What I'm going to show you now is a very quick DVD. An Indigenous woman from
Canada, Cree woman called Tantoo Cardinal, she's giving a short talk called crooked
braid. After 18 years he beat me. In the morning when he was so nice again, I
would braid his long hair, I would take my time like I cared so much and I would
do it perfectly crooked, I would make the hairs so they would stand up all
crazy-like, he'd walk all cocky in the street, all macho in the road, but his
braid would be so crooked and look so stupid and wrong. This shouldn't have
made me that happy. My husband beat the shit out of me, he wrapped my long black
hair around his hand jerked my head, I tried to get my son, that's not your son
he said holding my hair in his hand, that's not your son anymore. Now he calls
me in middle of the night weeping, he didn't mean to beat his wife, he didn't
mean to batter her, he's suicidal, he knows what his mother went through,
but he can't stop my son, they took our land, they took our ways,
they took our men, we want them back. So what do you think of that? That's quite a
voice hey, I got to say you know working in the north of Canada as long as I have
I hear this over and over again from women, where are the men? You know, where
are the men? And it's an extraordinary thing.
So Indigenous women in the north of Canada particularly but all over Canada,
who if they have a partner who's violent they're not only resisting their
partners violence, they're also resisting state colonialism, they want the violence
to stop but they don't want their partners to get racism, they don't want
them to get beaten in custody, they don't want them to get incarcerated, they don't
want them to be humiliated, they just want the violence to stop
am i right? So they're engaged in resisting colonialism and violence and I
think that's something we need to join them in, right and understand that and
conduct our programs in a way that reflects that, conduct the work we do in
a way that reflects that. That's quite a voice isn't it, she has,
now that bit where she laughs 'this shouldn't have made me so happy',
did any of you experience even a tiny bit of happiness listening to that? I
know you did, I was watching your faces, so what is it about that that makes us
happy? Her resistance. Why does that make us happy, why do we love that? It's
horrible, she shouldn't have to resist, you know, well how come we get so much
pleasure from her pleasure, watching him all macho and crooked in a road?
Why do we get so much pleasure from that, you have any any ideas about that?
Because he hasn't won, it's her strength, we can identify with that right. So I
think that's very important that when we hear about how someone responded to and
resisted was such dignity, so creatively, it's such an extraordinary kind of way
we can immediately identify with the person, do you know what I mean? We can
immediately identify with the human, their spirit, their dignity shines
through, so our job in part is to find the inner Tantoo Cardinal, the inner Pippi
Longstocking inside everyone because everyone has, that do you know what I'm
saying? And so our work can become partly identifying and honouring and
acknowledging the already existing resistance and spirit of dignity of the
person when faced with adversity, we can orient our work that way, rather
than treating the negative effects and impacts of violence which is the
colonial practice I'll come back to that later.