hi everyone today I want to talk about cultural confusion or what I call my experiences with
ethnic identity crisis so I would say every one to two years I have a moment something
will trigger it where I feel lost as it relates to what my culture is and when I say culture I mean
my ethnic culture am I Canadian am I Punjabi my Indo-Canadian am I sick like what am I and what
usually happens is something will bring it on either feeling isolated or feeling disconnected
from experiences that are taking place around me or I'll be in a social setting where I'm
with either Punjabi people and I won't feel very Punjabi or I'll be with a lot of white people
repeatedly in Canada or in the u.s. through my work when I'm traveling and I'll feel culturally
disconnected there or something we'll bring it on and I'll feel like I don't know who I am and
I usually end up calling my sister Komal and since this has happened a number of times she's ready
for it and I'll call her and I'll say I'm having one of those moments my ethnic identity crisis and
I don't know who I am and what my culture is and I'll cry and she'll talk me through it and then
I'll feel better and then I move on and I want to talk about about my experiences with that and
what I have learned especially over the last few years when I feel finally and feeling more sorted
so just by way of background with my story I was born in Canada 42 years ago to Indian parents my
parents immigrated from India to Canada 45 years ago and were Punjabi and were sick and when I say
sick that's my faith it's about si KH pronounced it cannot seek and I grew up in Toronto which at
the time was really multicultural although at the age of 11 my parents made a very strategic
decision to move us to the whitest place that they could move us to without moving us to farm country
which was about half an hour north of the city to a town called Unionville Ontario now they could
have moved us west of the city to an area called Brampton where a lot of Punjabis live a lot of
six live and a lot of their friends were living but they said no we want to take our children
to a place that where there are a lot of white people so that our children can learn how to shift
cultural codes and access networks that they don't we don't currently have access to and get a really
good education and all of that so they chose Unionville Ontario which at the time was extremely
homogeneous very white wasn't multicultural at all and a few things happened in because I went
grew up in Unionville one I grew up with a lot of white kids very few South Asian kids or kids of
color period and so on a daily basis for like I'd say eight years I was immersed in white Canadiana
in terms of hobbies and activities and pastimes and music and food and and ways of thinking during
the day at school and then the other thing that happened is that I unfortunately experienced a lot
of racist bullying and so in a really formative time in my life I learned that being brown or
anything that tied back with brownness was wrong or bad and that would attract a lot of racism and
so I learned at a young age to push down a lot of aspects of my brownness at the same time because
my parents chose to move us to Unionville we were as you would expect coming home and when
I said we my siblings and I but let me own it me I would come home after school wanting to do a
lot of things that white kids did like date boys or go on sleepovers or go to summer camp or party
until the wee hours of the morning or whatever whatever whatever and my parents who were Indian
immigrants and had only been in the country for like let's say 12 to 15 years so they were still
experiencing and winding and weaving their way through their identity as new Canadians to the
country raising children they were not having a lot of it they were like nah no we've moved
to Union Unionville so you have this access but what do you mean that you want to go and do all
these crazy Canadian white kid things and how dare you talk back to us oh no you don't talk
back to us no no no you know not in this India and South Asian upbringing household so they
were really struggling with us trying to be very Canadian even though they really wanted us to
be very Canadian and frankly because we were hanging out and growing up in Unionville not
with a lot of Indian kids we were absorbing a lot of Canadiana and on weekends while we spent some
time with Punjab other Punjabi families because we did like a lot of those family party things
in the West End and everywhere and Scarborough we'd go back to Scarborough which is a really
multicultural part of Toronto where I was born I was picking up pockets of Punjabi culture but we
weren't really fully learning it in the household either so for example my Paris native tongue is
Punjabi and my Punjabi that I speak right now is totally half-assed like I understand it I speak
it because if I have it's important that I do that to absorb aspects of my culture but I am
not good at Punjabi and I certainly wasn't as a kid they and my parents didn't really push that
but there were other aspects of Indian culture that they push and there was a lot of cultural
confusion for me growing up in that household because of getting mixed messaging around when
I should be really Indian in Punjabi and then when I should be Canadian and when it was inappropriate
to be really a Canadian and to be very Punjabi and and for example as a really loud boisterous
extroverted feisty woman girl at the time I got reprimanded a lot by my parents because that was
an appropriate behavior for a good Indian girl but it was perfectly acceptable in Canadian culture
and so I go to school and I behave like this to make friends and get socially accepted and again
and integrated with my teachers and all that and that was great which is what my parents wanted
me to do but then when I would come home and act like that it would be like oh no you don't know
no no you know and so I was just really confused and I really struggled with my identity for years
through my teens and then in my 20s and then even into my 30s and and at the same time I was making
friends from across cultures I had a lot of West Indian friends a lot of Caribbean friends and I
really felt culturally connected to my West Indian Caribbean friends because there was a
lot of overlap in terms of culture and spirit and family orientation and food and the music while
different was also quite similar that drumming beat and I I felt drawn there but then of course
I knew that but I'm a guest and and as a friend in this community but I'm not off the community
and I at the end of the day just felt really lost and actually felt lost for a long time and
now given that I do work in the area of diversity and inclusion and I teach culture for a living I
now understand that what was happening for me growing up and then into my adulthood as well
is that I was struggling with finding belonging and belonging is something that we all crave as
people people and I know that this is hard for a lot of us because we see ourselves as being so
sophisticated we're animals we are animals and as a species we are a very tribal animal species we
crave belonging in tribes and for me growing up ethno-cultural II I struggled to feel belonging
in a tribe I felt I felt like an outsider in white culture because I wasn't white and in
fact I experienced other and bullying and racism and continue to and so I didn't feel belonging
there and I I also though struggled with feeling belonging in Punjabi or South Asian culture back
then and still do because while aspects of South Asian of Punjabi culture really resonate with me
and I love like the family focus and the art and the food and the spirituality like Eastern
spirituality for me sick spirituality really resonates I also really struggle with the aspects
of misogyny for example that permeates our culture or the judgments that we have in the stigma that
attaches to being really authentic or different or unique because the high level of conformity
that we push and so that's really challenging for me and as a really feisty outspoken strong
independent person / woman it's hard for me in moments too and then of course while I'm a guest
invited into the homes of other communities and other friends circles and tribes I'm not
off those tribes I am a guest or a friend and so for me it has been a constant theme struggling to
find belonging in a tribe but here is what I have learned and this has been a journey that I have
been exploring for many many years and I would say it was really only a few years ago that I came to
see that where I'm at does in fact makes sense and rather than fighting this I don't belong I don't
belong I have created a new sense of belonging for myself and actually writing my book called the
authenticity principle where I explore the Who am I peace has been was really helpful for that for
my for me for my own journey what I have learned is that this binary way of looking at cultural
identity I am South Asian I am Canadian I am brown I am this I'm that actually doesn't serve some of
us and in fact it's this either/or sentiment it doesn't work we are not binary beings we are not
the either/or we are the and we are the and this I am this and I am this and I am this essentially
what I have learned is that I am a mishmash of cultures and I choose the mishmash because I get
to choose what resonates with me so for example I love that I'm Canadian I am fiercely proud of
being Canadian I love that compared to other nations around this world we are so fiercely
committed to human rights at the same time I as a devout proud Canadian I call out Canadians
I call us out as a collective for continuing to perpetuate the legacies of colonization and other
forms of supremacy where some of us are getting ahead and others are being left behind so I am
Canadian I accept that I embrace that I am also Punjabi and I love again the the family-centered
aspect of my culture I love that we celebrate spirituality in a way that really resonates with
me I love that the Sikh spirit is so woven into how I live and and and breathe and be and that
really feels good to me I love that on a certain weekend I can go to bung or jam or a volume of
jam and the very next weekend I can go to a soca fat I love that was my West Indian friends I think
that's awesome at the end of the day for me as a mishmash of cultures and in choosing what aspects
of the cultures that I want to be or I want to embody that work for me would I have come to see
is that really at the end of the day I identify yes as being Punjabi as being Canadian but then
I'm a woman of color who's so impacted by her gender identity and her racial identity and this
works it's not perfect I still have moments of feeling a lack of belonging I still have moments
of struggling with Who am I and and how that's evolving but I'm exhaling a lot more like I can
be for example in a train in India and just exhale be like wow I'm with my people the same way I can
be at a party listening to awesome music here and be like wow I'm with my people and so I'm
a mishmash and that works and that's great and so my takeaway for you after today is if you're
listening to me speak and this is resonating give thought to why you have cultural confusion or are
you having a yearly or biannual ethnic identity crisis like I have been having over my life so
far what's bringing on the confusion for you and most importantly how do you reconcile that are
you also a mishmash of cultures and if you are what's the mishmash and just know that that's
okay it's not even okay it's great it works for us too it doesn't have to always be packaged up in a
neat little form with a bow on it in order to work that we can be a mishmash so as always I'd love to
hear from you please leave your comments below or message me directly and thanks again for watching