Reciting My Life Story is NOT Brave: it is a privilege.

I have many privileges. I have pretty privilege. I took out student loans to get an education. I have a partner who has white male privilege. My partner likes to joke about loaning me his privilege, but he really does help me. We know salespeople are less likely to follow me around when I bring my own white male chaperone. He often lends me his privilege including our little condo, living expenses, and unconditional love. I am a Scoop survivor. My childhood was spent on the front lines of colonialism in the child welfare system. I was apprehended directly from the hospital in 1992. I was raised in foster care until my placement broke down and the state took me back. I did not know I had a blood brother until I was 6 and even then I had so many siblings come and go it took me many years to understand how truly privileged I am to know my brother. My brother and I were adopted out of our family and away from our territory in 2000. After high school my brother went no contact with the adoption placement. I am not as smart as my brother so I tried to maintain contact until after my undergraduate degree. I went no contact with the state appointed guardian placement in 2016. I am so glad I went no contact because I met our biological mom in Saskatoon for the first time in December 2023. I felt like her parent, which I am told is common in relationships affected by meth. We do not have a relationship, but I think she stopped searching the streets of Saskatoon for us. My mom is supported by Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability Program (SAID). I know all of this because I did the work both at school and with my dispersed kin from Waterloo to Orillia to Saskatoon.

 For over a decade, I sacrificed time with my family to study. I struggle with the idea that I wasted my time here. I am trying to make sense of the last few years. I needed to spend a decade taking out Ontario student loans to find my family because Scoop survivors are not entitled to any information at all. I did not start out saying “I will use education to find my family” because I am not that smart and I really did need school to teach me about my own people. This foster kid had questions only history could answer.

In the university world, I was used as a token and co opted even when I was talking about my fear of being co opted. Knowing I am being tokenized is one thing. Getting out of the environment where my ego is flattered by tokenism is another thing. As soon as I start talking about my experiences in the child welfare system white guilt takes over my audience. I cannot relate to white guilt. I am trying to tell my story. I am not here to take care of your emotional response. I am one of many. My story is not unique. My privilege today is I have the English words and skills to talk about the Scoop experience in a way that reached you today. My Scoop survivor mother and brother do not have that privilege. My Canadian history education was designed by the colonial state but I had control over my work and I ultimately made the decision to walk away from my PhD. I walked away from pain, suffering, and a false sense of support because the university will never love me the way my family does. When I started university I did not have a sense of family. Books written by Indigenous people for Indigenous people taught me that family is better than career. Capitalism is not my guiding light.

 I have been invited to sit on many panels, round tables, and conference presentations where I am the only person of colour and/or the only survivor. Sometimes I think I am only chosen because I check so many boxes so the organizers think their work is done. Most of the time, non-Indigenous academics are researching our people in abstract terms about issues that do not affect them. The last panel I did at Laurier was the first time Native youth used their question time to call out the panel organizers for tokenizing me. For one moment I felt like maybe the future is alright but then those youth came to chat with me afterwards and I became their camp counsellor. I went from flattered to rage again. Its not fair what Native youth have to go through in order to know who is lying and who is telling the truth. For most race shifters the lie is older than I am. How do Native youth raised in foster care fight lies older than us? Each time the family of a race shifter gets a shout out from big brands on social media, I think again how I am the wrong kind of Indian. My story is too sad. My truth is not taught in Canadian textbooks. I do not like being the only person of colour or Scoop survivor or Indigenous person in a room. I find no joy in being the first to teach a class of all white students about the facts of my life. I had one student say I was the first urban Indigenous person they met, they didn’t think Indians lived in the city. My heart breaks when someone congratulates me for bravery when all I am doing is teaching facts about myself.

I have told my brother about our family tree multiple times and he still thinks it is a foster kid dream. We were raised by white people who hate us and our ancestors. I know all about our oppressor. I imagine identity fraud is the quickest way to absolve white guilt. I imagine becoming one of us helps ease the pain. It is only through identity fraud and race shifting that I realized lots of people feel some time of way about being raised by a single parent. A 38 year old man got my mother pregnant for the first time when she was 11 and she gave birth to me, her third child at 15. I have zero feelings about unknown Vietnamese “father” except it would be a whole lot easier for me if I looked half white instead of Asian. To be clear, there are no Vietnamese people wondering where I went. The people wondering where I went are Saskatchewan Metis. My people are matrilineal so our ancestor knowledge was waiting for me to look in the right place. Our people are surveilled by both the provincial and federal governments so we are well documented for 7-13 generations. I am most familiar with the four generations closest to me and its Indians all the way down. I have so many cousins I can’t possibly meet them all.

Now that I am in my thirties I can better understand how fucked up my birth and childhood were. I tackle huge barriers to connect with my biological mom let alone her parents. Nothing can stop me from owning who my relations are, not distance, not meth, not the Scoop, not poverty, not lack of education, not social media. These things I speak about and struggle with are not distant memories. I am not talking about someone else’s story. Surviving the Scoop means I struggle with identity everyday.

Reciting my life story is not brave: it is a privilege.