Transcriber: Mary Kay Reviewer: Denise RQ
One of the things I wanted to talk about today was about Mi'kmaq women.
Particularly, issues around racism,
resistance, resilience, and revitalization.
One of the things I wanted to show...
In the past,
our history as Mi'kmaq women has been really hard to come by.
There's a really awesome book called "Countering Colonization".
Carol Devens explores the missionaries' writings
of the late 1600s, early 1700s,
and their reactions and their observations about aboriginal women.
One was that we were really not that important.
We were invisible.
Some of the things that we did as Mi'kmaq women,
we didn't talk to with men.
So when the anthropologists or priests came in and wanted to talk to us
about what we were doing, it was not to be talked about.
When I talk about the past to the present,
we come to the point today
where there's 1,800 missing or murdered aboriginal women
who are invisible.
People don't think about it. We don't know about it.
It's just this endless stream of women who are aboriginal
who through social inequality,
racism, sexism, discrimination,
have lost their lives.
In some ways from the past to the present, we're still invisible.
A part of my journey, and I always like to talk about this in terms of a story.
Thomas King says "stories are all we are."
The first thing I wanted to say, stories are all we are.
When we talk about the present, I grew up poor.
I'm also, my father was Irish.
I didn't become a real Indian in Canada under the law
until September 19, 1980, at 3:20 p.m.
and the reason I can make that precision, determination
is because I got married to a man from Chapel Island.
My mother wasn't happy, but let's not talk about that.
So, when we look at the Indian Act and colonialism,
it determines, even today,
who is an Indian, under the Indian Act, who has status,
who has rights to treaty, to benefits,
who has the right to live on the reserve.
And we go back to the past. This is kind of a contradiction.
Remember, I said earlier that we were invisible.
But I think that we had a secret power the federal government was very aware of.
That secret power was targeted,
and it was targeted through the Indian Act
because the Indian Act during the time of the Victorian Age
when women had no power at all, it focused on aboriginal women.
If you married off the reserve, you were no longer an Indian.
If you were married to someone else from another community,
you became a member of that community.
That undercut our communities
because the women had power through politics,
through raising our children, passing on culture and language.
When you take that part away, it really impacts a community.
Then we go to the residential school era,
and our children were taken away.
In all the time the Indian Act is getting longer and longer and longer.
It rules our lives from birth to beyond the grave.
Who was considered an Indian? Who was not considered an Indian?
I was one of the ones who was not considered a status Indian
until September 19, 1980, at 3:20 p.m.
So when I talk about that kind of racism,
one of the things I looked up in preparation for this talk,
there was a quote by Toni Morrison that said,
"Racism is a distraction for us. Can we educate people about racism?"
I thought about that comment. I thought, we as Mi'kmaq women, or me
- I should talk about myself -
have been very hurt by racism and sexism.
Sometimes it's hard to figure out which is which.
Am I being discriminated against because I'm a woman?
Am I being discriminated against because I'm a lawyer?
Oops! Yes.
Or a Mi'kmaq person?
Or now that I'm getting up there in age, is it my age?
All of these things are intertwined together.
We still live in a society today where we face increased violence.
We face increased poverty. We face that inequity.
I wanted to talk about racism and how much it hurts.
When Toni Morrison said it was a distraction,
- and like I said, I was thinking about that -
I thought, how is that a distraction?
It actually happens.
People in power put us down
because of our race, and culture, and our language.
This has been going on for millennia; - well, since Europeans first--
since we first discovered the Europeans, I should say, -
that has been going on.
But when we talk about racism being a distraction, it's a distraction to me.
Because when we look at all of the different things about
our history and who we are,
the stereotypes about us as Mi'kmaq women, that hurts me.
I have to learn
to find my own voice within that mishmash of stereotypes.
I wanted to say something about my mom.
My mom went to residential school.
My mom passed away three and a half years ago.
She taught us, my sister and I, what it meant to be
within ourselves as Mi'kmaq women.
She always said, "Get an education."
Going to law school, my mother would say,
Don't let those who put you down.
Don't do it. Don't listen to it."
And it was really hard to do that.
I'm perfectly able to protect myself in many ways.
But sometimes, with racism, I'm unable to do that.
That's where other people come in.
My mother went to residential school
and still taught us what it meant to be a Mi'kmaq.
What does it mean to be a Mi'kmaq?
It's about spirituality, culture, values.
It's about who we are, our connection to the land.
There was a recent case in the Supreme Court of Canada
that just came down about aboriginal title.
People think that this is crown land.
This is mi'kma'ki. This is unama'ki.
This is our territory.
We get our strength and wisdom from the land. That's what we do.
Sometimes people don't understand that.
So can we work on garnering and understanding of each other
in terms of humanity between us?
That's where part of the stereotypical reactions came in, that we were not human.
But we are human.
We have to get beyond the stereotypes.
I have to get beyond the stereotypes.
When I talk about this racism, I talk about resistance,
that we did not totally fall down.
We resisted. We wanted an education.
We ended up with the residential schools.
We wanted land. We ended up with the reserves.
We wanted to keep our language and culture alive when it was outlawed
under the Indian Act; we kept it alive underground.
That resistance kept us here.
I didn't clue into this until I was 32 or something.
When I was in law school, when people looked at us like,
"You shouldn't be here, you're not smart enough to be here."
My American background would come in and go,
"What do you mean? You can't be saying that about me."
And then my Mi'kmaq self would go, "Maybe it's true."
Maybe it's true.
So I started looking back at the history of my family starting with my mom
who survived residential school,
who survived and thrived in bringing those values
to my sister and I, nieces, and nephews, extended family.
That's part of the resistance that we've had to deal with.
That we've had to survive.
Using resistance to survive.
The next 'R' I'd like to talk about is Resilience
because my mom was the epitome of resilience.
In regard to resilience, how do we maintain ourselves and our own soul?
Again, this comes back to this idea of why is racism a distraction?
Because my resilience and my family tell me
we can't believe what they say about us.
It hurts. It's painful.
So how do we become resilient?
Some of the things that I've done, and I'm not successful all the time,
believe me, I'm not successful all the time, is meditation,
the return to our traditional ways, along with our Catholic ways.
It's feeling the blood of the women ancestors
in my veins of survival and thriving.
It's finding our voice,
and being strong enough and brave enough to get up and talk about our experience.
It's never getting into the concept of revitalization.
I think there's a revitalization.
I see it happening with our youth, in particular.
I just figured out, like 10 years ago, I'm not in the category of a youth anymore.
Like, "Oh my! I'm not a youth."
I'm getting old.
But our youth are the ones that are really, really stepping up to the plate.
And that revitalization means as Mi'kmaq women we take our place in our society,
in our community, in our family, our strength and power with dignity
of who we are as Mi'kmaq women.
And oh, that's so hard sometimes.
Because the negative stuff will impose itself in my brain.
It will say, "You are not worthy, you're not good enough, not smart enough,"
- well, I'm always too fat -
"You're too fat, you're too tall," you're too something.
We don't want that.
We're coming into a time
where the balance has to be achieved again,
where women have to step up and take their role as Mi'kmaq women,
politically, spiritually, culturally, whether people go on to do their dreams,
they become lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers,
and give back to our community.
I'm very interested in the idea of voice,
in the concept of being allowed to speak one's truth.
That's what I was taught by my friend, Trish Monture.
We have to find our strength within ourselves.
I had an experience at work, and I just want to share this with you.
I was talking about my mom's role
in the Chapel Island, in the community as an elder, as a prayer leader,
and two people thought it was funny.