So a friend of mine who is white is an Indigenous Studies major
@3 months ago with 46 notesAnd she posts a lot of stuff on native issues, especially issues on appropriation because even though it doesn’t affect her directly, it bothers her a lot.
I guess some guy commented the other day when she posted something about the sexualization of native women. He was a guy she’s known since public school and all of the sudden he posted: “You need to stop offending my culture, we can stand up for ourselves.”
So she was confused. So she asked what he meant.
He replied: “I’m Native” and nothing else. But the weird thing here is she said he never mentioned being native growing up.
So she inboxed him to ask him exactly what he found offensive so she could change it (she’s one of those white people who actually wants to learn from the mistakes.)
He responds with this huge asshole message and in the end he tells that she is a bitch ass n***er. (But continues calling her a racist bitch…)
Later when she is telling me more about it she mentions something about him being Inuit and having a status card and being about to go up to Nunavut every summer to visit his family for free. And something about how hard his life has been since his family moved off the rez.
The more she talked about it the more I’m finding faults in his story. Inuit people don’t have status cards as they don’t actually fall under the Indian Act. The only time you can travel on the northern airlines for free is if your mother happened to give birth to you on the airline (There are no hospitals in the north so if a woman goes into early labour sometimes the baby is delivered on the flight to the hospital). And the Inuit are not divided into Reserve’s. They own the land on their towns, a ring of land around the town, and each family owns a camp somewhere in the territory which they have control over. The only similarity between a rez and an Inuit community is probably the poverty.
Not to mention, personally I’ve never heard an Inuk refer to themselves as native. If you call an Inuk native, they usually get pretty ticked off.
What do you guys think of this situation? I mean I’m pretty sure the guy is faking being native just to play devil’s advocate, but who knows. My friend doesn’t know what to think either and she’s a little upset and isn’t sure if she should even continue her major if this is how people are going to react.
Any advice from my tumblr NDNs?
They do have beneficiary numbers and beneficiary cards. I know Cree and Naskapi use the same system and their ID cards look identical to my status card.
I’ve actually heard of northern communities in Quebec paying for transportation fees when a family member wants to visit or when there is a family crisis. There are hospitals in some areas of the north but it’s not common…there are also health clinics and I believe things like medivac are utilized to transport health emergencies….and often women are flow to the cities or larger towns prior to their due date to prepare for birth there.
There are also reserves that have set up systems where they own land, etc. Many northern communities (not just Inuit) have special areas of land where their camp grounds are…or cabins, etc.
I know a lot of Inuk who do consider themselves Natives. I’ve never heard any Inuk call themselves First Nations though. I have heard many say they were Native or Inuit/Inuk.
While he may have been extremely disrespectful about how he handled the entire situation…it could be possible that he is Inuit. I can’t really tell since I have no idea who the person is. I’ve noticed that when Native people in Canada are more dissociated from their culture/language/identity/home communities they don’t always often openly discuss the notion that they are First Nations or Inuit. It also depends on how they grew up and where they grew up. I’ve had “urban Native” (I’m not sure how I feel about the term, but they call themselves that) friends discuss having Non-Native friends not being aware of their ethnicity. It really all just depends on their own family or cultural dynamics. There are still many reasons why someone may not initially associate with their identity…especially with the discrimination against Native people in Canada. Even I don’t always openly discuss my ethnicity because I’m tired of the way people treat me after I tell them I’m Native and not of the ethnicity they believed me to be.
Honestly, this could happen again. That’s the thing…we may never know if this person is Native or not. However, people do need to take into consideration that Non-Natives being apart of or learning about First Nations/Inuit/Metis culture may be unsettling for some Native people. Our cultures and languages have been taken away from many of us and we were imprisoned for practicing our own cultures so now we’re currently in a very protective mode about it. There are some people who don’t want anyone who isn’t Native to be involved with learning our cultures and languages. On the other hand there are many people who are very open about teaching it to Non-Natives.
I’m right in the middle of that debate. I don’t want Non-Native people to know about some of our ceremonies that could be easily misunderstood or misinterpreted. I do want to teach Non-Natives some basic information about individual Nations and the differences in dynamics in each community. I don’t feel comfortable with Non-Native people speaking my languages. I’m comfortable teaching about how the language works and some simple terms but I know I would be extremely uncomfortable to hear a Non-Native person speaking my language fluently. I can explain this all more on my blog…if you’d like.
This is the reality though. There may be more people who get very upset about Non-Natives discussing Native issues. There may be more people who are more opened to the idea. This is how are cultural dynamics work right now. We each have our own views on how information should be shared and what exactly should be shared. I’d be completely lying if I said there was no possibility of this ever happening again. I can personally think of many Native people who would be upset with a Non-Native person discussing a lot of Native issues…regardless of their intentions. I also know many Natives who may believe that these Non-Natives are more like allies for them and are much more comfortable with the idea of them discussing Native issues.
People need to take into consideration that we are an oppressed group. We are a group that continues to struggle within this newly formed “Canadian society”. We have very different dynamics and issues than the majority of the “Canadian” population.
just bolded a few of kahs’s important points
Yes to all of this.
