This great conversation on Indigeneity is from a couple of years ago and it just keeps being relevant. Being Indigenous is an analytic, not an identity. We need to talk about that.

Patty (00:00:01):

You're listening to medicine for the resistance

Patty (00:00:04):

Troy was so smart last time, and this could only be better with Joy here. 

Joy: God we're in trouble. Hey, it will be a smart show. 

Kerry: (00:00:20):

Couldn't be more perfect. 

Joy! Oh yeah. 

Patty (00:00:24): Just so much happening, right? Like this has been bonkers in Native Twitter.

Joy: Oh, I know. I don't either. 

Patty: Because we had the list right? Where everybody was kind of losing their mind about the list and then some anti-Blackness that was happening as a result of the list.

And then, you know, and then kind of, I saw what was trending was seven days of fighting in Palestine and I'm like, no, that's, let's talk about seven consecutive days. 

Kerry: It's been like, what, how many, how many hundreds, you know, almost a hundred years we're coming up to now?- like stop it!  

Patty: And then we're talking about global indigeneity, right? That being Indigenous is more than just living here in North America, which is something that, you know, I've kind of been unpacking for myself over the last year.  Then there are conversations happening, you know, who is Indigenous, in Palestine and the Levant area.

Patty (00:01:37):

Um, and then what claims does that give them to land? You know, and what, you know, what claims does that give them? Um, and do we rest our claims on land solely to being Indigenous? 

I mean, even here, it's all migrations, right? 

The Anishinaabe started and then we moved east and then we came back and there are tribes that exist now that didn't exist then.  You know- like the Metis, right? 

They didn't exist at the time of contact and yet there are distinct Indigenous people and what's there.

 So all of these conversations are so complicated.

And then into the midst of these complicated, you know, difficult conversations, of course, rides Daniel Heath Justice's voice of reason and recognition into these conversations. 

So I can't think of two people that I would rather have this conversation with, for Kerry and me to have this conversation with, than with Troy and Joy.

Troy: (00:02:51):

Exciting to be back and, uh, and to meet, to meet Joy online, at least.

Joy (00:03:00):

Yeah, it's my pleasure. I remember watching you, um, I guess a couple of months ago when you're on and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like, just totally blown my mind. And I said it to Patty and she's like, yes, let's do a show. I'm like, yes, let's do it. Let's figure this out because yeah, it's a lot!

Kerry (00:03:21):

I agree. There's so much complexity. We're talking about Palestine and we're talking about these roots; where do we put roots down? 

What is Indigeneity? What are all of these spaces? 

I was thinking about Burma or AKA Myanmar.

And that brave stance that young woman-I'm not sure if you guys heard about it- at the Miss Universe pageant, held up a sign saying, 

‘Pray For Us.’ 

We are being persecuted or we're being killed, I think the message said.  Once again, it made me think about how precarious, you know, our spaces are, how the colonial system has this rinse and repeat way of creating, um, the same kinds of spaces.

These genocides that are created all the waves through, um, the way of being.

 I was thinking about China and the Uyghur tribes, the Muslim Islamic based tribes that are being,  ‘rehabilitated’ we have no idea to the scope and scale.

Kerry (00:04:38):

I have been fascinated recently with North Korea.  Just the very existence and structure of how North Korea even exists in this realm.  All of these pieces led me back to this idea that the reality, maybe I'm posing a question for all of us.

 Where do we begin? 

When we think about breaking this question down, you know, um, the right to be forced off of our lands, this space of, of the massacre, that seems to be such an integral part of the bloodletting. That's such an important, integral part of why we take over the land. 

And then finally, how the resources, because I noticed that we touch certain places, you know, we protest about certain places, more so than others. because resources are advantageous to more so than for some of the colonial structures that exist?

 And it makes it advantageous for us to take a moment's movement in those spaces versus others. I just, I've been very sad this week. 

I had to step away because of all of it.  As you mentioned, there's been so much!

I'm just going to breathe now….. (laughter)

Troy  (00:06:06):

I don't even know where one can start. 

We have you have to start, I guess, where we are. 

As you pointed out, what's going on in Palestine has been going on, you know, it’s 73 years since the Nakba stuff started and it's been going on since then,  although the roots go back even further than that. 

So, you know we can't that didn't just start this week and we didn't just start relating to colonialism this week, the four of us. And, uh, we didn't just start relating to genocide and racism either this week. 

So I think we're all situated in ways that give us insights into these topics, but also blind each of them in different ways too. So it's good to know.  

When I was a kid, my dad got a job in Beirut in Lebanon, and we were there before the civil war and our house was just, just up the hill from the Palestinian Palestinian refugee camps.

Troy(00:06:54):  So it was a lot of the kids I played with before that were there before I started school. And then I did first grade in Beirut. 

Some of the kids I played with were from the refugee camp. 

Then later when we came to this country and just the blatantly anti-Palestinian bias of the media was a real shock because you know, these are people who were kicked out of their homes because somebody else wanted it.

 And, uh, and of course, Lebanon wasn't doing a great job of taking care of them either. It was, you know, that was a big shame was that all these refugees are treated, treated so poorly in the, in the countries that took that they, that they went to.

Troy (00:07:30):

But you know, those little kids are my age- they're in their fifties now, and they've got kids and maybe grandkids and there are their generations that have been born in exile. 

And, uh, meanwhile, now we have this thing going on in Israel itself, where Arab Israelis are being targeted by Jewish Israelis and some vice versa too. It's just street fighting between us. We're not even talking about Palestinians, we're talking about different groups of Israeli citizens based on their ethnicity and their religion. Yeah, it's interesting.

Joy (00:08:06):

Cause I  live on social media and so just watching the discussions going on on Twitter. 

And it's interesting to see a lot of the activists for Palestine, which is great, but they kind of like, I've seen some memes where it's like, oh, just give you know, Canada, this part of Israel, this part of Canada or the US I'm just like, I'm like, okay, friends, no, we're not going to be doing this. Right. Because we're talking about colonization, but I'm surprised by how little, a lot of the activists understand that they're currently living in occupied states.

 Like, I'm just like, wow, like really like Canada, US you know, I'm, I've been quiet about for most of the weeks. I'm just like, okay, you know what? I'm just going to let people have their space, but I'm like, come on.

Joy (00:08:54):

Like, you know, like, and I'm watching like Black and Indigenous Twitter, we're just kind of saying, yup, that's the playbook. There's the playbook check, check, check, check. And we're like, we know this, we've been through this, we've done this, you know, for, you know, 500 years on this continent. Right. And so, and in many places much longer. And so I'm like, okay, let's, you know, I'm finally, I said something I'm like, okay, you know what?

 We need to kind of understand that this is a global issue. And that, you know, we are still currently occupants working in occupied states as it is, and sort of state of Canada, the state of us, right. Mexico, you know, and as you see, like, you know, with the countries that are supporting Israel, you know, a lot of them have like a huge long, giant history of, you know, occupation and colonialism and genocide behind them.

Joy (00:09:42):

And it's just like this isn't a surprise folks. And so, I mean, but it's good because I've had a lot of great conversations with people who did not know this. And so I'm kinda like, okay, let's educate, I'm kind of prickly about it, but I'm gonna, you know, do this in good faith.

 And so, and I mean, it's just been, you know, like Patty said a week because, you know, I'm coming off a week of serious anti-Black racism within Indigenous communities as is too.

 So it's like, okay, that's, what's up now. Right. It's a new type of, you know, I don't know, uh, fall out of hatred, fall out of genocide, fall out of colonialism. It's just like, okay. 

And yeah, which way is it going to, you know, smack us in the head this week? It just kind of feels like that. I'm just like waiting for what's going to happen next week is going to be something else. So it's been a yeah. Interesting two weeks, I guess. 

Patty (00:10:38):

Well: I think some of it is that we don't have a solid understanding of what Indigenous means say, particularly in Canada because of the way we use the word. 

Um, you know, uh, yeah, we, we just, we don't have a really solid understanding of it. 

So that's where I'm gonna kind of punt over to Troy. So, you know, if you could kind of give us that global, you know, that because not everybody also thinks of themselves as Indigenous, right? 

Like not all countries have that same kind of history where they would have a settler Indigenous kind of binary

. I hate binaries, but, you know, because they're, they're never, they're never that clear and distinct, but if maybe you could kind of help us out so that we're at least working from the same understanding, at least in this conversation.

Troy (00:11:24):

I mean, but the thing is I hate to jump in and say, this is what Indigenous means, because, because Indigenous is a contested term and it's, it's, it's used differently in different places, geographically, but also in different contexts. 

And, uh, um, you know, I guess, I guess what I got some, some attention for on Twitter a few months back was basically for, for putting up other people's ideas, who I, that I teach in the classroom about, you know, Indigeneity isn't is not an identity, it's analytic. 

And it has to do with our relationship to land our relationship to settler-colonial states. 

And that our identities are, you know, in my case, I mean, in other cases, other Indigenous nations and cultures, uh that's. And so we have, you know, Indigenous, there are 5,000 Indigenous languages in the world. Um, if each of those is a different cultural group, then we're dealing with a lot of diversity. 90% of human diversity is Indigenous.

Troy (00:12:18):

So it's hard to say any one thing about all Indigenous people are this or do this because it was less, we've got most of the world's cultures and, and, and get then as, as, as, as Daniel Heath justice was, was reminding us on Twitter, uh, you pointed it out Patty to me today. 

And it was, it was worth looking at again, is that it's not just a political definition either because our relationship to the land is because it's everything. It's not just, it's not just political, at least for, for many of us, it's not. And, uh, for many of our cultures, we derive our very personhood, our peoplehood, our, or you know, our spiritual identity is all connected to, to, to land and water. 

So, yeah, I mean, what, what, what Indigenous is Canada from a double outsider in the US I'm not Indigenous to the US but I've lived here for a long time.

Troy (00:13:03):

And I, I kind of, I kind of am like another settler in the US in the sense that I've been here for much of my life, whereas Canada is, is, is a place I observed from the outside.

 But it seems like in both the United States and in Canada, Indigenous is often used primarily domestically to refer to groups that are Indigenous within the borders of the Canadian settler state or the US settler state. 

Because, there are so many different groups and, and what other, you know, what terms is, what have, we can say native American or Aboriginal or first nation. So rather than just listing all the, all the many hundreds of nations, people might use that term, but then, you know, there's, there are Indigenous peoples in all over the Pacific and in much of Asia and in much of Africa and even, even a few places in Europe.

Troy (00:13:47):

And it has to do with this colonial relationship where we about the Sam. 

We have a really deep connection to Sápmi, our land and water. That is which we, you know, our, in our, our way of viewing it, it's animated. 

We ask permission from the water.  When we take water or do we ask permission from a place of a piece of land before we build a house there.

 The settler states, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia came in, came in in recent time, historically, you know, within the last 500 years came in and extended their borders through our land and claimed it as theirs.

 And then there was all the boarding schools and all that stuff.  Those are similar histories, uh, because there's sort of a similar playbook that comes from, that comes from a certain way of looking at the world.

Troy(00:14:37):

That land is something that isn't a dead object that we can just buy and sell and parcel up and own. Coupled with the idea that with the will to take that land from other people. 

People who are first nations of Canada, the US and Australia, New Zealand have experienced that. 

Indigenous Northern Japan, I've experienced that it's, I wouldn't say that the, I knew and all the many different, uh, Aboriginal nations in Australia and the Maori of New Zealand and all the Canadian first nations, and then the new it to the Métis and all the native Americans and Alaska natives and, and, uh, Kanaka Maoli in the US are all the same. We're not, we're so radically different from each other in so many ways, but we share this, we share this, the important art, a similar way of relating to our land and water.

Kerry (00:15:23):

That brings up for me a question when, you know, first of all, Troy, you're always so brilliant. And when you put it out there in the way that you just did, I'm like, wow, it's a vast, vast space!

 And then when you put the number on it at 90%, I went that's everybody pretty much, you know? Um, but what also comes to mind then is, is the word indigeneity serving us or Indigenous serving us and, and this, um, and the movements that all of us as a whole, as, as you know, a group like, just does it, it's served to be using this word in particular and then leaving it to be open to interpretation or not? 

Patty: Traces of History, by Patrick Wolfe, because he looks at the way race is constructed differently in different places, right?  It is like when we talked with your friend Marina about how Blackness is constructed in Brazil. and how it works in North  America and how it works in different places because it all works.

Patty:(00:16:37):

It works differently but for the same purpose. So, you know, and I think indigeneity, it works differently in different places, but for the same purpose, it works, you know, colonialism works to sever us from the land to sever us from each other, you know, to sever our relationships. I'm just writing, you know, it was just writing a bit about, you know, the Cree understandings of kinship networks and how many mothers, you had one that's tied up in the language, right? Like your, your mother's sisters are also your mothers and then your father's brothers are also your fathers. And then their spouses are also your mothers and fathers. Cause if they're married to your father, then that, you know, like these kinds of intricate webs of relationships and those things all get severed, you know, and our connection to land because, you know, the colonial powers are very mobile.

Patty (00:17:26):

They're moving around all over the place. So they're moving us around all over the place. And then it's like, I'm reading this book right now that Kerry had recommended, um, Lose Your Mother, um, about, you know, she had heard that the author's trip home to Ghana and, and, and how heartbreaking it was because you go looking a for home and realizing that that's not home. And I just finished Hood Feminism by Mikki  Kendall. And she's talking about real, you know, having to come to terms with her seeds may have been, you know, left Africa, but her roots are here this is home. So then that's easier than thinking about being Indigenous and diaspora not having that same connection to land, but having that kind of fraught relationship with colonialism, I don't know. And I'm thinking too about the ways that we do find even, you know, tomorrow night, we're going to be talking about refusing patriarchy, because everything exists in opposition to colonialism, right?

Patty (00:18:26):

Like indigeneity to a certain degree. We weren't Indigenous before the colonists got here. I was Ojibway. 

Joy's ancestors were Lakota, Troy's were Sàmi. Like, you know, like we were ourselves, we didn't have this collective identity that placed us in opposition to another collective identity. 

We were ourselves. And if you were our enemies, chances were we called you a little snake. That seems to be what we call everybody. 

So whatever identity, it's like, you know, identities, you know, existing in counterpoint to a binary that just doesn't work. It doesn't work for anybody. And so people have to keep, but that doesn't fit. I just keep thinking about how we keep identifying ourselves in opposition to something. I don't know that that serves us, but I don't know what the alternative is because we do need some things, some kind of coherent way of thinking about ourselves in opposition. And I think that's okay to exist in opposition to something that should be imposed. It's so intense.

Kerry (00:19:29):lt really does. Patty. I know for me, in particular, it's so interesting how some of the ways that you and I, outside of this space, how some of these very similar thoughts, um, I, I've almost been having the same kind of process going on in my own mind about how do I relate to my being this as a woman of diaspora you know, a Black woman that has been just kind of left here or plumped there, the point here, I guess, I don't know. Um, and how that interrelates to my, being this, to being whole, and also relating it back to the colonial space that I have had to adjust to in my thinking, um, I've been doing a lot of study recently on a man named Kevin Samuel's.

 And he's been, uh, approaching this topic from what we would have considered a 'Menenist' standpoint, but there were some arguable facts in the way that he was breaking some things down that has caused me to have to question how I stand in my feminist.

Kerry (00:20:52):

Because I kind of consider myself a bit of a feminist in my feminist stance and how this itself has become a way that we have created diversion and division between ourselves as men and women, the idea of the masculine and the feminine, and then how that exists in the non-binary or binary space. Like, so what I'm, what I'm getting at is all of these different isms, all of these, these structures that have been created really feed into our way of being separated and with the separation, it allows the system to keep feeding itself. I almost feel like we have to start examining the liminal spaces that exist, trying to find the commonalities, but at least allow for our specialness, that individual part of who we are to stand. Because as you mentioned, Patty being Ojibwe versus being Cree I feel there's such beauty there, right? And like, I know that I believe that when we, when we just classify it under one thing, it, it helps, but it doesn't do that make sense? 

And I'm really just caught in that right now. Like I know that I've been trying to process that and do we need some radical acceptance that goes along with that understanding we are different and special. And that specialness is what makes us unique and rich and full in the space of our togetherness.

Troy(00:22:39):

This is, I love this conversation because just like last time as I'm sitting here listening to this, I can do so many ideas. This phenomenon that we have, whether it be as Indigenous people or as members of any of our Indigenous nations or as racialized other, or as women, or as LGBTQ or as whatever group or groups one belongs to, and then being treated as a member of that group. If I define myself as Indigenous, then I'm defining myself in opposition to colonization and I'm erasing all kinds of other important things. Defining oneself in opposition to patriarchy is opposing something, but we have to post these things. I think like you said, petty, and we can't, there's also a sense, a certain degree to which we can't, you can't help it. I mean, I was thinking of Franz Fanon and his essay on the fact of Blackness and when he was growing up in the Caribbean, he really didn't think of himself as Black.

Troy(00:23:28):

That was sort of an abstract, weird thing. He thought of himself as educated from the privileged classes and, and to a certain degree as French. And then he goes to Paris to study and he's walking down the street and this little, little girl was holding her mom's hand and points and says, look, a Black man. And, um, that's when he, you know, realizes that he can't escape. He is Black and he can't escape it because people won't let him escape. That's, that's not that he's always identified or interpreted as that. And if we're interpolated as, as women or as or as Indigenous, or as whatever, whatever groups we may, we may be identified as we can't just pretend that we're not. I mean, we can't. And so I think, like you said, petty, sometimes it's worth fighting. Um, I can tell, I go back to the story.

Troy (00:24:18):

I always liked to fall back on stories, but in my own existence, you know, my mom's white American, and she went over to Norway and married my dad and us, I was there for a time. And then there's been in the US for time and in the US you know, I grew up speaking both English and Norwegian. I speak English pretty much without an accent. I look white and I get a lot of white privilege in the US as long as I don't mind people not knowing anything about, my Indigenous culture.

 I have a much different situation than my Sàmi relatives and began to feel like maybe I shouldn't be calling myself a hundred percent Sàmi. 

And then I go back and experience vicious anti-Sammi racism directed at me. And there's nothing that secures you and your own.

Troy (00:24:57):

There's nothing that secured me and my Sàmi identity as much as being harassed for being Sàmi than being threatened physically. That just makes you I guess I am, because it's not fun. And I would rather not be in this position right now, you know? Um, and, and, uh, I think that's one of the reasons for these alliances, but they also are alliances Indigenous. These, these are, we're a bunch of different groups that have a common cause and can learn from each other and help each other have awesome glasses. I kind of noticed that

Joy(00:25:41):

I was kinda thinking about like, you know, I'm like, this is the resistance like we're resistant. So cause I always liken it back to like, you know, some sort of weird um, you know, thing, but solidary, it's interesting, since we weave through this topic, I'm thinking about like, you know, indigeneity and land. And I saw a point, but, um, Carrington Christmas a few days ago. And so, and she mentioned that you know like not all Indigenous people are tied to land because many of us are in cities and urban centers. So what does that look like? And so when I saw, um, Daniel's, uh, tweet, you know, his chain, I was kinda like, I need to trouble that for a little bit because a bunch of us are removed from land and relations too, but at the same time, it's like, what does that relationship look like within cities?

Joy (00:26:28):

Um, so I just wanted to say that before I forgot that, what does solidarity look like? Oh my gosh. Um, I can't even think of one way it looks like, because again, like when we have like Indigenous, we talked about Indigenous as the overall say within North America and I that for sake of brevity, right? Like you have like, you know, Black Indigenous people, you have, like, I know a guy who's Cambodian and he's Indigenous. Right. And so it was like, what does that look like? How do we manage that? And these folks that I'm referring to are like, you know, Indigenous to North America. Right. And so it's like, so when I see discussions about like, um, what does, you know, kinship look like? What do relations look like? What does it mean to have a relationship to the land? It's like, what does that mean for a Black Indigenous person who didn't necessarily have that kind of a relationship for various reasons, whether it be slavery, whether it be, um, racism, right?

Joy (00:27:25):

Whether it is being chased off the land, you know, as say, some of my relatives were right. And so this is the thing. So it's like, how do we address solidarity when we don't even when we tend to think of Indigenous as like, you know, first nations, um, 18 in you, it's right. And just like one shape or form, you know, kind of brown veering towards the white sort of thing. 

Right. And so in Canada, at least. And so, and when we're far more likely to accept someone like Michelle Latimer, no questions asked, but then when I kind of stroll up and say, Hey, I'm Indigenous. 

Or like, Nah, you're not right. And so you're from Toronto and your hair is curly. It's not now, but that sort of thing. Right. And so solidarity, I mean, I can tell you, what does it look like based on the past couple of weeks, and I'm sure we'll get into that, but you know, it doesn't look like a list.

Joy (00:28:19):

It doesn't look like, you know, a supporting list who, you know, are largely Black Indigenous people or even run by people who are largely anti-Black. Right. And so, um, but yeah, it is a wide and varied topic from being a political analytic to like, you know, having a relationship to land, to having relationships with our relations. Right. 

And so I couldn't even begin to start thinking about what that looks like, but I do resonate with Kerry's point with just kind of like, you know, having those separate identities, but, you know, still coming together for that resistance to, and so, because we need to kind of have, you know, those differences because someone who was Anishinabek has a different relationship to Atlanta, someone who has Lakota. Right. So it's, you know, and me as someone who is Lakota and living in Toronto, it's kind of like, okay. And I kind of meander through these spaces. I'm like, should I be having this relationship with the land? Like, my people are like way out in the Plains, but here I am, you know, it's kind of like patching through what it is because we've been shifted around by colonialism taken away. Sorry. That's

Patty (00:29:28):

The reality of it really is Troy living in the Pacific Northwest, which is about as far as he can get from Sàmi land.  You know, I finished all, I've talked about this now that you have massive territory, I'm still within, there's not a big territory. It's not big, it's not Ojibwe. Right.

 My people are Northwestern, Ontario. It's a 24-hour drive to get up there. Right. I can be in Florida by the time I get there and not among Black flies, you know, but, but in terms of relocation, right? 

Like in the US relocation was government policy that went beyond boarding schools, they were shutting down, you know, in the allotment period, they shut down reservations. They were moving people into cities, you know, kind of getting them off the reserve and moving them into, you know, from, you know, from the Midwest into the city.

Patty (00:30:26):

So you're certainly not alone in terms of being a Plains, Indian living, living, living in a city. And I think that's, you know, where the writing of people like Tommy Orange is so valuable, you know, that kind of fiction where he's writing about urban Indians. That's 80% of us. That's 80% of us who are living in cities far from our home territories. You know, I see, you know, people who are saying, you know, you know, they're Ojibwe and they're Lakota and they're may, you know, like they've got this. And so then who are we? Because we didn't grow up in these kinship networks to tell us who we are. We grew up disconnected. We know, because like you said, Troy, from the time I was little, I grew up in my white family. But from the time I was little, I was the native kid.

Patty (00:31:15):

I was the Indian, even though I was surrounded by white people, you know, grew up in a blizzard, like, Tammy Street said, you know, growing up in a blizzard, the blizzard of whiteness, um, you know, um, you know, kids didn't want to play with me because of my skin colour, which, you know, as bonkers to me as a little, you're not playing with my skin colour. Oh, I dunno. This is a story outside of, um, you know, so other people impose that on me. So I couldn't run away from it. If I wanted to, when I got to high school, I let people think I was Italian. Cause that was easy here. And we talk about passing privilege. Um, but passing contains an element of deceit and deception because when you're passing, you're not telling people who you are, you're deliberately withholding that information. You're allowing them to think that there's some, that you're something that you're not. And you know that, and that's corrosive. And yet you, you know, this idea of being Indigenous is freaking complicated and it doesn't need to be colonialism just ruins everything.

Patty (00:32:19):

So what would the refusal look like? Because that's also what I'm thinking about because tomorrow night when we're talking about patriarchy, I started off talking about resisting patriarchy. And then I changed my mind to refusing because to me that sounds riff. We talk, we've talked, we've talked about the politics of refusal, which is just, you know, I'm not going to engage with that anymore. I'm just going to build this thing over here. I'm just going to refuse to deal with that because that does not speak to me, does not help me. That does not contain my life. What would it look like to exist as Cree, Lakota, Black, Sàmi, Ojibwe and refuse colonialism? What would that look

Patty, Kerry, Joy, Troy (00:33:07):

[Laughing ] existing in opposition to it?

Kerry (00:33:14):

This is the new train that my brain is going down. Well, you know what? I love it. 

I think you're onto something. Um, as we, you, you, you brought back that reminder of the politics of just simply deciding not to engage. And for me, this conversation is bringing up so many different things. 

For example, Troy, when you mentioned going home and hitting such resistance when you go back, you know, you can't deny being  Sàmi. It makes me think about when I go home to visit my mother's family in Antigua, it is Black, you know, the way that my cousins and my aunties and all of my people back there exist that every teacher they've ever had is Black. Every storekeeper is Black, all their doctor's lawyer, everybody is Black and dark skin Black.

Kerrr (00:34:18):

You know, there has been very little mix on that small island. The sense of being in your note is so radically different. I have realized in my time then what it is for me, I, I know my Blackness, I'm a Black woman and I have a lived experience that makes me guard in that space. Right. Whereas when I am there, it just is, and you live and you exist in that space. And it gets me thinking about this idea of just not engaging. 

What would it be if I could potentially create a space like that here? So for me, this boils down to being able to connect and create an economic basis. So where I can shop in stores that are, you know, Black West Indian, you know, just my culture experienced in those well Browns. And we also know that that economic power makes a difference.

Kerry (00:35:25):

I think I read a statistic recently that in North America, um, Black people, the money stays in our community for about six hours before it is extended out into other communities. So the dollar does not cycle, even though we are one of the powerhouses for an economic base, our dollar is so strong. And not only that we normally create culture, you know, uh, Black women, you know, we, we, we kind of build some of that creativity, but that panache, comes from North America.

 Um, it comes off the backs of us. And so partly when I think about how we, how maybe we can disengage in some ways, it is about that. It's about creating our own little nuggets, you know, creating our own little niche spaces that allow us, afford us to tap into our own uniquenesses as who we are, and then share, but really starting to create those spaces

Kerry (00:36:30):

So, um, for example, as I said, I think in particular, we still have to exist in the system. So to me, it is coming into the self-awareness of that uniqueness, creating, the economic basis for that, for me, I think that's fundamental, especially in my community, we just don't hold on to that dollar. Um, creating some of that economic base by our shops, create shops that are, are, are, or economic foundations, like grocery stores in our communities. We know we have food deserts and most of the communities that we exist in by our own grocery stores have outlets, especially that focus on our, um, image. We don't control our Black image, nobody like that is controlled by others. If we could get our own. 

I think it's happening more with social media, with people being able to hold their YouTube channels and creating our own sources of who we are, how we want to be seen. But for me, that's where it begins two things, money, and also, um, controlling our image. I think those two will be powerful,

Troy (00:37:46):

Powerful. And I think, um, I really, like we said, even when we're in the midst of our refusal we can't you know, it's one thing to refuse colonialism. It's another to pretend it doesn't exist. Um, because I'm, you know, I'm either going to increasingly sort of psychotic and just detached from reality or, or I'm going to have to, you know, do take specific measures, like invest in investing in communities, um, take control over our images, those sorts of things, which are, which are still, there's still acts of resistance with our acts that are focused, not so much on negating the oppressor as on empowering ourselves. And I think, I think, uh, yeah, I mean, it's harder for, for, and I'm not doing it all alone. There's so much, like a mentor for so many Indigenous people who are living away from our, from our native land.

Troy(00:38:36):

Uh, I can't, I can't live, I saw my life surrounded only by Sàmi people here and no would, I want to, I'm so enriched by living by so many around so many other people, but I can certainly make an effort to, to include and celebrate and, develop and engage in Sàmi culture in my life. 

And so, and tell me so many ways of being and knowing. Um, and it's so much easier now that we can talk to people every day back home too. But, uh, but, but the part of it is also taking that same way of relating to two people and to place and relating to the people around me and the place that I am at. Not in a possessive way, because this isn't my, this isn't my land. I'm on, I'm on now, y'all planned here. This is, this is their land, but I can relate to the land in terms of respect and in terms of a living relationship with a living entity.

Troy (00:39:24):

So it would be different if I'm back home. This is like, this is where, this is where my ancestor’s bones are for the last, you know, for the last 20,000 years. And, uh, that's not here, but, but it's still, it's still, you know, a different way of relating to that. And then I think this is back where the Indigenous people are so important because knowing and working with and interacting with Indigenous people here keeps me Sàmi, even though they're not me. 

I was only interacting with settlers and with other, with other non-Indigenous people too. But if I never interacted with other Indigenous people, you could disassociate it. Then it comes all down to you as an individual, as opposed to being part of communities. And so there are different types of communities. They, you know, could be a relationship with people as a kind of community even if you're not part of, part of the group of that group.

Patty(00:40:15):

Want to hear more about that? How relationships with other Indigenous people keep you Sámi

Troy (00:40:22):

Because, uh, I, and this works much easier for me than it would for my half-brother because my half-brother, his mother is from South Asia and he would never be, he would never be seen as white, um, a white person who speaks English, American, English fluently. If all I hung out with were, were white English-speaking Americans, I would be, I could be still very much participating in this sort of inner negotiation of part of who I am and this sort of alienation of by saying, yeah, I'm just one of you. And knowing that there's something that I'm suppressing, something that I'm cutting off and that sort of inner injury, but I would also just be having that culture reinforced all the time, because those become the cultural norms, those, those become the exceptions. And if I'm also hanging out with a non-people of colour who are, who are not Indigenous, but, uh, but then especially Indigenous people who, who have analogous relationships to their place, uh, they're not the same people don't relate to, to, to this land in the same way as, as we, um, uh, markdown may relate to our mountain valleys and our coasts.

Troy (00:41:30):

Um, but there's some, there are some analogies, there's some, there's some, some patterns that I recognize and there's also more humour than I recognize. And I recognize what it's like to be in a group that is at home and is viewed as outsiders by the majority of the population that lives there. It's like we're sitting right here where we belong and you look at us like we're outsiders. And I see that in, in my native friends here, uh, and my native colleagues and, uh, and that's like, yeah, I, I know what that's like. I get that. 

That's, um, that's a shared reality, even if it's from two different places. And so, and then having other types of relationships to place other types of relationships to people and community is reinforced by the people around me, other, other ones than the sort of relationship of domination and ownership and, and alienability that I can just sell this land and buy other land and that sort of thing that makes those things less automatic. It's a way of making sure that I don't just sort of slip into, this colonizer mindset or colonized mindset.

Patty(00:42:33):

It goes back to some of the things that have popped up in the chat about feeling kind of disconnected because you know, their relations are so scattered. Um, yeah, I'm going to have to sit with that. That's really helpful. Thank you.

Joy(00:42:53):

It feels similar because, again, how many Lakota is in Toronto? Right. And so, and just being, and I mean, if we're going to pan indigenize, you know, the sense of humour, certainly, you know, something we share, you know, across the world, it's like, yeah.

 Colonialism, ah, right. And so we were able to laugh at our misery so well. Um, but yeah, I really, I relate to that and feel that, and it's, it's about re I mean, it's kind of veering into another topic, which is about relations and such. Right. And so, and again, going back to what Kerrington said, saying like, you know, um, my Indigenous community is also an urban community and its many communities. Right. And so I'm paraphrasing really horribly, but I can't remember the tweet, but nevertheless, right. Like, and she's like, who's someone to call that invalid because she is Mi'kmaq. And I believe she lives, she doesn't live in Ontario somewhere. I can't quite pinpoint where, but, um, yeah. So it's like relations and what keeps us, you know, um, Indigenous or Lakota or Sàmi, even when we're far from

Kerry(00:43:53):

I was thinking Kerry, about what you had said about controlling our image. Cause I was having conversations recently about, um, both social media and about our presence on social media. Um, because of course, we don't own these things. I mean, we're here. 

Like we can all share that Trump got bounced off every social media platform in existence, but another one of my native friends just got another 30-day suspension on these books. So we can all laugh about it happening to Trump, but we know that it's more likely to happen to us.

 You know, the, you know, the algorithms are not set up, you know, for those who live in, you know, in opposition to colonialism the things we say, like what happened with, you know, um, the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls posts on Instagram. I don't think, I, I don't think there was any benefit to Instagram to deliberately silence those posts.

Patty(00:44:48):

But what I think is more likely is that there was, it hits some kind of algorithm. It didn't stop to consider the context of these posts because it's just an algorithm. And so then, because there was some commonality, it bounced all of them and that's what happens, right? Like you set up a rule and that's all these things are right. You set up a rule that affects you, you know, that's everyone equally, but it's not everyone equally. It never is who sets the rules determines. Uh, you know, and so, and when we do these things like on social media and, uh, you know, we're also in a sense performing, performing indigeneity for, for clicks and likes and views. And you know, we're performing a hype of ourselves. That's palatable to the people that are going to pay money for it. So it's a two-edged thing like, like Joy, I live on Twitter, I am very much out there.

Patty (00:45:43):

You know what I think about it because, you know, I've got a book coming out next year. And so I want to make sure that I have a big reach. And so then you think about that, well, how now am I not performing things that are authentic, or am I, you know, so what I'm, you know, you're kind of constantly balancing all of that stuff because it's right. It's a space that we assert ourselves in. 

And I think we should be there. I'm not arguing against it obviously. Um, but we also need to be careful about it. And particularly right now in COVID most of my conversations with Gary, when I'm talking about Indigenous things, I'm lately quoting social media people. If people that I know on Twitter, I am not quoting the women in my drum group because we never see each other.

 So my local community is becoming more and more remote and my soul. And then there's, we lose the accountability of our communities because I mean, we can Twitter mobs, we can take each other down all the time, but that's not real accountability.

Patty (00:46:44):

We can rail against the writer of the list all day long, but that's not real accountability. 

Real accountability happens in the relationships that we form in the

Kerry: I think you said a lot, you settled it. I like you're in my head, like what you were saying, because I too have been very much thinking about that, thinking about my image, thinking about how I am showing up on social media. I'm not a Twitter connoisseur like most of the three of you are. And I was really thinking about why, why I think  I shy a little bit away from Twitter is because I think it's so polarizing. You've got, you know, those 140 characters to speak your mind and make that point. And it's a remedy that has to, well, you hope it's riveting and captures the imagination and then it moves on.

Kerry(00:47:56):

And so for me, that flow getting out there means you've really got to be in that larger-than-life space and, and keeping ourselves balanced there. And that's the thing about what I believe social media has done. It is this beautiful space that allows us to be out there to get our points across. But I just got a shadowban, funnily enough, on Insta. 

Yes, I'm a cool kid, but the cool kid got put in jail for a minute, simply because I was doing a post that was about Black women and trying to empower them. And I, I'm still not sure what in the algorithm, didn't like what I was saying. And I know I touched controversial stuff, so there's an intimacy and sex coach. I talk about some things, but, for whatever reason, I was really careful about this particular post as I put it up and it got shadowbanned for me, what that taught me or what, I remember being sobered by was the fact that we have this platform to be able to speak our truth and our minds and, and create all of this wonderful stuff.

Kerry (00:49:12):

But it really can be controlled by the very fraction that we are choosing to resist. And so that in itself means we have to conform to it. And I remember wanting to stop my feet. I'm the youngest child, and I so wanted to go into temper tenure mode over this one. Um, but, but it, it was sobering in that as well. That as much as, um, we talk about wanting to resist, so I'm going to bring it back to that, that idea of resistance and being in it. I still have to conform to some degree, to show up, to be able to use this platform, to move my voice forward. And, and I find that just a real cognitive dissidence for myself, you know, I wish we owned a Twitter platform. Do you know what I mean? Because that's where true freedom lies. I almost feel like, you know, we're, we're just getting a little lone of this space and when, when whatever, and whoever is ready, it all just comes crashing down.

Patty:  And then let's not talk about women, the AI, oh, go back to the list. Right. Who's going to gatekeep who gets to be a member.

Joy (00:50:27):

It's interesting. Right. Because you touched on two things, you touched on the rules. Right. and rules applying to everyone equally. Right. And so, and when we think about what indigeneity is, you know, the rules don't apply to everyone equally because it's like, okay, well I need to see your pedigree. And it's like, well, that doesn't happen for Black Indigenous people.

 Like I don't have, you know, like slavery. Right. And so, and you know, birth certificates, like so many of my family, were not allowed to have birth certificates, you know, until fairly recently, like in the last hundred years, so that's not happening. And of course, and you mentioned it before a patio, I think last week that even just proximity to Black people at a certain point meant that you were Black, whether you were or not. Right. And so a lot of Indigenous people were labelled Black.

Joy(00:51:17):

Right. Because I don't know if they looked at a Black person at one point or another. And so this is a thing, right. And so then we have a gatekeeping list. You have the gatekeeping Twitter, which, you know, I still am very much in love with, but nevertheless it is, you know, it is a loan space and I mean, and again, and you have people who are, you know, okay, well, I'm going to make a list off of these rules that don't affect everyone equally because we're, I'm angry about the Gwen Beneways, or I'm angry about the Michelle Lattimer's or whatever, but it's like, but then, you know, I'm also kind of racist on the side too. So, you know, and it's like, the rules don't apply. They can't possibly, like, if you're trying to find a Black person's, um, what's the word I'm looking for a family tree on ancestry,

Joy(00:52:04)

It's not going to happen. Like I looked, I tried for my own family. Right. And so, and a lot of it is still oral and, you know, it's interesting cause Daniel had a thread about, uh, lower this, uh, today. 

And so I'm like, but again, what does the law mean to different communities, right? Like for white communities, like, yes, you had an Indigenous ancestor, like, you know, 400 years ago that, you know, is that lore not right. As opposed to like, you know, a Black family, you know, and I'm speaking largely to my experience with this, um, Black American. Right. And so, you know, is it lower because that's all we had, like, was it guarded more closely? Was it, you know, held more, um, carefully, right? Because again, then you had the community connection that also how's your community, uh, accountable. That is the word I'm looking for because it was a very tight-knit community.

Joy(00:52:58):

And so someone would say, oh no, that wasn't your grandparent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And so it's really interesting to kind of look at the rules and the gatekeeping and just how they change based on, you know, your skin colour. Like it is just, and you know, these rules that were created by white people that say, you know, you are one drop Black, you are, you know, you're not Indigenous, right. Because we want to get rid of you and we want to create more of you. Right. So yeah, my mind is being bent again, but I don't know where it just took us. I'm sorry.

Patty(00:53:32):

You were also talking about relationships and the way certain relationships were constructed to serve the needs of, you know, the way certainly, you know, communities were split apart or concentrated in certain places and pushed aside where either, because you have family law would be different in a history where families were disconnected over and over and over again, who's holding that collective knowledge. When you, you know, when like in losing your mother where you know, her great grandmother gets, goes off with the family and then winds up getting sold for gambling debts and never even had a chance to say goodbye to a spouse or children, child that might, that may have been back, you know, on the plantation, does, oh, gambling debts, your, I guess, I guess we're selling you, like, how do you hold collective memory?

Kerry: I love that because also what comes up in that is the collective memory becomes so rooted in the space of the trauma.

Kerry (00:54:29):

Yeah. And, um, I found after reading that book after reading Lose Your Mother, that I had this wistfulness about making the space of it, right. Because we all, most of us Black folks, um, hold out this dream of, you know, putting our feet, planting our feet, especially in Ghanian soil and, and going to the slave castles.

 And knowing that this might've been the last space of our ancestry. And in this book, when she counts her version of what happened in that space, you know, there were some, some holes for her, you know, some real charts came up about how, while this was the story of her coming, this was a place of where she came from. Her family's story of slavery being a slave was an erasure, of who she was.

 And it got me thinking Patty, and Joy and Troy, it got me thinking about my own family history.

Kerry (00:55:33):

And so recently I've been talking to my mother because all of my aunties and uncles, you know, of my family, especially my Antiguan family, they get a little bit older. And, um, I recognize how they have been the gatekeepers of this history. And they ensured that our legacy as a family was, was whole and real, you know, they got us together. They would tell us these stories. And as they're getting older, I'm seeing that my generation, especially with COVID, are a little more disconnected, like my cousins. And I, even though most of us were raised together. Um, you know, I'm noticing this, we're not getting together in the same way. And so one of the things that I'm playing with and realizing I'm feeling called to is, is to take some reclamation that I think one of the ways that we can offer resistance is in the reclamation of that history.

Kerry(00:56:39):

Um, I really want to do some, um, you know, recordings of the stories that my, my mom tells and my dad, sorry. I'm like, well, yeah, my dad too, I would love to do my Bajan side, but my dad tells get the stories of my aunties and uncles and what I thought was so interesting when I mentioned it to my mom, she said to me, you know what, Kerry that would be amazing because I don't know very much about my father, her father, my grandfather's history. They are, um, they came from Haiti and I think it was my grandfather's mother that immigrated from Haiti over to Antigua. So all this time, I thought we were originally Antiguan in that space and come to find out that it's not necessarily that I got that Haitian blood in me too. And so what would it be?

Kerry(00:57:35):

And I think there's, there's some real power in us being able to do that, too, to take it back as much as we can, even if it is just from that oral history, that oral history is powerful, you know, um, in losing your mother's today, uh, um, mentioned that you know, we all want that root story. I remember reading Alex Haley's roots when I was nine years old, it was one of the biggest books I ever read up until that, right. 1,030 pages, I think it is. And I remember reading that story and it was just like, for me, I was like, how did he know all of that? And that's one of the spaces that sparked my curiosity of wanting to know. And so I think there's a responsibility if we can to know that truth and to try and gather it. And that in itself is a powerful way for us to offer resistance in this space as well. Yes,

Troy (00:58:39):

Exactly. A thousand times. It's a, it's, um, it's a way its resistance, but it's not resistance as focused at the colonizer or the oppressor. You have to claim stories. what could be more empowering than that than reclaiming your stories. This is our modernity. Um, some years ago, I got into an argument with a senior faculty member at, uh, at, uh, at the University of Oslo. And I was just a junior faculty member at a tiny college in the Midwest of the US and he was talking about Indigenous people having, you know, so many Indigenous people haven't experienced modernity. This is our modernity is being alienated, being fragmented from.  Who, who has experienced that more than the African diaspora of being, being alienated, being, being cut off from, um, that's our modernity. And, uh, to fight that by reclaiming and by and by and by owning our own cultures.

Troy (00:59:31):

And it's a, it's a really important thing for me to do that because there are, it is a living language and there are people who are native speakers and when I can have conversations with them without having to go to in a region, that's going to be, you know, a really important moment for me right now. It's more than I can read what people write because I can take my time and parse it out and stuff. Yeah. But, um, but I also think that we need to, you know, our cultures are all changing too, and we need to own the things I'm, I'm working with. I've got a colleague, uh, his name is Caskey Russell he's clean cut.  And he and I are both big, big, uh, soccer football as we call it everywhere else in the world, fans working on a book on Indigenous soccer.

Troy(01:00:12):

And this was like, um, because, uh, it's not that the way that we do different things, you know, we, we talk, we have people teaching Indigenous literature, Indigenous novels, Indigenous films, um, uh, we, certain Indigenous cultures did have writing before colonization. We saw that I wasn't among them. We didn't have writing, uh, before, before colonization. And so it was the colonizers who taught us literacy, but we have our own literature. We have our own, our own stories and our own sensibilities. And I think we can do that within cities. We can be who we are and be doing new things to it, as long as we have those connections. And I think those stories are still out there. You've got to record those stories. You've got to keep them, and it will be not just for you because that's going to be a resource for so many people.

Kerry (01:00:57):

Speaking on that point. One of the things that I realized is how few stories come out of the West Indies. You know, I started kind of digging around a little bit and I think there's only one book that I know of that talks about, uh, an Antiguan family that, uh, trace back their history of one of their relatives and the, he could, and I think he had been a slave, like one of the last slaves or just out of it. And that's one book. Like I can't find very much, um, in that space. So to me, I recognize there's an opportunity, uh, for it. And, maybe there is a book or two here. We'll see, 

Patty: I'm talking about your book or would just be me. Okay. This has been really good. This has been really, really good. I am always so grateful for you guys when you spend time with them.

Troy (01:01:52):

Thank you so much for inviting me back and Joy it is a pleasure to meet you like this.

Joy (01:01:58):

It's nice to meet you too off of Twitter. And so I'm sure you just watched me ran like most people. So

Kerry(01:02:05):

Whenever I do dip, Joy you, give me joy!. I love it. 

Patty: One of the things I learned recently is that caribou and are the same animal, which I had no idea. I don't even remember how I learned that. Um, but it just kind of blew my mind that caribou and reindeer are the same, which makes Troy and I kind of cousins because I'm caribou clan. So that was on Twitter now, you know, see, I did not know that and right there in front of them, um, but then I saw that caribou and reindeer are the same animals. And that was the first thing I thought I was an animal that does really well

Patty (01:02:55):

Up north and who come from up there learning to live with them.

Patty (01:03:00):

Well, it makes sense. Right? You tip the globe in different parts of the world, look related, you know, you can see it. There's no reason why the globe has to be this way. It's really neat. And when we went up to Iqaluit, um, the one fellow that asked me, he asked me if I was Ojibwe. And I said, yeah. And he says, yeah, we look alike because we are men used to kidnap your women all the time.

Joy (01:03:23):

There's that Indian humour,

Patty (01:03:28):

That was just so weird and random. But anyway, thank you guys so much. This has given me so much giving me so much to think about these episodes are always like masterclasses

Kerry: 'till we meet again. Cause I'm sure we will. Somehow

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):

You can find Medicine for the Resistance on Facebook and the website, www.med4r. com. 

Don't forget to rate, share and support us by buying us a coffee at www.kofi.com/medicinefortheresistance. 

You can also support the podcast and so much more by going to patreon.com/payyourrent. 

You can follow Patty on Twitter @gindaanis and at daanis.ca. 

 You can follow Kerry on Twitter at @kerryoscity or follow her on FB  [email protected]. Our theme is FEARLESS.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Patty 

I come across the coolest people on Twitter. And one of those cool people is Zoe Todd, who is the fish philosopher, and I love that. And another thing that I love I was going through, we have a questionnaire because you know, of course we do. And one of the things that Zoe mentions in the questionnaire because I asked, you know, what kind of books do you know she would? Or would you like to recommend because I am obsessed with books. And and you mentioned, Aimeé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, among other things. And I love that essay, so very much. It's I, a friend of mine recommended it to me, I'd never been exposed to it before. I don't know why. And I live tweeted my reading of it because it was just like, it's just like phrase after phrase of just this gorgeous language, completely dismembering, you know, white settler ideas of colonialism. And it's just, it's just an it's just an it's just an extraordinary essay.

Kerry 

Interesting, it's been brought, I haven't read it yet, but it is on my I just …

Patty 

It’s a quick read,  what maybe an hour because it's but it's just absolutely brilliant. I feel like and then Fanon, you mentioned him to and everybody I read mentions Fanon and I think it's inevitable I'm gonna have to .. Is he really dense and hard to read? Because that's …

Zoe

It depends which things you read, I think, so I've gone back and started rereading, Wretched of the Earth just to sort of, because it's really focuses on, you know, how to decolonize. And but I think, yeah, that's where I'm going back to, but I mean, obviously, so much of his work has shaped a lot of the current scholarship, especially in the US and around critical race theory and thinking through anti Black racism. And so, yeah, I felt like, I needed to go back and, and re-engage with him, especially now that I have more grasp on sort of, like, the issues that he's talking about. And, you know, I tried reading him in my PhD, and I brought him into my thesis. But yeah, that was like seven years ago. So I have, you know, different questions now, and different things that I want to be responsible to. So yeah, yeah.

Patty 

So what are those things? Because you, you’ve been through a lot like you've been pretty open about it on Twitter, about, you know, kind of your, your hopes when you went into graduate school, and then your experiences in the academy. So how, what are you bringing to, you know to Cesaire and Fanon,  which really isn't going to be the focus? I'm just curious. Yeah, you know, because we reread things, and they're different when we come back to them because we're different.

Zoe

Yeah. So I came to both of their, you know, like scholarship, at the end of my PhD, when I went to defend my thesis, and it was, it was a very difficult experience, because the work I was doing wasn't really in line with the kind of anthropology that was being done in that space in the UK at the time. But I did have a sympathetic internal examiner. And she said, you wrote a thesis of, like, you wrote an ethnography of colonialism. And so what if we just reorganize this and you open with all the decolonial theory? And I was like, okay, and that gave me the okay to then go and bring in these decolonial scholars, and just sort of unapologetically center that, because otherwise, you know, they were trying to take me down the path of, at the time in the early 2010s. Like, it was really, you know, multispecies ethnography, and like, these, like environmental anthropology, sort of discourses were happening that were, like, potentially useful, but they weren't attending to like racism within the academy. They weren't attending to Indigenous people as theorists in our own right. And so like my work was not fitting into what they thought anthropology was. And so that was how I came around.

And really, it's the work of Zakiyyah Iman Jackson and her work on post humanism, and sort of rejecting how that's been framed by white scholars. That was what brought me in. So I really have to credit her writing. And she's also how I came to start reading Sylvia Winter, like, all, you know, I didn't find very much useful in my training in the UK, but it was the work I started to encounter after, when I started to say like, well, how can I actually be accountable, and then it started reading like Black feminist scholars, and then then everything started to open up. And I also that was when I started engaging with Indigenous legal scholars in Canada as well. And then that was what shifted me. So, anthropology was a hard experience to do a PhD in, but I'm still, you know, it shaped me like, it's, it has undoubtedly, like, set me on the path I'm on.

So I'm not like a, I think I'm at peace with how hard it was. But I'm also so grateful that I got, it's almost like I got to do a postdoc afterwards, just reading all the people that I should have been reading in my PhD, but that they weren't teaching. Because I remember at one point in my PhD saying, like, Well, why aren't we reading Fanon? Someone? I'm laughing out of the discomfort of it, someone was like, “Oh, that stuff's really dated.” And, you know, until that just shows you where white scholars worse, you're go, like, 2013. But I'll tell you, so many of them are now saying like, they're decolonizing anthropology. So. So you know, it all comes, you know, back into sort of, you know, relationship. But yeah, so I'm very grateful like that, …  friends. And I'm not pretending that I that I have read all of their work or, but I'm trying really hard to be accountable to their work, and then how their work is, like so many people now really brilliant people are in conversation with their work. So I want to be accountable to those spaces

Patty 

you had talked about, and this is this is making me think of something you had talked about before Sara Ahmed, who talks about citation or relationship. And we have talked with, and I'm spacing on her name right now, but a Māori academic [note: we are referring to Hana Burgess]. Remember, the one about doing a PhD without quoting any white men?

ZoeThat’s awesome!

PattyI found her on Twitter, like she had thrown out this tweet about how she was going to do a PhD, without quoting any white men, and we're like, what? We need to talk to you!  And then she kind of introduced me to Sara Ahmed and Sarah's work on citational relationship, which in my own book, I think a lot about because I'm mentioning like, you know, this book and that book and how these authors, and thinking carefully about who I'm citing, you know, because two people say the same similar things. But do I really want to cite the white guy who said it? Or do I want to cite the Indigenous women who say it but a little bit differently? In a different context?

Kerry 

So then that can tie in bias when we are doing that? Have you? How, how, how have you been grappling with that, you know what I mean? Even even that piece of it, because of what we are told in society we should be putting down and who should be valued as the ones to be cited?

Zoe

Well, in my own work, I'm, like Sara Ahmed, she wouldn't know this, but she kind of saved my life because she was another one of those people whose work I encountered kind of near the end of that process. And and when I realized, like, I don't have to cite all these miserable old white men, like she was modeling it, you know, and, and that was a real, like, it was the fall of 2014 was a real turning point for me, because I kind of wrote this blog post that went viral about this kind of turn in, in anthropology. And and then it started to get attention. And you know, and some people were really unhappy with it and telling me like, I didn't understand the literature and blah, blah, blah, but somehow I connected with Sarah Ahmed on Twitter in that period. And, and she, you know, like, I don't know her personally, but she kind of gave me the confidence to sort of go back and cite Indigenous people, you know, and like, so I quit trying to impress all these like old white anthropologists and, and that has, like, continued to grow.

And I remember at my thesis defense, like, this is, you know, this is 2016 they leaned in close and they were like, Why would you come all the way over here to like a world class environmental anthropology program, and almost none of the people here show up in your thesis. And I received that like this, like, you know, like, it was like a blow and I remember I like gathered just gathered myself. And you know, everything that led up. Some of it was just so hard and I remember I just like gathered myself and like steadied myself against the table. And I, I kind of leaned in and I spoke very softly. So they had to lean in. And I said, because the experience of working here was so hard. And I came here in good faith, you know, as an Indigenous woman, to work with people who work on, you know, similar topics and with our communities. And it wasn't a good experience. And I didn't see people working with, like, with kindness and reciprocity. And so I resolved that the only way I could honor the stories that my friends and interlocutors shared with me when I was working in their community, in the western Arctic, was to tell those stories in connection with Indigenous thinkers and with Black feminist thinkers. And, and, and I went on and on and on, and they finally were like, okay, okay, okay, we get it.

*laughter*

But they really, like I really had to say it, you know, like that, you know, I wasn't there to just reproduce that program. And like, I, you know, and I don't want to harp on, you know, programs are programs, they reproduce themselves. And you know, and like, it's not like people were malicious, per se, it was just, they were like, fulfilling a role that they thought they had to fulfill, which was like to discipline me and mold me in a certain way. And I wasn't molding in the way they wanted. And I was, you know, trouble.

PattyYou were a killjoy

Zoe

I was a killjoy and a troublemaker.

Kerry

So I just I love this because, one, there's such bravery in that. So like, you just, you just did that, you know. I just love it. That is that, that is when you are deadly, you know what I mean? So when you can show up and just say, leaning in, so that they lean into you, and mention that this experience caused me to have to call in all of the rebels to support but I stand with what I know is true. And to me, that's revolution in its highest form.

Patty 

Zoe takes it all on. You did a great read on braiding sweetgrass, to us it was it was it was, it was really, really good. I mean, I love braiding, sweetgrass, Robin’s an apostle, It is a lovely book, you brought up some really good points. Did you take any heat for that?

Zoe

No. And I mean, I tried really hard with that one to be really careful. You know, it's one thing for me to kind of say, like, you know, screw Latour, we don't need to cite him. It's a whole other thing to engage with an Indigenous women's writing. And so I wanted to make sure that I was very thoughtful. And I mean, I love Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work like, I've taught it now for five years straight, like every term. And I was actually like, I was really shocked when I had those realizations. Like, I was literally out walking in the forest when I was like, wait a minute, she doesn't cite a lot of other Indigenous scholars, and you know, what's going on structurally, that would, that would cause that. And so I wrote it out as a thread. Almost as much to like, help me think out loud about, like, what is going on there. And it you know, and so, but people have been really generous in their responses.

And so but, you know, it's taught me that, like, well, even the most incredible work still can't do everything. So, so asking and, I think, to have been working more and more in these sort of Western conservation spaces and seeing how, you know, Indigenous work sometimes gets taken up by white biologists, scientists, you know, people who are doing this kind of environmental work, and you realize, like, oh, they really love it, when there's a single sort of person, they can credit, they really love that narrative of like the single hero. And yet, so much of our work is just completely rooted in thinking together all the time in different ways. And like, putting pieces together that may not translate and you know, they can't say I learned this from 70 different people, you know, they're not going to do that.

And that's, that's given me some new things to think about about how to my team and I do our work. We're doing fish fish work and how do I make sure I don't recreate those sort of like erasures in my own citation practice so but it's, you know, I'm not here to say you know, this person did did a bad thing. It just, Oh, wow. Here's, I'm sure she wouldn't have even thought when she wrote the book that it would get taken up the way that it has where it's just this like runaway, you know, sort of hit that everyone you know, everyone, everyone's reading it in Canada and US at least.

Patty 

Well, seven years after it was written it hit the has hit the New York Times bestseller. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, it's the gateway into a new way of thinking.,

Kerry 

It was my gateway. I definitely know, when we started the podcast, sorry, sorry, when we started the podcast, you brought that book to my attention Patty, Braiding Sweetgrass, and it was my gateway in to understanding. So absolutely, I can see that happening.

Patty 

It's just when you know when these things are gateways and then people stop there.

Zoe

Yes.

Patty

And that's I think where you were talking about because when I think about citation or relationships in my book, you know, in, you know, what I what I'm writing, I'm, I'm thinking about my own limited knowledge. And the fact that I'm quoting all of these other people, that I'm referencing all of these other people, is a recognition that I don't know this stuff all on my own. I mean, that's why we do citations, right? Because we don't know. And so what I want people to do is what I do, you know, when something particularly grabs me and I, they've cited it, then I go and I pick up that book.

Zoe

Yeah.

Patty

And so that way, my book becomes a gateway to other books.

Zoe

Yes.

Patty

And then I just joined substack, because of course I did. Because one thing that I really enjoy is putting books in conversation with each other. And I did that with We Do This Til We Free Us and Border & Rule, I read them alternating chapters, and then wrote an essay  on it and had them in conversation with each other. You know, so that citational relationship and thinking about who we're quoting, it's, that's what we're doing, we're putting these things in conversation with each other, seeing what happens, and then and then developing something new.

And then this is kind of my segue into your essay on fish. Fish, Kin, and Hope  because, although, you know, citing traditional Indigenous knowledge is getting a little bit more, you know, recognized. You start with that. That's what that's what, that's what that essay starts with, with Leroy, and I'm just gonna read it because I I just I love it. I love it so much. And it I had to stop and have a good think. So you're citing Leroy Little Bear. And he says:

We as humans live in a very narrow spectrum of ideal conditions. Those ideal conditions have to be there for us to exist. That’s why it’s very important to talk about ecology, the relationship. If those ideal conditions are not there, you and I are not going to last for very long. Just text Neanderthal. Ask the dinosaurs. What happened to them? We asked one of our elders, ‘Why did those dinosaurs disappear?’ He thought about it for a while and he said, ‘Maybe they didn’t do their ceremonies.’

– Leroy Little Bear

And I loved that. Because it made me think about dinosaurs, they’re ancestors really, related if we're all related, they’re ancestors of a kind. And now we're putting them in our cars. And that's not very respectful. And you kind of get into that in the essay. So can you talk about a little bit because that was super intriguing.

Zoe

You're having a very similar reaction that I did when I you know, when a friend had seen him, give that talk live, and she wrote me and said, Zoe, as soon as that's online, you have to see it, you're going to love it because he brings up fish in that talk. And he said, I remember there's like because I almost haven't memorized I've watched that talk so many times now. It's like my, it's my origin story as a thinker like Leroy Little Bear has shaped me so deeply. And I've never met him. And he's like, evolved with scholars I can ever meet. I really hope I get to meet Leroy Little Bear because he's just, he's so brilliant. And, and so yeah, and in that talk, he talks about like, you know, nobody's talking about the fish a lot at this conference yet. And I was like, yes, yes, we have to talk about the fish.

But from that part of the talk, where he's talking about the dinosaurs like that, that, that sort of just that part of the talk really turned my thinking on its head, especially because I'm from Alberta. I'm from Edmonton. I have settler and Indigenous family in you know, from and in Alberta. My mom is a white settler. And my dad is Métis. And I grew up immersed in the oil economy of Alberta. And it's it's inescapable. It's just everywhere. It's everything the Oilers, you know, just going to university in the early 2000s. And in the engineering building, you know, all these rooms are sponsored by like, oil and gas companies and oilfield services companies and so that that sort of like what he shared about the dinosaurs and ceremonies completely shifted, it refracted my worldview, completely.

And I started to think about, wait a minute, like in Alberta, we live in this place that is full of dinosaur bones, because just just the way the geology has has worked and and we burn fossil fuels, like our whole economy turns on this, and what does that mean for our responsibilities? And so yeah, that that kind of led to some, you know, now I'm thinking through that in another piece that I've submitted that hopefully will get past peer review. I sort of asked some my deeper questions about like, what does that mean for us? Like, What responsibilities does this invoke for us? And I brought I bring in the work of Métis scholar Elmer Ghostkeeper. And then also a story that Tłı̨chǫ writer Richard VanCamp, shares about, that an elder shared with him with permission, a story about a trapper who became a cannibal, I won't use the name. And, and that, that there's sort of elders have speculated that maybe the oil sands in Alberta, if they continue to dig, they might uncover what was buried there. And that something was buried there to protect people. And so all these things, I sort of bring them together in this this other paper that I hope will get published.

Yeah, but you sort of had the same train of thought that I did, or was like, of course, their ancestors, like, they lived before us. And, and I had never thought of them as like, political agents, or like, you know, having their own worlds where, where they would have, of course, they would have had ceremonies, you know, like it just, yeah, that was a really transformative moment for me as an urban raised Métis person living drenched in a wheel, Alberta, and I've never thought about, you know, the interior lives of the beings that had come, you know, millions of years before.

Patty

Yeah, I’m just thinking, Kerry’s like I have a grandson, he's got dinosaurs everywhere.

Kerry 

It really is an interesting thought when you said now we put them in my car in our cars. I was like, wait, wait. Yeah, we do like, yet again, to me, what brings that brings up is the interconnectivity, the interconnection that exists between all of us, and how, you know, our, our ancestry, our relatives are from all different shapes, forms, and how and what I find is interesting, even thinking Zoe that you come from this Anthro, this anthropological kind of background, even thinking about those ancestors of ours, who might have been two footed, who didn't make it through, you know, and just this, this realm of how when our worldview stays polarized on this moment, but yet, we don't take into account all the gifts and connections that have come from that path. It's a really interesting space, like my brain is going. And I never thought about thanking the relative dinosaurs, because you guys are the things that fuel our cars. And also then to juxtapose against that, I think about how, once again, the system has used that against us as well. Do you know what I mean? Like, we know, there's so many things happening, because we put gas in our cars.

Zoe

Yeah,

Kerry

so much dissension in the world, and how we've all been displaced in the world, because of this gas, we want to put in our well, we didn't necessarily want to put it in. But that's just how things kind of rolls you know.

Zoe

Yeah. And I wonder about like, do they, if they can feel through the vast sort of like stretches of time? Like, do they feel sorrow for how we're treating them? Or do they feel sorrow for us that we don't understand them as ancestors, or don't think about them as ancestors in that sense. And so in this paper that I recently submitted, I also sort of argue that, like, science claims, Dinosaurs, dinosaurs as a kind of ancestor, in that like, sort of the common ancestor of humankind, or like, you know, that we stretch back to these ancient beings. But I argue that they they claim a kind of ancestry without kinship.

And so and that's a very like white supremacist way of framing relationships is that, yes, I can claim this dinosaur or this being but I don't have any obligations to them. And I get that, you know, I bring in Darryl Leroux and Adam Gaudry, and other who talked others who talk about white people claiming and did Indigenous ancestry contemporarily without kinship, where they sort of say like, well, yes, I have an ancestor from the 1600s. Ergo, you know, thereby I am, you know, you have to honor me. And as I, I try to tease that out. And that's where I sort of, I look to Elmer Ghosttkeeper, who talks about a shift in his own community in northern Alberta, between the 60s and 70s, where when he was growing up, you know, as a Métis person in that community, I think he's from Paddle Prairie.

And they, you know, he describes how they grew up working with the land, making a living with the land. But then when he came back in the 70s, and oil and gas, like, specifically gas exploration was happening, he found himself working in heavy machine operating work, he found himself work making a living off the land, and that just that shift from with and off, shifted, how he was relating to this land that give him life and his family life. And as he just so he did his master's at the University of Alberta anthropology and his thesis is really beautiful. And then he turned it into a book. And I have to credit colleagues at the University of Alberta, including my friend, David Perot, who turned me towards Elmer’s work and also just like, really beautiful, and I love getting to think with Indigenous scholars and thinkers from Alberta, because it's not really a place. You know, I think when a lot of like people in other parts of the country think of Alberta, there's reasons they think about it as like, a really messed up place. And like that, that is a fair assessment of the politics and the racism, I'm not excusing that. But there's also so much richness there, like Alberta is a really powerful place. And, you know, and it is where all these dinosaurs are and, and this incredibly dynamic, like land and water and, and so, I'm just really grateful that that's where I get to think from and I don't like that's Catherine McKittrick, you know, asks people, where do you think from? And where do you know, from? And so, my answer to that question is, you know, I know from Edmonton, which it's been called, Stabminton, Deadminton you know, it has a lot of, you know, negative connotations that have been ascribed to it, but it's home to me, it's on the North Saskatchewan River. It's, I love it. I don't live there right now, but I love it.

Patty 

Identity is a poor substitute for relations. That's, you know, that's what you're talking about when you're saying, you know, they recognize science recognizes them as kind of ancestors, you know, creatures that predated us and from whom were descended. But only or, well, they're descended in a kind of way.

Zoe

Yeah,

Patty

as but as progress, right as part of that linear progress. So there's no relation. There's a there's an identification without relationship. And then I was thinking of kind of a my own experience. Because I had identity without relationship, growing up. I was the brown kid in the white family. My mom moved me south I had no contact with my dad's, you know, with my Ojibwe family. And for me, that was very impoverishing, this identity without relationship, because other people identified me as native. You know, they looked at me and they saw a native person. But I grew up in Southern Ontario in the early 70s. Nobody, I didn't know there were reserves within a two hour drive. I had no idea. I thought all the Indians lived out west somewhere. No idea. And so to me, that felt like impoverishment. And so when people make those choices, and they're choosing these relationships, the you know, this, these identifications without relationship. It's like, why would you choose impoverishment, but they don't, they don't feel it like impoverishment, because the relationship is one of exploitation. What can I What can I extract from them by way of knowledge, by way of oil, by way of plastics, by way of, you know, learning off the land instead of with the land, which kind of brings me to anthropology, because it really confused me about you was that you study fish, but you're an anthropologist. And so that's obviously a whole field of anthropology, because I always thought anthropology was like Margaret Mead studying, you know, people living in shacks, and you know, kind of imagining what the world would have been like for, you know, these Stone Age people who somehow magically exist in the present day. So they’re 21st century people, not Stone Age people. But just like, that's kind of I think, and I think that's where most people go when they think of anthropology. So if you can please correct us.

Zoe

Well,white anthropology is still very racist. White anthropology is still like, it's trying. I said,

Patty

I How is anthropology fish?

Zoe

So the long story worry is that I started in biology. And you know, it's a 2001. And it was not a space in 2001, that was quite ready for Indigenous knowledge yet. And I struggled. So like I was really good at science in my in, in high school. And so everyone was saying you are a brilliant young woman, we need more women in biology and in the sciences, you're going to be a doctor, like they were pushing me that direction. So I was like, I guess I have to do a science degree. And I went in really excited because I I'm really fascinated by how the world works. But the way they, they were teaching biology, I'm gonna give them some credit, I think things have shifted and 21 years or 20 years, but the way they were teaching biology at that time, you know, half the class was aiming to get into med school, you know, and the other half was maybe, like really excited about like a specific topic that they were going to spend, you know, their time working on. And, but you know, it's just that experience of like, 600 person classes, multiple choice exams, like, that's just not how I work. And I now like, in my late 30s, understand that, like, Oh, I'm ADHD, and there's a very strong indication that I'm also autistic. And so like, those learning modalities were just not working for me, and definitely not working for me as Indigenous person. So I was sort of gently. I had taken an anthro elective in the first year that I got, like a nine. And it was on a nine point system at the University of Alberta at that time. And I like to joke that my first my second year GPA was a four, but it was on the nine point system.

*laughter*

Patty 

Looking for nines is that you're trying again,

Zoe

it was, I was not I mean, it was a little higher than four, but I wasn't doing great. So a mentor who was working in his lab, Alan Thompson, he said, he just sat me down one day, and he said, you know, you're really passionate about people, is there a way you could do a minor that will allow you to finish this degree, but allows you to explore those sort of social aspects. And so we looked at my transcript, and I done really well in Anthro. And so I said, Well, what about doing an anthro minor. And so I did. And that was actually a real turning point for me, because it took a class with someone named Franca Boag, who's who's teaching at MacEwan University now. And it was the anthropology of science. And it was, I think, shortly after, like the Socal affair, where he like that, that scholar submitted, like a sort of fake paper to a postmodern journal, and he got it published. And then he revealed that he had, like, it was fake.

And a, it's like the science wars had just just kind of wrapped up. And so I came in, and like 2014, I was like, what? Science Wars? But I but that was where I learned for the first time, you know, that there was a whole field of study of like science and technology studies, that was questioning science. And so we're reading like Thomas Kuhn and all that, you know, and like these people, and that's where I first encountered Latour, and, and I realized, like, wait a minute, I work in a lab. I'm one of these human, you know, humans shaping science, and it opened doors for me. So not that anthropology was a perfect place to go, because there was still, like, we were still forced to take like physical anthropology classes that still reify like physical characteristics. And I mean, at least they were teaching the problems in that in that and they were, you know, we learned about eugenics. And you know, so like, at least they were critiquing it, but I'm not here to defend anthropology in any way.

So to fast forward, I found myself doing a PhD in anthropology, mainly because it was a space that appeared to be open to doing kind of like Indigenous work. It's debatable whether that was actually the case, my PhD, it was a really hard experience, but it, you know, it opened certain doors for me. And there was a turn in the last 20 years in anthropology towards something called like, multispecies ethnography. And it became very trendy for anthropologists to work on animals. And so I just happened to kind of be there at the time that this movement was very, very popular. And so when I said I wanted to work on fish, people were like, absolutely, totally sure. I don't think they necessarily expected me to go the direction I would, where I was also like, and also anthropology must be dismantled or white anthropology must be dismantled. You know, like, they were hoping I would just do a nice little phenomenological study of the fishiness of a place and, and, you know, be done with that. And, but then, you know, I really went in some different directions, but I can't complain.

Like I've been so lucky. I've been funded, people have supported me. You know, who may have gone on to regret it because it wasn't quite what they thought they were getting. But I've just been really fortunate to connect with amazing people through that experience and to connect with amazing, like Indigenous scholars as well. And so the answer is like I, I practice anthropology, but my projects, everything we're working on is deeply interdisciplinary. So we have like, journalists and architects and scientists and community leaders. And so I take what's useful. This is what Kim TallBear often says, like, she takes what's useful from anthropology, but she leaves the rest. And so you know, and I really take that to heart because she does brilliant work. And she's been able to kind of take some aspects of it that are useful. But I don't I, you know, I haven't read Margaret Mead. I have had to teach some, you know, some critiques of her and my classes. But, yeah, like, I'm not, I'm not someone who would like die to defend anthropology as a discipline. But there's some really cool anthropologists doing covert, the some really cool like the Association of Black anthropologists in the US, like in the American anthropology Association, like there's so many cool anthropologists, who were critiquing and dismantling the harmful aspects of the discipline. So I don't want to throw it all away, because I do think there's really cool stuff happening. But yeah, so to answer your question, I kind of just fell into it. And then, you know, there were aspects of it that were useful that felt less harmful than biology. But I've come back around to working much more closely with the sciences, again, just from a very different angle.

Patty 

What’s fish anthropology?

Zoe

Well, I would say like in, like, so I like my PhD work was in the community of Paulatuk in the Northwest Territories. And I spend time hanging out with fishermen, just learning about how they've been applying their own laws to protect fish in their homelands. And so. So in that sense, like, the thing that anthropology offers, that some other disciplines don't, is just, it affords a lot of time to just hang out and listen to people tell their own stories. And it really values that, it values that experience of like people telling stories in their own words, and spending time with people, you know, working in, you know, the context that they work in. And so those aspects of it, I think, can be helpful if they're approached, you know, thoughtfully, and with a very clear understanding of the harms of the discipline and a decolonial, you know, need for decolonization.

But yeah, like I I think part of the reason it's so weird to keep rehashing my PhD is I hope that nobody from that program listens. I mean, I have long since forgiven them, I have, I have, like, you know, spiritually forgiven them. I have no, I have no anger. But I think that, like, where was I going with that? I think that yeah, there's aspects of it that can be very useful. And, and just the opportunity to spend time with people is really valuable. And one of the things that was hard about my thesis, I think that's why they struggled with it was that I wasn't just doing something that was legible to them, I was also going into the archives and looking at like, you know, 60 years worth of correspondence between the RCMP and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and other government and church actors who are talking about, you know, concerns about, you know, the fur trade economy had collapsed in the region in the 1930s.

And they were worried about how people were going to get food. And then fish become this really important role in that story, because people were able to continue fishing, even when other species were, you know, periodically scarce. And an elder that I had worked with, through that project named Annie had repeatedly reminded me that she said, You never go hungry in the land if you have fish. And each time she shared that I was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then this other aspect of it would unfold, you know, as we were out on the land, or even years later, I think back to that I'm like yet, this is why we have to protect fish, because they're one of the species that has been in abundance since time immemorial, even for at least in the Arctic, and also in the prairies. And, and for them to be in decline right now in the ways that they are is really alarming.

And so Leroy Little Bear points that out as well. He's you know, they, they've survived longer than the dinosaurs longer than Neanderthals. Fish have been around as well, about half a billion years, but they're barely surviving white supremacist colonial capitalism. So that should tell us something that if something can survive all these other cataclysms, but it can't survive this, that something. So, I don't know if that answers the question about, like, why anthropology? How did the fish fit in, but that sort of the fish you know, I had done this very quantitative research in my masters or we did interviews and, and surveys and sort of asked questions about how people were navigating different, you know, economic and social impacts on their harvesting lives. And it was through that experience that people Paulatuk friends were taking me out on the line to go fishing. And, and, and so women in the community said, you know, you know, not a lot of people have asked us about our fishing lives, and we have a lot of knowledge. And so I, you know, when I started my PhD, I asked, you know, would you be interested if I did a project where I spend time with you, you know, learning about your fishing lives? And and they said, Yes, of course. So, so it started out actually as a project on women and fishing, but then it grew into this project on law. And it really, that was sort of like where it landed.

Patty 

Neat. That's, that's really interesting. So, because you had made a comment, centering Indigenous legal orders, and you've talked about this, too, but Indigenous law, can you just explain that a little bit?

Zoe

Yeah, so um, so two of the big biggest sort of people who are working on these topics in Canada are Val Napoleon and John Burrows, and they're at the University of Victoria. And, you know, when I was nearing the end of my PhD, and I was still struggling to sort of frame the stories that people were sharing with me within the literature that was available to me in we call it North Atlantic anthropology. So like UK, US, Canada, anthropology. And, and then I heard John Burrows, give a talk, where he talked about the dynamic but rooted aspects of Indigenous law. And it just like blew my mind. Like I just was like, of course, Indigenous people have law like I had been so like, my mind frame was so colonized that, like, I couldn't see the law around me. And Val Napoleon wrote a paper in 2007, that basically describes the same experience for some of her students who sort of like when she's taught teaching, when she was teaching Indigenous law. Some students were really struggling to see the norms and protocols that we use in our communities as law.

And when I started to read her work, and John's work, and Tracy Lindbergh and other people's work, I realized, like, oh, all of these protocols that people were talking about within my PhD research are law and I so I had conversations with friends about like, you know, does it make sense for me to talk about this as law? And my friend said, Yes. And, you know, in applying to his own harvesting life, and then I realized, like, wait a minute, I also grew up with Indigenous law as a Métis person, and I didn't understand that that's what it was. And and I'm not saying I fully understand what Métis law looks like, because I think there's just a lot of questions that I can't answer, but, you know, Val, Tracy, I was at a conference where Val, Tracy Lindbergh, Patti LaBoucane-Benson, John Burrows and a whole bunch of other people presented. And Patti LaBoucane-Benson and Tracy Lindbergh had talked about Cree law, and how you know, through what they've been taught from elders and knowledge keepers, they work with, like one of the first laws in Cree law, at least on the prairies is love. And then everything sort of built on that and and any mischaracterizations are my own. So, I apologize to people who have far more teachings than me. And I only know a little tiny bit.

But those were experiences that really shaped me because I started to understand well, of course, like this, and Val’s work has really focused a lot also on stories, and how stories contain law and like, you know, instructions and guidance and, and that just that completely shifted how I was thinking about the work I was doing in Paulatuk and the stories that were shared with me. And it has gone on to shape. How I think about the work my team and I are doing now about how do we, how do we shift public perceptions of our responsibility to fish just sort of collectively, like Indigenous and non Indigenous communities in Alberta, especially where we're dealing with .. almost every fish population in Alberta is in trouble in one way or another. And so, you know, one of the questions we were asking in our work is, well, what would it look like if we, if we really focused on fish stories, both Indigenous and non Indigenous and what if we and this is a concept we get both from Robin Wall Kimmerer, but also from Kutcha Zimbaldi where we say we want to re-story fish futures. We want to re-story fish habitats through stories. And you know, and what I've learned from Val Napoleon and all these other amazing thinkers is that of course, stories are components of law. She cites Louis Byrd, who, who says stories are good to think with. And that is a sentiment that other people have sort of echoed it, like Julie Cruickshank has said that and Dell Hymes all these people, you know, stories are good to think with. And so that's what we're trying to bring into our work on protecting freshwater fish in Alberta and beyond, is, well what stories do we tell about fish and, and then when we start from that place of telling stories about fish, you start to sort of learn little bits about like, different experiences people are having, and and when you bring those stories together, then you're having really interesting conversations of like, what what do people in Edmonton experience of the fish, they may not see them, because so many populations have been impacted by urban development. And in the 1950s, Edmonton still put raw sewage in the North Saskatchewan.

And so, you know, I don't know if I’m making sense. So but for me, Indigenous law, you know, dying from the work that folks that you Vic and Alex are doing, Val Napoleon sort of says law, I wish I could pull the quote directly, but there's a series of videos that they've produced for the Indigenous Law Research Unit. And, and one of them, Val gives us really elegant explanation of what law is, and see if I can, if I can paraphrase it from memory, you know, it's sort of to the effect that law is the way that we, like think together and reason together, and work through, like problems together. And so that's something we're trying to capture in our work is how do we work through, you know, the experience of being people together?

Patty 

Well, Kerry, that makes me think of like, because it Kerry’s Caribbean, you know, and you know,  fish.

Kerry 

I'm so funny, you brought that up, because that was exactly what I was thinking now one of my native islands, my father is from Barbados. And so we have the migration of the flying fish, it's actually one of our national dishes,

Zoe

Amazing

Kerry

And, you know, I that is such an integral part of who we are as Bajan people, and, and just what is our space of, of existence, like the migration of the flying fish comes through, and it used to set even the patterns for how we existed I remember my grandmother of my grandfather used to fish but he was more like a, it was more a hobbyist thing for him. But he'd go out onto the waters early, early mornings, right? And, or they go down by the fish markets, and then gather the fish and come home, come back to the house. And then we would all the women in particular, we would all get together and clean and you know, have our conversations around this frying fish.

And then we make like what we call cou cou, which is our national dish. It's like a cornmeal dish, which is very much a something that Africans brought over as slaves. And we make this corn meal that you eat with it, and you'd eat cou cou and flying fish. And so when you when we think about the numbers and the scarcity that is happening, because I know even the migration patterns are starting to shift in Barbados. And it's not in the same abundance, you know, our oceans are being affected all over the world. And I had never, you really brought it home to me. The reality that the fish have survived, you know, cataclysm, they've, comets have hit the Earth. destroyed, you know, atmospheres, and fish have survived. And yet, that is a humbling thing to sit and think that we are in such a fragile point in our existence, that if our fish go, I had never even put it into that perspective until it well, I've thought it but you really brought it home for me. And even for me that the fragility of the patterns of our lives. You know, when I think Barbados I immediately think frying fish, like the two are synonymous for me. And all of that is shifting and changing in the way that we're in our experience now. So, yeah, it's humbling in a lot of ways.

Patty 

Well and the eel. I know we talked, I've talked with Aylan Couchie. She's doing some work. She was doing some work on eels and how they used to migrate from the Caribbean. Up down this up the coast down the St. Lawrence Seaway up the Trent water system all the way to Lake Nipissing. And now of course with you know, with the with the canals and the way things are closed off, that connection so the eel features in artwork and stories all the way from Nipissing to the Caribbean. And just the ways that connects us even though we may not have had contact in any other way, the eels did, the eels carried our stories with them. And there's just yeah, it's just really sad. So I just think it's really cool that you're, you know, you're working with on stories there are stories about fish, and I saw how excited you got

Zoe

I love fish stories!  *laughter*

Kerry 

I was just leaning into that. See how much of a passion it is for you. And it's delightful. It absolutely is delightful to see you just like the people weren't listening to the podcast, she lifts up. Space, our zoom call was lit up with the effervescence of Zoe as she is talking about this. And it's that passion, though, that I also want to mention, because I think that's the stuff that saves this space. I think it's you talking about it with that kind of exuberance with that kind of passion that is actually caused me to be interested in ways that I might not have been before. And it's only I think, with this interest with us calling this to light that maybe we can shift what is happening because as you said, this is gonna affect all of us in the long run.

Zoe

I don't know that I want to be on a planet without fish. Like, because that is a that is the

Kerry 

Could we even be on a planet without fish.

Zoe

And I don't know, I don't know, that was like humans have never existed without fish fish have existed without us. We haven't existed without them. And yeah, neither, you know. And it, there's a there's a lot of people who are really passionate about fish. Like I am inspired by my late stepdad who was a biologist who was just deeply passionate about fish. And, you know, it's like, there's a lot of really cool people working on these things. But for you know, any of those other people, it's like, it's worms or snakes or bees, or for me, it's fish, like I just, you know, and I love hearing fish stories like now it's like, Oh, I've never seen a flying fish, you know, and I, they, I bet they're amazing. I bet they’re so amazing.

Kerry 

They're really long. Their fins look like literally like wings, and they're long and they're kind of majestic, right? They're tiny, they're not that big, but their fins take up like double the space of them. And they're really cool, when you see the whole thing, and then we used to like cut them open, and then they would be seasoned up, they taste really delicious to kind of a meaty fish. There's, as I said, like, with even that conversation, look at all the memories, I'm thinking of my grandmother and being in her kitchen, and her directing me on to how you know the precision cut, to make to be able to skin it perfectly to pull the spine out so that the fillet stayed together. And you know, the recipe that went into sometimes you because sometimes you would bread them. And so you know that all of those memories and, and even that with it, sometimes we'd eat split peas, that we would that would be harvested from the garden and just peas from the garden that we would have grown. And so all of those memories get tied into that space of when I'm thinking about these fish, and what it meant to the enormity of the experience of my grandmother who is now an ancestor. You know, it's, it's important because it is more than just our survival. These are our memories, these are our histories, these are the things that have created the very space of who we are as humans, as relatives, as families, as mothers, as fathers, our societies. And I just I just I'm recognizing how interconnected and yet fragile those connections are. We truly have to respect our fish relatives. They created so much of who I am today.

Patty 

Well, and that's that relationship right just you know, going back to the thing with the Kim had said that identity without relationship is just such an empty impoverished thing. You know, we go to the grocery store and you know, and it's it's just so thin when you when you, you know when you really think about it and dig into it and you know, and you spent that time hearing their stories and seeing how the I don't love that they said, Nobody asks us our stories. They're like, Hey, would you like me to ask you and they’re like,yeah!

Zoe

All the scientists are coming like at that time now more fishing work has happened, which is great, like people need to like. Everyone should be able to do fish work. But at the time, like most of the climate change scientists and the wildlife biologists who are coming up, we're really focused on like the megafauna, the charismatic megafauna, so they're coming up, and they want to know about polar bears and care about and like, all of those are incredibly important species. So I'm not here to diminish that. But, you know, the thing that was exciting about fishing and I think I've tried to remember the name, there was a woman who had written a, like her PhD thesis. You know, before me at Aberdeen and she worked in the eastern Canadian Arctic in Nunavut. And you know, her finding was that everybody wishes. It's not just then you know, it's kids it's it's, it's an intergenerational like, joyful thing that people participate in, in, in the, in Nunavut. And that was very true in Paulatuk, as long as still is like fishing is just a really big part of community life. And I was so lucky to get to spend time, you know, and I really have to credit my friends Andy and Millie Thrasher, and their family who took me out fishing, through that whole time that I was there and took me to lots of their favorite fishing places, and I just got to spend time with them, like their family. And it was a lot like spending time with my dad, my Métis dad teaching me how to fish you know, on small lakes in Alberta, much smaller lakes much different and it was in Paulatuk is so cool, because like, I write about this in one of my articles are like Millie really took my nalgene just, like, dipped it into one of the lakes and was like, Here, here's some water, just that like that incredible experience of like, well, I can just drink straight out of this lake. Like, just the difference in, you know, what that feels like? And that that's the experience people used to have all the time. You know, and so in different places, so I just, yeah, I'm really thankful for it. You know, I just, that was a really amazing experience and, and

Patty 

This is bringing to mind I look, I listened to the Media Indigena podcast. And a lot a while ago, Candis Callison was talking about really missing the salmon from home. That because she's Tahltan from Northern BC, and she was talking about really missing the salmon from home that, you know, it tastes different, because it eats differently, right. And so what it eats and where it lives affects how it tastes. And salmon isn't just salmon. And I mean, like we live in wine country, right. And so we know that the wine from the one part of the region tastes different from the exact same grapes grown in a different because it’s digging its roots into different stuff. And so and so it tastes, but it was just that anyway, that just called it to mind what she she was talking about that these kind of intense ways that we can be connected to and shaped by place.

Zoe

Yes,

Patty

how connected it all is, and how important that is a really, really important that is, and we forget that we've got, I mean, people in the chat are just really loving you Zoe..

Zoe

Oh, really doesn't even look good. So I'm like, and the thing that, you know, I think fish can be sites of new memories as well like that. If we work together across many different communities, like fish still have a lot to teach us collectively. You know, my dad has memories when he was a little boy growing up in Edmonton, that it was, it was who he remembers fishing growing up was his friend who was from a Chinese Canadian family who had set lines for suckers, right by the high level bridge. And so, you know, here's my dad, a Métis kid, and his memories of fishing in the city are from Chinese Canadian family. And you know, that kind of like exchange of knowledge in ways that maybe like white settlers weren't really paying attention to who was making relations with the rivers and there's a lot of stories there that I think haven't been explored necessarily about. And so there's I'm forgetting his name. But there was this really cool urbanist in Edmonton who was doing a cool project where he he's from the sort of like the Chinese community in Edmonton, and he was connecting with elders, because both Chinese immigrants and Indigenous community members in Edmonton both relied on the sturgeon and other fish in the river. And so he was collecting stories across both Indigenous and immigrant experience from the like early 1900s, of how people engaged with the river.

And so, you know, I am also very, I, you know, I think that there's restorying to be done to that displaces the white settler imaginary, that they are the voice of the fish, that actually so many other communities also have relationships with fish, and that those stories don't get centered and a lot of the like conservation science and other narrative, you know, there is that real dichotomy like the you were talking about duality versus dichotomy, I was catching up on some of your tweets today. And you're really good points about. So I want to make sure I use the right terminology, that I'm not doing the conflating that you were pointing out, but that, you know, there's a, that settler Indigenous duality, or dichotomy gets emphasized in a lot of conservation work in Canada, to the exclusion of Black histories and other histories that are really important to understanding who has relationships to the water, who has relationships to the fish. And so, yeah, I just think that that's another reason like, fish stories are so exciting to me, because everyone has some kind of story, whether it's beautiful stories, like Kerry’s, or, you know, some people don't like fish and don't have a positive relationship to it. And that's okay to like that. You know, that. But that fish, I keep, you know, instead of say, like, one of my little tag lines for our work is like every part of Canada is a fish place. Just to remind, you know, the government that they can't, they can't, you know, sort of recklessly harm fish habitats, you know, in the name of economic development that, you know, like, the fish shaped this country, you know, yeah, yeah.

Patty 

This has been so interesting. Like really surprisingly, interesting because I find your Twitter threads so interesting. And I was really intrigued by an anthropologist who studies fish. That made no sense. Now I understand how those two things go together. And now I'm kind of like, well, of course that goes together.

Kerry 

I definitely got to follow you on Twitter. I I need to know can you shout you out for anybody else who's listening?

Zoe

@ZoeSTodd

Kerry 

Dr. Dr. Fish philosopher. Yes.

Zoe

I do have a doppelganger named Zoe H. Todd. And I just have to give her a little credit. Because she did her degree at Carleton. Right. She graduated right when I was hired. And then she moved to Edmonton when I moved to Ottawa, and so we, and sometimes she works. I think she's currently working for PBS in the US. And people will email me and be like, you've did such an incredible story on the news. And I'm like, It's not me. It's the other Zoe Todd. She's brilliant, follow her.

Patty 

I just really feel like this was an intro to

Kerry

absolutely,

Patty

You know, to the work that you do and to the things that the important things about the ways that the waters connect us and the fish and I mean, I'm thinking about all the memory that fish nation holds. Right, like right from, you know, I read Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumb, which is fish, it's mammals. But still, they're in water. And, you know, the relationships and the memories that they hold. Some of these beings are so old, right? Like they, they're 200 years old, some of these whales and you know, what kind of memories of us are they holding and, you know, just these extraordinary lives and stories. And so I just, I'm just so this was just so much fun. You're just ..

Kerry 

I absolutely loved it you on fresh air. It was an amazing, amazing talk.

Zoe

I just want to give a little shout out there's a ton of people doing cool fish work. So Deb McGregor at York. Tasha Beads who's a Water Walker and doing her PhD at Trent and there's a there's a scholar named Andrea Reed at UBC who's doing really cool coastal fish stuff and yeah, there's just a really cool people and then my whole fish freshwater fish futures team like Janelle Baker. I just just really cool people. They want to make sure they get credit because they're doing cool stuff.

Patty

Thank you guys so much.

Kerry

Till next time,

Zoe

till next time, have a great day.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Patty Krawec  so I just finished reading The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein so then when I came across Hilding, came across Hilding a few weeks ago about Indigenous stargazing. Mi’kmaq astronomer and tell us about yourself and about Indigenous stargazing.

Hilding Neilson 

Yeah, so I'm Hilding, I'm Mi’kmaq and settler from a group in Newfoundland. That's where my family's from the west coast of the island. Got my PhD at the University of Toronto in astrophysics, did some research back as a contract backdating astronomer, working in the Department of Astronomy, just next door to AW Peet. And I've been really interested in trying to bridge a lot of initiatives in astronomy that we don't really talk about that much, which is Indigenous knowledges. 

If I were to show you a textbook, you know, like a 500 page tome of astronomy knowledge from cosmology, the exoplanet, there'd be two pages on Indigenous knowledges. And we'd be sharing those two pages with Stonehenge, and New Grange in Ireland. And they'll be talking about perhaps the Mayan Astronomy, or maybe Hawai’ian navigators. And it will be spoken about as if we're past tense, as if Indigenous people don't exist. And then it will be like, “now on to the real science.” 

And, you know, a few years ago, I got to attend a national meeting of Canadian astronomers, and a Cree astronomer educator, Wilfer Buck, was presenting, and he gave a talk to the audience, discussing all these Cree stories, beautiful Cree stories. The Bear constellation with three dog constellation. And us seeing all this knowledge that we don't talk about in academic spaces. And I'm just sitting there wondering like, WTF is our knowledge? Where's Indigenous wisdom, Mi’kmaq knowledge? Where are the constellations? Why don't we talk about that? And so this sort of became of this giant rabbit hole that I've been going through trying to find different knowledges and Indigenous methodologies, and trying to create new space in academic astronomy for more Indigenous knowledges, though, granted, that mostly focused on the North American Carolinian peoples. There's just too much out there to try to do everything. 

And so hopefully now in the fall, we'll be launching our new course on Indigenous astronomy, that will be a senior level course talking of issues around colonization and astronomy, whether that's dealing with telescopes on Earth or going out to Mars, talking about knowledges, and then Indigenous methodologies. You know, how would an Indigenous, how would Indigenous peoples think about the concepts like the Drake Equation. Like we asked the question, how many advanced civilizations are there? And, noting that “advanced civilization” has its own problems with terminology, are there in our galaxy? And, you know, some dude named Frank Drake in the 1960s came up this whole way of kind of thinking about this through an equation. And all the assumptions presently require things like, what's intelligent life? How does life form? What is a civilization? And if we just step back and think back to, you know, how different Indigenous communities would think about these things and what does that mean? And there are ways of going through these kind of thought processes. One of the simple aspects of the Drake Equation is, you know, how long civilizations sort of last that can communicate. And Frank Drake, you know, was doing this during the Cold War. So, you know, the biggest fear was nuclear bombs. So he was suggesting maybe a century to 1000 years that's the length societies exist Now that we're in the era of climate change, probably, the same numbers apply. But, you know, I remember when seeing this meme a few years ago of “Canada- 150;  Mi’kmaq- 13,000.” 

Patty Krawec: Right. 

Hilding Neilson: So you know, if Western civilization’s got about a century, perhaps Indigenous civilizations have 10s of 1000s of years.

Hilding Neilson 

And you know, that's tens of thousands of  years longer to exist. It means many more Indigenous type, or Indigenous life possibilities of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. So just thinking from an Indigenous perspective, using–and trying not to really be pan-Indigenous–But, you know, common methodologies that you can have so many more civilizations in our galaxy, if you think about it, through those lenses of different Indigenous nations relative to traditional western science. And we could probably play through this exercise through different elements in astronomy and physics. And I think this sort of helped create this critical lens, again, around how we talk about astronomy and astrophysics, because it's become so Eurocentric, so westernized, so much in this narrative of “Space Cowboys, Colonizing Mars, Planting a flag, Sending messages out to other worlds,” that were really embodied within the same colonial narrative in the last four or five centuries, that I think we're due now to actually start thinking about it from a from a broader context.

Patty Krawec  

There were two things that Chanda talked about, and I kind of tweeted about it. Because one of the things that she mentions, is Euclidean, she's talking about Euclidean geometry, just you know, to bring it way down to super simple stuff. For all the non-physicists in the room. What she's talking about is that we're thinking in terms of, you know, Euclidean geometry is, you know, squares have a certain number of angles inside them. And triangles always add up to 180. But then, when we map that onto a curved space, that doesn't work, the triangle no longer adds up to 180. And yet, we live on a curved planet, underneath a curved sky. And we think in terms of these, you know, of these flat, you know, these these flat geometries, which got me thinking, you know, which got me thinking about the way colonisation worked, carving up the countries into these little squares to give away chunks of land. And they're carving up spaces that are curved, you know, they're carving rivers in half, and hills in half. And, you know, just because the lines match up, and they're mapping this grid and starting this, this disconnection, and we do that to the sky, we kind of chart it off in ways that aren't super helpful. I mean, they're helpful if you want to lay claim to it, if you want to, like you say, plant your flag in it, then it's very helpful to map it out that way. But in terms of relationship, in terms of understanding how things connect together, is not super helpful. So how does, I guess, how does the night sky change? When we look at it through Indigenous eyes?

Hilding Neilson 

I think if we look at the night sky, and start the traditional Greco Roman, we have all these constellations defined by this International Astronomical Union. So ADA constellations. And this was done on, around the beginning of the 1900s, by a British guy, a German guy and a French guy. So it’s a bad joke already. And when this happened, they kind of, like you said, they carved it up. They used Greek stories, they made up and borrowed some constellations from different parts, particularly for the southern hemisphere, where they completely imported their own belief system into those constellations. But in doing so, they also sanitized a lot of the Greek and Roman stories. You know, there are Greek and Roman stories for Ursa Major, Ursa Minor and Cepheus, and all these different constellations. But when we did this mapping, which was solely for convenience for people with telescopes, who want to do the observing and had to know where to look, it became, turned into nothing. You know, it took all the, it took our connections away from it, from a European,in the European sense. And when that became transplanted over here, you know, the Mi’kmaq, where there's Ursa Major, the Mi’kmaq also have a bear constellation. The Cree have a Bear constellation. Lots of cultures in the world have bear constellations around what we would call the Big Dipper today. 

Patty Krawec: Really, we all looked at that and saw a bear.

Hilding Neilson 

Many, yeah, to many, it's a bear and hunters.

Patty Krawec: That’s neat.

Hilding Neilson: A bear in a tail, sometimes bear and cubs. There's a lot of commonalities like that. And, but the problem is that this was designed solely to erase Indigenous cultures and Indigenous knowledges. And for me, like the Mi’kmaq, for many Indigenous peoples in what is today Canada, you know, what is in the sky, it's kind of a reflection of the land below; your knowledge is localized. And so if we basically say that constellation is Ursa Major, and your knowledge doesn't count, that's all about removing us, removing us from the land, just as much of that–maybe not as much as actually literally removing us from the land, but it's, it's part of that disconnection. And, and so that erasure is a part of the problem. 

And I think that, you know, for my own self, like, I didn't get to grow up within a community, you know, most people, most Mi’kmaq in Newfoundland, we were kind of away from most of the communities. Just where Newfoundland was. And in that respect, you know, how do we kind of understand those constellations? Yeah, I only know one or two Mi’kmaq constellations. I don't think I can name all 88 European constellations, but I can name a lot of them. I could probably name a few of the Cree constellations, thanks to, you know, listening to Wilfred Buck and reading his stories. And so trying to reclaim that knowledge is also kind of important, because that's part of our connection to the land. And you know, what, the constellations I see here, where I'm sitting in Toronto, or Tkaronto, are different than if I go to the far north, or if I go to the southern hemisphere. You know, if I go to Australia, the moon looks completely different. You know, for someone coming from Australia to here, the moon looks like it's upside down, and vice versa. And so the stories change, and our connection and our relations to these, to these special objects change. And that's, that's one of the unfortunate repercussions of the legacy of colonization with respect to the night sky. And then another thing, I think, relates to that, not just the constellations, but it's the light pollution.

Patty Krawec 

Oh, yes.

Hilding Neilson: 

So, you know, I like to joke, you know, I live in Toronto, if I step out onto my balcony, I might see five stars in the night. One of them might be on CBC TV. You know, they, they're just so few you can see. So you just lose that connection in this void of installedl light? 

Patty Krawec: Yes. 

Hilding Neilson: And how do we, you know, so I can't see the Milky Way, or what in Mi’kmaq would be a spirit road, which is also a spirit path for many other cultures, you know? So how do you connect to the ancestors, in that respect. all these things..

Patty Krawec  

Really, that's actually a really interesting point. Then eventually, I'll let Kerry get a word in edgewise. She's just here smiling and nodding and taking it all in the way she does. Because that's something like when I think about language, right, there's something residential schools took from us. And then if, you know, so if, in your cosmology, you believe that you need to speak the language, or the spirits won't understand what you're saying, how do you show gratitude? They can't hear you. And then if you die, and you don't speak the language, then the spirits won't recognize you. And so removing language in that way, you know, kind of cuts us off. 

And then as you were talking about not being able to see the night sky, the, you know, the stars, are our ancestors, and after reading Chanda’s book, they are in a very real sense. You know, really, you know, they really are our ancestors, they really are our relatives, you know, in a very literal kind of way, you know, very material kind of way. But that light pollution, that also cuts us off from them, cuts us off from being able to see them in the way that our, you know, our ancestors walking this earth, saw and understood themselves to exist. You know, kind of beneath the sky in relation in relationship to the sky. So that's, yeah, she asks that in her book, like what would it take for our communities to see, to see the stars. What would it take? Reflecting on her own having to be driven outside of LA for a, you know, two, three hour drive to be able to see. What would it take for our children, you know, for our communities? What changes do we need to make for them to be able to see the night sky? We're going to the National Park in Nova Scotia this summer, and I found out that it's a dark sky preserve. So I had to rearrange our travel plans, so that we will be there during the new moon so well, there's no moon and there'll be no moon in the sky. I've never seen the stars like that. This is going to be amazing. 

Hilding Neilson: Yeah. 

Patty Krawec: And I'm 55. And I've, and there will be a whole night sky that I've never experienced, that my father had. My father did, from growing up in northern Ontario. Like, it's that, it's that tangible. It’s that recent. For a lot of us. Not for all of us, but for a lot of us.

Hilding Neilson:

Yeah, no, I mean, you know, I haven't been home to visit my family, since before the, these end times, COVID. And, you know, when going home and seeing the night sky and seeing what is essentially billions of lights over your head, it's completely transforming and different and far more reassuring. In my mind, it's like, it feels more like a blanket. And, you know, there's a greater universe, there's relations, you know, Western science did get it right when Carl Sagan said we are made, we are made of star stuff. Just like Cree people, we are star, you know, star people. You know, it's all true. And we have that connection when you're sitting in Toronto and just basking in that eerie orange glow. You know, I think we miss out on so much. And I think it also negatively impacts how we, how we understand things like astronomy, physics. Even from a Western sense, the great, the great astronomers in Europe or even in, you know, China and India. And, you know, if you only think about it from true, purely Indigenous North American sense, you know, everyone had that kind of perspective of the night sky, they could observe it. If they had the telescopes or lenses or instruments, they can see these things, learn to connect, and figure out how they want to connect with it. Whereas today, in Toronto, there's no way to connect to the night sky. Unless I want to use a computer and then log onto a planetarium software. That's sort of what I think that's sort of what our children have to deal with today is, it's easier to see the constellations through a computer software than it is to go outside.

Patty Krawec  

Well, and even what they see is filtered right? Like I've got that Stargaze, that star map app on my phone. So because I don't, I can recognize the Big Dipper on a good night. Really I’m not very good at it.

Hilding Neilson: I’m honestly not much better.

Patty Krawec: But you know, I hold up my phone, and I can find it, I can find it that way. And I kind of map out “Oh, that's where this is. And that's where that is.” But they're all…They're not the Cree constellations. You know, they're not…they're not the Igbo, or Yoruba constellations. They're not the Anishinaabe constellations; they're not the way our ancestors would have seen the night sky. They're organized and collated in a way, you know, in a European way. And all those disconnected stories.

Hilding Neilson: 28:04

Our constellations aren't static, either. I mean, sometimes, you know, in Mi’kmaq, we have the story of the bear, and the bear changes throughout the year. You know, in the winter, the bear is on his back, as a spirit, and in the summer, it’s running across the land. Some of the constellations have different meanings at different times of the year, whereas the European constellations are static, kind of locked in forever, or as forever as they want it to be. So, you know, I think we've kind of missed out on a lot of dynamic aspects of these constellations that come from the motions of the Earth around the Sun, or the rotation of the earth. And motions of sky around us. And so so there's a lot, I think, a lot more depth in eliminating Indigenous constellations that we don't see. Relative to the European.

Kerry Goring 

I, this conversation is… I'm loving so many points, there's so many things that you guys have touched that I've kind of been like, yeah, right. Um, what comes to mind for me when I think about it, is how, what you mentioned very early on, the idea of building of, of the erasure, you know, the way that when you were talking about that $500 500 Page textbook, that would just, you know, mention maybe two pages of the ancient ways or of Indigenous cultures showing up in those books. And what I find fascinating about that, is that we know that ancient cultures actually are, actually really had mapping and stargazing down to a science, down to a detailed finite way that they were building architecture and buildings to map and and offer that space up. And so it's kind of like a little tiny bit of a pet project, but I really enjoy talking about this from an ancient space.

 And what comes to mind for me is even these knowledges that weren't, or Europeans have suppressed or have not allowed, or colonization has suppressed and not allowed us to expand into. Take, for example, the Dogon tribe, which is an African tribe that existed and was kind of, was very much removed from, you know, civilization or from colonialism until the early 1900s. And I'm sure you can explain a lot more about this, but they knew about the constellation or the the star system, Sirius, sorry, they knew about Sirius B, was it? Was it that they found and could map Sirius B before Europeans even knew it existed, and they speak about it from their own ancient traditions, you know, it goes into a whole other realm, which I'm really into. But the idea that they were given the gifts from their, you know, from their gods that came down and told them how to map the star systems. And they had no modern day interactions to be able to have known that it existed, except for from some sort of knowledge that must have been ancient to them. And I think about when we talk about this, this idea of the erasure, how much of the truth of how the history of our planet, the history of our species, understanding the relationships that exists between us, the stars, space and the universe, are being affected, because we have been narrowed down and washed down into–what I love Patty, when you were talking about the idea of a two dimensional space–instead of knowing the curvature of our lands, and knowing the curvature of the skies? How much of us is not being met, or the truth of us is being so lost in those spaces?

Hilding Neilson: 

Definitely true, I've heard the story of the Dogon, and to put it in context, Sirius A is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and Sirius B is what's called a white dwarf star, which is really small, compact, and is essentially the dead remainder of a star that has lost most of its material. And so today, you can only really see Sirius B with the telescope. Now, I don't really know much about the Dogon story, because, as I understand, it came through from French anthropologists, and as soon as I hear the word anthropologist, I tend to tune out. But yeah, that is very possible, and very likely, they did know better, because it might have been a star bright enough to the human eye 10,000 years ago, or 20,000 years ago, or even 100,000 years ago. And there are stories like that that come up all the time. 

You know, there are stories of a Paiute story from the West Coast about how the North Star came to be. And it is a son of the chief who's climbing a mountain, loves climbing mountains. And he finds this really hard peak to climb. And he keeps going around in circles, circles, and circles trying to find a way up the mountain but it’s so hard. Eventually he finds an opening and goes through the cave, and climbs away to the top. But unfortunately, when he gets to the top, there was a, there was an avalanche and the cave closed and he's trapped on the mountain. And that story can literally be interpreted as procession of the star. Because our what we call the North Star today wasn't always the North Star. It had to go around and around around. And so we see these long time domains. And that's one of the things that's very valuable in astronomy. 

There are stories in Anishinaabe, about heartberry stars, which are red supergiants, that change brightness. And the same very similar stories are seen in different Indigenous Australian nations about these things. And a ton of Indigenous knowledge is carried so much time domain, that, you know, if I think, you know, if Western astronomers just sat down and listened, we would learn a lot about these knowledges and about the history of the universe. Because it was only a couple centuries ago where we were, where the popular dogma was that the astronomy or space was static, and that it was unchanging. But yeah, that wasn't part of, I think, the Indigenous way.

Patty Krawec  

What's possible just to come back, you know, to what you had said about you know, when you hear anthropologist, you kind of, because yeah, I mean, they just they get so much wrong because they've got this particular lens that they're trying to jam the story into. So because then like the Anishinaabeg word for North actually means “goes home” and it contains, according to elders, it contains the idea of the glaciers going home, which meant we knew that they weren't always, you know, so during the last ice age, we knew that they had come from the north and gone back, which suggests knowledge of well over, you know, you know, 10-15,000 years because we didn't just know they were there, we knew where they'd come from, we knew that they went back. So it's the same, you know, with the star, maybe they knew it 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 years ago, their language contained the story of this star that is no longer visible, but it was back then. And so when the French anthropologist heard it, they're like, Oh, the stars have always looked like this. Therefore, these people couldn't have figured it out on their own. It must have been aliens telling them about it. Must have been… 

Hilding Neilson: Yeah 

Patty Krawec: couldn't have known it themselves, and yet, they did. so that's really, but I hadn't put those things together. That's really neat. So yeah, and we're. Yeah, so we had a question in the chat. So if you could, I don't even know what it means. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you answer that.

Hilding Neilson: If we look at the Western constellation Orion, on one of the shoulders was a very red star called Betelgeuse. And this is a famous red supergiant that is near the end of its life. And when it finally dies, it's going to explode as a supernova. And it’s going to be so bright, we'll probably see during the day. Like it'd be, it could be about as bright as Venus. 

Patty Krawec: Wow

Hilding Neilson: And so this is not the first star that has ever done this, blown up like that. And as opposed to being bright enough and close enough that we could see it. There have been other instances, around the year 1000, there was a star in what was called the Crab Nebula. In terms of Indigenous stories, I've only heard of one. And I can't confirm it, because the times that I was given in the story, don't line up with the astronomical knowledge, but it’s possible. 

So I was contacted by someone in Mi’kma’ki telling me about the Mi’kmaq flag. And the Mi’kmaq flag is a white flag with a cross and a star and a moon. And the person was telling me that the stars in the moon reflect a catastrophic, catastrophic event or timeframe, where people were struggling and there was starvation. But it was because there was a bright star in the sky that didn't belong there in a constellation that Europe called Cygnus. And he said, this was about 2000 years ago. I was very curious, because the fact that he took, the person told me the constellation, I'm like, I had to look this up. And there is a remnant of a star that was there, but that's, our best estimates’ that it exploded around 20,000 years ago. 

Now, I don't know, everybody tells time different, stories change. So maybe it's related. We know from more recently, there's a very popular one called the Crab Nebula, which is the explosion about 1000 years ago, that appears on historical records from around the world. It has been linked to the city Cahokia. in what is today Mississippi, I believe, which was a large Indigenous city there. I don't know how true that is. But people have tried to link the two events’ timescales. But as seen, seen a lot of Korean and Chinese texts, where they note that there's a new star in the sky. And so, but funnily enough, it never appeared in European texts that I'm aware of. It has happened, and I think we see these, these stories do occur. I'm not really familiar with too many of them. I'm trying to think if there's any, I can't think of any others off the top of my head. But, you know, even just a few years ago, or a few 100 years ago, you know, the heyday of Isaac Newton, and then, you know, that was a big deal for a lot of astronomers, was to find these new stars, supernovae and so like, you know, Kepler and Deacon Brian and these famous white scientists in Europe, spent time and found a few. Not aware of any stories, Indigenous stories that are being linked to these events. I'm sure they're there.

patty krawec  39:16

Yeah, yeah, we just need to listen to the stories and sometimes it's, it's the way we hear them. Right. Like, it's understanding like, remember, we talked with Del Lessin some time ago about they're basically rebuilding the Catawba language. And there was a story about oh, I think it was a rabbit. And it caught, you know, things caught on fire. And it, you know, and it sounded like just kind of this funny story about this rabbit dragging fire through a field. But what it actually contained was agricultural knowledge about agricultural burning. And there was a plant, a sunflower-type plant, that has an edible tuber and required…So the story contains all of this knowledge that they didn't initially recognize because of language loss because of culture loss, it just seemed like an interesting story.

And so, you know, that now they understand is actually something that contains agriculture, you know, important agricultural knowledge, which then makes you go back and look at the other stories. What knowledge is in there, that we're not getting, because we've lost so much contact context? and like you had said about the Greek stories and stuff that are put up into the constellation, even those are stripped. You know, even in the process of colonizing the sky, they still stripped meaning from it, we don't even get good stories, we just get kind of these stripped-down, sanitized picture books. But the real story is there, like it's there. And in our stories, in our cosmology, we just need to…we just need to listen differently, and look at and look at them differently. And some of that is… 

how did you start shifting your lens? Because you talked about not not growing up surrounded, you know, by a Mi’kmaq community. How did you start shifting your lens?

Hilding Neilson 

It really wasn't that long ago. You know, I'm fully trained in the Western system of astronomy. And I think really hit off when I had that interaction with Wilfred Buck, not seeing any Indigenous Knowledges. And then just diving into some of the great works, you know, the works, Murray Battista, Gregory cathead, all these great Indigenous science experts talking about all these different ideas and ways of thinking, and perspectives. And I always have to step back and be like, Whoa, what am I? Why am I doing? Why am I thinking about this question this way? Why am I thinking about stellar physics this way? Or quantum mechanics that way? You know, all these things are coming together. And you kind of have to question, I mean, it's really only been like the last four or five years where I've really been trying to relearn everything. And for the most part, I feel like I've done a whole other PhD.

patty krawec  42:19

So let's talk about quantum mechanics for a minute, because that's, or maybe longer, because that’ll take a minute just to explain what that is. Because I was reading Lawrence Gross, and he has this book called Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and Being, and I have to get it out again, it's actually behind me on my bookshelf, because there's a chapter in there where he talks about how in the Anishinaabe worldview and way of thinking–and the Mi’kmaq and Anishinabeg are cousins. You know, we migrated east and I guess made relatives and came back. So we're, you know, we're cousins, but he says that our worldview is much closer to kind of a quantum mechanic way of understanding things. And I've read his chapter. I've read Chanda. It's still just outside my grasp. 

Hilding Neilson: Yeah

Kerry Goring  

this is just a really, really smart

patty krawec 

Two people in the chat are like, Wow, I love quantum mechanics. So yeah, do it!

Hilding Neilson 

Yeah, yeah. So quantum mechanics is one of those things I'm always afraid to talk about, because I don't understand quantum mechanics either. I suspect most people in physics and astronomy don't actually understand quantum mechanics, we just do the math and hope for the best.

Patty Krawec  

AW says they are a quantum mechanic.

Kerry Goring  

And that's interesting, because I had just listened… I'm laughing about that, because I had just listened to a talk with a physicist named Sean. What is Sean last name? 

Hilding Neilson: Sean Carroll?

Kerry Goring: Sean Carroll. Yes. And he was talking about that. And I thought it was fascinating that physicists are more concerned with the application, is that a better way of putting it? Versus actually an overall grasp of what they're actually…what actually it is? And that was like mind blowing to me to know that it's, we just assume, there's like this assumption that this works. But nobody's really looked at what makes it work, if that makes…or we're looking at what makes it work, but not why it's there. Does that make sense? Sort of? I think?

Hilding Neilson

I think it makes perfect sense. I think, I think we do focus a lot on the how it works, as opposed to why it’s doing what it's doing. And I think from very much this, astronomers’ perspective, which is quantum mechanics is something you try to do your best to approximate and not actually work with. You just try to work around it. We think so much from this classical Euclidean sense and quantum mechanics is completely counterintuitive to that. Whereas most Indigenous knowledges that are coming to grasp how everything is very much about relative, like how things relate between you and I. How I observe something is very different from how you observe something, and that both truths can be true. Whereas in the West, we think everything has to be an absolute truth, which defies quantum mechanics because quantum mechanics of the particle has some speed and some place, but you can't really tell which is which. 

And, and so a lot of these respects, I feel like Indigenous knowledges have an easier time with quantum mechanics, because I think Indigenous knowledge is a little more relaxed about not knowing things; it's okay that there are mysteries. Whereas in the West, having a mystery is the worst thing possible. You know, it, it has to be explainable, has to be reducible. It has to be objective, and, like, I have trouble with quantum mechanics. I listen to Sean Carroll, fairly regularly, you know, I love his, his writing and words, and he signed it as “many worlds theory,” where you get, where if you observe a quantum event, depending on how you observe it, the universe branches. And then like, are we literally increasing the number of universes to help us explain how we don't know something? 

And we kind of do that we, when we don't understand something locally, we tend to make things bigger. We don't, we don't understand evolution. So we make evolutionary changes smaller, over a longer time, time periods. It works. We don't understand cosmology? Make the universe older. Or you don't understand why cosmology works? So well, we just create a multiverse. You know, one of the explanations of how we're, that we can live in a universe that seems to work, is that there's lots of universes. And there's just so many of these things like that, I think, you know, my understanding of Indigenous people is, we live in a universe that works, where things are just perfect for us to exist, because we exist, it has to be that way. That's how we're related, that's how our relation with the universe. Whereas if you're in the West, you have the axiom that the universe doesn't care about us, that we, you know, the fact that we exist should just be a fluke. For the fact that we live in a universe that’s just right. Can't, doesn't make sense. And I have colleagues who get really stressed out by this question. And given, given to the point, they try to pull out their hair, which, given that no one’s had a haircut in a long time, might be useful. 

But they just struggle with this, and they don't like it. So sometimes they come up with the multiverse theory where we have, where we are in one universe in a bubble of others. And there are other reasons to expect the multiverse. AW Peet is much more of an expert on that than I am, for instance, I'd rather, I'd rather defer to them. But please let AW jump in. There's just so many of these things that I think Indigenous knowledges learn to accept, because it's part of being in relation. And our relationality is what makes, allows for these things to work. I think with quantum mechanics, it’s a little more difficult, because it's, we also accept there's a mystery, but there is fuzzy truth, when there's multiple truths that can can coexist at the same time. Whereas in the West, everything has to be objectively true. I do experiment, you do experiment, you should get the same answer. Yeah. And that objectivity doesn't quite work. Otherwise. 

Patty Krawec: Oh, okay.

Hilding Neilson: but that's sort of the best I can come up with, by kind of b.s.ing a lot. You know, but Yeah, cuz I'm really speaking not in my best. Yeah.

Kerry Goring  

I love that you, you know, took the attempt, and I think you did beautifully with it. I appreciate you, kind of, tackling it. Because I think what I love about that is it's almost from this layman's space with a plus, because you definitely know more than we do. But what I, when I think about this, and then we put it into the space of our Indigenous, and you know, my Afro-centric cultures, it does come from that acceptance, that mystery is real, and with that, offers the simplicity to be in relation with all of those spaces. And what I mean by “spaces” is the universe, the stars, the earth, how we stand on the earth, the relationship that we have with, you know, the animals on our planes, all of those things have an interconnected sense that is wrapped in the mystery. And so, when we, like, I totally believe in the scientific, scientific method and I, you know, I understand that being a space that we have as a template to work from, but I do sometimes think that that part of it, the idea of the acceptance, that some of it is still to be revealed. And being okay in that is lacking in the way that we exist. And so what happens with that is that it's exactly that idea of disregarding, you know, or just pretending that that mystery isn't valuable.

Patty Krawec  

I had a, I remember when I was in science in grade nine, our science teacher, because it was the only year that I had to take science. We had a teacher who had, we were going over the criteria for life. And I think there's six, I don't remember what they are. Anyway, so we had, we had, there were six criteria for life. And he asked us, you know, you know, he's kind of running us through it, do plants meet it? does this person meet it? Does this, the rocks meet the criteria? And you know, we kind of go through it, And we're like, Nope, they don't. And he asked us again, are you sure? And we're like, oh, is this a trick question? You know, and so we went through them again, and we're like, nope, rocks are not alive. They don't meet the criteria. And he says, Well, what if they just do this too slow? And we can't measure it? What if they do this, and you know, we just don't have the capacity to see it? Like, he wasn't trying to tell us that rocks were alive. He was trying to tell us to keep those questions open. That what we, because he says science is one long chain of “we thought we knew that and we turned out to be wrong.” So maybe our criteria is wrong. And we always need to be open, you know, to thinking and questioning.

And he's the only science teacher that I came across was like that. Because I think like you said, they have this idea that there's fixed knowledge. And I wonder, I wonder if some of that comes down to European thinkers emerging in a place where everybody had the same basic cosmology, right? Like, the, all three Abrahamic religions existed. And you know, in Europe, the Jews and the Muslims were not treated very well. But they had the same fundamental cosmology, the same creation story, the same flood narrative. Whereas here, we're all bumping up against each other with our trading relationships and our treaties and stuff. And we don't have the same cosmologies. You know, the Anishinaabeg and the Haudenosaunee lived, you know, very close to each other in lots of spaces. And we have some similarities, but some significant differences in terms of how we understand the world. And the Anishinaabeg and the Lakota are also kind of right up against each other. And we have significantly different cosmologies in terms of…like, there's a lot of similarities about how we see the world, but our cosmology, like our religions, you know, to use that word, are very different. And yet we learned to accept that it was not a big deal. 

So I kind of wonder if some of that, because now I'm reading, a pastor friend of mine, has recommended this book, shoot, what's it called? Hebrew, The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics. And she's writing all about how the Bible is full of language about the world being alive, of trees, of the personhood of creation, and a very Indigenous, like, what I would think of as a very Anishinaabeg way of thinking of, the trees are people, the stars are people, the rivers are people, that this stuff is woven through. Because she says that when we talk about it, like it's a metaphor, we're not… like, you know, “the trees clap with joy.” And we're not saying that the trees have hands, but we're saying that they're expressing joy, that when the Hebrew people came back to the land, the land was happy, that the land had the capacity to care. And that's been completely stripped, like that's not present anywhere in any Christian theology that I have heard. So that's been completely stripped from the text and this is kind of my quest right now, about how these things got stripped. Because it got stripped from the way we understand the sky so…I don't even remember where I was going with that.

Kerry Goring  

I’m just loving it though.

patty krawec  

They had created this kind of monolithic belief system that didn't allow for that kind of relationality whereas here on Turtle Island, or whatever we want to call it, we were constantly bumping up against other ways of thinking about things and had…we're just okay with it. Like that's just the Lakota are weird, but that's who they are.

Kerry Goring  

It's okay to be like that, you know, that sense of acceptance, right? It's that sense of being in acceptance for all of it that I think is, is what you're bringing front and center. And just even taking in what you're saying there, Patty, I think it's quite brilliant, really interesting book, that's got to go down in the check of that one.

Hilding Neilson 

That me too, that sounds very…very interesting.

Kerry Goring  

That's very interesting. Um, however, what, what also comes to me when I think about that, is this sense that we have here that with that stripping, it was, it was what afforded this whole system, the colonial space that we exist in, to be even created. And this disconnection that we are experiencing with the Earth and the land, I just want my, my breath was just really heavy earlier today, because I was reading an article, I think it was in USA Today. And they were talking about, they want to move from saying climate change into using the terminology climate emergency. Because of the carbon that's in the earth, in the atmosphere, we're moving in major, major ways that is getting scary. They know that the Antarctic, the sheets, the ice sheets in the Antarctic, are going to hit the sea very soon. And it's just a really scary dynamic. And personally, I have family, you know, in St. Vincent right now, where there is a, the volcano is going off, and I'm getting live, you know, real live. You know, just talking to my people's real live experience of what that kind of space is. And so when I think about how we have existed and disconnected, the answers for me are coming from when we are doing and having conversations like this, of course, but really deep diving into this exploration of how we relate. How do we come back? How do we figure out those pieces that have been taken out and put back in? So you know, when I hear that you're doing this work, Hilding, that, to me is like, it's invaluable. How do we create this space now?

Hilding Neilson 

Yeah, this is very interesting. Without the discussion, last semester was popped my mind is Mars. So NASA just .. this most recent mission Mars called Perseverance, you know, a little toy car going around the surface of Mars, going out of the first helicopter launch on Mars. And there are lots of robots on Mars, and maybe in 20 years, there will be people. And hopefully, those people will not be led by Elon Musk. But, you know, but it does raise a lot of questions in the meantime, which is, how alive is Mars? We don't know of anything alive on Mars within our current definition. We're pretty sure nothing comes above the surface. We haven't really explored the subsurface of Mars. There could be life. Maybe single, probably single single cell life. Life is there, probably there. And even if it isn't, do we have rights to impact that? What are the rights of Mars? I mean, you know, there's a great comic. That's the earth in a hospital bed. And another planet is a doctor saying, “Oops, you have humans?” Do we really have a right to infect Mars with more humans? Or do we have that same right to the moon? How do we do that? How do we talk about coloni-? You know? Because we do, we literally talk about Mars as colonization. 

Patty Krawec:Yes 

Hilding Neilson: We have movies of Matt Damon on Mars and we send billions of dollars rescuing rescuing a dumb white dude. Yeah, and fully full disclosure. I'm also a dumb white dude. So you know, how do we talk about Mars? From an Anishinaabeg perspective? What would an Anishinabeg, what would the Haudenosaunee, what would a Mi’kmaq or Inuit mission to Mars look like? How do we engage and interact with Mars? You know, do we? What gifts do you offer Mars? If we visit, what are we allowed to take away from Mars? And we need, really need to have that conversation because right now the conversation is basically a Western novel. And we, the word frontier gets used a lot. Or colonizing, you know, they've sort of avoided colonization for the word exploration. But it's pretty much a dog whistle when it's basically going to be Elon Musk, or another rich dude sending people there to do space mining. Because, you know, capitalism. And how we face these things, I think very much because in this play of environmental ethics, as you mentioned, how we relate, how we want to be intentionally related with Mars, because I mean, humans, if the human mission to Mars has the same kind of history as on Earth, and last century of climate change, we're probably not going to leave it, do anything good on Mars.

Patty Krawec 

We're not going to leave better than we found it.

Hilding Neilson 

No. And I mean, there are people who talk about dropping asteroids on Mars with the sole purpose of heating it up, blowing it up and creating an atmosphere, so that we can terraform it. I mean, that's sort of what people really dream about is terraforming Mars. And I think we can look around North America and various other parts of the world and see terraforming from, you know, when Europeans killed the bison and introduced wheat and cattle to the prairie, or how we terraform north, at different parts of the world. 

Doesn't quite work as well as when we look at how various Indigenous communities sort of lived in concerts, where you know, Haudenosaunee, and their farming practices, pastoral farming out east, you know, the way we treat hunts, and all these things. And so we need to have a, we definitely need to have this space open for more Indigenous, whether it's Indigenous from North America, Afro-Indigenous, Australian Indigenous, specific, everywhere in this conversation. And to be honest, if I'm going to fly on a rocket from the Earth to Mars, over 200 days, the person I probably want to ask about is someone who can actually navigate the Pacific using nothing but their hand, as opposed to say NASA who, sent Matt Damon to Mars. There's so much expertise in Indigenous communities for doing these things that we don't even think about. At least in the Western, from NASA or the Canadian Space Agency, necessarily. And so we should be having this conversation. And we should be having that we really need that space, if this is what we want to do. If not, if we not we're basically going to leave space exploration and going to the moon and basically passing NASA satellites to people like Elon Musk. And if it's not obvious, I kind of really dislike that guy.

patty krawec  

Well, just like when we were talking about the sky

Kerry Goring: How did we guess? 

Patty Krawec: And, you know, it's not just cluttered from light below. Thanks to Elon Musk, it's cluttered from, it's now cluttered, you know, from things he's putting up there. And, you know, it's causing problems and he doesn't care because that's not, that's not his, that's not the frame that he thinks within.

Hilding Neilson 

If light pollution erases our stories, those satellites are rewriting them. 

Patty Krawec: Yes. 

Hilding Neilson: And why does he get to do that?

Kerry Goring  

Love that. And I think that is so powerful. I never, like, I've had these thoughts. So hearing you speak it and really, you know, bringing that into the light, love that. I'm really relating, it resonates deeply because I agree with you. And for me, the other piece to that is this idea that we discard the earth, this idea that we have raped her, you know, The Earth has been raped and pillaged very much like, guess what, you know, every colonial story that we know. And now we're about to just move on. And so it speaks to me about this push in the way that we are human. And how we are showing up in our humanness. So I, and without the interjection, without that conversation being had, and I don't know if it's happening en mass yet, but without those conversations, we are destined to repeat it

Hilding Neilson 

Absolutely, I mean, you know, if Amazon, Jeff Bezos , if these people are driving the conversation, you know, they're just, they're just the mercantile colonialists. There's no difference in Elon Musk and Samuel de Champlain. And the worst part about Samuel de Champlain, is he had his life saved by Indigenous people cuz he went ..  and be cured of scurvy and he just thanked God, as opposed to the, you know, people? 

Patty Krawec: Yeah. 

Hilding Neilson: And this is what we’re facing again. Yeah, we're facing this again. It’s this, the same story, just being retold on a whole new scale. And people are, conversations are starting to be had. I think there’re developments in terms of international law with things called Artemis Accords, which are related primarily to going to the moon and lunar exploration. But the biggest thing there is about preserving sites on the moon of astronomical significance or human significance. So, you know, where they planted the flag on the moon, that might be a national park, or lunar National Park. But that doesn't stop anybody from moving up there. And, you know, drawing a smiley face on the face of the moon.

patty krawec 

And national parks…

Kerry Goring  

What, what does that even mean?

patty krawec  1:05:58

Right, because they create this idea of wilderness and nature that takes people out of it. And it preserves it, like, for what? You know, so it's just, why are we like this? Why are we like this? where to think about what kinds of humans. I just wrote an essay for Rampant Magazine, where we're like, what kind of people do we want to be? What kind of ancestors, you know? As we get thinking about, you   know, thinking about the stars, you know, looking up at the stars, and knowing that those are our ancestors and knowing that we're going to be ancestors, we're going to be star stuff, you know. So what kind of ancestors do we want to be to the worlds that come after us? Because we're, you know, worlds came before us, worlds will come after us, what kind of ancestors do we want to be? What do we want to leave? What kind of footsteps do we want to leave? And stories and possibilities? And we got to think about that stuff. As opposed to? Well, they are, they are thinking about that kind of stuff. They're just not coming to the same conclusions that we would want them to.

Kerry Goring  

What big? How big is that? Like? What we're talking about? I'm really interested in those, in the conversations. How big is that movement? Is it? Is it growing? Like, is there an understanding that, wait a minute, we're creating the possibility of lunar parks on the moon like that, that makes me…I'm laughing, but I'm horrified all in the same breath. Are those conversations coming up in real ways, like in “Wait a minute. Hello, hello, hello,” type thoughts? Because we are hearing more about the explorations happening. And, and do we have somebody tempering it? Is that something?

Hilding Neilson 

I don't think we really have a very strong conversation around space ethics. It's growing, largely because that's the only direction it can possibly go. It's harder to have fewer, fewer than zero people talking about it. So there's things that are starting to happen slowly in the astronomy community, but it's very limited. I think astronomy, my colleagues really kind of learned something about this from Elon Musk, when he put up the satellites and it interfered with telescopes on our, you know, because when the satellites cross upon the telescope, you just got all these streaks on your images. And they, and there were people who freaked out and accused Elon Musk of colonization, and not consulting and all this other language that we were ignoring from Native Hawaiians talking about the 30 meter telescope on Mauna Kea. And this is a project in Hawai’i to build a very big telescope on top of the mountain, where many Native Hawaiians said, “No, we're good.” And many of my colleagues were turned, kind of, were very against the Hawaiian response, using phrases like “science versus religion,” “progress versus history.” And then they used the same language as many of the Indigenous peoples were using to talk about Elon Musk. And I'm not sure they, some of them, I don't think quite got that hypocrisy. But I think a lot of people started to see that there has to be a greater discussion of voice because no matter, no matter what's happening, you know, at some point, your voice is not, might not be the one that gets heard. And then you pay the price. And so I think some of this is becoming more and more important, you know, particularly as space becomes the playground for the very, very ridiculously, uber rich.

Patty Krawec  

Well, this has been super interesting.

I’m super interested in, you know, get in, getting more into, kind of, what quantum mechanics… just because, like what you had said about the relationality of it, and how that, you know, and how that has implications for how we understand how we work within the world, and how we relate to things. So I'm really interested in kind of going, going in that direction. I don't know, man, I read this physics book. And it was super interesting. And nobody saw that coming.

Kerry Goring  1:11:45

Did you watch Ant Man? Have you watched Ant Man?

Patty Krawec  1:11:49

No! It’s probably one of the few MC films that I haven't watched

Kerry Goring  1:11:53

Watch Ant Man. It will, it's a very, it was what? Okay, not really, but a little bit of what really sparked my interest in wanting to know more about quantum physics, was Ant Man. So that's also, maybe that's something we can all chat about too the next time you’re on.

Patty Lrawec 1:12:13

Well, I’ll watch Ant Man

Hilding Neilson 

Also, go back and rewatch End Game. All the time travel stuff is basically Sean Carroll's interpretation of quantum mechanics.

patty krawec  

Really. Okay that I have seen, that I have seen. Okay, AW’s putting Ant Man on their watch list.

Hilding Neilson 

It’s a good heist movie.

Kerry Goring 

It was a great movie. It's one of my favorites for this, from that world so…thank you, Hilding!

Thank you, Hilding! I appreciate you man. This was a great talk. And also please let's, let's do this again. Got my mind working. Definitely got my mind working. And I appreciate you.

patty krawec 

Thank you so much. 

Hilding Neilson: Thank you! 

Patty Krawec: It's super interesting. Alright, bye bye

Hilding Neilson: Take care.

You can find more about Hilding and his work on his website

And thankyou to Nick for the transcription!!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Angela:

You I have I've had troubles with the word microaggression, I've had troubles with it for quite some time. We hear, I think I've been hearing it more and more over the last few years in particular, the last year, I've been hearing it a lot more in the workplace. And because people are trying to be woke or aware, but the reality of living it, it's not micro,

Patty:

right. it's not meaningless.

Angela:

And so when we, for me, when we talk about it as a micro thing, the parallel is that when somebody is behaving that way, it becomes a dialogue or a narrative of that person's too sensitive, or I didn't mean anything by it. So I don't know what the big deal about it is, or, well, you know, she's just bringing it up, because she's hurt. And it's not, it's not about being hurt, it's about every instance of those things that have transpired over your life for a long period of time, continuing to open a wound of a larger viewpoint that you don't belong, or there's something not quite right with you, or those, we have to contain you, as opposed to the larger picture that you're not wanted to hear. And, or you're not wanted to be a participant in that society, or that structure in within the society.

And so, for me, when I've been looking at this end, a lot of my writing over the last year has been about microaggressions, because of experiencing it, and while, you know, a lot lot different areas of my life. I go back to the beginning point of erasure. So, the eraser of, of my identity. So you know, being born, being taken from my Black mother, my birthday being changed, my name being changed, and my Black mother not being allowed to take me back to Jamaica, or make arrangements for me to go to Jamaica, because realizing that it's, she's going to lose me, right?

So, and then that whole erasure are going to a small community where there's no people of color. And so I think one of the biggest macro regressions you can do to transracial adoptee, is to put them in a white family and not have any mentors. And, and so in that, you know, that whole, it becomes a series of events from from earlier in your childhood, basically, from your birth, to try to unpack, and try to find a place within living in a social structure that doesn't include you. And so how do we find that?

So, you know, my writing is about that, but it's also that place of moving from that place to a place of where do you find your place within all of that, so that you can actually have good mental health? Is that possible? You know, and what is the generational impact of that?

When I watched my, my son growing up, and facing these horrible aggressions, as a Black Indigenous child, young man, he's not a child. He's a young man.

And I was, you know, I was gonna, with all that, you know, been paying attention to and relistening to interviews from in particular Robin Maynard and Desmond Cole, and defund the police. I’ve been listening to a lot of that lately. And I was framing an essay around around the police involvement in my life, and what and the transition of that from being a young young girl in kindergarten to late teens, early 20s. And that, and that experience, and so I never really thought much about it. But I've thought more and more about it by watching my son get stopped by the police. Recently, you know, in, in his teenage years, he shared with me recently that the reason he decided to go bald, from the time he was like 14 to 20 was because he found that he got stopped less by the police. So, I thought, yeah, and it didn't help. He still got stopped a lot. As he's got a look that people quite don't know. You know what he is right? Which is really a horrible thing to say. But that's,

Patty: 

I don't know, they don't know where he belongs,  do you belong in this neighborhood? Or do you work in this neighborhood? What do you look like, you know, do you look like the people who live here? Do you look like the people who work here? You know, do you look like the people who you know who I think are going to be dangerous here. You know? Who have no business being here.

In the book Traces of History that I did that I just finished, he, he quotes a woman who's saying, you know, when we talk about dirt? Well, all we're really talking about is things out of place. Right? That's all we're really talking about, you know, you know, things are, you know, I don't particularly object to dirt, you know, being out in my yard, I don't want it, I don't want it in my living room, I'm gonna vacuum it, I'm gonna say that it's dirty, you know, or dust or, you know, any of the things that my dogs drag like they have their place.

And you know, and as, you know, racially marginalized people we're dirt, we're out of place. And we know, you know, so you know, to be racially marginalized, in the colonial West, is to be forever out of place, you know, whether you're Black or Indigenous, or some combination, you're out of place, you know, you're meant to be erased, you're meant to be moved around, you're meant to be, you know, you're meant to serve, particularly, you know, serve sort of particular purposes.

And, and I am increasingly using the term racially marginalized, as opposed to just racialized because when I say that somebody is racialized, I'm still centering whiteness as not being racialized. Right? And, you know, so it's more words, and it takes up more, you know, more characters on Twitter. But yeah, that's okay. But I feel like, you know, that's just something because when I, because that's what we were racially marginalized, and it's the race has pushed us to the margins and centered whiteness, but their whiteness is racialized as well to its own purpose. So that's just kind of explaining a little bit about my language.

Angela:

Well, I like that when you say “to its own purpose” to clarify, because I think that that's important in when we share and talk about our stories into in particular, and I'll use your term racially marginalized. And, you know, I really wanted to talk about the police stuff, because it occurred to me how early that involvement is, like, I never really thought about it.

But when I was working on this essay, I was talking about, you know, when I, when I was five years old, I was pretty determined young person, which probably got me a lot of trouble with my mother. But I was very determined so. And I really liked school. I like being at school much more than I like being in my parents’ home. So I was just set to go to school, and it was a PD day or some holiday or something. So I got up. And my, you know, mind you, my parents had three kids, they adopted four Black kids, so they, you know, and I was the youngest, so they somehow missed me in that whole thing. So I got dressed, and I went to school. And I didn't even notice that there wasn't anybody else. Any kids walking to school, I was just on my own determined to get to see my kindergarten teacher because I loved her, I was absolutely in love with this teacher. So anyways, I get to the school. And there's no school, I can't get into school. And I feel that I'm locked out. Like, I feel like nobody wanted me. So I'm crying. And I'm trying to get into school, and I'm banging on the doors. And finally I decide to leave and I'm walking up the path to go back to my parents house and a police car shows up. And the police says, “Are you Angela?” And I said, “Yes.” “Your mother's looking for you.” So I get in the back of the car, and I go home.

And so the idea is framed in my mind is that the police saved me they from what I'm not sure, but they saved me from something. And you know, a couple years later, my favorite bike, my parents bought me this bike and I love this bike was stolen one weekend when we were away. So when we got back from this trip, the first thing I wanted to see is if my bike was okay, so I run and get, I look for my bike and it's not there. So my parents called the police and two weeks later they find my bike. And I overhear the conversation with the police. And what they say to the to my parents is we found in somebody’s back yard, not off the Herkimer drive and and they were “known to us.” So this is a very this is a key that they were “known to us.”

So years go by and I'm 12/13 years old, and I'm out playing with my friends and my parents knew where I was the police show up. And they the police knew exactly where I was. So my parents knew exactly where I was, but they called the police to come and get me to bring me home rather than getting into the car. And this is what I'm setting up and what you know, Robyn Maynard talks about in terms of the police being involved with, you know, overly involved with people that are in care, right. And my parents used the police as part of their parenting, so they the police would show up and bring me home.

And it and it didn't occur to me at the time, like I was embarrassed that this wasn't happening to any my white friends. So I was the only Black kid there, I was the only person of color. And so the police would come, and they would pick me up and take me home. And every now and again, my father would joke about well, I was at the mall, well, we weren't sure if we needed to call the police to come and get you. And as we got a bit older, my mother she had, by this point, she'd gone back to school. And later, in probably 48-ish, she went back to school, got her grade 12 became a social worker, and became very involved the police because she, part of her work was investigating social welfare fraud at the time.

So she continued to use the police to parent her Black children. So, every time I use the phone, there was a card by the phone, it was taped to the wall that had inspector so and so's name. And it got to the point where I stopped using that phone, I wouldn’t go downstairs and use the phone because I always saw that I move out of the house when I was 16. I'm on my own, I get into some trouble. Not bad trouble. But I get into some trouble. I was drunk and I broke somebody’s door and you know, stupid teen stuff. But this person where I'm staying called the police, because I broke the door rather than have a conversation with me. She called the police. And so the first thing that police said to her, “Oh, we know Angela Gray, she's known to us.” And this person tells me that and I'm thinking how am I known to them. I've never been arrested. I've never shoplifted not at that time. But by that point, like I'd never been arrested. You know, the only involvement that they had with me was because of my parents’ use of them to help parent.

And so we carry, you know, I've carried this idea of the police as being the savior. And by that point, by the time I was 16, I was petrified of the police, to the point where if I saw a police car drive by, I would duck and hide. And I did that pretty much up until my son was born. And then I had to just sort of get over that because I needed to use the police. And in the end, they actually really helped me. But that feeling still hasn't gone away. And that feeling is still in that involvement is still in my life today, even though they're not tracking me down they’re tracking my son.

You know, he was out for we thought that this had stopped and earlier in the year us out for dinner with his girlfriend. And the police saw his girlfriend and then saw him outside of the restaurant came into the restaurant and ask them for ID and pull their computer up, set it up on the bar and searched to see if he had, probably if he had any priors, in front of everybody in this restaurant when he was trying to have a nice dinner.

And there's a few things that came to mind here for me is nobody said anything. Not even the waiter or the manager, nobody said anything. And he came into the bathroom and called me. And he was so distraught by it, that he thought he was disturbing me, his mother who loves him the most in the world. He apologized to me for calling me about a really horrific situation.

And so I bring that up in that this is the programming that happens with this stuff, and puts us at outside of society thinking that there's something wrong with us.  We’re not quite right, these thoughts. I had this dialogue with my therapist a couple weeks ago, because I'm dealing with some of this in in a couple areas of my life dealing with these significant microaggressions and trying to unpack them to find my voice in them so that I can stand up for myself and not be taking it on. And so what comes up for me though, is that there's still that little voice that there's something not quite right. There's something kind of off about me. And I have to correct myself and say, we need to unpack the larger society, the colonialism, all of that stuff that is not quite right.

And how do we come back to ourselves and continue to unpack that so that it's not taking up our entire weekend? I was dealing with a board member from a volunteer organization all weekend because I called her out on her microaggression towards me. And what I was met with was some horrible, horrific emails.

Patty: 

They always say, I'm not racist, I'm not racist.

Angela:

And you're insulting me that you're calling me out on poor behavior, and you're just sensitive. Right? And other people will chime in and say, well, Angela, I understand that you're hurt. And I'm, no, no, no, I am not hurt. This is not about hurt. The issue is much deeper than this. And I'm not going to do it in an email dialog. But if you want to talk to me about it, I will talk to you. Right. And these are the things that we have to keep unpacking and correcting and living our lives and then eat this thing. What's the point? Why am I doing this?

Patty: 

Yeah, yeah, it's exactly what and then when you talk about the police, you know, being known to police, you know, 16 years of child welfare, that's got consequences. Right, like you call, you know, like, you know, like, you get a police report about something, because in some neighborhoods, people are just in each other's business all the time. And so they're calling the police, because they can't parent, they can't problem solve. So they call on the police all the time, because, you know, they can't find their, you know, you know, they go get their kid, or, you know, they're having a dispute with a neighbor or something. And then if there's children within eyesight of a cop, those they send that report into child welfare.

And then, and then that phrase, they're known to us, they're known to us. And it could be completely benign, like what you're describing, it's parents that are using the police to parent their child, or because you can't, or because your neighbor can't problem solve and calls the police on you all the time. Right. And yet, that little phrase, they're known to us, they're known to us. And that gets interpreted a very particular way in child welfare.  Now try it now try to get rid of this, now try to get rid of the social worker, something, something must Something must be going on, something must be going on. We don't know what it is yet, but we're going to find out, something must be going on.

And that's, you know, when you know what you even say, you know, you've got a, you know, you got help, you know, the one time that you, you know, you needed them, and they were helpful to you. And I know, you know, Kerry and I had had a good experience, you know, you know, in our working relationship, but wouldn't it be nice if they were non carceral systems where people could get that kind of support. Just because just because we got a little bit of help here and there from the systems, that's how they suck us in. That doesn't legitimize them.

Kerry: 

It's so interesting, like, I've just been really listening to you, Angela, and your story. And first, I just want to mention and witness you, as you've moved through the process. You know, I'm, I feel it very deeply, because your story, you know, has been very similar. There are some tendrils that make a lot of sense, in my own experiences with having to deal with the police as well. And I know that it's just that commonality, that space of being Black and dealing with, you know, officers, and that system is a factor, it's just what we have to do as people of color to grapple with the space.

I know even till this day, and I like you had have like this very conflicted relationship with the, with police, because literally, they they have saved my life when I was in a very detrimental situation. I however, it took, I had to go 20 times before I got it there. There was a lot of disregard in some of it. But when I finally got it, it came through and it won for me. So I have this conflicted space, but I also and even now, when a police officer drives past me, I flinch. It is I am still dealing with some of the residual because as I've had that positive experience, I've also had some very negative ones where you know, the neighborhood I live in presently presently. Is is all white. There's myself and another family, there's probably a subdivision about 500 houses, there's another family, there's an I just found out one moved in. So there's three of us out of about 500 houses.

And we used to very often notice officers just driving by, sitting at the end of our line that was involved in the system and had some things going on. But since that cleared up, and it's been about a year, now, I've noticed that there's no more officers anywhere in the vicinity of where I live, whereas about at least three times a week, one would sit somewhere, and we're a very quiet crescent, it's a very quiet little crescent, cul de sac, it doesn't make any sense that they would be here on the regular, you know, so, um, you know, those experiences are, are really hard. And I could tell there's, there's so many I lived, I have our came from a family where we had five young men, teenagers, and it would be without fail. One of those young men, and my husband, somebody would be stopped by the police at least once a week and asked for ID

Angela:

and, and that whole thing, right? Like that, that whole space of public humiliation to be stopped outside of your house to be, you know, and it crosses over from, you know, that sort of involvement, but from the police and the, the taking on of the role in say retail, right? So it wasn't very long ago is about three or four years ago, I was walking into a store. On my way home from work, I was walking home, and I thought, oh, that place has some funky shirts. I think I go in there. And I was outside looking on the rack. And the store owner came out. And he looked at me and he says, Yeah, I don't think we have anything in the store that fits you.

Kerry: 

You know, I had an experience in one of our local stores recently, my daughter and I, this was before the for this last lockdown. We were in a drugstore. That's what I'll say, in our region. And we were by the makeup section, looking for a lipstick I think it was and we got the exact same response. I was looking for our particular red. And they were like, Yeah, we don't have it. But then when I looked around, I was like, it's right there. And they were like, No, we don't, we don't have it. And I was like, but it's right there. That's exactly the color I looked it up before it got here. And she was like no, because it had to be they had it behind the case. And she was like, No, that's not it. Sorry. And because I was like, I'm gonna leave this to Jesus moment, I was having to leave it to Jesus moment. Instead of instead of, you know, I just I just decided I was going to leave the store.

But that is the reality of some of how we have to exist. And in fact, there's another one more story before we we can you know, move on. I have I mentioned to you that there's another family that moved into this area. And she she bought a house on the street. That's pretty it's really a private kind of section of this subdivision. And you know, the houses were this neighborhoods about 30 years old, most people don't move so she just recently purchased and you know what have stood out like, you know, she's new. She was bought, bought her groceries, opening her front door trying to get in and a car drove past her and slowed down, took a big old look then sped off and sped away. within about five minutes. She was taking the her you know, stuff out she has three kids so you know you're gonna have a whole pile of stuff. within about five minutes. Two officers pulled up at the front door and said they had had a report of somebody breaking into this house.

Angela:

*sighs*

Patty: 

Right. So nice to feel welcome and safe.

Angela:

In 2021,

Kerry: 

and I think, you know, when we speak about these incidences, we're recognizing that there there's been some sort of shift, I think, you know, some people have that felt really brazen, in the realm of watching what has happened in the United States, and when Trump was in power, I almost think that there was like a refueling of this space, where, you know, people thought they can be bright and outright with with some of this racist dialogue,

Patty: 

For sure, he normalized it and empower them. And I admit, I had there was a woman on Facebook I was engaging with, she had made a comment that, you know, it was so easy to, you know, she'd give this to Trump, you know, having it out in the open, where we could see, we could see the ugly racism. And I was trying to get her to understand that one if she had just been listening to Black and Indigenous people all along, right. None of this is new. You know, Standing Rock and Ferguson, I never tire of reminding people Standing Rock and Ferguson happened on Obama's watch, having a Black man in the White House, did not save Black people did not save Indigenous people having Deb Haaland, she might be a great pick, but having her as the head of the Minister of the Interior, whatever they are, will not save the Indians. Right. She's not even the first Ely Parker was right first. Curtis came after him, he was a vice president. So she's not the first and but you know, these things, you know, these, these things don't save us.

And yet, you know, she didn't, she didn't get what I was trying to tell her is that having it out, and normalized and empowered, is killing us. People are literally dying. Because as you said, Kerry, these white supremacist feel empowered, they can act on it, they think, you know, they don't have they don't have to be in secret anymore. I like them better when they were secret, and not burning s**t down and shooting everybody. Please go back underground and keep your s**t to yourself. I know you're there. I know, you're there. The racisms still happen. The police are still who they are. The systems are still in place. But I like you better when you're quiet. And you're not in my space.

Kerry: 

This is not doing us a favor. When you're working in that kind of stealth, you understood that there was maybe a semblance of a chance for a consequence. But when you are just bracing with your stuff, that tells us that we have now stepped up into a level. Now, when you're outright like that, there, there is that sense of of knowing that we I've for me, we've crossed that boundary, you know, where we got to really almost level up now. Because the reality of the truth is, if you're if you can feel so bright with yourself, then that means that there's an inference that the system is working on a level that is keeping us you know, having to be directly in this confrontation.

And yeah, and I'm I'm recognizing though I'm enjoying some of the dialogues. I was looking up I've been watching a young woman, Kim Foster, from For Harriet, she's she's a YouTube, a young woman, brilliant, brilliant young woman. She talks quite a bit about pop culture, but she's a feminist. And she's a Black feminist. And she is very much about dissecting these kinds of issues. And she had on and did an incredible talk about restorative justice, with I'm just looking it up but she had this incredible talk. And what they were talking about is completely pulling down and decriminalized, not just decriminalizing, but abolishing the system and what it could potentially look like when we you know, replace it or, you know, whatever that realm would be knowing that you know, going in with the understanding and the knowing that it's kind of a trial and error space, you know what I mean that you we may have to try many things before we could reconstruct or create something that is going to value and create real sense of justice.

Because what what was mentioned in it, and I thought it was powerful is that she was saying that, you know, for many people, especially they were talking in particular about using it in domestic or intimate partner violence. And that's something that's near and dear to my heart. But what she was speaking about is that for most people, sometimes you get that sense that feeling of completeness, when you, you know, your your partner has been punished, and it's punitive. But a lot of the time, in those kinds of systems, you still come out, even if your partner goes through it, without that sense of feeling completed, that you really have had justice served. And what I thought was so brilliant about that conversation was what she was interested in, the lawyer that she was speaking to, was interested in creating a space that was based upon what the want of the person who had had the injustice done to them, what would be their idea of justice, you know, for some, it may be, you know, you lock them up for 50 years, and, and that be one end of it. But for others, it might be the apology and writing the right. Do you know what I'm saying, um, maybe it's you paying for my counseling that I may need, because you've caused me this harm. Maybe it would be, you know, paying these damages. But what I thought was so wonderful was that it gave the options, the idea of really going with who, and what my desires and wants would be, after I've been through a space like that, versus it being, you know, a system that throws everybody in and may, you know, not deal with the needs at all, in fact, or create huger chasms for people who are going through those spaces.

And we know that, you know, like, especially in a space like domestic violence, a lot of the times an officer is probably not necessarily the first point of contact, or are the best point of contact, right? Wouldn't it be great to have somebody who has the training, understand what is happening, because we know, for many people, you don't leave on that first try or those first incidences, and dealing with the whole scope of what happens when we're moving through a situation that can be so layered in the way that we look at it?

You know, I just, I just when we talk about this conversation, of being, because to me, we're talking macro aggressions. And a lot of the ways you're right, the micro and the macro pulled together, what what is not, I think, often address is the deep layers of ongoing trauma that these exposures cause us. You know, it is it's ongoing, it's, it's, it's just like a, you know, it's like the, the this heavy load that sits on our shoulders in every moment, I never know, like, the other day, an officer pulled up behind me. And I remember just doing this my instant sense, and everything's good. I'm not worried. But until he went around me, I'm like, ooh. And it shouldn't, I shouldn't have to have those sensations. And that's still after having a positive look.

But I remember the 20 times that I'm, you know, my 12 year old, got pulled over over the space of five years. You know, like, I remember those incidences, I remember having to take the the numbers and the badge names down of all of these different officers when they were approaching us. I remember an officer, like we were in the middle of an emergency situation, and trying to defuse it amongst our own, amongst a group of Black kids and my husband getting hauled down and put in on the ground, even though he was the one that was being able to mitigate the situation. But you know, the colors all the same. And it's, it's those experiences that have left that imprint in the space of this. And I just really think there has to be a better way that we can engage and create different spaces for this. I'm all for abolition, like abolish, abolition. abolishing police and and that system, it doesn't serve us in the best way? And what would it be to allocate these funds into, you know, the work and the trauma work, especially amongst our communities that have been marginalized, we so don't get access to some of those resources that would help us go through and create the healing that we still need.

Patty: 

And that's that that's actually one of the big critiques about restorative justice work, is when you put it back on the victim to say, okay, you know, you, you know, what do you want? What do you need, what you're getting what you're what you're getting from them as a trauma response. You're getting your get your, and you're making it there, you're making everyone's healing the victims responsibility, particularly in domestic violence cases. But in any case, where you've been wronged when now, you know, so there's other model models out there where somebody takes responsibility for the wrong door. And the purpose then is healing. So the person who's taken responsibility for the wrongdoer is basically working with that person. And when they come together, it's basically How's everybody's healing going? Are we there? Do we still need more time? Do you feel safe? What do you need to feel safe? You know, and, and, you know, and then those people are the ones that are saying, okay, you know, what this, he's, he's still got a lot of work to do, she still got a lot of work to do, we're not there yet. And so there's space for the victim to talk about what they need and how they need to feel safe. But the ultimate, you know, the, the ultimate burden of restoration or healing is on that other person and whoever is responsible for them. Because it is a trauma response, we've dealt with a lot. We've dealt with a lot, particularly when we get to that place. And so I'm not opposed to restorative justice work. But there's just been a lot of critique around that model of putting it all on putting it all on the victim.

Kerry: 

Well, I believe that a part of that discussion, and I love that we can have that conversation, because I think it's very individualized. And I think that the the idea that one model fits all, is it a part of where this fails? For me, you know, what I mean? Where the system has failed, is that my response and even how I'm going to show up in my trauma may not be the same as somebody else. Right. So I think that, you know, there's a lot to flesh out. I think that it would be, as we said, that idea of recognizing that there isn't going to be a one necessarily a one sock fits all. But But I love the idea of having those conversations, and figuring out what will work what what, you know, what,

Patty: 

what does, what does this situation need? What are the harms that have been done and what does this situation need?

Kerry: 

There are some cases where absolutely, you know, like, I'm not speaking personally, but I was very glad that some people got locked up around my space, I was very glad it was needed, you know. And, and that was justice for me. But I could also see how, for some of it, there, we there, there could have been more, right. And I and I just wish that those opportunities, these dialogues were available in those spaces. And I'm very encouraged that no matter what the you know, we come up with, we're starting to talk about it, we're starting to offer new ways of coming up with something that's just different than a system that we know, feeds very deeply into a capitalist agenda of, you know, putting people in jail so that they can create goods and commodities, we at least we're starting to have those conversations. Now how that's serving us in the interim. Um, you know, that's, that's still the work in progress, I guess.

Angela:

I think that, you know, from one of the things that I continue to go back to, in particular, when I was going through the police legal stuff around my adoptive family, in particular, my job for parents, is that and we, I grew up believing that the legal system was a justice system. And until we as, as a community as a people can reconcile that, if we need it will make space to have those deeper conversations about what it could be. But we're not living in that world we're living in a legal system that doesn't create justice. So we need to stop thinking that that's what his purposes I don't think that that for me, I don't think that that's what the purpose is for that system.

So to talk about changing something, the conversation has to be a the broader conversations, and almost maybe from a from philosophy, philosophy perspective around really what justice and democracy is, what is it? Because we're not, we're not living that. And we're certainly not living it as it was construed, you know, from our Greek and Italian philosophers. And I just go back there because I have an interest in philosophy, I think we can have some greater discussions around democracy. And there's actually a really great the National Film Board put out a really good documentary called what is what is democracy. And it goes through everything that we're talking about in terms of our legal system and our prison system. And, and, you know, where is the space for the victim to have a conversation, a meet, and I don't know what that could be. Because I can sit down and say, there's no way that I could have a conversation with my adoptive parents, even though at one time I wanted that, because until somebody is able to recognize the harm that they've done to another, we can't have these conversations. And so what do we do in the interim? I do think that money should be taken away from the police and put into community resources that just makes sense, like this just not make sense like to have

Patty: 

How does that not make sense. It makes sense to everybody except police and people who want to keep their neighborhoods white. Those are the only people that it makes sense to, or that it doesn't that they want the police to keep having money.

Angela:

Right. But I do in terms of the micro aggressions and the macro aggressions when I was talking to a lawyer recently, who she's not she's my friend, she's a good friend. And she sometimes we have these discussions she's bring brings in it from a lawyer, and and somewhat of a justice perspective, cuz she's a human rights lawyer. But one of the things she was talking to me about in a situation that I then I'm currently struggling with and working through is what, when this all gets sorted out? What's going to be given to you like, are they going to provide you with some extra counseling? Are they going to, you know, pay for some days off? Like, what are they going to give to you for having to experience a situation for the last 20 months.

And I think that in these systems, what I'm learning is that it's hard to voice those things. When I watch my son, you know, you should do something about this. And he's like, it's wrong. So I'm not going to go up against the police. What do you think they're going to do the next time when they look at me in the system? And know? And fair enough, right? And when we have these systems, how do we voice our concerns in a way that doesn't continue to diminish and dismiss us in terms of, I'm not hurt? This is just not just? Can we can we change the dialogue around what the impact is that every time you get stung by that micro aggression be? It opens up that wound and continues and continues? And then you're 30 years later? And you're still dealing with the police that fucked you up when you're 14, right?

And so it is when can we have those greater discussions around justice and ended up democracy and inclusion from a macro level distinguishing against that, that does not those discussions does not fit into a capitalist market. It doesn't, because it's a it's some, the commodity of information shifts when we're talking about capitalism. So the information that we are processing and giving and discussing in that model isn't going to work for us. And I don't know what it is, I spent a week in February, listening to Black Buddhists Summit out of the states. So these are Black people that practice Black people that practice Buddhism, because they found within the Buddhist sect that there is there's issues around inclusion. And one of the one of the speakers that I really, really liked was when he was talking about the impact of microaggressions on a larger level, is that we as Black people, as people of color, need to find our ways to step back from that, knowing ourselves like so and he was encouraging Black people themselves to go to other countries to be around Black people to see that it's different there as opposed to what it is in the States.

Patty: 

Well, that your experience in Jamaica.

Angela:

Exactly, exactly. And one of the things that a friend of mine, my hairdresser said to me, before I went, he said, you're going to find a deeper strength within yourself, you're going to feel more empowered, you're going to feel more empowered to get out there and do. And somehow he's right. Like, I feel like, I don't feel as much of that there's something off with me feeling that you just kind of carry around on your shoulder, not not wanting to look at it, but knowing that it's there. It's not, it's not that I'm off. It's this community that I'm living in the society that I'm living, that's kind of off.

Kerry: 

I love that. You know, it was interesting. You mentioned Patty, earlier when Obama got in, I remember speaking with some,

Patty: 

Yay we’re in a post racial world! The racisms are over!

Kerry: 

That whole idea that, above all, there's no more racism. And and that was kind of a conversation I was having with some of my American friends. Right. And I was, we were kind of, you know, yay, celebrating. But, um, for me, and I remember my husband and I to we were like, Yeah, this is great. And it's, it was so monumental for them, but for myself and for and for my husband, we come from Antigua, and Barbados, right? Where there have been Black Prime Ministers all day, every day. You know what I mean, so the experience of this was monumental. And of course, it was amazing, you know, for whatever it was worth or wasn't worth, you know, whatever. But that that piece of, of what you were saying, Angela really resonates with me in that regard, because they're, each community has the experience of, you know, in the diaspora of what it is to be in our Blackness. I know when I go to Antigua, everybody looks like me and then some, the shopkeepers are all Black, you know, if you had a white teacher, something was weird. Whereas in our experience, if you had a Black teacher, something was weird.

Patty: 

I don't think I ever had a Black teacher. I can't. I think in college, in college, I had one Black teacher in college, and, you know, university, it was at Niagara University. So that would have been my third year I, but I didn't think of a Black teacher in high school. I know there wasn't one in elementary school. I can't think of one in high school. I don't think I had one when I was in college. But even but even just, you know, to continue dragging the Obama years, the movie Get Out. Right? Well, you know, when you had said, you know, we're talking about Obama's election and the movie Get Out where he says I would have voted for Obama a third time if I like that movie was written during the Obama administration. That's when Peele was thinking about it and writing about it, so he's not, it's not about Trump level racists it’s about white liberals. The people think they're the good guys.

Kerry: 

That Trumps now

Patty: 

That’s who he is skewering in that movie and nobody gets it they all think that they're not like that. You can vote for Obama as many times as you like. You can have one you know you can have brunch with your Black friends.  Racists always have Black friends, it blows my mind it's always the same one I think there might be two of you out there that are friends with all this white foolishness

Angela:

Oh, it's when your white friends tell you sincerely you know Angela I don't see colour, and I love this person I do I see her good and I and that's where I have to go always is actually you know I just don't see your color I don't understand and I just and and I you know after the third time hearing that I just said okay, look, look, if you don't see my color, then clearly you don't see me, you don't see my experience. You didn't hear it when I told you about the guy giving the monkey sounds when I was crossing the street. You didn't hear it when I was told that that you know stop going into a store. Clearly you don't hear those things. But those are my reality. So if you can't share my reality on some leve,l at least have some empathy for it. We can't be friends

Kerry: 

like stop the erasure. I love that.

Angela:

It's it's the erasure and that's that's that is the that is the that is not micro that is macro. That is to to not consider that, you know, your heritage, whatever that like, I have enough struggle not knowing my heritage. I don't need somebody else putting that s**t on me. Whether you love me or not, like, you know. So God love them but man, f**k off?

Patty: 

Well, yeah, I mean, we navigate these things in our relationships and in our friendships, and then when we try to bring them up, then we're dealing with the tears and the anger. And the you're always on me. And why do you say this? And then, you know, I didn't mean it that way. And it's like, well, could this not be about you for 30 seconds.

Kerry: 

White, to deal with that space of white fragility is almost as exhausting as the actual micro aggression. But yeah, it is work. That, you know, that's that, you know, for me is the question. Do you find Angela, that you pick your battles? Do you pick your battles with this? Do you find that Patty?

Angela:

I do.

Patty: 

Oh, for sure. For sure. There's so many people that I don't bring it, I don't bring it up to and really for anybody. If what if we do bring it up to you? That is such a gift that is such a gift, I mean, it is it, we're demonstrating trust, we're demonstrating the belief that you want to do better, we're making an investment in this relationship. Because we're not bringing it up. I mean, you're doing it, I can promise you, you're doing it. And if we don't bring it up, then you know, if we're not having these conversations with you, that reveals a lack of trust and a lack of investment in the relationship. So if we do bring it up, put yourself aside for 30 seconds, listen to what we're saying, listen to the fact that we're saying we believe that you can do that better, we believe in you, you just need to listen.

Angela:

Right? And thank you, because that is so true. And it is tiring. And, you know, with, you know, I been in a book club for 15 years, and there's two people of color in the book club. And I decided, ironically, in Black history month that I'm going to take a take a break. And it's not because the women aren't lovely women. And it's not because we haven't had some of these conversations over the years. It's the ongoing issue around primarily reading works from white writers. You know, and when you look at that, in the whole scheme of things in terms of our lives, like I didn't grow up with having,  Patty, I'm, you know, we none of us grew up in Canada, having people of our culture reflected in our materials, right. And so, I've been reading this really, it's, I'm reading it very slowly. But it's a great book, and it's by David Mura. It's around craft, narrative craft, writing around race and identity(A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing).

And so he talks about how, you know, when we're reading, and unless it's a Black person, Indigenous person, an Asian person that's actually identified in the story, the assumption is the person's white, the story is what always, and I've known that, but when you're actually reading it, and going holy, and not swearing, and then I put the book down, and I have to go in and just process that for a minute as a small but what does that mean, and the whole context of your life is that since you were young, that's what it's always been. And so that, you know, the micro bits of Indigenous history, true Indigenous history, I'm on the third time doing this course around cultural, Indigenous cultural safety, third time, because every time I learned something new, and I cry, because of the parallels in terms of what you know, that's my son's history, that's his father's history. And, and then there's my history, that's erased as well. It's that's the biggest those micro, macro aggressions, so I had to lead this group so that I can take space to focus on Black and Indigenous writers in Canada. I'm taking the next year. And that's all I'm reading.

Patty: 

Hmm. The thing that I really got out of the history was in Native studies, there's gaps where Black people should be in Black Studies, there's gaps where the Native people should be. Yeah. And so we need to put these histories together and have these conversations together. Because like I said, at the beginning, because and I know, you know, we're just kind of wrapping up. Black and Indigenous are useful categories in terms of talking about race, but they're not mutually exclusive.

Angela: Yes.

Patty:

They're not discrete categories where everybody is either one or the other. There ends of a continuum. And there's lots and lots and lots. Yeah, so useful categories to think about, but not discrete categories, not mutually exclusive.

Kerry: 

I am chomping at the bit to get in. But right now, unfortunately, my focus is to be on all kinds of sex books. But once *laughter*

Angela:

I might jump ship, I might jump ship.

Patty: 

I'm sure Black and Indigenous have sex.

Kerry: 

So I love to hear how you are managing to bring this infusion. And it's so fitting for this conversation. Because, like, as we as we were talking about, those are the spaces to which we can heal, when we pull those kinds of panels together, when we start to, you know, mesh, any mesh the histories in such a lavish and luscious way and bringing a fullness to the experience and stories of us. I think that that's powerful, and offering up this place for us to finally start the process of moving through this.

And Angela, I just want to thank you for coming on for just giving us such a beautiful piece of yourself. And your story, as usual, you always do that. And and in just bringing a light to how we're all affected in this space. I appreciate you so much for that.

Angela:

I appreciate you guys for the openness and just to have this space, right, like, you know, Kerry, and I talk a bit outside of here, which I'm grateful for. But I'm finding, you know, so many years of having the absence of people of color in my life that I'm wanting and gravitating more and more to that because I think we all need that understanding and that place where we can feel that we can be real. And it's it's taxing not to be able to be real. And I find that my circles as I get older are becoming smaller, because you know, it we have to heal from the daily day. Right. You know, we deal with this in our workplaces, as you've talked about Patty and I made a may or may not have alluded to, you know, in our volunteer circles in our relationships, it's it's hard work. It's hard work. And to find that space of being still.

Patty: 

I thank you so much, Angela. I'm always so happy when you guys …

Angela:

you know the we were aligned. We were aligned together and ungrateful to I get so excited. I get nervous and then I get excited.

Kerry: 

But we're fine, not you.

Patty: 

We have good conversation for call girl so we will link up Okay, all right.

Kerry: 

Bye bye. Have a great night guys.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Black and Indigenous Solidarities

With Robert Warrior

Patty: 

So we're here with Robert Warrior. And so funny story, Kerry, I'm reading this book Crossing Waters Crossing Worlds by Tiya Miles. It was for Aambe book club, History a couple of months ago back in February, and I can't and, as happens a lot of times, you know, when I'm reading books or essays, I always think “is that person on Twitter, I got to find them,” you know. And so I'm going along, and I see Oh, Robert Warrior, and I'm really enjoying this essay. And so I log on to Twitter with the intention of seeing if I can find Robert Warrior. And in my notifications is like, Robert Warrior just followed you. *laughter* No way, I was just about to look for you. So that's Yeah. So there's a nice, nice, nice little bit of synergy there. I don't know what I might have been going off on on Twitter that got your attention, but

Robert:

I think it was on I mean, I think it was on Afro Indigenous issues or something like that.. That's a bit identity in general, I can't remember.

Patty: 

But that was something that, I mean, really, thanks. You know, this is this is why relationships are important, right? You know, because it's relationship that I have with Kerry, and then, you know, and other, you know, and other people that I'm getting to know, you know, just really how important these conversations are between our communities, and recognizing that our communities are not discrete categories, either.

Robert:

Great points,

Patty:

Not only are people in the Black diaspora Indigenous in their own right, in other ways. But people who are Indigenous to here also had relationships with Black people.

Robert:

Exactly, sure

Patty:

Also, you know, so we're, we're relatives in all kinds of ways. And, and, you know, one of the points that Tiya made when we talked with, you know, when, when she was on, Aambe, on the book club, was how there's gaps in gaps in our stories, and the story in our own stories. I mean, we all about what passes for mainstream education and the gaps that exist there, and how we're just not present. I just went off on a Twitter thread about Grapes of Wrath. And, you know, and how Steinbeck almost gets it, so close to understanding connection to land, you know, but where are the Indigenous people? On whose land, they're living? Oh, we're dead, like the snakes.

Robert:

Wow. Right.

Patty:

You know, so I go off on that relationship to land because like, we know that we're not in white literature in white education, but we're also missing from each other's stories. That was the point that Tiya made was, you know, in Black Studies, there's gaps where Native people should be. And then Native studies, there's gaps where Black people should be.

Robert:

Right, right. Well, I mean, I think that's a terrific point. And I think that I mean, so much this this conversation in general this topic I think, requires a lot of a lot of grace on the part of the people who are having the conversation, a lot of compassion for why people don't know the things they don't know. And and that people can only start where they start from and and we're trying to make the conversation better, we're not trying to have a perfect conversation right off the bat.

And so it but they can be really difficult and Tiya is such a genius and such a wonderful person, such an amazing scholar, but also just an amazing writer. And how she has she's able to, to in her first book and Ties That Bind, tell the story of this one little family and illustrate through through Shoe Boots and Lucy, that story that is just so powerful. You know, it's not very often that I cry in in when I'm reading a book but you know, When, when, when Lucy at the end of it is freed. Finally, when she's a very old woman, you know, I just, I just cried because I just it just the weight of her of her servitude had weighed on me through the whole thing, you know, and the way that she had to persevere through all of that. And then to say, oh, it couldn't have mattered that much, which is what people always want to say, right? But of course it did. Of course, it did. You know, she even if even if she'd had 15 minutes left to live, she still want to prefer freedom for those 15 minutes, you know, than not.

And but I do think that that being able to enter into a conversation where there's not a lot of rules, at the start, where there's not a lot of, of saying the only way that you can be part of this is if you will make sure that you do enough of this or enough that. I mean, you I guess I want to assume that a good author, a smart author will say, I hadn't thought about that, you know, the next time I do a story like this, I want to think more about that. And and that that can make that that we're trying to move forward. And we're trying to make the stories better. It doesn't be it doesn't make things excusable, that are inexcusable. But it does, I think it does offer a way into a circle of conversation that I think can be much more powerful.

Patty: 

Mm hmm. Well, I know, I'm working on a book myself, I'm my editor, you know, we were going, you know, going through the first half of it, and I'm talking about Indigenous experience. But I can't exclude, like Black experience as part of that. Right, you know, part of a colonial, you know, it's part of a colonial project, it happened, you know, in tandem and intersecting it all kinds of ways and, and acted differently in some ways, you know, and you get at that in, you know, in your essay that you contributed to this book, about why we reacted differently, you know, in sometimes supporting the residential schools. You know, you kind of get at, where's our WB DuBois? You know, and so she said, You really need to have Black eyes on this, because you're talking about Black experience. So you need to have Black eyes on this, you know, as part of, you know, your posse of people that are reading it ahead of time. And so I was like, okay, so I shipped it off to Kerry and Kerry had some feedback for me.

And I was like, okay, that's not what I meant. But you know, why, if that's the way it's being heard, and that matters, because communicating something if it's not going to be heard, or if it's going to unintentionally cause harm, like that's not. And I think these conversations with Kerry, have been really helpful for me as a human being, not just because we're friends. But just really helpful to me as a human being, because these are, these can be hard conversations. And I sometimes I say things that aren't right, because we're all raised in this soup. Having the grace to be able to share with each other and kind of go on like, sometimes Kerry, and I'll go. But that's, I don't know, like, I hope that we've created this space where we can have these conversations and that they're, they're hard, but they’re also a lot of fun.

Kerry: 

Absolutely I and I agree, I'm listening to both of you and recognizing the uniqueness of what we are creating even just the facet of having this kind of a conversation. It's creating the safe spaces to fill in those gaps. You know, when I look at I was thinking, the other day, I'm reading a book called Lose Your mother. Lose Your Mother is all about a woman, um a professor in the US, who is tracking back her history to to Ghana and going back through the Gold Coast and and her experience of what it is to go home.

And it's interesting because her experience of going home left her feeling much more of a stranger in that space. You know, we and why I think it's important to this conversation is what it got me thinking about is how when we don't get to really draw our tapestries really create our own stories and tell our own stories, it's left to get skewed, it's left to be romanticized in ways that may not be the actual reality. And we leave out some of those integral pieces that create the fullness of what our stories would be.

So for Sadaiya in that book, she was talking about how she was received in Ghana, after a while, you know, she was, um, she came back with the idea that she would have been welcomed home and The Ghanian people would have been like, yes, you know, sister, you know, and, in fact, what they kind of saw her as the privileged American, and not understanding the experience of what it was to have that ancestor move through the Middle Passage and what was endured in North America. And it struck me, because I know that I've romanticized one of my, my bucket list things is to go to the Gold Coast, and to really, you know, go to see some of the slave forts. And that thought, to me of being lonely in the space that very, you know, most often might have been the launching spot for where my ancestor left was, it was sobering.

And it brings back the idea that the stories that we tell each other, or we tell ourselves may not be in, contextualized in the right way, if that makes sense. And that, the the, the truth is to be able to hear the different voices as we move through that, and how those relationships really connect together to form the truth of who we are how we stand in this hear and now.

So I I'm, I think you're right, it's, it's very important that we create these dialogues that we can tap into those pieces of the story, like, when I was reading, um, you know, your book, there were some pieces of tendrils of, of family or relatives that were formed from, you know, tribes coming together with Black folk that I did not know. And, and that to me, oh, like, Well, hey, because I've seen some pictures, where you see some Black people in regalia, and you know, wearing wearing tribal feathers and stuff. And it's never made sense to me, 100%. And that picture was opened up simply from us being able to read, or me hearing it coming from you. And so to me, these forces in ways are integral, it's integral to get a fuller picture of how things exist, and how we sit in the structure of our world.

Robert:

And it seems like to me, I really appreciate all that, Kerry, I think this is really powerful. And it seems to me that, that recognizing that the conversation happens in places of pain is just so crucial. And that that's one of the reasons why people shut gates on each other, and why they create a kind of a gatekeeping, of who's allowed into this conversation space, that is my life. And, and this is why I'm accepting and this and and, again, I always want to call people out when they're being inexcusable in their behavior. And at the same time, I want to try to, I want to try to lead with compassion and trying to find a way to say, Can I get you to open that gate? Could I get you to think about, because the person on the other side is trying to open theirs right now. And until they're both open, and this is what I mean,

I think this I love your podcast already. Because, because it because it's about friendship. And I think that friendship requires this kind of this kind of vulnerability, right? And this kind of saying, I want to open myself to you in a way that allows you to see me and, you know, I'm pretty flawed. And so, but these flaws, that's part of what friendship is, you know, it's like saying, I'm overlooking your flaws. I'm not even seeing them anymore, because we're friends, we've moved past that point, right. And so the, the powerful conversations that can take place as you build that foundation of friendship is built on trust, and it's built on trust that, that we don't have to write each other off because we make mistakes, because we say the wrong thing.

And, you know, but I think one of the things you're seeing that it's I think that it's still largely unimagined and that we lack imagination and having the conversation about the different kinds of indigeneity that that we're talking about in this conversation, and that there are so many versions of indigeneity that go through it. I know that that native people in the US and in Canada and North America tend to, I mean, we're so fortunate to have communities that are intact we can go to, not everybody belongs to one of those communities, which is really important to say, right? A lot of people are incredibly disconnected from those things. But the fact that they exist, the fact that they're over there somewhere, that someone is really tightly connected to that sort of, of reality is, is powerful.

And of course, of course, those things exist in Africa as well, right? For African descended people. But the but the, the separation is, is so severe, right? I mean, in terms of distance, in time, and in geography, that, that it that it creates a different existential reality for people who are having to think it through. But on the other side of that is that connection to indigeneity, as well, and so for. And so it's unpredictable, right, and the way that these things intertwine with each other, usually through the process of love. And oftentimes just through people getting together to survive in the kinds of situations you're talking about.

Not always I think we romanticize things, if we think it's always that way. But, you know, I think I think of New England and how, how, at the time, when Native men were leaving New England to become whalers, African, African descended men were moving to New England as free Blacks, and were working in the same households that native women were in that this is where we really see the start of a lot of the Native New England families that are mixed between African and Native. And they came together that they didn't, you know, they, they, for the heterosexual people there, they didn't have other people and they turned to each other, they found in each other the sort of intimacy and the sort of being able to share a life with somebody that was really deep and meaningful for them.

And that this is, we see this now, you know, in, in the people that we meet. But being able to account for and not having to have made sense of them right off the bat, there's different forms of indigeneity that are in play. My I mean, I'm really fortunate coming from a family that is very deeply connected to who we are as Osage. And I'm able to, although that wasn't always true, just in the individual kind of end of my family, with my dad and others, but, but I've been able to connect with that. And you know, and I can dance and I can be a part of our traditions in a way that's really powerful part of our social life our political life. And, you know, I felt so fortunate about that. For other people that, you know, that that's not true in the same way.

But I think that, that, that I still at this point in my life, in spite of that good fortune, my own indigeneity as an Osage person eludes me at times. It catches me, it catches me unexpected, I learn new things, I find new connections. And so for me to expect that someone else is going to have figured their ties to indigeneity out seems a bit unfair to me, you know, at best, you know, and and so I think that, that, that can create the possibility of, of connection.

Patty: 

Well, and then you add to that, so we had those kinds of relationships. But some of our tribes were also slaveholders. And, you know, you can say all kinds of stuff. I read somewhere you know, about us not, you know, that. Okay, how did I, how did I put this, you know, this slavery is never, you know, it's it's never a good thing, but that a lot of native slave owners weren't as bad. And oh yes. Yes, I said that. I said that on Twitter. knocked over was a moment where I was like, wow, I'm really, really sorry, that was a huge misstep. You know, I clearly missread something and everybody who jumped on me was absolutely, absolutely correct in that, you know, because, you know, and I actually got a couple of book recommendations out of it. They said  “you need to read these books,” and I did. I did and we were jerks. Well, the Anishinaabeg weren't one of the slave owning nations. But you know, so we had those kinds of relationships too.

Robert:

Right.

Patty:

And then we're seeing the ripples of that with, you know, with what's happening with the freedmen?

Robert:

Absolutely,

Patty:

You know, and you know, and I wouldn't shut up about that with dead Holland's nomination because, yes, she's great, but but look at this legislation she sponsored, she has to do better, she has to recognize she is now in a position of some serious power. And look at this legislation she sponsored this is terrible anti Black legislation. And she needs to you know, she needs to do better. She's under the guise of Kerry, I don't know if you're familiar with the legislation I'm talking about. But under the guise of I think it was native sovereignty. She had co-sponsored legislation that would allow to try to determine its own citizenship, knowing that what they were going to do was strip Freedmen of their rights of their rights to citizenship and basically creating Jim Crow type situation for tribal citizenship. Is that correct? Robert?

Robert:

So I'm going to rely on your I mean, I’m new on that. But you know, I think that on those situations, I mean, these things are incredibly difficult politically to figure out and the policies behind them. In the end, I just, I mean, one of the things I've always said is, is, especially for Cherokee people, that whatever freedom you have to do something like you're describing to disenfranchise people, that you committed to not do that, too many of whom are your blood relations, even if they're not on your tribal roles, that when you do that, you really do have to open yourself up to the kinds of criticism, you can't just go hide from that critique. And if that critique ends up, alienating, you know, members of Congress who no longer want to send you the kind of funding that you have to say, why are we funding these folks? Yeah, of course, we recognize their freedom. But should we be? Should we be encouraging that through, you know, through the funding that we provide? And, and I think that that has to at least be an open question. It's one that can be debated, but I just don't think that people should just get a free pass.

Patty: 

Well, we're to hide behind sovereignty. Right,

Robert:

Right. Exactly.

Patty:

The South tried that argument. It didn't work. They fought a whole war about it. Don't get too well. And we talked with Azie Dungey about the Pamunkey tribe, which she's connected to. And, you know, the laws that were on that were still on their books about, you know, if you're Black, you can't inherit what you can't be a tribal member have land or something. And it had to do with protecting their own land. But the rules that required them to do that required is really the wrong word. But kind of boxed them into that corner 100 some odd years ago, don't exist anymore. So why are you still disallowing these members? Why did you set your membership criteria based on when that law was still legally enforceable? Like? That's not very nice. Yeah, so our relationship is complicated. And we need to be able to me that's the book that I had held up the Crossing Waters Crossing Worlds, that conference, you wrote the afterword for it, talking about the conference. It got heated,

Robert:

I did, and it really did. I mean, it was a wild ride. I mean, I'm so glad that it happened. It was hard to watch at times. And at the very end, I mean, it, you know, it there was a great idea that that Tiya had to use that time when she was when she was a fellow at Dartmouth to bring people together, Eating Out of the Same Pot. And you know, and let's, let's come together and let's talk and it and just saw that it was really a volatile kind of situation for everybody who was there. And that, that I think it was because of of how painful these histories are for people. And that, that, that I also think that there's a lot of dismissiveness in, in, in all of these groups in both of these groups, especially,

I mean, the main two groups that were at this conference, or whether it's really I would say four groups of people were there. There were Native scholars who do Native studies. There were African American scholars who primarily were there who do African American studies, but also the relationship to Native American studies. And then there were white scholars who were there who mostly did Native studies, who knew a lot about these things like [intelligible] really wonderful person and, you know, great scholar. And then there were there were there were Afro Native people there, there were Black Indian people there. And and that was part of the mix that really made things made things more, more tense at times, because there were people who had skin in the game literally, right?

The and I think that that really taught me being a part of that gathering really made me see that, along with getting Black eyes into this conversation, it's also really important to have Afro Native eyes, in Afro Native Voices in that conversation that it said that there's a that there's a different state that people have, when they've embraced that identity. And they're putting themselves forward into the conversation in that way. That because that, that, that the Afro Native people at that particular meeting made, made, made, some of the Native American people uncomfortable, made some of the white people uncomfortable, and many of the Black people were uncomfortable too they hadn't really spent a lot of time around people who were so forward in, in identifying as Afro Native, they knew people like this existed, they probably have relatives who, you know, say, hey, you know, we're like that too, right.

But it was a bit it was really, it was really, it really said something about where we are in all of this. And I don't know that we've come that far, either. And at the end, I mean, it was really I mean, it was so it was hard to watch at the end, because people, there was nothing resolved, we had a big session at the very end of it. And we tried to come together to say, this is what we've learned. But really, there was just a lot of bad feeling. And it's really hard to leave something like that when there's so bad feeling in the room.

And I mean that the thing that I always remember about that there had been a group of people from Dartmouth who wanted to sing Amazing Grace in a bunch of different native languages. And they tried to do this at the very end, it was, you know, would have been a really beautiful thing. But everybody was just feeling so terrible at that point. It was just it didn't feel like there was any grace, amazing are not in the room at that point. You know, we just really were kind of feeling like, there's so much to do here. There's so much, you know, that remains undone that, that that we don't know how to do this.

You know, we can't be kind of cold blooded scholars who just disinterestedly come into this conversation. There isn't a place of being disinterested here, we really have to see everybody's made to feel by this topic in some way. And and we have to own our own position within it. I've certainly seen that, you know, I we brought up the Freedmen issue. And, you know, thankfully, it's progressed, I think, in many ways, although I'd say there's so much more work to do on it still. But at least you know, the, the current leadership with the Cherokees has, has embraced has embraced the idea that moving forward is the best way with this and to just follow the treaty follow the law and and to move to move on. And so that to stop this process of trying to stop people from being able to vote and the Win I wrote about, I wrote about that issue when it was still pretty hot.

And I wrote an essay that was the most widely read essay on news from Indian country for about three years, called Cherokees flee the moral high ground, saying and it just really set out I just think the Cherokees are wrong. You know, I'm not Cherokee, but I'm gonna say they're wrong. In what they're doing. It's just morally wrong. And, you know, I have people in my own community in the Osage community, including relatives who basically said, you know, we don't agree with you, right. And the Wii was really saying, we, we Osages, just don't believe the way you do, Robert. And, you know, and luckily, I was mature enough by that point that I said, to myself, at least, I know one Osage who does. And I'm going to hold on to that, you know, so I don't I'm not going to have somebody tell me Osages don't believe that because there's one right here who does?

And I didn't ask for permission from everybody to write anything I've ever written. No claim it could be something that somebody else agrees with. I this is me, you know, and I wrote that I wrote that and I anytime I take a stand like that, whether it's saying I think that I guess on the on the issues of same sex marriage that have come up for the Navajo people, for the Cherokees, and for my own Osage people, we had our own version of that. And I took a stand against them. Because I thought it was right. And I think that that's such an important thing to do.

I have to say that one, one person I learned that from was my philosophy teacher, Cornell West, who is just, you know, one of my philosophical heroes, and I had him as a teacher, when I was at Yale back in the 1980s. When I was teaching at Stanford in the 1990s, Cornell came and gave a, a big talk for like, 1000s of students, and then he did a smaller presentation for, for a bunch of us, like 20 of us. And it was so great to be in the same room with him again, hearing him hearing that, that, you know, hearing his voice and just hearing how he talks, and he's so inclusive, and so wonderful. And I know a lot of people disagree with him. And I do too, sometimes. But just as a figure as a moral figure, I just think he's so considerable.

As somebody asked a question as a student of color, with this 15 minute long question. I remember, in my mind, I'm sure it was more like two. But the question was, well, what do you do when you when you're trying to make changes, but you know the change you're trying to make, isn't going to happen. And that, that, even though you're fighting for it, you just already know that the end of this is going to be you're going to be defeated, and you're going, you know that the thing you're trying to get, you're not going to be able to get and so you use all this energy to try to get it but then you don't get it. What do you do? How do you figure out when's the right time to fight for these things? And, you know, this is at Stanford was a very powerful institution, right? And in Silicon Valley, where everybody's just worried about money and worried about success. And it was just so great to hear Cornel West, his turn to that person and say, well, sister, sometimes you do things just because it's right. You just do it, because it's right. Yeah, that's it. Right. I hadn't heard that kind of moral clarity in so long, right? You say, I don't have to make up my mind based on some really complicated calculus that says, do I? Do I take this position or that position? And so I don't know, I think it's right. I'm gonna I'm gonna say it.

Patty: 

Is this the right, you know, we get so caught up in thinking strategically, right? And that's where this question was coming from is, you know, what's the point of being right, of speaking up, if it's not a good strategic moment, if it's not going to gain the kind of traction, that it needs to go anywhere? And, you know, when you were asking that about, you know, when do you know when you know, when it's the right time to bring it up? And in my mind, I thought, when you know, it's the right thing. That's when it's the right moment. Because when you know, it's the right thing, then sitting on it and not speaking up, becomes the wrong thing. You know, because now I know better. So now that I know better. Why wouldn't I speak up?

And of course, I don't speak up because it's scary. I will say things on Twitter, that I don't always say on Facebook, not that what because my Facebook friends are different, right? Like, it's a completely different crowd. You know, and I know a lot of people feel this way Twitter is my chosen family. Facebook are the people I have to see at Thanksgiving.

Kerry: 

And she says that with love.

Patty: 

But I think what I've gotten much better at and I'm in some of it really is the podcast. Because Kerry and I just keep putting ourselves out there week after week. And then people listen to it. You know, they listen to us, as both, you know, learning in real time. You know, but so but there's things I will talk about a lot of times mostly like about religion or something I don't know, because the people I go to church with are on Facebook, but I'm getting much better at kind of the crossover at saying the things where there might be some social consequences. In my day to day life.

Kerry: 

Yeah, I love this. I love that that you are bringing that up. It resonates with me so deeply. Oh, my goodness, Patty, because I have been in this space, I think over the last, you know, two or three weeks where I'm having to come into stepping into my power in that way. Where it's recognizing that the voice that I have I I'm I'm in the realization that I don't necessarily speak on it. Um, as largely as I would like to and when I'm starting to examine the whys behind that, I think it is because there's still that part of me that's looking for the acceptance or that or that, you know, not wanting to upset necessarily the different flows, or the different cliques of people that exist in my life. And with that being said, it's, it's coming to a point where I'm feeling not whole in who I am. So that, you know that stepping out is just what it's got to be because I'm I just, you know, it's I'm too compartmentalize, and it's not working very well.

So hearing you say that really resonates, really helps me know that, that that emergence, I almost feel like it's like a growth I'm doing, I'm rebirthing in some ways,I’m wilding is the word I like to use. But it helps me know that I'm not alone in that journey. And I take that almost with with looking at how we, as Indigenous and Black people are forming relationships are looking at relationships,

You know, when you mentioned the conference, and there being so much, you know, drama and trauma that sits in the air, I am, I celebrate it in some certain way. And in parts of that, because it's when we go through that kind of really feeling into it, I think a lot of times we do come at it from a strategy or we come at it from you know, the history, but we're not looking at what all of that brought into the room. And there needs to be a space to release some of that trauma, some of that pain, because it's a collective pain, what no matter what the perspective is, we all have come out of the direct response of this colonial capitalist system. And until we afford ourselves that space, the right to really feel into what the effects have been, then, and only then can we, I think fuse the other piece of it, which is to heal. To really be effective, you have to be able to offer some healing up so that you can process what the next phases of this game are going to be.

And you can't do that without getting mad at each other, or having those tough conversations that will create that forum, that space to go. So now what i Okay, yeah, I don't like what you say. But maybe there's something there. And I so, I really think those are the things that we have to continue to do is, is get in the room, close the door, hopefully it can be soundproof a little bit and just hash it out, hash it out and see each other, see each other as we move through me.

Patty: 

Robert, you had made a comment at the end of this essay, and I was just I was just rereading it the you were you were a Lone Wolf and Dubois For a New Century. At the very end of it, you as you say it will help us perhaps, work through the way we see ourselves in the way we exist in this world. Perhaps such work will help us re ask the question, what does it feel like to be a problem? Because that comes from the Dubois that comes from Dubois, right? I'm remembering this correctly. Can you talk about that a little bit about why you went looking at DuBois. And yeah, I love that essay. By the way, it was really interesting.

Robert:

Thanks very much, thanks. You know, I like so many things that had to do with the conference I had been invited to, to present at the 100 100th anniversary. There was a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Souls of Black Folk at the University of Wisconsin, that scholar, Caribbean American Scholar Nelly McKay put together. , And this thing was just, I mean, an incredible All Star lineup of people, especially of African American scholars, Nel painter, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. David Levering Lewis, who wrote the great WB Dubois biography, the two volume biography of DuBois. Lots of other people too.  

Vijay Prashad, and I were invited to be the panel that was about people other than Black people. And he had just written his wonderful book, The Souls of Brown Folk. And. And so we did this panel together. And I wrote this essay for it. And what was interesting to me that one of the first the first question I got is, why didn't you talk about the train journey of Dubois through the South, when he talks about, you know, looking at the land of the Creeks, and looking at it that this, and I, you know, I kind of thought about that, I thought, well, that's probably more elegant. And as the person asked that, that, I probably should have done that I probably should have made this kind of more elegant kind of thing. But I also wanted to bring these two difficult things that don't really fit together, together into what I wanted to say about a Native American perspective on DuBois. I wanted to say, what was going on at this exact same time, you know, what was the Native world in, in 1902 1902, when When Souls of Black Folk came out? Or maybe it's 1903. But it's right there at the turn of the, you know, the turn of the 20th century. And that, that I guess, I mean, some of this had was probably a little bit of an exorcism to, along with, along with Cornel West, I had other Black mentors, James Cone who invented Black Theology of liberation was my doctoral advisor, wonderful, wonderful, very influential person, the academic

Patty: 

Quite the academic ancestry.

Robert:

Right. And, and somebody's not as well known, but who was at Union Theological Seminary, when I was there as well, James M Washington, who Coretta Scott King brought down to the King Center, flew him down for a meeting, and she said, I want you to put together the essential writings of my husband, you know, and he did that. He’s this amazing African American church historian, you know, and, and he gave me, he just, he freed me intellectually from myself, you know, he taught me how to take myself seriously, as a student. And in a seminar, I just remember that. I remember, I put my hands down on a table. And I started talking to him like this, you know, I thought, What am I doing, you know, and I can't I can't do this, but he was okay.

You know, he knew he already knew I had all of these things inside that are that I was trying to, and I was trying to cleverly pull them out of myself, you know, I tried to find some sort of safe, safe way of getting these things kind of blown out my ears and blown out, you know, other parts of me, when, in fact, they just needed to work through my brain and through my heart, and now, you know, and out my fingers in my writing, and, you know, the things that I said and, and like I say, I was felt as though Jim Washington, freed me from myself, from my own from my own conceits. In so many powerful ways.

I learned so many other things as well from from James Cone. And it also allowed me to be a part of this company, of his graduate students who were from around the world. Many of them were from Africa, other African American students, and, and I was the Native American student in that in that group. And, and I just, you know, and I felt a kind of camaraderie, intellectual camaraderie in that group that was really, really wonderful and really powerful. And I think that, that around that time was when I was really figuring out what that legacy meant for me, because I always wanted, I always wanted the the Native intellectual tradition to be different. I wanted to have that Dubois figure, you know, that we could look to and to say, I want that person who does that thing that Dubois does kind of pulls everything together, and does this amazing, comprehensive look at the entire world.

And, and I eventually just had to say to myself, we got what we got. And guess what, you know, the one thing that we have, it goes back to this thing of having these intact places and communities and political bodies and political people. You know, I always knew that, that that this is a little bit complicated, but it may be really helpful to the conversation.

Let's say that I love the way in the African American in the history of Black thought, than African American thought. You always had these two dynamics going on, you know, at the same time, you had Malcolm and Martin and you Have you know you have DuBois but you also have Washington? Washington, Booker T. Right. But yeah, and are later Garvey too, right. And so you have these, you have these, these, this dialectic, and this historical dialectic, that's just really wonderful. And of course, you have an entire hidden world within that as well, that is all the other voices you don't see. But that the, the dialectic is always there showing me different things.

And I was frustrated, because I couldn't find the other side of that dialectic in the Native tradition and the Native tradition of written thought. And I wanted it to be there, I wanted to see that more. And it was, I could see that in some places, but it seemed like our impulse in the world of Native thought was to try to come up with “The Position” with “The Native Way of Thinking About Things.” And, and I was never satisfied with that. And so I had this thing called discourse envy, I wanted to. And you know, the thoughts are greener, the grass is greener on the other side of this, this fence. Right? And that, that and, because the thing I realized early on, as I said, you know, we don't have that same kind of dialectic. But those other points of view do exist are out there. And there, you have to, they're, they're more, they're happening in the local places.

They're happening in, in a world of,of the people who are, it's not just traditional knowledge, which is, I think, one of the in this, this could make some people want to turn off what I'm saying and that, I mean, that's fine with me if they do, but to say, it's not just the that I said to myself a little bit later, there's two kinds of subaltern thought within the native world. There's a subaltern thought, which is the subaltern are the  people who are unseeable to the, the regular world, they just can't see that there's this layer of experience within peasant life, or within Native American life or Black life, you know, that, that there are two kinds of subaltern just in general, I mean, there's probably 50 kinds, but the two kinds, I could really want to highlight that you could see people who had held on to those kinds of traditional knowledge about healing, about how to how to live with each other, social relations, and the people had this, this kind of intact sense of those of those traditions.

But there was another kind of subaltern too, which was the voice of the destitute, the voice of the people who were, who were poorer than the poor, who are, you know, the most starving of the starving the people who just were so far beyond the reach of the things that were supposed to make their lives, work and make their lives better. And that there was without romanticizing the position, there's a kind of knowledge that comes out of that, that sometimes it's sometimes it's imbued with that sense of, of Indigenous tradition, but sometimes not. Sometimes it's just imbued, as it is so often in Black thought with just, how do you start from this place of living in a world that says, you're nothing, that gives you nothing? And then how do you make something out of that?

And I knew that, that that kind of thought exists out in the native world, too. It often associates itself with that traditional knowledge with that kind of prestige of that, you know, of that Indigenous knowledge, because it's smart. You know, I mean, people like that are smart, and they know that people who are in those positions have answers. I think that's been really theorized so beautifully by by Leanne Simpson, in her book, As We've Always Done, and I think she does a really great job of getting at a lot of those things

But that essay about Lone Wolf, I think, and the boys too, instead of being able to find this worldwide gigantic figure like Dubois that I had to say, while the gigantic figure was the gigantic figure for the Kiowas. And he was he was going to be this enormous national figure for the Kiowas. But he may not be a big, enormous national or international figure. In the same way DuBois is because this context is different and his his struggles are different, who he's who he's trying to reach out. to then be a part of that's also different, too, and to say, let's settle into this intellectual space, this tradition that I'm a part of, and stop looking over my shoulder, stop looking over the horizon, you know, and to just settle into it and to learn the beauty of it.

And to see, what does it take, if you're somebody like, like Lone Wolf, who, you know, doesn't have the benefits of education, the benefits of just knowing where the levers of power are? How do you figure out how to get all the way to the Supreme Court with with with a case like that? Even Even, even if it's not successful? But that you figure out how do you fight? How do you how do you take what you have a fight with it, and to fight back? Right.

I still, you know, I still want people to aspire to that, to that gargantuan sense of intellect that Dubois brings into, you know, what I see when I see my African American brothers and sisters in the academy, and then African American writing and other forms of African American thought, who are in that line of that DuBoisian line? You know, I marvel at it, you know, and I say, What a great gift that the world gave, that the African American world gave to everybody, the boys, but especially to the African American world, you know, to set this, this kind of example, and again, not to say that DuBois was perfect, or that you know, that he was just this ideal kind of person in all ways. But intellectually, it's just breathtaking, you know? And yeah, and I guess that was that was, I think, I guess the part that still lives on and that is to say, I really want to hold on to that idea of the intellect as being so crucial to how do we get how do we get from here to where we're going? I’m bringing mine along with me, I'm bringing my intellect along with me. And I don't want to I don't want to fetishize it, I don't want to make it the only thing I have, but I'm bringing it along, because it's helped me so many times. And it's helped other people, other people's intellects have helped them so many times.

Patty: 

And it's important, right, because we, we don't … I just read Dale Turner's book, This is Not a Peace Pipe. And he talks about that he talks about the you know, the, the need for “word warriors”, you know, people that know the language that know how to navigate the legal system, they know how to navigate the intellect, you know, the, the international stage and know how to, I mean, when when I did social, when I did social work, so much of what I did was, you know, was act as almost as an interpreter, you know, for people to be able to access the system, because if you can use you know, if you want to access a certain mental health program, you have to hit the key words, you know, you have to be able to identify the things that get you into their mandate because you might meet their criteria, but unless you can, unless you can articulate it, you don't and you won't get the service and so that was a lot of what I did was that kind of interpretation. And so I think that's what Dale is talking about, is you know, we need these word warriors because they can be those interpreters and get us putting our putting our needs and thoughts in ways that will be heard on the global stage

And I think Art Manuel was really good at that. From a Canadian standpoint, in terms of you know, we're not gonna deal with Canada we're gonna go straight to the World Trade Organization. “We’re nations dammit, we're gonna act like nations” you know, so that he was really good at bringing you know bringing things in and communicating it in a way that the people whose hands on the levers of power knew how knew how to do. So that's really really important you know, but then like he said, we also need that other thread those traditional people because otherwise what are we fighting for? What are we accessing those halls of power for?

Robert:

Right

Patty:

Not you know if it if it's just to set up another you know, just cut it just another capitalist society where we're the landowners instead of the white people. What's the point? That's not that's that that's not that's not going to save anybody that's not going to help anybody. So oh, we're just going to transfer land ownership. That's not a that's not what land back is for that? Do I want you know, do I want to transfer over ownership. Yes. Do I want it to end there? No, that's not that that's not what's going to fix this. So yeah, we need we need both of those traditions. But I think your what was neat was, as you were talking about that, yeah, like when you see that in Black history, you know, you've got like that yin and yang constantly. Both sides talking and making their cases. And then the power is in that, that friction between them. And what emerges and you know, and so often what we hear in Indian country, you know, you start disagreeing, like you had said, you know, being the only Osage you know, they'll say, don't think that.  Well, I know one that does. You know, we're told so often we need to speak with a unified voice, we need to agree we need to agree. And we don't. Disagreement is ok. That's where the important stuff happens.

Kerry: 

Yeah, I find this so interesting to listen to because it one last night it interestingly enough, I was on tick tock, and tick tock has these fascinating little blips of information that you can pull in, and I was actually got on a tic toc. stream or hashtag, where they were playing Malcolm X, they were playing Martin Luther King, they were going into Patrice Lumbaba, um, all of the great African orders that have spoken and held our struggle from here to Africa. And it was fascinating to feel the passion and the power of all of those voices. And what I was left with as I was watching, you know, you go down a tick tock hole, let me tell you tick tock is one of the most addicting things you can get on. And I think after about three hours of it, what I was left with was the power of the voices. But that the sense that because we were, they were so different, or we couldn't connect them, and what power it would have been if that connection could be made.

And so for me to hear both of you speak about the, the other side of that maybe where that, you know, when the voice is too unified, it may not necessarily or is one voice only, it may not have all of the the flow and color of that maybe right is an interesting perspective for me, because I know that one of the things that comes from our school of Black people is that we can't unify, we can't get it together, we you know, our scatteredness, and this is what is not allowing us the whole idea of the fist instead of the fingers, you know, whatever analogy you want to use. So I what comes to mind, for me is the sense of the balance between all of these sides,

You know, we talk a lot on this podcast, Patty, about the different medicines, the different approaches to be able to create the change that we all want to see. And it for me, it's once again, being in appreciation for all of it, getting everybody at a round table, and allowing for a safety space, a space of safety so that every voice can be heard. And then maybe I don't know if it's picking out the best pieces of it. But I, or holding the space for all of it. So that we can bring about change. Because as you as you mentioned, we don't want the same picture that we have now. It's to to evolve it in a way that's going to suit everybody and be relatives. I love that idea. When you say relatives, it just brings me joy, to know that we can all be relative.

Patty:

We are all related.

Robert:

So I think an important concept in that for me is it's in the title for today solidarity. And that, you know that there's a there's a time for talking, there's a time for solidarity, and sometimes I hear people say, Why are you talking about that? We don't have a dog in that fight. You know, I mean, I hear that a lot. And And I'll say, I don't, that's not how I do things. I don't really think about them in that way. Of course, I have a course I have a stake in that. You know, because what's going on there something that needs to be addressed. And so I'm addressed that. I didn't I don't calculate things that way. And I don't think we should, and that that, that.

That solidarity is such an important thing. And I think that at best it does grow out of relationships that are already that already exists. It's so much easier. Those relationships already exist. This, sometimes it doesn't sometimes you have to go stand with people. And that's where you start a friendship is by standing with them. And, and you stand with people without asking a lot of questions, you make up your mind to go stand with them, and then you got to go stand with them. And if you need to leave, then you leave. But you don't you don't say, Now, can we do this another way? Or could we? Could we change our goals a little bit here? It's like, no, no, no, you're you're standing in solidarity. If you can't do that, then stop standing, you know. But that, that, that's hard in and of itself, you know, and it can be hard for people to do. But it's also really important. But I think it's strengthened by the quality of conversations that happen. Before and after.

I think that sometimes people these days are always looking for easy resolution. And they don't realize that part of solidarity is getting together afterwards and saying, what worked about that? What didn't? I had some questions about what went down over there? I wasn't going to slow things down in the moment. But could you kind of clue me in? What was that, you know, I got to pick up a bad vibe from that person. What was that all about? Do you know?

And just to, you know, and one of the things that always is remarkable to me that amongst activists, people, people who really go out and put themselves on the line, it's not usually very hard for, for Black people and Native people to get together to stand with each other. You know, I mean, one of the one of the first things that Black Lives Matters did was to really stand with Native people, you know, other than doing things with and for Black people very specifically, were able to embrace the idea that, that even though Native people are a very small population, in comparison, that they got problems with cops too. Right, and that it's a really violent world out there for Native people, really dangerous place for, you know, for our people to and, and that was no trouble for people inside of that people who were the real activists, they understand that they get it

Kerry: 

And are used to being on the front line.

Robert:

And as an academic, I'm always having to remember that to say, sometimes people on the inside of, you know, the cloistered walls of academia can can have more trouble than then just people around the street people in the street kind of know what's going on. And, and stance and it going back to what Patty said earlier, you know how scary it can be to figure out how am I going to get up there? But am I going to say how am I going to do this right? But you know, the payoff of that is just when you get up there, just how how good it feels. You know, if you know something is right in your heart, and you go and you stand up for it. I was you know, I feel for people that have never done that, you know, who who can't bring themselves to do it not out of pity. But I mean, it's just because you don't know how good it can feel that you've done something. You've done something to make the world a little bit different. You don't have to win, win or lose that day. You’ve already won.

Patty: 

No, that's Whoa, yeah, you give me some really good things to think about. I so appreciate your time.

Robert:

For sure. Well, you're welcome.

Patty:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for this.

Kerry: 

Thank you, Robert. I definitely got to follow you back. I think this talk was amazing, really enlightened. Mind that by night, I appreciate it.

Robert:

Thank you very much for having me.

Patty: 

Bye bye

Robert: See ya’ll Later.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Please note this episode deals with sexuality and sexual violence and may not be suitable for all listeners. Some material may be triggering.

If you do find yourself triggered or having difficulty, please contact your local rape crisis center. If you need assistance locating support, please use RAINN.org in the US and Ending Violence in Canada to locate supportive services.

Kerry: 

We're talking about Tamari’s book, Appealing Because He is Appalling. And it's all about the idea of Black masculinity, colonialism, and erotic racism. And this is a topic that is so near and dear to my heart. Because it's very much about how we perceive ourselves sexually, and how these ties really affect how we are showing up in these colonial spaces. How has the systematic racism, colonialism, you know, all the isms affected us, and in particular, a very forgotten piece of this space, which is the Black man. Black men have been railroaded into one real vice where, where there, I've always looked at it like we we see them, you know, in this sinister space as one product, or we see them as an infallible space and another end of that product. Like it's almost nonexistent. There's no space in between. And Tamari, I really want us to get a moment to, to unpack all of it, because there is a lot here and so much stuff that I had no idea about. And I'm sure we'll we'll get to talking. I'm sure we will. Let's get dive in.

Tamari:

Yes.  No, thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to be with you. And Patti again. Is this our second conversation? I think it's our second?

Patty: 

Yeah, at least second, maybe third.  We’re old friends now.

Tamari:

Yeah. We often do not speak about Black men and disabilities, you know, to talk about police violence, without talking about the disabling of Black men, either psychologically or physically. We're just missing a huge part of that conversation. But not just the the disabilities that arises from being incarcerated or interaction with the police. But the brilliant thing about the paper that Leroy and I wrote, and I wrote is that we take this back to slavery. And slavery was the production of disabilities. And if you look at the nature of resistance and rebellions, from slavery onward, very often you're talking about individuals that were disabled.

So if you go to Haiti, you found that Boukman and others who were the founding figures of the Haitian Revolution, those people were all physically disabled, they had either limbs that were dismembered, or some other such thing. Harriet Tubman, right, she took a piece of metal to the head and had convulsions, all her life. So disabilities is a major part of Black resistance and rebellion.

And if you know, I mean, I think we can get get to this, again, is to talk about Emmett Till, and disabilities. That is a really important piece of disabilities history that not a lot of people know. And Leroy introduced me to it. And I did a bit of research on that. And it's just absolutely amazing that this young boy had a speech impediment. So he had like a speaking disability and his mother in Chicago taught him in order to form his words, he should whistle. So that led to, uh, I forget the name of the guy that led the charge. I think his last name was Bryant in thinking that this little boy was whistling at his wife and his wife knew that that was not the case. And upon her deathbed admitted that it was all concocted. So disabilities is a major part of resistance. But it's also produced by anti-Blackness and the particular targeting of Black men.

So about me. So I'm a professor of sociology at Brock University. been there since 2006. And my areas of specialization and interest are Blackness and anti-Blackness in Western and Asiatic cultures. I do not separate the west from the east because it's all Asia people talk about the European continent. All the continents begin with “A” except for North and South America which are joined by an isthmus.

Patty: 

Yeah, I saw Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, I was listening to a panel she was on and she referred to the Asian peninsula of Europe.

Tamari:

That's what it is. There's no Eurasia, it's Asia..

Kerry: 

I just love that. That is a drop of knowledge. Now, you know,

Keep going, Tamari, with, with, with this interest of yours being, you know, Blackness, anti-Blackness and understanding, I really want to hold space. First off, for the topic matter that we're going to be discussing tonight. I really recognize I mean, we've we've gathered before, and I really recognize, you know, how our Black men especially, are not necessarily honored, nor do we lend voice for what their experience dealing with a colonial system can be. And I really would love for us.  One we're honoring you. I'm I also want to just acknowledge the the bravery or the the fact that you're speaking out and giving us some context, because I think that it's unusual in some of the ways that we've we've been told about Black men, you know, and and what there are, and I really want you to give us some of that. What, when we talk about this book, what was your thought process and putting it together and compiling it? What is it about?

Tamari:

You know, so my main thought processes was that I went through my undergraduate years, taking courses in feminism, and women's history. And my my second published essay was a critique of first wave feminism in Canada. Talking about, looking at the first wave feminists in Canada, they were really anti-immigrant. They're really hated Chinese people. They were eugenicists. They hated mixed race unions and couples, and they particularly hated Black men and white women. And they were all about this Nordic Anglo keeping Canada white. And if anybody's going to get the vote, it should be them, it should be them because they're the models of civilization.

So I went through studying this stuff. And then I kept thinking about my experiences growing up in Toronto. And as a young adult, going to nightclubs and something just didn't sit right with me. Because, you know, I had experiences where I have to wonder what explained it.

Like if, you know, I gave one instance in the introduction, where walk into a club, downtown Toronto, was about 22 years old. And, you know, young white woman, looking my age walks directly in front of me, like, and I you know, I couldn't get up, get away from her because she's like, walking right in front of me, right? So I just walk into the club, like, what's going on here, right? She just walks right in front of me, looks me in the eyes, and clutches my testicles, and my penis, and squints and then gives me that look, and then lightly squeezes and then walks off and what what the f**k just happened? Like, this doesn't make any sense, right? So of course, my night was ruined.

But as an undergraduate student, I'm thinking, Okay, this doesn't fit with the narrative that men are the ones that dominate women, men are the ones that objectify women, it just didn't fit in my experience. And the more brothers that I spoke to, the more I kept hearing the same thing. But there was nothing in the literature that would help me to explain what this was.

And so I actually intended to write my dissertation on this very topic. And so I approached a white feminist scholar who does at when I was a student at OISE, whose specialization is gender, sexuality. So I thought, Okay, this is this is someone that I could work with, who can help me process like, what theory can explain my experience and experiences of other Black men? So I sat down with this person who I hoped would have been my supervisor. And I explained my my interest in this topic. And this white woman just looked at me and busted out laughing and said, Now you know how we feel. Like oh, s**t, okay.

So there's no way that I can write a dissertation that would deconstruct this phenomenon, because I will be basically assailing feminist theory. Right so it that idea never left me. And so when I just went I was  theorising you know how to go about doing this book, I thought, You know what, I'm not going to do a sole authored book, I put out a call for papers, I reached out to people around the world. And this was starting in about 2013, 2014. And so the book has been, this particular book in this formation has been in progress that long, because I knew from my readings that these dynamics were taking place elsewhere around the world and across time, and that in some situations, it had like really national significance and importance.

Like in Japan, which was a country basically occupied by the United States, from like, 1853, when Admiral Perry went into Tokyo Bay with his Black ship, right, this Black ship, and his bodyguard were like these African American guys that were six foot five, ebony Black, super muscular. And the Japanese were like, you know, five foot three. And so they're looking up with these giants. Who were the body guards for Admiral Perry, and it's like, oh, s**t, if this little white guy is commanding these big negros, then we better listen to him.

So Blackness became this weaponization, to help the Japanese to understand that you should submit now or else we're going to set these guys after you. Right? So Black masculinity in Japan has this interesting history of being the symbolic front edge of US domination and conquest in the country that got really ramped up and amplified with the, with the with the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and then the occupation of Japan thereafter.

So I really thought that I needed not to write a sole authored book, but to bring in other people from different regions of the world, so that we can understand what the dynamics are, how they look differently, how they look similar. And just to have a better understanding of what this issue is that we're dealing with, where we just like lack the capacity to see Black men as fully human beings.

Patty: 

The one thing that I was really into that really intrigued me was the discussions about queerness, and about anti queer beliefs and attitudes throughout the Caribbean, because I see a lot of parallels with how that takes place. How that has taken place in Indigenous communities as well. So can you because I think you contributed to one of those essays as well.

Tamari:

So those were two two separate essays. One is by Kumar McIntosh. And he was addressing the issue of anti queer representations in newspaper cartoons in Jamaica. And he did a really nice deconstruction of how that anti queer representation fits in with respectability politics and this kind of light skinned politics. And this the colonial narrative that gay men or gayness is somehow antithetical to what it means to be Jamaican. Right. So he does a really nice paper in deconstructing how class bias is part of the colonial logic and mentality that leads to that sort of representation.

And what I really like about his paper is that he does not go down that rabbit hole of mass constructing all homophobia and all anti queer politics in Jamaica, somehow inherent to the culture and pervasive to the people. Because, I can tell you that in my experience, when I like so for example, there's a JA Rogers right, the one of the most famous Jamaican historians ever who was like one of the leading figures in the Harlem Renaissance. He's got like a bunch of books, race of class, recent race, not race and class. I forgot the other part of the title is a three volume set. It'll come to me in a minute because actually cite him. In one of his books, I think volume two or three, he talks about homosexuality in Jamaica, and he's writing about this in 1943. And what he ended up saying is that when the British ships, the British warships come to dock in the harbor, the pharmacies sell out of unguents. And like I read this a long time ago, and then I reread it incredibly impressive. For the book, and I didn't know what the hell an unguent was, it’s gel basically. Right?

So Jay Rogers is writing about this in 1943. Right, that it was same sex relationships was just a fundamental part of the culture as it is everywhere else. But there's, something happened. Post 1945 Post 1980, post IMF Post World Bank really eviscerating the economic life of Jamaica. Right. And so we have lost the capacity to look at gender and sexuality politics, outside of economics. But when you factor in economics, when you factor in the history of buck breaking in Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean, that homophobia takes on a particular valence and a narrative, that it has different meanings and practices on the ground.

When you look at Dancehall culture, transgender gay men, they are a big part of Dancehall culture. So how does it come to be that in Dancehall culture, you have an acceptance of homosexuality, but in formal politics and its articulation, you have a different narrative. And I don't think that the Western narrative of framing Jamaica as a homophobic space is in fact, accurate and a really useful analysis in articulation of what gender and sexuality politics looks like in Jamaica. So I think Kumar's chapter does a wonderful job of deconstructing that homophobia and that queer/anti queer politics, without castigating the totality of Jamaican culture.

The other paper by Zizwe Poe, um not Zizwe Poe. Sorry. That's their, that's the father.

I keep getting the father and son mixed up (Watufani M. Poe). So his paper looks at queer politics in Cuba, and in Brazil, just about the time of 1888. And shortly after, when slavery was abolished in the Spanish Dominions was 1888, rather than 1865 in the US, and 1833, in the British dominions, so think about that. 1888. That's just like, so someone alive in Brazil now has a grandmother, or grandfather, who was directly enslaved.

So he writes this wonderful analysis of literature and some of the first novels that were based on same sex relationships between African and European males. But he also does another wonderful piece of work of looking at the Inquisition. And a lot of what was involved in the Inquisition was these records about aberrant sexual behavior. So, he does an amazing chapter deconstructing all of this. And I think his core point is that this idea that same sex male relationships is somehow anathema to Blackness, really does not understand Black history and African history. And this is like a raging debate where some people are saying, Africa didn't have homosexuality. And other people are saying, well, when you look at the archaeological evidence, the narratives from the first the Spanish, the Jesuits and others, it's very clear that they were same sex relationships and that there were transgendered males who were core parts of their communities.

So when you look at the historical evidence, and you look at the narratives from the enslaved Africans in the Americas, it makes it very clear that homosexuality was a fundamental norm, a regular part of relationships. But at the same time, his work demonstrates that African males were definitely sexually assaulted by slave masters and other white males. And this is one of those aspects of slavery that is only not, I'm sorry, that is only now beginning to get it's just do in terms of research.

Kerry: 

For me as we're we're unpacking this, there's, there's this sense of like heaviness that I feel because I recognize, you know, I have Black sons. My father is a Black man, and you know, this doing them this justice of holding the space. And speaking about this, you know, I when I was reading through the book Tamari what really touched me it was a triggering moment because you mentioned it in the foreword, you know, it's in the forward where you talk about this sense or this, the the the statistics about Black men and sexual assault, and we have so not put those two pieces together. And I really want us to dive into that. Tell us what the truth of that matter is? How are how is that showing up? As well in the way Black men are, are, are showing up just how are they in conjunction to this reality against these numbers? I don't even want to go there. I'm gonna let you do it.

Tamari:

So the thanks for asking that question. So I'll just give like a little bit of these statistics from Canada. In the city of Toronto, right. Black men are 4% of the population. But of all complaints of sexual assault against the police, to the Special Investigations Unit, they represent 25% of all complaints. Right?

I will, I will, I was asked to be on a supervisory committee for a student. That was her thesis was looking at strip searching in the prisons. And I thought, yeah, great, I have no problem being on this committee, I could be very useful. And at a certain point, I had to say to the supervisor and the student that look, I have to withdraw from this committee, because I just can't process this notion that's being constructed, this narrative, that somehow strip searching of women in prisons is somehow much more egregious, harmful and devastating to them than it is to males. I showed the student that 80% of all strip searching that occurs across the province of Ontario, with the bulk of it being done in Toronto, 80% of all persons strip searched by the cops are males. But when you look at the report from this, this this agency in Toronto, they don't actually say any percent of males are strip searched, they say 20 to 25% of females are strip searched. So you have to do the math. Right. So even at that level, those people that are compiling the data, simply refuse to see that 75 to 80% of all persons strip searched are males, and therefore they're not obligated to do any further research and inquiry in terms of what the impacts are. Right.

Now, when you when you, the data out of the United States, right, is that and we don't we don't have this data in Canada, the data out of the United States is that there are as many men raped in prison, as there are women in free society that are raped. Prisons are a rape factory. It is probably no less the case in Canada. Prison is also rape factory for women. We tend not to think and when you read Angela Davis's work, for example, in her book on prison abolition, right? She talks about sexual violence in the prison, but make no mention that males are predominantly the victims of rape in prisons. But she also doesn't talk about women as being raped by other women in prison. So whether you're talking about males or females, prisons, are rape factories, no matter which way you cut it, right.

And I think one of the the points that I tried to make in my introduction, and in that preface is that to some extent, we really need to take a step back from sharply linking these essential categories of male and female with privilege and victimization, vis a vis, sexual violence, right, it really disables our capacity to see that there's a way in which sexual violence works, that disables our capacity to understand that the rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault is higher among same sex relationships, meaning, lesbian, gay and trans.

So where then do we go, if we can have a rational conversation about power, because we're too busy fixating on what the genitalia of the people are to presume that they either are, should be punished more frequently? Because they're males, or that they're more victims because they're females and require special treatment? Right. So this is not to disavow the violence to women, but it's to say that we need to shift the dial like something is happening And we're losing the capacity to have meaningful conversations that help us to understand what sexual violence looks like, and how it functions in the lives of males.

Because we're only, researchers are only now beginning to gather the data, and it's principally in the United States. And what they're saying is that we have missed this significantly, in terms of the impact on young boys that are sexually assaulted, and males that are sexually assaulted both by males and females.

Kerry: 

I really enjoy this line of conversation, because what comes up for me when I hear these stories is how, how much, you know, you know, men, and Black men in particular, are just simply, you know, not even in the picture, you know, this sense of once again, the erasure around how we have allowed Black men to show up. And then let's think about the how that picture that erasure is affecting the ways that our Black men are interrelating, are being, you know, judged in society in a particular way. Because normally, we don't see Black men as being, you know, the victims of the assault. And yet, there's this, you know, huge picture of them being the person who offers the assault. And I really want us to break that down, because that goes into some things. And Patty, I know you had something to offer to that.

Patty: 

Well, because I mean, early on in the book, you make the point about, you know, there is no universal manhood, masculinity and, you know, universal men versus universal women. You know, and I've heard that in, you know, from a number of Indigenous feminists as well, you know, rejecting this universal womanhood. You know, so this idea of the, when we talk about like this universal womanhood and this universal manhood, we're not able to talk about these other things. And you know, you also make the point you know about we know that men get sexually assaulted we joke about them in prison, don't pick up the soap you say, right, how often to cops threaten person that they're interrogating, or whatever with “Yeah, you're gonna go to jail, and you're gonna get raped? And how are you going to like that?” And it's like, Dude, I stole Skittles, like, why are you doing this? You know, like Mariame Kaba uses that language too, “How do you be a, you know, call yourself an advocate against sexual violence and then send people to rape factories,” right? How do you? How do you do that? How so we know that men are sexually victimized and Black and Indigenous and making up the bulk of the prison population in Canada. And yet, we still call the cops on them. How is that not sexual violence,

Tamari:

it's hard not to understand it that way when you frame it that way. And that's because you're rethinking the narrative. And you know, as Patty, as you were relaying that, that perspective, I was thinking about Omar Khadr. Like this was a 16 year old boy in Guantanamo Bay, and the CIA interrogators in order to get this child soldier, a child, who should never had been incarcerated, to get him to confess, they said to him, we're going to put you into a US prison with four big Black men and you know what they're going to do to you.

So even at that level, the idea that rape is an instrument of control in prisons is one thing. But to use this as a means of threatening a child, to say that a Black man, this is how we’re going to punish you, if you don't confess. That just shows the extent to which of phenomena called sociogenic.

This myth of the Black man as a rapist is so pervasive in the culture that we need to begin to clearly name what I'm calling the Black phallic fantastic, which is the idea that Black men are hypersexual, they've never seen a and typically it's, you know, heterosexual. So they've never seen a woman that they would not want to sleep with. And especially if it's a white woman, oh my god, right? They're hyper sexual. They always want sex. Second, they're priapic they have large penises. Oh, everybody knows that. It's just like this thing. That's a part of the culture. I've had Black women complain to me that their white female work friends ask them if it's true. And how would they know? Because they have Black sons. So white women are asking Black women if it's true, a white woman who might be have a spouse who was a Black man or any other woman, other women what women would ask them, Is it true? Right

So we demean, and we discipline men for having locker room talk. But we know that white women and other women do this. Right? So that's the priapic myth. And the other is that well, we're prone to rape. If, if the accusation is made, it's reverse onus that dude has to prove that he didn't do it. This is just how pervasive these these three aspects of what I'm calling the Black phallic fantastic are and it's mobilized in different ways throughout the culture at different levels.

And right now, I'm just about to launch my, my research project for a book, that my next book, calling it sex tropes in trauma, the intimate lives of Black men, and I want to understand how do these tropes affect you? Right, because I've been talking to enough Black men to be disturbed by what by what I'm told, that's for some of them, their quote, unquote, first experience is being 5, 7, 8, 12, 16, years old, right, and being introduced to sex, very often by older girls, and grown women. But the older these guys get, the more they frame it as an experience. So they don't even have a language, to name having their sexual sovereignty, their autonomy removed from them, while as youngsters.

And what I'm what I want to get at is, like, how has this affected your life, if you have had any of these experiences, whether it's with the tropes, or with actually having your autonomy being taken from you, because we don't have a language for it. And I think that's one of my, that's my mission, really, with this next book, is to help to develop a language. And I think this will lead Black men to be able to live more full lives with higher quality, intimate relationships, if they can deconstruct these tropes and the trauma with their partners.

Kerry: 

Oh, okay, Tamari, I have you just sent chills down my, to my very core, I am really, really resonating deeply with so many of the things that you said, one being that I work very closely with Black men, with couples. And it has been my experience as well, that that this this sense of the Black man, or, you know, having these very early sexual experiences, and somehow, as you said, it is created to, you know, we know that when we go through trauma, we, we have different levels of acceptance of what that traumatic event is, and, and depending on how you react, you may freeze, or you numb out and then I believe that it's reinforced by our societal norms that tell our men that, you know, they're allowed to have these sexual conquests. And yet, I too, have noticed at an alarming rate that I see are Black men are having these experiences as young as five, the median age that I have seen is around 12, 13. That seems to be a median age. And the how that has shown up is a lot of these same people end up in my chair afterwards.

And I find that there's been this, there's been several disconnections in the way that the perceptions of sexuality, this idea of even being able to associate the trauma, I do a lot of work around just even opening that door to recognize that there might have been, you know, what, do you know at 12. You don't know these things at 12, curiosity maybe, but what do you know?  You know, it's speaking that language and giving them that language.

I think it's such a powerful space, because so many of us and, and in particular, Black men don't. And I it's funny, I'm really interested and working on developing a course myself a system to offer some of the healing spaces that we need to around it. And it is novel, allowing even to connect into that emotional space that allows men to feel safe enough to even be able to acknowledge it is is some work that definitely is needed. And I am just commending you if this is you know that that's the next step for you. As you taking this further what.

How is, when we talk about this. How is Black men? How are Black men sitting in it? Do you know what I mean? Like we know that we have the you know, you have the Black phallic fantastic. Can you dive in and explain that just a little bit more like break that down? Because I really want people to understand and hear this. Like, when you mentioned this theory, I went, Wow, this is it. This is it. Can you really break it down for us?

Tamari

Okay, so thanks for the question. So, what I've done is I've taken the three major sexual stereotypes about Black men, because Fanon, Baldwin, who are the core theorists that are used in this book, all of their work deals with those three tropes or stereotypes. Others do it also, right, Chester Himes, Calvin Harrington, others do it. But there's something about the way in which James Baldwin was so persistent and so pervasive. And he was a cultural critic/psycho analyst who took these sexual stereotypes that are in the ether in the popular culture. And he brought it down to the level of daily practice. And he often used his own experience. And Fanon took it from the vantage point of the psychoanalyst’s couch. Right, who would psychoanalyze Western culture. And of course, the problem with Fanon is that he never applied his own theories to himself, whereas Baldwin did.

So there's a whole space and a gap in Fanon’s articulation of these tropes, right? That not even those who focus on his work, have paid close enough attention to, to see that Black Skin/White Masks, for all else that it was, it was an autobiography. Fanon was making self, making sense of himself as a colonized man, who could not get out of the space of colonization. Right? So this, he was literally working a lot of this stuff out through his patience. And this is what came through in Black Skin, White Masks, but I don't think a lot of his experts, those people who specialized in his work have paid close enough attention to that.

So what I did was I took these three tropes, the hypersexuality, right? Because you know, this presumption that well, Black men always love sex, and you say sex, you think Black man, you think big penis, you think Black men. You think rapist, you think Black men. And this is what was core to the work of Baldwin throughout much of his body of work, and also Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks. And what they were getting at was, how do we deconstruct this, so that Black men can be seen as human beings and live human lives, and that others will not depend on defining who they are by imposing those sorts of tropes on Black men so that they can see themselves as innocent.

So what I did was, I said, Look, how far does this go back? And you got to go back to Greece and Rome. And people some people might say, oh, Tamari, you're taking it way too far. Well, okay. Well, you go to some of the Roman baths in North Africa. And you look on the, you look at the frescoes or reproduce some of those in the book, where did those come from? That was Romans reproducing those narratives of priapism as applied to Black men. But here's the twist. Priapism on the African significant signified barbarism. On a Roman is signified responsible use of power.

Because for the Romans, the penis was an instrument. The phallus was an instrument of power. The bigger the better. On an African or barbarian it connoted savagery, and sexual irresponsibility. This was part of how Rome envisioned African men because it also served as a symbol of fertility. So kind of like the the lawn jockeys, you know, holding up the candle, right? You rub the head for good luck on your way out of your house. Okay, those symbols, those frescoes of African males that were priapic, those were meant to connote fertility, but it also meant to connote barbarism on the African. Those things function together.

You go back a little further with Galen, the Greco Roman physician, he said that there's certain things that are unique to Africans, right. One of them is their large penises, and that they're hilarious. What what where would he get that idea from the Greeks and the Romans had a conception of moral geography where you were geographically that signified your moral qualities and characteristics, Mediterranean - Middle Earth. Those were the people that were rational, balanced, reasoned, they had equilibrium. People in the south or oversexed, people in the North, the Nordics, people, they said that they were frigid, and stupid. So all these Nordic people taking Greece and Rome as their inheritance. The Greeks and the Romans despise them. Right?

So when you go now to like the, the, the 17th, and the 18th and 19th century in Europe, who were they reading? They were reading Plato, of course, but they were also reading Theadorus of Sicily. They're reading all these other Greco Roman, Greek and Roman philosophers, geographers, that located race, with geography with moral characteristics, and they always associated hypersexuality, rape propensity, and large penises with Africans.

Kerry: 

And, and what that brings up, interestingly enough, where I went with that is into the Middle Eastern slave trade. It's not something that we very often discuss, but the fact that, you know, the, you know, the Middle East, or moving into that part of the world that they were having, you know, they were slaving enslaving Africans for about 500 years before the Middle Passage started, you know, and we also don't talk about that in that realm of the slave trade, that element of creating eunuchs. So so many of our Black men were actually castrated. And so I think that's very interesting to note that, you know, this idea of power when you when you bring up this the sense of the Greco, the Greco Roman era, considering penis size, being about power, I find it very interesting that the very first thing that would happen when they enslaved our people or Black men, that the first thing that went was the penis.

Tamari:

So that's an interesting observation and let me add a bit more to that. Right. When you look at the enslavement of African people, by Arabs, mostly and to a lesser extent, what we now call India. One of the interesting things is that is the demographics, the Trans Saharan and the Trans Indian Ocean enslavement of African people, two out of every three African taken was a female. The other 1/3 were males. And they were chiefly used in military service, but also in the bureaucracy as eunuchs. The Khalif of Baghdad in the 10th century, he had something like 10,000 or 11,000 eunuchs in his bureaucracy. 4000 were white males from Eastern Europe, the other 7000 were African males. There was a tendency to prefer eunuchs who were Africans because they will be castrated. And in the Turkish Empire in Turkey itself, like in Ottoman Turkey. The the the royal bureaucracy was literally like virtually all staffed by African males. And many Turks don't know the extent to which Africans were not only in the military, but predominated in the palace, right and among the upper classes, but we, the most Turks don't know this because they could not sexually reproduce. Ah, and so the castration centers were in Egypt, right, one of the main centers was in Egypt, in Alexandria, and in Spain.

Kerry: 

Wow. See, once again, I had no idea. Thank you for that piece of information.

Tamari:

So they also had it was a it was, it was it was an art and a science. So clean shaved were those who had the both the penis and testicles cut off. And shaved were only those who had just just a testicles cut off. The mortality rate for those that were clean shaved was extraordinarily high. And in some cases, the surgical procedure amounted to no more than a stone crushing the genitals of 12, 13, 14, and 15 year old boys. Right, this was the level of barbarism and brutality, that was meted out to African males during the Saharan and the East Indian slave trade. So if those males were not used in the military, and they were, if they were used in the bureaucracy, they were very, very often castrated, the mortality rate depending on the type of the procedure was not high. And absolute disregard for the survival of the males was not a concern, because it was cheaper to replace them than to grow them.

Patty: 

We often think about, you know, kind of the history of Blackness beginning with the transatlantic slave trade. But really, Africa and Europe aren't that far apart. You know, they're not that far apart. I'm like, you know, you talk about the, these tropes going back, you know, to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome and further further back, because this is not a huge geography that we're talking about, and trade routes and relationships, and wherever, wherever Black slavery went, you know, or Afrocentric, slavery went, That's they weren't all eunuchs, as like, you say, were in the military. So they form communities that remain to this day, like in the case of, of the Siddih in India, and we forget that we get so kind of locked in our own little world, that, you know, we forget that there have been Black people in England for a very long time. You know, there have been Black people in France and Spain and, you know, kind of throughout, you know, those places for a very long time, and not always enslaved. Not, you know, you know, that's also kind of a very narrow picture that we have. And, and that's what carries forward in our current thinking about Blackness, as we only have this kind of very small, very skewed perspective of, you know, of what it is. So that's, I mean, that's something else that I really appreciated about your book is the large, global and historical context of it, that makes us see just how much bigger it is, which shows just really how absurd our current view is. And the current limitations of the way we think about Black men and Blackness in general. It's, it's ridiculous, it’s so tightly controlled this narrative, this, you know, white supremacy, white supremacist, colonial narrative, but it's ridiculous. It doesn't, it doesn't hold. The center does not hold.

Kerry: 

right. I love that so much, Patty, because it's true. For me, when I was reading this book, at the same way, same thing for you, even as a Black person, like just the expansiveness of this body of work, like you really do touch from so many different spaces. And it really brought home, how we, as Black people, and in particular, are Black men whose voice doesn't get heard. They are not a monolith. They are, you know, have different experiences have had, um. Even though there are commonalities, which you know, I think you're drawing in, but the there are these differences in the way that we have had those experiences. However, we don't give the voice to our men to speak it. And as you said, that language hasn't even been developed. So, you know, Tamari, I just want to really commend you for you know, doing this, to me, it's groundbreaking work. I know, we I know, there have been others that have come before, you've quoted some of my you know, I call them my hallowed babas you know, Dr. Diap, and, and others that you've quoted. But I really recognize how with there's so much more to go. And I I'm, I'm we're at our hour, so that's kind of why I'm like, Man, I feel like we've only just like we just we just did like 10 pages in like that's, that's what it feels like. And there's so much more to cover. I really would love for us to come back even to break down like this, the sense of queerness and how that has shown up that there's just so much disabilities and how that has shown up in We got to have you back Tamari?

Tamari:

Well, I would, I would definitely say thank you. And I would, I would definitely bring my colleagues with me that contributed to the book, because they have to speak to the work from their own perspective, because the work than they did was just absolutely brilliant,

Patty: 

Like for myself as an Indigenous woman, and thinking about the men in our communities, and, you know, kind of their experiences, because, you know, our men are also hyper sexualized, and, you know, on the cover of, you know, those bodice ripping romance novels and, you know, and kind of, you know, play that, you know, portrayed as the, you know, the savage, and, you know, always in a loincloth with a rippling chest, right, like, it's, I don't know, like, it's always in that way, we talk about the hyper sexualization of the men and the women in two very different ways, right, like the woman is always seen as the victim. And the man is always seen as the predator. And we don't see that by framing our men in this way. And we do it ourselves. You know, because we buy into that stuff, right? Like, we've heard it from the time we were little, you know, but, you know, that is in itself a form of sexual violence, because we're putting them in this box, that is not helpful, and is not I mean,

I could just go in so many in so many ways about this, but we just had our sisters in spirit event yesterday. And the woman who and one of the women who organized it, who spoke at the beginning, she said, I know, it's called Sisters in Spirit, and we're here for our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. But we're also here for our two spirited people and for our men, and for all of those who are experiencing sexual violence and murder and going missing. This was not only for us, this is for all of us, because these things are pervasive in our communities, and whiteness, patriarchy, colonialism. That's the problem. That's the problem, not each other. And we are here together.

So thank you so much for this book, I'm gonna be unpacking this for a while.

Tamari:

Patty, if you can, if you could encourage any First Nations, male to do an MA or PhD on exactly that issue that you mentioned, it is a, it's screaming to be done. The issue of the hyper sexualization of First Nation males, it's across the 19th century, into the 20th century, it is still pervasive, it's with us. But again, we don't have a language for it, because that work is really, I think I've read just a little bit of it. There's something out there. But I don't think to the extent that people have caught on to really do that research.

Patty: 

Well, I think we're very comfortable with the idea of women as victims, we're very comfortable with that. And we're willing to throw lots of money at it and special days and everything, the idea of our men being victims, we're not that comfortable with that

Kerry: 

I and I, you just hit the nail on the head. And I think what is so powerful about this is when we talk about the ways that we are dissecting colonialism, we are offering up medicines, I think this is an imperative part, until we allow a space for, you know, our men to be able to shine, to be able to stand up to be able to voice and bring power to their voice in their vulnerability. Because what I think we've excluded from men is that sense of their vulnerability and the ability to be safe, to be heard. So as we develop the language as we create these truths, we as we have these conversations, this is one of the ways that we tear apart this system as it stands because it joins us. It allows us to feel it allows us to create healing. And I'm so, so grateful to know you Tamari. This is great work you're doing. I really appreciate you

Tamari:

my sisters. I want to thank you both, Patty and Kerry, this is wonderful. Thank you. I look forward to being back.

Patty:

We'll see you again. Bye bye.

Kerry: 

We're doing this again. Thank you both. Bye. Good night.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Patty:  So we're here talking Deondre Smiles about Indigenous geographies. And I took like grade 10 geography that was the extent of my geography training, which means I learned about glacial movement and labeling rivers and all of that stuff. But I mean, first off, just the idea of Indigenous geographies from a land bank perspective is really interesting. Because colonial borders are one thing biozones are another thing. And so it's just seemed like a real this really fascinating topic that I know almost nothing about. So why don't you introduce yourself? Explain a little bit about your work and then and then we'll get into kind of what what we mean when we're talking about Indigenous geography.

Deondre:  Sure, I'd be happy to. So my name is Dr. Deondre Smiles.  I use he him pronouns as well as the Ojibwemowin general pronoun win.  I am a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, I'm of Ojibwe, Black, and settler ancestry is specifically Swedish. On my mother's side, my mother was Ojibwe and Swedish. My father was African American man from Oklahoma. And so I am currently an assistant professor of geography at the University of Victoria. I'm out on the west coast of BC, Canada. Some other interesting facts about me, I'm originally from Minneapolis, did a did a bachelor's degree in geography at a tiny little State University that probably noticed nobody's heard of in Minnesota, I did a master's degree in global Indigenous Studies at the University of Minnesota and did a PhD in geography at Ohio State where I also did a postdoc for a year as a, as a history postdoc. Well, they're kind of interesting things about me, I tend to not think of myself as a super interesting person. So usually, I'm at a loss about this. I also, also sometimes, trying to talk about myself is really hard, but that's perfectly alright.

Probably the coolest thing about me are probably, you know, the people surrounding me right? Married to a wonderful woman for almost two years now we have a cat so um, that's probably what I'm, besides posting a lot of things about Indigenous geographies, on Twitter. I'm also well known for posting photos of my cat um, quite often. So I do that. I live out in Victoria. Most of the time, I'm actually talking to you tonight from Columbus, Ohio, where my wife is still here doing a doctoral degree at OSU. Back for our reading break, and doing some doing some other kind of appointment type of things. Avid musician. Yeah, that's pretty much that's pretty much me in a nutshell.

I mean, obviously, there'll be far much more that we'll talk about here in this interview. But specifically when it comes to Indigenous geographies, because that's what I really describe myself is, my interests in that work are multifaceted, to say the least. And so there's kind of a couple of key strands of my work that I really have drawn upon. And the first one is what we would call critical Indigenous geographies, right? Like bringing the way that Indigenous peoples engage with space and place into conversations with power and race and economics and capitalism and colonialism and all these things. The other strand is what what we would call in the United States like tribal cultural resource preservation, probably north of the border in Canada would be you'd probably use a term of, you know, Indigenous resource management or a cultural resource management.

And so a lot of my work over the last, oh, six years of my, my education and in my academic career have been focusing on the ways that tribal nations in the US and First Nations in Canada and Indigenous nations around the world have found very creative and unique ways to protect on cultural sites such as burial grounds against development and disturbance. That's been that was the focal point of my dissertation. And what I'm doing now at UVic is bringing in some of my other interests that such as science and technology studies, political ecology, or the studies of how politics and power engage with the natural environment. In an Indigenous research ethics in exploring the ways that these Indigenous nations are now using the lessons that they learn from defending the dead and applying that to more than human relatives such as you know, the land, water animals, plants, especially in an era of anthropogenic climate crisis that it seems like we as Western global northern society seem to have the throttle down, like at full in our hurdling ourselves straight into this.

And I think it's important with that where you see a lot of discourse nowadays about oh, well, the world is ending we need to look at you know, colonizing space. And you know, what are we going to do when the world ends, and I draw upon really, really awesome scholars like Kyle White, and other Indigenous scholars, especially a lot of Indigenous women and Two Spirit and queer thinkers that say, well, Indigenous peoples have already lived through the apocalypse, right? Like we have already seen, the apocalypse happened on our lands, and in the ways that colonialism and capitalism seeks to sever us from those connections. And so maybe if folks actually listened to Indigenous peoples, we might be able to offer something about how we can deal with Apocalypse, and how it's not necessarily the end of the world, but maybe an opportunity for us to reframe how we are in relation with the world.

And so that's the work that I do. I'm starting up a lab, a geography lab at UVic. In that regard, we call ourselves the Geographic Indigenous Futures lab, or GIF lab for short. While I say we have labs, mainly me right now, but I'm recruiting graduate students to work with me and work in the lab. So, if you're an Indigenous student who's really interested in space and place, and you want to go get a master's in geography, I'll make sure to drop my contact information here with the host some definitely come talk to me, I'm recruiting for fall 2022. Now, so I'll leave it there. Because otherwise I could do the time honored Ojibwe tradition of kind of going on and on and talking for a while, but we have, I'm sure you'd have some some questions you want to throw my way. And I'd love to just have a conversation with both of you. So thank you for having me.

Kerry: You know, it's interesting, I just left the shores of BC. On Saturday, I was on the west side, visiting my family, my daughters out there. And the one thing that I will say about being in BC, especially in the Vancouver area, we were right in Burnaby. North Vancouver, like we were around places there is that you you pick up, the land speaks you know, there's there is no doubt that there is a sense about the space of BC that feels old and nurtured and loved. And that energy, that space of being in that can only have been curated by those who have known and understood this land.

And interestingly enough, I was I was there spending time with my granddaughter. And I you know, Halloween was coming up. And she mentioned the idea of a zombie apocalypse. And so I thought it was so funny when you mentioned how we understand the land because what I had turned to her and said Is she was like, what if there's a zombie apocalypse Nanny. And I said to her, let me tell you something. We are people of Indigenous and of color. We've been there and done that. We don't, no nothing about the apocalypse is gonna sway us. And so she looked at me and she was like, Wow, is that true? And I said, look at where we are. This land is eons old, it has existed before us, and it will exist after us. And there are some of us that do understand this space.

So with that, Deondre.  My question for you is, are we listening anymore? Do you believe and it sounds like you know, I kind of feel that you may go this way that the the ears are now right, to truly hear the voices that are have always been an understood meaning out.

Deondre: So yeah, that's a really, really great question. Kerry, I think that we are definitely in a position where the ears are more open than they were probably a generation or two ago. I mean, one of the things that I deal with as an Indigenous geographer is still this, this this overarching kind of thought that well, you know, why do you study Indigenous geography? You know, are there Indigenous people left?  I think about in my PhD program, being at a departmental happy hour. Having fellow grad students decided that I was going to be the person to try to sharpen their theoretical claws on and say, you know, why do you do Indigenous geographies? Didn't didn't colonialism win?  And I'm you know,  I'm like, well, it didn't because I'm standing here right in front of you right now, you know, right like

But, you know, these are the things that we have to deal with. I think that in the current political climate that we find ourselves here in North America, particularly, I think that people are starting to realize that Indigenous peoples have a lot to say about how to live in relation with the environment. And it's becoming more than the romanticized  “Oh, yes, Indigenous peoples are these like, you know, very deeply spiritual folks that are out there, you know, living in community with the, with the, with the animals and things like that,” you know, this very kind of pseudo spiritual environmentalist BS that really infantilizes Indigenous peoples and kind of places us as part of, of the environment.

And what they're starting to realize is, oh, no Indigenous peoples have, you know, these really complex systems of environmental stewardship, um in particular, some that my colleagues do really, really great work on, you know, ecologies of fire management and stewardship, or lands, you know, stewardship, that are based upon, you know, long standing, you know, worldviews and ontologies and epistemologies that have predated colonization, right.

Um, you know, in particular, in BC, you know, having just dealt with the, you know, these massive fires that burned across the province this summer, I had a pyro geographer, who's from a tribe in California, come into my class just a couple of weeks ago. And he talked about fire. And he said, yet when I go around, and I talk to people about fire, for example, right, their first inclination is like, fire in forest and fire in the environment is bad, right? Like, you don't want wildfires and things like that. He says, No, if you actually do it, right, and you actually do do it properly, and you don't just you know, it isn't just some out of control fire, but it's done with an eye on the ecosystem and things like that, based on these cultural values that other tribal nations have have thought about, you can find that fire is like a really beneficial thing, for example, and it blew my students minds.

I think the obstacle that we are facing right now, though, with this kind of opening of the ears, it's not that people aren't willing to listen, what we oftentimes have to deal with is that we still have to deal with ideas of theft of Indigenous knowledge, for example. So right now, I think we're kind of we go in and out of this, this framework where settler academics and settler policymakers, governmental leaders, like all of a sudden, you know, and I've noticed this in Canada, more than the United States, right? Where all of a sudden, it's really fashionable to be down with Indigenous issues, right? Where it's like, you know, oh, yes, we actually want to listen to you. But the type of listening that they do is based upon Okay, so how can I use this knowledge to help further my career? How can I use this knowledge to take it and I can use it to get grant funding or I can use it to get accolades that don't go back, that don't trickle down to the communities that did this, right. How can I listen? In the case of some academics, how can I listen so that I can use it against them and kind of shoot back at them? Oh, well, you know, your, your forms of knowledge are not scientifically rigorous, right? Like, you have to think about the science.

I think the challenge is going to be actually listening and mastering the art of listening without preconceived thoughts about how you're going to respond and how you're going to act. Right, right, listening and actually taking what people have to say in mind. And you know, not thinking, Oh, well, I'm just going to listen and then I'm going to get a word in after that, but thinking okay, maybe I might have to sit with what they've said, especially if it's things that make people uncomfortable, I think we as as Western, a Western quote, Western global northern society are really, really quite bad at sitting with discomfort, like, we it's something that we want to get rid of. And a lot of times that discomfort is what you have to sit with. And that's actually where true growth kind of comes out of right? When you deal with those. Those awkward moments or the moments where you kind of feel like how the community is kind of taking me to task here, right? Like, I think we all kind of know that. Right?

Like, I think about, I think about the times when my mother like you know that this strong Anishinaabekwe definitely let me know what's up. I mean, she she raised me with tough love sometimes. And you know, when I was a kid, I was like, Oh, this doesn't feel really good. And now that I'm still, you know, I just turned 31 this year, and I still feel like I'm still pretty, you know, I still have so much left to left to learn in life. I'm like, I'm really glad she did that. Because those are the moments we're actually kind of through and kind of learn things right. And so I think that that's going to be the next step for listening is you know, you listen not to capitalize or to exploit you don't listen just for you know, your kind of ego’s sake, but you actually listen and you almost towards a point where you kind of pass the mic to these communities to these Indigenous peoples and you allow them to start kind of guiding the conversations going forward.

Patty:  I wanted to start with your essay on George Floyd. Yes, just because it's it's an interesting way of thinking about Indigenous geographies and urban spaces, because we think of Indigenous places, we always think of rural spaces. So, you know, so I kind of wanted to start there, it's an urban space, it's a way of thinking about the way that the state acts on our bodies. And then you had another essay about autopsy. And those two put to those two reading one after the other was kind of really interesting things in my brain. Just because they and then the last one about radio just just seems like a nice place. It feels like life. Plus, it's kind of what Kerry and I do. It's not really radio, but it's independent Indigenous media. So yeah, so that George Floyd piece was really, I didn't realize that you were actually from, from Minneapolis.

Deondre: Yep. Born, born and raised for the first few years of my life. As a matter of fact, the the apartments that I spent the probably the longest time in in South Minneapolis is about four blocks north of where George Floyd was murdered. One of those things and so I remember you know, the little convenience store, Cup Foods that he was killed in front of I remember that is a little kid passing by that. And I know that intersection quite well.

And in kind of another another sort of panel that I talked about, about this, I was like, it's actually quite funny kind of taking a look at that apartment, because in 1994, right, my, my single mother was able to afford the rent in that apartments, I mean, we were, we were pretty poor, right? I think there was one bedroom and so I got the bedroom and my mom and then my dad when he was around, slept on an air mattress in the living room. And we were lucky enough that we were right next to Powder Horn Park, which is a major center for South Minneapolis as far as like recreation and things like that. I took a look at that apartment now. I can't, I can't figure we paid more than probably 500 or 600 bucks a month for it back then in the early 90s. And now it's it's pushing like $2,000 a month. And there's like a laundry list of all these requirements, right? That you have to make so much of this income and you can't do this and you can't do that. And I'm like, man, it's some shitty ass apartment in South Minneapolis. Right? And you're, you're acting like this is like, you know, a condo in Vancouver or something like that, because it now it's across from a park. And, you know, all of a sudden, you know, Minneapolis is now cool, again to folks to live in, right?

You know, it's like I grew up in Minneapolis in the mid 90s. Like, we were like the most kind of like Wonder Bread like Midwestern city. I mean, it was cold all the time. And Minneapolis was not cool back then. I mean, it was cool for a lot of reasons, right? But kind of dominant society kind of us as “oh that Midwestern city.” And then, you know, around the time, unfortunately, I think like when Prince passed away and things like that, all of a sudden people are like, oh, yeah, Minneapolis might actually be a really kind of trendy place. And now you see that gentrification, but that's all kind of an aside of just kind of the changes that have happened. But yeah, my family's my family. My grandmother moved her kids down from the rez, from Leech Lake in the 19, late 1960s, early 1970s. And they've there's been members of my family that have lived in Minneapolis ever since. So if you have any, any viewers or listeners from South Minneapolis, we have many generations of South Highschool Tiger alumni in my family. So yeah.

Kerry: I love that

Patty: To build on what you said, you talked about gentrification, you talk about the way certain places are framed as safe and dangerous. Depending on how the dominant society sees them, right, because there are neighborhoods, so we know how to live in them. And then even is like, you know, Ibram Kendi talks about this. And in one of his books, that even though he was from a neighborhood that the dominant culture may have thought was dangerous. He thought it was safe, and it was this other neighborhood …

Kerry:  And that is such an interesting sentiment everywhere we go. Because, once again, taking it back to being in BC last week. What I thought was fascinating is that parts of Burnaby in BC is, or parts of Burnaby are considered not necessarily the best areas. And when I drove through what vague, what's considered the hood in Burnaby, I was I just couldn't fathom this. That most a lot of those places had Land Rovers and Mercedes Benz outside, even though in the lot, you know, like outside in everybody's driveways, there was nothing that would have been like the stereotypical markers of what we would consider a hood. And so for me, what it really created in my space was this, this, you know, taking an inner look at how we take these perceptions of what we do call hood, versus what the reality is. And so I think it fits really well into the question that you're asking Patty, this idea of how, you know, the bigger culture can create these ideas or these lines, these red lines that make certain areas supposedly distasteful? I could not, I'm talking beautiful, you know, houses on a couple of acres, neighborhoods, it just it made no sense to me. But this was considered the hood. Couple of shootings that happened and all kinds of things. Very interesting demographic or way of thinking about it.

Deondre: It really is, in terms of Minneapolis, right? I mean, in my lifetime, I've seen neighborhoods that were used to be considered gritty becomes suddenly these really hip places, right. For example, northeast Minneapolis, or as, as a lot of kind of hipsters like to call it nordeast Minneapolis. I mean, back in the 1990s, right, this was kind of an industrial neighborhood, kind of gritty, really blue collar. You know, there's nothing sexy about northeast Minneapolis. You know, fast forward 20 years now you have craft breweries and yoga studios, and places where you can buy kombucha and things like that, and now everybody wants to live over there.

You know, the kind of the biggest thing when I talk about the Twin City is that people, they shake their heads, even in Minnesota, when I talked about it is, I always I always kind of bring up on like it during the era of Jim Crow segregation in the south, the worst segregation in the United States often was not in cities like Birmingham, or Atlanta, or Charlotte or places like that. The worst segregation, oftentimes were in cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul, because it had that veneer of being in the north, where, you know, the North fought against slavery in the Civil War, and kind of the, you know, the American mythos. And, you know, the North with, you know, through the Great Migration and things like that the North was viewed as this is by white Americans is like, Oh, yes, see, we're opening our doors to these Black Americans from the south.

They would get to the north to find racist covenants in real estate deeds, and redlining, and things like that. You know, one of the biggest, the biggest proponents of segregation in the United States was Robert Moses right? One of these great urban planners that we hold up as I looked at all these things he did in New York City. Well, what he did in New York City, and other cities is designed highways to run right through Black neighborhoods and to divide white neighborhoods from Black neighborhoods. Right? It was like the 20th century version of the railroad tracks like the other side of the freeway. In St. Paul, in particular, the Rondo neighborhood, probably one of the most vibrant Black neighborhoods in Minnesota. found itself under under the under the bulldozer in the 1960s. When they decided, well, interstate 94 Need to go someplace, we're going to build it right through the middle of this neighborhood. There's nothing left of Rondo besides some street signs saying where it was, um,

And so yeah, it, you know, North Minneapolis, which is probably you know, the area of Minneapolis that is identified the most with Blackness and also has this reputation of all this, that's where all the shootings happen, right. You don't want to be in North Minneapolis. I'm like, Well, you know, what, what happened was that, you know, these processes of segregation and things like that ended up instigating race riots, right. And then White Minneapolitans kind of said, well, we're moving out to the suburbs because North Minneapolis used to be one of the wealthiest areas of the city and then after these race riots that were caused by you know, neglect and all of these in all these different things white Miinesotans white, Minnesota said Okay, so we're gonna move out to these new suburbs and leave Black Mineapolitans in North Minneapolis, which then became kind of economically segregated and left and left largely to its its own plan kind of obsolescence right anytime. You know, though, the city will be really quick to take any credit for like any kind of, you know, major positive developments in North Minneapolis saying, oh, yeah, you see, Minneapolis is super diverse, super welcoming city and a lot of times is like no, that happens at a community to grassroots level,right.

It's the kind of a funny story that I think I told in the article is around you know, around the time of the protests right, in Minneapolis or on the police precincts you you see it you saw a lot of folks from rural Minnesota in the suburbs, kind of jump on Facebook and say Oh, see, look how it look at those, look at those, quote, thugs rioting down there, right? Like, that's why that's why I'll never go to Minneapolis even though you know, these are the kind of folks that go to country music concerts at the baseball stadium, like once a year, and then like, leave and don't come to the city otherwise, and it's it, but that drives the dominant narrative, right?

So people, my mother lives in North Minneapolis, and people are like, Isn't she like, you know, isn't she like, scared of living there? Like, isn't that dangerous? I'm like, No, it's not dangerous, right? It's like any other big city like you, you go there, you you, you handle your business. Um, you know, it's, you know, I can if I wanted to go, if I'll put it this way, right, it's like, you, if you go looking for trouble, trouble is going to find you. And it's going to find you, whether that's in North Minneapolis, or that's in 50th and France, which is like the fanciest neighborhood in Minneapolis, right southwest Minneapolis. But it just comes down to kind of the ways that you know, white settlers, quite honestly kind of paint these kind of narratives.

Kind of one example that I don't think I talked about in that paper is, you know, the fact that Minneapolis is Dakota land. And when they talked about renaming Lake Calhoun Bde Maka Ska. It was it was kind of that moment, for the first time where people kind of saw how much masks could come off in then this moment, right. You had these people that live next to the lake, that was, you know, it's called Lake Calhoun. And it was named after a politician who was a major proponent of the system of slavery in the United States and help to, you know, support it and strengthen it in the in the early 1800s. You saw people kind of coming out saying, Why, why do we really need to rename this? Right? Why do we need to re rename it to Bde Maka Ska. Stop focusing, oh, it's gonna bring down our property values, right like that, that time honored, like, you know, dog whistle for oh, it's going to it's, you know, if it's viewed as anything other than white American, it's gonna, it's gonna hurt us.

And people are like, wow, those people are being are being like, super racist. And folks like me are saying, those are the same people that that would be, you know, flying pride flags out in front of their house and having, you know, Black Lives Matter signs in their front yards, and saying, like, everyone is welcome here. You know, because they are in a neighborhood where they don't have to confront diversity, right? Diversity is something that is far away from them. And they're like, Oh, yes, it can stay over there. Like, we'll support it, but we wouldn't actually want it coming into our neighborhood.

And then when you know, something as simple as a name change, you know, is threatening enough to them that they can be like, Oh, well, you know, if that's going to bring down the neighborhood, we don't want that. And so, I think kind of the whole kind of saga. And really what I tried to kind of attest to in this is that, well, you know, this really kind of ripped away kind of that veneer of the North, in the minds of a lot of people's being this really kind of a non-racist place, right? I'm like, it's just as racist as the South. And that if we understand that, and we and we think about those kinds of geographies of race as being something that is nationwide versus just, you know, just focused on the South, then we can actually really understand quite honestly kind of how fucked it is in the United States for a lot of folks and how we can really take concrete steps to try to push back against that, just like the the people that went out there on the streets in Minneapolis, I'm really, really tried to do Minneapolis and many other cities as well.

Kerry: In it, when I think about, you know, all of what you just said, You're it what comes to mind, I think about this whole year I've been I've been spending some time doing some reflection on like cycles. How I see things cycling in and cycling out, right. And I really feel when you mentioned that pulling back the curtain like that idea of the veneer being stripped away. I think that's very profound. Ove, over the last couple of years, I think we've all had to go internally, and and or you can't gaze at the scenery, and not recognize that there is much that is not what it seems and as much as we may have settled in some complacencies about the way that we have viewed the relationships that we have with each other or that we've even had with the land because nobody can say that Mother Earth is not saying something back to us now.

You know, what you started with a sense of we must listen, we must pull it back and really be willing to see it for all the dirt and grime that exists. And it, Are we ready now to add some soap and water hopefully it's environmentally sound and start to wipe away. Start to wipe away at some of this dirtiness that exists. And with that, like what? Where do you Where do we fit as people who, who may have this different viewpoint? Because we've been mired in some of that grime for a long time. Where do you think we can move ourselves? Or show up? You know, we're normally the ones that do we come with the grit? You know, what did they call the, you know, the Mr. Clean Magic, magic chalks or whatever we normally come in to do that deep cleaning. When do you think we fit in for that?

Deondre: So yeah, so so people, so people like us, right, that are used to really kind of doing that deep cleaning, and kind of, you know, doing that kind of labor. I think that I really points to the next generation of really badass, Indigenous and Black and other, you know, scholars of color, activists of color, community members of color. You know, I feel like with every succeeding generation, we say, you know, we're aren't we're becoming more visible and we're become we're, we're ending up in places that we were not intended to be right.

I think about as an Indigenous geographer. I think about 20 years ago, you would not see any of us in tenure track positions in institutions, I think, maybe, you know, I think for Black geographers that are better doing equally, if not more badass work, they would be the same thing, right? I think that you wouldn't see us it might be one or two in some vision, you know, very forward thinking visionary kind of departments. But you know, in my own departments, where I feel very, very fortunate to be it took a decade to do an Indigenous hire, right. And there they are so happy to have one but you know, we geography in particular, like we can be such a such a kind of a backwards kind of looking discipline and where we're constantly kind of tied to the past and kind of still trying to maneuver how to bring bring geography into the present.

And you know, when that when those conversations happen, I'm like, Well, what does the future of geography look like I always kind of say, look to like the Black, the Indigenous and the other scholars of color, especially the ones from the Global South, right? They are the ones, we are the ones I try not to use weeks, I'm like, it's gonna be all these people that are in school right now that are going to really use the work that we've done as a launching pad to really do some really, truly exciting things. And I think that happens outside of academia as well. You know, the saying that often gets put in, you know, you see it on memes on Facebook, and you also see it on Twitter a lot, you know, you know, these Indigenous students, these Indigenous children are, you know, quote our ancestors, wildest dreams. I'm like, you know, it might sound kind of hokey, but I'm like, that's actually really super tricky, right? It's the truth,

Kerry: hey, I have a bought my T shirt yet, but I so want one, I so want one because that state saying being our ancestors’ wildest dreams is the truth. And you touch something that I think is so important, and I just wanted to spend maybe a second here is, you know, Deondre, tell us what brought you to geography. And you know why, I was speaking to my husband recently. And we were talking about, you know, some of the rappers that are existing like the King Vons of the world, and, you know, some of the spaces where, you know, we've seen Black folk show up in what has been our traditional ways out of being, and yet you said something to me that I thought was so profound when you mentioned that, you know, being a Black geographer, has been, you know, you're trailblazing in certain ways.

You're, you're creating and showing up in ways that you may not have been able to before. And I think that message is so important. For those of us coming up, though, not us. I'm a little more seasoned, but those coming up like my grandchildren's generations coming up, to recognize that there are these opportunities that you don't got to be in the NBA, and, you know, a mumble rapper, to be able to show some semblance of success. Could you tell us a little bit about how you did it? What brought you there? You know, cuz geography, you know what, it’s geography?

Deondre: So that's a great that's a great question. Sorry, to sorry to interrupt. There I am. Yeah, I resonate with that. There's a lot of really, really good basketball players in my family. Actually, I was not one of them, I was a swimmer in high school, actually. So I've always kind of been that person that's kind of kind of walked a bit of a different path. And so there's two people, well, really one person and then a community that I really want to credit with kind of inspiring me to take the path that I that I've taken and so the first one is, is my mother.

So why I really like geography is my mother from a very early age. She, she was always really big on education, it was something that she she felt very strongly about. You know, one of the things that she would do when I was in high school is she said, there was no question of like, Oh, what am I going to do when I when I graduate high school? She's like, No, you're going to college, right? You're, you're going to go to college. And so she would wake me up every morning. And she would say, like, oh, you know, good morning, kid who's going to go to college, right.

But that, the framework of that started when I was two or three years old, and she would bring me to the library in South Minneapolis, right. And I would check out books and I would read the newspaper on my, I was reading from a super early age. And I would get maps, right, I also would like look at maps. And I really, really enjoyed maps, because it was always it was always really fun to look at them. And imagine that I was going places, right, like tracing the roads and kind of thinking, what would it be like to go here? What's this place like, it really inspired a curiosity about different places.

You know, growing up in growing up, as we did, you know, I didn't really get a lot of opportunities to travel. But when we did, I always really enjoyed it. I remember we went out to went out to an Indigenous march in Colorado Springs in like the mid-1990s right about, you know, honoring treaty rights and things like that. And I really, really loved it. Um, I remember having my map kind of tracing the path that we were taking and learning, you know, seeing the new cities on street signs and things like that. Um, and it's just something that I always kind of picked up because of that, because she exposed me to it at an early age. I found that geography classes in elementary and middle school in high school, were the classes that I got easy A's in right?  Um, the one story that I often tell on Twitter is, I almost got into trouble in high school because I wrote a paper about South Africa, and I had researched it so thoroughly that the teacher thought I plagiarized it, it was like, it was miles beyond what a high schooler would write, was expected to write. And so it was one of those things when it came time to go to college. You know, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a question of, if I was going to college, it was like, Okay, where are you going to college? Because like, my mom wasn't gonna, wasn't gonna just let me not go.

But also, you know, when I thought about the majors, right, I was immediately like, Nope, I'm going, I'm going into geography. That was actually the big determining factor in where I applied to school. I was like, does it have a geography program? If it doesn't? I'm not, I'm not applying here. If it does, then then I am. And so that was, that was what led me to it.

And then when I got to school, I kind of thought, Well, what do I want to do with a geography degree? And I kind of thought, well, maybe I want to do like land surveying, or maybe I want to be a cartographer. But the American Indian Center at my school, we would do this yearly Spring Break service trip, and we would go out, they had a relationship with the Northern Cheyenne Nation in Montana, and we would go out there. And so the year that I went, we went out there. And they took us on a tour of the communities.

And they told us a story of the Northern Cheyenne people. And one of the big stories, big, big parts of their history is they said, Well, we our homeland is here in Montana, in the mountains. And these foothills, we were relocated down to the Great Plains by the US during, you know, the era of of treaty making and treaty breaking and relocation and things like that. And they said, Well, what we did is we we loved our homeland so much that we, you know, we as a people took off and fled back to Montana, and the US military chased them. And there was a there was a series of military conflicts, right, like the Battle of the Little Bighorn of the battle Greasy Grass happened not very far from the Northern Cheyenne homeland. And it was kind of part of the history and they said, We, you know, because of the resistance and the bravery that we, we showed up, the US decided that they would allow us to stay here in our homelands.

And they talked about, you know, having conflicts over resource extraction, that, you know, companies want to come in and mine coal on the reservation. And they they've said, Well, we as a community have, you know, a lot of us have are the feeling that we would rather live in our homelands and be and be poor, and be economically disadvantaged, versus allow them to basically tear our land apart for any kind of short term, like economic gain. And it kind of was something that really inspired me and I was like, This is a story. This is a story about a story about a love for a place love for land rights.

And I was like, well, geography is about space and place, but we often don't bring the emotion into it. We don't, we don't bring these Indigenous perspectives. And so that pretty much was like okay, so I want to bring Indigenous perspectives into geography. And then, you know, pretty much any hope for me to do any kind of other type of geography was pretty much on me down the drain at that point, and that's really kind of led me on the the the work that I do to the present day,

Kerry: A couple of things I have to say, first of all, I know your mom has got to be proud of you. Your mom has got to be so proud of you. You know, you you're just an exemplary young man. And and I know that as a grandmother as a mother, I could be totally doing the ups for you. So that's first.

Second is what I really love about your story and your retelling of it, is how you followed your passion. I think it's so important to point out that every one of us, I think, as you take your journey, we have something that is a spark, and, and really tapping into what that interest is. And then following that space, is the key to your freedom, it is the key to being able to be and living in your best space. And I know this is a little aside, but to me, it almost is about a geography. Because even our personal journeys is marked with a path, it's marked with a set of markers that allow us to be in our highest space. And so, life imitates our passions and our arts.

Patty: Yeah, no, I love I love that because that's clear in you know, kind of in the papers that you write the the layering over, of Indigenous perspective on on this space. And I was just because that was the advice that I gave to my kids, you know, if you're going to go to university study something you love, if we're, if you're going to spend that money, study something you love, because there are careers and opportunities and things that you don't even know exist right now. And they will either they will cross your path, as you walk it you know, as as as you get there like Mariame Kaba, when she talks about abolition, you know, we walk this path of abolition and the opportunities, possibilities that we don't even know about, well, you know, we will build the world we want by walking this path.

But I also want to remember that not everybody has the ability to do that. Right? That there's, I mean, privilege might be the wrong word. But opportunity. There's also you know, there's also certain necessities, right? Sometimes, you know, people may have obligations or things that, you know, so we also need to think about creating this world where people can follow their passions in this beautiful way. Because like I was making the world a better place when we can do this, when we're not getting our soul sucked out of us. Because we have to do this thing that pays the bills.

And that's, I think, where this generational stuff comes in, you know, the Deondre, you had talked about, you know, what are the you know, are the children of today kind of being our ancestors’ wildest dreams? Because I think about that, whenever I go to powow, my favorite thing, about pow wow? You know, and I don't know, Kerry, maybe, maybe the parallel is, you know, watching watching people play spades, I don't know, when the old ones are dancing with the young ones. And I look at the old ones and I think you remember, when this was illegal, when our ceremonies were illegal, when, you know, when you sang hymns in church to cover up the organizing that was happening in the basement, because our gatherings unless we were gathering in church, it was illegal, you know, we weren't allowed to gather together. But the young ones, they don't know that world. Right? So my generation, kind of the sandwich generation, we have the trauma from our parents, and then the push through of our generation of trying to, you know, blaze this path or make this path even possible.

You know, and then, you know, Deondre, you are the next generation, I'm afraid because I'm 56. So your generation behind me, you know, kind of emerging into these possibilities. And then these ones who are coming next, they don't even know, this is all just normal to them. Being able to be an Indigenous geographer, and to layer Indigenous realities over these colonial spaces that are themselves layered over Indigenous reality. So there's just that's just really cool to me.

And we've kind of gone off of my plan for the conversation which is like totally fine. That's that's a much better conversations. But I do want to end with your with your piece about listening to native radio, just because that's just so hopeful and beautiful talk and it made me think of Smoke Signals. Have you ever seen the movie Smoke Signals? I'm dating myself now. He starts off with a good day to be Indigenous, It’s A Good day to be an Indian. So, what prompted this article about listening to native radio as, as an Indigenous geographer to think about Native radio? Because I loved it.

Deondre: So that is an awesome question. And it actually speaks to the importance that I place on working with people from different academic backgrounds is me and thinking about things in a different way. I think a lot of times in the spaces that I that I'm in, I get this reputation as somebody that thinks a little bit outside the box, where it's always people are always like, well, that's not that's not possible. And I'm like, well, that's not possible, if you think about it in the way that you're thinking about it. But you know, how can we make it possible.

And so in my master's degree, I was really, it was a wonderful interdisciplinary degree. My, the program director of that of the Master of Liberal Studies program at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, which is what it's, it's kind of shifted to something else now. But he was a rhetorician. And he does a lot of Media Studies things. And so he was really good, or he's really good at at many things. Back then probably the thing he was the best at was irritating me because he would always ask, well, what is geography? And I tell him all these things, and I would say, Well, you know, it's really wide, wide, ranging and multifaceted. And you'd be like, Well, if that's the case, then is there really such a thing as geography, right? If geography can do everything, then what is geography? And I'm like, no, no, we have disciplinary boundaries.

And of course, now I really kind of come around to the thinking of like, Yeah, we actually really don't have for a, for a field that really focuses on maps and political spaces and things like that, you know, among other things, we are, we really have rather porous boundaries, and we're always in the risk of kind of like, falling away from each other, which, you know, maybe that's what geography might do in the next few generations is maybe we might turn into something else as we, which, you know, may or may not be a bad thing.

But anyways, because of his interest in rhetoric, he had me do a lot of media related stuff. And so one of the projects that I did was I there's this television show produced by the PBS affiliate in Duluth, called Native Reports, um probably one of the best television shows out there about Native American and Indigenous culture. Um, you can actually watch it on on YouTube, if you live away from Duluth, which I'm assuming 99% of the of the listeners and viewers probably do. But he had me analyze that. And so I watched like, two seasons of Native Report. And I went through and I was like, here's all the things they talk about, here's the geographic locations, here's all these things. And I did that for a project paper.

And then I started kind of a sequel to it where I'm like, Okay, so there's, there's the Indigenous radio stations as well. And I kind of want to kind of, and those, those things are more accessible on those, they've been around a lot longer than these television shows. So so let's see what they do. And I kind of started the project. And then I moved on to other things. And I graduated with my master's and I kind of left it alone. And then we fast forward, you know, three years after I get my master's, you know, this old, this old mentor and program director is like, Hey, I'm pulling together this special issue on listening, your radio piece is basically really close to being ready for publication, you should put it out. And so I sat down, and I kind of, I did more content analysis. And so I actually listened to a bunch of tribal radio stations in Minnesota, I spent like, half a summer doing that just sitting there when I was doing work, listening to the radio is like a really kind of it was really a really relaxing form of data collection, it kind of brought me back to being a little kid listening to you know, listening to the radio when I was growing up, right, I actually I did that I didn't watch a whole lot of TV, but I listened to talk radio a lot and things like that.

And so I listened. And I was like, you know, what kind of music are they playing? What kinds of messages are they saying Are there are any kind of geographical references, all these things. And by the time I got done with with listening and looking at reports about things, I took a look and I'm like, Man, this is actually a really, really good paper that ties together geography and community, right kind of saying, here's the ways that these radio stations can foster a sense of community and foster a sense of connection between Indigenous and non-Indigenous listeners. And so I submitted it. To my surprise, they got accepted, right? That was like my second ever published article.

But you know that paper, I really felt that as like, this is a really, really good way of talking about how community can be formed in some some of the most everyday kind of ways and how things as mundane as weather reports, or public service announcements, or even just the basic news can really tie people together in these really kind of enduring ways. And so it's one of my, it was one of my favorite articles to write. And I'm really glad that I'm glad that it's still picking up traction, right? I never imagined two years after writing that, that I'd be, I'd be talking about it on a on a major, you know, on a major program about some, you know, Indigenous issues and things like that. So

Kerry: The ties that we create, when we allow ourselves to just go into our own spaces, and I, I, I'm really, really loving all parts of this conversations, even the parts we veered off on, because I think what I'm really going to walk away from this conversation with is how deeply we are tied to our passions. Like we we can create these unique medicines, these unique ways of, of looking at some of these enormous problems or what feels like they are enormous problems, when we come in it come at it from these unique perspectives. And with an open mind and our creative hearts. That's what's really going to tap away at some of these problems that exists. So thank you, Deondre for being such a reminder of that space. You're right, that thinking out of the box. That's your superpower, I would agree with you. It's definitely a superpower. And we're into those here. We're into those here.

Patty: Yeah, that was that was really neat. Because when I when we think about it, because we think sometimes, you know, but you know how great social media is. And it is I mean, that's how I connect with you know, there’s so many, that's how I found you found each other on Twitter, and I find so many interesting people that way. But these are corporations, right? Like, they're corporations with algorithms, and they exist to make money. And the fact that, you know, my husband and I were just talking about this a few weeks ago, you know, he's talking about Google, and how Google, you know, just gives all this stuff away for free, you know, with the maps and the searching and everything and I’m like, that's right. Because if you're not paying for the product, guess what, you are the product. So there's limits to you know, kind of how great social media and these things can be.

And we were talking about, you know, so we were just talking about, you know, how we form connections. And then, you know, looking at your paper, it's, it's these, these smaller, independent things that we do, because we've got like national radio and national this and national that, but it's these small local connections and, you know, in podcasts to you, because we form kind of smaller communities, and we're talking to each other. Right. So we're not as like, like, there's no code switching. I'm not concerned about my white audience. And what my white, I'm always surprised that white people listen to this. Because I'm not concerned about their feelings. I'm not concerned, I'm concerned about having Indigenous conversations about Indigenous things. I'm concerned about listening, you know, to Black voices, and to Afro Indigenous voices, because that's a world that I don't walk in, that's not my worldview, I need to listen and I need to cede power when necessary. You know, I need to pay attention to when I don't know things, and be willing, be willing to listen to that.

So. So that reminder that these things, these, you know, native radios, and zines and podcasts and all of these ways that we communicate amongst ourselves, how important these things are. Because we live in diaspora, right? We have a homeland here on this continent, but we still but we're still in diaspora I do not live, it's a 24 hour drive. And I'm still in Ontario. If I want to go home, I drive for 24 hours, I'm still in Ontario, I'm going up and around Lake Superior. I don't live at home. I'm connected to them through various ways. And I'm connected to that geography through various ways. So thank you, thank you for this conversation and reminding us that geography isn't what I thought it was in grade 10. It's not labeling that some coloring rivers blue, it's …

Kerry: Longitude and latitude, that’s what I remember.

Patty: it's, it's our lives, our lives, our connection to each other into place. And that's really beautiful. And thank you, thank you so much.

Deondre: It's, it's absolutely my pleasure. Yes. As a matter of fact, the experiences that you talk about, I mean, we I get, I get so many students that talk about like, Oh, I didn't know that geography could be all these things because the way that that you're taught it in grade school is such a limited kind of way. And that's where sometimes I kind of push. And I say, hey, we, you know, in geography, we're like, why is it that so many students come to us from other other departments? Right? It's like geography is one of those great majors in the university that it's, it's something that people kind of come to, there's very few people like me that come into come into college or university thinking, Oh, I'm going to do geography. A lot of times they happen to take a class for their Gen Ed's, or things like that. And they say, Oh, hey, this is actually really, really cool.

And I and that's when I kind of pointed on …  we need to be bringing this perspective, to a holistic kind of viewpoint, we're right away. And in elementary school, and we're teaching children about maps and things like that. We're also teaching them about the ways that geography is really tied to our everyday kind of lives. Right? That's what that's one of the big themes of every single class that I teach is I say, well, geography is not some abstract thing that you kind of put away and you don't deal with it.

I mean, there's, you know, in particular, when I teach a world regional geography, which I'll be doing again, this spring at UVic, I do an assignment where I say, Okay, I want you to tell me your daily routine, right? Where do you go? What you know, when you commute to school? What routes do you take, what buses do you take? Do you drive? What route do you take to your campus? Like, where do you go to eat? Where do you go to shop? Where do you go, you know, when you're hanging out with your friends, if you're taking, you know, taking somebody out on a date, if you're going for a swim when you're doing all these things, and I tell them start writing that down? Let's make a map of your daily life. And I'm like, That's geography right there. It is not like What's the capital of BC? Or what latitude is Valparaiso, Chile on, right, it is how do you relate to space in place?

And I think that if we do that, um, you know, people are going to well, more people will come around to geography, but also, I think that may be some of the horror story that I hear so much are people in their high school geography classes or elementary school geography classes. My wife has told me some of her is actually, actually she's a she's an audiologist. So she's about as far away from geography as you possibly can be, except I'm always one that's like, oh, no, we can do things that are audiology and geography, I think of a good colleague of mine, um, Arianaa Planey, at the University of North Carolina, and badass Black geographer who she's in a, she's in a public health program. Now, she's done things related to, you know, geographic access to audiologists and things like that. And so, like, Hey, we're pretty much everywhere. Right? Geographers have fingers in pretty much every single academic pie that's out there. You just gotta, you just gotta know where to find us and kind of look for our hallmarks of who we are and in what we're doing. So yeah ..

Kerry:  I really appreciate this for the creativity of it. You know, sometimes when you think about, you know, being an academic or being in a space of puts us in a box, and you know, staying in that, you know, curvature of that well, there's not a curvature, keeping it in the perimeter of that box. This conversation, lets us know that everything can be in the flow. And I like that rhyming. So I'm going to stop right there, Deondre, and say, Thank you so much thank you for all that you brought to the show. I appreciate you so much.

Deondre: Thank you very much. It's been an honor and a pleasure. Hence, you know, I can't even believe that we've been talking for an hour. It's like, I feel like we've just been going for ten minutes.

Patty: I know, these hours go by so fast.

Kerry: They do.

Patty: Alright, well, thanks again. And yeah, I guess you're on the list to come back.

Kerry: Right. You know, what I was really thinking I would love to have you back with the our archaeologist and let's have a conversation about how, you know, geography may have shifted and changed and what has happened in the spaces of those I would kind of be interested …

Patty:  Do you mean Paulette? Paulette Steeves.  You knew Paulette right?

Kerry:  Yes Paulette.

Deaondre: Paulette yup.

Patty: Because yeah, cuz we had Paulette and then last time we chatted was with Keolu Fox and You've done work with Keolu, like these three know each other so .. we’ll figure something out. We gotta go. It was lovely talking to you. See you on twitter!

Deondre: Yes, this was a great time, thankyou very much, I look forward to the next time I get to see you all.  Kerry: Good bye

Patty Good byeDeondre: Good bye

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

the land is my ancestor

Patty 

So, anyway, so we're here with Keolu Fox. Chanda had made this comment, quoting you about the land is my ancestor, and that is a scientific statement. And she was just completely taken by that comment. And then so was I. And that's really all I've been thinking about. Because it's just such a, it's just such a neat way of thinking and understanding our relationship with the other than human world and our connection to place, and all of that. And so yeah, so now I'm going to let you introduce yourself. And what you mean by that phrase, when you say the land is our ancestor,

Keolu

Roger that. Aloha everybody, my name is Keolu Fox and my mo'oku'auhau, or my genealogical connection or origin is to the Kohala Kapaʻau  which is the northernmost district of the Big Island of Hawaii. And I'm joining you from the Kumeyaay nation here in La Jolla. And it's a beautiful day, it's always a beautiful day here. But I'm a genome scientist, I focus on all kinds of things. And mostly, I have been really thinking about that idea.

And I've been centering around that idea for a little bit. Because many of you know, there have been a lot of things going on where we live, where we're from the Big Island right now. Our volcano is active, and Pele is letting her hair down. But we have another very sacred place. And that's Mauna a Wākea, Mauna Kea, right? There have been all of these protests in this, this tension that's kind of like, played out in a lot of different ways. Because we have a problem with settler colonialism. And we have scientists, who would rather seek authorization instead of instead of consensus building and taking care to actually asked our people what we want.

And so I thought about this idea of like, what is actually shaping our genomes over time, right? We always have these comments about our, our genealogical connection to the Āina, right? Like one of my favorite online scholars, was a medical doctor, his name's Dr. N. Emmett Aluli., is always saying the health of the land is the health of the people and the health of the people is the health of the land. And when you think about that, historically, it's actually the same thing. So, what our community is saying about a, hey do you need to dig four stories into the Earth, into this Āina, you know, not only our ancestors buried there, and there’s fresh water aquifers, and there's, it's a very sacred place for cultural protocol. But it's also our ancestor.

And so I think that gets lost to a lot of my Western colleagues with a certain worldview, they're, they're willing to accept the idea that, you know, natural selection, and Charles Darwin and these finches on these islands have been shaped by this different geography. But they're not willing to accept it in terms of humans, because they're human exceptionalists. So from our point of view, it's like, we are, the Mauna, the Mauna is us, it really has shaped our genomes. So has the ebb and flow of the moana, the ocean. So has high elevation in the Himalayas.  So in that sense, you know, I think Indigenous people have it right, because we have not really completely separated ourselves from the Āina.

That's why we believe in sustainability. We, you know, indigeneity is sustainability. Like it's the, it's synonymous. And I can give you a bunch of examples, but I think, I think that idea is really powerful, because it allows you to like, with just complete fluidity, connect all of these really important ideas around natural selection and evolution, and also Indigenous epistemology. And if you look historically to like the ways we talk about biological complexity in the Kumulipo, which is an ancient origin chant, which was famously translated by Queen Liliuokalani. And you'll see that like, if you look at where this this, this story starts this chant is Pule, where it begins is with like darkness. Right? And then we get into single celled organisms, slime molds, and then we build up the complexity you see over time. And, and, and I'm not like an authority scholar on that. But I think it's so important that it's not. It's not wrong at all. You know, in fact, it was right before, maybe somebody like Charles Darwin had put it together in English. So I think that's a really important idea. And the ways that we think about evolution and natural selection in our relationship to the Āina is really important.

Patty 

Yeah, I'm reading right now, though, I always have, like, so many books close to me, Salmon and Acorns, Feed Our People. And early on in the book, she kind of makes a very similar point, because she's talking about the Kuruk people in Northern California, and the interconnectedness of the salmon and the water and the people and the geography and, you know, and how we impact the environment and the environment impacts them. And it goes, you know, and everything just kind of keeps weaving, weaving back and forth. It. And I think you're right, I mean, in that connection that we have, that is indigeneity, the, you know, kind of that maintaining that connection, but now I you know, as we talk about that, you know, I'm looking at Kerry, who's part of the you know, the African diaspora who maybe doesn't know, you know, kind of she talks about, you know, connecting with Ghana, but not, I'm gonna let you talk about that.

After you turn your mic on, I'm gonna let you talk about that

*laughter* 

Today, I learned from AW Peet to talk about turning your mic on rather than being mute. Yeah, I can you're going to be ableist. learn from AW on a daily basis. I love them.

Kerry 

Okay, thank you for that reminder, because I have the headset going and then clicked off. And I didn't realize both really does matter. So anyway, what was coming to mind for me as I was listening to this conversation, and, you know, just feeling into this information. You know, what just came up just from, like, I think it's that soul space is, of course we are, and what comes up when we think about, you know, the earth, you know, the space of our being, being connected through this human genome being a part of the earth and all of it being interconnected. Why? What I what I believe has happened is, as we have moved into this colonial space, that disconnection is been such a disruption that has affected our genome, and had has us acting in ways that is not like ourselves, and what what I take when we think about myself and my, my Blackness, in, in my wanting to know, where my where I come from, I feel into this ancestral memory. And I know, it's an epigenetic memory of something that my, my ancestry has not known for a very long time. And yet, I feel it. And that's why when we are having this conversation, I was so interested, I've been reading and listening and watching some of your work in the last day, actually, I really sat down and watched it. And it's, it makes me go in, it makes me go to that deep space. And what what do we offer out? Or what words would you offer out for those of us who don't have that direct connection? And yet the earth that special, that special link is calling us?

Keolu

Hmm, I think that is a brilliant question. And I think like couching it that way, too, because of the forced migration of people is still a diaspora. Right? And that is a really powerful and important idea in terms of thinking about, it's not just shaping our genome or mo'oku'auhau and our genealogy but we have this term we love in Hawaii and it's Ka mua, ka muri, and it means walking backwards into the future. And actually, we say that all throughout throughout the moanoculture. So Tahiti, Marquesas, Samoa, Maori, like we all We all say this this term. And I think it's a really important thing to think about.

So when we like when we think about our radiation and diaspora, across the Pacific, if I just focus on island people, we have a founder people who are on waapa, right? They're on boats, they're going they find a new place. They represent like a fraction of that genomic diversity that existed in the original place or position. That's not so different than a forced migration. No, I mean, very similar. Then you have the arrival later, of settlers, and you get like these population collapses. And so what happens is that population that's made it to Hawaii, or you know, really any Indigenous community from Hernan Cortes, to James Cook, this encounter with colonialism, again, shapes our genome, and we can see this, when we look at the genomes of modern Indigenous people, we can see this decrease in human leukocyte antigen HLA diversity. So in that sense, it's like, the geography shapes our genome over time. It does, we are the Āina, but so do our encounters with genocide, so do our encounters with and those are like, that means that everybody that's, that's Hawaiian, for example, is a survivor of that event.

It also means that the way we attenuate inflammation, which is the root cause of common complex disease, from everything from heart disease, to cancer to and, you know, insulin sensitivity, COVID-19, all of these things are a reflection of our history. Now, our methods are getting so sensitive at identifying these things, that it's a matter of maybe asking ethical questions and saying, maybe we need more people from our communities to ask the hard questions, to build these and help prioritize these scientific questions. And iteratively kind of co-design and co-partner with the communities that we come from, because the truth is, these are hard questions to ask. Like, like, I think in our lifetimes, we will be able to determine what the impact on people's health is of the transatlantic slave trade.

And that is not a question for me to ask, though. Right. And I and I don't think that like that positionality, like, when I started this job, as a professor, someone told me, “You know, we think it's weird that you're Hawaiian, and you would want to work with Hawaiian communities. That's not objective.” And I had to fall back for a second, I was like, I'm really shocked that you would ask that some anybody would say that, you know, but that is how like, that is the status quo. And how brainwashed people are in academia like that is how few people from our communities make it into these leadership positions to be primary investigators for these major projects. These people are so not in tune with being like they work with, like Margaret Mead or something, right? Like, she's not Samoan. That's why she had all these dumb ideas. Right? Right. Like think about it like that would never?

You know, there's just tremendous insight that our people have when we work with our communities. One, if you f**k up, you can't go home for Christmas. Go home for the holidays you’re already home. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's like a kuleana, like an obligation to your people and our health and all these other things. But also, it's like ensuring that the questions we ask are prioritized by our communities. I think I think we're getting there. And I think the way that we're interpreting the data is so much more advanced too, you know, and we're just getting started. So it's gonna be a beautiful future. But, you know, but I think that these questions aren't, aren't easy to ask, you know, so

Patty 

You talk about Just So Stories that you know, the Rudyard Kipling stories, but then you apply them to the scientific process. And that's kind of what this is making me think is, you know, because we come up with these ideas, or we like scientists, colonial scientists come up with these ideas, and who is in the room takes very much what questions are being asked, Can you unpack that a little bit about the Just So Story so that people know what I'm talking about?

Keolu

Yeah, that's a that's, that's a great like, it's a child’s story from Rudyard Kipling. who like if people who are listening don't know you, maybe you've heard of The Jungle Book, or you heard of the book Kim. Some of these old school, you know, they're like pretty colonial they take place in India, mostly. But he wrote this child's book for his daughter. And the book kind of has these funny stories where they explain like why is the elephant's nose so long? Well the elephants nose is so long because they got tugged on for 30 minutes by an alligator when he was trying to drink some water or whatever, right? But what what these two scientists in this I want to say late 70s? Peter No. Yeah, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. What they did is they said well, these these ideas are used to explain evolutionary things like their their adapt their what they call adaptionist narrative. So it's like, I can use an evolutionary narrative to explain innateness and this gets really dangerous and can become super racist, because it's used to justify shitty correlative science.

So, so and I had this mentor and he would always tell me, you know, tell me 2genes, any two genes in the genome, there's like 20,000 genes, and buy me a whiskey and I'll tell you a story. And what he was trying to say was, I can make a correlative story about anything statistically. But that doesn't mean that it like mechanistically is true. So what you see is people invoking adaptionism, natural selection and evolution, to justify really racist science that discredits the accomplishments of Indigenous people, for example.

So one of the examples I love to give is this Thrifty Gene narrative where they're like, oh, you know, and, you know, we know, we know, we're not dummies, we know we have a problem with type two diabetes and obesity in our community. We also know that Hawaiian people are really big, Samoan people are really big. We're all big. But part of it has to do with, you know, many different factors. Part of it is colonialism, because you took away our access to the reefs, and our rights around land stewardship, and hunting and fishing and all these other things. So when you replace those traditional food ways with spam, white rice and soy sauce, what do you think you get? Right.

But when you say that the reason we have this problem is is a genetic innateness. That comes from our diaspora. That's racist, right? So why do those narratives get perpetuated in really popular scientific journals, they end up in the media, and it comes down to discrediting our voyaging accomplishments. Because if you've ever talked to any navigator, they'll tell you, these waapa, these boats were filled to the brim with sweet potato, taro, pigs, chicken, all kinds of things, there was never a problem with like scarcity of calories. So how would we develop a problem where we become sensitive to or have problems with hyper caloric storage in a modern-day setting? You see what I'm saying?

And so like it gets, it gets wound up and entangled into these racist narratives in the way that they describe, maybe genome sequence data. What we do see with this mutation in this gene, it's called CRE BRF. And it's privately found in the Pacific amongst Hawaiians, we've even found it in the Chamorro and Guam. And what we see with it is it's actually associated with muscle density. And there was a follow up study, I believe in Aotearoa. It's showing that Polynesian rugby players of a, you know, of Polynesian or Maori ancestry have a higher frequency of this mutation. So it's more like a tall, dark and handsome mutation that has to do with BMI and athletic performance than it is like a thrifty mutation that predisposes us to obesity. But do you see how different it is when I'm just choosing that, that as an example, we could do this with sickle cell? We could be like, Oh, it makes people from Equatorial Africa weak. Or we could say no, this is, this is actually truly remarkable in the way that how many people have died from malaria, you know, so it's really about it's really about how you interpret the mutations and what they actually do. But if you don't have mechanistic evidence, then why are you making up and spinning these b******t narratives that discredit our accomplishments as people?

Kerry 

I'm really just fascinated with this conversation and and where you're going with this because one of the pieces I was reading when you were speaking, talks about how most of the studies when we look at the genome, when we look at you know, breaking down the genetic understanding of things really has not done has not been done on Indigenous and People of Color. And so, you know, hearing you break that down, because we too have supposedly a pre disposition for type two diabetes and high blood pressure. It gives that different perspective. And I remember once I don't know, I remember hearing Oprah speak about that in the Black community. And I don't know who she she had been speaking to a scientist of some sort. And I remember some of the information that came out was the one of the reasons why from a Black standpoint, we seem to have had a propensity, because we, even in the Middle Passage, why we survived some of the challenges was because we had an ability to take in salt, our ability to hold salt in our thing, which does lead to the type two diabetes or the high blood pressure. But because we had this mutation, it actually was one of those things that afforded us to survive the atrocities of that passage, because we were able to to absorb and survive less, or our salt intakes kept our water levels or our electrolytes higher, something along those lines. Don't quote me, it was a long time ago, that I heard that, but I remember that stuck to me, because it's what you're speaking about, it's the way that the perspectives are put forward to us. Right. And, you know, normally when we put it that way, it's almost, I've always seen it, or the system puts those those narratives out to us, to keep us feeling less than. That somehow, right, somehow that structurally, our genetic or genomes or makeup is not, as you know, valuable, or as put together as some. And when we then talk about this idea that it has not, we haven't even been studied in the same way. How, how does those two things play off of each other?

Keolu

Yes. Yeah. I mean, um, so first and foremost, I'm so glad you mentioned that, that, that it's like we're taking a, pardon the pun, but it's a minority of the data, if it's 90% of genome wide studies, they've mostly included people of Western European ancestry. So, you're making all these inferences and narrativizing data? You know, less than 1% of these studies have included Indigenous people, very small percentages of included individuals of African ancestry, and that's a continent.

I want to put some things into context. It's like that is the origin of mankind. We spent more time there than anywhere else on planet Earth, it has more genetic diversity, languages, cultural diversity, food, culture. I mean, it is heritage, it's it's so to reduce it again, as a monolith to one continent isn't nuts, that's one. And then, and then we have all of these other conversations that go around there. And to your point about the the salt slavery hypertension hypothesis, which is a very, which is a very interesting idea. Again, it's a narrative that's popularized, but but again, it's not been taken to task in a way where it's either been proven or disproven, because we don't have enough data for that.

So of course, when you build narratives, it's going to be it's not going to be in service of a community, you're not going to ask questions about how much stress to these people have every day? Is that a factor? What about people's diets? What about people's access to healthy food, and all of these other kind of metrics that are probably more informative and predictive of people's health.  So I'm not saying that genomics doesn't play a role it does. But again, the the way that you we create narratives around it. Now then let's look at the other side of the coin, because this is the most brutal part 95% of clinical trials feature white people. So, we're not even designing drugs for our people in the way that we were like, designing drugs for one population and then giving it to other people.

Or I worked in blood transfusion research for a while. And we would have 90% of people who donate blood are white, and then and then the, the kind of inverse of that, you know, sickle cell patients are Black. You see what I'm saying? Like it's a it's a stark contrast. We're literally giving somebody a temporary organ, we're infusing them with blood that includes all types of diversity of RNA from one other, you've seen what mRNA can do now. Having, now we're taking RNA from one person and giving it to another and we're not really thinking about what the consequences of that are. So I'm just saying we've not really thought everything through it a more thoughtful way, because we haven't had the attention to detail with population specific medicine. And I'm hoping that over the next few decades, that becomes something that's really important

Kerry 

That, that I love that so much that really resonates with me because my brother, my brother in law, actually doesn't have sickle cell. But he carries the sickle cell trait. And he also carries the Thalassemia traits. And interestingly, we were just together, it's our, it's our Thanksgiving here in Canada. And we were just down at I was just over at their house. And he's having an episode, where yeah, he's having a sickle cell episode. And it's, you know, he's had several over the years, he's, you know, he's been in our family for 30 years, and I can’t even believe that, but um, we, you know, he's been around. And what we've noticed is my, my niece carries the sickle cell trait, and she gets mild symptoms, she gets very mild, like, sometimes, you know, the fingers tingle, she'll have a stressful event and, you know, really be in pain at the extremities and some of the same things that her father has, but not to the same degree. And well, it's interesting when you bring this up, it, it tells me how little we understand, because technically, he doesn't have the disease. And yet he gets exactly the symptoms, and it has been treated in the same ways, even though they're not exactly sure how and why it's happening. And I bring that up, because it's exactly what you're saying that there's there's, the studies don't extend far enough. Right. And while there, we manage it, it's it's almost been like, I shouldn't say this, but when when the doctors that have been treating him for a long time get around, he's been like a test subject, a bit of a unique case. And it's been trial and error. You know, they've tried different things to see what's worked, and thank goodness. I mean, he's, we can get him through them. But it's, it was something that struck me that it's a unique space, and not very much is known about how to make it work for him. So they, you know, throw things at it. It's hope it's been it sticks so far. Right?

Keolu

Yeah. I mean, we I mean, you know, things get even more complex, when you're you come from a place like Hawaii, they showed in the census data, that we are the most diverse state state in the United States of America. And we, I mean that in by and that's like a long shot. And also we have the highest percentage of mixed ancestry people. And it's been like that for a while. And you know, and that that means that things get a little more complex. And we need to really think about what the future of medicine is going to look like, especially if it's predictive and preventative.

Patty  28:10

I’m  just thinking it's not that long ago that people were saying that Indigenous people were genetically predisposed to alcoholism. I remember hearing that as a kid. And I think there was a brochure had just come out not that long ago. About some Cree guides, it was a, it was a fishing camp. In northern, I think it was Manitoba, did not to give alcohol to the guides, because they're genetically predisposed to alcoholism. And it was like, these ideas and they take root. They take root, and they don't go anywhere, because they keep medicine, you know, Western medicine, Western scientists, they keep looking for the problem in us. There is something wrong with our genetics, something wrong with our makeup, you got to fix us. There's nothing wrong with colonialism. And with the imposition of you know, this change in diet. And I mean, one of the things in this book that they talk about is the salmon run and how it's gone. It's 4% of what had happened. And that's, you know, so that's a significant change in their diet, which leads to a significant change in their health. You know, because like you said, now they're eating spam and flour.

Keolu

Oh, yeah. I think that's so fascinating. It's like we it's kind of like a slippery slope Sometimes, though, because we can point to actual examples where where we are, I mean, and sickle cell is such a great example. And so is high elevation, adaption and all of these incredible ways in which we are a reflection of the Āina. You know, but when I tell my colleagues, we're going to empirically measure the impact of colonialism on the genome, they're like, whoa whoa whoa,  I don't like that. We don't like that. You know, and you have to think about it. I mean, it's it's about how we choose to. I mean, I obviously like I often do that to make people feel uncomfortable, because I want them to know how we felt going through these medical schools and education programs throughout the whole time, because now we're wielding the power of being able to prioritize the question, and that's unique now. And it feels good. But but but also, but also, um, we want it to have impact. You know, I don't we don't want to tell people where they came from. That's not important to us. That's not a question we prioritize. But if it has a role in thinking about how we can predict and prevent disease, or create treatments that speak to our history, then that's important. And I think I think we're getting there. And yeah, we just, you know, we need to we need more students that like and where the prototype Wait, till you see the next generation? Man? They're like,

Patty 

Yeah, well, I know. You know, we, we have been talking about, you know, studying Kerry often talks about epigenetics, you know, kind of studying the long term impacts of trauma. And I've heard a few people asking what where's the long term studies on the impact of affluence or influence on the impact of greed on some of these ultra wealthy families? What how does that affect their genome? Like, are they genetically predisposed to being selfish a******s? What's going on?

Keolu

Regarding the epigenetic stuff, we have a new project that we're working on. And yeah, and I mean, I think we're gonna get get to the point of point, point and position where we have tools that are sensitive enough to, you know, ask answer the questions that we that we have, and provide solutions that might result in better better treatments for our people, right.

And one of them is the effect of testing nuclear bombs in the Pacific. And this is, you know, my auntie, who is a female, Native Hawaiian colonel, she's retired now. Amazing person. But she spent a lot of time in various places. And I mean, the things that we've we, you know, she's she's told me about and the types of health infrastructure that exists and the rates of different types of cancer that are telltale signatures of nuclear radiation exposure. I mean, it is just astonishing, what you'll see in the Marshall Islands and how Henry Kissinger is like, ah, 50,000 people, that's just a statistic, who cares? Or Jacques Chirac, reinstating nuclear testing programs in French Polynesia, or, you know, among the Tuamotu Island archipelgaos there and Mururoa. And the rates of cancer were seen. And these are telltale signatures, you know, the, the thyroid cancers, the lymph node cancers, the leukemias, and I guess the question is, one, can you detect that? Is it is it going to be a signature of in the genome that is independent of inherited cancer? Is it baked into the genome in a transgenerational way, which would be, that'd be epigenetic inheritance, which in my opinion, is straight up genocide, there should be real reparations for this. And then can we design better types of chemotherapy that speak to that, because if it is, has a unique architecture, and it is a unique signature, then we need better drugs for our people. And the French people need to pay for it. And those are the facts.

And so and so here, we are now approaching new questions that we can use these tools for ones that allow us to move forward in terms of medical advancement, but also in terms of our goals of achieving justice. And I am so stoked about these new projects, because I feel like I was born for this s**t. Also, also, because we're capable, and our people deserve better. You know, and I think that's going to inspire other scientists who are way more brilliant than, than I am. To, to come up with with with solutions. But this these are some of the new projects that we're working on.

And I'm not afraid of the French government. They know what they did. They tested 193 nuclear bombs over from 1966 to 1996. Think about how recent that is, wow. And then they had the nerve to name their new hospital after Jacques Chirac. And that was when I was like in Paeete in Tahiti, that's such a slap in the face. So from my point of view, and these are my brothers and sisters, you know, those are my my ancestors, my kupuna so you got to understand when you test nuclear bombs in the Pacific, it doesn't just sit there. I mean, you have ocean currents, wind currents, I mean, some of the stuff we're hearing about. So, and those happen to be this is the most important part, these happen to be questions that that community has prioritized as far as health issues go. So here we are.

Patty 

Yeah. And it's, and that's so important because they, they come, people come in, they have these ideas, they want to, you know, with colonial, you know, they see the problem, they're gonna fix it, they're gonna, you know, they're, and then they're, you know, they're doing their studies and their, you know, their outcome measures and all the rest of it. And there's no, there's no relationship, there's no relationship building, at the front end, any relationship that they start is just so that they can come in and help and so that they can come in and fix this. And it's like, they keep doing this. And things just keep getting worse from our point of view. But then that just keeps clearing more land from their point of view. So I understand why ...

Keolu

Mm hmm.

Kerry 

That, you know, I think it gives a new meaning to that saying the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I very often feel that, you know, it's too we see how there seems to be a playbook. And the playbook shows up over and over and over. And any Indigenous any, you know, native communities of any origin around the world. And that idea that the Western colonial system has to come in and fix us. Right, Oh, normally has that underlying agenda, where, you know, they're, they're coming to help. But then, you know, it was like a backhanded help. Because we're, we're always, you know, ass out, pardon my French, you know, especially with the French and any of the other colonials that have come in and created the systems to which we're now having to dig out and build our resiliency up against. And that's, I think, also, another part of this that I'd love to see or hear what your thoughts on about it, is the remarkable way that we have been able to adjust and adapt. Right. Yeah, I really think that that's something that has been so powerful amongst people

Keolu

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I'm, my mom is such a genius. She's like the Hawaiian MacGyver, you know, like, she just really figures out ways to engineer all kinds of systems with limited resources. And we live in a pretty rural, isolated place. And, you know, I'm on the phone with her. And she's like, oh, yeah, the truck door, it's not coming for three months, it's on backorder, or this generator part. It's not, it's not coming. But we did this, and so on and so forth. And you see how much ingenuity and genius exists in our communities in all these beautiful ways. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Unless, you know, things became very differently.

Now, when we contrast like where we live with other areas, where there's like hotel and tourism, infrastructure, I mean, the things that they need come like *finger snap*, you know, agriculture from the mainland, protein from the mainland, other things. So you just see this contrast and like, what about when we need medical things in our community in the outer islands? Why are you prioritizing capitalism, and profit over our community's health just over and over and over and over again. And I can point to our toxic relationship with tourism throughout this pandemic, because we had an opportunity to push the reset button, right, we had an opportunity to reform and recalibrate and we didn't do it. And that's because we have too many corrupt politicians that are you know what I mean, I'm gonna call it like I see it. I just feel like we had the opportunity to move forward with other forms other, just develop forms of our circular economy, an island system that has all forms of renewable energy.

I mean, the island that we live on alone has 11 out of 13 biomes on planet Earth, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet Earth. So why are we the extinction capital of the world? Why are we the invasive species capital of the world? Right? Why do you want to build a golf course here? You know, that's stupid. That's not even a sport, you don't even sweat when you play that I'm talking about. So like that we are very familiar with all these, I mean, the forms of exploitation and the forms of of genius and ingenuity and Futurism, you know, I think that Hawaii is a really incredible place for that. We will continue and whether it's agriculture or ranching or energy sustainability solutions, oceanic sciences, geology, like anything, that's why all these people want to come to our islands to make hay. You know, you know, that we've been, we've been prac ..  How do you think we found these islands? Science? You know? So,

Patty 

yeah, like, when you think like you had talked earlier about, you know, kind of about the Pacific, diaspora and, and, you know, kind of traveling, those are some pretty huge distances requiring some pretty significant knowledge of not just celestial navigation, but winds and ocean currents, and who else is out there, and things that want to eat you and making sure that you have enough food. You know, and who are you gonna call for help when you're on a boat in the middle of the ocean, you got to be pretty resourceful. And like, we don't, we don't often think about that. And that's like, you know, we're so impressed with you know, Columbus, right? It was just Columbus, Indigenous peoples, or whatever. You know, and whoo, you know, he crossed the ocean, whatever. And, you know, 1492, you know, and that was such a major accomplishment. But y'all were all over the Pacific a long time before that.

Keolu

You're preaching to the choir, you know, honestly, I just wrote this piece for Indigenous People’s day, Indigenous futures day. And I told you earlier before it's late, yeah. So it'll be out in like, the next 24 hours. But it's about many of those ideas. I mean, we had all of these we had and have all of these super complex. I mean, if you ever get to work or meet some of these master navigators, I mean, they are, they are treasures, like Hawaiian treasures. You know, I mean, they're not all Hawaiin. And, you know, but they're there throughout the Pacific. But, I mean, you're talking about bird migration patterns for land, finding birds, the green turquoise glint on the bottom of a cloud that lets you identify a lagoon from 300 miles away. I mean, you work with these people, and you understand that. It's humbling, you know, people that that are that are operating, and have that skill set.

And yeah, I mean, we just got we it was the fastest in less than 1000 years, our kupuna traversed a territory or space of the space of Eurasia, and it wasn't just unidirectional, right. It's like, oceanic superhighway. Complex, dynamic routes back and forth. And I think we're still only beginning to understand what, how truly remarkable that level of travel and comfort on the ocean was. And then when you talk about, like being in tune with the Āina, and how the ocean shapes your genome, I mean, we're talking about people that really understood navigation. And if you're ever out there in the middle of the ocean, and it's not at night, because at night, it gives you a little comfort, and you can use the Milky Way. Right. But, but I mean, during the day, it's just like overwhelmingly confusing. But over there with with the, you know, the Inuit and the Yupik that very similar, I've been been to that part of town and I'm like, oh, it's white everywhere. And it's kind of scary.

Patty 

It just keeps going.  I’ve been up to Iqaluit on Baffin Island. You don't want to leave, like my son lived. My son lived there for 18 months. And he would like to go hiking out on the on the tundra. And he was warned, don't go too far. Like make sure that you can keep certain landmarks in sight. Because you get past the wrong hill. And you're done. You can walk for three days and you won't find anything. So you know to navigate that is just ..  and yet they navigated it circumpolar navigation there. You know, traveling across it only looks far apart. And then you tip the Earth on its side and you can see how connected those circumpolar people are and how actually close together they are. And we forget, we don't think about it like that, because we're so used to looking at the Globe in a particular way. And it's a very Eurocentric way of looking at it.

Keolu

Oh, yeah. No doubt about that. But I saw these little maps, these wooden carved maps, and they were made. I forget, I want to say it was Upik. But it might have been anyway. But it was a used by people who are hunting. They use it as a way to like, understand the coastline in which they're cruising. Oh, I forget what it's called. Yeah, I'll try to find it. I'll send it to you guys afterwards. “Yeah, probably, it's called this.”

Patty:

*laughing* And I'll remember what you were talking about.

Kerry 

I love that so much. You see what I'm what really comes to me through this whole course of the conversation is what how brilliant. We all are. And, and when we are given the opportunity to stand and feel into and create our own truths. It shifts this enormous and enormously, we shift the space, we really get these new, innovative, which really are connecting back into the old ways anyway. But we can we can get this beautiful space of melding the old, into the new and refreshing allowing ourselves to remember what I think we've already known. And and when I hear, you know, that they're, they're now starting to study the how how people were navigating the seas, and that, you know, it's like a superhighway. And once again, what keeps resoundingly in my head, I always say the ancestors sit on my shoulders. And I'm hearing somebody's going, of course, it was, you know, sometimes we are so removed, because of the view that we sit in right from this colonial Western viewpoint. That it always was. And we're not just talking about, like a period of time, we're talking about real time, people who were living their lives, people who were, you know, creating these experiences, you know, determining their destinies and the end the laneways of the oceans. And I think it's so important to bring that piece of the humanity back, understanding that Mother Earth, Gaia, whatever we want to call this space was connected to that space connected to that be. And I think that's what innately we bring. If that makes sense.

Keolu

Oh, absolutely. It makes sense. I was reading this thing recently about the way that whale bladders are used to make all of the, the skin for the different kayak. They did like this mathematical approximation of like, what would be the perfect aerodynamic or hydrogen dynamic dimensions of this watercraft? And what would it look like if you were to, like, optimize it. And the I mean, over time, First Nations people hit it on the nose, it's absolutely perfectly engineered. It's light, it's packable. And the material I mean you speak to you like using all of the materials of the creature that you're honoring, you know. And that bladder is the perfect material, it’s material sciences. I mean, it's lightweight, its transparent and almost almost camouflaged. And it is impermeable, and it is the same exact thing they used for their parka.

And I got I was thinking about that I couldn't stop thinking about it, because it is so perfectly optimized over time. And that it speaks to the local complexity of that environment. And this is the problem with a lot of capitalism, too. It's like, we started this Indigenous Futures Institute here. And the whole goal is to seek that local complexity in every technology that we engineer. Everything that we create should be in context to that environment, just like our genomes, just like that parka just like that the waapa, the way that our ancestors over a long ass period of time finally figured out that if you put two hulls next to each other, you can go anywhere in the world to the most remote islands in the world. If you displace weight and water and make it hydrodynamic that way. And look at all of the models they use for like the America's Cup, for all these like carbon fiber. They're all catamarans and trimarans and so that's our intellectual property, and Larry Ellison better recognize that and pay my people. Because you, you know what I mean, you're talking about these are the fastest boats in the world. That's our stuff. So like, but I just look to all of the ingenuity and context of the environment. And I'm like, Man, I can't stop my mouth is just like *pantomimes open mouth*, amazing. It's amazing. So I just, you know, basically want to spend the rest of my life looking for more that it's everywhere. Yeah.

Patty 

And then what capitalism does though is it takes that one particular model, and then it just wants to replicate it all over the world.  It works here. And let's just do this everywhere. Let's just manufacture mass manufacturing, everywhere. And that's, I love what you're talking about with that Institute. Let's look at the local diversity, that and then look at, look at that local diversity and build that as opposed to just let's just, you know, now we're just gonna scatter it all over the world. And everybody's got to do it.

Keolu

Yes. That's our EK, like, I was thinking about this new initiative in Vancouver, like, if you're listening all my Indigenous peeps in Vancouver, and you're doing that four block stretch, and you're the architect and engineering people on that job. And this is some serious land back stuff. So what they do with it is the most important thing, because you have to show the rest of the world that you're the leader in this s**t. Do not borrow ideas from other places in the world. Make sure that that speaks to your heritage, your accomplishments, your peoples engineering, and make the most be and it will be perfect. But if you try to borrow ideas, we're gonna put Hanging Gardens from India, these bridges and da da, that no, that's that's their thing in Kerala. That's right, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's a trap.

Kerry 

I love this so much, because I think you're right. And I, I think what you're saying too, is, is it's so timely. And it's almost imperative that we hear that, because the earth as we are moving into this next phase environmentally,  we have seen that, that idea of just kind of taking some, you know, status quo prototype sort of thing and dumping it here and dumping it here, there doesn't work well. And I to really, for us to look at this, and I think shifts some of the tides, we're gonna have to get creative, innovative, in so much of understanding each ecosystem, and this idea of the biodiversity of spaces, and working out uniquely, how are we going to be able to affect it to slow down what you know is going on right now, this is very, right, like this is a time where we really have to bring that front and center. And I think these are some of the conversations that I haven't heard really happening, least from the governmental but you know, whoever is in charge spaces, they're just talking about cutting emissions. But I think that idea of narrowing it down has to come front and center,

Keolu

Agreed Trudeau has to take the colonial wax out of his ears and pay attention to the geniuses in your community. Like pay attention. I think it's so interesting too, because in Hawaii, you know, we we grew up with this, not only was our genome shaped by this ingenuity, but we watched this like dialectically intertwined phenomenon. So we have this Ahupua`a system in Hawaii. So from the top of the the moku all the way down to the ocean, we have this this like sustainable gardening gravity system. And the way it works is like you have freshwater at the top that leads to you know your sweet potato, people in what you're gonna kill me. Sweet potato patch and then you know those from the sweet potato patch and all the phytonutrients from there go into this next garden and all the phytonutrients from there go into the lo’I  which is the taro patch and then those then that bacteria goes into the fish pond where you've created this, you know, artificial fishery environment right on the water and you've stacked stones around so you get like the fish growing and eating in the mangroves and then it cannot go out the hole that it came in because it's too big so can't even get to the reef and it's this complete, then you take the leftover fish and you bring it to the top for fertilize you get I'm saying like it's a complete circular economic system. It's engineered for its invisible

Okay, that's why John Mayer arrives in f*****g excuse me. He arrives in Yosemite and he's like, Wow, this place is pristine and did it and these people are like, bro, we've been cultivating this Āina for 1000s of years, right? That's our our technology systems are invisible. They have been designed to be infinity loops. Right, we talk about the parka. I mean, I could break down any one of those technologies and show you why it's an invisible infinity loop. Let's contrast that with capitalism and optimizing every single system for exponential growth and profit. If it's going this way (upwards), that's not good. It needs to go this way (circular). And so if it's not working within the circular system, and then you have all these other people who's the lady who's talking about donut economics, it's like, okay, you stole our IP. Maybe they're going to give you a MacArthur Genius Grant, another one that should have went to an Indigenous person, you know, can you do, but I think that the that a lot of these large institutions are starting to get hip to it and realize that, that, that they the things that were invisible to them are starting to take shape. You know,

Kerry 

What, what's in the dark always comes to light. And, and I find that interesting, though, is that, you know, just based on what we know, a western culture to do, is that a space that, you know, we want them to know, in that way? I think, for me, what what comes up is making sure we stay front and center and that we're ready to snatch back.

Keolu

Yeah, right. Your IP, the IP thing. I mean, I think we really need to get in I'm we've started a whole kind of Indigenous ventures focus on intellectual property, because we have to position our communities, because that is a great way. And we've started a number of different companies that are really focused on that mechanism. It's like benefit sharing. How do we bring the money back to the people? So let's like for example, let's say you have a community that's adapted to high elevation in the Himalayas, okay, I'm just going to pick them. And we find a genetic mutation that allows us to expedite the development of a new drug to make the next I don't know Viagra. Okay,

Patty

okay. High altitude Viagra. But,

Keolu

I mean, I'm saying this, and it sounds like science fiction, but this is happening. Now, there are multiple companies that are interested in this, okay? Right, okay. Because they know that who did all the legwork for you? Evolution, and if I can zero in on them on a molecule that allows me to understand how to make a new drug, I will do that. And I will patent that information. And I will put that drug on the market.

Now, what this company Variant Bio is doing is they're saying, no, actually, we give X percentage of the royalties and intellectual property to the community in which it's derived, they have benefit, they have a benefit sharing clause, okay. And a large portion of that money goes back into select programs that are involved in cultural revitalization practices, education, health care, all the drugs that are created, in partnership with that community, they're either given to the community for free or at cost. So, none of these like Vertex Drug.  Americans are the worst the drug hits the market, it's $300,000 a year and you have can only get access to it through your insurance company. So they're like disrupting the whole relationship.

Now, here's the beauty of it. That's because these companies, if they make money on that, this is the they can buy back land, the exact same land that shaped their genome in the first place. And that's a circular economy there. So, we just have to think about re engineering all of these criminal industries, whether it's big pharma, any sort of energy or resource based company, you know, we're big into Indigenous data sovereignty, right? We've been talking about all of these opportunities, and just recognizing data as a resource, just like timber, just like oil, just like diamonds, any rare earth mineral, you know, and I know that the largest companies in the world are all based on generating, mining, modeling data, big data as a resource, and it's a form of economic value. It is the forum, surpassing oil in 2018, as the most important, valuable commodity on planet Earth. So why aren’t our people getting a cut of that?

Kerry 

We you've touched something, I would love to hear more about that. Maybe sending out some research just at the center of understanding of intellectual property, I would love to hear more and how, you know, because that to me, now. Now we're talking about a real way, tangible, fundamental way to shift power. And I think that that one will speak it speaks so loudly and in a language that the capitalist system would understand.  And I think if we that that's something powerful to spread the word on,

Keolu

I was going to say we're starting a kind of Indigenous intellectual property patent troll entity, because we have to play offense, it seems like often more often than not, were reacting to things or we're writing like these policy pieces, or, dare I say, ethics pieces where we're trying to get people to play book. And then then like a lot of our colleagues, they end up kind of window dressing and referencing our paper, but they don't actually do the things we're telling you to do. So, you know, I'm relatively young. So I'm observing this and seeing who's referencing our papers and see why and you know what, f**k this. We're about to make technologies. Now. We're about to make deterrent technologies, safeguarding technologies, and counter technologies, because we have to get in line and be in control.

And, you know, a lot of the things we're doing with like native bio data consortium, we recognize what was Ford's secret sauce, when he created the Model T, vertical integration, they controlled everything from the rubber that they extracted in the Amazon, to the ball bearings to the engine, manufacturing, everything on the manufacturing line, they have complete vertical control of our communities need ready, and not limited to: satellites, so we can decrease the digital divide, write our own cloud based web services, so that we can process our own information and safeguard it, right?  file repositories and store our genomes. We have to I mean, we need we need infrastructure. And we need people to stop investing in these bunk, just criminal and dare I say it, mediocre with the lack of innovation, infrastructures that already exist and invest in our people.

Kerry 

I love this so much. I'm, I'm, wow, this This to me is a conversation that I would really like even just take, take this part of it, and when I really enjoy this, because seriously, I think you're that, to me, is a real, practical, revolutionary idea. And not just an idea, you guys are putting it into practice. And it speaks to me, because we often talk in the Black community about doing very much the same thing, building our own infrastructure. And and talking about claiming these pieces. And I think, you know, sharing that information is powerful, because this is the way we can exist in the system, and claim it back for ourselves and reshape it because it's literally a monster, it's like with eight heads. And these are the ways we can cut off some of the heads and maybe they don't grow back. You know, so I would love for us to maybe do this as another conversation like, Wow, very interesting.

Patty 

But we talked so much about presence, right about, about presence, and being visible in things, but presence is not power. No, we can dominate a room, right? Like we can have, like the whole faculty, you know, be Indigenous people. But that doesn't mean that we have any power over the knowledge that we're creating, or the things that we're putting out there, because somebody is still controlling what papers get published, and somebody you know, and the funding for the projects. So you know, so we can have all the presence in the world, that doesn't mean that we have our overt the ability to control our own genetic material, you know, you know, that goes out there, or what happens with, you know, like we were talking about very early on, you know, the stories that get told about the stuff that you know about the things that are already out there, and the meaning that gets invested in that stuff, and then how that drives medical research. And they keep looking for answers in places that only wind up that only support the colonial system. So this is a really interesting and important application of the things that of you know, of the things that we started off talking about.

Keolu

Yeah, I mean, we're just getting started with building a lot of these infrastructures and companies and training the next generation of people so that they can fill these roles and who knows what amazing ideas they're going to have. I mean, we were we're holding it down. I mean, in the health and genomic space. But I think there, just there are other people, I think that are really thinking about ideas in different directions. And I'm looking forward to learning from them. I mean, a lot and a lot of this applies to other things too, like repatriation of ancestors and museum settings and artifacts.

Patty 

Well, we  just talked with Paulette Steeve's about about that. Yeah.

Keolu

Oh mahalo nui for the opportunity, you know, for so long we've not been able to to make decisions or have major leadership roles. I appreciate you guys having me on here and the conversation. And I'd love to come back sometime so …

Kerry 

Oh, well consider it done, we are going arrange that to happen. Consider it done. This was phenomenal. I really appreciate it.

Patty 

Thank you. So thank you so much. I really thought this was so interesting.

Kerry

Thank you bye.

Patty

Baamaapii

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere

With Dr. Paulette Steeves

Patty Krawec

We're here with Dr. Paulette Steves.

Josh Manitowabi made a remark that the Anishinaabe word Giiwedin contains the idea of going home. And that what it was referring to was the glaciers, that the glaciers were going home. And this is knowledge that's contained with elders. And he gave me you know, reference to a couple of books where elders are, you know, talked about this, in the Cree have a similar word. I think it's a kiiwedin rather than with the G. And I was just so captured by this idea that our language contained knowledge, not only of the glaciers, but the fact that they hadn't always been there. And then I encountered somebody was talking on Twitter was talking about talking about Paulette’s book, Dr. Steeves Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere kind of expands on that hugely on Indigenous presence, not just 5000 years ago, or 10,000 years ago. Like, like your dissertation. You know, it's more than 100,000 years ago,

Kerry: we love it so much

Patty: that’s an extremely long time. And I was just like, when I saw that this book existed, I was like, this needs to be in my and I rewrote part of the beginning of my book based on it. I was like, I need to get this book into my book. Because it is a story of beginnings, right? I don't focus on that. But creation stories ground us, they say so much about what we believe about ourselves.

Dr Paulette Steeves:

And that's, that's important. That language you Giiwedin, because that tells us that the people were here, before the glaciers came, right. And they were here when the glaciers went home. And white faculty, white archaeologists don't know our language, don't value our language, and don't understand that not just Indigenous history, but World History is held in those languages. So that's really, really an important point about the language.

Patty: 

And then I came across it in your book, I came across more examples of that, right, where you talk about Thunderbirds and the terratorns, and the story of the Osage have, and then they went and found all these bones. And it's like, wow, it's like, if you talk to the people, maybe you could learn something.

Paulette:

Right. But archaeologists typically for decades forever wouldn't talk to Native American or First Nations people, because they didn't give their knowledge any value. And because their academic capital was built on our history, our artifacts, and how the archaeologists told the story. So, they owned it, they own the artifacts, if they talk to us, they were terrified, oh we might have to give them something back and acknowledge them, that is slowly beginning to change. But, you know, I worked in field archaeology a lot in the US and archaeologists were supposed to by their agreements, consult with tribes, and they didn't, and none of the archaeologists on the crew had a clue, even whose land they were on. So it was really sad. I learned a lot about how devastating archaeology can be to Indigenous history from working in field archaeology for I don’t know, six years in the US. And seeing that, you know, how terrified archaeologists were that, you know, the Indians were going to take everything back and, and they wouldn't own it. And that was their academic capital.

So in an upcoming coming, grant, I have some collaborators and one of them is going to talk about the capitalism of history and how that is controlled by non-Indigenous archaeologists. And so there's a lot of points that people don't think about. They don't realize it's not just archaeology and history, capitalism is involved in a big way. The nation state is involved in controlling that story, because they stole all the land based on Oh, it's a terra nullius. nobody's using it, we can have it. Right. And so when we show that's not so it makes it unsafe for the nation state. But I mean, I got an email yesterday from an archaeologist that um, his wife is Colombian. And they went down to Bogota. And he talked to a lot of archaeologists there. And they don't even discuss what we call pre Holocene or pre 10,000 year before present sites because of the pressure from archaeologists in the US to deny it. And not to acknowledge that these these ancient Pleistocene sites exist. So a lot of the field of archaeology has ignored this timeframe for Indigenous people, because it's dangerous to go there. Because archaeologists in the US say so

Kerry:

I'm fascinated with the world of archaeology and and the, the sense the knowing that we, as people who are Indigenous to the land, people who have existed beforehand, people who have been colonized in this space in time, I think we have an innate understanding that that existence began beyond what we are allowed to claim. And then, you know, the truths of those existence are scattered all over the world, you know, that were they there's these artifacts that show up, that can't be carbon dated within the timeframe that suits the world archaeological space that exists right now.

And you mentioned something that brought up two questions for me, one being that, you know, you mentioned the capitalism, the capitalist kind of system that exists around archeology, as it exists now. And that brought to mind also how the colonial system managed to take the wealth out of our, you know, our peoples, and turned it into their ownership, their, you know, history, and also, my understandings or studies of things has always shown up that for, for the origins of white folks like that understanding of what it is to be white, you know, whatever we're going to use that they they that understanding isn't found everywhere, like it normally comes from, you know, people who have color involved in the spaces, and then somehow they show up, like we are older. We are older forms of existence, or older species that existed. And I find that an interesting space, like for you does that. Do you think that's one of the things that fuels this colonial way of being? Is that sense of wanting to know where they come from? Do you know what I mean?

Paulette:

Yeah, no, in, in a lot of the things that I've studied, I've really come to understand how archaeology is a child of colonization. And so if you go back into early archeology in the Americas, you'll see that Aleš Hrdlička was sort of a self trained archaeologist, he trained as a physician. But, he was extremely racist. And he claimed that the Indians had only been here 3000 years. And the thing is, if you if you look at what's required in archaeology, to make claims, and to write histories, you have to have data, you have to have evidence, you have to have science. And he was basing this on one graveyard he'd done up in Alaska. He wasn't even looking at, you know, all of the evidence from all of the continents. And he went to his grave denying that we been here for more than 3000 years.

So it was actually an African American, freeman, a Black man in Texas who was working as a cowboy that found the site that broke that barrier and prove that we've been here at least 10,000 years. He found this site with these huge bones and realized they had to be extinct animals because they were way too big. And he told his story. And his story got to Jessie Figgins at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. And in 1927, he went out and started excavating this area in Texas, and actually found what they call a Clovis point in the ribs of an extinct bison. And he had to fight for a few years and have people come and see it. Nobody would believe them because everyone believes Aleš Hrdlička, right. This white or white guy who was racist. And eventually that was accepted and they're like, Okay, so the Indians have been here at least 10,000 years. Right, but it's been stuck there since the 19, late 1920s. And all this evidence has surfaced are our ancestors left us their stories in the land to tell us of their time here. They left it on the rocks with rock art. They, they've held it in their oral traditions. Archaeologists have traditionally ignored all of that. But since I've started publishing and writing more or listening, and they're stepping out of that box, so there was there's a huge fear in archaeology, it's it's been said that if you talk about sites or published on sites that are older than then 11 or 12,000 years, that's academic suicide. Right? The violence that violence against archaeologists that found older sites that's not scientific, that's not academic, that's racist..

Kerry:

Mm hmm 

Could you tell us some of the stories tell us what, what, what the ancestors know and what was left in the rock art?

Paulette:

Oh, there's, there's so much in the rock art, it's immense. So I just had my students completed database of rock art sites whose location was known and made public. And we have, I think, over 2000 sites, there's another 1500 that are held within another database, and their their locations aren’t public. So I won't publish on those. But what that tells us is that, you know, those rock art sites are like mnemonic pegs. So I have heard that one person worked with elders in the Yukon, and they wouldn't tell certain stories. But if you took them back to a rock, or a certain area, they would sit down and start telling the story because the rock held that story. Right.

So they have an amazing, amazing, very rich oral tradition of history. And when you hear, like, they have words in their language, that mean, the glaciers went home, you know, they were here, then. And that's anywhere from 8000 to 12,000 years ago. So you know that people have been here for such a long time.  Archaeology sites, they left stone tools, they left bone tools, they left their history of butchering mammals, they left botanical plants and medicines. And they left us those stories. It's up to us to retell those stories. Tom Delahaye, is an archaeologist who worked on a site in Chile. And he was trained like all archaeologists are trained to, you know, people were never here before 12,000 years or 11,200 years, when his site, Monte Verde data to 12,500 years, there was so much evidence there, he couldn't deny it. You know, there was meat, there was seaweed, there was medicine, there was botanicals, there was tools, it was in a peat bog. So that means the oxygen couldn't get in, everything was just really well preserved. He lost his funding, and he had to fight to get it back. That's how violent it is. So nobody would believe him. They hadn't been to the site or, you know, experience his data. But they just said, Oh, no, you're wrong, because people haven't been here. And he had to fight for years to get that site accepted. Now, he now has another area close to there that dates to over 30,000 years. But he, you know, he had he lost all of his funding, and he had to fight to get it back.

And that's not right. We're supposed to be archeologists. We're supposed to study the history of humans, right? We're not supposed to deny it and say it doesn't exist before we even look. But that is the case for the Americas unfortunately.

Kerry:

And I I'm I'm, I'm really like hearing this, because I also know that that seems to have been something that happened even when we study Africa, and my understandings of you know, how they've carbon dated, you know, the Sphinx, there's been arguments in and around, that the Sphinx has existed for far longer than the 5000 years that they've dated it, give or take, you know, they mean that some people believe it's actually 25,000 years old, depending on how you carbon dated it. And I'm so curious to understand, you know, you mentioned it being archaeology, archaeological suicide. Why? What do you think is that that, you know, rigid buffer that is hit that space? Why?

Paulette:

Racism? So So you look at it, the nation state controls history, and so whoever controls the past controls the present, right. So if we are very infantile in time compared to global human history, we are the babies right? And so we're not evolved. We're not anything, we're dehumanized. So Vine Deloria Jr. talked about this and Vine Deloria Jr. has a quote and it was somebody thing like, you know, until we are equated with human history on a global scale in in ancient time, we will not have full humanity. So he knew that there were oral traditions and stories and evidence of being here much earlier. And he knew that like, the first archaeologists like Aleš Hrdlička said, We'd only been here 3000 years. So we're newcomers.

So if you look at a lot of archaeological textbooks, or you hear archaeologists talk, they talk about the Indigenous people of the Americas being Asians from Asia, right? So totally disenfranchise us from our identity of being Indigenous to the Americas. Pardon me, Asia did not exist. Neither did an Asian culture 10 or 12,000 years ago, we are not Asians from Asia, we are Indigenous to these continents. And we have been for a very long time. But they teach. They they preach and teach this worldview that disenfranchises us from the land. Why? Whey all live on the land that the colonizing government stole, you know, through a genocide and intentional genocide, of putting they put rewards on Indian scalps, you'll get 50 bucks for a woman and 500 for a chief. Those were lost. So people were intentionally killing Indians. If people thought that Indians were human, you know, and it had been an established, you know, advanced culture, they wouldn't have been out there shooting them for 50 bucks.

So so this started back, you know, what, when America started the dehumanization, and linking us to nature, not to culture, right, and it's taken over 100 years for people to realize, oh, they did have very advanced cultures, they have some of the earliest areas of agriculture, they have more Indigenous languages in the Americas than the whole rest of the world put together. Right, that really all humanizes us. And archaea, a few archaeologists have spoken out and said that, you know, archaeologists understand the importance of the past to people, and the importance of human, you know, history to humanizing people in a certain area.

So our history was built in colonization, to dehumanize us, and we're rewriting that history. And that's important because that frames people's worldviews, and when you push back against that, and you inform their worldviews, and you give them all this new knowledge, they're going to see us different, right? They're going to vote different policies are going to be different. Land Claims are going to be different. We're still in a place where we're very dehumanized, and we're starting to reclaim that, and make it public. And people are just starting to understand it. It's like, all these settler people are scratching their heads going really holy. I didn't know that. Right? Like, people don't know. And so they just believe what they're taught.

But one of the first things I teach students is to think critically, I mean, don't believe what's in that book, study it, find out for yourself, you have the skill to do that to become informed. And you see people and events in an entirely different way.

Patty:

Mm hmm. Your book it, you make a couple of interesting points that I've been, I mean, you talk about evidence is not found, because it's not looked for, you know, because they've got a particular story, you know, that they want to tell. And, you know, and we talk about different peoples being, you know, Asiatic or Caucasoid, or whatever. And, and these are modern, you know, these are modern racial categories, people who existed 12,000 years ago, 30,000 years ago, 40,000 years ago, they weren't any of those things. We're taking contemporary ideas, and imposing them. Like when we talk about how humanity started in Africa. Africa didn't exist 100,000 years ago. Africa is a very recent invention, that has a lot of colonial baggage attached to it, you know, and you look at kind of, I remember going to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and you see, you know, that poster of the evolution of mankind. And that start, he starts dark and hunched over and then becomes of white, he starts Black and becomes white.

Paulette:

There's this term called agnotology, which is the intentional teaching of ignorance, and the hiding of facts and data, right. So, US and Canadian education is based on agnotology. It's not so much what you're taught is what you're not taught. Right.

So I asked all my classes this Where did humans begin? Africa. Okay. And what did humans evolve from. Well, primates and where did did primates evolve? Africa. No, the earliest primates in the world are from Wyoming. Right? 47% of the earliest proto primates are from Wyoming and Saskatchewan. So if primates as Nova has a little video that shows our earliest ancestors were did everybody first evolve? North America, North America, Hello. People aren't taught that I have a book chapter out there on that also.

And that's really a great example of how agnotology is used. They don't teach students that the earliest primates are from the Americas. Right? And that's intentional, because that would make North America important. Imagine if people thought that it that everybody evolved from the earliest primates from North America, right? Could we say we have been here forever? Yes. Hello, of course. And it's scientific data to show it so. Agnotology unfortunately still plays a huge role in how students are taught, and so does racism and bias. I had to teach from one textbook. As a graduate student, you know, we have teach the professor's class and the textbook was talking about what is an artifact and these two authors said, Well, an artifact can be a beautiful 20,000 year old spearpoint from France. Or it could be an indistinguishable flake some weary Indian chucked out in the Mississippi cornfield 1500 years ago. So what kind of worldview are you framing? Beautiful ancient things come from Europe, but some weary Indian chucked out an indistinguishable flak? Why would you even say that

Patty:

You weren't here 15,000 years ago, how did you know, he was tired?

Paulette:

And so I take that book, every chance I get. And I brought it up to the professor. And I said, do you understand how dehumanizing and wrong this is? He was really embarrassed, because he hadn't realized how bad that wasn't, he's been using that textbook for a while. Right? So first year, students, this is what they're taught.

Patty:

Right? And that becomes foundational, to how they, how they think their perspective. Alexis Shotwell does some really nice writing in her book, Knowing Otherwise about our implicit knowledge, you know, things that we know, but we don't articulate, you know, like the way our hands know how to do things. We don't have to think through how you know how to do stuff, our hands just know what to do. And, you know, we feel and, you know, and we have, we just know some things, and that it's this kind of stuff that that forms the basis of that, that, you know, nobody has to tell them that Indigenous people are, you know, backwards. And you know, less than and all of that they just know,

Paulette:

It’s normalized violence against Indigenous people. And that plays into how people frame and vote for and create policies for land claims for clean water, for human rights, right, for funding, for schooling, for everything, you know, and so people just normalize that we're worth less, because we're less human. So let's fund their schools like at only two thirds of what we fund, settler white schools, right? This, these are the kinds of things that play into it. And I'm kind of beginning to push the envelope further.

So if we look at Northern Asia, we know that there were early hominids there 2.4 million years ago. So there's archaeology sites there where we know that Homo erectus or homo sapiens were home erectus like 2.1 million years ago at one site. We know there are sites in Siberia that date from 24,000 to 340,000 years. So why then, wouldn’t it have early humans? Because they follow animals, they follow herds of animals, because that's their sustenance, their food, right? Why would they have stopped there? If they already walked 14,000 kilometers from Africa? to Asia?

Kerry:

Why wouldn’t they just go ahead.

Paulette:

Why would they just stop? Oh, no, we can't cross there. Yeah, no, that doesn't. That's an anomaly. That does not make sense. So I'm now looking to start a new body of research where we'll actually look at what was the Paleo environment in Northern Asia and in northern North America, like at specific points in time, so we know, between glaciers, there was a land connection, and the entire land in the North was like a subtropical forest. So there was plenty of food we know because we know that mammals were coming and going. So camelid camels arose in the Americas. They had to migrate across there to get to the rest of the world. As did saber toothed cats, and and primates, right? So if they're all going from the west to the east, and humans are over there in the east, you know, when mammals are migrating back and forth, why would the humans stop? Right? Right? Like it doesn't make any sense.

So I'm starting to build this new body of evidence and knowledge to show that it has never been impossible. From the earliest times we see, you know, 2.1 or 2.4 million years in Northern Asia, it was never impossible for mammals or humans to have come to North America, there's no way you can convince anybody really, if you're looking at the facts that they waited in, you know, 2 million years to do that. They were there the whole time. No.

Patty:

And you make  sorry, you make a really good point about Australia that I just kind of want want to bring up because they accept presence, you know, human presence in Australia much further back then they accept human presence in North America. And they also accept ocean travel. We always walked. We always walk, we had to wait for the snow to clear and we walked. But in Australia, they could take boats. So why couldn't we take boats? You know, like, and I thought that was a really, I thought those were some really good points, because I never thought about that.

Paulette:

Like, yeah, well, they don't teach you. They don't teach you didn't think about that at all right? You're not supposed to. But Crete, it was in Ireland that you always needed some form of water transport to get to. And there's sites on Crete that date to over 100,000 years. So we know that early humans were using forms of water transport to cross open bodies of water over 100,000 years ago. Well, now they're trying to say all the earliest, yeah, the earliest people in North America came 15,000 years ago, and they used boats and went along the ice. No, you know, we have points in Eastern Canada, one that was dredged up from the continental shelf that dates to over 22,000 years, that are exactly the same as points found in the area we know today as France that date to that same time. And people are like, Oh, no, that's impossible. Why? During times of glaciers, the water was less the oceans were sucked up in the glaciers. And that made the land crossing much more viable. And if you talk to a lot of Inuit people today, and you ask them, also, would you have any issues going, you know, a few 1000 miles across snow and ice? No, we do it every day. We do it all the time. That's our way of life right, people were accustomed to crossing through glacial areas. Awesome. Right?

Kerry:

I love what you're saying so much, because a part of what I've always felt, when you when you take a look at the the history of the world, is how much it's kept fragmented. And yet, just like people, you know, like, I always feel this even with history, just how segmented we you know, the colonial system will take pieces of, and yet it doesn't take into accountability, that flow that ebb and flow that we as human beings just naturally have. Also, our relationship with the land, you know, we've had to live on Mother Earth forever. And, you know, wherever we, wherever she throws at us, we've had to adjust. And so I always find it fascinating that, um, you know, one of the beautiful things about the the human species is our ability to, you know, to innovate and to create, so why wouldn't we be able to adapt, create and innovate to move with whatever the environmental, geographical areas are presenting for us, like, why would that not be possible? And I agree with you, if you're really bringing forward for me, the sense of how the colonial system even used archaeology as a tendril to keep us controlled and in bay and to lessen the humanity of, you know, Indigenous peoples from all over the world.

Paulette:

Yeah, archaeology is the handmaiden to the nation state and they only produce stories that the nation state would approve of that made it safe for the nation state. Right. And it's like when you look at areas in in Mexico and in Central America, and they call people in Mestitzo and Latino, those are names. That's how you erase Indigenous identity. Right? Those people now are learning to speak out and reclaim their Indigenous identities. You know, they're not Mestitzo, they're not Latino. They're Indigenous communities had names had identities. But the nation state and archaeologists assisted them in this erases many Indigenous identities as they can, if you read a lot of archaeological stories oh the people disappeared, or there was a huge community there were 1000s, or they mysteriously disappeared, people don’t mysteriously disappear. They move, right, they migrate. Whoa. So when we,

Patty:

we, we traveled in the American Southwest a number of years ago, we went to Mesa Verde, beautiful site, we were we'd gone to go look at the cliff dwellings and our guide was the Navajo Ute, man. And, you know, he's showing us around, and he's showing us this one Cliff dwelling, and he says, you know, people lived here 1000, you know, 1000 years ago. And, you know, and he's going on about how they vanished. And it was so mysterious, and everybody's just really soaking this up, right, this great mystery of Where did these people go? Civilization that just vanished. And then he breaks character and says, Have you ever been to Detroit? people move. Yeah.

Paulette:

I did a I did an article on Mesa Verde. And got to go there and experience it. And yeah, people move, floods come droughts happen, people pick up and move, they don't mysteriously disappear. But that's how archaeologists erase us. And so what one of the kind of unspoken goals of archaeology is to cleave connections between ancient sites and ancient people and contemporary people, right. So they won't let anybody reclaim human remains older than 2000 or 2500 years because you can't prove they're yours?

Well, you know what? as an undergraduate, the Quapaw tribe came and asked me if I could help them. So they were trying to reclaim over 500 ancestors, from their very well known towns, Quapaw towns that were along the western side of the Mississippi River. Right, so archaeologists know, these are Quapaw towns, they know the remains came from that area. But they were using a loophole in the Native American Graves Repatriation Act to not return those remains to the Quapaw. And there were a lot of elders that were maybe in their last years, and they would just be in tears when I met with them, they really wanted to rebury their ancestors. So I was only an undergraduate student, we didn't have a DNA lab there. But when they asked me, I realized we could do this. And I got one of the top DNA labs in the US to work with me. And we extracted a Quapaw DNA from a couple of elders, so we had something to match to those ancient remains. When I announced that I was successful in getting modern Quapaw DNA, then museums pretty much immediately gave the 500 ancestors back to the Quapaw. And two weeks after that results, they were re-buried. So the museums and universities knew that these human remains were Quapaw. And they knew they'd be really embarrassed if I brought it out and proved that they were withholding them. You know, and I showed that they were linked through DNA.

So one thing I learned from that is that we can use those tools, those scientific tools to support communities, right. And that was kind of a turning point, I was headed for med school. And that was a turning point that headed me to archeology instead.

Kerry:

Thank you for sharing that. I think that's so important and riveting, because I know that the African continent, so many of the countries in Africa are starting to, you know, knock on some of those museum doors, and are claiming back their ancient artifacts as well. And it's been so interesting to hear like the Smithsonian, for example. My understanding is they have 1000s and 1000s. of stolen, you know, goods, merchandise artifacts, you know, ancient tribal, you know, heirlooms that they have taken and they're just sitting in boxes in a warehouse somewhere. And what came to mind even is the remains of you know, Sarah, Sarah Baartman, the Hottentot Venus, that African woman who they had encapsulated all of her human remains and it took them what's it 19 It was in the 90s, I think before they actually returned her back to her native land. And so, once again, I did not realize there could you explain a little bit you caught me there. Explain a little bit about this. This, you know, loophole legislation that exists where any you can't claim remains that are 2500 years older, then could you can you speak a little bit about that

Paulette:

You have a lot of archaeologists who are very vested in those policies. And so it's it's, there's a there's a law in the States came in in 1990, I think called NAGPRA, Native American Graves and Repatriation Act. So that required archaeologists, museums, to create lists of everything they own, including the Smithsonian, all these museums, everything right. And to to put make those lists public so that if Indigenous communities wanted to reclaim human remains, or affiliated spiritual artifacts, they could start that process. So as soon as that law came in, a lot of archaeologists in museums that are looking for loopholes to deny that right, so like I said, that was capital, they were sitting on millions and millions and millions of dollars of capital that got 1000s and 1000s, and 1000s of archaeologists their degrees. Right. And they did not want to give it back.

Oh, my God, there was some a hateful, hateful talk going on, in the Society for American archaeology. Right. And they were supposed to have this done within I think it was 10 years. And you know, we're, we're couple decades past when they were supposed to have it done. And there's a lot of them are still denying returning artifacts and, and ceremonial, sacred artifacts and human remains, because that's their capital. So, tribes pushed for that law, we wouldn't have that law, a lot of tribes hadn't pushed for it, and example of how they treated us differently. There was a road being built in an area of the northeastern United States, and they hit a bunch of burials, they hit a historic burial site. And they took all the remains from that the settler remains and the African American remains were re buried in a new cemetery. The Native Americans were sent to a museum. And that really, really angered some Native Americans. And they began to push for laws, so that our, our ancestors, our artifacts, our remains were treated the same as everybody else's.

So there is that law in place. It does have loopholes that people try to use. And communities like the Quapaw said, you know, what, watch us, we're gonna, we're going to take care of this. And then they came and found me I was only an undergrad student at the time, I had to quickly learn a lot. I had to apply for grant for an honors thesis. But we were successful in doing that. And I got to work with the Quapaw NAGPRA Office for two years. So I got a lot of training in that area, seeing what they faced. And that ended up having to be the mediator in meetings between the museums and the tribe because there was so much aggression coming from, from the museums, right.

Patty

There was another highway that was built in California that found a bunch of bones.

Paulette:

Every highway they build there finds bones.

Patty Krawec  38:31

The one, was there were Mastodon bones ..

Paulette:

That's the Cerutti site. It was called the Highway 54 site. So when in California, highway five goes up the coast of highway 15, goes up the interior and goes around and coastal mountains. And just north of San Diego, they wanted to join those two highways, they wanted to make a connector highway. So when they cleared that it wasn't that long ago, it wasn't 15 or 20 miles I forget, it wasn't that long of a highway, but they found over 114 archaeological sites. And one of the sites they found they hit this big mammoth tusk and it was standing straight up and down. So the archaeologist had them stop. The specialist came in and started looking at this area and they said, these bones are not disarticulated like they should be. So if this mammoth had died, his bones would kind of be scattered here and there but they weren't. There was two femur heads over here, there was a tusk vertically straight up and down on the ground. There were signs of what we call spiral fracturing.

So mammoth bone is so big that even an ancient short faced bear couldn't bite it and break it right. The only way to break a mammoth femur would have been to take a big boulder and smash it. So we know that early people liked the marrow. They like the bone for making tools in the marrow was highly nutritious, right? So we know that there is a body of science that shows how people broke the bone and that bone when it's broken by humans, fractures spirally. And we can tell by looking at the bone if it was broken when the animal was alive or when he just died, or if it was broken later. So is it a green break when he you know when he's living? Or is it a later break?

So Um Dr. Steve Holen, who was the head archaeologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He retired, I actually got to do my fieldwork with him on Pleistocene sites in the Great Plains. So I worked on mammoth sites with camelid bone, rhinoceros bone, like just amazing, amazing sites. So Dr. Holen, and another team of scientists that, you know, a huge team of scientists, they knew that if they claimed that this site was a human site, and they thought at the time that was over 200,000 years old, that they would just laughed out of the business, they just be slaughtered. So they waited they that was beautifully curated at the Museum of Man in San Diego. And they waited till technology and dating got to a place that could not be questioned. And then they had those bones dated, and they dated to over 130,000 years. So they finally published that. So I studied that for my dissertation, that collection from that site, they published on this in 2017. And there was an immediate firestorm of ridicule, immediately. But they were absolutely convinced this was human workmanship on this bone. The site was not in an area where the water didn't put those boulders or bones there, it was not in the water at what we call fluvial area.

Some archaeologists have supported them. So that's like, within that area. We have some other sites. Louis Leakey, who was the famous paleontologist from Africa, right found a lot of the earliest humans, the man knows what he's doing when he's looking at stone tools and bones. He came in and worked on the Calico site, just north of that area in southern California. He said that site was over 200,000 years old. What did the archaeologists in America say? Oh, he's just a crazy old man who's cheating on his wife. Right? Immediately start bad mouthing him, calling him a crazy old man. Because he said this site was over 200,000 years old, I believe him.

Right, there's a few other archaeologists that believe him, south of that area in central Mexico, around this reservoir, there have been four or five sites that have been dated to over 200,000 years. So we have what we call a regional area with not one site, but a bunch of sites that date between 100,000 and over 200,000 years. And but you know, if you talk about them, you're just crazy. When when I first got a hold of Dr. Holen, and I was asking him about older sites, he said, Don't tell anybody what you're studying, they're just gonna call you crazy. But you know, if it's gonna be your dissertation, you kind of got to talk about it. So I actually after initially talking to him, and he told me about 10 sites, I started reading about those sites. And every time you read a paper, you find about another site or another site. Well, in two weeks, I had over 500 sites, and I went, you know what, this is insane. The whole story, the whole Clovis first story is based on conjecture, every piece of it now has been proven to be wrong, incorrect, and not based on scientific data.

People were here way before, way before, if you got people, I worked on the [intelligible] site in Nebraska, that dates to 22,000 years before present. If people were here, 22,000 years ago, you got to back up and go, How long before that did they have to get here? And then you start seeing all these other sites that date to 5060 100,000 years? That makes sense, right? We see a pattern, but saying that people got here 12,000 years ago, and in 500 years, they went all the way from Alaska to the southern tip of South America and east to west to the Amazon. No, humans didn't move that fast. They would have needed jets. Hello

Patty Krawec  44:08

And then there's also the matter of the languages that you brought up, it takes time for languages to evolve and split and become new languages. You know, I've read you know, The Horse, The Wheel and Language, which is you know, fascinating story about the Steppes and the development of the horse and wheel and language. You know, and he, they talk about how much time it takes just to branch off and evolve.

Paulette

[unintelligible] said it takes minimally 6000 years, even within the same family tree for a new language in that family tree to be, it takes 6000 years, right? So if you look at the Americas, and we've only been here 12,000 years, we should have the smallest number of languages. There shouldn't be very few, right? I think Europe only has between four and nine, depending on who you talk to, but the Americas, California alone has 15 different language families, the Americas has about 180 to 320 language families in the world more than anywhere in the world, that tells you that people had to be here longer than anywhere else in the world. So maybe there's something in that science of timing languages or whatever that is. Right. But when you look at a continental area, hemispheric area that has more languages than the rest of the world put together, you got to realize people been there a very long time for those languages to develop. Students are not taught that either.

Patty:

Or not taught put those things together. Right.. You know, I just I want to switch gears a little bit because I'm just mindful of the time. You coined a phrase in your book that you know, as an Anishinaabeg person just fascinated me and I wanted,  pyro epistemology, Could you talk about that? Because that was just so such an interesting idea, particularly to me, because we have eight fires, right?

Paulette:

Yeah, well, that came to me in graduate school. So I've been reading about the seven fires, and you know, how we're coming into the aid fire. And, and I know, because I've done this, I learned how to do when I was younger, and we use fire to clean land. Right, so So forest areas get really choked up, they get a lot of underbrush, and the new baby trees, you know, can't get up and get the sunlight. So, Indigenous people to keep the land healthy would do controlled burns, right, they would cleanse the land, and that allows that new life, good life to grow and to come up and to get the sun. And somehow it just hit me that this is what we need to do with all of these horrifying, dehumanizing discussions and books, we need to burn them. Right. And we need to make space for new discussions of Indigenous people to come up and grow up in academia, that will really bring a healthy life and healthy thoughts to people.

So epistemology is how we learn the truth or how we learn what we learn. So I thought, we need to fire epistemology, we need to clean the academic landscape of all these dehumanizing talks, all of this settler, white Eurocentric view of Indigenous people, we need Indigenous people and their informed peers to rewrite our histories. And those histories need to be informed by Indigenous knowledge or traditions. You know, stories in the land, rock art sites, there's so much beautiful, beautiful data that that could be recorded.

The problem for most non Indigenous scholars is that our languages and our stories are very, very advanced. They're very intricate, they're far too advanced for those white scholars to understand, nevermind that they don't understand the language, right? They cannot understand how we spoke in metaphors. If I told you, oh, there's a black and brown deer over there. In 10 days, you're gonna forget it. If I told you. There's this amazing four legged creature with this beautiful coat that is red and brown and silver and white. And I colored this story with all these metaphors, you would never forget it. And that those are oral, I get goosebumps. Those are oral traditions, right? They were, their language and thought and the power of their intelligence was so much greater, that you can't give that story to a non Indigenous scholar because they would never be able to decipher it or understand it.

It's hard for me I had to translate stories from another language I had to translate from another language for my, my PhD. And so when I did a masters, I found these articles that were written in French, the French men were going down the Mississippi River and they wrote that they were afraid that the Indian stories would be lost because they were all being killed. So they stayed long enough to write some of their stories and they took them back to France. And they stayed there in a museum for over 100 and something years. I just got lucky and found where they had just been digitized and put online and I chose one. It was difficult for me. It was easy to translate the French but then I had to sit with those words. And go what is the story they were telling me and the story was it was a man who was teaching his daughters proper safe, ethical protocols for where they I lived at the time. But I realized, you know, it's this difficult for me. And I have to really dig deep into my spirit and listen to their voices. How could someone who's not Indigenous do that? They can't, right?

Kerry:

Oh, there this is such a juicy, amazing conversation I really, oh, oh, Paulette, you are just making my soul sing. I really enjoy, when, you know, we get guests on which all of our guests are, but that can just break this down into that soul place. And that's what I feel like you're doing when you are, are telling us and giving us this knowledge. It's it's literally about shattering the fabric of what we have created, or what the colonial system has said we must be. And so are you finding that it's starting to you know, are the cracks real? Are we, are you beginning to chip away? And feeling that ripple effect of chips are getting, the chunks are getting a little bit bigger?

Paulette:

Yeah. And and I'm starting to see now that more archaeologists are reaching out to me with their stories about older sites and how they've been denied. And they're getting bolder and braver. They're feeling safer now in publishing on sites that are older than 12,000 years. So we're starting that fire, right. And every time I write something, I'm just flicking my bic and just lighting that fire. Because the only way we're going to re humanize our history and revive and reclaim our history is to burn that history that this group of white people said we had to have. Right.

And and that begs the question, Who has the right to tell history? Who owns the right to tell the story for someone else? Nobody. The people who own that history, have the right to tell their history. And they don't have to tell it in the way that you say, right. And, you know, people that know me, were really afraid Dr. Holen was terrified for the critique I'd face when my book came out. There hasn't been one peep of critique, not one.  I have gotten really good feedback. Archaeologists like Ruth Graham, she actually worked in the field for decades. And she did publish on older sites. She got a hold of me through a friend last week so that she can make sure she attends my seminar with the Peabody tomorrow, right? Archaeologists are now talking, I've gotten emails that people are just thanking me for telling the truth, because it makes the field a safer place for them. Right?

I'm sure they will come a point when some really angry archaeologists who, actually you see them at conferences, and you bring the subject up and they get screaming and shaking, they get really angry, you know, and I'm just like, what's your issue? This is what we're, we're archaeologists, right. But when it comes to the Americas, they want that to stay in a box, if you look at the rest of the world, human history in the last 20 years has completely changed because of the work that people have doing, because tech technology supports it. And we should not expect that it won't change just because it's our homeland and territories, of course, it's going to change.

And you know, they found a new site off of Vancouver Island that dates to over 14,000 years. They're publishing on it. So now I'm seeing more and more people publishing and publicly discussing on older sites since I started talking about this and writing about it in 2015, right when I got my PhD. And so I think we're starting to see cracks, I think people are starting to open their mind. And they're reading my book and going this makes sense. So in my book, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, I reclaim over 120,000 years of our history, and I do it using those Western tools and the Indigenous tools. I use archaeology, I use science, I use data collection, I use oral traditions, you know, I understand, I use mammalian evolution, mammilian migrations I use paleo environmentalism, I use paleo geography. And I show that people being here before 100,000 years make sense. People not getting here to 12,000 years it makes no sense at all. It never has. And I have people saying that to me that you know, I always said that and never really made sense. But I didn't know how, you know, well now, you know, get my book and you know how to make it make sense that we've been here much longer.

Patty Krawec  55:10

Mm hmm.

So what is the best place for people to buy your book? I just there was a question in the chat.

Paulette:

Yeah. So people can buy my book from the publisher, University of Nebraska Press, any of the bookstores, it's available on pretty much every bookstore online, Amazon, Walmart, you know, every every bookstore has my book available. It's in production, audio version is in production, I can't wait to hear it. I want to hear the voice who, a professional voice person. Yeah, and then if other people are interested, I'm starting to think now to where we need to get it done on some other languages, you know, like Spanish, and maybe some Asian languages and Middle Eastern languages, because archaeology is a global field. And Human Evolution is a global field. And, and I do believe that North America has a very good place in human evolution, specifically, since we know that the earliest primates were from the Americas. And so if we look at that, and we go, Well, how did they find out to the rest of the world? And when were people coming and going? And you know, they Yes, yes, early humans evolved in Africa. But they left there  look, they were in Northern Asia over 2 million years ago. So hello.

They wander? Yeah. It's, it's a global thing. And so North America plays a part in that. You know, it's it's important. And people in countries are very proud people in Africa are very proud that humans evolved there. People in you know, Germany and other areas are very proud of what's their earliest archaeology site? What's the earliest tools, right? Why should North America be left out of that? Because we do have a history based on Indigenous knowledge and archaeological knowledge that goes back over probably 200,000 years, at least, if not earlier, people haven't looked for it. They weren't supposed to look for it. It was very dangerous to look for it. It was dangerous to discuss it. The few people that did left some very valuable clues for me that a lot of early sites were very, very deep. And so I'm starting to think now where would we look for early sites? Where have they previously been found? There was a skullcap found in South America that had heavy heavy brow ridges that looked really like a Neanderthal brow ridges would look right. Of course, that disappeared, but not before they were pictures, and a discussion of it published.

Kerry

So really, do you know when that was, when was that published? You know how long it

Paulette:

was a long, long time ago? Okay. Long, long time ago. Yeah, it wasn't recent. So we need to look at, you know, gather all that evidence, gather all those pieces and start really looking at those sites, with an open mind with a very open mind as to the science of the data. And not with this constraint that a bunch of all white archaeologists in the Americas put that is not even supported by any data or science.

Kerry:

Wow, I am, I am absolutely riveted. I would love like, we always say this, but I'd love to have you come back on and to go a little bit deeper in because for what's coming up for me as even I was reading a study, or an article recently that was talking about the Amazon. And as they're doing, you know, the, the burning of the Amazon and clearing the land, they're actually doing I think it's I'm not sure what the technique is, but they're offering UV or they're doing infrared, that LIDAR that's scanning, and they're realizing that there might be older civilizations that were actually overgrown by the forests. And so there's a whole worlds

What I think I love so much about you Paulette and the work that you're doing is that you're you're literally just you know, you're taking a sledgehammer to this idea of the history of the world. And I believe it anchoring for those of us who have been so displaced in the story. It gives us an opportunity to reclaim this truth, to to recreate I loved when you said, you know, who decides who creates history? I think that is such a powerful thing, because what you're doing is allowing us this truth to question what we've been told as the narrative and decide what pieces of it we're going to choose, if any at all. And I think it's so important that we continue these conversations that we keep the digging, the digging going, that we offer ourselves the spaces of truth. I'm just so impressed. with what you've done your work

Paulette:

The more people that will discuss it and realize the absurdity that people were only here 12,000 years ago, the more we open up the possibility. So to do work to do archaeological, you need funding. Can you imagine applying for grant to excavate a site that might be 80 to 120,000 years old, they just, they're crazy, right? We have to normalize that discussion. And so I'm really hoping I'm doing that for the next generation of archaeologists, that they'll be able to be funded. And I, you know, in the back of my mind, I just see this big field of have young archaeologists coming out and looking at the 100,000 year old sites in the Americas, because now it's acceptable, and they can get funded.

And so we really need to normalize this discussion and to show how absurd that the archaeological story of people, Clovis first people, that's another thing, right? They said the Clovis first people, right? So I found a book. If you look in a library and you find cultural books, you got the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Cherokee, the Clovis people, the Clovis people were never a people except in the wildest imagination of archaeological mind. There is nowhere in the world, a cultural group, the size of a hemisphere, cultural groups are small. So they so they frame that also to erase the diversity of early Indigenous people. Right? So there's so much that we need to normalize that I like what you said, I kind of think I'm like, I'm like the bull in the china shop of archaeology. And I'm just kicking the hell out of it

Kerry:

I love it. Oh, yes.

Patty:

And I particularly like even the title of your book, the Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, because that's something that we have talked about quite a bit on this podcast is the way the word Indigenous is used, particularly in Canada, to refer very specifically to this place Indigenous people live in North America.

Paulette:

That's, that was an intentional bit of humor on my part. So, us Indians, we have a way of silently kind of getting back in a humorous way and other people. So when I was a grad student, I had this great title decolonizing Indigenous history. And I talked about it and I used it in papers and a professor before I graduated, used that title for her all white scholar book, right? And I'm like, well, there goes my title. And so I thought about it for a while. And you know, there's always been a denial that that there ever was an Indigenous Paleolithic. So that's their big, it never exist, it never existed. So I'm like, How do I poke those guys? How do I poke those people that deny it? I call it the Indigenous Paleolithic of the western hemisphere. So paleo is not our word. That's not how we recognize our history. But I needed to have, you know, I wanted to have a strong title that really pushed back against that racism, that there was never an Indigenous Paleolithic. And I'm like, watch me. Indigenous Paleolithic. That's my humor, like, watching me. Getting back at angry old  archaeologists.

Kerry Goring  1:03:19

Right, I enjoy you so much, Paula, you are just exactly what we what we talk about on this show. It is that Reclamation, you have stood up in your way. And just created true medicine, like this is true medicine that feeds the soul of I think I Indigenous people, absolutely. But as somebody who is an ally, as a person of color, who's also, you know, can can understand this idea of the displacement, you fed my soul as well, because I knew that as I followed, you know, Black archaeologists and same ideas, they're saying the exact same thing and our voices have not been able to shine through and be heard. So to hear that you have managed to, you know, be the bull in the china shop, and you're definitely breaking some teacups, and getting to sip tea at this one. I think it is fabulous. And I really love that we got a chance to have this conversation. And let me tell you, I just bought your book, as we've been speaking is it is definitely going to be here. I can't wait to read it.

Paulette:

It is it is medicine to reclaim your history right and reclaim your right to rewrite and retell your history and to tell the truth, that is a part of healing and reconciliation. So briefly, I'll tell you, I met with an elder in 1988 in Lillooet British Columbia where I grew up. And then I was going through a very difficult time separating single parents, three kids, blah, blah, blah. And he said, This is training. He said, the elders have talked about you. And we understand that you have a job to do in the future. That's gonna be really, really hard a lot harder than this. Well, at the time, there was a single parent, three kids greater education. 26 cents and a truck, what could possibly be harder, I had no clue. But his words went to my heart. And I never forgot what he said. And coming close to my graduation, I realized, Oh, my God, this is what he meant. I just have to rewrite World History. Okay, I think, right. But he said creator raised me for this from the time I was born. And that's a whole nother story. But he was right. I'm fiercely independent. I didn't know any other way as a child. That was how I survived. And that was how I had to be in grad school. Because I faced a lot of racism, people tried to push me out in so many ways, professors, students, I faced a lot of more aggressive racism in grad school than I faced anywhere in my life, I had to be fiercely independent and strong and think for myself. And so you know, my elder was right. And they knew they knew I had this job to do. And they were right, it was much harder. But I got it done. And it's not done. Now, I'm going past the 130,000 years and saying, why couldn't we have been here, just as long as people were in Northern Asia.

Kerry:

I love it. I love it, that you are a force to be reckoned with. And I'm here, I am here for all of it. Definitely, I'm glad that you got a chance to tell us about your book, tell us where they can find you. Anybody who wants to because I also need to definitely be following you.

Paulette:

People can look me up Paulette Steeves, I'm on Facebook, I have a Research website online, I'm on Twitter, you can find me at Algoma University [email protected], you can email me  My book, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere is in all online bookstores. And so I'm starting to get more of a I'm trying to keep up to having a social media presence like I'm in a few places, but I'm so busy with writing and doing everything else. And I still have to teach. I am a Canada Research Chair. That's a very kind of prestigious position here in Canada where I get a huge chunk of funding for five years. And I only have to teach two courses a year. That gives me more time for writing and research. So I like I say I'm starting to work on that second piece of this. And I have three, four book chapters that will be coming out next year and two the following year one, one on Vine Deloria Jr. So that's probably the nicest comment I've gotten from someone who read my book, another archaeologist and an Indigenous archaeologist who said I write in the vein of Vine Deloria Jr. and I was just like, Oh, my life is made I can finish now.  

Patty:

Well, I mean, I'm what I really, I think what what I didn't, what I didn't expect, but it didn't surprise me at all was your ferocity regarding the nation state and colonial and capitalism's investment in the way that the story is currently being told. Because I mean, that's I mean, that's practically every conversation Kerry and I have is. Why is this terrible thing happening? Well, the nation state and it’s investment in capitalism.

Paulette:

Yeah, it took a long time to pull that together. But there's a lot of really good published discussions within Archaeologists from Latin America, South America and other ones that are more open minded. They realize the politics of the past and how it plays into the present and how it disenfranchises you know, Indigenous people, they take all of our artifacts, and they put them in a museum and they remove them from their cultural place and their cultural stories. And they give them new stories that are safe for the nation state. Oh, look what we found because they disappeared. Hello, we're right over here. Hello.

Patty:

We didn't take care of them that keeping the eye we didn't say anything so that they can take care of them for us keep them say yes, because we don't know how to do that.

Paulette:

yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, a lot of you know, I owe a debt to a lot of really good scholars that have discussed that and talked about that. And, and it's really important for students and people to understand that that kind of control has been over us forever. And we need to reclaim our right to tell our own stories in our own way. And, you know, be able to have them thank thank you to the University of Nebraska Press. They asked me for this book, like almost immediately when they heard about my research and my dissertation, and they waited a long time. There's a lot of data. And because it was, might face severe scrutiny and critique, I had to be so careful that there was no mistakes anywhere. And, you know, I finally just sat down and said, the Indigenous way is to tell a story. So I'm going to start telling this story. And it took me from 2015 Till this year to do that. So

Patty:

well, I am so glad that it came across my Twitter feed. And then really surprised when I went looking for you that you are already following me. So I'm so glad that you came across my Twitter feed, we've got a couple of more really neat conversations in this vein coming up. We're going to be talking with Dr. Keolu Fox, we're actually we're taking a break. Next week, we're not going to be here, I'm out of town. But then, so but then the week after we're gonna be talking with Dr. Keolu Fox about how the land is our ancestor. He's a genomic researcher. So it's going to touch on some of the things that you brought up regarding genomics and our and our place here. And then we've got Dr. Deondre Smiles, who's going to be talking with us about Indigenous geographies? So again, you know, some of this, you know, kind of some of the things that you talked about more into our present. So this is kind of a really neat trilogy.

Paulette:

Yeah, I just worked with Deondre as a collaborator on on some research I'm doing because he's a sort of just graduated as a junior faculty, and I've met him before. And you know, what the genetics of geneticists say that, you know, we're all Asians, and we're related to Asian, they have less than 1/10 of 1% of the data that would say what, you know who we really are and how we're all related. They can't even say that. Yeah, right. I called the Max Planck lab, and I emailed a guy and I said, is it still? Do they still have less than 1/10? Of 1%? Yes. They don't have the data. So they can't make those stupid, crazy. claims

Patty:

yeah, so I'm pretty excited to talk with Dr. Fox  Because he's really a different, a different, a much different way of talking about and thinking about genomics.

Kerry:

Yeah, I was gonna say, What a delicious space guys for as we turn history, anatomy, you know, you name it, we're gonna be turning it on its head. Yeah. And I'm here for all of it. I hope you all will be too.

Paulette:

Thank you for having me.

1:13:06

Thank you for having me.

Kerry:

I really would love for us to maybe get everybody back on. Wouldn't it be interesting

Patty:

panel would be fun. Having all three of you at the same time. Something to think about for the news of the day plan for the new year. Get our January going?

Paulette:

Wow, what a good start to the new year. That would be

Patty:

amazing. All right. Just put all three in a room and see what happens. Right. Right. So thank you guys so much. Thank you for listening. We did have some people in the chat. So that was fun today. Um, I will talk to you guys later. Right. Thanks. Bye.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Helen Knott joins us to talk about her memoir In My Own Moccasins. It is a story of trauma and recovery, of relapse and recovery, love and persistence and becoming a matriarch.

Not all of our societies were matriachal, that is a very particular style of governance, but being a matriarch is more than that. It is taking on a role in a family, in a community. And Helen talks with us about what it meant for her to realize that she was stepping into that role, ready or not.

In My Own Moccasins, with Helen Knott.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com