#indigenous academic

[piizunn]

“Knowing You Has Made Me a Better Settler Person”: Tokenizing the Métis Identity 

View my work: A Spectacle of Me for You 

By riel 

My name is riel, I am a Red River Métis artist descending maternally from the historic Métis families by the names of Berthelet, Caron, St. Germaine, Dubois, Dazé, and Larivière, who come from the communities of Pointe à Grouette, now St. Agathe, St. Norbert, and St. Vital, now modern-day Winnipeg, and the historic Batoche, Saskatchewan. My Berthelet ancestors, notably my third great grandfather Joseph Berthelet Sr. was a community leader of Pointe à Grouette, and my fifth-great uncle Jean Caron Sr fought at fifty-two years old in the battle of Duck Lake, Saskatchewan of the North-West Resistance of 1885. His house is now a historic site in Batoche. My mother is a Métis academic with a background in education and my father is a settler of British ancestry, and an archaeologist-turned-locksmith. I introduce myself in this way, in the traditional way of Métis authors, such as Chantal Fiola and Jean Teillet, to contextualize my knowledge and experiences, as well as my connection to this land.  

Earlier this year, 2022, as the winter semester wrapped up, and spring was beginning to rear its big green head, I finished building a Red River cart. It was four months of research and physical labour. I taught myself methods of wood joinery that my ancestors would have used, the hand tools they had access to pre-industrial revolution, as well as the power tools we as modern Métis have access to now. After the cart’s completion I installed it in the Ivan Gallery at school. That is when and where it happened. A classmate of settler colonial ancestry approached me. We had spent two semesters at odds. Her work focused on the climate crisis but came from a place of doomism and borderline eco-fascism. She regurgitated colonial narratives regarding our “doomed world” and the inherent violence of humans, and when she was corrected and shown the harm in her words she doubled down.  

She said to me “knowing you, has made me a better person.” I do not know this woman and she does not know me, but I believe I knew her in that moment. To her, I am an encyclopedia, a fountain of knowledge for her to drink from whenever she wants to feel a little less guilty. I realized what she meant. 

“Knowing you has made me a better settler person” 

What does it take to know a person? Who defines knowing? In that moment, I knew my classmate, but she could not have known me less. To her, and many others I have met in my life, my culture and I represented an outlet for settler guilt. I was the “real Indian” she took a photo with to prove her proximity and understanding of Indigeneity (James Luna). Because in settler minds, every Indian is every Indian, and every Indian is an encyclopedia to test knowledge against. I am a measuring stick for settlers to compare their thoughts and actions to. 

I began to really consider how settlers were tokenizing me; sexually, intellectually, culturally, spiritually, to settlers I am a fantasy Métis academic. I am an all knowing all sensing wise Indian who can track a man through all terrains, who can tell you your spirit name by just looking at you, who will save your life when you are caught unprepared on my land, and who will scalp an enemy with no mercy. That is what people want from me, not the stories of the Métis resistance leaders who tried to overtake your settler ancestors in the Northwest Resistance, who could spit bullets and toss gunpower directly into their guns all while on horseback. They do not want to hear about The Old Wolves who fought in the Northwest Resistance and years later met in St. Vital to lovingly and meticulously document our young nation’s history, who hated the word “rebellion” (Jean Teillet). 

A Spectacle of Me for You is an installation containing a series of sculptures, photographs, prints, and found objects arranged in a “spectacle” of the Métis identity. The work is the result of experimentation with materials and engagement with Métis theory on self-governance and our history. Being named after Louis Riel often feels like an invitation for settlers to give me their unsolicited opinion on whether my ethnic group should have rights, and if Louis Riel was a madman or not, with most of the conversations quickly becoming anti-Indigenous and/or ableist. To my people, however, it is an honour to be named after Riel, the man who, with Gabriel Dumont successfully won the Red River Resistance of 1869, and commanded my ancestors in the Northwest Resistance of 1885. In this work I employ Indigenous humour- our ability to make fun of ourselves, remaining in control of the joke in order to remove that power from settlers, who are suddenly uncomfortably aware of their perception of Indigenous peoples. I have been heavily influenced by artists like Jesse Ray Short who dressed as Louis Riel in a drag-esque performance, and James Luna’s performance Take A Picture with a Real Indian (2001) and Artifact Piece (1987), Dayna Danger’s Big ‘Uns series, specifically for their reclamation of explicit Indigenous sexuality, and their ways of incorporating Indigenous, specifically Métis and Salteaux material culture into representations of Indigenous sexuality. Finally, I also would like to reference Rebecca Belmore’s piece Artifact #671B from 1988, where Belmore implicates her own body as an artifact in similar ways that James Luna has.  

The viewer enters the room to find a table at the back of the room, seemingly an in-use workspace, with a sewing mannequin dressed in brown pants, a red and black flannel, a Louis Riel shirt, and a beaded leather strap on placed over the pants. There is also a half-deflated mask of Louis Riel placed on the table. On the table there are postcards- free for the viewer to take with two different designs to choose from. On one side of the room a log has been placed on the ground and another rests a few feet away, seemingly more haphazardly than the carefully placed log.  

A Spectacle of Me for You is a staged representation of what a beader’s workspace might look like. A series of props that vaguely reference the Métis but does not actually represent the workspace of the artist. It is a highly curated idea of the Métis identity, playing on well-known stereotypes. Among the workspace set-up there are two stacks of postcards, one with a shot of the artist posing with two logs they personally harvested in January of 2022, left over from building a Red River cart, one of the logs positioned suggestively between the legs of the artist. They are dressed in stereotypical lumberjack clothes as well as a t-shirt with Louis Riel’s face and a slogan that reads “keepin’ it Riel”. The artist also wears a latex mask of Louis Riel, tying the fantasy together.   

Otipemisiwak Voyageur Fantasy Husband is a series of postcards as well as a costume worn by the artist to comment on different aspects of tokenization. The leather strap on harness worn over their clothes is an overt reference to the fetishization of Indigenous people, specifically Indigiqueer and Two Spirit community members, and a comparison of Indigenous and settler masculinity. The harness is paired with a lumberjack style flannel and a shirt with an image of Louis Riel that reads “keepin it real”, and a latex mask of Riel, worn on the artist’s head, obscuring their face. The postcards and the mask are a reference to modern Métis material culture and our infatuation with objects with Louis Riel’s face. The mass-production of these items has both caused a massive inflation of Louis Riel-kitsch, but also a larger awareness of our presence as Métis people, and what Riel means to us. Akin to the presidents' masks used by the Ex-Presidents gang in the 1991 film Point Break, the artist uses their Riel mask to draw attention to the way real historical figures, particularly politicians become caricatures of their actual selves in the eyes of the public, allowing them to be immortalized in popular culture. On a smaller scale, something similar has happened to Louis Riel where many settlers deem him a violent mad-man, and reduce him to a caricature of himself, while the Métis have reclaimed this treatment, and have found ways to honour him in our material culture. 

References/Works Cited 

BELMORE, REBECCA. ARTIFACT #671B, 1988. 

BIGELOW, KATHRYN. POINT BREAK. TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX, 1991.  

BURNS, CLARISSA. VOYAGEUR GAMES DEMONSTRATION. https://metisgathering.ca/classroom-resources/classroom-voyageur-games/. MÉTIS GATHERING. 2022.  

LUNA, JAMES. TAKE A PICTURE WITH A REAL INDIAN, 2000.  

LUNA, JAMES. ARTEFACT PIECE, 1987. 

   RIEL, LOUIS. FINAL TRIAL STATEMENT. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/riel/rieltrialstatement.html. JULY 31ST 1885.  

SHORT, JESSIE RAY. WAKE UP!, 2015. 

  TEILLET, JEAN. THE NORTH-WEST IS OUR MOTHER : THE STORY OF LOUIS RIEL’S PEOPLE, THE METIS NATION. PATRICK CREAN EDITIONS, AN IMPRINT OF HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS LTD., 2013. 

[screamingfromuz]

Listen. LISTEN, the longer I spend in the academic world, I am more convinced that describing Judaism and Jews as a religion/ethnic grope/ethnoreligion is unhelpful outside of Academic circles.

The best way to explain Judaism is using the tribe model. A lot of times Judaism is a community first and a religion second, i.e., your level of religiousness is rarely a thing that alienate you from the community.

Think of other tribes, like the Sámi, Aboriginal Australians, Māori, Yurok, Inuit ect. Each have their own unique religion, but we do not think of them as a religious group, because the tribal identity is more important, and the religion is considered part of the culture, not the opposite.

IMORTANT SIDENOTE: I am aware that many of those tribes, and other tribes have a big chunk of Christians in them, usually more Christians than those who follow the indigenous religion of the tribe. BUT for the sake of discussion, I am equating Judaism to the section that does follow the indigenous religion of the tribe.

So, despite the fact that the religious structures of Judaism is very integral to Judaism, it is partly because of the community based focus of Judaism. The most basic example is the Minyan, the fact that prayer is preferred to be done in a group. Or the fact that the Sader is meant to be a celebrated in a group. and so on.

SO, ethnoreligion is a great academic term, but for outside that world? A tribe is a much better term to explain Judaism.

[atopvisenyashill]

I am so glad you articulated the criticism of Dany crucifying the slavers as a political folly and not a moral folly like listen I am a Dany fan if I could send asks from my sideblog you would know this but I do not believe we are supposed to just brush off the crucifixion like Dany herself isn’t even fully convinced it was the right thing to do. Remembering it she feels sick and has to shut down her doubts and TELL HERSELF it was right. She is an interesting character to me because she can’t stand the compromises she must make to maintain peace AND YET she does want justice and liberation BUT she also hates the suffering and bloodshed of war AND YET she is quick to command violence on impulse. I do think her peace in Meereen was real (big Meereen Knot Essays believer) but all of her internal conflicts lead her to her mistakes. Can’t stand peace but can’t stand war so she just tears herself apart!! It’s tragic! It’s interesting! So much more interesting than an unambiguously heroic Dany who makes no mistakes ever!

Yeah, like....it's certainly morally messy, and I think it's morally more messy because Dany isn't a slave of the Ghiscari like Missandei or an Unsullied like Grey Worm, Red Lamb, etc who is rising up and using violent revolution to liberate the slave class of Meereen - she is a descendant from a foreign, formerly slaving culture that enslaved most of the cultures represented in Meereen, someone of noble birth who has experienced immense suffering but was able to pull herself out of it because of her immense social privilege and magical abilities, using violence in an attempt to liberate those her family had once helped subjugate while...still keeping herself at the top of the pyramid.

There's a lot of mess and contradictions in this situation and I find it much less interesting (as you say) when people paint what Dany is doing here as unambiguously heroic. I know I sound like a broken clock when I say it, but the justification of "well this culture has slavery and slavery is bad" is the exact sort of rationalization many colonial and imperial powers make when conquering. White Americans made it about various Indigenous communities ("oh well the Iroquois had slaves and conquered their neighbors" yeah and white americans had chattel slavery which is objectively worse so what now??), the UK and France used it as a rationale for conquering most of Africa and parts of Asia; there's always this annoying through-line of "well Africans sold themselves into slavery" and I think making this argument that "Well the Ghiscari are brutal slavers" is really similar. And I know people don’t like the dragon/nuke comparison or the imperialism/colonizer comparisons but….what made the genocides of the Americas, and the colonization and imperialism of the 20th centuries stand out from the wars that came before is the sort of hellish combination of nationalism, political schisms, fervent hatred of the Other, and industrial growth. Never before could people amass armies and kill on such a massive scale before. Never before did we have weapons that were so fucking good at killing. Never before did we have the bureaucracy capable of streamlining the process so damn well! (and not for lacking of trying, shout out rome but like...still). I think the dragons are a commentary on that - when someone has access to technology like that, can one person be left to decide if it’s use is good or evil? can one culture not be completely corrupted by their technological advances? can nuclear bombs or weapons Ever be used for good, and if they can be then where is that line drawn? who draws the line? why does that person get to draw the line? I don't think any of this will have a clear answer because that's not exactly how he does things - he's just writing a scenario about this and letting us analyze why it happens on our own.

So it’s like okay the Ghiscari and Dothraki are slaving cultures...Sacking a city is still a violent, destructive thing to do and she does it three times including to a city she is attempting to rule. The moment she had an inkling she might be ruling Meereen, she should have rethought her actions there so she doesn’t start off alienating a large group of people. Coming in as a stranger from a culture who used to be slavers and constantly making comments about how much she hates the culture she’s ruling over is....not great! Dany going back and forth between "I hate these people I was right to crucify them" and "there's too much violence amongst these people I have to stop the violence" is why the issues in Meereen become so complicated. Does she have reasons for acting this way? Yes! It doesn't change the outcome of her actions!

What's interesting about her is that as you say, she does realize this conflicting dichotomy within herself! That’s like, the entire issue she’s facing in Meereen - she wants peace because she knows that’s what’s best for the people there and yet struggles to control her boredom and temper because she is too traumatized to sit still any longer. She’s associated the constant move, the constant fight, the violence and blood and death and destruction with righteousness, justice, goodness, and we can SEE it’s having a negative effect on her psyche, her emotions. She’s not HAPPY by the ending of adwd, she’s not self actualized, she’s just hardened herself completely in the face of this unending monster of a campaign. She wants off this ride and yet she’s unable to find a way out. I don’t think we’re meant to cheer her on here!! SHE is barely cheering herself on here!!! It’s a burden to her!!!!

[sapphicacademic]

hi i'm micki and i'm native and here's some media to consume for those of u who want to learn about indigenous allyship

read

Not Your Princess (poetry collection)

Seven Generation (graphic novel)

A History of My Brief Body

Anything by Julia Emberly (she is white but I adore her work so much)

The Break (this one is So So So important)

watch

Finding Dawn (documentary)

any documentaries about the stories of MMIW, learn their names learn about their stories.

LEARN WHAT LAND YOU ARE ON. PLEASE. THANK YOU.

[tuurverheydepoetryandprose]

This page contains resources for:

- Protests

- Black Lives Matter

- LGBTQIA+

- Women’s Rights

- Mental Health

- Climate Crisis

- Organising

- Indigenous peoples

- Disaster relief

-Links to free academic and literary texts

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s1 episode 19 thoughts

my evening scully and mulder time has arrived!!! i read the synopsis of the episode- that they investigate a shapeshifting Indigenous creature- and (correctly) made the guess that things would be. well. appropriation-y.

the first thing i wrote was "roarrrrr a bear", this is because we see a taxidermy bear. hope that clears up any confusion.

the old man looks like mark twain. which is a normal thing to notice about a guy.

the son of mark twain guy- who shot a creature that turned out to be a man- pulls our duo aside and mentions how he knows their story doesn't make sense. i admired this self-aware move. most of the people who give mulder and scully their evidence are less willing to admit that it's kinda unlikely they really got abducted by aliens or saw bigfoot or whatever. so he won me over in this way.

scully's annoyed because she thinks it's just a homicide and says there's NOTHING unusual about this... and at that very moment mulder rolls up with a big piece of skin like "nope. nothing weird at all". count on him to find that. seems just like the thing he'd do. spooky mulder and all.

they go to a bar on the reservation to try and find the sheriff and learn more, but are met with a chilly reception due to the fact that they are working for the US government. but we see the dead guy's sister and she is very pretty as well as an old man that mulder talks to about shapeshifting.

"i want to believe" <- HE SAID THE LINE!!!!!

when they go to check the guy's body, mulder gets on the ground and opens the deceased's mouth to reveal: he has fangs!!!!!!!! which is probably the first time mulder looking in a dead guy's mouth has found anything useful! but certainly not the last.

at this point scully is weirded tf out because like. he knew to look for the skin AND jumped straight to the dead guy's teeth and she says mulder, you had best tell me what is going on right NOW. and we get a lore reveal!!! he knows all this because a similar case was the... drumroll please...

VERY! FIRST! X-FILE!!!!!

everyone cheered and clapped and pointed at the screen.

everyone EXCEPT scully, that is. because she is pissed that he would propose people can turn into animals. she got so mad that she got out of the car and left. this reaction is likely why mulder did not tell her about his hunch in the first place, but really can you blame her? she is a doctor. that profession is too busy to deal with werewolves.

they had giant umbrellas in almost every scene of this episode. oh, to be tromping around the pacific northwest adjacent era, hunting for clues in the rain... how atmospheric!

scully says she's very sorry to the murdered man's sister. not much to note here beyond that it was a kind thing to do.

there's a scene where someone turns into a wolf creature and pummels mark twain man and it looked remarkably similar to the attack my werewolf character in skyrim performs, which made me laugh. the "lunge and rip the person apart" technique must be universal to werewolf media across the land.

scully finds mark twain guy's son hurt in a field and takes him to the hospital! that was very kind of her but: i don't like it when our duo splits up. i enjoy their codependency.

but oh no!! things are not looking good for our murdered man's sister, who has since gone missing. did she do it....? (spoilers: nah she's innocent)

i felt very bad for the scraggly guy scully found in the middle of a field, who seem to thought that he somehow triggered his father's death. scully says she knows how it feels because she just lost her dad and holds his hand as he cries. scully :(((((((((

so then mulder and the sheriff visit an elder who explains the myth of the shapeshifter to them as one who is attacked and then attacks others, and cannot remember the trance they fall into. they refer to this as an Algonquin legend, and at first i was confused because the Algonquin live on the opposite side of north america, but the term can also refer to the entire language family that stretches across the continent. the more you know!

(regardless, the appropriation of Indigenous imagery as a form of horror entertainment by white folks is always gonna be Problematic and i do not excuse them of this crime)

but this is a sad kind of monster, in the x-files universe at least- one who doesn't know they are attacking others, which is a very compelling trope imo...

and we learn the kid had his father's blood in him, which can only happen if he ate his dad... which means...

OH NO! HE'S GONNA EAT SCULLY!

(actually i will copy my notes verbatim here, which i wrote while she drove him home, then continued writing as she tried to help him out while he was acting weird and locked himself in the bathroom)

"NOOO THE KID IS THE EVIL FELLOW AND SCULLY IS DRIVING HIM HOME this is what being a doctor gets you ohhh poor kid and poor scully she just wants to do her doctor duties and she'll pick the damn lock if she needs to that's doctorly dedication NOOOO HE'S GONNA EAT HER NOOOO NOT IN SEASON ONE WE HAVE SO MANY MORE TO GET TO"

wow, i think that says a lot. feel free to unpack that at a later time.

anyway, mulder realizes what is going on and he shows up with the sheriff guns blazing. like seriously, he SHOOTS the taxidermied bear i had earlier said "roaaaaar" to. the head is blown clean off. he was NOT going to let scully get eaten.

finally during his search of the ranch, he opens a door and she's hiding in there. they fall on top of each other and she says "it's okay, it's me, it's okay" and. man. the whispering. the need to be at each other's side in the face of imminent danger. the relief of those hushed words. it's okay. it's me. they're together again and they can face this Thing as a united front. ohhhhhhh hold me tight.

the sheriff shoots the mysterious creature and surprise! it turns into the guy who had been previously found naked in a field and accused of eating his father.

scully is deeply perplexed by all of this. she does not know what to think, for a mere 24-ish hours ago she was talking about how a human cannot become an animal! another instance of her central beliefs being shaken to the core.

before they leave, the old man yells to mulder "see you in about 8 years" referring to the cyclical nature of the attacks. and he says "i hope not"... how very ominous... i will certainly keep this in mind for future seasons

i thought the suspense in this episode was really good and i knew deep down she wasn't really going to be eaten, but i was still scared, so it certainly did its job in that regard. overall, not my fave episode though for cultural appropriation reasons- hint to those reading: Don't profit off of bastardizing Indigenous belief systems.

they did serve with those goth black umbrellas, though, i'll give them that.

[bijoumikhawal]

RE: cultural appropriation primarily being about an economic state of affairs where white people make money off of other people, a related idea I've been contemplating but haven't been able to like. Finish writing about is the idea of cultural decontextualization, which is when a cultural majority (often but not always white people) engage with another culture in a manner that erases- and may simultaneously replicate- racist histories, and is more about creating false narratives than economics.

A personal example would be white people making clothes based off of Coptic Egyptian artifacts, especially while generically referring to them as "Roman" or arguing Coptic art does not exist, which denies Copts part of Coptic history while resurrecting the French Coptomania of the 1920s, and specifically Albert Gayet's actions of taking items from Coptic graves to the point where a model was dressed in a tunic and shown off (which is also terrible from an artifact preservation perspective- this tunic would've been at minimum, 1300 years old at the time).

[mourntomidnight]

As Mother Earth determined

Aeons ago

We are alive

As nature is alive

We were made to be beautiful

In spirit

And how we decorate

In how we dance

How we speak

And most of all

How we love and nurture

We are one

As the great bison

The pine trees

And down to the insects

And even after we die

Nature does not forget that

For as we decay we return to

Our Mother Earth

And once all is done with that

Flowers sprout and bloom

To mark and remember who

We all are

From the ancestors

To everyone who one day has

To return to Mother Earth

And see their ancestors

In the Spirit World once more

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

John Linton Palmer, Sketches of moai on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Nov 1868, watercolour, Easter Island Album, F030/6 © RGS-IBG.

Above: ‘Inside the crater at Otu-iti’ (pencil annotation: ‘Published in Illustrated News’).

Below: ‘One of the images outside the Crater at Otuiti. These were generally in much better preservation than those elsewhere, the angles of the stone still sharp’.

"Linton Palmer’s later sketches indicate an enduring interest in forms of material culture, architecture and archaeology. In 1863, for example, he took leave from HMS Melville to travel for three weeks up-river from Canton with a fellow-doctor William Kane, Scots businessman James Banks Taylor, a missionary Orientalist (and the future Oxford Professor of Chinese) James Legge and his Chinese secretary Tsang Kwei-Hwan. Linton Palmer sketched Buddhist temples and pagodas along the way, although they were not included in a subsequently published account of the trip. Drawing was also to play a significant role in his later studies of the ethnology and geography of Rapa Nui, arising from HMS Topaze’s visit there in November 1868. Although he appears to have included drawings with a letter sent to England the following month, Linton Palmer’s account was published by the Ethnological Society without the drawings, as was another paper presented to the Royal Geographical Society. Nor did his sketches of the skulls (which were sent to Thomas Huxley) appear in print. At least one of his drawings from the Topaze was published in engraved form in the Illustrated London News before his return to London (20 March 1869), and other sketches may have reached wider public audiences in the same way.

...

Today Linton Palmer’s most well-known sketches are those he made on the island of Rapa Nui (Easter island) in 1868, during which one of the moai, Hoa Hakananai’a, was excavated from its underground resting place. The evidential quality of Linton Palmer’s writings on Rapa Nui have been questioned by later archaeologists, especially his supposed tendency to rely on what is regarded as hearsay rather than first-hand observation. However, his sketches of the sites of the moai and the marks upon them constitute a significant and in some respects a unique documentary record which still has value in archaeological study.

...

In view of the continuing debate amongst Rapa Nui specialists over the quality of Linton Palmer’s evidence, it is worth making two further points. The first concerns the place of accurate observation within his routine practice as a naval surgeon: it was his responsibility to observe the bodies of the crew, the condition of the ship and of the weather, and in this context precise documentation in multiple forms was essential. In a naval setting, moreover, the notion of isolated observation independent of ‘hearsay’ does not really make sense: here an observation which was not shared could not be tested or relied upon. The second point concerns Linton Palmer’s prior experience of archaeological survey which has hitherto been unknown. In fact, ten years before the Topaze voyage, Linton Palmer himself had undertaken the first field survey of the stone circle at Calanais (Callanish) in the Hebrides, just prior to its excavation..." - from Felix Driver, “Material memories of travel: the albums of a Victorian naval surgeon.” Journal of Historical Geography 69 (2020): 48.

[karinyosa]

after all these years little still riles me up like a history class debate

[allgirlsareprincesses]

Random musings on violence, theory, and hearing indigenous perspectives:

A few years ago (2018?), I picked up a book on Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory. I only made it a few chapters in because it was dry AF and I typically need some kind of research goal (like a fandom meta or upcoming podcast recording) to actually get through the more intense academic lit. But due to recent events, I decided to pick it back up. If you're not familiar with Rene Girard, he's a 20th-Century Christian philosopher who proposed a mimetic theory of violence, which is to say that he believed human violence to be universally driven by mimetic desire. Mimetic as in "mime" or imitation, so people instinctively desire to be like the other or have what they have, and so this unconscious envy often drives violence. Or at least, that was my understanding from what little I read.

Only a few pages in on my second attempt, and I could not help an overwhelming feeling of disgust. The book argues against common critiques of Girard's work, including that he has an ethnocentric (white eurocentric) view, and that his so-called "universal" theory disregards diverse perspectives. In my opinion, the defenses given were flimsy, even without having read the full critiques themselves, and to that I would add one more: Highly educated cishet white men have no place creating theories of violence when they are so rarely the object of such violence. Reducing the lived reality and trauma of predominantly women, queer, non-Christian, non-white people to an academic theory is patronizing at best and harmful at worst, because it reassures the theorist of their own righteousness without requiring them to actively DO anything to stop the violence or take responsibility for the ways people like them have victimized others throughout history. It's ivory tower bullsh*t at its absolute worst.

Now granted, I know Girard was a young man in occupied France during WWII, so I'm sure he had some firsthand experience with violence, but he spent the rest of his life in relative comfort, protected by his privileged status. And perhaps if his work had focused on more diverse sources, I might be less critical of that status, but as it is, there's a heavy emphasis on European literature. Not even historical accounts! But "great novels" of Europe's past. And these are worth studying, sure, but you can't reasonably call any theory formed from them "universal."

This is also a huge problem with the work of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Which again, IS NOT TO SAY THEIR WORK HAS NO MERIT. I personally still find it illuminating and thought-provoking. But eventually, we have GOT to stop considering white men the standard for academic and philosophical thought! It's so limiting!

And historically, given how much violence has been perpetrated by white men upon others, I think it's worth considering that any theories of violence they propose may be incomplete or corrupt, and in any case useless to the victims. Lastly, I'm not particularly impressed by many of Girard's modern proponents, who skew more right-wing and therefore are often aligned with institutionalized violence.

So yeah, I quit the book. At this point, I'm much more interested in seeking out indigenous perspectives in academic discussions. My interest in folktales has led me to many fem scholars of color who collect such sources, so I'm gradually building a reading list that I think will ring true to me more so than authors like Girard. If any of my lovely followers have recommendations or thoughts on what I've shared, I'd appreciate your input!

[piizunn]

fur, money, adventure: mechanisms of colonialism and survivance

riel ✰ | march, 2023

“Of all the things on earth, the motherland is the most important  

and sacred to us because we inherited it from our ancestors,”  

- Louis Riel 

Fig. 1, Wilson. I. Former Jean Caron Sr. House, Batoche Saskatchewan. Image courtesy of I. Wilson and Parks Canada

I am Red River Métis, descending maternally from historic Métis families by the names of Berthelet, Caron, Ste. Germain, Larivière, Dazè, Dubois, and Boudreau; we come from the Red River Settlement in Manitoba and Batoche, Saskatchewan. My Berthelet family members were employees of the North-West Company and community leaders in the town of Pointe à Grouette, now Ste. Agathe (St. Onge). My fifth great uncle Jean Caron Sr. fought in the Battle of Duck Lake of the North-West Resistance of 1885, with his sons and under the command of Gabriel Dumont, Jean Caron Sr’s house still stands in Batoche to this day (fig. 1). I introduce myself in this way, the traditional way of the Métis to situate myself on this land and contextualise my knowledge and experiences. 

My practice serves to counter the settler-colonial understanding of Métis people and our history and establish us as a people who have been practising survivance for generations. With the help of aesthetics of survivance I oppose mechanisms of colonialism; aesthetics including the Hudson’s Bay Company’s bloody legacy, the monuments and public art installed throughout Calgary, the suburban cowboys that come out of hiding in their McMansions on the outskirts of the city, riding their steel steeds, raised trucks, to the summer Stampede. The aesthetics of survivance are “[...]more than survival, more than endurance, or mere response, [...] stories of survivance are the creases of sovereignty,” (Vizenor, 15). In her 2019 book The North-West is Our Mother by Jean Teillet, the author compares the birth of the Métis Nation to human birth; messy, bloody, painful. Our history is vastly complex and controversial in the eyes of the average Canadian settler today. It is a history that makes settlers uncomfortable, confused, sometimes defensive and angry in response to lack of knowledge and this ignorance is often no fault of their own. Canada has a carefully curated canon of history that we are all spoon-fed in school until given the chance to learn the other sides of this history, to think critically and hear stories of survivance. 

Fig. 2, The Bay “Shopping is Good” advertisement, 2000. Courtesy of the HBC History Foundation

Countering aesthetics of survivance, The Hudson’s Company has developed their own aesthetics of colonialism. “Fur! Money! Adventure! That [is] what the Hudson’s Bay Company territory had to offer Englishmen and Canadians three hundred years ago,” (Sealy, 1). From the very beginning of the point blanket, with its iconic stripes on white wool, traded for a single beaver pelt to an advertisement from the year 2000 (fig. 2). An image of a nuclear family wearing matching white outfits in a clean white room. Everything accented with green, red, yellow, and indigo stripes, down to the scarf that the grandmother is knitting, referencing the histories of trade and handmade goods long abandoned by the HBC in favour of their modern department store model and multiple aesthetic rebrands throughout the years after the industrial revolution (Toneguzzi). The advertisement simply states, “Shopping is Good, Toronto”. Pro pelle cuttem, a pelt for a skin, a skin for a skin.

Fig. 3, Starr, Riel. Image of the original HBC logo, downtown Calgary. Image courtesy of the artist.

The HBC shield on a building in downtown Calgary (fig. 3) is a grim reminder of the bloody birth of this country, laughing in my face. As Billy Ray Belcourt puts it: “Canada is still in the business of gunning down NDNs. […] Despite the stories of progress and equality at the core of Canada’s national identity, a long tradition of brutality and negligence is what constitutes kinship for the nation of citizens sat atop the lands of older, more storied ones. […] What I can do is love as though it will rupture the singularity of Canadian cruelty.” (Belcourt, 5)  

Fig. 4, 5, Starr, Riel. Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

A Spectacle of Me for You: Otipemisiwak Fantasy (2022-present) is an ongoing body of work that explores the Métis identity through a modern and Indigiqueer lens, and through humour and the NDN belly laugh (Whitehead). The work consists of a series of photographs of myself wearing a costume I created using a combination of found and handmade garments. In the photographs from 2022 titled Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband, (figs. 4 and 5) which have been printed in the form of stickers and two different postcard designs, the character Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband (OFH), the masked trickster, poses with wood leftover from building a Red River cart in 2022. The aesthetics of survivance often incorporate embodying the skewed image that settlers have of the savage Indian, over exaggerating it so that that the joke remains in our own hands, and we can laugh at the ignorant moniyaw. In these photographs OFH is wearing a red and black lumberjack flannel over a red shirt with a black graphic of Louis Riel’s Face and white text that reads “Keeping’ it Riel,”. Around his waist is a ceinture fléchée, and a beaded leather strap on harness worn over brown dress pants. On his head is a latex mask of Louis Riel, his skin is placid and his features cartoonish, in the style of the masks of American presidents used in the 1991 film Point Break (directed by Katherine Bigelow) (fig. 6).

Fig. 6, Patrick Swayze, James Le Gros, Bojesse Christopher, and John Philbin in Point Break (1991), dir. Katheryn Bigelow. Image courtesy of Twentieth-Century Fox. 

This work explores the aestheticization of colonialism through these political figures and latex masks which can be attributed to the abstraction of the real person from their caricature in history and in the cultural zeitgeist. One postcard design contains a full body shot of the character in a comically dominant pose with a log positioned suggestively between his legs, standing in for the strap on harness’s missing toy. The second design is a close-up shot of the character’s pelvis, the strap on harness visible with his thumbs hooked casually on the straps.  

Referencing other Indigenous artistic personas such as Adrian Stimson’s “Buffalo Boy” and Lori Blondeau’s “Belle Sauvage” (fig. 7), my artwork including OFH satirises the settler-colonial understandings of Louis Riel as a violent traitor to the government by pointing to the ways his story has grown into a mythology of sorts in the eyes of Canadians in a similar manner to other related figures like the former presidents represented in Point Break.

Fig. 7, Stimson, Adrian; Blondeau, Lori. Belle and Boy’s Savage Buffalo Happy Hour. Image courtesy of Adrian Stimson and Lori Blondeau.

Like Stimson’s Buffalo Boy, my character represents an exaggerated Métis identity in order to “[…] camp up colonialism, sexuality, and authenticity,”  embodying the trickster archetype like Buffalo Boy in the words of Stimson, “he’s campy, ridiculous, and absurd, but he is also a storyteller, who exposes cultural and societal truths,” (Rice, Taunton, Stimson). OFH mimics the over-sexualized settler-colonial perception of Indigenous masculinity, sexuality,  and queerness and is an exploration of the ways in which my identity is tokenized: sexually, spiritually, academically, and culturally. 

A Spectacle of Me for You: Otipemisiwak Fantasy is a way of participating in the phenomenon within contemporary Métis art of Louis Riel related kitsch objects that flood markets across the Métis homeland. Alongside and juxtaposing red and white Canadian kitsch that litters tourists' traps and contemporary art galleries across this land, appears the stoic face Louis Riel, gazing out at the country that has developed since his murder in 1885. As Marilyn Dumont puts it: “Riel is dead, but he just keeps coming back,” (70) Contemporary artists like Jessie Ray Short embody Louis Riel by taking on his likeness as a costume. The short film Wake up! (2015) (fig. 8) is a queering of this popular trend.

Fig. 8, Short, Jessie Ray, still from Wake Up!, 2015, video with sound, 5:58 min. Courtesy of the Artist, via Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen

The artist, transforms herself into Louis Riel by applying facial hair, a wig, and clothing to mimic the most famous portrait of Riel in a drag-esque performance. The work asks, “How do you explain a culture in small talk?” and is an example of the “re-examining the cultural significance of Louis Riel [that] allows us to consider the ways in which we can question representation while still respecting the importance this history holds.” (Junker) 

Fig. 9 (left), Danger, Dayna. Digital print of Adrienne Dagger, wearing one of Dayna Danger's fetish mask. Image courtesy of the artist and CBC news.

Fig. 10 (right), Danger, Dayna. Big’Uns: Adrienne, 2017. Courtesy of the artist’s website. 

The beaded strap-on worn over the pants and the explicit nature of the posing is in reference to Dayna Danger’s Big’Uns (2017) (fig. 10) series, as well as their series of beaded fetish masks for their emphasis on material and process (fig. 9). The result is what Danger refers to as “the most Native BDSM thing ever,” to wrap yourself in beads. Like Danger’s beaded mask project, the Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband persona came about partly out of a joke, the desire to make something humorous and sexy. Being queered by my Indigeneity, my sexuality, and gender, I consider Sara Ahmed’s words from the introduction of her book Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others,

 “A queer phenomenology, perhaps, might start by redirecting our attention toward different objects, those that are “less proximate” or even those that deviate or are deviant. And yet, I would not say that a queer phenomenology would simply be a matter of generating queer objects,” 

The emphasis on the strap-on harness points to a specific queer object with cultural associations within the concept of queer phenomenology and orientations. It functions not only as a deviant object or a queer object but also an Indigiqueer “orientation device,” (Ahmed, 3). 

Fig. 11, Starr, Riel. Spread from Reading Marilyn Dumont to A Railway Berm, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.

The most recent work in A Spectacle of Me for You: Otipemisiwak Fantasy is a performance titled Reading Marilyn Dumont to A Railway Berm (2023) in which OFH, sporting a new fringed leather jacket and matching tan suede Manitobah Mukluks reads poetry by Métis poet, author, and academic Marilyn Dumont to the dismantled railway that once entered the former Fort Calgary. The title of the poem is A Letter to John A. MacDonald and the author directly addresses the first prime minister and informs him of his failed railroad project. In addition to the Louis Riel mask, I had also begun the process of making a mask in the image of John A. MacDonald but had not found a use for it until reading the poem by Dumont. The performance is documented in the form of a hand-bound zine using imitation sinew, with photo documentation of the performance of reading to the railroad and John A. as well as the action of “scalping” the John A. mask to remove it from the base. This is contrasted with documentation of the site using both historical and modern images taken during the performance and sourced from the museum of Fort Calgary’s website (fig. 11).   

Fig. 12, Starr, Riel. Prairie Vessel, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.

Prairie Vessel (2022) (fig. 12) is an exploration of Métis aesthetics of survivance, specifically the Red River Cart and its material and physical qualities, as well as its history and symbolism in our culture. The Red River Cart is represented in the contemporary Métis Nation of Alberta and Manitoba Métis Federation logos, the cart being revered as an important symbol of survivance to our people. Historically the carts were built without the use of standardised measurement or plans, however there were two defining design features common to all Red River carts; their two wheels and lack of any metal joinery, only using wood and rawhide in their construction. The research for this piece included scouring online databases like the Louis Riel Institute and the Gabriel Dumont Institute in order to find any sort of construction plans for the carts. George Fayant is one of the few Métis makers with this skill, and has been building them for over two decades, since 1998 (Patterson). Prairie Vessel (2022) is a study of Métis material culture out of the need to preserve a lesser-known art form, and to practise survivance both personally and for my people so that I may keep knowledge and ways of making beyond alive, to keep them thriving in the spirits of my ancestors and all living Métis. 

I am just one Halfbreed, but I am still Halfbreed. My ancestors' spiritual and genetic material makes up my personhood and part of that personhood is in all Métis. I do not yet know who I am to my people, but I carry an important name and an old spirit. I would like to be a trickster, “lotta raven in that one,” they’ll say (Maracle, 19). I would like to be like old James Bird Jr., trickster, trader, smart as a whip, a deadly sense of humour, and mean to missionaries. Wiisakayachack, Nanabush, Bluejay, Raven, Coyote, Li P’tchi Mond, Chi Jean, James Bird Jr., I long to be a chakapish.

Works Cited  

Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, 2006.

Barkwell, Lawrence. Métis Mythology and Folklore: Mythological figures. Métis Museum, Louis Riel Institute.  

Belcourt, Billy-Ray, et al. A History of My Brief Body. Two Dollar Radio, 2020.   

Bigelow, Katheryn. Point Break. Twentieth Century Fox, 1991.  

Danger, Dayna. “The most Native BDSM thing ever”: Dayna Danger’s Fetish Masks Challenge Indigenous Sexuality Taboos. CBC Radio, 2018. 

Danger, Dayna. Big’Uns: Adrienne. The Resilience Project, 2017.

Dumont, Marilyn. A Really Good Brown Girl. Brick Books, 1996. 

The Hudson’s Bay Company History Foundation. The Bay, “Shopping is Good” advertisement, 2000. 

Junker, Jocelyn. Capture Photo Festival: Jessie Ray Short’s Wake Up! (2015), 2022. 

Maracle, Lee. A Really Good Brown Girl: Introduction. Brick Books, 2019. 

Patterson, Dayne. Red River cart unveiled at U of S celebrates Métis presence on campus. CBC News, 2022. 

Rice, Ryan, and Carla Taunton. “Buffalo Boy: Then and Now.” Fuse Magazine, vol. 32, no. 2, 2009, pp. 18–25. 

Sealey, D. Bruce. Stories of the Métis /. Manitoba Metis Federation Press, pg. 1, 1973.  

Short, Jessie Ray. Wake Up!, 2015. Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen, 2022. 

Stimson, Adrian, “Buffalo Boy: Then and Now.” Fuse Magazine, vol. 32, no. 2, 2009, pp. 18-25. 

St-Onge, Nicole J.M. “The Dissolution of a Métis Community: Pointe à Grouette, 1860–1885.” Studies in Political Economy 18.1 (1985): 149–172. Web. 

Toneguzzi, Mario. Hudson’s Bay Co. Launches Strategic Rebranding Amid Privatization. Retail Insider, 2020. 

Vizenor, Gerald. Fugitive Poems: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence. Lincoln, Nebraska: First Bison Book 2000, p.15. 

Whitehead, Joshua. Full Metal Indigiqueer: Poems. Talon Books, 2017. 

Wilson, I. Former Jean Caron Sr. House, Parks Canada, 2002. 

[kcarkwright]

Native American Legends—An Anthology

Now that I am at the tail-end of my first novel, I’m having that panic-stricken anxiety of what comes next; the agent, the editing, beta readers and word counts (seriously, my book may be over 200k words. I overshot it lol). My biggest panic, though, is its second book, and what I wish for it to look like.

I am writing a sci-fi/fantasy series focusing on mythology from areas that don’t get as much love as they should. Rick Riordan has done a justice for Greek, Roman, Norse and Egyptian—but there’s just so much more out there. And something near and dear to me, as an Indigenous POC, are the legends of the first people of North America. This is what I wish for my second book to focus on, and I’ve been casually (read: obsessively searching at 3 am) browsing for good sources and such to build the basis of my second book.

Looking up information on these legends…yeah, it can be tricky. Gentrified too, in the name of hippy shaman and ‘spiritual beings’ who attribute one belief of one tribe to what 'Native Americans’. believed as a whole (therefore sticking us all in one teeny tiny stereotypical box). So that’s why I wanted to provide you all with my favorite source for Native American legend!

FIRST PEOPLE

Not only does this site have hyperlinks to Indigenous-Run stores and a Photography Series of (non-sterotypical) Native people throughout the years, but they also have the largest Anthology of Native American/First Nations legends I’ve seen so far. A to Z—from Abenaki to Zuni and everything in between (like Nahua/Aztec and Blackfoot, tribes of yours truly!). It also possesses an Educational Resources page that helps connect readers with a wide array of informative websites to better extend your knowledge – or to lend a hand. It even has good clip art!

There’s a beautiful, informative, and non-colonizer-influenced page dedicated to educational videos, and another with treaties/agreements made throughout the year with many different tribes. There’s a glossary that explains the roles of different tribes’ deities, as well as the meanings of those tribes’ names and just how many are in North America (organized by state/Province, hyperlinked differently depending on location). And, finally, links to individual tribal websites, where you can hopefully learn more during that late-night-rabbit-hole deep dive.

Take a browse! This website has helped me feel connected with my people as someone who grew up without that chance, and even if you don’t need it as a writing resource—it’s such an interesting read!

If this website interests you so much that you wish to extend your thanks in the form of donating (hey, those hosting fees aren’t cheap!) use this link!

[atopvisenyashill]

i know i’m always bitching about gaps in the collection at my job and my weird patrons but LISTEN my six the musical readalikes is doing surprisingly well (i shouldn't be surprised, library patrons in general love historical fiction especially bad historical fiction lmao) so i was looking to refill it and i wanted some more ~diverse titles and we have one (1) book about black royals in fiction and as far as i can tell like....absolutely fuck all on asian royals? which reminded me about how grrm has bitched at several points about how there's not a lot of good historical fiction on moorish spain or the maghreb in medieval era, and that's what he likes to read above all else - not a historical tome but history as a story, history written from the point of view of someone interesting.

this post has no point beyond me and george both agreeing there is a HEINOUS, near CRIMINAL lack of popular historical fiction about anywhere outside of europe. someone get on this so that old man can get more excited about world building in dorne pls!!!!

[ivandurak]

Four years after Garcilaso completed his great work, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala sent a document of more than a thousand pages to King Felipe III that is a fount of information on life in the Inca realm (Guaman Poma 1980, 2006). A son of ethnically mixed ancestry like Garcilaso and Valera, Guaman Poma found himself caught between two cultures. He assisted the Colonial administration in varied capacities for decades, including efforts to stamp out idolatrous practices. Even so, he was conflicted in his loyalty to things Christian and Spanish and to traditional Andean ways of life. In 1613, he completed his epic work, which included hundreds of drawings of Inca personages, history, religion, and customs, as well as an illustrated litany of Spanish abuses. His drawings are an irreplaceable source of visual detail, while the text – an often incoherent mélange of Spanish and Quechua – contains many useful particulars. Like Garcilaso and Valera, Guaman Poma wrote about expansive imperial Inca conquests earlier than many Colonial Spaniards or modern scholars have been willing to accept.

Terence D'Altroy. The Incas. Second edition.

[hussyknee]

She's an Asian scientist and this was in response to Richard Dawkins insisting that the indigenous knowledge of Aotearoa was unscientific. But also pretty universally applicable to privileged white academics and cis dudes.