A while back, I was in a writing workshop with a bunch of white women, and a conversation on racialized people cropped up. One woman got very excited, bouncing in her seat, and proudly announced, "My psychic told me that this is my very first time as a white person."
I'm not entirely sure what sort of reaction she expected. Was it a "Yay!" from everyone? Did she think this exonerated her from the guilt of her colonial ancestors? I really don't know. I can't fathom her joy at this spurious claim, or the motivations of her psychic. Maybe there's good money in telling white people they were never white in previous lives.
I don't believe in reincarnation, but I do believe our ancestors visit us from the past through our bodies and mannerisms. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see my great-grandmother. I see my aunties. I see my father. The resemblance is striking. Yet I am not these people. Their memories don't float inside me, even if their stories do. I share some of the same character traits as my predecessors. My mother inculcated in me my love for animals and my sense of justice. I inherited my father's athleticism and motor mouth. I am also the recipient of ancestral trauma.
My family isn't good at expressing love. We aren't huggy and kissy, but "spare the rod and spoil the child" was a colonial tradition generously practiced throughout all of our childhoods. We all got beatdowns and birchings, spankings and wallopings. Our homes weren't ones of peace, but of fear, acrimony, and violence. It's all we knew, and it's how we were all taught to be.
Both sides of my family are replete with warriors. Our men went off to war, to peacekeeping missions, to intel-gathering, and came back in denial of their deep damage. All this untreated, unmitigated trauma got passed on in a terrible game of hot potato. I recognize that only now in my middle age.
I remember my Dad announcing to me in my childhood that mixed-race relationships were bad ideas, not because the races must not mix, but because the children of such matches would experience undue hardship.
The funny thing is, he was a mixed-race child, and so am I. He just didn't see it that way. He's a blend of Inuit, Mi'kmaq, and European. His skin is much darker than mine. I inherited my winter skin colour from my European ancestors, and my features from my Indigenous ones. When I smile, my almond-shaped eyes vanish behind high, round cheeks. In the summer, I brown up. I remember sitting in the bathtub as a toddler, my mom scrubbing at tawny olive skin with a coarse washcloth, not realizing I wasn't dirty but dark. It only happened the once, and she apologized when she clued in. My mom doesn't tan. Her ruddy skin burns and peels when the sun kisses it. But even at my darkest, my skin doesn't match my Dad's. I don't think I ever recall him having a sunburn.
It never occurred to me until recently that this denial and ignorance of Indigeneity, all while practicing so many traditional land-based teachings, was the result of necessity. To the best of my knowledge, no one from my family ever suffered in a residential school. They were in hiding for their lives.
I was never bullied because my Dad is dark and my Mom is not. It never came up. I was bullied for being a weirdo. I only realize now that a big part of why I was picked on was because I didn't act like a normal white person. I didn't even know I was Indigenous, at the time. I didn't know my grandmother was Mi'kmaw. My Dad didn't even know. I knew I was Inuk, or "Eskimo," as my Dad always said, but it never occurred to me that this was unique, that I was part of a very small minority. I never considered that my Indigeneity was the reason for many of my family's oddities. Whereas normal families bought their food at grocery stores and medicine at drug stores, my family grew our own food, foraged our own food, and made our own medicines. Sure, other people went fishing, but my Dad is the only person I knew who casually dispatched fish by biting their heads.
In 2012, I attended
a Tanya Tagaq concert. She improvised a throat-singing performance during a showing of Nanook of the North, and while I watched and listened transfixed, I saw Nanook killing fish with his teeth. A jigsaw puzzle piece slotted itself into place.
I grew up on the land. When other kids were playing board games, riding their bikes on sidewalks and streets, I ran feral through the forest. My only real rules were these:
- Take the dog.
- Stay nearby during moose rut season.
- Stay nearby and wear bright colours during hunting season.
- Come home when Mom whistles
The dogs were my protectors and sometimes my transportation. They warned us when there were bears about, and kept us from being stalked by coyotes, cattle, and wild dogs. In the winter, I helped harness the team to the dogsled and we tore up the snowy countryside. My sister and I jumped on and off the sled while the team raced across fields and trails. The dogs were never joyous while they worked. We employed them to bring home our winter's wood, and the dogs were angry and vicious while they toiled. I stayed out of their way when they were working, careful never to get in their way. But when we played together, their tongues lolled in big doggy smiles, even though the lurching of kids jumping on and off a qamutiik in motion is much, much harder work than hauling firewood. Dogs know the difference between work and play. Later on, when we only had the one dog, he pulled me around the Appalachians and the Rockies on my skis.
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