Sometimes I feel like I’ve been sleeping for 20 years. When I learn something new I think why didn’t I learn about this 10 years ago or 20 years ago?
When I was 29 years old, I met a group of educated indigenous young people. I mean like they were sophisticated, educated entrepreneurs, who were doing consulting work for first Nations people in northern Alberta.
It isn’t the first time and throughout my life I happen to be in connection with people that have taken me places where I never thought I’d ever end up like universities university towns. It’s been an incredible journey
In art school, when we were in the process of making Art Work. We were told not to reinvent the wheel. The lesson was that whatever actually we’re going to do that someone had already created something similar to what we were thinking of doing.
That’s basically how I feel today about this blog. I know throughout the years sometimes I can put in just a just one entry. Sometimes I put in 10 entries in one year. Sometimes I put in a post because someone had commented like if the blog was still active. When I think about the Contant of what I’ve written, and I realize that I’m just one person.
I just want you to take this in context. Imagine thousands of writers writing on the same topic for the past 20 years. Now imagine they’ve written this and nobody has read it or they’ve read it and have forgotten about it.
It’s like writing, hoping someone would read it and realize that nobody’s interested. The problem is that nobody was interested in this blog until Nathan chasing horse got arrested. I mean there there were indigenous girls and indigenous women who were curious about my involvement with Nathan Chasing Horse. Yes, they read my blog, and sometimes they tracked me down.
No, I understand this nobody really knew my name. I kept it anonymous. I didn’t want anybody to know who it was that was riding all the stuff. It was difficult enough having people in my community. Gossip about me. The sad reality is like I just would not get involved in any conversation, not that it was ever brought up. And a lot of the comments that I’ve written for the posts that I’ve written I never spoke to anybody in my community about it.
Every once in a while, I reminded that there was someone out there, who just did not like me. And that person was a Nathan Chasing Horse. It was his followers, who tracked me down and leave comments or call me. No understand this even my phone number was anonymous so it’s amazing to me that they were able to get my phone number.
As a result of being interviewed in a public forum, my identity is no longer a secret. It’s like somebody discovering that I’ve been a comic book superhero ..’mild mannered .,.’ you know what I’m saying. The problem for me. Today is the realization that the Contant of this block is nothing new. There of been a lot of indigenous women throughout Canada and the United States who’ve been documenting and publishing works on, murdered and missing indigenous women.
So what makes this blog so special? And and why are people interested in the content.? I thought about the psychological factors based on circumstances that led Nathan Chasing Horse to get away with criminal activity for decades. It’s not uncommon for medicine people in First Nations communities to take advantage of vulnerable girls, and women. so the question is what makes this so unique?
I think it’s societies attitude. I think within my own community there is a living organism. The community has a life of its own and we’ve thrived. It’s the same thing with greater society. It’s a living breathing organism. The problem with that organism is that it determines who’s gonna live and who’s going to die. Because this organism is based on colonial mindsets, remember this. The Romans conquered England, when the English believed in Dreds and fairytales. And from their, the English became colonizers themselves, and I truly believe that as indigenous people, who’ve been colonized, we were in a metamorphosis, or renaissance of becoming colonizers our self.
In our small communities, we dictate who’s going to live and who’s going to die. It’s based on the social construct of chief and counsel and the administration offices, and the managers as in who’s going to work and who isn’t going to work. I know it’s just my theory yet today I really had to think.
I believe I’ve just realized that what I did 17 years ago was nothing. Was just a reflection on things that were happening to me and the people I loved. There are a lot of things that happen in our lives and we have no control over. We can get frustrated and we can get lost in our own self defeating ways of thinking. However, writing helps.
My conversation with a woman today about the blog, makes me think about my life, and have interacted within my family and within my community, and within the universe itself. We are all unique creatures, but what sets us apart from other human beings. I believe it’s how we interact with our brain. A human brain that spends at least 95% of our thinking time on networking. This is the thing that divides us from all other living creatures in this world is how we think.
It’s this mindset that society is a living, breathing organism that has a certain way of thinking towards people of color. Or a certain mindset that they have towards women of color. Historically women of color are perceived as being invisible. So what makes it so horrible and devastating to be an indigenous woman. It’s one thing to live in a community where we all connected. We all know each other, and when someone dies, and when we have ceremony of grieving, we all connect and we all support each other.
An example would be like New Orleans, where they have jazz singers, parading the dead body to the cemetery. It’s a celebration of life that has been fighting and healing from white supremacy. It’s their celebration that they have finished this life. It’s the reality of people of color. In my community when someone dies, we try to do the best we can to honor their lives. Our culture is unique.
I believe it’s one of the reasons I moved home from the United States. I need to find a purpose, a sense of self, and a reason to practice spiritual activism. The sad notion for me is that I’ve been so isolated and probably breathing and at the same time creating chronic stress for myself, that I didn’t know or I didn’t want to see the bigger picture.
Have you ever heard of the story or miss mythology of taking a secret and whispering it into an object because the secret was so great but yet you had to keep it quiet. Well, in some ways, that’s how this blog seems it was a whisper and yet it was a whisper to the victims, who were keeping something secret. The blog was set up so that if they wanted to whisper into the block, there would be someone who would listen and who would say that you’re not alone there are other people whispering into this blog.
I think a lot of times our ancestors, our indigenous ancestors. Created ceremonies, mythologies, and rituals to help us cope with chronic stress, grieving stress, and isolation. Storytellers created stories, so that people could listen and be amazed at what the world was all about. It’s the notion that out there a person can get an education can read thousands of books, understand the science of computers and social media. But it’s the content of the media that is the message.
I just felt that I needed to write something down tonight. As I worry about all the victims of Nathan Chasing Horse. I wonder if they’re complacent. Complacent in the sense that he was arrested and that he will serve prison time. As much as I wish, I had a magic wand to wave over them and say everything’s gonna be OK. That’s not really how the healing process takes place.
The reality is that for decades, and decades, there have been people like Nathan Chasing Horse coming into our communities. First, it was the missionaries, the Catholic priest, the Anglican priest they were people coming in with the savior complex, saying that they could save our savage souls. There’s nothing new about it. as indigenous people we’ve been exploited. We have consultants and professionals and even our own people coming in making money off of us. We have a born-again Christians coming in to convert us.
So what makes this so unique? I think the uniqueness of it is that he was a young man who society elevated him to a different status that’s one of a movie star. Just like a magic one all of a sudden he’s got status. I even goes so far as to pull up pull up the messiah complex where people want to be around him so they can get closer to God or a spiritual Isamar whatever you call it. The sad thing is Nathan Chasing Horse is a colonizer.
He’s made it a business to say to people look where we were submissive we lost her from through genocide, but look at me I’m a colonizer. I am dominant over white society, and IT can tell you how to elevate your status just like me. With all the hocus-pocus and magic around spiritual activism in the form of mythology for Spiritualism, like séances and card, reading, and witchcraft, and whatever thing that human beings have used throughout history. It’s nothing new like I said England, they believed in Druids they were drew it to believed in fairytales, and then the Romans came and colonize them, and they intern, the English started colonizing the entire world.
If an Nathan Chasing Horse gets away with this. If he gets away with these horrific crimes. Should he walk away? What does it say about indigenous girls and women? What does it say? It means that society is determining for us and even those girls who are yet to be born that we don’t exist before, were even born. Society has said that we’re we’re good as good as Deb. Yes the consciousness of the world is looking at this. But what is it? Are they actually looking at. I am concerned. Like the bigger picture is, does society really give a damn about indigenous girls and indigenous women.
See, that’s the question. That’s the stupid question. Understand this decades and decades this question has been asked. And decades and decades people have been trying to answer this. Yet the problem still exists because we’re fighting and trying to heal from white supremacy. I’m just one indigenous woman. There are thousands of indigenous women who have the same and similar voice but I’ve demonstrated in this blog. What makes me more unique than anybody else? You know I had the answer the answer is that I wrote about Nathan Chasing Horse. I wrote about one man.
The reality is as indigenous people we create it we created this man, and many other young men like him. We can look back 150 years and say yes, there have been people that society created to kill the indigenous girl or the indigenous woman. But we’re doing it to our own selves now. We are indigen as people have become colonizers. how do I come up with this conclusion you may ask. Because we created him we as a living, breathing organism have determined who is going to die and who’s going to live we’ve become a colonizers we have become no better than the Europeans colonized us. Yes they did a good job and those Indian Residential School don’t you think
We’re doing it to our own selves. We are a community small as it is community spread all over the Americas either in urban settings or on reserves for on reservations were ever in whichever country you live in. We created this mythology around spiritual activism. We did not find balance, because we were so egocentric and thinking that racism only affects indigenous people. When, in fact, systemic racism affects all people of color.
I know this is my own personal opinion and I believe I’m entitled to it. A lot of people reflect back the things I say to them. And a lot of times it’s difficult for me to hear what they say about me. From their eyes, they see how difficult my life has been. I mean we all have difficult lives. But what makes people think this? And the reality is because I’m indigenous.
I’ve lived so long in this life, and I speak English so well, but when I’m on the phone, nobody can tell if I’m indigenous, because I have a very very limited accent. I’ve had men swoon over my voice. I’ve lived in it entirely around non-indigenous people. I think my life is very unique in the sense that I have an isolated myself. Some people say that I’m a princess because I’ve got a live near a movie theater a mall 07 11 hospital fire fire stations like I have to be near modern conveniences and therefore I’m a princess. in any case I really appreciate my non-indigenous friends and I really appreciate the education I’ve earned. I’m very grateful for those colonizers who are my friends, who tell me straight to my face that it’s very difficult for them to check themselves.
So that’s what I wanted to write today in this blog. I realize in some of my blogs I just wrote a few paragraphs. I don’t know why it is now since Nathan Chasing Horse was arrested that I am going into these long, long essays.in any case, here’s my strategy, for the next time Nathan Chasing course appears in court. This will be on August 23, 2013. I will do a short press release within this blog. I am also doing some more posts as an introduction to the blog that I will be submitting and posting before August 23. I’m doing this at this as a strategy so that I’m going to be better prepared should journalists or curious people want to ask me questions. This way they can look at the blog and find their answers in my blog.
I just don’t really feel that. I could handle a lot of questions. I was a bit taken back in being interviewed. I didn’t really understand it until I realize that I have to do some work in this block my due diligence. It’s my voice it’s my perspective it’s my life and how I dealt with Nathan, Chasing, Horse and his followers. I don’t mind talking to the people who interviewed me prior. It’s a given that they asked me questions and I answered questions. It’s just that I want to be prepared a little better prepared for anybody else who wants to track me down.
Enclosing this little blog post I just want the reader to know they’ll be spelling mistakes. Grammatical, errors as I am dictating this post OK anyway, I hope I’ll have more of videos and audio tapes for you as I’ve had quite a few talks with various people with different opinions and discourse, and I think it would be interesting to hear their point of you.
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