This title expires March 31st, 2024
Subject(s): Canadian History, Canadian Social Issues, Canadian Social Studies, Canadian World Studies, Criminal Justice & Law, First Nations Studies, Holidays, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous Peoples, Social Issues, Social Sciences, Sociology, Women's Studies
Grade Level: 9 - 12, Post Secondary
Erica is a grad student in Social Justice, Indigenous feminist, and community organizer from inner-city Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She discusses the struggles of inner city Indigenous people.
Running Time: 21:00
Country of Origin: Canada
Captions:
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Producer: iiniistsi Treaty Arts Society
Copyright Date: 2016
Language: English
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TRANSCRIPT
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- [INAUDIBLE] Erica Violet Lee [INAUDIBLE]. I'm a student of philosophy. I just recently completed my classes for my BA. And I've found that in the Academy, but also just in the world and trying to operate as a young indigenous person, a young indigenous woman, a feminist, a two spirit person, it's so rare to find spaces where we have the time and the level of comprehension to actually get into issues that are affecting us and our lives. It's exhausting to be an indigenous person and try to operate in Canada in a settler's state where we can't even have nuanced discussions about the things that we face, the violence that we face, the complexity of our lives.
- I had a discussion with a cab driver on the way here and he was from Pakistan. And he asked me, "You are really dressed up and you're going to a university. That's really interesting. Are you native by any chance?" And I said, "Yeah, I am. I'm Nehiyawak. I'm Cree." And we had a discussion breaking out of stereotypes that are built between us.
- And I think part of my work with Idle No More, and my work in the Academy, and my work as a human being on this planet has been to build connections with racialized groups, migrant groups, black people, queer people. These are the groups that I'm interested in reconciliation with. I'm not interested in only conceiving of myself as an indigenous person, as an other, to the Canadian settler.
- So it was a really beautiful conversation and an interesting start to the day. Normally, I go into philosopher mode and I just want to be introverted and not have those conversations because they are exhausting. It's exhausting to have those conversations and try to justify your humanity sometimes. But I know that there's a lot of solidarity between Indigenous groups, and migrant groups, racialized groups. I've seen Black Lives Matter in Toronto bring indigenous groups of the land up and recognize, we're in this together as indigenous people, as black people, as migrants, as racialized people, facing colonial oppression in our everyday lives.
- So I am from inner city Saskatoon, Misaskwatominihk. And these are some pictures of my home. I grew up here, raised by my mother. And this is the place where my philosophy is rooted. A lot of people erase indigenous people entirely from urban spaces. And so I try to claim, I'm urban, and this is what it means to be an urban indigenous person. An urban indigenous young person who managed to make it through school systems where I was taught that I was less than. Where I was taught that indigenous people didn't do philosophy. That indigenous people didn't go to university.
- But I should say, too, that that's not the only thing that makes an indigenous person worthy of being in this world and safe. It's not about the clothes we wear. It's not about being able to wear a blazer, and go to a university, and do a talk. It's just about basic human dignity. And everyone deserves that, regardless of whether or not we have a PhD.
- This is from an anti-police brutality rally in inner city Saskatoon just the other day. This rally was held in commemoration of all of the horrific police violence that we face in inner city Saskatoon that goes widely unnoticed. People are dying in jail cells.
- How many of you have heard of the starlight tours? Starlight tours was what I grew up in. That's what I grew up in Saskatoon in the 90s when Neil stone child and many indigenous men, and people, sex workers were brutalized by the police in the inner city. And we're still afraid to talk about it because they have so much power over us.
- So when we're talking about missing and murdered indigenous women, indigenous feminism, being safe in my own body and my own streets, I need to name police violence and its role in upholding the Canadian settler state. The North-West Mounted police, the precursor to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was founded to keep indigenous people away from settlers to keep settlers safe. So when people tell me to go to the police if I have a problem, I don't think of safety. I think of that history. But there is resistance. And this is a picture that proves it. We're resisting and we're standing up because we're tired of being brutalized.
- Another problem in inner city Saskatoon, which Ester just discussed beautifully, is a lack of resources in terms of food and access to groceries, access to safe and affordable homes, and just recently our only inner city grocery store closed down. So people now have to walk, just as it was before the community brought this place to fruition in the first place. We have to walk long city blocks to be able to get fresh fruit or produce.
- And this is not an accident. This is not a coincidence. Keeping indigenous people hungry, keeping us deprived, making sure we don't have proper food to eat when we're trying to send our kids to school, making sure that we're dependent on underfunded government systems like food banks. That's deliberate. It's a part of the dispossession of indigenous people from our lands, keeping us hungry.
- This was my love letter. I wrote a piece on my blog. I mentioned I was a writer on my blog, Moontime Warrior, about a love letter to the inner city and a love letter to people who are struggling in our communities every day just for food. The basic right to food.
- There's so much beautiful urban resistance in urban spaces and I need to acknowledge the Ogimaa Mikana Project, which is a project in Toronto run by Anishinaabe activists and scholars to reclaim urban spaces as indigenous space. So often the idea is that indigenous people are over there, and they exist over there in some sort of alternate reality, and we just don't have to deal with them in our everyday lives. But the majority of indigenous people in Canada now are in urban spaces.
- And so this is a project that brings Anishinaabemowin the language, into the streets, into the faces of people. Saying, we're still here and this is still indigenous territory. So I'm thankful to be here today on Blackfoot territory as a [INAUDIBLE] person. I'm thankful for the historic treaties between our nations. The relations between our nations that allow me to be standing here today. I'm thankful for Blackfoot resistance on this land. For keeping this land.
- That was an example of some street art that we're doing in inner city Saskatoon. I don't know who put it up because street art is an illegal activity. Putting up wheat pasted art is an illegal activity, and I definitely wouldn't want to get the Saskatoon police on my case. So I won't say anything about who put that up there. But I think it's really beautiful and an example of indigenous resistance that still thrives in urban spaces against gentrification, which is a continuation of our dispossession.
- So this morning I spoke on a youth panel. And the youth panel was all young indigenous men, which to me was really extraordinary. Like I said, I'm in philosophy. I spoke at an academic conference the other day and I'm struggling to be in these spaces and realize, yes, I have a right to be here as a young indigenous person. As someone who was told at every turn in my education in the Canadian public school system that I didn't belong.
- I remember an experience where I got a high score on a CAT test, the simplest Canadian general education tests. And they didn't believe that I could have gotten that score as a brown girl from the inner city school, Pleasant Hill. So they made me retake the test under close examined conditions, and I got a higher score.
- And this isn't me trying to brag because test scores on tests don't matter. Grades in school don't matter to an indigenous person's worth. What matters is that we are consistently denied space to intellectually develop in healthy ways. From the legacy of residential schools to the way I see mining corporations sponsoring all of our spaces to speak as indigenous youth in universities. Sponsorships from mining corporations that are killing us.
- So to be on this stage and to claim space as someone who is from inner city Saskatoon and never thought I would have this kind of opportunity is important. I want to be the kind of person, like my indigenous professors who I see at the front of the classroom, and make me believe that I can be up there too.
- This is a picture of Paris. I was a delegate from the [INAUDIBLE] delegation, some members of whom are here today, to Paris, the COP 21 Climate Conference. And this is in an action called Canoes to Paris on the Seine River. Another thing I never expected growing up in inner city Saskatoon is getting to go to Paris, and speak at a UN conference, and be in that space. And it's definitely something I was unprepared for, but I don't know how you can be prepared for that type of violence either.
- What ended up happening was that we went into this conference space, and it's sort of like a carnival. It was not telling of the situation that we're in right now, which I referred to in my writing as the next apocalypse. We're basically living through another apocalypse. And so everything, I think, that we do is indigenous peoples, as indigenous feminists in our actions and our philosophy walking through this world is recognizing, we've got a big problem on our hands.
- And so to be in the United Nations conference space and hearing Canadian leaders speaking to Amazonian groups, indigenous groups, and tell them, well, we have to worry about our economy too, as Canadian groups are going in and destroying their lands. Made me recognize that, as an indigenous person in Canada, in occupied indigenous territory, it's my job to stand in solidarity with indigenous people all over the world from the Amazon to Palestine. And recognize that environmental violence coming from the Canadian state is impacting us here in the Nehiyawak territory and Blackfoot territory.
- In northern Saskatchewan, we've got some of the worst deforestation in the world going on right now. If you go up north, you see all the logging trucks taking trees. And yet, we don't have homes in the north. Why aren't those logs going to build homes for indigenous people in this land? Why are they going to industry? And it's just mind boggling to me that we still don't have proper homes. We don't have proper running water. That's a fundamental human right.
- And so Paris, to be in that space, it was scary. And I felt at home, finally, Just to be traveling, to be traveling as an indigenous woman, also is something that I've been thinking about a lot. And so to go to Paris and to be on that bridge was for me recognizing I have a right to be in this world, to move freely in this world as an indigenous woman, even with the extraordinary amounts of violence that we face on a daily basis. To claim your right to be on the land, to be in our bodies and be safe it's such an extraordinary thing. To say that I'm going to travel and I'm not going to let these colonial borders stop me is a revolution.
- This is art by Erin Marie Konsmo of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network, one of my close friends and one of my biggest teachers. Young indigenous women, Cree folks to [INAUDIBLE] folks, have been my biggest teachers. They have been the ones who give me knowledge without withholding it. Who tell me that, yes, medicine in urban spaces, when we find it growing up through the cracks of the concrete is still medicine.
- To travel is an indigenous woman, to walk down the street in the middle of the night, and believe that we have the right to do that. That seems like such a simple, basic human thing. And people tell me, don't go out at night. I know you're a philosopher, I know you're a writer, and that's how you get inspiration. From long strolls at night. It's my favorite thing.
- But they tell me, don't do it. Don't do it because you're going to get killed. You're going to go missing. You're going to get sexually assaulted. But I refuse to let that stop me from moving through the world and from having curiosity about the world. From traveling. From exploring in a way that doesn't mean I have to conquer things to learn about other places.
- This is a sign on the Highway of Tears. Girls don't hitchhike on the highway of tears. As if it's the responsibility of indigenous women and the fault of indigenous women for traveling, for daring to go out of the house, that we face violence. And not the responsibility and the fault of the people who victimize us. Who run us down in the streets. Who steal us from our families, from our communities. I refuse any victim blaming for missing and murdered indigenous women, and girls, and two spirit people because we have the right to travel on these lands.
- Something that I wasn't expecting when I went to Paris was that in the metro station when I was coming home from a concert of one of my favorite bands a man came up to me and tried to grab me. I didn't speak very much French. I've only mastered one colonial language so far and it's English.
- But he came up to me in the metro and I was in transit home from one of my favorite bands' concerts. And he decided somehow that it was his job to intervene in my life. He saw me having fun. He saw me moving from one place to another, just trying to go home at the end of the night, and decided that it was his job to try and grab me, and grope me, and attack me.
- I managed to push him away. And I remember going back to the space where our Canadian youth delegation was staying. And just because of the sheer amount of violence that we faced in that United Nations space in Europe, the capital of colonialism, we thought maybe we should only travel with a buddy system. Maybe we shouldn't go out at night. Maybe we should stay inside. Maybe we should only travel if we have a man with us.
- What an exhausting life to live. What a limiting life to live. And so my response was to jump on a train the next day and go to Antwerp, go to Belgium, and explore. Because I had to get out of Paris just to get away from it for a bit. But to refuse my body to be policed into submission, to enjoy traveling, and to say I'm not going to stop moving. I'm not going to restrict my movements for men who think that I shouldn't have that freedom to move.
- And you know, this isn't a new thing. If you think of the past system, if you think of residential schools and the way that students were held in those spaces, if you think of incarceration and the way that 80%-90% of inmates in Saskatchewan are indigenous, even though we're only about 25% of the population, That's about restriction of movement too.
- So all of this really comes down to is the continued dispossession of indigenous people from our lands. And so I think that to be in the world and to continuously assert that I have the right to be safe in my body, on my streets, on this land, and anywhere I go, is one of the most important assertions for us to make.
- When I think of reconciliation, I don't think only of human relations. This is some art by my friend Zoe Todd. She's a Metis anthropologist and she draws fish. And I think it's such a simple and beautiful intervention to think about the fact that there are more than human relations on this planet. And we have broken our treaties with them.
- We've broken our treaties with the fish. We've broken our treaties with buffalo. We've broken treaties with beavers, with the water, and the land. And so those are some treaties I want to renew. And that's our job as people living on this planet and exploiting the territory of the fish, of the bison, of beavers. It's our job to reconcile with these creatures, as well. So when I'm thinking of reconciliation, that's what I think of.
- This is a quote by Mahmoud Darwish, an extraordinary Palestinian poet. "We have on this earth what makes life worth living." This was sent in to us during the height of Idle No More movement by someone in Nazareth. And I remember being so exhausted at the point that this photo came in. Exhausted from the movement, exhausted from the sheer weight of what it takes to keep resisting every single day when you're facing extraordinary violence.
- And it reminded me of all of the beauty on this planet. And I was thinking about earlier today with the youth panel how all of the young men that I was presenting with talked about traveling. They talked about the future. They talked about school. They talked about freedom. They talked about things in nuanced ways that I couldn't even talk about at that age.
- And so when I think of the future, I think of young people all over the world who are saying, this is enough. We need to work on reconciliation with fish. We need to say no to violence on our bodies as indigenous women. We need to say that we deserve home. Home in any space that we are in. We deserve home in our bodies. Because home has been continuously taken from us, as indigenous people, as indigenous women.
- Gloria Anzaldua, a Chicana poet, writer, philosopher, said, "I'm like a turtle. I carry my home on my back wherever I go." This is for all the young indigenous people in the room. This is who I speak for and this is who I want to talk to. Because we so rarely have spaces to talk to each other. If anyone tells you that you don't have a right to be in this space, whether it's a classroom, an academic space, an academic conference, on the land, on your own streets, remember that you are made of stardust. You are made of the medicine that grows up through the cracks in the concrete in urban spaces. And you're made of the struggle of your ancestors. Struggle rooted in love. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE]. Thank you very much.
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