from a white farming family, her childhood home being just 2 km down the road from where mine still sits today. Growing up she embraced the cuisine of her German ancestry, that was all her mother taught her. If I remember correctly, she’s mostly German, but had Jewish family survive the Holocaust, becoming refugees to Canada after leaving the Netherlands. I’m unsure if they were Dutch Jewish, I never asked. Despite having 3 known sides of family, I’ve always been distanced from them in some way. When I was young my mom told me the reason we didn’t spend time with distant family was because they were “mean” to her. As a teenager I learnt “mean” actually meant racist, they were upset with her for adopting an “Indian” baby.

Like Toni Morrison, much of my own literary (and musical) background comes from autobiographies. Now that I think about it, I’m surrounded by autobiographical creations. I can prove this on the spot by looking down at my phone next to me, Spotify open, playing Boujee Natives by Snotty Nose Rez Kids, a hiphop duo from Haisla First Nation. That song is on my ndn rap playlist, below it is my hiphop for sexy ppl only playlist which contains only Black/African rappers. I hit shuffle on the playlist and Malcolm Garvey Huey by Dead Prez comes on, ironic as I get to read works by/about these exact historical figures for this geography class. If I look into my backpack next to me I’ll find Dancing On Our Turtle’s Back by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) and Creeland by Dallas Hunt (Swan River First Nation), both autobiographical works to an extent. That’s just my immediate surroundings here at a cafe near my house, I typically exist near a shelf of autobiographies at my two library jobs, as well as at home in East Van.

Where would I go? If I wrote an autobiography what section would they put me in? Would it still be autobiography if so much of my family knowledge comes from government documents like an adoption act or residential school records? Would my Indigeneity render it a historical work? If I have to rely on historical evidence to make a guess, does that make my life a fiction? Assuming an Indigenous category exists, who makes the decision on whether I’m too Black to belong? Perhaps I’ll write a biomythography like Audre Lorde. The sisters have it figured out this time, I know where’d I go.

If past you were to meet future me, Would you be holding me here and now?

[Historians – Lucy Dacus]

References :

Afromarxist, “What's in a Name? ft. Kwame Ture (1989)” YouTube, video publication date 27 October 2019, https://youtu.be/OGcl359SMxE?si=T_bs5PKLBZuUYwZ0

Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.

Chakasim, Neegahnii Madeline. “Pretendians and their Impacts on Indigenous Communities.” The Indigenous Foundation, May 10 2022. https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/pretendians-and-their-impacts-on-indigenous-communities

HTFC Planning & Design & Manitoba Hydro. “See what the land gave us” Waywayseecappo First Nation Traditional Knowledge Study For the Birtle Transmission Line. December 2017. https://www.hydro.mb.ca/docs/projects/birtle/appendix_c_waywayseecappo_tk_study_final_report.pdf

Lucy Dacus. Historians. Jacob Blizard and Collin Pastore. March 2, 2018. Matador Records, digital streaming.

Books / music mentioned

dead prez. Malcolm Garvey Huey. June 22 2010. Boss Up Inc., digital streaming.

Hunt, Dallas. Creeland. Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2021.

*Maynard, Robyn. Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2017.

Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. New York: Crossing Press, 1982.

Phoebe Bridgers. ICU. Phoebe Bridgers, Marshall Vore, & Nicholas White. June 18, 2020. Dead Oceans, digital streaming.

Snotty Nose Rez Kids. Boujee Natives. May 10 2019. Independent, digital streaming.

Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011.

*Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always Done. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

sources with * were in the original essay but omitted from this version

0 notes

mangedog · 2 years

Text

The Only Blak Queer in the World

I was the Only Blak Queer in the world. I had many difficulties. I didn’t know how to tell my family. I hadn’t seen Steven Oliver can’t even on Black Comedy yet, we hadn’t watched it together over dinner. TV didn’t save me. I hadn’t seen Electric Fields perform in a sweaty old meat market with a group of friends who had similar feelings. I hadn’t heard Zaachariaha’s deadly voice singing ‘Nina’. I hadn’t yet read Lisa Bellear. And cried sitting on the carpet in the library over sharply written work that spoke to me and my experience. I started a blog. I got many comments. People were always asking me what it was like to be Blak and Queer. I hadn’t yet started thinking about gender as a colonial construct. Or examined my ideas of masculinity and femininity.

I hadn’t yet realised that my relationship was interracial. I started another blog. Thoughts about interracial queer relationships featured. I hadn’t got a crush on Kayemtee yet and listened to her track that samples Cold Chisel: will your cruel attitude last forever? I wondered if my parents would ever accept my future partners, if I’d ever have the chance to legalise my relationship, have children, ask for more, not for less. Some nights were really lonely and I created Cathy Freeman as a lesbian and Prince as an Aboriginal. I got trolled, deleted my social media accounts and the only known evidence of Blak Queer existence was destroyed. I hadn’t yet seen the doco on Uncle Jack Charles and met Blak Queer Elders who knew of a previous time Australians had to vote on the rights of a group of people. These Elders knew what it was like to hear their rights discussed by people outside of their group. I hadn’t yet worn my flag singlet tucked inside my Calvins as a gammin fashion statement. I hadn’t yet been to Mardi Gras. I saw the white gays and the white gaze I was used to and then I saw Blak Queers everywhere and every conversation was an insight into a Blak Queer past, the street becoming a site of multi-time, the past-present beat, the future love, and forty years of Blak Queer pride spread into more than sixty thousand years of we-have-always-been-here.

My dance joined a big dance. I saw a Wiradjuri/Yorta Yorta lesbian couple who had been marching since the beginning, who chanted, ‘Stop Police Attacks! On Gays, Women and Blacks!’ in 1978 and they told me off for knowing fuck-all. Every chant is a line of a continuing poem and I am learning the words. I saw the flag sparkle, I saw gays from everywhere from Moree to Perth, I saw a Blak Captain Cook, Malcolm Cole, in 1988, the year of the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander float, that float should have been the first float that year, but mob didn’t open the parade until 2005, when Aunty Karen Cook and Aunty Lily Shearer walked out each with a coolamon of curling leaves, smoking the parade. The small leaf fire was started on the corner of Liverpool and Elizabeth Streets and in parade time, it never stopped. I thought properly about what it meant to be marching on stolen land. And that Roger McKay in 1982, when he carried the flag in the march, made the point that the Sydney gays’ golden mile was the unceded land of the people of the Eora nation. It was our modes of community and belonging white queers craved, and this influenced how they made their ‘scenes’. I woke up on a mattress in a queer share house with a text from the other Blak Queer asking to go on a date. I consumed Blak Queer art, and I created it.

I saw Paakantyi/Barkindji artist Raymond Zada’s work at the Art Gallery of South Australia and cried. I felt the heavy loss for all of the ones killed, murdered, missing. For the erasure of Blak Queers in every capital, small city and town in Australia. And I told myself I was lucky to have stayed alive and counted the times I thought I would die. I began to know the stories of more and more and more Blak Queers who had died. I knew them as Ancestors. I read Natalie Harkin’s, Yvette Holt’s, Nayuka Gorrie’s and Alison Whittaker’s writing online and in bookstores. I saw love for Blak Queers everywhere. Outside the city the sky sent me hints, the walks on Country along the river kept me safe. I saw the colours of my own heart, and they were not the colours of isolation and fear.

- From Throat (2020), by Ellen van Neerven (they/them), a nonbinary Mununjali Yugambeh writer.

#ellen van neerven #throat #the only blak queer in the world #poetry #nonbinary author #nonbinary writer #actuallyindigenous #actuallynonbinary #indigenous author #indigenous writer #aboriginal australian art #aboriginal australian poetry #indigenous poetry #nonbinary poetry #queer poetry #queer author #queer writer #australian author #australian writer

30 notes · View notes

lestis · 5 years

Text

justcoralthings: writing a fucking essay (works cited in MLA format) in your phone notes page while on break about how it’s impossible by definition to culturally appropriate the identity of “two-spirit” cause you were looking for the flag on google & came across some dumbass commenters

**knee-reaction to reading this might be huh this person is wack cause i know if i read this my danger signals would be piping but to be clear. im not saying cultural appropriation is nonexistent or not a problem.

fjfjdj i have a Lot that i could write about this but. tldr; it’s not possible to appropriate the two-spirit identity because by identifying as two-spirit (as long as you are informed & don’t like. just think ‘oh it sounds cool’) you are native! not genetically, but culturally, because you can’t identify as two-spirit without ‘’’agreeing’’’/sharing the native perspective & culture.

((cause if someone doesn’t genuinely share the perspective of spirits that aborigines have—see: two-spirit.. it’s in the name.. they have 2 of them—they don’t actually identify as two-spirit. & because they have to actually ‘’’believe it’’’/share the perspective of aborigines to identify, it stands to reason that culturally they are native american))

(((and again i could go on & on but keep in mind that blood quotients / race have been historically used as tools of genocide against aborigines & that if it just Doesn’t Seem Right maybe that’s cause you’ve been taught that by the system that caused that genocide and that maybe you should reexamine what race & ethnicity mean from a native/non-european standpoint. like you might be native even but have been taught it as what it means in a european system bc the teaching of american schools is undeniably eurocentric/from a european perspective)))

#actuallynative #actuallyindigenous #actuallyaboriginal #✌️#Anyway.#im thinking of like actually writing an essay (book?) on this cause #speaking w other native people has really changed my perspective??#& like a lot of aborigines buy into that colonist perspective simply Because #Of boarding schools — if u dont kno their significance #literally google native american history boarding schools —#& also that english is.... a colonizer language & as such definitions (of race ethnicity etc) are descriptors explained #by .. european concepts #cause the literal definition versus it in the context of how it’s been used as a weapon against native people #(Please google ‘blood quotients native american’ it’s .... really telling #)#and for the most part is not taught in schools #or DM me & i can rec some books/sites to check out #this blog cant accept DMs but my main (@luvielo) can

2 notes · View notes