This is the sixth post in the Historicizing Adaptation blog series. Below the piece is a note from the author speaking to the influences and contexts that have informed this writing. The note also elaborates on connections to ideas of adaptation.
I spend my days authenticating myself in a settler state
I authenticate my email account, my bank account
I scan my thumbprint and open digital doors
I am like everybody else in that way
But then others pursue my Indigenous identity
It is commandeered for twisted commemorations and causes
I symbolise things – this is out of my control
I am the Indian on the t-shirt
On the back of the leather jacket
An appropriated symbol of counterculture
I am the Indian at Inauguration
The settler states assume that since we are embedded in a post-colonial enterprise
That I wish to hold up that story
They assume me happy to be the base ingredient for their shining project
There is a delay in Canadian media
It is based on what Canadians are ready to consume
What they are ready to bite off the carcass of the nightmare
Try as they may to sleep
The bones are still outside their houses
Atrocities
They want me to dance and wear my ribbon pants
To annoy but not properly vex
In repeating my story, they wish to soften it
To acclimatize to it – to the point where they can hear it and eat lunch
Non-Indigenous folks want to be me
They often seek authentication through me
Maybe I’m an ace of authentication
I weave myself in a web of authentication
And it is an 18th century spiderweb
Every time I perform their version of my identity for them
There is a delay between the past and who I am allowed to be now – I am trapped in re-enactments in performance
I can never be enough now un-buckskinned
The government infantilized me, but they are automaton parents
My world ended once I was embedded in settler colonialism
I am functionally extinct – I am here but have little to no effect on my ecosystem
In this post-apocalyptic world, I live as I am allowed to – through performance
…
I held my baby’s hand while she bent over into the fountain to take some pennies for her and her sister
Her sleeves were soaked, wicking up water and she gleamed – a smile from ear to ear
The settler grownups gasped “Those are wishes!”
And I reminded them wishes aren’t real
They believed in money
Chlorinated fountains and shopping malls
We were just playing Indian in a foreign place atop our graves
Author’s note
I am a professor of literature; my work focuses on creative writing. In this piece, I am thinking about identity and adaptations. I am thinking about history and how I am situated in it as a writer and as a L’nu person.
Through both my research and my experience, I realize that everything is symbolic and is framed, associated, and contextualized by folks looking to worldmake or assert cultural imaginings of spaces. I am thinking of fashion lexica, vernacular architecture, cultural heritage. I am focused on these as adaptations to particular histories.
My piece reflects a range of influences and references. One obvious influence is James Baldwin. The reference to soft rains in the title is a tip of the hat to Ray Bradbury’s short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains.”
My piece includes references to Indigenous identity and deals with current issues related to interlopers and the commodification of Indianness. It also examines Indian Play, both in terms of how non-Indigenous peoples sometimes claim Indian identity and in terms of how Indigenous peoples play with their own identities. Our identity at times is used as a numinous key for small and large religions to access some level of their own mythology.
In writing this piece, I was thinking of the house symbolizing the state and the conquering of “nature,” with identity and mobility being embedded in settler states.
Also, I was thinking about humanity ending itself and I was associating this with thoughts of the Harry Harlow monkey experiments. I was feeling like the baby monkey. I feel as though the government always thought they knew what was best for me, infantilized me, and tried to parent me in a weird way, but they were a wire -shaped parent with a little furry cloth on them. There was not much to them as parents. I feel like they experiment on us. There is a history of that, and we have had to adapt to it.
And I was thinking of discussions about climate change with community members. It is often referenced that our world ended with colonization. We are navigating that, trying to survive daily life, when an occupier now sets the standards for what life is. This, too, is adaptation.
All these thoughts make it clear to me that myth-making is a big part of both history and adaptation. Settlers are aces of encoding landscapes and dispossessing Indigenous folks. Indigenous folks are sidelined and must adapt to new realities. Some Indigenous groups think Seven Generations ahead. Settlers in the US are thinking thousands, but not in a good way.
