How Not to Do Anti-Racism

I logged onto a Zoom call a while back in the middle of a conversation between a student and an instructor. The student, who is white, was talking about how their church was working hard at reconciliation, and was recommending lots of books by Indigenous authors for its parishioners to read. While that's cool, what the student said next was a lot less cool. They talked about how they had painted a big portrait of Jesus in the Woodland Art style, and had incorporated all sorts of native art into their painting. Stuff like orcas and bears and totem poles. I didn't say a word. I was too grossed out. Although I have Mi'kmaq ancestry, I was not raised with any of those teachings, and I don't feel like I have the right to create art in the Eastern Woodland Style. And considering Christianity's role in the genocide of Indigenous peoples, I certainly wouldn't be making an Eastern Woodland-style portrait of Jesus and mixing it with a pan-Indigenous array of copied art. That's some serious audacity.


Last week, I was in a class on anti-racism that started off well enough, with academic topics introduced, and then breakout sessions with two or three people discussing the concepts for five minutes. But then a video on racism in Canada was shown. The video has excellent information, things newcomers and members of the dominant culture really need to know, but as for the racialized people in the group, the video had little value. It just tore the dressing off unhealed wounds. I was seeing people I know in that video, seeing the cops attack women in Wet'suwet'en, a video that was already seared into my mind. I recalled the cops tearing down the red dresses set up in memorial to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and seeing them trample them into the ground. I saw the faces of people murdered by police and remembered how last year I stopped three police officers from continuing their brutalization of an unarmed woman screaming out for help. I watched violent act after violent act perpetrated by police, security, and the DFO. I saw the destruction of places where I have lived, heard the talking heads, and found myself drowning in wave after wave of colonial violence. And then the video was over, we were broken into groups of three and told to discuss what we'd seen in six minutes. And then goodbye, see you next week.

I felt like I'd been pummelled. Shell-shocked. Filled with words I wanted to scream out to the universe, but there was no time to unload any of them. For the racialized people in the group, the ideas in the video aren't new. They aren't ideas. They are our lived reality. If we haven't been targeted by police, someone in our community has been. I remember the fire keeper from one of the local powwows who was gunned down by cops in Quebec recently. I remember when a matriarch messaged me because the cops were shooting at her friends in Six Nations. The cops did this just to elicit a reaction, so they could film the aftermath and claim the natives were making unprovoked attacks.

Our experience of racism in Canada the good, the squeaky-clean, the excessively-polite, the nation of goofy, genial Mounties--our experience is different than that of the dominant culture. Why did that video need to be inflicted upon us when we would not be given a chance to vent? Wham. Bam. Thank you, Ma'am. No aftercare for us, unless we choose to contact the appropriate people on our own time.

The next session takes place on September 30, the federally-recognized first National Day for Truth & Reconciliation, a day only this year considered to be a federal holiday. It is not being recognized by my school, though. I told the instructors and my fellow students that I would not be attending the class because I will be honouring the survivors and victims of the euphemistically-named "residential schools" (actually concentration camps/reeducation camps). I hoped that the class would also be recognizing this day, would be out there with survivors in solidarity, but instead, I was given a general "please accept our good wishes and know we will be with you in spirit." I know bloody well they will not be with me in spirit. They will be in sessions, discussing something which has nothing to do with the genocide taking place in Canada. I will be expected to catch up on the material in my own time.

This is frustrating and disappointing, and became just one more thing which piled atop a week already filled with stressors. The next day, another stressful thing happened, something I'd normally be able to deal with, but combined with the retraumatizing video foisted upon me the day before, I found myself tumbling headlong into a vicious anxiety attack.

I was able to bring myself back out of it with the tools I've been developing with mental health counsellors, but my psyche still feels a bit bruised. Maybe I should go hiss at cop cars for a bit of catharsis.