A Fat and Tangled Knot - Red River Roots, Part Two

These Red River posts are about me learning how to be Métis, and this one might make more sense if you read Part One first. Also... As I said before, I am not a history teacher, so if I get things wrong, please forgive my errors. I'm working on it. Ready? Here we go.

Last time, I said I want to work on a “fat and tangled knot”. This would be the “who am I” knot. I have been trying to place my (obscured) Métis-ness alongside my (obvious) Whiteness. I wonder what space I can take  as a Métis person in the twenty-first century. I don’t want to be some mouthy “Indigenous-Come-Lately”. On the other hand, as a Settler’s son, is White Supremacy all my fault? I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. 

Hold on, gentle reader. This is going to get a bit navel-gazey.

What should I call myself? Well… It never hurts to look at facts:

I have a SIN number, pay taxes, and have a Canadian Passport. So… clearly I am Canadian.

I am the son of a British immigrant. My dad was born in London in 1941. His family enjoyed the opportunities offered to Settlers in colonized Canada. They hit the prairies in two waves (1920s and 1940s), and took space that was made available to them by displacing Indigenous Peoples. Due to patriarchal colonial law, Dad being born in England entitles me to UK citizenship. So… clearly I am British. Go ahead and laugh.

My Mom was Métis. She was born and raised on the Red River in Manitoba.  Our French Settler ancestors  had been there for two hundred years by the time Mom was born. Our Cree and Assiniboine family had been there for thousands of years before that. I was born there, too, but grew up in White suburbia, away from where my kin built a Nation on the prairie. Still, I have the card. So… clearly I am Métis.

That's a fat and tangled knot...

This leads me to another another label. I think it helps.

“White-coded”.

It’s a slippery term. I heard it for the first time about a year ago. I think it’s useful. I have floated this label with various friends and family that have helpful opinions. University professor friends, Métis cousins, and a leader in my anti-racism group have all chimed in on “White-coded”. It has resulted in diverse viewpoints, some unenthusiastic. This pushback led me to put the idea on the shelf for a spell and think on it while I tried to find a good definition.

Here is where I defer to Chelsea Vowel. She is a Métis writer, lawyer, and all-around badass. I am a fan. She’s a super-hero when it comes to unraveling Indigenous issues. Chelsea said on her Twitter:

“… (White-Coded) means "viewed as white". So you look white, and ppl treat you as white. Just based on your looks.

I'm here to dismantle my own Whiteness too, yes. I am not hiding from that, my dad is White.

I am White coded, I benefit from White privilege in ways I understand, and in ways I don't even know I don't know about.” (Boldface emphasis is mine.)

Bingo. I feel this. It applies. So… Clearly I am a White-coded Métis.

How did that happen? I mean,150 years ago Mom’s family was just Métis-coded Métis.

As I did family research, I tried to imagine the generational trauma my family carried after Red River and Batoche. Even today, looking at family, I get a whiff of those events. I also traced the changes in our culture and make-up as the 20th century marched along.

During her life, if Mom and her family claimed anything at all, they claimed to be French. I’ve done the genealogy. My earliest French Ancestor lived on the St. Lawrence River sometime in the late 1600’s. That’s early colonizing days, long before Canada was even thought of.  A hundred years later my French family was in the prairies, hunting, trading, farming, and intermarrying with the First Nations families there. They were busily forming the new Métis Nation.

A lot happened over the next century, and by 1900 Mom’s family were Métis-coded Métis, living over on Red River lot # 12. The folks who lived in those houses were survivors and children of the (then-recent) Reign of Terror, and fallout from Batoche. They certainly lived in the shadow of racism from White Settler Canada. 

After that came my grandpa’s generation, born around 1920. The continuing surges of White Settler immigrants meant that Métis kids often married non-Métis spouses. My Grandpa Antione married a poor girl of Scottish descent. She was Gramma Jessie to me, and  and you couldn’t ask for a better grandma. I see Grandpa’s generation as the first step towards White-coding. French was no longer the household language. Grandma spoke English. My Grandpa Antoine actually went by "Tony".

Métis family ties prevailed, though. My mom told me stories of her childhood visits to “the farm”. This place belonged to my grandpa’s cousin (Joachim Perrault) in St. Pierre-Jolys, fifty kilometres south of Winnipeg. This is where my Grandpa Antoine was born. Apparently the fall harvest parties were quite a thing, and when Mom was a girl they would all go. She told me they would make blood sausage from a freshly-slaughtered hog. I adore this mental image. It sounds like Métis family culture was still running pretty strong, down on the farm, back in the ’50’s. Also, my Scots-descended grandmother had people there who spoke English. This was new.

My Grandpa enjoys the harvest party with his family.

My mother did not identify as Métis. As I said, if Mom's family self-identified at all, it was as French. But calling yourself French in this context was a cover. It implied Whiteness and was meant to hide the fact that you were Indigenous. Some passed easier than others, and I think my mom was one of them. When I was a kid, my Great Aunt (an enormous nun) looked me in the eye and told me there was no First Nations ancestry in our family. She actually said “Indian Blood”. Am I even allowed to say that today? She was slightly offended at the thought, so complete was her denial and racial shame. I mean… I have the family tree. Both her parents were clearly Métis, historically. I have a copy of the government scrip papers for her Grandmother, Mathilde Carrière, survivor of Batoche, which clearly labeled her as “half-breed”.

So…  It was fine to be French, but being Métis sure didn’t help you. In this way, the Métis could be White-coded after the Red River and North West Resistances. It helped avoid some of the racism that was visited upon them.

My mom grew up in this. She was raised in an intensely Catholic culture that she rejected later in life. She spoke French fluently in school and professionally, but I almost never saw her do it at home. She married a rail-thin, charismatic White boy (a musician, no less!) who was born in England and raised in Alberta. Within two years, she moved with him across the country and left Winnipeg and the French, Catholic, Métis thing behind. There’s the next degree of White coding. Here’s where me and my brothers enter the scene.

Me and my brothers in White Suburbia, early 1970s.

When I was a kid in the ’60’s and 70’s, I grew up in White suburbia, with a delicious dose of British Ex-pat / American culture. Marmite toast, Sunday roast, Evel Knievel, Disney on TV… The Métis thing didn’t come up much. When someone did mention it, it was often awkward. I remember an uncle making a joke about being a “Mighty Métis Warrior” while  he twirled an imaginary moustache, using a voice and accent that could only be called racist today. The funny thing? We actually are descended from mighty Métis warriors. This is true. The unfunny thing? I have also used this accent for comedic effect, in a more ignorant time. I am ashamed of that.

And my First Nations kin? The ones who historically married with my Métis family and engaged in the buffalo hunts and Resistances a mere 100 years before my birth? My four times great-uncle, (and mighty Métis warrior) Gabriel Dumont, spoke six languages: Michif (the language of the Métis), Blackfoot, Sioux, Cree, Crow, and French. No English, though. I’d say we were vibrantly connected to the First Peoples of the plains in those days.  

Yet…  

My strongest childhood memory of First Nations Peoples were the alcoholic homeless folks on the streets of Calgary. There was also a touristy “Indian Village” at the Calgary Stampede that freaked me out. I was afraid of them. This was my own racism, which has led to years of unconscious bias. I did not feel or know the connection we shared. This journey from Indigenous superstar Gabriel Dumont to a kid afraid of his First Nations family took less than 100 years. Such is the power of colonialism.

Also… just to make things more awkward, I need to make clear that I love my White British Settler family and identify with them whole-heartedly. They are fantastic, supportive, accomplished kin. One day, I may focus on that side of my family in a different kind of blog post. I am of them. They have always been in my life, on my side, easy to find. 

And, also… they… <er>… we… are literally the default framing for colonized Canada. Oops. There’s my fat knot again. 

Anyone who looks at me will assume I am White. End of discussion. As I learn more of the sour and cruel history of Canada, I am appalled. Out of respect for the abuse and genocide First Nations endure, I may mention, occasionally, that I am White-coded. I do this not to excuse my Whiteness, nor to undermine my indigeneity. Rather, I do it to figure out my sometimes-confusing place in all this. It gives me perspective.

Here is some more wisdom from Chelsea Vowel:

“I don't agree that White-coded Métis have it hard, I'm sorry. I understand that it hurts sometimes to be misrecognized or doubted…

But that isn't oppression. When we are misrecognized as not being Indigenous at all, what does that do? It folds us into Whiteness.

…we also have to recognize how we benefit when we get misrecognized as White. And not just focus on feeling denied….

So yes. From time to time let's discuss how our Indigeneity gets overlooked, but let that be a tiny part of a more important discussion plz…

… as a White-coded Métis, I have to address my own privilege as part of dismantling Whiteness. Beyond merely saying I have that privilege.”

I’ll say it anyways. I have a ton of privilege, and that’s only the privilege I can see so far. I have never personally experienced the abuse that is the default for Indigenous Peoples in Canada. I can walk anywhere in this country (as a middle-aged White dude) like I own the place. It’s in my snake brain. Anything different does not naturally occur to me. My entitlement is systemic and comes from the Whiteness that Chelsea references above . It’s the Golden Fucking Ticket, and, until recently, I didn’t even realize I had it.

I am starting to understand some truths, unveil my own racism, debunk some myths, and, thankfully, fortify my Red River Roots. As far as untangling  my “who the hell am I” knot, it appears I am a British, White-Coded Métis (French?), Canadian person. 

The problem is, having untangled that, I have a new and nastier knot…. It’s the “what can I do about it?” knot, and what, exactly, is “it”?

Well, here’s some stuff I need to do: I need to listen more and talk less. I need to respect, amplify, and support First Nations and Indigenous Peoples. I need to speak only from my own truth, and never presume upon theirs. I also need to step up and find ways to help. As Métis, I am a member of this Indigenous family and, as a White Settler, I am complicit in the crimes that have been committed against them. One coin, two sides. 

It is easy to reel off a starter list of abuses visited upon Indigenous Peoples: residential schools, the Indian act, numbered treaties, over-policing and incarceration, the displacement of the Inuit… I could go on and on.

I believe we need to learn about the past and present so we can identify and dismantle the White Supremacy that is is woven into Canada. There isn’t a lack of information, I believe, but a willful misinformation, reinforced over generations. This fog of racism is so thick that it makes it difficult for average, contemporary White Settlers to even glimpse the problem. You can’t fix a problem if you can’t see it. And we White Settlers have had the blinders on for hundreds of years. 

So many of the conflicts that Settler culture has with Indigenous Peoples are founded in falsehood, or, if you're being polite, misunderstanding. It would take another blog post to begin to debunk the broader myths. Thankfully, more talented people that I have done it already (remember Métis Superstar Chelsea Vowel?)

Big picture? What is that new “it” in my fat and tangled knot of “What can I do about it?”

“It” is the relationship that Indigenous Peoples and the Canadian state are trapped in. “It” is the result of centuries of colonialism and cruel, bad-faith policies. We need to repair and, ultimately, recreate “it”. If we work on this together, as Indigenous Peoples and Settlers, perhaps reconciliation will be possible. Canada, as a nation, could become more stable and more just.

I am keen to help tackle... "it".

******

I have referenced, linked, and quoted Chelsea Vowel in this post. I thank her for her intelligent and fun guidance through Indigenous puzzles, and for help with the term "White-coded". If she ever reads this I hope she forgives my treatment of her Twitter posts, which I edited and added bold type to. This link should take you to an unadulterated feed, if you wish to investigate. Again, I am indebted to family and friends for their feedback as I juggle these ideas. I have been helped  greatly.