I'm Anthony. I'm James. And we're team Ahkameyimok.
I think the great thing about The Amazing Race Canada is the format of the show is designed
to get people engaged. Being on TV and being in people's living rooms, we felt it was very
important to show Indigenous youth, trans youth, Two-Spirit youth and really anyone
who wanted to get up off the couch and do something positive for themselves –
We wanted to give some visual representation to minorities, Indigenous people and especially
Two-Spirit youth, because they are such an important part of our nations and communities,
and we wanted them to see themselves on TV, and it's totally fine, normal and cool and
accepted to be who they are.
What's been surprising for me is the number of non-Indigenous people who have said 'Those
skirts were amazing,' or 'I never knew this,' or 'You're representing this for me.'
People just uniformly said how proud they were of us for – how happy they were to
see all of the different issues represented on TV.
There have been some people on social media who've said 'Okay, just run the race – why
do you have all of this social messaging? Just get through the challenges,' and, unfortunately
for us, it's not possible to do that. Our existence, by default, is a political statement,
because we're gay, Indigenous men, from a certain place, and so just being alive is
a political statement.
What I think we wanted to do is break people's stereotypes that they often have of Indigenous
people. And we know so many successful, well-educated, grounded in culture and spirituality, Indigenous
people, and often they're not in the public light, and other issues that are perhaps more
negative are in the public sphere, and so those are some of the things that we wanted
to bring to attention – there are many people – many more people like us in the community.
Yeah. We just wanted to show people that we're here and we exist.
It just re-affirmed for me how my husband is, and how I absolutely, 100 per cent, made
the best decision to choose him as a life partner, and how blessed I am to have him
in my life.
I think, for me, what I learned is that my husband is not going to ask for help. It's
my responsibility to read into what he's communicating non-verbally in order to make decisions that
are best for the both of us. Like during the diamond challenge, I was the one that was
like 'Do we need to use the express pass?' And I think that he wanted to, but he didn't
bring it up for whatever reason – like during the G7 summit, I didn't want to show frustration
– all I wanted to do was be a positive listener to generate his speech and I think that it's
about supporting one another in that way, in order to be happy and be productive and
keep it moving.
I think at this point we're not prepared to figure out what we would do – we're just
kind of dealing with what's happened and I think we need to sit on it and think and figure
it out in the future.
I don't know. There are so many things –
Chanel. Let's just say we won $10 million – we wanted to – near the mountains in
Jasper, there are so many important Indigenous spiritual sites of significance, and it would
be great to have a space out there where we could go and be on the land and invite other
people to reconnect with their indigeneity, which has been disconnected and severed for
many different reasons. I'd love to have an Indigenous healing space and centre where
I could work with elders from the community with Cree medicines and Cree ways.