Circular arguments about Indigenous identity are about as annoying as mosquitoes

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Drew Hayden Taylor is an Anishinaabe playwright and humorist.

It seems that some arguments never die; they just relocate through time, and come bearing white hair and a cane.

The other night, I was in Lakefield, Ont., watching Indigenous authors Maurice Switzer and Jackson Pind discuss their work. Eventually, they took questions from the audience. Maurice had just finished talking about the importance of actual residential school survivors coming into classrooms to talk about their experiences, rather than teaching a series of dates and facts – nothing is better than firsthand understanding with such controversial and emotional experiences, he argued – when one woman put up her hand.

This woman, a retired professor of history and, I’m assuming, a proud person of pioneer persuasion, disagreed. She asked: what was she to do if she taught a class in medieval history or the Victorian world? Would that limit what can be taught and who can be brought in with personal experiences? This produced a modest and polite discussion – at least, for a time.

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Later, I was standing in line waiting to get my book signed, and that same lady was standing behind me, leaning on her cane. She recognized me, and we soon started what at first seemed to be an amiable conversation. But as I discovered, the Discourse Gods giveth and taketh away. I forget how the topic came up, but soon we were chatting about pretendians. To paraphrase her argument, people like Buffy Sainte-Marie and Joseph Boyden have brought so much to the world and the culture with their talent – so who cares if they aren’t Indigenous?

I responded: “Well ... several hundred thousand Indigenous people in Canada alone. Minus five. I’ve got some cousins in Cancun this week.”

But Ms. Sainte-Marie was adopted, she said.

“Into a specific family,” I replied. “But not into the entire Indigenous community.” She was not convinced. In fact, she rolled her eyes. That quickly became her chief defence against every counterpoint I offered. Evidently, having advanced degrees provides you a dinghy in the ocean of Indigenous reality, and she was determined not to get wet. My partner would have called her “a true colonizing presence.”

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Then, mercifully, we were briefly interrupted. I had earlier been asked by a gentleman about the colourful jacket I had been wearing, and I told him that it had been designed by a Métis woman near Edmonton. He asked if I was Métis myself, and I said no – I was Status Anishnaabe from Curve Lake First Nation, albeit with a substantial dollop of Caucasian blood, through no fault of my own.

I used my standard identity joke: I’m half-Ojibway, half-Caucasian. That makes me an Occasion. A special Occasion.

The woman pounced again upon hearing this. “So, you are Métis.”

“No, I am Status Anishnaabe.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes once again. “But you are half white. You just said it. That means you are Métis. That’s what Métis means, ‘mixed blood.’”

I stood there in what was fast becoming an interdimensional line of people seemingly stuck forever in time, unmoving as the universe whizzed by. I tried to explain to her how the Métis are traditionally a mixture of French, Scottish and Cree from the Prairies, but she would have none of it. “That’s not what I have been led to believe,” she said, shaking her head. Evidently, her privilege in life had taught her all she needed to know about me and those who have been colonized in this country. More than me, in fact.

As an Indigenous man, I have long been taught to respect women, especially older women – and, further down that line of thinking, to respect older women that are carrying a big stick with them. Ordinarily they have much to teach us. But the problem here is I don’t think I was in the right state of mind to be taught. I also wasn’t that interested in what she wanted to teach me.

These are the kinds of conversations that have been popping up in our communities for decades. Picture each discussion being a mosquito in the Canadian North, and you’ll get the idea how frequent and how annoying they are. But rarely have I had this conversation with somebody who was so acutely sure that I – that we – were wrong. I was awed by her conviction.

Now, the bad news is I am confused. I am disheartened by what she said, but I want to respect who she is. As an older retired woman, becoming a professor back then in a time of male privilege could not have been easy. I grant her that grace.

The good news is I eventually got my book signed. One thing time has taught me is that you have to be grateful for the small things.