Cowboys and Indians
We met when I was a brown cowgirl. Internalized racism lived in my body and built a mid-century colonial home with a white picket fence. I had shame and judgment for my family and shame and judgment for myself. There wasn’t much questioning or thinking on my part. I believed what I was meant to believe about native people, and I believed that about myself. Perhaps this is where the roots of white supremacy and self-hatred dug a little deeper into my body and my consciousness. But to say you were a bad person would not be accurate. To say you were outwardly racist would not be true. You were a white Christian boy in a small Alberta town. Well rounded, son in a functional family, privileged, regulated, supported. You taught me how to drive your standard on those country roads. We didn’t talk too much about Christianity or god but it had a home in our relationship. We would talk about how you shouldn’t date “that girl” because she had already dated too many boys. That would not be proper. The foundation of that mid-century colonial dug deeper. I don’t really know what we had in common but I liked you because you were kind, gentle, and funny. Youth has a way of allowing life to appear simple. School taught us a simple version of our reality.
As I grew, I slowly began to learn the history of this country, it’s genocide, violence, hatred, racism, classism. The story of my family both current and distant. The story of the pain, dysfunction, trauma, and violence in my life and in my family. I began pulling the weeds of white supremacy, self-hatred, racism, and colonialism from my body; digging deeper for the roots. I began to learn the wisdom of my ancestors; a story and a truth I was never privy to until I became much older. I became an Indian.
What did you learn as you grew? I saw a Facebook post of you going door to door in the white collar corporate city campaigning for the Wild Rose Party, then for the United Conservative Party. For our great premier who wants to privatize our public sectors, harass teachers and health care workers, discriminate against queer people, and who certainly does not give a shit about us Indians. A man who would rather destroy our oldest relatives, the mountains and the rocks mining for coal. You work at a bank, got married, had a baby; I work in the inner city with those who suffer from the reality of colonialism making minimum wage and pay for therapy.
Are we the real cowboys and Indians? Do you fill the niche you’ve been meant to fill? The niche that has been set out and crafted for you for generations? And yet I feel as if part of me still knows you; the kindness, the gentleness. Can cowboys and Indians find common ground? Was our relationship possible only because I denied the Indian that lived within me? Can we still find common ground if I stand in my truth (read:power) as an Anishinàbekwe? Will that threaten your privilege or bring about your humility? Or have you become a cowboy and I an Indian?
