Baamaapii!

This brings us to the end of our limited run series of the original conversations that became Bad Indians Book Club, and I hope you have enjoyed listening to, or reading, them as much as I have. In a couple of weeks I'll be back to my regularly scheduled nonsense with Nanaboozho whose stories I have missed terribly. Taking a quick trip to the Canadian east coast with stops in Sackville, Fredericton, Elsipogtog, and Halifax. More deets at the end.

I just finished Hamid Dabashi's book After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization and there is a lot about that book that connects with why I wrote Bad Indians Book Club and with this panel conversation in particular. On page 99 he says, emphasis mine:

After the unbridled savagery of Gaza, it is not only European philosophy that reaches its ignoble ends. We need equally to think of the modes of knowledge production about Gaza itself, about Palestine, as the simulacrum of the world outside of the purview of the discredited Eurocentric imagination. We no longer need to worry about the critique of Orientalism. We need to think of how to produce knowledge about Gaza and Palestine and the rest of the world.

for the illusion of the West has lost all credibility. I was not, I am not, talking to Habermas or to European supporters of Israel when I underline the irredeemable racism of their philosophy. I was and I am talking to Palestinians, to Arabs, to Muslims, to people in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and to vast swaths of people in the Global North who are conversant with us.

What he's talking about here is about the development of knowledge OUTSIDE of the Eurocentric/Western centre that has called the shots for so many centuries. What kind of knowledge is being developed at the edges where we of the Global South (which is more a social and political location than purely geographical, tho I like the way it centres the exploited nations on either side of the equator) talk amongst ourselves about philosphy and the production of knowledge. In its response to Israel's horrific violence over the past few years, the West and the church it spawned have lost all credibility. It has no moral high ground, if it ever did, and nothing really to teach us anymore about how to live in this world.

This is why I wrote Bad Indians Book Club, because I was curious about the knowledge being produced by those at the edges, those who have been pushed violently to those edges, who no longer have any interest in the colonial centres. What kind of stories do we tell about science and history and gender. How do we document our personal histories? What of fiction its various genres? What do our stories have to say about our lives when we aren't either cleaning off the colonial distortions or adapting ourselves to a Western audience?

What if we did just sit together, like we did on this panel, Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous, straight and queer. All just sit together and share stories, some of them smutty for sure. What kind of stories would we tell about the world around us and our engagement with it if we refuse that discredited European imagination and the stories it tells about us. I'll tell you that the state hates it when we do that. It must or it wouldn't spend so much money trying to keep us apart in all sorts of ways. Cutting funding to the community centres where we gather, incarcerating parents and children, criminalizing immigration while relying on migrant workers who are deportable as soon as their labour is no longer needed.

There are so many stories. That's really the best part about Bad Indians Book Club. There are so many stories, I could not include them all. I couldn't even include all my favourites. And in the time between editing and now I have found new favourites, new authors like Dabashi who are writing about the importance of gathering together to develop our own knowledge, to take that knowledge seriously, and stop trying to find a place in a world that has rejected us. Whatever subject you are interested in we are there, writing about it Indigenously in cities and rural places because we exist in all kinds of layered relationships and places.

Bad Indians Book Club is a hard book to categorize, I know that. Reviewers have mentioned it, the categories on Amazon are all over the place. I think of it as a manifesto on the power of collective, intentional reading to change the world. A manifesto on the knowledge being produced at the margins, and the importance of taking that knowledge seriously.

And remember the first rule of Bad Indians Book Club:

Always. Carry. A. Book.
No exceptions.

Episode 10 Bad Indians Book Club Baamaapii

Patty Krawec: This is Patty Krawec, your host and the author of Bad Indians Book Club Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds. This podcast series, which formed the basis of the book, brought together marginalized writers and the people who read them. Like many cultures, the Ojibwe say something like, see you later instead of goodbye, baamaapii. This conversation with author Jesse Wente brings us back to where we began. The knowledge that our stories matter because we matter.

So actually we're mostly talking about Jesse's book Unreconciled. Usually we have, usually I'm thinking about a number of books. But I really liked the way Jesse's book was structured in terms of the stories that we hear, the stories we tell ourselves, and then the stories we tell each other. And I really liked that framing for the way that we're gonna talk about what it is to be Indigenous.

And of course, in the book list there were also books written by Black and Afro Indigenous authors because that's been something that worked really hard at over the last year doing this book club. It wasn't how I originally planned it, but I very quickly learned that Indigeneity is global, and that, we can't talk about these discreet categories. That there are a lot of ways of being Indigenous and writing and thinking about indigeneity and our relationship with the world around us. I think of it, it's been a wild ride, eh Jenessa, this past year, and I know Joy and Seán have been around for a couple of panels. You guys are quickly becoming favorites anyway, so we're talking about what it is to be Indigenous.

We have Jenessa Galenkamp, then Joy Henderson an Afro Indigenous woman, activist in Scarborough. So being Indigenous, the stories that you were told, how did that kind of, I know you just said that you read the book you just finished the book. How did that resonate for you in terms of the way the stories were told?

The ones we learned to tell ourselves, and then the stories that we start to build and share among each other. 

Jenessa: Reading through your book, Jesse, which was really great. I really liked like the way that you like laid out the book, like the stories that you were told, like when you first talked about that baseball game when you were really little and then like stories you told yourself and then, just building on that and going from there.

And I was like, oh, that's that's such an interesting way of framing it. So then I was thinking back like on my own life, so I am, I'm Métis, I'm from Georgian Bay from some of you might know Cheri Dimaline, she is from the same community as me. And this is something that my mom had always made clear to us that when my sister and I were younger, but I never really knew what that encompassed.

And one of my first memories was like when I was really young, like a church service and there was a man there who was escorted out by like church security, who was dressed in like full like regalia. And I was like, I remember being really angry and not knowing why. And also thinking to myself after that being Indigenous means you can't, like the church doesn't like you, which is probably not wrong.

That's what you've seen over and over  in history. And then from there, like I went to I was homeschooled and then I went to a private Dutch Christian high school, like 99% of the people were like white Dutch immigrants. And in my grade nine geography class, my teacher was like, yeah, like I don't think, like none of us here can say that we have anybody in our families who've been in this country for more than a hundred years.

And I was like, what? I'm here. And she was like, oh, that's very cool. And I was like, okay, like being Indigenous is cool. But then a couple years later in the same school I was in law class and I don't remember what we were talking about. I think we were just talking about something when the teacher wasn't there. It was just, I was, I said something to the effect of what the government did to Indigenous peoples in Canada, like grade 11 me, it was like, it was not right. And my class was like, no, like this happened everywhere. What makes Indigenous peoples so special? And I was like, okay. So being Indigenous means like, other people don't care what has happened to you. 

So I like, I feel like I heard all these narratives as like a young, like teenager. And then as I grew older and became a young adult, I really started to talk to my mom more about like her past and explore what it meant to be a Métis person for me, like my sister and I. And one of the things that after reading a bunch of books, I like connecting with community was a super important thing. And I think that something that I've grown to realize is super important is like. How you elevate other Indigenous people in community and how you bring them into community and welcome them.

And I feel like an example of that happened to me was actually through Patty. Patty helped me get, I work at a friendship center actually. I'm an executive assistant at a friendship center. And I definitely feel like I need to credit Patty for just talking to I don't think without Patty I would be where I am.

And one of the sweetest things that happened was after I got the job at the friendship center was Patty came by my house and dropped off a ribbon skirt for me. And I was just, I was such a huge gesture, coming from this little girl who when I was probably like six or seven, saw a man in regalia and like traditional gear kicked out of a church to like then receiving my own ribbon skirt from Patty, who I know, like I consider to be like a really cool person in our like local, urban, Indigenous community. It was really, it was really big. So I think like taking that for myself and thinking about how I can do that for other Indigenous people and community and treat them with the same respect and dignity that Patty has shown me is yeah. Is super important.

Seán Kinsella: I'll start with Tansi [introduction in Cree]. So I'm Seán Kinsella also Seán Carson. Just depends. Both of those are my names. One is my middle name, but it's my mom's maiden name. So I go by both professionally and within the dirty poetry that we'll talk about later, I'm sure. But for myself, within my family we actually weren't, we weren't we didn't talk a lot about being Indigenous.

And one of the reasons that I have realized later in life was because of the families that we come from. So we're from treaty six. Our bands, we're right around the North Saskatchewan river, and we were actually pretty involved in the 1885 resistance out in treaty six. And what happened with the members of my family is they actually were treaty signatories and so they fled.

So a couple of them ended up in jail at the same time that like at Big Bear and Poundmaker were and one of them died in prison and one of them was later released and went back to the communities that they were from. But for us it was something that we didn't talk a lot about because for my family it was a risk and we were, part of those Cree Nakawē and  Mistawasis bands that were branded as disloyal to the Canadian government. And we, we did fight them, so fair enough. There is that aspect of it I suppose, it wasn't untrue but we were also folks who didn't receive reserves. There reserves that my family are associated with, they weren't actually on the books until like they were agreed upon before the treaty signing, but then they weren't restored until the 1910s or so, or 1920s.

And so by the time, by that time my family had moved away and some of them had taken scrip. So scrip was a program that allowed folks to get either cash or land depending on the circumstance for what at the time I think was thought to be a treaty relationship where they were gonna receive an annuity payment, but the government much like a treaty arrangement believed that that was an extinguishment of title. So for us that was, it was a one time payment. And I think it's important for that context to recognize in that context that these are also folks who and this is for me, going into the other pieces of the stories we tell in and to, not to pull ahead of the questions, but, one of the challenges with these kind of identities is they're so complex, right?

So some of my family signed treaties, some of my family took scrip, some of my family were literally doing both until the government caught them and said, you can't do it anymore. Because under the program they qualified for both. Like they had signed treaties and the treaties hadn't been upheld.

At that point like my family was was part of Big Bear's band and we were basically like, he refused to take a reserve. And then they surveyed it, never got one. 1885 happened, he died and our family essentially were scattered. Some of them are still in Montana. And then some of them ended up a little bit just about, 45 minutes south in Helman, which is where my family ended up which is a tiny, didn't even have a name at the time, like that's a later name that came with the railway. They just picked a name, which is an interesting way to go in terms of colonial cartography. And that's where my family has been ever since.

And it was really interesting because there's a lot of like old burial grounds there, and that's where our family originally were buried. And so it was right around where that community was probably where we either, I would imagine maybe summered because it's getting into the rolling hills of the southern part of the plains and I think we probably wintered a little bit, maybe further north along a lake or along the north Saskatchewan.

These are the pieces where none of this was told to me. This was all stuff that I had to figure out, and construct with relatives and cousins later. Because for my family there was just a lot of shame in talking about it literally because of that idea of they thought they were still gonna be targeted by the government.

And even still through, through both of my mom's parents are Indigenous, both served in World War II as vets. Both came back and weren't recognized because they weren't status Indians at the time. And so neither of them were recognized for their service as Indigenous vets.

And both of them did it partially I think to escape the racism where they were from. These are the kinds of stories that we heard were much more the sort of intergenerational trauma stories. And I often say for Indigenous folks, sometimes it's like a lack of story, right?

So like sometimes for us, there's the stories we tell, but then there's this big, absence of stories sometimes, and that's where the real story lies. And it's only through, I would say, like my generation and folks who are able to work through some of that intergenerational trauma and healing to be able to start to reconstruct what those stories look like.

I always put it that way. 'cause I think it's really important to, to recognize like that it's a restoration of the, the places we come from and the lines we had in our kinship practices that were disrupted by colonialism. It's not a, I struggle a little bit with this notion of reconnecting because it, it's for me, feels like the colonizers won. And I'm like, that's not what happened. We still maintained our kinship networks. We just couldn't be as loud about them as we wanted to be, and maybe, would've wanted to be during the time for lots of reasons. And so I have to talk about these because these aren't necessarily the stories that people hear a lot about when we talk about Indigenous identity or the complexity of that, especially in treaty six.

But for us, like we were a part of that, the Iron Confederacy,  which is, most, a lot of our communities were mixed. A lot of our communities had, multiple nations living with them. So that. For me, is very normalized. That's just how we did in that area. And it was colonialism and the Indian Act and other actions like that forcibly separated us from each other.

Because, you see that now where there's not that many reserves that are mixed, mixed communities of different nations. But we know that's how we were living for generations and generations because we had confederacies. It's really interesting to be able to engage with these kinds of pieces. But that's where I kinda look at the absence of story as being a story in and of itself, and then how we reconstruct our understanding of those things as we go and where that responsibility lies. 'cause I get a little frustrated about it because I'm like, where would our family be without that sort of, like colonial interventions and how much, how expansive would we recognize our kinship network is?

Because for us, like I joke, if you're a Métis, Cree or Nakawē away person and you're from probably Northwestern Saskatchewan or Alberta, probably there's a good chance we're related, right? Because our family and Kinships were huge. We have huge families that have these massive kinship networks, and those were the things that were disrupted when we were separated and put on the reserves and and even just between our different nations.

So I'll leave it there, saying Ekosi, but that's how I would start to answer that question is the absence of story is in and of itself sometimes a story.

Patty Krawec: really. I really like that and I jotted it down because I think I'm gonna want to come back to that as conversation goes on, because I think that you were right in identifying that is a very common thread, that our absence of stories and constructing out of those, the spaces between is part of how we build a relationship.

So I jotted that down because I want I'm gonna wanna come back to that as the conversation goes. Yeah, 

Ann Marie Beals: so I'm Ann Marie Beals. So I'm a two-spirit mixed blood L’nu. so I'm African of social, so from, I'm from the territory in Mi’kmaq, the of the Wabanaki Confederacy. And my pronouns are they and them.

And so right now I'm on the territories of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee nations and I'm very grateful to be welcome to these lands. And so maybe, I guess what I'll do is to share a bit of my story in relation to telling stories. So on my father's side, we are refugees of the War of 1812, where African Americans in diaspora were seeking freedom and a better life to another solution.

So we landed in North Preston under British rule. So what that meant was, so the British were pretty ticked off that the colonies had separated from Britain and wanted to take over some of that land, which was actually Indigenous land, but they would never recognize that. But they said, you escape from the plantations where you're working and toiling and dying and you come fight for the British, we'll send you to BNA British North America.

You can go to Nova Scotia. We'll give you land, we'll give you houses, we'll give you food, we'll give you rations, we'll give you everything that you need to survive and have a good life. Like most colonial governments, they straight up lied and when my ancestors that to Nova Scotia, they were welcomed by racist white settlers who did not want them to be there.

And the governments settled them, settled my ancestors on really like terrible rocky ground where you couldn’t grow anything without any kind of provisions, which is where Mi’kmaq communities also were. And, without having rations and having the things we needed to survive, always grateful to the Mi’kmaq my people for helping out my ancestors coming from America.

Because we wouldn't have survived. They wouldn't have survived those, the harsh winters that can happen sometime in Nova Scotia. And that's like the sort of how Indigenous and Black solidarity happened in a sense way back, in the 1700’s. But, and my mother, so my mother, this daughter and my Black grandmother and my Mi’kmaq grandfather were stole, was stolen away, placed in an orphanage called the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children around the age of two and aged out at the age of 18 or so. This particular orphanage was grooming the children to be basically domestic servants for white people or trades people for white people. And so she was sent to Toronto to live with a priest and his wife to be their maid and my mother really hated doing kind of domestic work.

So the priest sent her back to the home where they couldn't figure out what to do with her. And so eventually at the age of 19, they just got rid of her. They just kicked her out. So she really had, she never learned either African diasporic or Mi’kmaq ways of being and knowing. And in my mind, she became a very successful product of colonialism in a clear break of transmission of Indigenous knowledges, coupled with the hatred of her being and spirit.

So, though I'm Indigenous about Turtle Island and Motherland Africa, I did not grow up on the land, and I'm not connected to my grandfather's community or my father's community. So that's the story of how I came into being. But now I understand that you know who I am, how I identify as a political act, and I know, Jesse, you wrote about that, a political act of resistance of the white men's ways of being and knowing.

And so when I was growing up, I felt like no one, I felt like a lost soul. So I turned to religion to try to find a place of belonging. So I think I, I went through every religion there that I was able to find in Nova Scotia at that time, and there was nothing that was able to satisfy my soul.

So then I started just going on a journey of just trying to find out where I belong. And I read about residential schools and I read about the Catholic church, and I asked an elder one time like, what, why is it that there are so many people that believe in the Catholic religion after how horrible this religion has been to native people?

And she explained to me, the similarities between how Mi’kmaq ceremony and Roman Catholic religion was and I just left at that, but I never really was satisfied about relieving that tension between the Catholic religion and Mi’kmaq ceremony. So I guess that's a story in a sense and just thinking about relationships to the land and relationships, to religion and relationships, to colonialism. 'cause I believe that's part and parcel of that. 

Jesse Wente: I'm struck listening to these stories and I'm very much eager to listen to Joy, so I don't want to take up too much time.

One of the things I'm, it took me a while to get to the structure of that book, and, but it is purposeful. And one of the, one of the things that strike, if you read the book, those, it does follow my life somewhat chronologically. And I think that's because, what I, and even hearing, listening to Jenessa is that when we're young, when we're first there, and I think this is a colonialism thing, a lot of the identity is actually what other people tell you.

They actually really inform you of, right? Because I know for me, I thought everyone was Indigenous. I didn't really grasp that until you leave the house and then you're like oh, okay, I get it. And it's other people that tell you it's, I don't think we grasp that initially as kids. And and I think those pressures and for me, the journey, and I think this is the journey you find in the book, is that it's taken a lifetime for me to unpack that.

I don't actually have to listen to what those people tell me about myself. And that has nothing to really do with it. That is a colonial thing that tries to impose it’s identity on you. 'cause it wants to box people in. And that so much of the process that we're in, in, in so many areas of life right now is trying to unpack even just for ourselves.

We talk about. Decolonial, decolonization and all this stuff. And for a long time I was really doubtful and I still have struggles sometimes thinking about like how you do that in colonial systems. I say that as someone who tries to actively do those things, but even I sometimes wonder if this self futile.

But and maybe this is, you're talking to Jesse who's got this book out and has been in like therapy for a while now. And I guess, I had this sort of moment in therapy and I have a wonderful therapist who's an Anishinaabe woman and she's amazing. And where I paused and I said, all this shit is just us trying to unpack, I think what Seán said was exactly right.

It's not, it's about us getting back what was taken and not. It's a weird thing 'cause it's both progress and yet also a return, a restoration. But it is, so it's both going back to move forward. So it's a weird thing to describe, but that this, the fact that we're so wrapped up in identity and what it means.

'Cause I guess I've settled on what it means to be Indigenous is what, for me anyway, whatever I happen to be doing at any that's just it. There's 'cause certainly I've never been able to escape being Indigenous. That was never possible for me, even though I have, quote unquote more white relatives than I do Indigenous ones.

But as, as you can tell from the book, that never appeared an option where I could just not be Indigenous. Like it was very clear that's how everyone was gonna see me. And so part of it is probably okay, then. I need to understand what that is. And sitting here now as a middle aged man like it's taken a long time to and I still struggle with these things and I still struggle when, because our identity is still in so fraught and so under attack, because we're, I think in the bones of colonialism, it still views us as a threat. So even as an attempts to shift, it can't help itself. And so there's moments when I, things happen in our community around identity that are fraught and it gives me agita and and I, it makes me sometimes question myself. And part of this whole thing is that's just silly.

That doesn't matter. And when I see discourse around. Folks trying to reconnect or doing these things can only imagine the struggle. And I think it gets so complex. And I do yearn for, as Seán was imagining could we just do this the way we would've done this before? 'cause so much of this wouldn't be an issue if we could just do it that way because we did live among each other.

We wouldn't have had these weird conversations that I think are a moment in time, but don't reflect the grand grander picture of time and how we sort of be. And as an Indigenous kid who grew up in the Toronto in the seventies and eighties, I didn't find an Indigenous community in Toronto.

I found the Black community in Toronto and they were the first, they welcomed, they understood me in a way. I will never forget it. And they in a lot of ways helped guide me back to where I am today because they gave voice to some things that, for me in the seventies, eighties weren't as voiced in our communities, or we were still trying to get over some things that we weren't ready to address them necessarily in that way.

And that I found them there. And so they gave me a deeper understanding. And so for me sitting here, 2021, I'm amazed that sometimes we struggle understanding how these things are intertwined. I don't understand why people can't grasp how intertwined they are, like, so I struggle sometimes and I, and maybe that's why I'm less on social media because I think that's not that helping us discuss these things.

Because I think if we sat like this and if our nations were able to sit again like this, because they used to meet all the time, and they used to discuss this stuff, we could fix a lot of this and it for us. Like I think that's the important thing. It's a, we I would love us to, and I say this again as someone who spent a lot of time working in colonial institutions and I don't want to say that was wasted, but I do want to say, I don't have as much patience for reforming those systems.

I have a lot more space for we can just start to disregard maybe them as much as we can. I know they're still standing on our feet, as Lee Maracle would say. But I don't know. I think we as a lot, if they're standing on our feet, there's a lot we can do with our hands and we should maybe do that and restore a lot of this stuff and not worry too much about what they think about and what they're gonna do about it.

And, fuck it. It's 2021. It looks like half, I got cousins who it  looks like their nation that's sinking into the the ocean out there. I don't want that. I we need there's an urgency we need and and I think the part of it should be just us figuring out how we can do the way we used to do in spite of all of this, and make that an issue because yeah.

And that includes our understanding of how we would relate with other communities and what that would look like. Maybe specifically the Black community, who, at this point, our struggles are so interlaced on this place. They are so interlaced that I, they're inseparable from each other. I don't see how we would pull one strand without the other one. And I got so much space for it. I'm ready for it. This is I can imagine a future and I hope we can start all imagine together. That has nothing to do with what's here now. And yeah I don't know if that answered the question, but I, that's what I wanted to share and I can't wait for Joy and her awesome cat ear headset, which is immediately the must have item of every year. I can’t believe I don’t have it.

Patty Krawec: Long hearing all of that. Whatever we do, whatever Indigenous people do is therefore, like Seán eating that popsicle Indigenously in the thing in the graphic that, that I created just being so Indigenously awesome standing there, eating his popsicle, but also.

You, as you were talking, it made me think of, we're talking a lot about it, when we talk about identity. Kim TallBear framed it in a way for me on, on, on Twitter. A few, weeks, maybe a couple months ago. Now. I don't remember how time goes so fast. We, as opposed to talking about identity, when we talk about relationships, how much that changes the conversation.

You know, when we talk about who are, about our relatives and our relationships and, and then that may, and that's just such a much more expansive way of thinking because identity puts us into those discrete categories, which we never had, right? You're either Black or you're Indigenous, or you're a migrant, or you're German or you're, you or you're, any of those things.

And so many of us, our languages were verb based, so we didn't think in terms of who we were, we thought about who we were being and who we were in relationship with. And, and what you were talking about with the Black community, that's. That's the whole podcast that Kerry and I have, that Joy and Seán have also been regulars on, is these conversations because, Kerry’s Black, she's part of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora and talking about all of this common ground and finding all of this common ground that we have, in our communities and in the way that colonialism acts on us.

So I just keep writing things down. 

Joy Henderson: and it actually, Seán touched upon it because I had a thread a few months ago just talking about I am Indigenous at whatever I do. Whether I'm playing legends of Zelda or if I'm sitting on a hill, sarcastically referencing, sitting on a hill, listening to an eagle while the pipe sounds sort of thing.

And yeah, it's just like when I was growing up, I grew up in Toronto and my dad's actually American and Afro Indigenous. And so I grew up in Regent Park back in the seventies, and, sorry, not seventies, sorry. I was born in the seventies, but eighties and nineties. I'm copying Jesse. Sorry. And yeah, and for me it was, I was hella confused as a child around identity because it was just understanding, that I'm Black, understanding that I'm Indigenous, understanding where that all came from. I grew up in a largely Caribbean community as an American Black child, right? And so it's a, and the thing is, it's Blackness is of course not a monolith either, right? And trying to say talk patois having like Jamaican kids like look at you like, what the hell? and I don't know what I'm doing, right? And and I remember specifically, I guess it was in grade two. And hanging out with my best buddy Leonard at the time. And we were like the only Indigenous kids in the class and we were just like, we really have no clue of how we're different, but we know that we are different.

And and it often came through negative stereotypes, right? Such as, being drunk or, that sort of thing. That's how it was filtered towards us as children, within the community. Outside the community. I remember we went on a field trip to Ontario Place and it was funny and we were like hanging out and we were back in the day Ontario Place had that thunderdome for kids, right? Where you're lucky if you like, came out alive. And so me and Leonard were in it. And we are being, naughty, little 6-year-olds just running around tearing up the place. And we had a white lady come and call us and she was like, oh,” you guys are like bad little Indian children,” right? And I remember melting off to her and then I was just dying like, 'cause she was so shy, but I just I said something really rude.

I can't quite remember what, and I laughed and laughed then I pulled him away. Oops. For me it was a bit I guess for me, my story has always been about resistance. And because I've always been that asshole I guess And that comes, again, from stories from my dad who, we have a long history of assholes in our family. People who resisted slavery, people who ran away, people who were draft dodgers, right? And so it's, I don't know, maybe it's genetic, right? And so for me that's a terrifying thought with when I think of my kids, it sucks. But for me it's that's always been, I've always been, my identity has always been about resistance.

And then forming it, as we grew up through Regent Park. And I remember one of my earliest stories, around indigeneity, it wasn't a positive when my dad, went into a friendship center back in the day and he was chased out, and he was called the N word and I was with him and it was, heartbreaking.

It was. Okay. That's not for me. I am just going to walk right over to being Black. Because you know who wants that? And and it wasn't until much later in life, that, I started like saying, you know what, no, I'm not gonna let that one incident frame my indigeneity.

And Patty, you're great at bringing people together. I've met so many people through the panel. And, but at the same time, I remember like being terrified and literally going up to another Afro Indigenous person in Toronto, Nenookaasi. And, she's well known throughout the community and I was telling her my story and she just looked at me and she's girl, you belong, right? And she like, just pulled me in for a hug. And it's just that kind of, need to connect. And our Afro indigeneity is quite different. I'm more multi-generational and she is first generation, one Black parent, one non-Black parent. And I had a huge tear on a thread about that this morning.

And but yeah, so it's just, my story is just like everyone else's story and everyone else's history. Complex, like complex, confusing, it meanders here, there, everywhere. And it is interlaced. Jesse mentioned like, how do we pull, we can't pull apart Black and Indigenous. It's just like pulling apart, I don't know, hair, what's a good thing, right? A ball of yarn?  I don't know. But it's like there's no way, right? And and that's I guess what my story is and what my indigeneity looks like. And I live a very urban Indigenous life, and I. No, I am not ashamed about that because a lot of my people were pushed into the cities and I'm like, okay, much like Black and Indigenous people, we'll make the best out of everything.

And we formed like amazing, communities within these cities. And I love the urban Indigenous community within Toronto. It's just, it's vibrant. It, we make the best of everything, right? Like you can walk downtown and the thick of Bloor and there’s I’m like, oh, is this a garden?

Oh, this sweet grass. Okay, this is cool. And so I just, I love the reclaiming of urban spaces as well. And people coming together across many nations as we were, did back in the day and saying, okay, we're gonna make this work. Let's make a health center. Let's make a, program for youth like. So in our nations, we're just gonna have to work together like we did back in the past. 

Patty Krawec: Urban spaces are also Indigenous land, right? Like we have that really, that real urban rural divide where we, when we think of land and Indigenous land, we tend to think of, those kind of rolling hills or vast tundras or whatever, where there aren't any people, but somehow that's Indigenous land.

But urban land is Indigenous land too. And what it's funny, listening to people do land acknowledgements down here in Niagara because they'll name like the Haudenosaunee and the Anishinaabe and the Neutrals and the Attiwonderonk and the Métis and the, and there's this huge list of all the Indigenous nations that lived around here, because that's what it was like. And urban spaces are like that too. 

Jesse Wente: Just to follow up on that, Patty, I had a very interesting discussion with an elder recently, Duke Red Bird. And he reminded me, he was like, we were always urban and rural. And he's like, why do you think they settled in these places that they now called cities? 'cause we were already here, we were already living, that's where the people already were. And sometimes in the thousands, like we had huge places that we would gather together that would be called cities by any modern definition. And so his point was, we actually should just put, that's not a real thing. That's another imposed idea on us. It's not real. We've always organized ourselves in a variety of ways. And it's natural that the cities we see in Toronto are where they are because they were always the cities in Canada were where we were always gathered. And so I took that a great solace to that as someone who also was born and raised in the city.

And is, it's just again, that the manufacturer. Thing because there's every possibility if that, if colonialism never happened, I still might have been born in a city away from the traditional homeland, because that is how we lived. And so don't wrap ourselves, because we're wrapping ourselves in knots around this when it's not our knot to unravel we shouldn't let them tie us up like that. 

Patty Krawec: I'm noticing your pro, like we, we have our pronouns in, in, in our screens because we're good people. And Ann Marie, you have a Mi'kmaq word in your pronouns. And what that made me think of Tanya Taqaq had put out a tweet earlier in November where she says, “there are no pronouns in my bio because I'm still measuring the differences between western and Indigenous gender rules. I feel like an Inuk, she but a Western they a western she/they. Thank you for your patience while I figure this out.” It launched into a number of people responding that the colonial she, her, he, him, they, that all of these things, they don't really capture how we, how we may feel as Indigenous people in terms of our agenda because I'm thinking Ambe is gonna, come back.

Next year is the year we read Kwe, and I have to practice saying that because "Read Kwe" is hard. But Kwe in Leanne Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s sense where she talks in, as we have always done about, that kind of expansive understanding of kwe that includes masculinity. It includes, pe, non-binary. It includes queerness. It includes this huge spectrum of how we lived as Indigenous women in this, really broad way other than colonial. And so even when we say woman, that kind of narrows it right down to that colonial binary and, and so then, and when I saw your pronouns, you're okay with talking about that a little bit in the context of Tanya's tweet. I'm here to surprise everybody. Jesse, were talking about your book and Anne Marie, you were gonna talk about your pronouns, but you've got it out there. So yeah. Is that you if you could explain what Ngem means and then your thought process around using that rather than the rest of us have the He, him, she, her, they, you know  we've got the English translation. 

Ann Marie Beals: So like Joy has mentioned. I am a person who resists at every turn and every corner. I am in the academy right now. I've been labeled as an academic. I do a lot of Zoom calls suffering from the copious amounts of Zoom calls that we do. So as a form of resistance and as a form of clap back against colonization. I put, I purposely put Ngem so that people to question always the use of the English language or the use of the French language, the use of the colonized languages because I'm angry that I never had the opportunity to learn my languages.

So that's my clap back against colonialism in the academy as a sense. And I don't, I don't explain to them what it is they wanna know and they can look it up. But it also reminds me of the time before, contact with a white man that I could be, I could express myself and be whatever I wanted to be without any kind of thinking that I had to categorize myself in some kind of a way to fit a colonial narrative.

So it's like a double clap back in a sense, because it's grounding me in the sense that, you know what, just because this is your way white men doesn't mean that I have to follow it. And also, I don't accept your languages even because these are the languages I have to use. That doesn't mean that I'm always gonna be doing that and I see you.

So yeah. So that's, that. That was it. But really it was, initially it was a sense of I'm just trying to resist in any way that I can just as a person being in a very colonial institution that does not recognize, the colonial power that, they want to have over Indigenous students and Indigenous faculty, and Black students and Black faculty that oppression is just clap back at that.

Patty Krawec: I love it. I love it. I now change through our pronouns while Seán talks about smutty poetry, because that is also a way that we be, it should I'm launching into smutty poetry because now we're talking about gender and and and pronouns. And so that just seems like a natural segue to how we be Indigenous in smutty ways, 

Seán Kinsella: super smutty.

Yeah. And I think that the point about the pronouns is actually is actually really profound. So I think for myself and I was a little bit, I'll be honest, I was a little bit nervous at the start, so I didn't use my full, I didn't do my full introduction. But another way I would describe myself is ayahkwêw or the Cree way.

We would describe that as neither man nor woman, but something between or both, or however. There's other ways in Cree that we describe that also. But English is, even though I write this smutty poetry mostly that I write in English, it's, and I like to play with the language because I figure much like the, some of the earlier points, I'm like, I was a pretty voracious reader when I was a kid and I'm I'd like to sometimes fuck around with English better than other folks can.

I'm like, listen, I'm gonna take your language and I'm gonna make you really uncomfortable with it, because that's what we do. Because, if you're gonna impose this language, and I sorta resonated earlier with the piece around resistant to the family trait. So the other, I said this far, I'm also Irish, so I'm native and Irish.

And so resistance is just baked the hell into us. Like we don't, I, there wasn't an option given when I was a kid as to whether to be either a critical thinker or someone who is incredibly resistant at the best of times. But in terms of the smutty poetry, yeah, I think some of it is. It's my way of clapping back and playing with gender norms.

It's my way of playing with what is respectability politics. For some folks, I'm also like, I work in a colonial institution and I have a what some outside of might call it, a big deal position, quote, unquote, within those institutions. And I don't tell people necessarily that I write smutty poetry because of that sort of tension point that settler colonial society is very buttoned up.

And it, and I think it comes a lot from, I wonder sometimes you know about who, who won the war of 1812 and like that we got the British and the Victorians and that sensibility that pervades all of Canadian society and I'm just like, shit, we could have had the French, it was, that was an option?  Damn it. Also just the different ways. Not to say that anyway, different colonizers, different, I have now made the panel lose it. So that's the mission done. But I think about that because it's such a buttoned up way of looking at the world. And so for me, I look at smutty poetry as again, like taking that language and twisting it back on people and saying well this will make you uncomfortable for a bit.

And also playing with language because, for us because their languages are so action based there's so much variety we can do. And it's also I think trying to even play with and invert some of those like poetic sensibilities that, like when I was in undergrad and even through like my master's program I basically had to write and read mostly about white, dead white men, right?

That was the entire curriculum until I think honestly my last year of university and I had stuck to the course just so I could do like post-colonial literature and, looking at our literature and like some of those other pieces. So it was really holding on there. But I, it was one of those things where I'm just like, I just had to read a lot of dead white guys.

And so for me, when I can take that language that they didn't give us a choice to learn and just really make people feel uncomfortable with it, I'm having a good day. So that's how I leverage that. And then also I think how do we bring in, to bring it to that stories we tell, how do I also ensure that I'm bringing my identity as a Crip person?

So I grew up in a small town, I joke about indigeneity for me was actually secondary to being Crip. So because I was visibly disabled and Crip first, that's the thing that people notice first my race, even my gender identity and queerness. Although that definitely became a bit of a factor later.

That wasn't the first thing that people noticed about me. The first thing they noticed about me was physical difference. And then and then they would realize how queer I was. And then that was a problem. And then maybe it was the indigeneity, but that's only if the first two things didn't have me running and hiding or, scrapping as needed. And I think one of the challenges of that is how do we bring those identities, also as someone who tries to subvert monogamy the idea of different ways of queerness and methods of queerness and all that. How do we bring that into the sexy poetry I wrote?

And that's, it really centers on those themes and like queering everything. And then talking about disability. And for me it's really important because as a disabled body, we're not supposed to be sexual like, like we're supposed to be at best asexual. But we're not supposed to think about that.

And we're certainly not supposed to be people who either generate desire or think about desire. And so that's an important inversion for me. And then I think when we come back to belonging and community, I think there's real questions of how do we show up in spaces? And how do we create spaces that allow for all of those identities to be present?  Because I know for myself. There really is a question sometimes of like, when I'm in a community space, I'm like, okay, how disabled am I allowed to be here? Is this an accessible space and have they done that work? Same for queer space. If it's a very like heteronormative, straight Indigenous space of which many are, can I show up in that queerness or is that gonna actually pose a bit of a safety concern?

How out can I be about being non-monogamous and what does that look like? And so for me, my poetry is about creating, if we think about Indigenous futurism, my poetry is about creating that future that I envision for myself and for other people like myself that we can exist in a space that is ours.

So for me, it's about creating that sort of generative abundance space that I can exist in that maybe some other folks can see themselves, but also is about, pushing back on those narratives that tell us that we're not supposed to exist in those kind of ways or we're not supposed to talk about those things.

That's not what polite Indians do. And I'm like, fuck that. No. And and I think also just also, and this is more of a literary piece, but also to take the canon for me and to simplify it a little bit, because I find even for us sometimes, like we can be incredibly brilliant as Indigenous literary theorists and we can engage with those materials and all that.

But I'm, I also still wonder, how do we create our own version of these things? Like how do we create our own spaces for literature and that kind of stuff. 'cause we have those traditions, like where we have oral traditions, right? This is I know from my communities, like we have the, some of the dirtiest, most hilarious people on the planet in our communities, and many of them are the aunties and grandmothers. And they like, you think about the fact that we used to sit around in lodges for eight months of the year beading and then telling stories like, shit got dirty, shit got real dirty there and entertaining and it's with your family. So then there's that awkward level of what's going on there?

So we have this long tradition of being able to sit with the uncomfortable and and I'm thinking about this as like when parents or siblings or other people discover your sort of catalog of dirty poetry that you also have that is on your Instagram. Maybe that's just me. Like we have this long history of how do we sit and assert ourselves and be ourselves. And I will say like with a lot of respect to my sister as an example that my sister has been my go-to for that because my mom will go to my sister for awkward questions about my identity sometimes and she'll be like so why is Seán like wearing lipstick now? And my sister be like, mom, and then sit down with my mom and do that labor of just explaining that piece of things. And then we've had that conversation. 'cause for my sister and I, we're both very non-binary. Very like pushing on those things.

And I remember us talking to my mom one time and my mom being a little exasperated about, and I think she used the phrase like, why can't we be normal? And we looked at her and we said, mom, do you realize what environment you've created where your children are comfortable talking to you about this stuff? Like this really difficult, really, stuff that a lot of people just would shut down and not be interested in hearing. And like you've created children who are assertive in our identities and love ourselves and love each other and create these generative ideas, like what a great thing that you've done as a parent.

And my mom was like, oh yeah, let's, that was that. I bounced around a bit there, but I think it's those stories we tell about how much we can represent ourselves in various spaces. And for me, like it's, I use my writing to create the space I wish existed more. 

Patty Krawec: Jesse, what Seán is talking about me is making me think about your kind of work and your kind of, your trajectory of movies and the movies that you grew up watching and versus, and now you're in a position where you can help shape those stories where people, you know, like Jenessa, like Anne Marie, like Joy, like myself.

We can see the things that, our kids can see, the things, our grandkids. I've got a grandbaby on the way can see themselves in ways that which is not possible. I grew up with I is for Indian on my, on my kindergarten wall. Can you talk a little bit about that, about, what you're able to do and how you. Because you also went with, performing indigeneity and then refusing to perform. And so that's, and that's, what Seán is thinking about this refusal to perform, the indigeneity that settler Canada expects from us. 

Jesse Wente: Yeah. Yeah, and I think I've gone a bit where I've I don't think I ever really wanted to perform my indigeneity 'cause I didn't even know what that meant. And yet there was that sort of demand and now I just don't give a shit. Like I, I don't whatever. I'm just gonna come. One of the things, and I will talk a bit about the movies in a second, but one of the things I wrote down when Ann Marie and Seán were talking and spilling all that wisdom, is that like so many hypocrisies built into colonialism. Like for example, that these nations were set up with equality in mind when of course they weren't. But the idea that, colonialism really does like to champion itself. Like all these states as like the home of the individual. This is where you get to be you. But then of course they want complete conformity.

Like they don't want you to be you at all. Like they, and they would rather you not be you. They would rather you be them. And by really specifically in that way. And I was just sitting there God, we gotta give up all that shit. Like, why? We should just be. I don't I, when I hear these stories, I just, I feel so deeply God, I wish we could anyway I was just struck by, boy they really did a number on us and themselves by the way and themselves they've done a number on themselves

In terms of the film work. I fell in love with movies as a very young age. I didn't find smutty poetry until much later. But I fell in love with movies early on and I knew that's what I always wanted to do, so I was somewhat relentless in wanting to be in the movie business, even though when you're an Indigenous kid in Toronto in theeighties I don't even know what that meant.

There were, there was barely Canadian English language Canadian filmed in the eighties. People think it's been around for a long time. Yeah. Really hasn't. And so like there was not that much happening. And then I, I saw an Alanis Obomsawin film in like 1984. Incident at Restigouche was broadcast on TV in Ontario.

I think it was TVO at the time. If I remember, Alanis said she had a, they would just broadcast everything she made at TVO. It was some deal they had with the NFB. I watched that and I was just struck that here's this woman who like could be my mom or looks very much like we do. And she's like getting into an argument with the fisheries minister. I'd never imagined that this was a thing. And that sort of triggered the idea that, and I would say later in the decade when I saw Do the Right Thing, my mom took me to see, do the right thing at the Carlton Cinema when it came out, this was a very important, she like she mad, she was, she, my mom was always the person who indulged my movies.

We would always watch Saturday night at the movies at on TVO with Elwy Yost and which was a great way to learn cinema history. And so I remember when Do the Right Thing came out, she was like, we are going to see this movie. You need to see this movie. I would've been like 15 or something. So perfect age, quite frankly, to see, Do the Right Thing. I would highly, now I think of it, my daughter's about to turn 15. I only know if it's something we're gonna do together. And 'cause I realized that like my mom would often talk about movies afterwards and what she really, she wanted this, I don't know if she had seen it, I'm now suspecting maybe she'd already seen it. Because it was clear that she was desperate to talk about it with me and wanted to know what I thought both about the film, but also the central question of that the film poses is what is the right thing to do and does Mookie do the right thing in the movie? And, it would surprise some who knew my mother, but she was like, yes, he did the right thing by throwing garbage cans through the pizzeria window.

Which of course is not, I think what settler society would see as the right thing in that situation. But she was like, yeah, sometimes that has to happen. And when I think about it now, given what we've seen. I, 'cause I do give a lot of speeches and a lot of talks and it's mostly to non-Indigenous folks. And one of the things I often say is we've told these stories for a very long time. What has changed is maybe people's ability to listen or hear them. And likewise, it, recently I was on a different panel or something and it came up and I was like, yeah, like Spike Lee made a movie about police brutality against Black people 30 years ago.

And it's still a thing, like this is not a new story. Like he literally made a movie exactly about that. It was a nominated for an Oscar and yet we pretend we didn't know or not us, society in general pretends that this is new information. And so for me, part of the drive is I don't want the, I didn't know to really be an excuse Because I think it's a fake one, number one, I think most people do know at this point. 'cause we've told these stories, so if they don't know, it's a willful thing. And B as someone who watched for a long stretch, I watched about 1500 movies a year for 20 or so years. And when you're watching that much, you get a very good understanding of both what is made and what is not in that sector.

And what I began to understand was it's what was not being made that was upsetting. It was the what's being made is what's being made. That's whatever. But it was more like, we don't see certain types of stories on screen. We just don't. And. That's an issue. Because for all the reasons that we can discuss about storytelling being how we communicate and understand each other.

And I started out as a film, I wanted to enter the film industry. I started out as a critic, which is a fairly passive role in the whole machinations. Because you're dealing with finished films, you don't have a lot of say in what happens about them. Sure. We can pretend critics have an influence on the sector. That was probably true years ago. I don't think that is really true at all anymore. But there was a time that we could pretend that there was a dialogue between criticism and art. And I think in other art forms it still exists. But in film has become, at least in Hollywood way beyond its critic truth in terms of what they made.

Then I realized that was too passive. I wasn't gonna get the change I was seeking out of that. So I became a curator. Thinking well now I'm dealing with not finished films and I'm dealing with deciding what films actually burst onto the public scene and in what way that happens. So that did allow me to like elevate and champion films and do things. But then quite frankly, that became not enough. I didn't think that was gonna work as much. And the opportunity came for a variety of reasons, which people can read the book if they're really interested. But where the ISO was gonna become a thing, I was one of the many people that had advocated for the Indigenous Screen Office to exist for many years.

The advocacy has been going on for 25 years in Canada, and they needed someone to run it. Turns out I will have just left my job. I was trying to write a book and I don't suggest people do a startup when they're writing their first book. Lesson learned on that, and which is like the only writing tip I have. Don't start a national not-for-profit when you start writing a book that's that's the advice I got for you. Yeah, write that, write, make note. Don't do that. And and so now the screen office, we just closed our first round of applications. So we're sifting through, I don't know, I don't know if I'm allowed to share like the numbers that, but let's put it this way.

We, we received, in the last federal budget, we received $39 million over three years investment into the creation of ventures content through the ISO. That was roughly half of what we actually asked for. And given the first round, we were bang on with our numbers. We've got requests for about double what we can actually give out this year. So we were nailed it in terms of what, anticipating what the, what was actually necessary. So that gives us a lot of energy to go back to the feds and say, look, we were, we said what we said, and we will bingo we were right, shocker on that one. And but so that means between now and March we're gonna, we're gonna, I think we will obviously give out about $11.7 million in grants.

That's the largest investment in Indigenous screen storytelling since the founding of APTN in Canada some 20 odd years ago. And would be about the largest investment any colonial government has ever made into Indigenous specific storytelling. And that's just the start and the goal there. So there's the goal that we, we talk about, which is narrative sovereignty and all of this stuff. And that's all really good. And talking about stories and all that, the, we say narrative, we sort of mean sovereignty sovereignty, just, but what I would say is that I've come to understand that narrative sovereignty is one of the tools that we'll re we will require if we wanna achieve and gain back our sovereignty both politically and physically.

And despite colonial states knowing the importance of narrative sovereignty and because they protect it for themselves constantly, and they've actively eroded ours, they're currently clearly willing to invest in it. I don't know. I can't speak to, I think we make very compelling arguments about the importance of it, and we make all sorts of business saying it would be good.

I don't know if they connect it with long-term sovereignty missions, don't care. Don't need to forefront it for them. I feel we're among friends, so I don't hide what we're exactly doing. And we don't hide. 

Patty Krawec: CSIS doesn't listen to this. 

Jesse Wente: I'm sure they, yeah, they, I'm, and I'm very confident I'm no longer on a CSIS list.

So that list, I'm so on that list, it's whatever. I've been on that list for a while now. They still gave me the chair of a Crown Corporation, so I dunno what that says about that list. But so that's the trick, I think. And the hope is that, and I think what we will see is because I think this was the desire, it is not just that we have access to dedicated funding and it's our communities that are deciding how that works, but also over time, we will shed the shackles of the stories we've been forced to tell. I think one of the things that we've had is like they, there's a, there is a story they want from us and it's the one we're asked to tell over and over and over. And it's even part of my book. 'cause I don't mind telling it 'cause it's my life and my family. So it's an important story for me. I don't mind sharing, but I also understand they’re ravenous for that story of trauma and despair and all this stuff. And I'm pretty convinced we got better stories than that one in our communities, because I've seen them, I've seen them when we've been free to do it.

That's actually not necessarily what we will say. And I think that's what I want is I want, I can't wait until the first romantic comedy comes through the ISO or the first smutty gimme a sex movie or something. Whatever it may be, something smutty great. Because I think that's us.

That is us, and we need to get back to being us.

Seán Kinsella:  I just wanted to, I think, add the piece around and I think focusing on what Jesse was saying around this idea of avoiding the trauma porn piece and looking at Indigenous joy. Because I think that's even as a writer of, more or less erotic stuff, but then some less erotic stuff. But there is always that temptation, I think because of the appetite of settler colonialism to focus on the trauma part. And I just blatantly refuse because I'm like, that's the least interesting part of our nations, honestly. Like it's the thing that is most in, for us is most in sight because we're still living it. But that is, by far the least interesting part of who we are and what makes what makes us. And I think, the point about we have really scary stories. We have really sexy stories. We have all of these like thousands of years worth of knowledges and calendars and prophecies and all this stuff.

And it's a blip. Like it, it's a blip now. 'cause when I look at it that way, and I'm like, all right, we had a prophecy cycle as an example for Anishinaabe people like my job talks about the eighth fire and that's the, we're in the eighth fire now, but you know what, that's a prophecy cycle of 400 years.

That goes back a couple. And I'm like, so even this 400 years in that prophecy cycle, of which there's eight is like a blip. And 400 years from a settler colonial perspective is a really long time. That's, empires have been forged, lost, turned over, ceased to exist. Nation states, like all of that stuff.

It's gonna be, I think a really, I have a lot of hope that in that, that is, it's gonna be a blip. We're gonna look back and be like, that was interesting. That was an interesting experiment in settler colonialism. I think it is about how do we create space for each other within that and sort of space for these complex discussions and complex perspectives and do this solidarity with each other, right?

Because that's, I think the point has been made. The whole idea of settler colonialism was to divide our communities, right? To make sure conversations like this would never fucking happen, right? That Afro Indigenous and Black folks and Indigenous folks would never be in the same place together having these kind of conversations because this is so threatening to the state.

And if I wasn't on list, I probably am now, but it's so threatening to the state for us to be having these conversations because of the way that, like, when we have this solidarity, like they don't have the power. They really don't and they don't have, part of it stems to the fact that and I use the Tomson Highway quote piece where, because they're dead below the waist.

That is the whole like way that it is typifying settler colonialism. 

Patty Krawec: Take it away. Indigenous Joy. Give us the last word, 

Joy Henderson: the Indigenous joy. I don't know. I like, I absolutely wanna hear these stories. I have the story popping around my head and it's just about like my random life as an Indigenous woman with my Indigenous friends.

And when I'm like, posting my polyamory shit and on Instagram and Seán's like texting me like, yes. And it's just like, where is that story? Just a really, even just our mundane stories are hilarious and wonderful. The stories where we bring kids, bring like elders into like centers with youth and they tell like the smutty stories and you see the youth that just wanna die inside and meanwhile the adults are just like laughing their asses. I was like, hahaha feel my pain. And it's just amazing. I want to see those stories. I was really excited to hear about your work, Jesse. 'cause I'm just like, yes, and I love the optimism because. I am not an optimistic person. Maybe 'cause I'm a Capricorn something, so I'm like, I hang out with Jesse now whenever I need like that dose of like optimism, I'm coming to bug you.

And I don't really know how to end in the last word, so I'll just go for days and days. Just bringing it back, Seán mentioned they didn't want Black and Indigenous people sitting together. And that was evident in 1526 when they, brought Black people to, America I believe the Carolinas.

And what happened was that, the slaves revolted with the help of the Indigenous folks and they're like, oh shit, this is a problem. And so I am all for that problem because, and I am a product of that problem. And it is great to be in that position, but also, seeing the communities work together and how we weave them together as well and our stories as they weave together throughout history. And they always have and they always will. And I sure hope you know that I'm around to see a little bit of it. I plan on living for a very long time, just despite everyone.

And yeah, I am, yeah, I wanna see those stories. I think we're almost out of time. I am sorry. So I'll leave it to you, Patty. 

Patty Krawec: No, that's okay. Thank you. This hour and a half went by like super fast. Wow. That's and this always happens. I never get to all of the things that I wanted to talk about and all the questions that I wanted us to reflect on, but that just, yeah, joy.

I'm just really glad to have had you guys together and to talk about these things. About, about the joy, about, about possibility, about what our stories can be and what they can, to move out of this trauma porn. And then I'm just finishing my own book. I'm in the midst of those final revisions before the copy editor gives their hands on it.

And I'm I'm, I did the opposite. I wrote my book, then I started a nonprofit. I've got, I've been in the midst of where, in the med of meeting with the lawyer to get Nii’kinaaganaa off the ground. Basically turned, pay your rent into a real thing. It could be a real boy. So yeah, so I, I did it backwards.

I did do the book first, and then the nonprofit. That is really solid advice for everybody not to do it the other way around. Books are a surprising amount of work. I, yeah, they're, and I'm already tired of my book. I've read it far too many times already, and at least two more run through. So I'm excited about moving on. And then we've been thinking about next project that aren't based in trauma porn and that aren't based in the sad story of loss and colonialism, because I feel like we need to get those stories out of the way. There's still so many people who don't know who will read this stuff and they hear these stories, and they had no idea because this wasn't the story that they were told about who we were and about who we are.

So I think we need to lay that groundwork, but in what comes next, then we can really unleash ourselves. And and that's something, that I really value about all of you and Ann Marie looking forward to getting to know you more in other conversations, is the way that you guys do unleash yourselves on an unsuspecting colonial world.

And we deserve it. We deserve that money. We deserve that land. We deserve everything that we have because we are offering them so much more than they ever offered us, right? We're offering them a world that they can live into. We're offering them so much more than they ever offered us.

So whatever we can take from them, I say take it and then ghost the system. I'm with Sandy Grande. Let's ghost the system, pack up our toys and build our own stuff.

Patty Krawec: Thank you for listening. You can find me online at thousandworlds.ca where I write about traditional Ojibwe stories and how they connect with our lives, along with the books that I'm reading or feel relevant to the story. This podcast series and the book that emerged from it changed me the way that good books and the conversations about them do. Remember the first rule of Bad Indians Book Club: Always carry a book. 

These conversations originally streamed live and were recorded in 2021. Editing and transcripts completed by Tiffany Hill with the generous support of Dr. Eve Tuck, director of the Visiting Lab Lenapehoking. Our theme is Biindigen, an original hand drum song composed and performed by Nicole Joy Fraser.

Baamaapii!

Want to add Bad Indians Book Club merch to your life? Get your Live Laugh Lurk on at Johnnie Jae's shop where she sells tshirts, stickers, tote bags and so much more. And that cover art by J NiCole Hatfield is stunning isn't it? She sells prints, cards, and more on her website.

From Red Pop News: Krawec challenges us to read with intention, to notice the silences, and to bring the stories pushed to the margins back into the center. Her work reminds us that stories aren’t just inherited, they’re chosen, shaped, and lingered in until we’re ready to step forward.

Order your copy of Bad Indians Book Club today in the US at Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and in Canada: Indigenous owned GoodMinds, as well as Amazon, indie books, and Chapters Indigo. Get it wherever you get your books.

Podcasts and Interviews!
Missing Witches Part 1 and Part 2
Turning Pages
A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast
CBC's The Next Chapter
New York Society Library
Shawn Breathes Books

Book reviews!

Featured by Poets and Writers as one of "best books for writers"
Featured by the Library Journal's reading list for Native American history month
Featured by Goodreads for Native American Heritage Month
Featured by Powell's Books for Native American Heritage Month
The Miramichi Reacher
I've Read This
Pickle Me This
Foreword
Reading Our Shelves
Red Pop News
On Our Radar: 49th Shelf
Ms Magazine's top 25
Summer Must Reads Toronto Star
CBC Books 45 Canadian nonfiction books to read this fall

My list of "must read books" for CBC on TRC Day, Sep 30 2025
An excerpt published by Baptist News Online.

Do you want me to zoom into your local bookstore or bookclub? Talk with you on your podcast? I can do that. patty.krawec@gmail.com For larger professional settings you can email Rob Firing at rob@transatlanticagency.com

SPONSORED

And don't forget to join up with the Nii'kinaaganaa Foundation. Every month we collect funds from people living on Indigenous land and redistribute them to Indigenous people and organzers. You can find out more information on the website which is now powered by ghost, which means that you can become a subscriber there just like you are here! You can sign up on the website to be a monthly donor or make a one-time donation right here.

Make a one-time donation