#fnmi

Sorry it's been a while since I've made an original post.

I just wanted to share some of the voices of the indigenous people of what is now called Canada. My parents immigrated to treaty 8, from China, so I am a settler of Canada, just as I am a member of the Chinese diaspora.

Historically tho, written records are a little mixed on the interactions between the first wave of Chinese immigrants.

Some records show that the first Chinese immigrants forged mutually beneficial relationships with the local indigenous people to make life easier.

Other records showed that Chinese immigrants 'were frequently grant land and water rights to Chinese individuals to the detriment of First Nations.'

There are physical evidence of cross-cultural exchanges seen through old Chinese-Canadian opera clothing having influence from local indigenous regalia.

Some records show that indigenous women married Chinese men, which meant they had to forfeit their 'Indian status' in exchange to marry the one they love. However, some Chinese men would leave their indigenous wife after their Chinese family came over to Canada.

Some Chinese immigrants would work for the colonial government and became Indian agents on the reservations. Which meant, they were complicit, if not reinforcing, horrific colonizer rules.

Other resources:

An academic presentation on historical Chinese-indigenous relations

Documentary on historical Chinese-indigenous Relations

Modern day:

Here are some FNMI-Chinese works.

Trevor Jang's (Chinese & Wet'suwet'en Nation) works can be read in the following:

Journalist articles

Frog Girl Short Story

Hang onto these words

Tsets Yu

Highway of Tears

Kaylan Wang (identifies as Chinese & Metis):

Borders within Borders (poetry)

There is definitely more to stories and perspectives to be heard tho.

If you have any more recommendations about FNMI Chinese voices, feel free to share below or tag me in a separate post, so I can reblog!!

We Will Always Remember (Where We Met), 2024

House paint on un-stretched canvas

On display at AceArtInc in Winnipeg, Manitoba from September 6th to October 18th, 2034 as part of a group exhibition titled ‘Room To Grow Tall’ curated by Sanaa Humayun and Kiona Callihoo Ligtvoet of Making Space, a BIPOC focused peer mentorship for visual artists.

We Will Always Remember (Where We Met) 2024 is an installation in the form of a map leading from AceArt Inc. to the Forks National Historic Site. The piece utilizes modern materials like latex house paint with traditional canvas, exploring themes of contemporary Métis homes, our trappers tents, and the ways in which Métis access knowledge, and housing, community, and our traditional spaces.

The map invites the viewer to walk from the gallery to The Forks as they consider the past and present uses of this land, and the relationship between the Métis and this sacred confluence. The work is a continuation of a piece created in 2024 for The New Gallery in Mohkinstsis titled let’s meet at the confluence which took the form of a public billboard in the downtown area.

At the core of my practice are concepts defined in the works of Gerald Vizenor, Sara Ahmed, and Chantal Fiola whose writings discuss notions of survivance, queer phenomenology, traditional Métis teachings, and appreciation for the lands that hold us.

The following is an accompanying text I wrote the morning of the workshop programming I planned for this exhibition.

Saturday, September 7th, 2024

12:01 PM

I’m staying with my friends B. and C. in their beautiful apartment in Winnipeg. They’re such sweethearts and I’m so grateful I can crash with them. I took the morning to myself after karaoke last night. I was sleepy and a little dehydrated so I stayed back to make my plan for the day.

I felt the sound of drums, I opened a window but the sound was coming from inside the building somewhere. I found the place where the drums were the loudest and standing in the dining room with my hand over my heart and a rowdy kitten named Mabel at my feet, I listened to the drummer as their voice joined the beat and felt the vibrations through my feet like the roots of a tree.

...I flashback to this time when I mentioned to an Indigenous (Blackfoot) student that I'm the Brazilian equivalent of what Canadians would call Métis (part white, part Indigenous).

Their face lit up and they were so excited that I was Indigenous too that they ran off to tell their friends. They didn't even care that I was Indigenous from a different continent.

It wasn't even the scandal, as much as how little Liberals cared and the paternalistic ways they spoke to me about how good I had it, that cemented my vote with the #NDP. The LPC is not an ally to Black people.

Voting Liberal to defend against racism is like the Liberals who haven't met a climate target in 29 years, even after adopting Harper's weak ones; saying we're building pipelines for climate change. We have a systemically racist Police Chief from #Scarborough-Southwest who made a career our of targeting Black Torontonians, Liberals appointed him Public Safety Minister.

We have a tone-deaf Liberal MP from #Winnipeg North who spent $3,000 to draft a petition to make criticism of police akin to hate speech. When Indigenous and Black people and other POC are likely to be overpoliced and at the receiving end of excessive force.

We have a Prime Minister, who when trying to explain how progressive he is, talks about learning about racism and privilege in university, and then went on to wear my skin colour as a costume, multiple times after that then claimed to be blinded by privilege.

We have a Liberal MP from #NorthYork who insisted that Black people like me, felt flattered by this mockery. I'm sorry, Judy, I don't. If you wear shredded clothing, stuff your pants and paint your skin black, as a costume, that's an insult. Don't get me started on how the Liberal Party maintained Stephen Harper's mandatory Minimums for 6 years, then made their own changes to the CCC that the Bar Association and CCLA et al. said weren't evidence-based and are systemically racist. https://vice.com/en/article/paxknk/how-the-governments-new-crime-bill-could-screw-over-people-of-colour…