As we honour this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and celebrate the sovereignty of all Indigenous peoples worldwide, we turn to writing by and interviews with Indigenous writers and artists from the Room archives and beyond. May these writings guide us to the life work of standing in solidarity with Indigenous peoples, decolonization, resisting the displacement of all Indigenous communities – today, and every day, always.
“Tricks” by Jo Billows in Room 44.3 Indigenous Brilliance
gentrification as colonial displacement
pipelines as land grabs
foster care as 60s scoop
prison cells as residential schools
fentanyl as smallpox blanketsI see your tricks
Immerse enough generations in self-hatred
and we do it to ourselves
we poison our bodies,
our children die by suicideI see your tricks,
do you see mine?rounddance as survivance
protest as empowerment
education as unlearning
dreams as sovereign thoughts
Indigenous parenting as revolution
kitchen table as political organization
direct action as reoccupation
cigarettes as offerings
tattoos as permanent regalia
art as reclamation
body as frontlineorgasms as decolonization
poetry as war cries
community gardens as windows through concrete
tender relationships as resistance
self love as fuck you
self love as uprising
“we are the moon,” by Natalie Harkin and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson via Red Room Poetry
we agree on the rising heat and weight of worry the global pace is quickening to spin-out all our tomorrows we recognise this fight-flight tremor on the verge feel the gravitational pull transforming every cell in every living thing our body we are running somewhere between dogged resolve trepidation and fatigue and like all the grandmothers before us who created everything from nothing
The Indigenous Brilliance Podcast – Episode 2: Poetry with Brandi Bird and Billy-Ray Belcourt
Brandi Bird: … I tend not to think about my readers, which is like, or my audience or whatever, which probably isn’t the best way to think about writing. But I hope what … they take away from it is that Indigenous people are varied and have different experiences. And my experience won’t be like another person’s experience. And like, I guess I write “Indigenous poetry” and like quotation marks, but I’m hoping that like it is for me really, it’s not necessarily for every indigenous person. It’s for people with similar experiences to me, but it’s like some, someone will not have the same experience as me and they’ll be indigenous. Like I’m hoping I’m writing for Indigenous people, but like, I know that my experiences are not universal. Even within Indigeneity.
“maskihkîwiwat” by Jennifer Adese, Third Place Winner of Room’s 2023 Short Forms Contest
Switching gears, I tried to push back the clouds, explaining to Gene and my cousin all the stuff I’d learned since I had been away at school. Words like “intergenerational impacts.” I told him matter-of-factly, “It makes sense. It helped me make sense of this…why we feel bad things happen, why we feel cursed, why there is so much bad that we can’t see any good.” I wanted him to feel the tiny streams of light I’d been able to let in. Instead he nodded, his wispy, brown bangs falling into his eyes.
From Injun by Jordan Abel, via Poetry in Voice
-
a) he played injun in gods country
where boys proved themselves clean
dumb beasts who could cut fire
out of the whitest sand
he played english across the trail
where girls turned plum wild
garlic and strained words
through the window of night
he spoke through numb lips and
breathed frontier
“Thinking and Engaging with the Decolonial: A Conversation Between Walter D. Mignolo and Wanda Nanibush” Wanda Nanibush and Walter D. Mignolo in Afterall
Wanda Nanibush (writing from Palestine): The prefix ‘de-’ in decolonisation means to remove, reduce or produce the opposite of colonisation. It seems the first step would be to understand colonisation as the theft of land and liberty from Indigenous peoples. This connects any process of decolonisation to the prefix ‘re-’ in restoration, reparation and restitution of Indigenous lands, bodies, cultures and communities. For this reason, decolonisation means letting Indigenous people lead. Decolonisation involves unlearning and changing what colonialism is based on in terms of private property, manifest destiny, ‘discovery’, Enlightenment, Eurocentrism, Cartesian dualism, hetero-patriarchy, capitalism, positivism, sexism, racism, individualism, extraction, classism, violence and control. Decolonisation should challenge all that is thought to be proper and normal in current settler colonial states. Decolonisation involves a centring of Indigenous ways of being, knowing and loving. In this we assert sovereignty, no longer asking for recognition of it.
“Old and Wise,” by Jónína Kirton, in Room 44.3 Indigenous Brilliance
soon to be sky bound the stars await
until then I long to be all that I am
to move between day and nighta cloud floating thin
my fingers filling with sunlight
my limbs beaming brightness
my hair radiant silvery wisps
shining in the moonlight
my body buoyant and blameless
I long to lay low stay close to the earth
until the wandering wind persuades movementand in the morning, I filled luminous
bright, breezymy arms my legs
feathery wisps of innocenceno fingers pointing mine now tender tendrils
gesturing toward earth
“Clink Canoe” by MƏLIDI (SYDNEY ROBERTS), First Place Winner of Room’s 2022 Creative Non-Fiction Contest
I wonder if she had it in her to live like how my people live. It must be in her somewhere, her Indian-ness. I could have given her the practice blanket so she could have at least something. I shouldn’t have sold it. The Indian collector will eat it. I wish I could make her see how beautiful it is to me. How devastated my mom and dad will be if they ever found out. A feeling in my stomach I only started getting when I learned English. I wish I could show her, before the mamaɫas white people came, I was nine my dad gave me his Hamatsa, the wild man responsibility. I jumped out of a sacred ring of cedar and I became wild so I could lead my people.
“Cree Girl Explodes the Political Project called ‘Alberta’” by Emily Riddle in Room 43.3 Twine
i stared at the sandstone dome of the alberta legislature so long that it started to disintegrate. this “temple of democracy” seemed to long be crumbling on its own, seemingly always undergoing maintenance. but this time the sedimentary grandfathers formed into this symbol of occupation were fully revolting.
“Coming Home: An Interview with Joshua Whitehead,” Joshua Whitehead in conversation with Jessica Johns for Room
Joshua Whitehead: There’s also this idea in queer culture of “coming out” as this whole process, and everyone knows that story. Also Alex Wilson, who is an Indigenous scholar in Saskatchewan, also talks about this idea of “coming in” as Indigenous people who are queer, trans, non-binary, etc. “Queer” in the largest sense of the word. She talks about this idea of “coming in” as a simultaneous process that queer Indigenous people need to go through. Because within Indigenous spaces, specifically on the rez because of intergenerational trauma caused by queer sexual assault in residential schools, or the sixties scoop, or Child Family Services, or any kind of colonial agenda, queerness has been made to be this horrific and demonized thing.
So Alex Wilson talks about this idea of “coming in” as another process that a queer Indigenous person must undergo, which is coming back to that space and claiming your space within that community, but it is also creating a braid or a bridge that allows you to live as you are, unabashedly, but in a way that places you back within that community.
“Dearbaby Destroytown” by Gretchen Potter in Room 44.3 Indigenous Brilliance
Dear girl, it is too late for many of us, and I don’t mean only the Destroytown family—I mean everyone at Barren Creek. Many things have happened here since the nation won that land claims case, Dearbaby—the reservation has been barricaded by people carrying guns, houses have been burned down, men have lost their minds, sons have been murdered, and daughters taken away. I won’t pretend that we tried to help. No, we kept ourselves apart. Our family has kept its distance from the rest of Barren Creek for the most part. Don’t mistake that for us thinking we’re any better than anyone else, though you will hear otherwise. Things could have been different. We might’ve been able to help. We didn’t. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
From Whereas by Layli Long Soldier via Poetry in Voice
Whereas my eyes land on the shoreline of “the arrival of Europeans in North America
opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.” Because in others, I hate the act
of laughing when hurt injured or in cases of danger. That bitter hiding.
“Eden Robinson: On Writing and the Gothic,” Eden Robinson in conversation Room for Room 39.3 Canadian Gothic
Eden Robinson: Well, all writers have innate talents. I’m horrible with erotica, but violence comes easily. It’s actually a default mode that I have to fight. I worked hard on my dialogue and am comfortable with it as a skill set, and have to force myself to write description, which I find painful.
I also think our current society is only possible through oppression. Our clothes are sewn in sweatshops. Our meat is factory farmed. The resources we use in our technology and vehicles are stripped from indigenous land bases around the world—loot and leave the mess for the locals. The economic meltdown in 2008 seemed to evaporate our collective conscience. We were so focused on economic wellbeing, social justice issues got shoved deep into the background and became not just unpalatable, but unpatriotic.
Further reading and resources:
- “How Do You Like Your Reconciliation?”, via The Yellowhead Institute
- Land Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper
- The Indigenous Brilliance Collective, which is centred in celebrating Indigenous women/trans/2S/queer storytellers.
- Indigenous Women, Two Spirit, & Indigiqueer Writers to Read
- Indigenous Authors to Add to Your Reading List
- Room 44.3 Indigenous Brilliance
