Content Warning: discussion of sexual assault; domestic abuse; violence against Indigenous women; and inconceivable Indigenous Feminist anger. I do not claim to speak for all Indigenous women, nor do I intend to universalize the dynamism of Indigenous lives, traditions, and experiences. This is my truth.
I want to begin by extending deepest gratitude to the Glow Project for giving me the opportunity to passionately discuss critical feminist issues facing Indigenous women. This is likely to be the most vulnerable and intimate piece of writing I will ever publish online, so I feel incredibly blessed to have been recruited to this safe space with hopes of helping other women who have faced, or are facing, similar circumstances. I honour those important souls who have witnessed my journey from abuse to salvation. From isolation to community and self-love.
As a lover of writing and storytelling, I find it critical locate my voice in my writing because I honour my being as a kaleidoscope of histories, stories, and experiences. Numerous intersections and histories shape my positionality as white-coded Anishinaabekwe, a fourth-year undergraduate student of Women’s and Gender studies, writer, lover, climate justice advocate, and Indigenous feminist. My unceded family territory, known as Friday’s Point, is located in northeastern Ontario on Lake Temagami. I have come to process some of the ways my selfhood is shaped by attacks against my traditional family territory, the residential school system, and violence committed against our minds and bodies. Naming these injustices is crucial to our healing. But still, we are not our victimhood. The women in my family are incredibly talented artists, dancers, researchers, filmmakers, fishers, hunters, and visionaries. We work tirelessly despite our hardships and persist by drawing on ancestral strength. In our resilience, we express ancient truths of self-determination, relationality, and sovereignty as birthrights. In my commitment to heal, I work for Indigenous feminist futurities, worlds assembled beyond the state with our voices, stories, and bodies. These are worlds we do not often have the space, time, or spirit to consider as we tend to devastation, manage a constant state of grief, and bear our traumas.
I write in remembrance of, and for, Cindy Gladue. Tina Fontaine. Loretta Saunders. Myrah Whitstone. Josephine Pelletier. Amber Young. Lena Anderson. Rebecca Maher. Cleo Samaginis. Gina Cardinal. Maisy Odijick. Shannon Alexander. Gladys Tolley. For my auntie Jane Friday-Roy; you embody the importance of remembering. You are a reminder that I am the descendent of matriarchs whose voices could not be silenced, for their prayers still protect us, and strength and resistance still guide us. I feel an obligation to serve as a witness to your stories.
To be here and to live, speak, and write my stories with gendered violence is the product of privilege and circumstance. While at university, I have come to realize the ways in which my ability to perform as a cis-able-bodied-white-coded woman affords me power, safety, and access, particularly as I navigate academia and engage with feminism, anti-racism, and anti-violence. I find it imperative to leverage my privilege as white-coding and as an undergraduate student to portray the truth of a marginal identity and make space for others in a way that disrupts systems of oppression.
My perspectives and lived experiences as Anishinaabekwe drive me to write for violence as a common thread in our lives. When women share our stories, we cultivate radical hope. We refuse our reduction to narratives of vulnerability. We talk back against our dehumanization. We propose the framework necessary to move forward.
After the extremely sudden loss of my father in January of 2016, I entered a state of extreme anger. I could not comprehend how everything I had ever known to be loving and unconditional could possibly implode before my very eyes. Things were never supposed to be this way. Everything that was supposed to last forever suddenly became temporary and unpredictable. I engaged in self-destructive behaviours as I tried to glue together the broken pieces I believed my life to be. I craved to regain the power that I felt the world tore away from me.
The first boy I sought security, affirmation, and reassurance from taught me how absence takes up so much space. The lack, the silence, the disinterest. I placed my melodies in the generosity of his mouth and he chewed them up with sharpened teeth and a glean in his eye. He crafted a loneliness meant just for me and poured it down my throat. Injected it in my veins. Moaned it into my open mouth. My lips were embroided with apologies that cried his name. When I released them, they tasted like blood.
There were days when he tasted like love. He tasted exactly like what I thought I deserved. Like lust, passion, and validation. But I wasn’t searching for anything except survival. What I believed to be love would sharply turn to hate, poisoned with harsh words. I would still stay, whimpering ‘please love me’, begging for scraps of affection at his feet.
In a state of denial, I loved the worlds I created to cope. I imagined I was nurturing life where none was found. I believed my love would grow and do better. I trusted my own conscious lies because they made things much more bearable and imaginative than real life. But Creator always brought me back to the same cycle, which continued until I chose myself over my defences.
Time has passed and I have learned to heal by stitching my wounds with threads of sentences and patches of prose. I find graphic descriptions of violence against women to be very traumatizing. As Indigenous women who are also writers, feminists, and academics, how do we express the truth of our lived experiences and ways of knowing without being consumed by a gaze insistent on our vulnerability? In response to these questions, I have chosen to share my story in the form of prose that spares any disturbing details. In my healing, I still love the worlds I imagine. But I no longer imagine them to harm myself, but to work for a better future for my daughters. To plant seeds of change. To return to love and wholeness as I move from pain to power.
Otipemisiwak (Cree): we own ourselves; we are free. I dream of a world where I can take lone midnight walks guided by moonlight without searching corners for shadows. I crave the chorus of laughter as my grandmother and aunties gather around the kitchen table to drink tea and share stories. A world where our bodies, lands, and spirits are safe. We do not rely on the state for protection because safety is our birthright. In this world, we have never had to think twice.
Untamed dreams, wild hair, unapologetic acts of refusal. An end to centuries of mourning.
In this world, we live without fear of violence. We are not angry at the occupation of our lands. Agents of patriarchy no longer leave us to die in motel bathtubs. We are not instructed to forgive and reconcile by blood-covered hands wrapped tightly around our throats.
Colonial empires require constant upkeep.
In this world, my boyfriend will not try to kill me when I try to leave. My cries for help will not go unanswered by pursed lips hidden behind tightly pulled curtains and locked doors. My emotional vulnerability is held as something precious rather than consumed by ill intentions. In this world, my future daughters will not endure the pain prescribed to us by a state dependent on our non-existence.
They say our freedom is impossible. That makes us want it even more.
In the world, we do not have to mourn centuries of words unspoken, worlds stolen, and dreams unrealized. We reject phrases like “gaps in services”, “high-risk lifestyle” and “lack of access” in favour of “patriarchy” and “white supremacy” and “genocide”. We no longer recite statistics and count bodies. We quit attempting to convince others that we are worthy of being grieved.
This is our home. We should be safe here. By birthright, we are free.
In this world, our bodies are not imprinted with the memory of pain. Our solidarity is not founded on shared experiences and violence. Counting our breaths. Raising our voices. Bearing our trauma.
We are so much more than they say we are.
But this is never our story. Our very existence is resistance, our refusal an act of survival.
For you. This is our truth.
Written by Megan Lalonde
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