Medicine for the Resistance

MAR 6, 2023

Global Indigeneity

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64 MIN

MAY 4, 2022

All places are fish places

65 MIN

APR 22, 2022

A colonized sky

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: 28:04Our 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: WowHilding 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 39:16Yeah, 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 42:19So 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: YeahKerry Goring this is just a really, really smartpatty 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 NeilsonI 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 skyKerry 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 itHilding 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 1:05:58Right, 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 1:11:45Did you watch Ant Man? Have you watched Ant Man?Patty Krawec 1:11:49No! It’s probably one of the few MC films that I haven't watchedKerry Goring 1:11:53Watch 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 1:12:13Well, I’ll watch Ant ManHilding 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 byeHilding Neilson: Take care.You can find more about Hilding and his work <a target="_blank" href="http://hildingneilson.com/">on his website</a> 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 <a href="https://medicinefortheresistance.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">medicinefortheresistance.substack.com</a>

62 MIN

MAR 1, 2022

nothing micro about micro aggressions

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 IDAngela: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 havePatty: 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 nowPatty: 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 foolishnessAngela: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 friendsKerry: 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 <a href="https://medicinefortheresistance.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">medicinefortheresistance.substack.com</a>

59 MIN

FEB 23, 2022

Black and Indigenous Solidarities

Black and Indigenous SolidaritiesWith Robert WarriorPatty: 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, butRobert: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, surePatty: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 academicPatty: 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 thingsBut 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 stageAnd 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:RightPatty: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 itKerry: 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 byeRobert: See ya’ll Later. This is a public episode. 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63 MIN

Medicine for the Resistance

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