MASCULINIDANS-26

14 July 2013

Conversation between Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm and Sam McKegney on a bench in Wiarton, Ontario, while Kateri’s sons Kegedonce and Gaadoohn played at Bluewater Park and were tended by Sam’s daughter Caitlyn.

KATERI AKIWENZIE-DAMM is a poet, essayist, editor, publisher, activist, and spoken word artist from the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation. She is the founder and managing editor of Kegedonce Press, which publishes works by Indigenous artists and is situated on her home reserve of Neyaashiinigmiing, Cape Croker on the Saugeen Peninsula in southwestern Ontario. Akiwenzie-Damm’s poetry includes the collection My Heart is a Stray Bullet (Kegedonce Press, 1993) and the spoken-word collaborative CDs Standing Ground (Nishin Productions, 2004) and A Constellation of Bones (Nishin Productions, 2008). Akiwenzie-Damm is editor of the groundbreaking collections Without Reservation: Indigenous Erotica (Kegedonce, 2003) and Skins: Contemporary Indigenous Writing (Kegedonce, 2000) and contributor to critical collections including Looking at the Words of Our People (Theytus, 1993) and Me Sexy (Douglas and McIntyre, 2008).

SAM MCKEGNEY: Has your perspective on gender relations, and masculinity specifically, shifted as you’ve become in recent years a mother of boys?

KATERI AKIWENZIE-DAMM: Oh it’s definitely shifted. In a way, I didn’t really expect to be a mom of boys. I mean, I never really thought about it either way when I thought about becoming a parent. So now I have two boys. And I’m actually adopting another boy—

SM: Oh wow—Congratulations!

KAD: Thank you. Kegsy has a sibling, so he is going to be joining us. He’s three years old so it’s going to be a longer process, but maybe sometime in the fall or before Christmas he’ll be living with us. Now I’m going to be completely surrounded by boys, which was not something that I expected, so I’ve been giving a lot more thought to “how do I raise them in a way that honours who they are, in terms of their identity in many respects, not just their gender?” But absolutely that’s part of what I’ve been thinking about: being a woman raising boys as a single mom.

One of the things that’s shifted significantly is my thinking, because I have a brother but I haven’t lived day-to-day with all that male energy before. And my boys are so different, the two I have now. As I was telling you, Gaadoohn, the little one, I call him “The Ruffian,” is so loud and he’s got a big personality. He’s really expressive. He can’t talk yet so I think his speech delay has led to him being very expressive in many ways. Also, he’s just a rough-and-tumble kind of kid. If you push him, he laughs, you know? He likes roughhousing. He’s a lot rougher. Kegs likes roughhousing too, but he’s a very gentle, happy-go-lucky, affectionate kind of kid. So just the fact that they’re so different has made me have to think about how to help them to be who they want to be. Parenting is such a “learn as you go” type of thing. I can’t parent them in the same way because they’re two very different personalities. And I think that, being an adoptive mom, it’s easy for me to see that they’re so different from each other, and in many ways they’re different from me and I accept that. When people have kids who aren’t adopted, maybe there are some other issues that come into play that don’t come into play for me. If my boys need help because they have speech delays, I don’t take that personally or see it as a reflection of me. Some people get really defensive about those types of things and I don’t. Because for me it’s just a matter of, “what can I do to help them to achieve what they can achieve, and to be all that they dream of being?’

Gender is one piece of that. And you know, it is difficult as a mom of boys. How do I make sure that they get enough male influence? I have to recognize that I am who I am too and that I can’t fulfill all of those needs for them. So I have to be mindful and try to present them with opportunities to hang out with boys and be around men who will mentor them and interact with them in positive and healthy ways.

SM: Is it difficult to negotiate or plan for those types of mentoring scenarios? I realize the boys are quite young now, but thinking to the future as they develop, do you see lots of opportunities for those kinds of positive male-only spaces, and also forms of mentorship?

KAD: I think it’s going to be an ongoing challenge for me because you can’t really foresee how other people are going to interact with your children. You can’t control other people and their interest in doing that, basically. Frankly, I thought my brother would be a lot more involved with them than he is. But he’s not, and that was a bit of a shock for me. I thought that there would be much more influence there and there isn’t. So, I guess that’s also part of the reason why I’ve had to be more mindful of it.

Right now it’s not as much of an issue—they go to daycare. My older son, Kegsy, is fortunate in that in his room at daycare there’s a man and a woman instructor, so he gets both influences there. But that’s not going to be the case when he starts going to school full time. From year to year he might have a male teacher, or he might not. It’s definitely going to be a challenge. I’m very protective of them, I guess as most parents probably are. But I feel really protective that they are allowed to be who they need to be, and that people don’t try to force them to conform to other ways of being. Like I’m really protective of Kegsy and his affectionate, nurturing ways because I think that boys can lose that very easily with outside pressure or pressure from the men in their lives. So I try to protect that for him and let him be who he is by nature. So it’s going to be a challenge as a single mom, absolutely. And it’s always going to be a factor in terms of having a new relationship too, because, I mean I thought I was picky before, but now…

SM: [Laughter]

KAD: [Laughter] I’ve been picky in the past, but I mean now my children are first and foremost in my thinking all the time. I could never be with a man who I thought couldn’t have a positive, healthy relationship with them. So whether that means I’ll be a single mom from here on or whether I’ll be able to find somebody who can fulfill that and be a great partner all around, I don’t know. I’ll have to see how that evolves. But yeah, it definitely adds another challenge because there isn’t a male figure in the house.

I have to say, because of all the work I’ve done around Indian residential school and children’s aid scoops and so on, I know how risky it is to leave your children in the care of other people. I’m very aware of that, and I’d be lying if I said that it hasn’t affected the way that I look at enrolling them in clubs and things like that. I have to really scope things out before I let somebody be with them in a non-supervised kind of way.

SM: Another layer of concern that arises with sports clubs and the like is that they often teach particular cultures of gender that can be extremely limiting. I think, for instance, about the forms of heteronormative masculine machismo that tend to be valued in hockey culture.

KAD: I’ve never pictured myself as a hockey mom… but whatever they need, I’m going to try to let them follow that and be there supporting them. So I guess if I end up being a hockey mom, I end up being a hockey mom. But circumstances are going to have to be what I think the boys need as well. And I can’t totally control that.

Kegedonce has such nice long beautiful hair, and I’m sure at some point somebody at the daycare or going through the daycare said something to him, because all of the sudden he came home one day and said, “Boys don’t have long hair; girls have long hair.” I was trying to tell him, “well, you know, in our culture…” but he doesn’t really understand the concepts yet of being Anishinaabek, or about our culture, or anything like that. But I did try to explain to him that it’s not the same for everyone and everywhere, and that it’s not true, that some girls have short hair, and some men have long hair, and so on. But, it was probably just an offhand comment from somebody or another kid, and it stuck with him. It made a big impact on him. It reinforced to me that you can’t control everything. But it’s not always going to be possible to put him only into situations where he can be who he is and he can express himself and he can follow his culture and so on without people pressuring him to be something else.

I think team sports are fantastic in a lot of ways. I played team sports the whole time I was a kid until university, and I got a lot out of it. I learned a lot about negotiating my way through life with other people that I wouldn’t have if I had pursued individual sports and interests. I want my sons to be able to do that as well. Kegsy is already signed up for T-ball this summer and he’s learning that he’s supposed to listen to the coach, when really he’s running off in every direction. It reminds me of when I took ballet as a kid, like all the little ballerinas were going one way and I was going the other way. Yeah, ballet was not my thing I guess. It was evident even then, at four or five years old. [Laughter] So I can relate to him, when he’s supposed to be running the bases and he just keeps going. I think that type of group learning experience is valuable, and I don’t want my fears to limit my children.

So it’s really trying to walk this fine line, and I’m sure I won’t always get it right, but I really try to communicate a lot with my boys. At night when I put them to bed (with Gaadoohn not so much because he can’t talk yet, but with Kegs) we have a lot of conversations just lying in bed, before he falls asleep, just kind of going over the day and things like that. So I’m hoping that we can develop a relationship where if I make a wrong choice, or misstep, he can tell me about it and we can talk about it. That’s the saving grace in all of this, because otherwise I’d just drive myself crazy trying to figure out what’s the perfect thing to do every time. So I’m kind of giving myself a break and saying, “Okay, we’ll try as much as possible to always do the best thing and on the other hand, we’ll just try to keep communication open so that we can figure things out as we go, too.” It’s tough, I mean, they don’t come with manuals. Is that a pun? [Laughter] No manuals… or woman-uals!

SM: [Laughter] Neither manuals nor woman-uals are available, as far as I know. What motivated you to confront the stigmatization of sensuality and the body, and to open up spaces for celebrations of the erotic in your work as a poet, editor, and publisher?

KAD: A bit of my background: I was raised Roman Catholic. For whatever reason in my immediate family—and, you know, I’ve asked my mom and she doesn’t really remember why or how this ever happened—but I can remember as a kid having hugs and kisses at night, and then we got to a certain age and all of that stopped. And then there were a lot of taboos around talking about sexuality, relationships, and so on. My parents obviously weren’t—I mean, it’s obvious to me, looking back, that they weren’t very comfortable with those kinds of conversations. So, I felt unprepared in some ways when I got older. I also felt that I learned a lot of fear and I guess shame, as if that aspect of myself had to be hidden. Like you didn’t want to be too obvious about anything, didn’t want to be too assertive or even let people know if you liked somebody, that sort of thing. I was very secretive about all that, crushes, desires, and everything as I was growing up, because I thought it would force me to have to answer questions that I had learned not to be comfortable answering. It also meant I felt I couldn’t ask questions. So I just kind of put that in the background.

I thought that I had to live up to a certain image. Like I’m supposed to go to university and supposed to be a good girl, and all of this. And that came out of being raised Catholic, it came out of my family circumstances, and society in general. I also think that, being Anishinaabe, there were fears and things that got passed down. It wasn’t until I was older that I started thinking that the source of some of that is it just isn’t really a safe world for Indigenous women. But I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew that there was a lot I shouldn’t say, and that I shouldn’t dress in certain ways, and I had to be really careful about all sorts of things.

I was a late bloomer, I was almost thirty before I fell in love with somebody—not that he necessarily fell in love with me—and I started looking for reflections of healthy relationships between Indigenous people in writing because I was a voracious reader and, doing the work that I do, it was a natural place for me to search for those images. I really started seeking them out. It was so strange to me because it got to be this big quest; it wasn’t very easy to find those positive images and stories. I might have been in my late twenties, but probably a lot of kids go through that in their teens when they start reading love poetry and they’re dating and falling in and out of love. I was looking for those reflections of what I was experiencing in my late twenties but I couldn’t find anything. I was lucky because I knew a lot of Indigenous writers, and spent time with them, wonderful people like Jeannette Armstrong, Lee Maracle, Patricia Grace, and Haunani-Kay Trask—and all these people who were writing around love and relationships and so on. I also became aware of residential school and the impacts that it’s had intergenerationally. Then right around this time, Phil Fontaine disclosed his abuse and all these horrible stories of abuse started coming out in the media, which was really great insofar as it could finally be talked about and addressed but, on the other hand, as a young woman, I felt surrounded by all these stories and images of our people being victimized, sexually victimized. There was no antidote to that. There wasn’t much that I could look to and say, yes, there’s all of that in our histories, but look at all these other positives. I could see the beauty in my own family because my grandparents had a fantastic relationship, but overall it felt like there just wasn’t a lot to hold on to.

For somebody who was shy and who grew up the way that I did, I don’t know why I decided to take that on, to collect and write and encourage others to write erotica, but I think it was partly for myself. I had this instinct that if that was something that I really needed, then surely there were other people, other Indigenous people, men and women, who needed to see depictions of themselves in positive, healthy ways, and interacting with each other in positive and healthy ways as much as I did. So, that’s when I started collecting erotica for an anthology. It was quite the experience because I really was shy about it but I was compelled to do it. At first I thought that there were going to be a lot of people who would look at me like I was crazy, or like I was some kind of pervert, like I was just trying to amass this little collection for my personal needs or something. And a lot of Indigenous writers weren’t writing erotica, but as soon as I’d mention it, they’d be like “yeah, definitely.” The light bulb would go on—you could literally see it. It’s like they would brighten up and say, “Yes, I don’t know why I haven’t been writing that, but I’m going to.” Sometimes, even a year or two years later, I’d go to my mailbox and there’d be a submission from them. Yeah. So that’s how it started, and it became a seven-year-long project. Part of the reason for that was that a lot of people didn’t have that kind of writing readily available. They just didn’t.

AS A YOUNG WOMAN, I FELT SURROUNDED BY ALL THESE STORIES AND IMAGES OF OUR PEOPLE BEING VICTIMIZED, SEXUALLY VICTIMIZED. THERE WAS NO ANTIDOTE TO THAT.

SM: Do you think the fact that people weren’t already writing those things or didn’t have that type of writing available was evidence of having internalized that shame you’re talking about or was it more of a tactical artistic choice to focus on other material?

KAD: It wasn’t just one or two people who didn’t have it or write it; it was more like one or two people who did have that sort of writing available. Like Richard Van Camp, when I contacted him he was like, “Woooo!” and he started sending me all of these stories. But it was generally the opposite, where there were only one or two people who did have something available, and other people were like, “yeah, I’m going to start writing something; I’m going to work on that.” And they did. A lot of people did. There was so much support that it became obvious to me that people weren’t even aware that they were limiting themselves, or that they hadn’t felt safe expressing that side of themselves, even though in their other work they were quite fearless.

SM: Do you find the situation is quite different now than when you began the project?

KAD: I think so. I think there are a lot more depictions of love scenes, and there have been special erotica issues of Indigenous magazines, exhibitions of Indigenous erotic art and so on. I had really hoped that the day would come when people would be writing erotic poetry and erotic scenes in their stories and novels, and that it wouldn’t be a big deal. Because it was kind of a big deal when I first started collecting it. People felt quite brave, I think; they were stepping out of their comfort zones. I even got interviewed by a Sami radio station one time, calling from Norway, because it was such a big deal—it was something really different, pushing at people’s preconceived ideas about us and our literature. When people thought of Indigenous literature, that’s not what came to mind; it was like protest literature or something about the environment, you know, those kinds of really limiting, narrow definitions of our writing. I think it’s finally getting to that point where someone can write a collection of poetry and erotic poetry can be part of it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a big thing. It just takes what I would think of as its rightful place in our lives and our forms of creative expression.

SM: This positive movement in the Indigenous artistic scene—where the erotic is finding its place more comfortably within a range of expressive arts—is occurring at a time when other forms of media are commodifying sexuality in potentially dangerous ways. I’m thinking specifically of Internet pornography and the sexualization of young women in TV and film. Do you see art as, I don’t know, a “corrective” is the wrong word, but how do you see artistic struggles toward positive sexual intimacy functioning within a broader cultural and media spectrum in which the erotic often functions according to power dynamics that are oppressive?

KAD: Unfortunately that might be the third step, you know? In some ways right now, people are just coming to a point where they’re comfortable with that form of expression again, but I’m not naive about it. I think that at some point somebody’s going to say, “there’s this type of porn and that type of porn, so let’s see what we can put together for people who have Native American fetishes.” I can’t control that though. I think that’s a real possibility in this day and age, and all I can imagine is that if we keep creating our positive stories and images, that we help to counteract those kinds of exploitive images and stories. That’s probably bound to happen at some point, but in my way of doing things, you just keep doing what you do and creating the beautiful and helping people to recognize the beauty and the positive, and to stay focused on that, so when that day comes there won’t only be the images of exploitation dominating our thinking and the thinking of others in the society around us.

When I was growing up, there was such a dearth of anything erotic, about the only thing I can remember seeing was Tales From the Smokehouse. There was a copy of that book my grandparents had in their house and it was like, “Oh, what’s this?” You know? I don’t even know if I ever snuck it long enough to read the stories! The artwork by Daphne Odjig was so intriguing itself. Other than that book there were silly romance novels that used Indigenous people as cyphers to fill with their strange fantasies of who we are. Part of my motivation for doing the erotica work was that I didn’t want other generations in my family—that’s what I was thinking about first, but also anybody’s kids—to grow up the way that I did, with no real and inspiring images of themselves to add to their sense of sexual identity and to help guide them in understanding who they are. You don’t get everything from your family. You get a lot from your family, but you don’t get everything, so those outside images are important and influential. I hope that my boys will benefit from that work that I did to help our people to start expressing that side of themselves, which sounds quite lofty, but I’m really proud of the fact that I was part of that reclamation and that I helped to move it forward in some way. If I do nothing else, I think that’s not a bad legacy. I hope it helps them and other children in my family and community.

I DIDN’T WANT OTHER GENERATIONS IN MY FAMILY...TO GROW UP THE WAY THAT I DID, WITH NO REAL AND INSPIRING IMAGES OF THEMSELVES TO ADD TO THEIR SENSE OF SEXUAL IDENTITY

SM: People like Andrea Smith have firmly established that attacks on Indigenous understandings of gender and gender systems have been a fundamental element of the colonial process in North America. What is your sense of how your own community, for instance, is dealing with that legacy?

KAD: My sense is just from what I can see, and today people are more open than they were when I was a kid. I can remember hearing about a gay male being beaten up in the community when I was younger. I don’t remember exactly how old I was but I think I might have been ten, or maybe a little bit older, possibly a little bit younger—somewhere around there though. And now there’s a gay male couple living openly in the community—well, actually two that I can think of off the top of my head. I don’t always hear everything that goes on in the community because I’m not working in the community, per se, but I haven’t heard of them having any problems. I haven’t heard comments from other people behind their backs or anything like that. So there’s a kind of acceptance thirty years later that there wasn’t when I was a kid… Did I say thirty? I shouldn’t be dating myself. [Laughter]

That’s not a huge amount of time, but I think that a shift has happened, and I’m glad to see it. I hope it continues and that people not only become more open-minded but that they really start to look at what the thinking was traditionally around gender identity, sexuality, and so on, because I think in some ways that knowledge hasn’t been shared widely. There’s been a concerted effort by the churches and the government to make sure that kind of knowledge wasn’t passed down. So I hope there’s a reclaiming. There has been to a certain extent, but I hope that it flourishes even more so that more people gain a better understanding. Because my community, probably like every other First Nations community in Canada, is still suffering the effects of residential school, children’s aid scoops, ongoing underfunding for our children, and the impact that colonialism has had on parenting and the passing along of traditional knowledge, of sacred knowledge.

SM: Are there people in your community that you would feel comfortable going to to ask about certain stories and things—men’s teachings, for instance—as the boys are growing up? Or is traditional knowledge accessible in that way?

KAD: That’s a complicated question, maybe more so than it appears, or maybe I make it more so than it needs to be. Because I think that there are people who have that knowledge, or pieces of that knowledge, but it comes back to putting a lot of trust in somebody in a really important area of my sons’ development. So I would be very careful about how that would happen or who would be involved in providing those kinds of teachings to them. Because unfortunately people have been so affected by colonization that those who appear to be traditional do not always act in traditional ways, in the best ways, and there are sometimes power dynamics that I really have to be aware of. Again, it’s such a huge sacred trust to allow someone to provide that to my sons.

But I also believe that it doesn’t have to be somebody from my specific community. If there are people who can help them with those kinds of questions, and they are from other Anishinaabe communities, I don’t have a problem with that. Even men who would have knowledge from other Indigenous cultures and so on, I think that can be really helpful too, as long as I’m aware and able to mediate that to some extent. Because I learned a lot about who I am from travelling internationally and being able to talk to people from other Indigenous cultures like Patricia Grace, who’s been a big mentor of mine, and Haunani-Kay Trask, who has changed my thinking in so many critical ways. They’re a long ways from Anishinaabe territory! But it really helped me understand myself by learning from them about their cultures and teachings.

SM: Who are the artists today that are exciting you in terms of how they’re challenging understandings of Indigenous men and masculinity through their representations?

KAD: An emerging poet whose work I find really interesting and I’m excited about is Giles Benaway. We’ve just published his collection of poetry Ceremonies for the Dead, and I find what he’s doing really intriguing. I don’t know if I could specifically say in terms of depictions of men, but I think that, as a poet, he has a kind of brave openness about him that I find really compelling. So he’s one person. I really like the work that Daniel Heath Justice is doing, and Niigaanwewidam Sinclair, just in terms of the way they present themselves and the way that they talk about gender roles and ways of being. I think it’s much more inclusive and thoughtful, and, in a quiet sort of way, really kicking the shit out of the stereotypes and the norms, the norms which were forced upon us, inherited via the dysfunction of genocide. Those norms, which should never have been norms, it’s like they’re taking a sledgehammer to them. But they do it in such a kind of quiet way, and I love that, because I think Anishinaabe people do that a lot.

At a Sunday church gathering or women’s institute meeting on a Sunday afternoon, my grandmother could say the most outrageous thing that really confronted people’s beliefs. And I’m sure that half an hour later, people would be sitting there having tea and go, “Did she say…?” You know? Because she would say it in such a way that it was very non-confrontational and sounded so logical and matter of fact. Some of the work that I see and that I admire a lot, it comes from people who are doing that kind of thing. I like the shit disturbers too. I always have. But I think that we need a bit of both, and so I like that work that’s happening.

I think that what you’re doing is important because just the fact that I’m having trouble thinking specifically of the way that masculinity is being represented in Indigenous arts in Canada, or even more broadly, tells me that it’s an area where we need to be more thoughtful and more aware, and to not accept the depictions that are out there, which are pretty narrow when you think about it. There’s the monosyllabic warrior stud type guy and there’s the dysfunctional, abused or abuser inmate, ex-con—those kinds of stereotypes. But I think your work is really timely, and I hope that what you’re doing and others are doing in this area is going to have the same ripple effect that the erotica work had, where my sons are going be able to find a wider range of depictions of Indigenous men that will maybe inspire them, influence them to some extent, and teach them both in that Nanabozho way of what to do and what not to do—because Nanabozho taught through both his good deeds and his misdeeds. They’ll have more to draw on than I think Indigenous men have had in the past few generations.

A LOT OF INDIGENOUS MEN HAVE LEARNED WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN INDIGENOUS MAN FROM THE WORST POSSIBLE SOURCES, LIKE RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL OR CAS OR JAIL, OR PARENTS WHO WENT THROUGH ONE OR MORE OF THOSE SYSTEMS AND LACKED THE PARENTING SKILLS THAT THEY NEEDED IN ORDER TO GUIDE THEIR SONS.

SM: You and I have spoken before about the causal relationship between particular ideological conceptions of masculinity and eruptions of violence—particularly violence against women. Can you reflect on these connections?

KAD: There is an underlying acceptance of violence against Indigenous women in the mainstream. Absolutely. That’s why so many women are missing and continue to go missing and that’s why their disappearances don’t get investigated in ways that lead to them being found or even their bodies being found. That’s why funding for Sisters in Spirit can be axed with no public outcry. This acceptance also persists within our own communities. A lot of Indigenous men have learned what it means to be an Indigenous man from the worst possible sources, like residential school or CAS [Children’s Aid Society] or jail, or parents who went through one or more of those systems and lacked the parenting skills that they needed in order to guide their sons. I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody that perpetrators so often are the men in our own communities, because they’ve been taught that violence against Indigenous women is a legitimate option and Indigenous women also have been taught that it’s an option for how they ought to be treated. It is an intergenerational thing where that way of thinking just gets passed down and passed down, and it leads to real outcomes in the real world. These ways of thinking don’t just remain in people’s fantasies without having any impact in the real world. They do impact our reality, they absolutely do. And the real outcome is that it’s not safe for Indigenous women. I think that hasn’t changed a whole lot. I mean there are still constant reports of Indigenous women who are missing. That’s still going on. And when things like Idle No More happen, violence is directed towards Indigenous women in response.

I think changing things within our communities means that we have to get back to some basics around who we are and how we interrelate. And it gets to that erotica discussion too, but it’s beyond how we relate to ourselves in terms of our sexuality, but in terms of intimacy of all kinds. It’s how my sons are relating to the girls at daycare, and how they are being taught to do that, and how they’re being taught to talk to the women who are around them, how they’re being taught to talk to the girls who are around them, and what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. It’s about how they are being taught to see themselves and what it means to be a man and have power. Because power’s not necessarily a negative thing. We all need to be and feel empowered. We all need to assert our own power in different ways, but there have been so many negative examples of power being expressed that as soon as you say “power,” I think for a lot of people that means power over something. Power to bend something to your will. And that’s what concerns me.

WE HAVE TO RECLAIM WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT MEN HAVING A PROTECTIVE ROLE, BEING THE PROTECTORS IN THE COMMUNITY. I BELIEVE THAT’S A LEGITIMATE MALE ROLE AND A POSITIVE ROLE THAT HELPS OUR FAMILIES AND OUR COMMUNITIES TO STAY SAFE AND BE HEALTHY.

In terms of the healing of our communities and of ourselves, I don’t know if it sounds old-fashioned, but I really think that one of the roles of men is to protect the women in their families and communities. And, in a lot of ways, that’s not happening. That’s why it’s far too easy for other people to come in and create havoc, abuse our women, leave marks on our children’s minds and spirits, and then walk away. I don’t know if it comes out of guilt from the men, because maybe they’ve done things themselves that they’re not proud of, or because that violence has been normalized in some ways, but if the men in our own families and communities aren’t protecting us, there’s no way that women can protect ourselves and our children against men. That’s just the reality. Individually, maybe we can, but on a broad scale, old-fashioned as that might sound, I really think it’s necessary for men to assume this role. When men don’t protect the women and children around them, women and children are more vulnerable to being harmed. So I think we have to reclaim what’s good about men having a protective role, being the protectors in the community. I believe that’s a legitimate male role and a positive role that helps our families and our communities to stay safe and be healthy.

Some people might think I’m some kind of throwback or it’s a really sexist thing to say, but to me it’s just common sense. It’s just the reality of accepting that I’m a woman and I have certain strengths and abilities, but if a guy is coming at me, what are my chances of protecting myself? If my brothers, cousins, father, grandfathers, uncles, whatever, are not there to intervene, I can’t control that situation. I don’t see women as weak in any way, but there are just some genetic imperatives that we can’t escape. Like, men are not going to have babies. So, I don’t care how much I work out, I’m not going to get the biceps that a guy would have. It’s just how it is. So we have to be able to get past that self-censorship where we think, “I can’t say that because that might sound bad to some feminists or some other women or some men,” and just say, “This is what we need from the men around us. We need protection. Our families need protecting.”

SM: And that sense of protectorship is generative in multiple ways because it not only provides a sense of safety and stability, but it also offers an important sense of purpose and meaning for the protectors.

KAD: There are so many men who don’t know what their role as a man is anymore. It can be just something as basic as being watchful and protecting their families and communities. It could change our world as Indigenous people if that were happening. I think it would create a profound difference if men could simply—I mean, nothing’s simple—but if they could take that on as a basic part of their responsibility as men.

And there are other things, like being a present and healthy parent. And part of that is protecting, but for men it goes beyond just being a protective parent; it has to extend outward. In our communities there’s a role for everyone as far as the children go. And not everybody lives up to that. Some people have gotten into that nuclear family thing where they only really care about their own little family. But when kids are around at community functions, if somebody’s doing something that’s dangerous, people will speak up and speak to them, and as long as it’s done in a good way, it’s not a problem. There aren’t arguments about, “you’re not allowed to talk to my kid because he was running and screaming around the hall.” There’s still an acceptance that everybody has a certain responsibility for caring for the children in those kinds of gatherings. So if you expand that out, it should be all the time that we’re vigilant about protecting our children and our community, about protecting each other. There are many things working against that kind of change, but it’s something that we can strive to get back to that would really change our lives and change the future for our children.