My paternal grandmother passed on a few days ago. I've been thinking a lot about her life in relation to mine, specifically what she taught me...lessons I live and practice but have never really connected back to her.

My grandmother was born on an island in the Mediterranean almost 100 years ago. She was born Elena Cubeddu and had no middle name.

More than anything else she loved her family. More than anything else she hated this land...Canada. I say this because she hardly ventured outside and I don't think a day went by that she didn't curse something related to the weather or topography. While my grandmother hated this land, she also loved this land because it made me possible...and she loved me. Tremendously. All her grandchildren. And she loved that I loved this land. And perhaps this contradiction was one of her greatest struggles. 

What my grandmother also loved was a good dramatic love story. Stories of forbidden love, of unrequited love, of love that could transform villains into heroes. She really loved the T.V. kind that had steamy, scandalous sex scenes even though she would click her tongue, pretending to be all shocked and offended. Yes, she loved a good story and I think this is because she lived through and in stories...stories that spanned centuries. 

When I was about 15 years old, she took me into her home for awhile. Until I was about 18 years old or so. Looking back at that time, I never really paid that much attention to how she was with other people... what she shared with her other grandchildren. I know she wasn't one to provide an immediate answer to any question. She always kept herself busy cooking, cleaning, and tidying up. But there were times in her kitchen when I would be sitting at the table eating and she would sit in her chair against the wall in front of the fridge and talk to me.   

She never spoke about her life as a mother raising seven children. She never spoke to me about the old house that she used to live in in the south end. She never spoke about cooking or politics or friendships....What she did speak to me about during these times, was "her Sardinia".

I think she found a way back to her island through her stories and she wanted me to know that she existed apart from her children or grandchildren. During these times, she rarely shared stories about specific people or detailed events, but she would often go on about Sardinians as a whole...as proud, strong, cunning and resourceful people. She would talk about a people that were labeled as bandits, thieves, of "monkeys trying to imitate men" (as Dante once wrote in reference to Sardinians) but to her, were proud Sea People that had fought against pretty much all of southwestern Europe and the Middle East for their land and culture for over 1000 years. 

My grandmother spoke about the land....about desert sand, salt winds and an inescapable heat that eventually all of its captives succumb to and learn to love (or at least tolerate). She spoke about lemon trees, honey, coral and prickly pears. She would go through lists of words and how to say them in Sardu. In her words, I learned about how her culture came from the water and how her Sardu language was in every wave that crashed in against the great cliffs of volcanic rock. 

The truth is my grandmother taught me my first lessons about how tied we are to a place...what it means to be so connected that every minute spent away from your place takes a small part of you that you will never get back. 

Most people fighting displacement don't really stop to analyze and theorize about it. They are too busy living it, making choices to oppose or accept it. They are too busy sharing their storied truths and surviving through memories. So long before I was introduced to the writings of all these celebrated intellectuals that I reference so often in my own scholarship,  I had my grandmother's stories. I had her love of place through her stories.

She taught me some of the most pivotal teachings about love and place. She taught me that there will always be Sea People...and "land people" who fight to hear their language in the tides... who know that there is nothing more valuable than to bury your hot feet in the sand and be grounded in over 1000 years of people who fought for you to remember.   

On January 1, 2018 this world said farewell to one of the kindest, funniest, wisest and intelligent Anishinabekweg. Her name was Freda McDonald and she taught me so many things about what it means to live in a respectful and caring way. She taught me if I ever had trouble sharing my voice...to remember to just sing...to just sing as loud as I could. 
I wrote this poem to honour her...in appreciation of all that she gave and shared with so many people. 

For Freda

She laughs ribbons of light, revealing the magic and beauty in everything.

She braids philosophies of kindness, humility and courage, extending an unbreakable line to all humanity.

She speaks currents of warmth and generosity, rising gentle waves of dignity and love over mending hearts.

She moves and the earth is thankful to carry her.

She sings and the stars are thankful to welcome her home.

One of the topics I enjoy learning and teaching about is the relationship between material culture and settler colonialism. Specifically, the ways in which settler colonialism materializes Indigenous Peoples in distinct ways.

The other week in my "Living with Things" course,  I was discussing Marx's theoretical contributions to the field of material culture studies. I introduced my undergraduate students to important concepts including consumption and commodification. As a group we explored how Marx’s approach was highly critical of production and consumption  because, to him, these activities took place within a capitalist paradigm whereby the production and subsequent consumption of things participated in the exploitation of human labour and the unequal distribution of power between "upper" and "lower" classes. 

Later on in the day, I sat thinking about the much talked about and 'tweeted' issue of coming into one's "Indigeneity" through this "Ancestry.com" business. I began to think about all of this related to what I had went through with my students earlier in class that day. And because writing is often a way in which I work through and materialize my ideas and emotions I prepared the following piece:



Settler colonialism
                                
                                            commodifies
                                                                                      ancestry 

Settler colonialism shouts
                              
                                                        spit on this and for $199 plus tax
                                                                        
                                                                                                                      we will ship you an ancestor

Settler colonialism tempts
                                                  
                                             in exchange for an ancestor
                                                                                          
                                                                                            we will validate your Indigenous parking permit

Settler colonialism shouts

                                               Your paper ancestry is a ticket
                                                                                               to a whole new world

​of rights and resources

But

Anishinabe kinship orders tell us 

                                                     Our ancestors gift us
                                                                                               relational intelligence

Anishinabe kinship orders tell us

It isn't about "claiming" your ancestors

it is about

honouring them
knowing them
loving them

Anishinabe kinship orders tell us 

Love, honour and come to know your ancestors

by

looking after

remaining accountable to

relationships with sisters, mothers, aunties, babies, land, water, animal and plant relations 

each and every day

Anishinabe kinship orders enact

responsibility and reciprocity

                                                                         Not rights or resources

Refuse settler colonialism
                                         the way it          commodifies
                                                                                            claims 
                                                                                                               cannibalizes
our ancestors 

Embrace 
Anishinabe kinship orders 

to live respectfully

intelligently 

relationally 

* This is a part of my presentation made at the Anishinabewin8 conference coordinated by the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation Feb 10 and 11 in Sudbury, ON.

Today I am presenting about a short film that I helped create some time ago. This film brought about 20 Anishinabe community members including women, Elders, men, youth and children from northwestern Ontario. It was filmed over the course of a weekend, and then a few follow-up sessions in different locations including Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation, Fort William First Nation, Savanne and Thunder Bay. 

The purpose of this film project was three-fold:
1) To document the practice of making a brain-tanning a moose hide;
2) To record some of the Anishinabemowin words that are connected to this practice; and,
3) To honour the voices/perspectives of our older ones/language speakers 

It is important to mention some guiding principles/teachings that we followed to help ensure that we were doing things “in a good way”:

- Involving multiple generations of Anishinabeg
-Learning by trial and error 
-Doing our best as we went along 
-Taking it easy on each other
- Making sure the little ones were around and looked after well/kept safe

The film can be accessed here: https://vimeo.com/102961623

Now as a maker and researcher of Anishinabe visual and material culture, I find that this film project opened up my mind to thinking a bit differently about Indigenous language revitalization. 

We often discuss/read about learning Anishinabemowin, talking Anishinabemowin, or listening to Anishinabemowin, but as someone who experiences the world through making things—someone who learns best through tactile processes… I ask,

Have we considered the possibility and potentiality of making Anishinabemowin? 

We have been gifted with different ways to experience this world (through our mouths, through our ears, through our eyes, etc.).

BUT we also experience/learn about the world in other ways, for example, through our fingertips and through our noses (touch and smell).

We are not designed to suspend any of these senses in order to do the other. They work together.

So if we consider this, then making Anishinabemowin implicates not only our eyes (sight), ears (listening), mouths (talking), but also calls upon us to consider what we are also doing with our hands (touch)… our entire bodies (e.g. smell, taste). 

Let’s consider how our ancestors made Anishinabemowin happen:
-Through activities on the land (hunting, skinning, gathering plants, walking with each other to visit, etc.)
-Through a range of cultural/social/spiritual activities (dancing, drumming/singing, sewing/mending clothes, beading, preparing food, etc. 

The thing is all of these activities activate and engage our ENTIRE BODY and bring us in close relationship with a wide range of materials in our environment.  

Through the embodied and social act of tanning hides, skinning animals, etc. our ancestors were not just simply talking Anishinabemowin, but they were also inscribing Anishinabemowin upon/within their bodies just by living a way of life that facilitated and developed a very sophisticated relationship between language and their material/physical environments.

So if we take up this idea of making Anishinabemowin happen, then we must carefully consider the way we feel, touch, smell, etc. the language as well speak, read and listen to it. 

Why is all this important?

It affects our pedagogical approach to Anishinabemowin revitalization. 

If we link language revitalization with land-based, highly physical and tactile activities that, indeed, include repetition, texture, rhythm, muscle strength, etc.
then we can both locate/access that language knowledge that is deeply inscribed in our bodies through hundreds of years of work conducted by our ancestors AND we can simultaneously re-inscribe that language in our very being.  

As we continue to create opportunities for the acquisition and retention of Anishinabemowin, we should consider:
-Multisensory learning 
-More emphasis on connecting words heard/spoken to material things. These can be complex practices like making a pair of moccasins or more simplistic like passing around the moccasins for people to touch while saying the word.

Meeya. Miigwetch.

​*This piece is dedicated to all the beautiful, strong Anishinabegkwewag who were separated from their children and in many cases permanently forced to give up their rights to parent their children and to the vision that they will someday get hold, kiss and dance with their grandbabies and great-grandbabies.

Our Time To Dance is published in the First Peoples Child and Family Review, 11 (2). Miigwetch to the editorial team and to the other contributors!

Nin kokum

You stand there so beautiful
embracing life as a commitment to future
Your vision seen through my eyes

Nin kokum

You stand there so innocent
yet familiar with the agony to follow
The theft of life felt radiates through my bones

Nin kokum

You stand there so strong
grounded in our gifts
Your spirit is my belief

Nin kokum

You stand there so resilient
ancestral wounds are your relational intelligence
Your blood carries code
And your tears interpret

Nin kokum

You stand there prepared
You can see behind and beyond
the veil of violence
the rope the wraps
rapes
robs
my/your future/past

Nin kokum

I know you can see me I exist only as a promise your extension your prayer
sustained through ceremony fed by faith
We have always lost lives and lived loss

Nin kokum

I stand here now carrying our future/past
loving
reclaiming our stolen

tearing at the tight threads of lying order

​un binding un learning un becoming

Nin kokum

because of your life because you stood so beautiful
so strong

Nin kokum
​
Now is our time to dance

​On December 5, 2016 a group of community members in Anemki Wajiw (the City of Thunder Bay) gathered together to answer the call of a 12-year-old Anishinabekwe named Autumn Peltier who asked people to come together to support all the water protectors at Standing Rock. Her call led to a thoughtful and direct act of Indigenous presence in a place where erasure is something many Indigenous peoples struggle against every day. It involved Indigenous peoples standing together with many of their allies in prayer, song and story. This group stood in the middle of a busy intersection during the day. Some of my sisters were in attendance. Beautiful, strong, kind, and intelligent kwes, among them, lawyers, artists, social workers, educators, and mothers. The Chronicle Journal published a contemptuous editorial entitled, “Blocking roads muddies message” in response to their actions. You can find it on their website. Instead of responding to this galling editorial I decided to re-write it. My goal in rewriting this is to make visible the significant privilege that is packed between each line and that frames every word. As a researcher/writer, I draw on satire as a mode of inquiry into issues of colonial power and abuse and unchecked privilege in a place I call home. 
                                                                        ***

Blocking roads muddies message 

Translation: Message was clear as clean water...the mud is in my eyes/ears/heart/mind folks.

“It would appear everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame, a better soap box to stand on or a highway to block.”

Translation: I really don’t know anything about who these people are, or what their story is, but I am going to write about them. Why? Well, because I have a platform to speak from by virtue of the fact that I live in in a society that both explicitly and implicitly tells me my voice matters the most.

“While we support a person’s right to protest, we have problems with protesters blocking highways and roads to further their cause whatever that might be.”

Translation: I am going to use the word “we” instead of “I” so that everyone knows how important I really am and how overly confident I am that so many other people think the same way as I do. So, while we really do support a person’s right to protest, we have a problem when they enact that right by actually protesting. Moreover, we really have a problem when their “cause” inconveniences us in any way.

“A day of action can take many forms. This 90-minute demonstration, which disrupted traffic…and drew a large police presence, was held to raise awareness of the environmental impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the community’s water supply as the $3.8-billion pipeline would have to be built under Lake Oahe.”

Translation: A day of action can take many forms as long as it doesn’t inconvenience us in any way (in case we weren’t clear before). Now we are going to provide some ‘important’ details including the length of this demonstration, oops, we meant ‘protest’. We are also going to choose to include the details that distance ourselves and the citizens of Thunder Bay from this so-called ‘cause’ like how it was all about a pipeline and a group of native people waaaaayyyyy over there in the USA… That’s right, because we want to absolve you from feeling any responsibility or connection to the native people here or their causes. We are comfortable with people just believing that the State will always provide clean water for us. You know, everyone is just better off believing that an endless supply of man-made water will always flow from the taps! At the same time we will intentionally omit other important contextual information relevant to this protest that actually connects this cause to our community. Like how pipelines are actually something we should be concerned about as citizens of Thunder Bay.  Ahem, Line 5 is a deteriorating pipeline running right under the Great Lakes.

“Walking along the sidewalk with signs, calling on people to protect the Earth’s water, would have garnered a more positive reaction from motorists who were probably headed to work, a meeting, Christmas shopping or numerous other reasons for moving across the City.”

Translation: We are comfortable with protestors disrupting pedestrian traffic and not road traffic because people who drive to get places lead more important lives than people who walk to where they need to get to. Oh, and of course we are going to mention all those poor people just trying to Christmas shop for their families because we want you to relate to and sympathize with us and distract you from engaging in any critical reflection of the message conveyed by these people.

 “The incident is now being investigated and there is a possibility of charges by police who called it unlawful under city, provincial and federal law.”

Translation: Let’s bring the law and police into this and use words like ‘charges’ and ‘unlawful’ as yet another strategy to disconnect the reader from, and isolate, these native troublemakers/misfits.

“While road-protest closures are an increasingly popular method of making a point, everyone in this country is entitled to free, unencumbered, movement across their communities.”

Translation: Protests that disrupt traffic may be popular, but they definitely aren’t popular among those in Canada who are entitled… to move across this country freely. But let’s not talk about all the people living, for example, in First Nations across northern Ontario …people who actually can’t move freely at all due to lack of safe or reliable infrastructure. 

“People need to consider what kind of soapbox they plan to use before protesting. Their message will be far better received if the vehicle used is not the one being blocked.”

Translation: People need to consider my comfort and needs…  including my work schedule, shopping schedule, the holidays I practice, the specific route I take to work, my lunch plans, my chiropractor appointment, etc. when they plan to stand up for anything….because this is all about me! Their message will be far better received if I write it for them and put it in that big box in the very back of the closet marked ‘unchecked privilege’ 

A few days ago, Nehiyaw student Erica Violet Lee shared some powerful words on the importance of her “academic aunties” in helping her navigate the University experience as an Indigenous woman. Her blog entry can be found here: http://moontimewarrior.com/2016/02/05/im-concerned-about-your-academic-career-if-you-talk-about-this-publicly/

As an Anishinabekwe in the academy, I read her opening sentences and I found myself going, “oh kwe, you are nailing it! You got it! Debwe!” 

Here is her introduction:

What truths would be written if academics weren’t afraid of losing their jobs? What truths would be written if you followed through, with practice, the type of sovereignty and decolonization you theorize in journals? All the times I’ve heard some version of “I’m concerned about your academic career if you talk about this publicly”: that’s not concern for me. I knew about the systems, I knew the stories about these men. We all do. We all do, because academic aunties gossip. And academic auntie gossip saves lives.- Lee

I felt compelled to add to Erica’s words…motivated by the wise words of some of my own academic aunties who have highlighted the importance of sharing our experiences in academia as Indigenous researchers and educators so that our successors will have a guide. 

I get the importance of academic aunties. I get it because, well, I come from a family with many aunties who look out for me. 
Aunties who care about my wellbeing. 
Aunties who have been there when I needed help. 
Aunties who send me the “love u” texts and facebook messages when I am away from home, teaching/working and feeling disconnected and lonely. 

When I changed careers and became a professor, it was a challenging, intimidating and downright scary experience. Within my first few months, I went to several meetings and found myself feeling like I was either wearing an invisible jumpsuit or a big flashing “I” (as in Indigenous) sign around my neck. It was extreme. It was hard. It was frustrating. It was isolating. There was no in between. At the same time, I knew I was finally in the right profession. I believed in the overall leadership and direction of my Faculty. I was (and still am) very excited about changes and growth. I was (and will always be) grateful to be an Anishinabekwe teaching and learning within Anishinabeg territory. 

I remember talking with my husband about how I felt. He asked me who was there for me to talk to at work? Who could give me advice/offer support? And it was during this conversation when I realized that while there were many intelligent and helpful individuals that surrounded me, the people I felt most comfortable with…the people I felt safe with… the people that I believed would “get it” …were other Indigenous women who had been there for years. The thing is, I wasn’t in the same department as any of these women. I had been to maybe one or two meetings with them. Some of them I had only said hi to once or twice…at most, a short discussion… 
But I knew.
I just knew.
I knew they were my aunties. 
I felt such a strong and familiar attachment. It really is hard to explain… how you can just sense this powerful, nurturing, fierce, brilliant, understanding, no tolerance for bullshit, mother-bear, ogitchidaakwe-ness  presence in the ivory tower.
​
But, believe me…you can. 
I did. 
And it is important. 

So important. 

Because, they really do “get it”.

They have walked the path. 
They have hit the road blocks. 
They have the bruises/scars. 

But…

They have built bridges.
Found alternative routes.
Learned how to carry on with the blisters. 

And have done so with integrity, grace and strength. 

So miigwetch to all the academic aunties out there. 

To the aunties who help raise you up when you feel defeated by the “democratic processes” that are more about “protecting certain individual privileges”. 

To the aunties who help remind you that you are strong and intelligent and that your voice has a right to be heard.
 
To the aunties who are still engaged in their own struggles but still find the strength to take on ours as well. 

Academic aunties are instrumental in providing safe and supportive learning and working environments for every Indigenous person who steps foot on a university campus.  

Miigwetch nin oshe yag

As an Anishinabekwe I stand in solidarity with those who resist the First First Nations Control over First Nations Education Agreement, a retooling of the FNEA because I believe… 

1) Anishinabeg have a right to an education that is not the same as every other Canadian, but an education that will help reclaim, revitalize and strengthen our knowledges and the intergenerational ties that are instrumental to the life of these knowledges. 

2) this agreement is an economic strategy aimed at assimilating Indigenous Peoples so that they can be more productive members of a Canadian society.

3) this agreement further colonizes our knowledges and knowledge sharing practices through the imposition of provincial rules, certification, training, etc.

4) this agreement reflects more about what Canada wants for "it's First Nations" as opposed to recognizing what each Nation has an inherent treaty right to. 
5) fear, ignorance, and greed motivate the people in authoritative, elitist positions that claim they are acting for my wellbeing yet refuse to listen to my voice or the voice of thousands of other Indigenous Peoples who share my concerns and relate to my struggle.

6) I will be labeled by the aforementioned elite group as a delinquent—a derelict—a disinformed Indian…the other half will accuse me of "spewing pseudo academia". 

7) through the process of making my mark, I awaken and strengthen my imagination, consciousness, body, awareness

8) in fighting colonialism on the visual/material battlefield 

9) I am supported and surrounded by my ancestors 

10) in a good life for my children, Keeshig and Kiniw, and their children’s children. 

****On February 12, 2014 Métis artist/activist Christi Belcourt initiated a visual campaign following meetings and announcements regarding the First Nations Control over First Nations Education Agreement which took place last week in Alberta. 
Here are her words on why she started this: 
"For all of us who disagree, who want change, who stand up for change. I’m claiming the blue dot for us as a mark of pride" 

* Both Alfred Gell and Howard Morphy have contributed influential writings on the anthropology of art. Their work deals mostly with art produced by non-Western societies (Indigenous Peoples). In the following excerpt, I summarize and respond to two quite "famous" pieces of their large corpora of writing, Gell's "The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology" (1992) and Morphy's "Art as Evidence and Art as Action" (2009). I focus on their understandings and applications of aesthetics and agency. 

Really, one of the things I love about art is that it provokes and evokes. Okay, those are two things, but they are connected. 
Recently, an issue regarding the appropriateness or "okay-ness" of using photographs of cultural items (regalia items) on wearable art made me think of one of my favourite quotes on photography.  It is from Tuscarora artist and visual historian Jolene Rikard. She states, that photographs are not real life but may haunt you into seeking life. It is a personal favourite because it gets to the heart of a question that anyone needs to clarify if they are to critique photography in art:

What is the relationship between photographs and reality? 

Is a photograph just an indexical trace of something that happened in the past? Is it just empty vessel that can be used to trap or capture a person, thing or event that was at a different time and different place meaningful--culturally or spiritually? Is a photograph only supposed to signify or represent something that is "out there"? If you were to answer "yes" to these last few questions, I would say that you may be both affording too much agency to a photograph, and limiting it's potentialities.

The idea that a photograph merely represents something/someone else is connected to a realist and representational paradigm that was made popular through colonial pursuits of documenting, collecting, essentializing, and organizing Indigenous Peoples and their culture: Of what is refered to as "salvaging the savage". A colonial perspective of photography would suggest that a photograph has the power to capture the essence of a person or a sacred cultural item in its entirety. The agency of the power of the photograph and it's maker is privileged over the agency of the subject of the photograph itself. 

Now one of the problems I see with affording this type of power to the photograph, as an Indigenous woman who carries sacred items, is that the significant meaning and value of these items may only be understood through real life experience. Therefore, a photograph will never represent or reflect the relationship I have with a sacred item --this, I need to live out in my own way every day. If it did, all I would need to do to take care of my spiritual health would be to fill my house full of images of things and people (actually some people do this, but that should probably be left to another discussion). 

Then what is the relationship between photography and reality? Well, the photograph itself is the result of a complex, ever changing relationship between its maker, the apparatus and other material equipment needed to make the photograph visible, and the viewer or consumer. The relationship is not fixed, but emergent. It changes across time and place. It changes from one context of viewing to another. So as fixed and stable as a photograph may appear, there is really nothing permanent or stable about it.
 
If photographs do not represent or capture one reality, what they can do is evoke particular experiences that challenge us to reflect on multiple realities. Hence, my reference to a photograph's potentialities.   This is why some people can look at, let's say, a colonial photograph and "see" both assimilation and perseverance. 

Now, I'm not arguing that it is right or okay for a company to exploit Indigenous culture just to make huge profits. I'm not in support of a billion dollar conglomerate like Victoria Secret or American Eagle mass producing First Nations imagery on panties or muscle t-shirts (on a side note I'm also not in support of the exploitation of labour involved in producing said clothing); however, I do think that an Indigenous artist intentionally using a photograph of a cultural item in their arts process to produce a new material art object that will take on a life, form and meaning(s) of it's own is something entirely different.   

To me, I see an intentional choice to visualize and materialize an Indigenous presence, which is very significant given how Indigenous Peoples and issues relevant to their way of life are rendered invisible through colonial (visual) narratives and myths. If anything, I see the potential of, as Rickard puts it, "haunting (our Indigenous) People into seeking life"... and maybe even life through seeking those cultural items photographed.