Shame, identity, imposter syndrome
I recently had the pleasure of travelling to Victoria as part of the LEVEL Youth Policy Program 2022 cohort. It was an incredible opportunity; one that exposed me to the world of Indigenous and Canadian governance and connected me with BIPOC policymakers who are as committed to systems change as I am.
The trip also dug up some deep-rooted identity imposter syndrome.
We began our day at the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. The Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ erasure was palpable; while the grounds of the legislature were once home to these nations, today they have been forced to the outskirts of the city. Their presence is memorialised by a single totem pole on the property’s lawn.
We came to the legislature to attend Question Period. The set up of the Legislative Chamber, imprinted from the colonial British era, positioned the MLAs’ desks in rows. The government and opposition parties faced one another as if prepared for battle.
This session opened with introductions and discussions of important events happening throughout the province. Coming up was the one-year anniversary since Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc announced that 215 children went to residential school and never returned home. It was the first of many unmarked gravesites to be found across the country, an unveiling of “Canada’s” shameful past and present.
The week it happened, I visited Tk'emlúps as a show of solidarity. Collective grief and trauma hovered over the school grounds like a thick cloud of fog, evidence of the devastation this news left in its wake. Even as a guest to the territories, I left feeling dispirited, and angry with the government for its attempts to extinguish the bloodlines of my Indigenous kin across the country.
So when the topic of residential schools came up during the question period, I was expecting it to be handled gently, and sensitively. It was not. The MLAs spoke about the topic with no trigger warning or regard for the Indigenous youth sitting in their gallery. They described awful human rights abuses as trauma porn, forgetting that the harm they described had happened to our living relatives.
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Following that, the MLAs moved on to discuss the parliamentary issues at hand. Up first was a debate on British Columbians’ wait times for and lack of access to family doctors. It was a serious topic, one that warranted a fulsome, collaborative discussion.
Unfortunately, the way the issue was presented was unproductive and combative. The impetus used by the Liberal Party of British Columbia to argue for funding more doctors was that the British Columbian government needed to stop funding its “billion-dollar vanity project”, otherwise known as upgrades to the Royal BC Museum.* This was posed as a question to the Minister of Health; the problem is, the “vanity project” in question falls under the purview of the Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport.
Wondering who that might be? it’s the Honourable HLI HAYKWHL ẂII XSGAAK Melanie Mark, British Columbia’s first Indigenous woman elected as MLA, as well as the province’s only First Nation woman to serve in cabinet. She was never given an opportunity to answer.
It deeply frustrated me. The last thing the British Columbian government needed after finally getting one First Nations woman in the room was the opposition party silencing her.
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In the afternoon, our group headed over to the Esquimalt Wellness Centre to learn from Jessica Wood, Assistant Deputy Minister of Reconciliation. Jessica presented her efforts to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, but what struck me most was what she had to say about her role in her community.
“Here I may be regarded as an expert,” she said, “But back home, I would be told to help care for babies and clean fish jars. I’m seen as a baby there because I have so much to learn about my culture, spirituality and language”.
Her statement hit like a gut punch; I was reminded of how disconnected I feel from my own Anishinaabe nation.
My great-grandmother was fluent in Anishinaabemowin. Colonialism crept into our family quickly; none of my relatives have fluently spoken our language in generations, and I only know a brief introduction in my language.
I’ve never learned to hunt, trap, gather, pick medicines, or bead. I wouldn’t have a clue how to survive in the bush, even though my ancestors lived intimately with these lands.
At that moment, I felt like a baby to my community too. That feeling of failure, of shame, of imposter syndrome, came crashing over me. I excused myself from the session and had a long, hard cry outside.
One of our program facilitators, a mixed Nehiyaw woman, followed after me.
“I get it,” she said, “Sometimes I feel too Indigenous in white spaces, and too white in Indigenous spaces. Let me remind you though, you are welcome here”.
I wiped my tears, calmed myself, and headed back inside to continue the reclamation work.
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You may be wondering where my sense of feeling “too white” to be Indigenous comes from. I know that Indigenous peoples are not a monolith and come in all skin shades. My family is evidence of that. However, to this day I still struggle with imposter syndrome.
I remember learning it in the fourth grade. I was in social studies learning about cultural identity for the first time. I went to a school where the majority was so white that the students of colour could be counted with one hand.
“Raise your hand if you are English”.
10 hands.
“Raise your hand if you are Ukrainian”.
7 hands.
“Raise your hands if you are Aboriginal”*.
3 hands. Myself and two other students, both of whom had darker skin than I did. Both of whom were bullied badly by our peers. Both of whom I felt as though I could separate myself from if I stopped saying I was Aboriginal and started saying I was European.
It was there I learned to be ashamed of who I was. That shame kept me from connecting with my Ojibwe roots until I was in university; a decade-long gap in knowledge that could have been spent becoming rooted in my identity.
Instead, I internalised a sense of imposter syndrome I haven’t been able to shake; despite writing my thesis on the harms of the Indian Act, despite assisting 11 First Nations across the country navigate humanitarian crises, despite my nonprofit work to promote Indigenous women’s reclamation of the outdoors industry, despite writing a report to petition the government to better support Indigenous youth, despite being accepted graduate school to write a thesis addressing reconciliation.
I know that I am Anishinaabe, and that nothing I do will ever change that. However, I also know that maintaining cultural, spiritual and linguistic ties is essential to our resistance to colonialism and our continuity as Nations. Without a strong cultural and spiritual identity myself, I have never felt as though I’ve done enough to be considered a “real” Anishinaabekwe.
When I was younger, I was ashamed of my Indigeneity. Now that I’m an adult, I’m ashamed to admit that I walk through the colonial and the Indigenous worlds, never feeling like I fit perfectly into either.
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The larger takeaway here is that modern-day colonialism is not about smallpox blankets. It’s about how we are silenced, erased, and removed from our communities. It’s about how we’re made to forget who we are and where we come from.
Today’s colonial methodology may be more insidious, but it is surely just as destructive. The British Columbian government having one First Nations woman in history and then silencing her is proof of that. So is my family line’s disconnection from who we have been for thousands of years in the span of one lifetime.
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Note: As this post was written, the government of British Columbia halted its plans to invest $800 million into redeveloping the Royal BC Museum, over allegations that doing so was irresponsible in the midst of a doctor shortage, an increasing cost of living and other critical issues coming out of the pandemic. I agree with the decision, and I still don’t think the Honourable HLI HAYKWHL ẂII XSGAAK Melanie Mark should have been silenced.
Note: I used Aboriginal here because it was a term I grew up hearing used to refer to Indigenous peoples; however it is outdated now, so please stick to Indigenous or better yet, the individual Nation you’re referring to.
