My So-called White Privilege - Ask Before You Assume
It would seem that empathy no longer cuts it these days, as my effort backfired. I was lambasted by a friend of hers, no one I know, a complete stranger to me, who chastised me with this:
“You could start by apologizing for not realizing how your privilege can further wound the people around you that don’t have it. When you can’t look outside your own experience to be able to understand why so many people are overcome with profound anxiety at the idea of walking into (certain places) in America that today (are) indeed a hidey-hole for all manner of white supremacists, it’s a problem.”
I’d like to reiterate here, that this person knows absolutely nothing about me. A word to the wise: assuming you know anything about a complete stranger’s experience, let alone enough to make the kind of assumption made above, is not generally the recommended course of action. It is always better to be informed before blurting out preconceived notions about people. This person had no idea what my life experience has been but she probably took one brief look at my profile picture and assumed, from the paleness of my face, that I was a “white” person from a “white” community taking advantage of “white” privilege all my “white” life. Shockingly, you really can’t tell anything about anyone simply by the colour of their skin. In fact, that could be considered (*gasp*) racist. It’s paradoxical really, coming from the “woke” faction.
Let me tell you about my very "non-white" hometown. I grew up in a Cree community where I was almost always the only non-Cree child in my class. My hometown was a trading post for the Hudson Bay Company. The Scottish employees from the Orkneys mixed a fair bit with the Cree, and it shows in the culture of my hometown. Elders play jigs on the fiddle, while people sip tea and eat bannock. Last names like Sutherland, McLeod, MacDonald, Fairies, Linklater, etc. abound. Plaid clothing and moose hide form part of the traditional clothing at cultural events. Step dancing is part of local tradition. I come from a beautiful culturally mixed place. During a certain time and in this particular place, Europeans and Cree mutually respected and even loved each other.
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| A recent trip to Moose Factory, August 2019 - Myself, long-time family friend Jemima and my sister Rose Anne |
Unfortunately, this has not always been the case. I have heard the stories of some of my peers who grew up with parents and grandparents who had either gone through residential school or were the children of those who had gone through residential school. I have heard stories of parents unable to show affection to their children because they didn’t know how, stories of parents saying the cruellest things to their children because of the pain they themselves kept bottled up inside, stories of broken families and multiple half-siblings from different stepparents because people had never learned from their parents how to have a mature relationship and stay together and stories of substance abuse brought on by depression and a feeling of worthlessness. I have heard stories of treaties with a distant “white” government that never turned out to be what they were supposed to be, treaties that offered certain advantages to the Cree, in exchange for whatever the government wanted, but only if they accepted many limitations in what they were allowed to do business-wise, and where they were allowed to live.
I have heard so many, many stories; too many stories of suicide. When a whole population grows up in institutions, no one has their parents’ example to go back on. You don’t get individual attention or affection or care from adults in an institution when there are a hundred more children with the same needs. Children need their parents. What happened to First Nations people is exactly what would happen to any society if you put all the children into state-run orphanages or boarding schools instead of letting their parents parent them. It doesn’t matter how good the institution is, it opens children up to abuse. There will always be abuse. Children need their parents to protect them.
Try to imagine the social dysfunction that this would cause. This is what, ironically, most conservative Christians are against. This is why so many choose to home-school instead of sending their children to state-run schools. We should be the FIRST to recognize what a huge mistake residential schools were. We should own that and recognize that social dysfunction is passed on from one generation to the next. It is not just something that happened years ago, it is still happening. We need to recognize that and support them in their efforts to take back their culture and their lives, to deal with their emotional and social wounds in order to become strong people capable of mature relationships, communication, showing affection and building each other up instead of tearing each other down.
I often hear non-Indigenous people wonder why Indigenous peoples “just can’t get over it.” Let me try to put things into perspective for those of you whose ancestors came from across the big pond.
Imagine that you are a (mostly) peace-loving, agricultural people, living in a region of scattered populations, small villages and towns, and plenty of forests for hunting. Your government is mostly locally based, you are organized into clans, and at the head of each clan is the clan chief. You have one head chief in an assembly of chiefs, within a confederation of clans. You have no king and no army. There are no official borders, but everyone knows which territory is theirs. Your clan is in a confederacy of clans for two reasons, to promote peaceful trade and as a protective measure against the more aggressive nations to the North. All men grow up learning to fight in case of necessity, but, excepting when there is war with other nearby nations similar to yours, most men and women are in the fields farming, in the woods hunting or providing different services in the towns. Other than these occasional wars, the yearly summer stress to ensure survival for the next winter and perhaps fearing that this year, it will be your newborn child who will be sacrificed to the gods to ensure their continuing goodwill (societies are never perfect after all), life is good. Your nation has not built any great monuments to history or religion, there are only a few small temple-like structures in the towns. The most historically, culturally and religiously important sites are the scattered ruins here and there, on hilltops and in glens. These are the sites of your ancestors; the birthing grounds of your people. It is here that people gather, mostly during the temperate months, to celebrate important feast days. It has been this way for centuries, even millennia.
Until one day, strange folk arrive from a faraway country, speaking a language like nothing you have ever heard, dressed in clothes completely different from anything you have ever seen and bearing weapons that are more advanced than anyone around you has. Their actions, their way of thinking, their religion and their customs are far removed from that of your nation and those around you.
These people decide to build homes and stay awhile. At first, you don’t think it matters, there is plenty of space in your area for everyone. But soon, more and more of them come, building their own villages and towns. Except for traders, most of them do not try to integrate themselves into your society, they prefer to keep to themselves as if you did not exist. They send people to try to convert you to their faith, some of you convert, but most of you just find them annoying. Some of you learn their language, and more rarely, some of them learn yours and even become part of your community, but the vast majority treat you like second-class citizens in your own land. They chop down the forests, animals are forced to move, they start to use your farmlands for their own and every once in awhile they desecrate your most sacred sites, tearing them up, building towns over top them without ever consulting you first. It is as if the land was there for the taking and belonged to no one.
These abuses naturally lead to conflict. More people, similar to these, but with a different language arrive later on. They are in conflict with the first strangers, and your people decide to form an alliance with the second group for the time being, in hopes that this will eliminate some of your problems. But the second group of people is very similar to the first, few of them integrate into your society. They are more interested in establishing their own towns and cities and claiming your land for some far-away king.
Strange new illnesses, brought over by these people, decimate your nation and the nations around you. You lose half your population to illness and war. By this time, villages have turned into cities, and your people have been pushed out of your territory by soldiers into lands less desirable. Too late, you join together with other clans and nations in an effort to rid yourselves of these people, but there are already too many of them and they are too strong.
Treaties are made with the new governments of these new peoples, but they trick you, the advantages they offer you are not worth the restrictions they make on your lifestyle. Your people, once so many, are now so few compared to them. If you leave the restricted area they want you to stay in, you lose your treaty rights, but if you stay, you cannot do business with the outside, only with the people of your own nation within your area.
You try to keep the old ways, you try to negotiate with these people, but they consistently get the upper hand. It is hard to figure them out. You don’t understand their thinking. Those of them who live with you, who trade with you understand and respect you better, but this government of theirs is always a threat.
One day, the government sends missionaries and soldiers to take your children away from you to schools run by them. You only see your children on rare occasions. They are taught that your ways, your culture, your language, your religion and your way of thinking is wrong. They are taught to speak a new language, practise a new religion, celebrate a new culture and think a different way. They come home, confused about themselves, unable to have mature relationships with each other or show affection to their own children. This happens to a whole generation and then another. They fall into depression and abuse alcohol and other substances. Your whole society has fallen apart. Your language and your ways are being forgotten. Your history is being lost, your people are lost, so many of them are socially dysfunctional, they no longer know where they come from or where they are going. You never ceded your lands to this new country; it just grew up around you. This land is still your land. You are tied to the land, this land that has been in your family for generations, this land that has been your lifeline, your subsistence, your link to your ancestors and your gods. It is yours. It is all you have and all you need, but this foreign government keeps going through it, without your consent, as if it were theirs, with no care for your sacred sites or your way of life. If you were to camp in their backyards, they would put up a fuss and yet they wonder why you protest everything. Why you are so “difficult,” why your people are drunk and homeless in the cities and why you just can’t pull yourselves together and “get over it.”
Admittedly, this is an oversimplified story. The very existence of the Métis in the west, the cultural uniqueness of my own hometown and the fact that there are Cree descendants living in the Orkneys right now would point to the fact that at certain points in history, some groups of Europeans were capable of integrating themselves into the societies that were already here and having good relationships with them. A whole new culture sprung up from the two old ones. This is how it should be; two cultures come together in mutual respect and each is free to borrow what is good from the other. Unfortunately, this has not been the case in general, and Indigenous Peoples have often had to deal with ignorance and racism in their own land, from foreigners or people whose ancestors were foreigners.
This is the story I grew up with. As pale as my skin is, I know this story. I do not consider myself “white”. My DNA is mostly European. I am not Cree. But I am also not “white”. White is a colour, not a race and not a culture. My culture is a mix of the culture of the village I grew up in and that of my parents. It so happens that I share part of the same Scottish heritage as the Cree from my village. As a child, I often listened to fiddling, both in the community and in my own home, and my mother can still show you a good jig today. My experience is not a “white” experience.
Let me tell you about my “white privilege.” I was very privileged to be called “white-man” every day for years, the worst insult anyone could throw at you, on the same level as a swear word, thanks to generations of abuse from a “white” government. I can still hear the contempt in the other kids’ voices as they spat out that word. I was a child. I did not know what my people, my government had done to their people. I didn’t understand the reasons behind the hate. More importantly, I myself had done absolutely nothing to them. It wasn’t my fault.
What I did understand is that when I was in grade four, my father had to come to meet me every single day, twice a day, at noon and after school. If he didn’t, other children would be waiting at the doors for me, ready to beat me up, because I was “white.” I had my community mapped out; I knew all the paths so I could make a quick exit. I never turned a corner without checking first to make sure the usual culprits weren’t there. I was constantly on the lookout for bullies as a child, I could never just play peacefully. If I let my guard down a gang of 2 or 3 or more might sneak up on me, shove me to the ground and start kicking me or punching me.
I understood that my mother was at her wit’s end, trying to keep me in mitts and a hat because other children consistently stole them away from me. I understood that people put worms and burdocks in my hair because I was white. I understood that no boy would ever want to go out with me because I was undesirable and a loser. My classmates found out that my first name is Mary, and they laughed. “Mary Jeanne Chabot? Who would ever want to marry Jeanne Chabot?!”
I understood that I could never be proud of any of my achievements because that brought on the next worse accusation: “Ever proud that one.” I learned to never show pride in any of my accomplishments, to never cry about anything and to never show happiness for any reason. Even today, I dislike being the centre of attention because I don’t know how to react in a socially correct manner.
I was an outsider. My very presence was a tiresome burden on my classmates. They were obliged to tolerate my existence at school, on sports teams and on class outings. For years, I tried to figure out what was wrong with me. If I reread my diary from my teen years, entry after entry sounds like a constant self-critique. “Did I laugh too much today? Maybe I should just not make jokes anymore. People don’t like my jokes. I shouldn’t have said this, I shouldn’t have laughed at that. I act too happy, I’m too talkative or too something. I’m just gross.” Many of my peers made fun of my hair or my clothes. It took a long time for me to realize that this was not normal and that most people elsewhere did not automatically hate me on sight or think that I was a homely, repulsive excuse for a human being.
As an adult, I found out that I was not the only one who dealt with this kind of bullying. Other children with paler skin, who had mixed parents, or who came from a different band also had similar experiences, although perhaps to a lesser degree. These others, after all, even those of mixed race, could all claim to belong there, could all claim their Cree heritage, whereas I could not. They had their extended family; aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, in the community, a kind of support circle, which I did not. This was my “white privilege.”
Despite my so-called white life, I had to relearn social norms when I moved away from my community because the social norms are different. I grew up in a place where you don’t offer money for a favour because it is understood that what comes around goes around. I moved to a place where my new friends would be constantly upset with me because I didn’t offer to pay for their gas, or for some other thing. It didn’t occur to me because I, in turn, did things for free for them. I learned the hard way that you must at least offer money or people will think you are profiting off them. They are then free to refuse it. Had I been from an obvious ethnic minority, my friends might have been more understanding and might have explained things to me. But I was “white”, so I was supposed to know these things.
Even now, I must consciously make myself do things a certain way in certain circumstances because it doesn’t come naturally to me. Although I know this is how it is done here, it is alien to me. Job interviews are bad because I dislike trying to sell myself. I grew up learning never to show pride in myself so self-promotion does not come naturally to me. This also makes it hard for me to insist on getting something I am due, (at work or elsewhere) if someone doesn’t feel like giving it to me. Bargaining is another thing I have a hard time with. I usually leave that to my husband (Yes, a boy finally did want to marry me, imagine that!) Where I grew up, you don’t try to pay people less for what they are selling. It makes you seem cheap.
After having grown up in my Cree community with all the good experiences as well as the bad, I go back to visit my community and even now, years later, I still sometimes doubt the sincerity of people there, through no fault of their own. I remain not quite convinced that they really want to spend time with me and are not just being nice. I have no rational reason to doubt. But I do. I still cannot quite believe that you can genuinely like a “white-man”, it seems unnatural. I don’t really belong.
I don’t think I “belong” anywhere. I am not like my fellow French or English-Canadians. My siblings and I are a breed apart alongside the other rare non-Cree children who grew up with us. We have lived that connection with the land, we know the culture and history of Indigenous peoples, we know the social norms, the way of thinking. We have danced with our Indigenous brothers and sisters; we have felt their pain and we have our own wounds. We have a different perspective; we grew up in dual cultures and we understand how both work. We have a voice too and I think it should not be dismissed because it is “white.” Perhaps it is time to put that understanding to good use as contributors towards reconciliation.
“You could start by apologizing (for your white privilege).” so I am told. I am sorry, but I already spent half my life trying to avoid aggravating other people simply because of the colour of my skin. If there is one thing I refuse to apologize for today, it is for being “white.” I spent enough time in my youth being sorry for being "white", thank you very much. I am pretty sure I know what racism is. As ironic as it may seem, not only have I seen it firsthand, I have experienced it firsthand. If someone thinks my “white privilege” is so great, they are welcome to it. The idea of "white privilege" is racist itself. It's making a whole group of people the scapegoats for the problems of society, based solely on the colour of their skin. We are more than the sum of a group. We are individuals. ANY judgement passed on any person, based solely on their skin colour is racism.
I have heard so many, many stories; too many stories of suicide. When a whole population grows up in institutions, no one has their parents’ example to go back on. You don’t get individual attention or affection or care from adults in an institution when there are a hundred more children with the same needs. Children need their parents. What happened to First Nations people is exactly what would happen to any society if you put all the children into state-run orphanages or boarding schools instead of letting their parents parent them. It doesn’t matter how good the institution is, it opens children up to abuse. There will always be abuse. Children need their parents to protect them.
Try to imagine the social dysfunction that this would cause. This is what, ironically, most conservative Christians are against. This is why so many choose to home-school instead of sending their children to state-run schools. We should be the FIRST to recognize what a huge mistake residential schools were. We should own that and recognize that social dysfunction is passed on from one generation to the next. It is not just something that happened years ago, it is still happening. We need to recognize that and support them in their efforts to take back their culture and their lives, to deal with their emotional and social wounds in order to become strong people capable of mature relationships, communication, showing affection and building each other up instead of tearing each other down.
I often hear non-Indigenous people wonder why Indigenous peoples “just can’t get over it.” Let me try to put things into perspective for those of you whose ancestors came from across the big pond.
Imagine that you are a (mostly) peace-loving, agricultural people, living in a region of scattered populations, small villages and towns, and plenty of forests for hunting. Your government is mostly locally based, you are organized into clans, and at the head of each clan is the clan chief. You have one head chief in an assembly of chiefs, within a confederation of clans. You have no king and no army. There are no official borders, but everyone knows which territory is theirs. Your clan is in a confederacy of clans for two reasons, to promote peaceful trade and as a protective measure against the more aggressive nations to the North. All men grow up learning to fight in case of necessity, but, excepting when there is war with other nearby nations similar to yours, most men and women are in the fields farming, in the woods hunting or providing different services in the towns. Other than these occasional wars, the yearly summer stress to ensure survival for the next winter and perhaps fearing that this year, it will be your newborn child who will be sacrificed to the gods to ensure their continuing goodwill (societies are never perfect after all), life is good. Your nation has not built any great monuments to history or religion, there are only a few small temple-like structures in the towns. The most historically, culturally and religiously important sites are the scattered ruins here and there, on hilltops and in glens. These are the sites of your ancestors; the birthing grounds of your people. It is here that people gather, mostly during the temperate months, to celebrate important feast days. It has been this way for centuries, even millennia.
Until one day, strange folk arrive from a faraway country, speaking a language like nothing you have ever heard, dressed in clothes completely different from anything you have ever seen and bearing weapons that are more advanced than anyone around you has. Their actions, their way of thinking, their religion and their customs are far removed from that of your nation and those around you.
These people decide to build homes and stay awhile. At first, you don’t think it matters, there is plenty of space in your area for everyone. But soon, more and more of them come, building their own villages and towns. Except for traders, most of them do not try to integrate themselves into your society, they prefer to keep to themselves as if you did not exist. They send people to try to convert you to their faith, some of you convert, but most of you just find them annoying. Some of you learn their language, and more rarely, some of them learn yours and even become part of your community, but the vast majority treat you like second-class citizens in your own land. They chop down the forests, animals are forced to move, they start to use your farmlands for their own and every once in awhile they desecrate your most sacred sites, tearing them up, building towns over top them without ever consulting you first. It is as if the land was there for the taking and belonged to no one.
These abuses naturally lead to conflict. More people, similar to these, but with a different language arrive later on. They are in conflict with the first strangers, and your people decide to form an alliance with the second group for the time being, in hopes that this will eliminate some of your problems. But the second group of people is very similar to the first, few of them integrate into your society. They are more interested in establishing their own towns and cities and claiming your land for some far-away king.
Strange new illnesses, brought over by these people, decimate your nation and the nations around you. You lose half your population to illness and war. By this time, villages have turned into cities, and your people have been pushed out of your territory by soldiers into lands less desirable. Too late, you join together with other clans and nations in an effort to rid yourselves of these people, but there are already too many of them and they are too strong.
Treaties are made with the new governments of these new peoples, but they trick you, the advantages they offer you are not worth the restrictions they make on your lifestyle. Your people, once so many, are now so few compared to them. If you leave the restricted area they want you to stay in, you lose your treaty rights, but if you stay, you cannot do business with the outside, only with the people of your own nation within your area.
You try to keep the old ways, you try to negotiate with these people, but they consistently get the upper hand. It is hard to figure them out. You don’t understand their thinking. Those of them who live with you, who trade with you understand and respect you better, but this government of theirs is always a threat.
One day, the government sends missionaries and soldiers to take your children away from you to schools run by them. You only see your children on rare occasions. They are taught that your ways, your culture, your language, your religion and your way of thinking is wrong. They are taught to speak a new language, practise a new religion, celebrate a new culture and think a different way. They come home, confused about themselves, unable to have mature relationships with each other or show affection to their own children. This happens to a whole generation and then another. They fall into depression and abuse alcohol and other substances. Your whole society has fallen apart. Your language and your ways are being forgotten. Your history is being lost, your people are lost, so many of them are socially dysfunctional, they no longer know where they come from or where they are going. You never ceded your lands to this new country; it just grew up around you. This land is still your land. You are tied to the land, this land that has been in your family for generations, this land that has been your lifeline, your subsistence, your link to your ancestors and your gods. It is yours. It is all you have and all you need, but this foreign government keeps going through it, without your consent, as if it were theirs, with no care for your sacred sites or your way of life. If you were to camp in their backyards, they would put up a fuss and yet they wonder why you protest everything. Why you are so “difficult,” why your people are drunk and homeless in the cities and why you just can’t pull yourselves together and “get over it.”
Admittedly, this is an oversimplified story. The very existence of the Métis in the west, the cultural uniqueness of my own hometown and the fact that there are Cree descendants living in the Orkneys right now would point to the fact that at certain points in history, some groups of Europeans were capable of integrating themselves into the societies that were already here and having good relationships with them. A whole new culture sprung up from the two old ones. This is how it should be; two cultures come together in mutual respect and each is free to borrow what is good from the other. Unfortunately, this has not been the case in general, and Indigenous Peoples have often had to deal with ignorance and racism in their own land, from foreigners or people whose ancestors were foreigners.
This is the story I grew up with. As pale as my skin is, I know this story. I do not consider myself “white”. My DNA is mostly European. I am not Cree. But I am also not “white”. White is a colour, not a race and not a culture. My culture is a mix of the culture of the village I grew up in and that of my parents. It so happens that I share part of the same Scottish heritage as the Cree from my village. As a child, I often listened to fiddling, both in the community and in my own home, and my mother can still show you a good jig today. My experience is not a “white” experience.
Let me tell you about my “white privilege.” I was very privileged to be called “white-man” every day for years, the worst insult anyone could throw at you, on the same level as a swear word, thanks to generations of abuse from a “white” government. I can still hear the contempt in the other kids’ voices as they spat out that word. I was a child. I did not know what my people, my government had done to their people. I didn’t understand the reasons behind the hate. More importantly, I myself had done absolutely nothing to them. It wasn’t my fault.
What I did understand is that when I was in grade four, my father had to come to meet me every single day, twice a day, at noon and after school. If he didn’t, other children would be waiting at the doors for me, ready to beat me up, because I was “white.” I had my community mapped out; I knew all the paths so I could make a quick exit. I never turned a corner without checking first to make sure the usual culprits weren’t there. I was constantly on the lookout for bullies as a child, I could never just play peacefully. If I let my guard down a gang of 2 or 3 or more might sneak up on me, shove me to the ground and start kicking me or punching me.
I understood that my mother was at her wit’s end, trying to keep me in mitts and a hat because other children consistently stole them away from me. I understood that people put worms and burdocks in my hair because I was white. I understood that no boy would ever want to go out with me because I was undesirable and a loser. My classmates found out that my first name is Mary, and they laughed. “Mary Jeanne Chabot? Who would ever want to marry Jeanne Chabot?!”
I understood that I could never be proud of any of my achievements because that brought on the next worse accusation: “Ever proud that one.” I learned to never show pride in any of my accomplishments, to never cry about anything and to never show happiness for any reason. Even today, I dislike being the centre of attention because I don’t know how to react in a socially correct manner.
I was an outsider. My very presence was a tiresome burden on my classmates. They were obliged to tolerate my existence at school, on sports teams and on class outings. For years, I tried to figure out what was wrong with me. If I reread my diary from my teen years, entry after entry sounds like a constant self-critique. “Did I laugh too much today? Maybe I should just not make jokes anymore. People don’t like my jokes. I shouldn’t have said this, I shouldn’t have laughed at that. I act too happy, I’m too talkative or too something. I’m just gross.” Many of my peers made fun of my hair or my clothes. It took a long time for me to realize that this was not normal and that most people elsewhere did not automatically hate me on sight or think that I was a homely, repulsive excuse for a human being.
As an adult, I found out that I was not the only one who dealt with this kind of bullying. Other children with paler skin, who had mixed parents, or who came from a different band also had similar experiences, although perhaps to a lesser degree. These others, after all, even those of mixed race, could all claim to belong there, could all claim their Cree heritage, whereas I could not. They had their extended family; aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, in the community, a kind of support circle, which I did not. This was my “white privilege.”
Despite my so-called white life, I had to relearn social norms when I moved away from my community because the social norms are different. I grew up in a place where you don’t offer money for a favour because it is understood that what comes around goes around. I moved to a place where my new friends would be constantly upset with me because I didn’t offer to pay for their gas, or for some other thing. It didn’t occur to me because I, in turn, did things for free for them. I learned the hard way that you must at least offer money or people will think you are profiting off them. They are then free to refuse it. Had I been from an obvious ethnic minority, my friends might have been more understanding and might have explained things to me. But I was “white”, so I was supposed to know these things.
Even now, I must consciously make myself do things a certain way in certain circumstances because it doesn’t come naturally to me. Although I know this is how it is done here, it is alien to me. Job interviews are bad because I dislike trying to sell myself. I grew up learning never to show pride in myself so self-promotion does not come naturally to me. This also makes it hard for me to insist on getting something I am due, (at work or elsewhere) if someone doesn’t feel like giving it to me. Bargaining is another thing I have a hard time with. I usually leave that to my husband (Yes, a boy finally did want to marry me, imagine that!) Where I grew up, you don’t try to pay people less for what they are selling. It makes you seem cheap.
After having grown up in my Cree community with all the good experiences as well as the bad, I go back to visit my community and even now, years later, I still sometimes doubt the sincerity of people there, through no fault of their own. I remain not quite convinced that they really want to spend time with me and are not just being nice. I have no rational reason to doubt. But I do. I still cannot quite believe that you can genuinely like a “white-man”, it seems unnatural. I don’t really belong.
I don’t think I “belong” anywhere. I am not like my fellow French or English-Canadians. My siblings and I are a breed apart alongside the other rare non-Cree children who grew up with us. We have lived that connection with the land, we know the culture and history of Indigenous peoples, we know the social norms, the way of thinking. We have danced with our Indigenous brothers and sisters; we have felt their pain and we have our own wounds. We have a different perspective; we grew up in dual cultures and we understand how both work. We have a voice too and I think it should not be dismissed because it is “white.” Perhaps it is time to put that understanding to good use as contributors towards reconciliation.
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