3 AM Poetry – deviations from research notes into Indigenous feminists’ perspective on the ongoing MMIWG2S+ crisis…. you know, written in the dark on night, while attempting to process this world’s horribleness.
In her keynote address and subsequent paper, Kahnawake Anthropologist Audra Simpson (2014) presents a compelling argument: that Canada’s “multicultural, liberal and democratic structure” retains the “malignant inclination” of the settler imperative through its subsequent statecraft, which requires the death and “disappearance” of Indigenous women to insure its sovereignty. To position this piece in Canadian HerStory, she was also angry about Stephen Harper’s recent comments of MMIWGs “not being a priority” as they were isolated incidents and not a societal issue, the “not” apology that followed the Residential School Settlement in 2008, and his seemingly immediate declaration of Canada “having no history of colonialism” at the G20 Summit 2009.
“Canada likes to tell an innocent story about itself – that it is a place founded by immigrants and settlers, which somehow escaped the ugliness of history, a place very different from the place south of it, across that border. Canada is not like that other place for many reasons, it tells itself. However, it is especially exceptional now, because it has apologized; it stood and faced its history, and it has “reconciled” the violence of the past with its present. Presumably, with this acknowledgement of wrongdoing, Canada may move on.” (Simpson 2014)
“All Canadians, but especially those leaders who are of settler descent, must think hard about the ways in which we not only imagine nations and states but more importantly, governance itself. (Simpson, 2014)
“Disappearance” indicates not only the “not finding” of a body as “logically” spring to mind when contemplating the phrase “missing and murdered”, but also the silencing, the denial of voice, of validity, of value. The consequent “not thereness” of being somewhere Other than in the here-and-now: elsewhere, “unhomed” from community, unhoused” entirely and “vulnerated”; on the streets, kicked to the curb and Otherwised. Violated violenced, volatile, violent.
the silencing
perhaps unwilfully
trained, ingrained
un-acknowledged, de-humanized
invisibility of an entity; a human entity
a woman, a girl,
a nother – the Othered.
and men
by whose standards is this
not A PROBLEM?
In this alone, have we not witnessed vio-silencing enough?
Is our continued non-Indigenous silence not complicity?
Hidden Evidence untold truths PLSmith
CC bumped into Turtle Island,
named all two-legged resources
Indians.
[less than,
questionably human,
of doubted soul],
unleashing a cascade of God-sanctioned
genocidal intents.
Cartographers inked paper –
possession validated.
Pope decreed, in His name,
the owning of this Other
empty land
and all her inAnimate resources:
doubly-armed justification
Patricolonialized
North America.
MANdated Contract:
Capitalize on extracted resources.
Rape Mother Earth, women, and others.
Ransom the children,
eliminate the problem.
separate/assimilate/salvate
the Other
the first peoples
entirely
land, law, language, culture
traditional ways of knowing and being,
spiritual, reciprocal relationship with all
are
in recovery.
To regain sovereignty, lessen the illfull impact
traumatic molecular alteration of
blood/bone knowledge
will take generations.
Hide the evidence
behind the doors, under the blankets and carpets
before company comes
to your home.
If not seen,
it simply
does not exist.
Smile-arm in preparation,
and be polite.
If a glimpse is had of untold truths,
Apologize.
Smile harder through the next denial.