Why We Need to Amplify Indigenous Voices
[Music]
when i was 16 years old
i took what was essentially my first
trip to indian country
i rode the train north across the
province of ontario and onto winnipeg in
manitoba
crowds shuffled in and out at stops in
small towns along the way
with each stop more and more blue and
green-eyed passengers departed
until almost all eyes remaining were
dark brown
skin became darker too i looked around
at the other native passengers for signs
of recognition
i remember thinking that they saw in my
eyes what few people ever did
that i was one of them that day on the
train
my parents sisters and i were heading
west on our way to a sinclair family
reunion
my paternal grandpa elmer and five of
his brothers and sisters were gathering
on the grassy banks of manitoba’s red
river for a party
the day of the reunion was clear and
sunny
and on a quiet walk with my grandpa we
visited the graves of his parents
and ancestors ending at the monumental
grave of chief peguis
we had begun that trip in toronto where
i grew up the eldest of three girls
my father douglas is cree ojibwe pegus
nation
my mother joni immigrated to canada with
her family from the uk
at the age of five when i was seven
years old
my mom’s mom bubby to us moved into our
home
bubby was a german jewish refugee whose
incredible imagination was our constant
companion
she spoke often about the importance of
a happy childhood
she told us how memories of her early
years had helped her to survive later
darker ones
during nazi germany and the subsequent
ravages of world war ii
our home was filled with her watercolor
paintings
that evoke the german fairy tales of her
young life
her inner world was a part of our
environment there for us to engage with
whenever we wanted to
in contrast my dad’s parents granny
phyllis
and grandpa elmer visited every year
from winnipeg
i sometimes wondered how our lives might
be different if we had grown up closer
to their stories too
bubby was open about the therapy she had
undergone to recover
from the traumas of the war it was clear
that through this process she had
recovered her ability to share her
earlier memories with my mom
and with us but my dad left home when he
was a teenager
and somehow the strains in his family
hadn’t healed in the same way
along with a hundred and fifty thousand
first nation
metis and inuit children in canada
my grandfather had survived an indian
residential school
or indian boarding school as they were
called in the u.s
from age 7 to 10 he lived at the
catholic
fort alexander reserve school fort
alexander was one of close to 130
schools in canada
and one of 357 in the united states
in the simplest terms the schools
existed
to sever children’s ties to their
families
their ties to culture and their ties to
land
to make room for the expanding settler
colonial economy
indigenous language and cultural
practice was forbidden
and children often suffered emotional
physical and sexual abuse
at the hands of the authority figures
tasked with managing their education
my grandpa didn’t talk to me about his
experience directly
but i always knew about it and i now
know that he was recorded saying
the three years in that school were the
saddest days of my life
the nuns and the priests were about the
most cruel people god
ever created i could never imagine
how people who confess or said they were
servants of god
could be so cruel to children i have
never forgotten that
one consequence of his years spent at
the school was shame
my grandfather became a decorated
soldier in the canadian army
his courage was celebrated many times
over but he did not tell his own seven
sons that they were native
when he learned this at age eight my
father remembers feeling surprised
and then his own shame because in
childhood games of cowboys and indians
he had always played the cowboy the good
guy
not the indian who was always the bad
one
growing up i thought a lot about how
bubby seemed to heal through telling her
story and that so many stories
untold by indian residential school
survivors
meant so much history unhealed and
unknown
i grew interested in connecting the past
to the present
and in the intergenerational impact of
the policies
that reduced indigenous land holdings to
two percent of american soil
six percent of canada and cost millions
of native people their lives
i wanted to amplify the stories like my
grandfather’s
because when traumatic events occur in
cultures and are left
undiscussed it’s not just the stories
about the traumas that don’t get passed
down
the transfer of other cultural knowledge
is disrupted too
my grandfather for decades didn’t share
stories about his own family
or his young life because of the shame
he felt
at being an indian ultimately
my own family background and my
interests in recording these less told
histories
led me to pursue an oral history project
with a non-profit voice of witness
which works to advance human rights by
amplifying the voices of people impacted
by
and fighting against injustice
my book project how we go home voices
from indigenous north america
contains 12 first-person narratives
what i observed during the many
conversations throughout this project
in cities reserves and reservations
across the continent
is that the stories we tell about the
past also
shape our future struggles over memory
are also struggles for liberation
sharing stories helps counteract the
erasure of indigenous life
and history i heard this truth
in every conversation i had with houico
homes narrators
who are each carrying memories forward
as a way to reverse a form of injustice
that has directly impacted them althea
guibouche
once homeless with her young children
founded an organization that provides
food
for winnipeg’s most vulnerable
populations
gladys raddick a survivor of sexual
violence whose niece went missing
along canada’s highway of tears became a
family advocate for the national inquiry
into missing and murdered indigenous
women and girls
marion naranjo herself the subject of a
radiation test while in high school
went on to lead santa clara pueblo to
compile an environmental impact
statement
on the consequences of living near los
alamos national laboratory
indigenous people are doing so much work
to restore health to our communities
to recover from the past to fight
against ongoing injustices
by now you may be wondering what can
non-indigenous
settlers do we live in a time
in which people are increasingly
interested in how to make
reparations and reconciliations with the
past
how might the us make reparations to
african americans for the history of
slavery in this country
how might the united states and canada
reconcile relations with indigenous
peoples
one outcome of this contemporary mindset
is the ever-growing practice of land
acknowledgments
a land acknowledgement is a statement
made to recognize
indigenous peoples as stewards of the
land
and to acknowledge the ongoing
relationship that exists between
indigenous peoples
and their traditional territories you
may hear one
at the beginning of a performing arts or
academic event
or see one monumentalized in writing
at the entrance to a museum or national
park
the problem is that in their hurry to
incorporate them
many organizations land acknowledgments
are reduced to performative gestures
they aren’t fleshed out enough to be
doing any good work
or even worse they are reduced to their
least
helpful abbreviated forms leaving only
the part
that speaks of the past but research
from the non-profit
illuminative gives us some guidance
about the work a land acknowledgement
should do their research reveals
that 87 percent of state-level history
standards
fail to cover native people in a post
1900 context
and that 78 of americans want to learn
more
about native people cultures and
contemporary stories
so if a land acknowledgement simply
states that yes
this place that we are gathering is the
traditional territory
of the anishnabe the dna the choctaw or
the chickasaw
we aren’t doing anything to fill this
knowledge gap
we may even inadvertently contribute to
ongoing erasure
by evoking in our audience’s imagination
the trope of the vanished nameless
faceless prehistoric indian
the people who used to be here
but this ever growing practice of land
acknowledgement
can be a helpful first step towards
reversing the erasure of indigenous life
in north america
it is helpful to remember that we are
all occupying tribal land
because it offers a starting place for a
larger exploration
it requires that we ask what happened
to indigenous people here on this land
what is happening now and how can we
support the efforts of indigenous people
to realize whatever dreams they have for
how to live here now
and in the future so what if instead of
writing land acknowledgements as fixed
statements
institutions instead conceived them as
the beginning of
ongoing conversations if you use your
land acknowledgement as an
opportunity to consider how you
very specifically you your organization
your school your park your museum
might make restitutions for the past
then you will be propelled to learn much
more about local indigenous land and
life
land acknowledgments exist because
settlers moved to these places
signed and then dishonored treaties with
the first peoples here
and carried out genocide but relations
between settlers and indigenous people
are not history
there are ongoing battles over the land
and its resources
to acknowledge indigenous land then is
also an acknowledgement that indigenous
people
still have different ideas about how to
live here
to learn more about these ideas read the
work of indigenous writers
follow indigenous thinkers on twitter
and artists on instagram and then
pass that impetus along by advocating
for your local school board to do the
same
if you pursue this education for a
little while you will come to understand
that many indigenous people today
contend
that the truest justice occurs through
the land back movement
which aims to restore territory to
indigenous people and nations
if you are interested in repatriating
land you can pursue relationships with
local indigenous people and
organizations involved in land return if
direct repatriation isn’t possible for
you
you can donate to a land tax movement or
throw a fundraiser for one
organizations like oakland’s indigenous
women led
saguarote land trust are funded by local
residents and businesses who voluntarily
pay them
a land tax for living on ohlone land
the organization has reworked their
three plots
for and with the local indigenous
community to cultivate
traditional and medicinal plants to
practice urban farming
and to provide space for ceremony
one of the plots a quarter acre site was
gifted
by non-indigenous organization planting
justice
after they returned from standing rock
and asked how they could support
indigenous peoples in oakland you can
get similarly creative about sharing the
time and resources
you have can you advocate for your
workplace
or a community organization you are
involved with to hire more indigenous
people
or to include more indigenous
programming in your events
can you share your physical space with
indigenous organizations
who may not have their own place to hold
events
if you work at an organization with
significant land holdings
like a farm wildlife center or park
can you offer native people free access
to visit their ancestral territories
can you designate space for indigenous
people
to use the land hire an indigenous
consultant to help you explore the
possibilities
oral historians think about how sharing
stories
can act as a kind of testimony and for
testimony to exist
there must also be a witness to it
witnessing
is not the same thing as listening which
can be a passive act
when we witness a story that story and
that person
becomes a part of us and it changes us
i remember feeling this way returning to
brooklyn
after my interviewing trips this act of
witnessing
has connected me to howie go home’s
narrators in a way
that makes me feel accountable to them
even years later
ultimately these stories are now making
their way
into classrooms across the country
on good days i like to think that in a
small way
they might help a new generation of
north americans forge a more just future
so when you start thinking about how you
or your organization might engage with
the history of these lands and new ways
ask how you can be a witness to these
stories
and who you can make yourself
accountable to
thank you miguet
you