My guest tonight shares her experiences growing up
on a small Indian reservation in British Columbia
in her critically acclaimed debut book,
Heart Berries: A Memoir.
Please welcome Terese Marie Mailhot.
-♪ ♪ -(cheering, applause)
-Welcome to the show. -Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here,
and thank you so much for this book.
This is an experience that I think few people would envy
but most people would connect to.
It is a memoir of your life that is written...
And it's honestly one of the most authentic points of view
I've ever come across.
When you were writing the book, one thing I wanted to discover
from the beginning was, was it hard for you
to figure out how to be the voice of...
American Indian people, but at the same time realize
that you're not the voice for American Indian people?
It's an interesting balance to have.
Yeah, I think when you come from a collective culture,
like a community that relies on each other,
and when you speak out against violence
against, um, indigenous women,
and when you speak out against, um, the way... we're treated
and the way disparity is working against our bodies
and who we are, like...
I feel like... sometimes when I'm talking,
I feel representative, and then I remember,
oh, this is a singular story,
like, this is what happened to me,
and I feel like if I can speak out,
I'm gonna encourage other women to do so as well,
um, and hold up their voices when they do.
-Right. -So, you know,
and that's how I relieve the pressure of feeling like,
okay, I'm not speaking for all indigenous women,
but I am helping, you know?
When you look at your story, and you...
the time that you've gone through,
you-you speak about it in a painful way,
in an authentic way,
but in an uplifting way at the same time.
I mean, there's times where you talk about growing up
"on the rez."
As a... as a native person, do you find that you...
that you connect with your world in a different way
to how people perceive your world?
Yeah. I mean, I grew up...
my mother was a healer, and my mother was so powerful,
and also, um...
you know, exploited, her work was exploited,
and she was living, um, in a community
where we were surviving on welfare,
and sometimes she was, um, employed
and working 70 hours a week, and she had to neglect us
-to stay afloat, you know? -Right.
So, like, but really, there were so many moments
where we would collect medicine together
and we would pray by the river, almost daily.
And she helped me see the world as familial... familial,
and she helped me, um...
see the world as something... as something sacred.
-"Sacred." You know? Yeah. -Right.
When you look at that relationship
between yourself and your mother,
do you think that her introducing you
to that world and having you live
an authentic native or indigenous experience
helped you or hindered you
in assimilating to the world that was around you?
And then do you think that's a good or a bad thing?
It's difficult, because she was resistant
to let me, um, fall into trying to please people
within academic institutions at school.
She was like, "This is a choice.
"And it was not created to hold up indigenous people.
It was created to assimilate them into, um, a white culture”"
So she always tried to make me critical of the world,
and I thank for her that, but it also hindered me a lot
because I just wanted to be normal, too, you know?
And I think, you know, ultimately, it helped,
because my voice is the voice I grew up around,
and the voice, um,
that the book is getting attention for
-is-is the one she gave me. -Right.
-Yeah. -And it is, it is a voice
-that is apparent throughout the book. -Yeah.
As you're telling your stories, one thing becomes apparent,
and that there's so many different themes.
There's your life on the reservation.
There's your life within the family,
which is a different experience, as well.
You share a heart-wrenching tale
of discovering that your father was abusing you,
which is something that's hard to comprehend.
What did you go through when you discovered that?
And what did you mean by you "discovered it"?
Yeah, I think when you have-- when you--
I told my mother when I was young
that I had been abused by my father,
and her reaction was... negligent.
Her reaction was to kind of question
if it really happened, because she couldn't believe it,
because it would say something about her as a mother, too,
and her ability to protect me,
so she kind of didn't deal with it in the right away.
Which, then again at 16,
I let her know again that "I think this happened, Mom.”
Like, I remembered these few details,
and, you know, I told her and trusted her
to hold that space for me, but she was not prepared, you know.
And so I kind of just tried to forget.
And I think when you do that act of forgetting,
and you think, "Okay, well, you know,
"this person didn't listen to me, who I trusted so much,
and who I still trust so much and love so much,"
you mitigate, and you think,
"Well, I guess it didn't happen,
or I guess I misremembered."
And then you realize when you're at the age I was,
which was, like-- I think I was 32-- and I realized, no,
I-I would like to talk about this now,
because she is long gone, and all I have is myself.
And I really need to get over...
And, you know, I need to look at this,
and I need to talk about it.
-Right. -Yeah.
And w-when you look at your experiences growing up
and the world you grew up in
and your relationship
with your father and your mother,
do you find that those things contributed
to the stage in the book
where you talk about having to institutionalize yourself?
A-And what was that like?
What is the conversation someone has with themselves
where they go, "I have mental health issues.
I need to address this"?
I-Is there a shame? Is there a fear?
And how do you overcome that?
Yeah, there's this stigma when we are vulnerable
and we realize, "Oh, I'm crying more than I should.
"I-I feel debilitated,
like I can't go to work and I can't function."
There's this, um, urge--
and people encourage it--
that we just get over it and go to work,
that we just don't deal with it.
But then, you know, I broke down
after trying to just get over it and deal with...
you know, deal with the day-to-day aspect of life.
I broke down. I had to realize that, like, my mental health
was more important than, um, going to work, you know.
And I think I had the luxury
at the time that it happened where I...
(laughs): Actually, no, I was evicted
after I checked myself in.
-So it really does have these effects. -Right.
You have to have the luxury of having...
being able to have a breakdown.
A lot of people don't, you know.
A lot of people can't just check themselves in.
When they do, their life is changed forever.
And I was just kind of lucky
in that things did fall apart after that.
But I really...
I wasn't willing to give up hope.
You know, that was the last thing,
-and I'm still holding it, you know. -Right.
And that-that is a thread
that is apparent throughout the book, is hope.
-You know, from a hopeless place -Yeah.
moving forward to the space you're living in now
-and the loving relationship with your kids -Yeah.
and with your husband and surrounded by friends.
And your community, which I feel is a big part of the story.
How important is it,
or why do you think it's so important
for indigenous voices to be heard
in their most authentic way as opposed to being told
from the view of somebody on the outside?
Yeah, I think for a long time
people have engaged with our communities
with-with the hope to fix it and save us.
You know, and I think, um, we never wanted that.
We don't need missionaries.
We need, um, to do things for ourselves
and also, um, for people to stop exploiting us
and our land and our resources
and saying that we're doing it to ourselves when we're poor.
-You know what I mean? Yeah. -Right. I know what you mean.
So I think it's... I don't know.
I mean, I-I look at it, and I think...
When I look at this book,
I know that, like, a Native woman
who's probably a single mom, and she might be on welfare,
she might go into a library, and she might see a book
from a woman from her circumstance.
-Right. -You know, and I-I like it.
I think there should be more of it, you know.
-Yeah. (laughs) -I think I agree with you.
It's-it's a beautiful story.
You have honestly one of the most amazing voices
when it comes to putting it down on the page.
-Thank you so much for being on the show. -Thank you.
(cheering and applause)
Heart Berries, a beautiful memoir,
is available now.
Terese Marie Mailhot, everybody.