Becomings-Unsettled? (Un)Braiding Settler-Treaty

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED?

(UN)BRAIDING SETTLER-TREATY LIFE WRITING

A Thesis

Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research

In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Curriculum and Instruction

University of Regina

Audrey Jennifer Aamodt

Regina, Saskatchewan

March, 2020

UNIVERSITY OF REGINA

FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH

SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE

Audrey Jennifer Aamodt, candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education, has presented a thesis titled, Becomings-Unsettled? (Un) Braiding Settler-Treaty Life Writing, in an oral examination held on March 13, 2020. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material.

External Examiner: *Dr. Jeannie Kerr, University of Winnipeg

Co-Supervisor: Dr. Jesse Bazzul, Curriculum & Instruction

Co-Supervisor Dr. Kenneth Montgomery, Adjunct

Committee Member: Dr. Michael Cappello, Curriculum & Instruction

Committee Member: **Dr. Anna-Leah King, Curriculum & Instruction

Committee Member: Dr. Emily Eaton, Department of Geography & Environmental Studies

Chair of Defense: Dr. Fanhua Zeng, Faculty of Graduate Studies & Research

*via ZOOM Conferencing **via Teleconferencing i

Abstract

Rather than viewing this abstract as a simple outline of the main ideas, the nuts and bolts, the meat and potatoes, the name of the game, and the bottom line, I consider it a story. It is another moment for practicing life writing as research.

On an early December morning, a large group of Canada geese gather on Pasqua

Lake in the Qu’appelle Valley, near a brief narrowing of the lake in the southwest. The lake ice is thick except for a peculiar patch of open water, an oddity for the season. Here the geese float and flap mostly at the edges together, preparing for the day ahead. Nearby some ice fishing huts perch atop the frozen surface, fires lit, rods hovering over drilled holes, awaiting a catch. We have gathered too, for a scholarly writing retreat. This abstract is one of my writing tasks. While it’s positioned first, I have left it for last, wrestling with its objectives and function. What is the story of this thesis?

This thesis is an altercation with academic writing, linearity, form and format, educational research, data, multiplicities of mistakes, goodness, and settler-colonial normative narratives. It stories theory by braiding, unbraiding, folding, and unfolding problematic normative narratives in turns and tangles, in the middles of mistakes. As a collection of textural braidways, it illustrates White settler-Canadian treaty responsibilities to land, water, air, and treaty partners—both human and more-than- human kin. These responsibilities include disrupting White, settler-colonial systems of supremacy and individual settler-Canadian good intentions. Such life writing plays with how becomings- (tearful, humble, ethical, unsettled) work while risking Indigenization of education and settler-treaty life writing as research. The offered self-stories are prayerful openings for living treaties with truthfulness, reciprocity, and humility. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? ii

In the afternoon, the geese take flight overhead as I walk along the shore, slipping and falling, in awe of the ice lifting at the edges while meeting the sand and rocks, green algae suspended in frozen formations. With each season, the water melts and flows and freezes again and again. Like algae, the self is suspended, both fixed and fluid, in life writing stories. Like geese, the self sometimes floats and flaps at the edges, part of a pack, and moves in lines of flight. Like fish, hunted, the self gets caught, hooked and tied to normative narratives, pulling taut-taught on the line. And the fish resist. The geese honk. The algae blooms. The self slips and falls.

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? iii

Acknowledgements

This thesis somewhat attends to land, territory, and treaty acknowledgement tensions throughout. Therefore, here I will simply note that this thesis was mostly written on and with Treaty 4 land and I “send greetings and thanks to all members of the natural world” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 107). I also recognize and extend gratitude to all those who have supported my scholarly thinking, writing, and related teaching activities. In particular, thank you to Dr. Jennifer Tupper who introduced me to life writing methodologies. The theoretical engagement of my original thesis committee—Dr. Paul

Hart, Dr. Shauneen Pete, and Dr. Carol Schick—is appreciated. Likewise, I am grateful for Dr. Anna-Leah King, Dr. Emily Eaton, and Dr. Michael Cappello who accepted the baton from the original committee and provoked further methodological tensions of settler-treaty life writing. Heartfelt thanks to my supervisors: Dr. Paul Hart who initially agreed to supervise my progress as a PhD student; Dr. Ken Montgomery who generously bolstered my resolve during growing pains, stalls, and shifts while reminding me that

“this is just another school project.” I am beginning to understand; and, Dr. Jesse Bazzul whose enduring guidance, counsel, feedback, and friendship has been pivotal for helping me strengthen this thesis, shaping how I have come to understand scholarship, writing, and academia. Thank you for your incredible commitment and attention to my work, and for the opportunity to teach and write alongside you. Also, I acknowledge the graduate scholarships and teaching assistantships I received from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina. I would also like to thank the Faculty of Education,

University of Regina, for the opportunities to teach as a sessional instructor and now as a faculty member lecturer. Finally, much gratitude to Morgan, Robyn, and Willow. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? iv

Dedication

This life writing is dedicated to all my ancestors and my settler-immigrant great- grandparents—the Dietrichs; the Zuntis; the Budds, and the Aamodts, their Canadian descendants, to treaty partners and all relations, and all the relatives that are part of these stories and more; all kin, “including not just our human family, but the animals, plants, birds, fish, the water, air, and the earth . . . . all Creation” (Mzinegiizhigo-kwe Bédard,

2008, p. 96). It is dedicated to Treaty 4 relationships and wider relationships between

Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada and beyond. May we all work towards miyo-wîcêhtowin, wâhkôhtowin, wîcihitowin, and wîtaskêwin “as long as the grass grows, the sun rises from the east and sets in the west, and the rivers flow” (Elder Alma

Kytwayhat, cited in Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 20). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? v

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... i Acknowledgements ...... iii Dedication ...... iv Table of Contents ...... v Textural Braidways: An Overture to the Reader, Or, a Preface for ‘The Man’ ...... 1 Bungled Middles┃ pipon Winter ...... 10 Mistakes in the Middles ...... 10 Life-Letters...... 10 Winter Writing ...... 14 Multiplicities of Mistakes ...... 17 Recipes of Mistaken Identities ...... 21 Braiding in (Lines of) Flight ...... 25 Ravenous Flying in the Face of Nag ...... 25 Autobiographical Selves in the Middles...... 29 Braidings with Turns and Tangles ...... 32 Sweetgrass for Sale...... 35 Safe and Sound...... 38 Whispers and Lies ...... 40 Settler-Treaty Life-Writing ...... 42 I Am Not Racist, Am I? ...... 42 Over and Through a Sliding-Door Threshold ...... 46 Subtle and Sly Settler-Colonialism ...... 48 A Settler-Treaty Woman’s Moon Time Mis-Steps ...... 50 Ecological Ethics ...... 53 Ethical Relationality ...... 53 Response-abilities Beyond Earth Day...... 58 Environmental Education: Pretty As a Peacock ...... 63 Reciprocity ...... 67 Braiding Wilderness: a Counter-Wilderness Interbraid ...... 72 The Most Eligible Conifer, by Willow ...... 73 Puddles in Paradise, by Audrey ...... 74 From the Mint Julep, by Morgan ...... 77 Interbraid: Counter-Wilderness...... 78 Delusional Deleusians┃miyoskamin Spring ...... 80 Processes of Thesis-Writing ...... 80 A 3-Minute Thesis ...... 80 Questions of Becomings ...... 83 Abstracting an Abstract ...... 88 adrift, living lost...... 88 Becomings-data ...... 93 BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? vi

Relations ...... 100 Becomings-Participant: PARTICIPANTS NEEDED ...... 100 Willow and Morgan...... 101 Robyn...... 103 miyo ethics...... 104 Settling On An Audience ...... 108 A Goose Moon, Niski-pîsim ...... 113 Surprise? Choosing Easy ...... 117 Analyses With No Meaning ...... 122 Countering and Unbraiding Settler Narratives...... 122 Feminist Bewitchings ...... 127 Call Me a Settler ...... 132 Blocks of Becomings, Intensities, and Turning Over Theory...... 135 Mis-takes: Appropriation Problematics ...... 139 Treaty 4 Gathering: Am I a Treaty Partner? Becomings-TreatyPartner? ...... 139 Prairie Detours: Treaty Inheritance ...... 144 Land Learnings ...... 149 Métissage Mis-takes: How Has Indigenization Been For You? ...... 151 Braiding Canadianness: a Counter-Canadian Interbraid ...... 155 Such Experiences are Educational, by Morgan ...... 156 I Am Canadian, By Robyn ...... 158 Sod-Made, By Audrey ...... 160 Patriotism is Dangerous, By Willow ...... 164 Interbraid: Counter-Canadian ...... 165 Blundered Becomings-┃nîpin Summer ...... 170 Becomings-Tearful ...... 170 Tearful Discomfort ...... 170 Tear Stains...... 173 Settler Tears ...... 176 Tears and Pee ...... 182 Becomings-Humble ...... 185 Cookies Don’t Count: ReconciliACTION Troubles ...... 185 An Easy Mistake To Make? ...... 195 Treaty Land Acknowledgements: That’s Stupid ...... 198 Openings To Humilities ...... 205 Becomings-Ethical ...... 206 ‘To Begin In a Good Way’ ...... 206 Catholic Confessions...... 214 What Is a ‘Good’ White Settler Teacher To Do?...... 215 Catholic Education for Reconciliation? ...... 220 Becomings-Unsettled ...... 223 Sod-Made Memories ...... 223 Suspended Indigenization ...... 228 Becomings-indigenous? ...... 231 Tipi Teaching ...... 236 BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? vii

Becomings-Curricula: Curricula for Mistakes ...... 238 Braiding Water Places: A Counter-Ripples Interbraid ...... 241 Transfer Beach, By Robyn...... 242 The Drop Off, By Willow ...... 244 Lake Living, By Audrey ...... 245 Interbraid: Counter-Ripples ...... 247 Unbraidings and Tangled Tales ┃takwâkin Autumn ...... 251 Breaking Up with Life Writing? ...... 251 miyo-wîcêhtowin, Making Good Relationships ...... 256 wâhkôhtowin, Kin ...... 259 The Ladybugs ...... 260 Eisenia Fetida ...... 261 miskâsowin ...... 263 Purslane and Raspberries ...... 263 Understanding Who We Are ...... 266 tâpwêwin, Telling Difficult and Necessary Truths ...... 269 wîcihitowin, Reciprocity ...... 275 wîtaskêwin, Peaceful Coexistence ...... 278 Medusa ...... 278 kihci-asotamâtowin, Sacred Promises ...... 282 tapahtêyimisowin, Humility...... 287 Trouble ...... 293 References ...... 295 Appendix ...... 311

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? viii

List of Figures

Figure 1. Four stranded storied braid with folding turns and crosses...... 3

Figure 2. Textural braidways illustrate Canadian (red), white-settler (white), treaty

responsibilities to land (green), water (blue), and treaty partners—both human and

more-than-human kin (folding with reciprocity)...... 4

Figure 3. Storied strands emerge side by side...... 7

Figure 4. Make a mess of it: Representing knots, loose ends, and flyaways...... 8

Figure 5. An abstract letter...... 88

Figure 6. Pre-emption document...... 88

Figure 7. An absurd solicitation technique...... 100

Figure 8. Translation, Cree Online Dictionary...... 107

Figure 9. The spelling mistake was unintentional and the students were embarrassed by

their error. Yet, it shows how the settler-colonial machine even uses mistakes to

grease its gears...... 186

Figure 10. Student created, event marketing material...... 188

Figure 11. Red dress exhibit...... 189

Figure 12. The revision to the email is underlined...... 208 1

Textural Braidways: An Overture to the Reader, Or, a Preface for ‘The Man’

Dear Reader, I baulk at the prospect of telling you too much before you are snapped up with these stories and middle moments . . . in a block of becoming like the wasp and the orchid . . . like roots and microorganisms1. In favour of creating an opening for your own creative readings, I lean towards telling you too little. Though I vigorously resist succumbing to appetites for clarity, coherence, and rationality, I have reluctantly decided it may be sufferable to offer some brief thoughts about the disorganization of this storied collection. In doing so, I trust that you will read with sass, a brazen irreverence

(scorn and mockery) for normative modes of reading and also for any suggestions of how to read differently, in this case, especially textural braidways.

Even with sass, you may experience feeling as though I have left you to flounder in frustration, to throw up your hands and say it is disorganized and unclear. However, I would rather we feel irritated and unfulfilled instead of romance, conformity, and unity since, for example, mythicizing a unified Canada with good, helpful, sensical citizens has caused a lot of grief. Instead, perhaps we might feel moved, “in the way a crowbar in a willing hand envelops an energy of prying” (Massumi, 1987, p. xv), to make something of the mess we are in, something maybe also confusing, upsetting, and disconcerting. I view this possibility of making a mess as a kind of resistance to settler-colonial pedagogies, epistemologies, and normativities. In rendering this as a possible way to read with resistance, I hope you will take your own turns. I hope you might

read it as a challenge: to pry open the vacant spaces that would enable you to build your life and those of the people around you into a plateau of intensity that

1 “a block of becoming that snaps up the wasp and the orchid . . .. There is a block of becoming between young roots and certain microorganisms, the alliance between which is effected by the materials synthesized in the leaves (rhizosphere)” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 283). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 2

would leave afterimages of its dynamism that could be reinjected into still other lives, creating a fabric of heightened states between which any number, the greatest number, of connecting routes would exist. (Massumi, 1987, p. xv)

Dear Reader, I hope not to close down your own movements. This is one of the reasons I have hesitated to tell you exactly how you might read this collection.

Nevertheless, I will write this partially for ‘The Man,’ with a nod for the two men who are my supervisors. Compelled by one of them in particular to provide some introductory assistance, to help readers engage with textual braidways, I oblige. Here, The Man is used as an exaggeration to represent the institutions of our lives, those founded on systems of patriarchy, patriotism, nationalism, colonialism, White supremacy, classism, capitalism, ableism, and heteronormativity. In this sense, the University can be seen as one of the oppressive systems that I am tied to and trapped by. I abhor that I am, to a certain extent, writing a preface to check off this box for The Man, while also supposing to subvert it.

Undermining and attempting to be acceptable are highly incompatible. When a desire to be admissible or a longing to finally pass takes over, creativity and possibilities tend to shut down. Then, I begin to do things as the system prescribes. Guidelines are consulted.

Templates are followed. What happens if they are not?

Purposefully, I have written in disjointed ways, “as a holding together of disparate elements” (Massumi, 1987, p. x). Braiding stories together, and with theory, while retaining distinct strands is used as a method to interrogate problematic normative narratives that my self reproduces. The written braids may be understood as drawing from narrative inquiry, autoethnography, collective auto/biography, life writing, literary métissage, and other methodologies, along with both critical and poststructural perspectives, but are also viewed as not necessarily or exactly any of these frameworks. It BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 3

is both/and as well as neither/nor, and more so multiplicities in between where boundaries are blurring. The collection of self-stories attempts to disrupt normative narratives that assume we can know in full, that one thing flows neatly into the next, that lived experiences are easily recalled with clarity, and that interpretation of them produces straightforward knowledge of the self, relationships, and the world.

Concepts—such as mistakes, humility, reciprocity, kin, etc.—show up as storied strands, folded together in turns and crosses (Figure 1). Sometimes a braid has three

strands, sometimes four, sometimes more. For

example, Counter-Wilderness and Counter-ripples

are, respectively, critical interbraidings of three

participant self-stories. Whereas, Counter-Canadian

interbraids four participant self-stories. Differently,

Bungled Middles, Delusional Deleusians, and

Blundered Becomings are composed of four strands,

each made up of four strands themselves.

Divergently, I conceptualize Unbraidings and Figure 1. Four stranded storied braid with folding turns and crosses. Tangled Tales as a large knot of loose ends and flyaways. Each of the strands may be thought of as a Turn rather than a subcomponent of a Chapter, in any proper sense. Together they create a thicker braid, a messy one, with strands of different girths, lengths, and shaggy smoothness (Figure 2). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 4

Figure 2. Textural braidways illustrate Canadian (red), white-settler (white), treaty responsibilities to land (green), water (blue), and treaty partners—both human and more-than-human kin (folding with reciprocity).

One of my primary intentions is for Canadians, more specifically White, settler2-

Canadians, to engage with this storied collection. However, this is not meant to limit readership. Others might find it useful or interesting as they consider their, perhaps troubling, interactions with settler-Canadians like me. In this vein, I especially invite a consideration of the ways that colonialism permeates the lives, hearts, and minds of all people in a settler-colonial state, including First Nations, Métis, Inuit Peoples, (new)

Canadians, and (newer) immigrants, as well as refugees. Yet, I suggest that Canadians and newer immigrants have very different tasks than Indigenous Peoples in Canada. For instance, I assert that Canadian treaty responsibilities include disrupting White, settler- colonial systems of supremacy. In this way, settler-treaty life writing is a form of resistance. Stories are political. Stories are also part of a political pack.

So, I seek to take up such responsibilities from a White, settler-Canadian subject position. Throughout, I intentionally re-center myself. However, I do so as a potential site of disruption. In this way, the individualized storied moments simultaneously illustrate reproductions of normative narratives and create critical potential for different stories to be told. They resist settler-colonial structures even while being part of them. Perhaps this too is another mistake, another move to innocence (Tuck & Yang, 2012). That is, White,

2 “Settler describes a set of behaviors, as well as a structural location, but is eschewed as an identity” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 7). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 5

settler-Canadian stories inevitably re-center settler-colonialism when they reproduce normative narratives of settler futurity (Tuck & Yang, 2012). These kinds of mistakes cannot be escaped. Settler self-stories are always risky, often presupposing a settler future. They get tangled up in good intentions.

Yet, I offer these textural braidways (Figure 2) to problematize settler-Canadian good intentions and to imagine a different kind of futurity, the kind that resists a reproduction of settler-colonialism and White supremacy. This hopes that future relations between settler descendants (Canada as a settler-colonial nation) and Indigenous Peoples

(First Nations, the Métis Nation, and Inuit) could be formed through something other than settler-colonialism and White supremacy. Treaty life writing features subtle moments of settler-colonial normative narratives that demand Indigenous Peoples to ‘go away, that works for me’ or ‘work for me, and then go away’3 and prompts simultaneous opportunities to imagine different treaty relations4.

Dear Reader, I encourage you to practice reading these textural braidways rhizomatically. Peek at the table of contents: What jumps out for you there? Maybe that’s the thing to read first. Though the table of contents somewhat has a braided order, it is not necessary to read a whole section of strands together. In practicing rhizomatic reading, use multiple folding points to engage with concepts of interest. For example, reciprocity is explicitly listed in the table of contents. You could read that turn, see what

3 Paraphrased from Veracini (2011). 4 While a focus on treaty may be interpreted as conflating all relations between Indigenous and non- Indigenous peoples in Canada, it also reminds that Canadians exist because of treaties and that First Nations, the Métis Nation and Inuit never gave up, surrendered, or ceded land–contrary to the English wording of many of the numbered treaties. Rather, the First Nations who made treaties with the Crown agreed to share land in peaceful coexistence. Therefore, treaty life writing is employed as potential sites for unsettling Canadian normative narratives. Further, the focus on treaty is not meant to stand in for the widely complex relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples in Canada. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 6

emerges, and then maybe you’ll keep reading about that. You might decide to search the document for reciprocity as a keyword. In a tangle, there are other places that keyword search might rhizomatically take you. I have taken the liberty to list some internal hyperlinks for a spattering of possible rhizomatic roots-routes. Be aware that once you click a link, you will fly somewhere else in the writing and there is no quick link back to this paragraph. Therefore, I suggest you read the rest of this overture unless you are ready to rush into the rhizomatic middles. To turn over reciprocity, you could potentially read braiding as acts of reciprocity, miyo ethics, treaty land acknowledgements, and various other strands of your choosing. Your rhizomatic reading of reciprocity might also sprout other concepts to poke around with, like response-abilities or ceremony, reading what seems like backwards and forwards all at once. Notice wîcihitowin too. It might become so tangled that you react as you would to pulling on a tangle of hair in the shower drain, with quivers and mumbled grumbles.

Here, it may be useful to interrupt and note that I am not a fluent nêhiyawêwin

(Cree y dialect) speaker. Intentionally, I weave with some nêhiyawêwin concepts to disrupt English as a dominant language and euro-western worldviews that are reproduced by the English language. It also is a way for me to practice reciprocity with those I have learned these word-concepts from. I have chosen not to provide a glossary for these terms since I want to avoid the implication that translations, definitions, and dictionaries could adequately encompass their meaning or that it is possible for me, an mono-linguistic

English speaker, to skillfully do so.

If you get lost in rhizomatic reading, that could be okay. If you yearn for more stability, you could return to reading with a braid. In such instances, you might read the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 7

interbraids which showcase participant stories. This is also an invitation to be in relationship with us through our collective autobiographical stories and accompanying counter-narratives. Perhaps something we’ve shared resonates with you or reminds you of a story of your own, or not. Consider how your own stories relate and are different.

Difference is something great. Difference is where the Life is. Also, what stories are silenced or continue to be missing? What are the limits, the delusions, the insufficiencies, the failings of settler-Canadian self-stories? The stories I offer are only glitches of potential.

If you get stuck, you can always revisit the table of contents and select another moment in the middles, maybe this time reading rhizomatically with another keyword concept. Instead of reading rhizomatically, you may prefer to read with some linearity, perceiving the table of contents as a list. I’m almost certain that’s what this thesis committee mostly did. Quite commonly, page numbers seem to govern the linear order of things. Therefore, it is often assumed, without much critique, that this is natural and normal, that it is the best way to compose, arrange, and communicate ideas. Aligning with western concepts of time, it suggests that one thing follows the next, and so on. However, I invite you to imagine the Figure 3. Storied strands emerge side by side. storied strands collected here as being assembled alongside each other, cheek-to-cheek and shoulder-to-shoulder, or maybe BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 8

more aptly, as hair emerges side-by-side from your head (Figure 3), rather than simply advancing onwards or downwards. “The ideal for a book would be to lay everything out on a plane of exteriority . . . on a single page, the same sheet: lived events, historical determinations, concepts, individuals, groups, social formations” (Deleuze & Guattari,

1987, p. 9). You might be thinking that this doesn’t really make any sense. That’s okay with me. Instead, maybe wonder if and how it might make something in between sense and nonsense. That’s ridiculous? Is there no such thing? Is it only one or the other?

Maybe that’s only a story we’ve been telling ourselves.

Think of all of the storied bits like the middle of a messy braid, weaved with other strands and falling apart. The whole thing is unstable. If you begin to read at what seems like the beginning, or the end, that’s fine too. The beginning isn’t really the start, and the end provides no closure. There is no conclusion in sight. It is all middles. “You can take a concept that is particularly to your liking and jump with it to its next appearance. They tend to cycle back” (Massumi, 1987, p. xv). For example, consider that many of the stories are full of mistakes. The writing turns mistakes over and over and over again. I like to think of this process as taking mistaken turns that fold with each other. Many

times I have felt I should clean up some

of the writing, to tie off loose ends, to

correct the mistakes. Then I began to

wonder how to represent the knots and

loose ends, how to be unkempt and

Figure 4. Make a mess of it: Representing knots, loose ends, and flyaways. disorderly, attempting to represent flyaways, frays, and a resistance to cleaning up and tying off (Figure 4). You might wish BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 9

for neatness and precision. At times, I offer neither.

The text has texture. The writing is textural, both braided and falling apart.

Prompted to provide a visual representation for textural braidways, I first tried using digital formats. It was wholly unsatisfying. I could not make it work like paint or, better yet, yarn. For a minute, ruminate on yarn and yarning. This thesis is a collection of stories, of long, rambling tales. Yarning is what our lives are made of. In this way, I view life writing processes as rigorous woolgathering, literally collecting tufts of ponderment.

This took some time to ‘figure out’—to both theorize and visualize. With many long pauses, I waited and brooded and felt bad about both. I told myself I needed to hurry up.

But it came in slow movements, intermittent and broken ones, with pools of tears and mounds of ice cream. These figurings are one version of a map, possible entries, not arborescent knowledge, nor a rigid how-to manual for becoming or being some sort of

Unsettled-settler. The game of school I’m playing here is an attempt to stop playing the game of school or at least to play at it badly, which I hope means I’m playing it the best

I’ve ever played. Indeed, this thought is very silly and contradictory. It is arrogant too, as settlers are wont to be. Regardless, there it is. Dear Reader, you have your own figuring to do, a reader-writer reciprocity; I dare you to make a mess of it.

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 10

Bungled Middles┃ pipon Winter

Mistakes in the Middles

Life-Letters

Friday, November 3, 2017

Dear me, I have decided to write life-letters to myself. Life-letters are like postcards—though somewhat lengthy ones—with tiny, scrunched, hand-written notes about places, moments, and experiences. They are personal, yet unconcealed . . . exposed. This Regina, Saskatchewan postcard is sent in the mail, the snail kind, with a stamp of the Queen in the corner. Life- letters are like memos—the serious kind, the ones sent by email from the School Division

Office to communicate something necessary and perhaps even important. Life-letters are like messages, both notes-to-self and, simultaneously, also like talking with all my relations. You are welcome to read them, these self-stories as life-letters, if you wish.

They are not hidden, like a private diary of a teenage girl, under the mattress. Tending towards seriousness, I foolishly kid myself as I attempt to lighten up a bit and play around a little with my own life-writing (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009).

You might have noticed the date. I include it on purpose though the date doesn’t really matter. This one occurs now, today, as a life-letter postcard, while I sit at a corner spot in a University hallway. People pass by as the first snowflakes of the season sail down on the other side of the floor-to-vaulted-ceiling window. This is not really the beginning; it is another middle moment. Time is a construct, as you might already know and feel. The time I have lived (and live) is colonial. When I was young, I learned how to understand the School Bell and what it signified. Order. Structure. Civilization. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 11

Goodness. The terrible bell I followed so well. Count the years. How old are you? What do you want to be when you grow up? Hurry up and finish that. There is a deadline.

The date is only a reminder that self-stories happen every day. “The truth about stories is that that’s are all we are,” claimed Thomas King (2003, p. 2). I am made up of self-stories. So are you. So are we. Our relationships are stories. Stories are life. Life is the stories we are told and the stories we become. Life-stories make up “my anxious little identity, just a well-battered mix of colonialism, heterosexism, classism and racism. All of them reinforce each other, all are needed . . . none of them can be un-made from the mix” (Chapman, 2005, pp. 262–263). Dated life-letters wink at each day in its context. It is the year of Canada-Colonialism 150. “Stories can control our lives,” they are

“wondrous things. And they are dangerous” (King, 2003, p. 9). School stories control us and Canadian stories are dangerous. These two are tangled together, rooted, established, entrenched, and fortified. These are the kind of weedy roots that are difficult to pull up from the ground. They always grow back.

I am getting ahead of things here, but it does not really matter. I allow myself such indulgences; writing what I am not supposed to, in ways that undermine the template. I have made a pact with myself, a promise to let go of supposed to. Always wanting to be good, to meet and exceed expectations, I realize that that, too, impossibly, has to go. Nevertheless, at the same time it never leaves. Somehow the expectations remain, even as I attempt to be liberated from them. It has taken a while to come to this. I have been afraid, afraid of making mistakes. And I have made many. School did this to me. The blame rests there. Also, this is my fault for being such a good student. all. the.

Time; for wanting to please, for trying my best not to disappoint. Repeat: “Stories can BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 12

control our lives,” they are “wondrous things. And they are dangerous” (King, 2003, p.

9). These life-letters are partial self-stories of how School is the culprit, the wrongdoer, the scoundrel, the sinner, the villain; offending and evading; normalized and made innocent. And so am I. School stories have controlled my life and I bet it has controlled your life too. School is dangerous.

I am teasing myself, and you too perhaps. But I am not joking. This collection of life-letters is quite messy. I mean it. This disorder is my thesis. Suppose that what it is supposed to be is pointless. What do Education degrees do? What if they mostly just reproduce School, with its colonial-industrial undertones under the guise of goodness? It is not funny. I have spent a lot of time (and angst) pretending that I believe in the benefits of School. I suspect I may get in trouble for saying so. I would not be surprised. In fact, I would accept it. At long last I am finally disrupting the class on purpose. I might get sent to the principal’s office. Rather, the Dean might request to see me. Do you find yourself wanting to argue with me? My knee is bouncing with apprehension. Will you disagree with me? No need. There is a quiet, little voice whispering to me that School is useful, offering the potential to help us become better people—maybe. The argument is clear: It provides experiences that aim to assist us in learning about worldly things, at least, and maybe even how to be well in the world. What is so wrong with that? It is a whisper—

Who put it there?

Maybe I won’t get in trouble. That’s more likely, if my past record is any indication. School has been good to me. I have always done well, followed its rules, been part of the system, mostly fit in, got straight ehhhs. More than that, I have made a living,

I may even dare to say a career, on it. Beyond a job, it has been like a pilgrimage, a BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 13

passage, a walking. Desperately, I wanted it to be straightforward. At first it seemed like being a teacher might be an easy kind of path to follow. So what is my problem then?

Why am I so disenchanted? School needs to do better. I need to do better. Walking away after spending only 5 years as a high school teacher, using graduate school as an excuse to run, felt painfully necessary. Whispers: Who in their right mind would quit such good, stable, employment? In my right mind, perhaps in yours too, it was acceptable only if I was going back to School. School: It is next to impossible to escape. In all its ambiguity it follows us around, framed as solutions to problems, as a necessity for happy lives, a good world, and prosperous futures.

Although I am playing the rebel here, being out of line puts me on a precarious edge, with the jitters no less. Mostly, I would like to avoid any conflict with School.

Truthfully, I would like to avoid all conflict, including internal conflict and any potential conflict with you. I have been trained/schooled to be nice, to get along well with others, to do the right thing, to be a good girl. I am afraid to upset someone—both you and myself. I fear not being good enough. Yet risk it, I shall. Maybe many of us are afraid. I still have to do something, in spite of and because of such fear. We are all called to action

(Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015a). That means me. Through these little life-letters I remind myself to contribute, if only slightly and in the smallest of ways, towards better relationships. Throughout, I risk myself . . . the death of who I think

I am,5 while more deeply understanding my social positions, my identities, and processes

5 Here, the idea of risking the death of the self comes from Foucault (1990), “not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what it is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself” (p. 8); and, “maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are” (Foucault, 1982, p. 216); as well as from Deleuze and Guattari (1987), “To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves . . . . We have been aided, inspired, multiplied” (p. 3). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 14

of subjectivity. These life-letters are also about ethical subjectivity, filled with wonderings about what constitutes ethical White-Canadian subjects.

Winter Writing

Strangely, I awoke very early this morning. Writing thoughts served as an alarm and, unlike the radio, there was no snooze button; turning them off seemed doubtful.

Peeking over the edge of the bed, the red-digital 4:53 stared out, surprising me. I never wake up this early by choice. Bargaining with sleep and time, an internal dialogue, I will just write a few prompts down, quickly, so that I will not forget. Then, I will sneak back to bed. The screen felt blinding as I lifted the laptop lid. Dim. Dim. Dimmer. There. I can manage that. A few jot notes. Click Click Click. Tippy toes back to the darkness and warmth of the covers, my body’s heat still lingering there. Calm breathing with closed eyelids. In my head, cradled in a pillow nest, another writing thought pops up. Maybe my dreams will hold it for me, I wondered. After a few back and forths, I gave in and got up.

Each time I laid back down, there was another thought that insisted it be written. Can it wait a couple more hours? But the words swirled like the night’s snow in the air, until they came to rest here; the white page like the soft ground outside. Winter is a nice season for writing life-letters. It lends me a quiet contemplation to take time, to go slow, to slow down.

This morning, Valerie-Lee Chapman (2005) was in my dream-thoughts. Recalling my first reading of her (counter) story of making a good Victorian sponge cake, the excitement, inspiration, and wonder I felt then returned to me. Encouraged by her scholarly openness, her mode of vulnerability, her willingness to take this chance, of which I hadn’t experienced in academia before, I remind myself that being risky is also BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 15

how I want to write self-stories. Life-letters are necessarily vulnerable; they both hint at and, sometimes, must be quite explicit about (my) identities. Chapman’s work allows me to play with the seriousness of traditional doctoral writing expectations. In this way, I pretend that I am simply writing letters and it relieves some of the pressure to write it right. She asked herself “what narrative strategies work best, how can I make my work accessible, so that people don’t fall asleep reading” it (p. 260)? Similarly, I am curious about writing ways that wake me up early in the morning and keep me awake, compelling me to continue. Heaven forbid, as my grandma used to say, that I fall asleep at the keyboard, making key prints on my cheek where pillow creases should be.

Winter life-letters are my game6. A ritual to help me live theory. “Theory should be useful, and understandable” (Chapman, 2005, p. 261). Of course, different theories help us to think with a variety of perspectives (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). However, I argue that theory must extend beyond just talking about thinking. It is meant to do something. Instead of finding out what they might do and how theory might work in life,

I often get caught in prescriptive academic traps, the kinds that bite and bite hard, with jaws of specific methodological traditions and proper theoretical applications clenched tightly. They lie in wait, with toothy, wide open mouths, ready to snap my head off, tear me in half, or crush my bones. Rusty metal hidden near tunneled entrances, like those with a spring trigger set to trap moles and gophers in prairie gardens, send me into fits of agony followed by prolonged paralysis. This trap: What is the point of these letters?

What is the value of self-story research? The bite leaves a bloody mark, a sinking in,

6 Partially a truth-game, i.e., Foucault’s (2008) parrhesia; a critical game of exploring how certain kinds of truth, knowledge, and ways of knowing and being are represented with autobiographical writing, while others are left out, missed, hidden, silenced, forgotten, unseen. Truth-telling is a game of weighty responsibility. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 16

compelling me to practice following particular methodological traditions and to apply theory7 properly, in specifically legitimate ways.

Yesterday, a close friend of mine forwarded the email announcing her doctoral defense. That trap is set for next week. It included her abstract along with the specific questions that her research sought to answer. It is good work, the right kind of PhD work, the kind that is expected of us. This is not that. I feel great tension as I resist defining clear research questions; numbering them in order: one, two, three. It is another trap, I think. School has done this to us, trained us to be this way, to think and represent our thinking in ways that force limits, even with good intentions. Instead, I offer these life- letters as a way to poke holes in these sanctioned customs, to attempt to trick the traps. It is not a perfect plan, since it is nearly impossible to overthrow School. But what option do we/I have? I have fallen in the traps for far too long, over and over again. One day I might be quicker, more intelligent, better suited to dismantle the traps. But for now I dodge and duck and sabotage, with naughty misbehavior as my methodological strategy.

These life-letters are mischievous lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

Through this life-writing, I explore what it is like to live this theoretical figuration. Could

I dare to “give up worrying about what Deleuze might have intended and use him in [my] own work ‘to free life from where it’s trapped, to trace lines of flight’ (Deleuze,

1990/1995, p. 141) into a different way of being in the world” (St. Pierre, 2004b, p. 285)?

I wonder how lines of flight work and what they do. This is the game of writing these life-letters. Where will the flight take me, take us? Hopefully it will cause multiplicities of disruptions and eruptions of unsettled and ethical becomings. I wonder, too, how to

7 In particular here, the ways I take up critical, post-humanist, and post-structural theories throughout worries me most. It may become clear that I don’t really understand any of it. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 17

make becomings work: becomings-tearful, becomings-humble, becomings-ethical, becomings-unsettled. Maybe becomings work by making—that is, by producing—many, many mistakes.

Multiplicities of Mistakes

Certainly this entire project is a big mistake. Indeed, it is a collection of more than one mistake; mistakes upon mistakes. At every turn, these life-letters are full of multiplicities of mistakes. I summon my vow to thwart traditional traps, all those procedures for a good thesis: be correct. It must be error-free. Do your best to do it right.

Hope to be held up as credible, valid, useful, and trustworthy. What if I set validity aside?

How dare I! Defiantly, Patti Lather What is a mistake, exactly? (2006) calls validity a problem, - There is nothing exact about it. Okay, in a way . . . what are they? “aporias of legitimation” (p. 51). - All of these things, and maybe more, show up now and then: Boldly, I suspend the assumption • moments of mis-stepping and mis-taking • problems encountered that this work is right—perfect, • misbehaviorings • a faux pas infallible, correct, or True.8 It is, • a perception of being wrong and I am, irrational, illogical, and • a pedagogy of mistakes: to engage mistakes unscientific; emotional—mad. • mistakes are failures • mistakes are the stuff of nonsense Instead of good, these life-letters • mistakes produce trouble What if you don’t get in trouble? What if it’s are questionable and question good something terrible/good you don’t expect or can do nothing with? intentions—especially my own, • mistakes are modes of becomings- tearful, humble, ethical, unsettled especially Canadian treaty land mis-taking. I seek to be an “unbearable questioner” (Foucault, 2008, p. 18), a dissident to

8 I use a capital T to denote universality or absoluteness. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 18

ongoing colonization through schooling.

If I have implied that I have repeated many of the same mistakes over and over, without learning anything; this was not my intention and is also a mistake. Likely I have done so and, of course, this too has happened. My point is that mistakes are impossible to avoid. At the same time, I notice the problematic binary in this language: good/bad, right/wrong, perfection/mistake. The English language is somewhat flawed for this reason. It defaults to either/or, this/that, without possibilities of becomings that come up through the middles9 of things. “A becoming is neither one nor two, nor the relation of the two; it is the in-between” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 293).

Mistakes are everywhere, not only on one or the other end of a coin but also in the middles. Moreover, middles are not on a spectrum but always perpendicular to it

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 293). No longer interested in a continuum of bad-better- best, I focus only on my many mistakes. Mistakes are failures, the “failure to understand that push us against the limits of interpretive ways of knowing toward a recognition of those limits that were binding and disallowing of productive resistances” (Jackson &

Mazzei, 2012, p. 85). Mistakes are nonsense and “Deleuze maintained that it was only out of nonsense that thinking could occur” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 85). In engaging with mistakes, there is the potential to think and be differently. Mistakes assist “the knower’s straying afield of [them]self” (Foucault, 1985, p. 8).

There once was a professor who asked me if calling my work a mistake meant that I was thinking of quitting. Along with a few others, she had attended my early

9 This spelling is intentional; a purposeful grammatical error. The playful plural denotes multiplicities rather than conceptualizing the middle as a singular location or space. A pin cannot be dropped on a map to direct us to the middle of things. Middles are much wider than that. They are the expanse. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 19

morning session during a spring conference on studies in education. It was the first time I spoke publicly and specifically about this writing and thinking. At one point, standing up at the podium beside my slideshow, talking about (my) mistakes, I felt emotional and a few tears dropped as I talked. Though there were some sympathetic and supportive colleagues of mine in the room, this particular professor and I were strangers. Afterwards, as we exited the classroom space, we stopped in the gloomy grey-green tiled university hallway to exchange pleasantries, or so it seemed. Quickly, she blurted, Are you thinking of quitting? Such an interpretation of my making mistakes disclosure-device had not occurred to me. Taken aback, I replied, no, not at all. More truthfully, I could have replied ‘not anymore.’ There was a time, near the end of my first year of PhD classes, that I thought seriously of quitting the program. But it had not happened since. Strangely, once I began acknowledging and accepting mistakes, the urge to give up began to dissipate. However, it seemed that the word mistake had rendered her unable to imagine otherwise. It is not really her fault. School did it to us.

What a wonderful reminder of how schooling—teachers, students, courses, studying; the search for (certain kinds of) knowledge10—assumes that we must always be or become right, or at least closer to being correct. More and more and more right. Erase those mistakes. Use pencil for math. Edit your work. Neatly now. Do not let anyone see your weaknesses. Present your best attempt and hope it is good enough. Definitely do not howl. Crying is not an option. The narrowest of margins are left for mistakes, for exploration, for curiosity, for self-questioning, for living this complex life. However, what if the best of life is in the fullness of mistakes, wee ones and great ones all tangled

10 In particular here, western, scientific epistemologies are implied as normative modes of knowledge production. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 20

together in an impossible mess? “A becoming is always in the middle; one can only get it by the middle” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 293). What if mistakes are becomings?

Then, why should school and learning processes pretend to be different, pretend to be perfect, pretend to lead us to have any right answers? Perhaps we would be better served if education left us with more questions than good answers. Nevertheless, I would not suggest that making mistakes is the overarching goal of school and life, that consequences don’t matter, nor that all mistakes are okay and will always be forgiven.

Still, I am reminded to let go, little by little, of anticipating rightness and righteousness in these life-letters. Throughout, I invite myself and the reader towards a questioning (a dismantling?) of the right/wrong binary, of the assumption that being error-free is the goal in education and in life, while mistakes are to be avoided at all costs.

To help with this nonsensical endeavor, I have disorganized these life-letters as turns and braids, folds and crosses, bungles and blunders, delusions and unbraided tangled tales, rather than a more common six-chapter structure. Instead of presenting some version of a usual template—such as, 1) Introduction, 2) Literature Review, 3)

Methods and Methodology, 4) Analysis, 5) Discussion, 6) Conclusion—clearly in order and checking the rules, I use strands of three, four, and more in (un)braided forms to notice and interrupt some normal presumptions of what graduate research and theses, and life for that matter, should or must look like. I offer up the following life-letters more like strands of thoughts—all of them somewhat mistaken, confounding, jumbled, and twisted; confused and confusing; muddled and mad; all of them potentially unsettling to the settler-colonial-Canadian self.

There are mistakes in the messages and messages in the mistakes. Beyond the old BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 21

adage of learning from these, I play with these mistakes to help me think, question, and live in the middles of things; to notice that our lives are far from straightforward, linear progressions of growth and decay. I am and we are becomings. I am and we are multiplicities of mistakes. Such attention to mistakes can help me/us to notice processes of becomings, the multiplicities of relations that have produced us with certain understandings of ourselves and our worlds. Embracing mistakes is a practice of truth- telling. This is Barthes’ (1977) reversal: “what the world takes for ‘objective,’ I regard as factitious; and what the world regards as madness, illusion, error, I take for truth” (p.

230). A settler life in Canada is always mis-taken, always has been and always will be.

Recognizing this, coming to terms with oneself, one(settler)self-in-relation, is appropriate and ethical. In doing so, mistakes are certainly unavoidable, though not necessarily cause for guilt, shame, and condemnation. Eluding the trap of righteousness, acknowledging mistakes upsets innocence.

Recipes of Mistaken Identities

For the most part, Mom taught me how to be in the kitchen; how to cook and bake. Buns, cookies, cakes, soups, canned fruit, pickles, and well-balanced lunches and suppers, she can make it all, often from scratch, and she would always let me help. Above the stove in their farmhouse, the place I still think of as home, there is a cupboard full of regularly consulted cookbooks with tattered corners, stained from dripped ingredients, and Mom’s handwritten appraisals in some of the margins. A recipe that has v.g. scrawled beside it (her shorthand for very good) has earned some of the highest praise possible from my mom. If it has v.g. next to it, you can trust it is a dependable choice and likely acceptable to serve for company. She always follows a recipe, with infrequent BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 22

modifications. She likes to do it right, as it is written, as much as possible. I wonder if this is simply due to her personality or if school trained her to be this way. Probably it is a bit of both. Some of my favorite memories include helping her make tasty goodies, especially for Christmas or Easter, but also on random or daily occasions of no special significance. Though it is mainly a serious affair, I still enjoy working in the kitchen with her.

Sometimes, I would watch Dad prepare food too. That was how I learned that cooking could be kind of mischievous. He rarely followed a recipe, unless making biscuits. His classic dishes of homemade chili, hamburger helpers (not from a prepackaged mix), and porridge were usually improvised and often creative, though he would follow an unwritten pattern of sorts. Grandma Aamodt would make bread in the same way. Maybe the recipe was part of her body-memory. Watching her mix egg, milk, flour, and oil together and then knead, I was awestruck wondering how this magic was produced by her arthritic fingers. In this way, Dad is like her. Yet, when we (my brother, sisters, Mom, and I) talk about Dad, it is always understood that he is a bit of a rebel, not only in the kitchen. He quit school after Grade 10; he could not be tamed nor bothered, preferring to work.

Perhaps whether I follow a recipe or not is irrelevant, since my identities are (I am) made by a social recipe and I cannot simply choose the ingredients that make me.

Let’s remember, Valerie-Lee Chapman (2005) is a Victorian sponge cake, “a well- battered mix of colonialism, heterosexism, classism and racism” (p. 262). And, these stories control our lives (King, 2003). Imagine I am those white buns my mom and I would bake. Gosh, this analogy insinuates my ample white, cushioned backside a little BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 23

too quickly, as it sits in my swiveling desk chair. And I am a sugar cookie; the Christmas shaped ones—stars, coniferous trees, reindeer, and snowflakes—with intensely sweet, white icing. Sometimes we would use the gingerbread man cookie cutter. It did not have a skirt. That is how, as kids, we knew it was a man.

Using this cookie, I acknowledge my social positions. I have followed the recipe of being a good girl: I am sweet, white sugar, white, innocent, white flour from home- grown Canadian wheat—Dad’s harvest; watch your weight, my dear . . . only eat two—a limit I always exceeded. We always had enough money for treats; there was always an abundance of food to eat; my parents worked hard for this heteronormative, cis-woman, able-bodied sugar cookie in the kitchen. These are the normal stories, the Canadian myths11 (Episkenew, 2009, p. 2) that have become part of my life. The well-loved sugar cookie recipe, written with Grandma Zunti’s hand, is special and saved in an old plastic bag along with a collection of other favorites. She was the daughter of a settler. I am part of the fourth generation of my family to live in Canada. Most of my great-grandparents homesteaded in Saskatchewan. Even so, I am a settler too. I am here to stay. Losing most connections to family heritages in Norway, Switzerland, England, and Germany-Russia and reminded that Canada encouraged this loss, I feel at home here and call this place my home.

So, this normal sugar cookie, this I, learned the common sense (Kumashiro, 2009) recipe that made me. With a little sugar, butter, and flour, this I was formed as a regular

Canadian—the good, white kind, the behaved citizen who had no need to question their origin stories. In this way, my identity as a treaty person was always hidden and never

11 “Must it not be admitted that myth as a frame of classification is quite incapable of registering these becomings, which are more like fragments of tales?” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 237). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 24

understood. It was/is not part of a normative national narrative, left out of the stories that constitute/d me as a subject of the nation. Joanne Episkenew (2009) calls this a “colonial creation myth . . . the belief that the good, brave, and enduring settlers battled the forces of nature to bring civilization and progress to a land sparsely populated by primitive people” (p. 109). My family is part of this story and this story created us as Canadians.

For, “the settlers’ hard work and diligence resulted in the building of a new nation-state”

(Episkenew, 2009, p. 109). Recognizing the numbered treaties as a strategy for Canada to take land and sell it to my great-grandparents disrupts this colonial creation myth as tension is realized. Homesteading stories are truth-myths and, along with (my)self, a fiction; my mistaken and mis-taken identities. Such Canadian identities have been and are claimed as part of a recipe of assimilation and genocide of Indigenous Peoples.

Coming to understand myself with a treaty identity, an alternative version of myself as a subject of a dishonest nation, I have learned to follow another recipe: Treaty acknowledgements. The recognition that I am writing these life-letters within Treaty 4 territory is extended as an acknowledgement of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Lakota, and

Nakota peoples of Treaty 4 territory as well as the four historically Métis communities in this region: Lebret, Fort Qu’Appelle, Willow Bunch, and Lestock (Pete, n.d., p. 4–5).

Furthermore, I know to say nehiyawak (Cree Peoples) instead of simply Cree, for Cree is a colonial word. I know that it is better to try nêhiyawêwin (to speak the Cree language) as well as Saulteaux-Ojibwe, Dakota, Lakota and Nakota languages, and Michif. I also know that expressing such acknowledgements is not enough. Such recognitions, though needed, also work to position me as one of the better settlers. I am one of the nice ones, a thoughtful one. I write this sarcastically but also with some seriousness. I have been told BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 25

that I have a good, gentle heart. Yet I think wanting to do the right thing, to have ethical relationships with Indigenous Peoples as a settler-Canadian, is also fraught with possibilities of pretending I am innocent and good.

While I recognize how I benefit from the making of Treaty 4 (being allowed to live, work, study, and love with/in/on this land) with further transparency, I also realize that Canada had/has some very real, unethical intentions that first and foremost included taking land. That is, Canada required First Nations to give up and give over: “do hereby cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada, for

Her Majesty the Queen, and Her successors forever, all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever, to the lands” (Treaty Texts, Treaty No. 4, 1966). Also, a consequence is that, as a descendant of immigrant-settlers, I can choose to think of myself as benefiting from these treaties in all ways and/or I can ignore them. There is little requirement for the average, good, prairie-Canadian citizen to recognize that these numbered treaties make all the difference. If I ignore their existence, I still benefit. This is the system of White- settler privilege, of White-colonial supremacy. As well, by recognizing the treaties, I can problematically claim that I am perhaps a settler becoming unsettled. This sounds nice too. It implies how I wish to be regarded as a friend to my Indigenous neighbors. My.

There is always ownership implied in such colonial language. This Canadian recipe has not attained a v.g. denotation.

Braiding in (Lines of) Flight

Ravenous Flying in the Face of Nag

Along with my desires to be right and to be a better settler-descendant, to be considered good (good enough to earn a doctoral degree, good enough to be respected, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 26

good enough to work in this field, good enough to be accepted as a friend, good enough to not be blamed for the crimes of Canada, good enough to remain innocent by becoming unsettled) I continue to feel a great temptation to start with some sort of beginning. Is that not the way telling stories is supposed to be done? Once upon a time . . . The problem here, however, is that beginnings are murky and many. There are countless places to start, as well as no place to start. Beginnings and endings, of stories and lives, are illusions.

“Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are” (Nietzsche,

1954, pp. 46–47). The passings through, the storytellings, the thresholds matter.

Entrances and exits are only middles. In or out is immaterial, by which I mean that the passings through render in/out as insignificant, bodiless-disembodied-shadows. Various other looming, menacing, and haunting expectations—Be organized and clear!—nag at my innards. These, too, are illusions.

Coming up through the middles, taking turns, crossing thresholds, and following lines of flight produce different processes of knowing than if/then, linear, straightforward, rational thinking of humanist selves. There is a fierce pull to cite someone here, one of the many important philosopher-thinkers, to situate my understandings of the im/possibilities of getting free of the humanist self via life writing processes. Probably, I should cite Deleuze, and Foucault, at least. Then, likely, I should refer to some life writing scholars such as Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, and Leggo (2009), especially to note that “reading and writing life writing became both a poststructuralist and a feminist project” (p. 19). If coulds and shoulds were butter and nuts, we would all have a merry

Christmas. Instead, I will wait until later, during another life-letter . . . written someday, maybe, for a deeper post/humanist discussion, discuss, disgust, disgust-sion. How BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 27

wonderfully frightening it is to be careless, to care less, to misbehave, to be improper, to dare to be in trouble, to follow lines of flightful thinking. All the while, Coyote and

Raven cry, “caw! wraaakk! harrrroooooo! ha more ravenings” (O’Riley & Cole, 2009, p. 127).

Such nagging feelings demand that, at some point soon, I would explain about the self-story interbraids, why we wrote them and how they are useful. For now I imagine pulling, nagging feelings as a character with an internal diatribe and, here and then, will refer to this character as Nag. They remind me of the magpies at the farm who would swoop down to steal the dog food. My self-doubt is easy prey. It would also help if you shared some background information about autobiographical storytelling, Nag pesters.

These could all be somewhere to begin, silly-girl, they say, All this talk about middles is ridiculous. “Silence, Nag!” Everything happens in the middle of things. “Looking for middles, rather than beginnings and endings, makes it possible to decenter . . . remaining open to the proliferation of ruptures” (Alvermann, 2000, p. 118).

This is my very motive: What could an openness to being absurd allow that clarity conceals? How do self-stories and life-letters highlight curiosities about and processes for becomings-unsettled? The term unsettled purposefully hints at something colonial, while the recognition of such is counter to the normative narrative. I am not a settler; I was born here. I am not am immigrant; Canada is my home. It has been my family’s home for

4 [or 10?] generations. Where else would I go? Also, I do not like being called White. It is insulting. That is reverse racism. These sorts of common rebuttals are pervasive

(Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). In my experience they occur often in daily conversations, thoughts, online social media interactions, and in our self-stories. Nag repeats them in BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 28

turn. What could recognizing them do?

Flying in the face of convention—Listen up, Nag!—“maybe we don’t have to give [the reader] a blow-by-blow account of how we wrote the story, researched it, analyzed it and then regurgitated it, complete with ‘implications for practice’” (Chapman,

2005, p. 261). Thank you Valerie-Lee. Therefore, I give these life-letter self-stories some space and room to fold and unfold as they will, purposefully disrupting the organization of a normal thesis by moving in lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Here a line of flight is not only to be imagined as a scheduled trajectory of an airplane, nor necessarily, like the old maxim, as the crow flies. Crows might be known to fly straight and far, from points A to B, when confronted with wide-open grasslands or vast bodies of water.

Instead, I imagine these lines of flight more often like Raven’s ravenings—in movements and formations, in tricks across the grasslands, perhaps hungry, voracious, and devouring what I once thought I knew to be true and good. Erstwhile, “coyote rests against the roots of a thousand year old fir” and “raven fluffs his feathers fluttering sighs” (O’Riley &

Cole, 2009, p. 125),

you are speaking in abstractions anti-western formattings believing that you are thinking independently postpositively yet are deeply rooted in status quo slaloming laterally Then moving in more straight lines straight turns Machinemade rows monocrops cashcrops selfdelusionings your point of view petrified fossilized magmafied the medusa syndrome all that your methodologies touch turn to reason (p. 126, emphasis added)

Lines of flight are tricky.

Even while I hope I am thinking differently, Coyote and Raven remind me that being free of reason is quite impossible. “Do not even lines of flight, due to their eventual divergence, reproduce the very formations their function it was to dismantle or outflank? BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 29

But the opposite is also true . . . the tracing should always be put back on the map”

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 13). So, I persist. For, with necessary mistakes, I cannot stand for more of the same: more questionnaires, more interviews, more surveys, more gathering of certain kinds of data and evidence, more monocropped methods and methodologies, more recommendations for future research that reproduce status quo, and straight turns with right-angled thought patterns.

While (un)braiding in flight and (mis)stepping through some theoretical thresholds, beginnings are murky and many. They are enigmas, knots in the middle of a braid. Still, all of this is also selfdelusionings, for simultaneous lines of flight do not disclude the humanist self. Straight lines and turns are of the well-travelled grid roads taken care of by rural municipalities and their hired men, like my uncle, who drive the grader down the washboards and smooth the gravel for the next vehicle on its way home from town. They are also of the old dirt ones between the quarter-sections near farmyards that tractors and truck tires groove down with each pass, with the grass popping up in the middles.

Autobiographical Selves in the Middles. Here is one of my petrified12 cash crops: If I simply wanted to unsettle the individual, humanist self—that being, there. This one. Yes, me (or you)—I could begin by attempting to explain who I think I am. Yes, that one there. Me. Or, you. Or, them. Over there. That individual. In western style, the individual has become a central focus of attention. “The individual of humanism is generally understood to be a conscious, stable, unified, rational, coherent, knowing,

12 I like multiple meanings of words. Here, I use petrified to mean both that 1) I am afraid of reproducing humanism, in all of its problematic effects; and, 2) that humanism is solidified as normative narratives, with a particularly hardened state of understanding the self as subject, to which poststructural perspectives are only a response to and therefore unable to escape. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 30

autonomous, and ahistoric individual” (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 500). Often individual stories are shared to answer some very easy questions: Who are you? Who do you think you are?

Pause here. Hold your initial response in your mind. Why do you hold the understandings of the world as you do? Perhaps the answers are not so clear.

A simple response could begin with an autobiography, of sorts. I was born in

Rosthern, Southern Saskatchewan, Canada near dawn on an early July day, the middle of the first year of a new decade. I am a daughter, a sister, an aunt; I am a prairie-girl who is interested in education for social and ecological justice . . . Something like this. Yet, the beginnings of my-your-our lives began years upon years upon years ago, before birth. My parents, Marianne (Zunti) and Neil Aamodt, help me to recall some of my recent ancestors, my grandparents and great-grandparents—Mary Ann (Dietrich) and Casper

Zunti, Helen (Budd) and Oliver Aamodt, Catherine (Schantz) and Jacob Dietrich, Anna

(Widmer) and Casper Zunti, Sara (Johnson) and Floyd Budd, Anna (Sandnis) and Hans

Aamodt—who are buried in small, rural-community, mainly Christian graveyards with names like Horse Lake of the West Bend district and Holy Rosary Roman Catholic

Cemetery in the Reward district. I cannot specifically mention all those who came before them since we have mostly forgotten their names and, quite definitively, forgotten their stories. In this way there is no beginning of the self that is tangible. Beginnings are real fantasies. Coyote and Raven know that selves are not simply individuals but are part of becomings-middles and becomings-kin.

we’ve been part of the land and sky and other scapes so long and so intimately that we don’t often think about our relationship to them-it-those ones since them-it-those ones was/is us and us was/is them-it-those ones without their ever being a twain to meet or not. (O’Riley & Cole, 2009, p. 125) BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 31

Many Canadians were born to Euro-immigrant families, like mine. Those of us who have repressed our relationships to them-it-those ones, who was/is us, often also forget that our beginnings do not simply imply our birth. Likewise, the story of being

Canadian cannot begin simply with confederation. Colonialism has played with settlement processes of subjectivity, of identity formations that produce particular kinds of settler-Canadian subjects. While more than 150 years have passed since confederation, the subjectivity implications exceed this history lesson. That is, such processes of producing subjects of the nation also happen long before particular individuals are born, as well as before the birth of the Canadian nation, and continue into presents and futures.

Therefore, I-we-they must look into the cracks, those deep cracks that have been patched over, held together, and hidden with grasses waving idyllically in the breeze, must be with the dark places of the soil, the folded over places where some of the rhizomatic roots are rotting and others grow-spread-proliferate. “Multispecies storytelling is about recuperation in complex histories that are as full of dying as living, as full of endings, even genocides, as beginnings” (Haraway, 2016, p. 10). In this way, these life- letters are not simply about beginnings, but endings too. For example, recognizing

Canada’s genocide of Indigenous Peoples is necessary. I must look into the cracks in myself, the crevices that I cover and shield from the light. At the same time, although crows fly from here to there, from some beginning to some destination-end, stories do not have to be written this way.

All so-called initiatory journeys include these thresholds and doors where becomings itself becomes, and where one changes becomings depending on the “hour” of the world, the circles of hell, or the stages of a journey that sets scales, forms, and cries in variation. From the howling of animals to the wailing of elements and particles. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 249) BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 32

As I think about cracks, crevices, and journeying through thresholds, about encountering doors of becomings, and about howling and wailing in the circles of hell, the following obscure, uncertain, and unclear provocation opens up on the page. The openings are both downwards and across, with elusive destinations.

hear a low howling in the middles a self howl of fear mis-stepping and mis-taking the depths of hell all over this place damned those internal hells of agonizing hate here and there self-doubt doorways creates a need for change braidways all middles who slides of innocence and flies of wet, salty tears and folds of shame and feels sympathy and cries humility and and and and and and yearning Knowledge doorways braidways all middles are all around and everywhere of family friendships Risking the death strangers of (my) self misunderstandings that easy self prejudices who was born in that place discriminations once upon a time treaty walking through all middles thresholds storied doorways truth-tellings of textural braid writing

Braidings with Turns and Tangles

It is great if one of my sisters agrees to braid my hair, but I love it best when Mom does. Almost always in three strands but not always straight, and sometimes with small strays, Mom’s fingers in my hair has a certain special effect. When we were young, she BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 33

would often make what she calls a French braid, although the only francophone connection we have is through my Grandma Aline, my Grandpa Zunti’s second wife. We have never talked about the roots of this common name of such special braids. Of course, during these ripe days of womanness, I have to ask her if she would mind—Would you braid my hair? You know, the normal way. She taught me how to braid hair like this:

Split the hair into three sections. Take one of the outside strands and fold it over the middle; this one becomes the middle strand while the middle now replaces the original, outside strand. Then, take the opposite outside piece over the new middle, which now becomes the middle. In this way, all of the strands are the middles. They are all part of a whole, yet also distinct. One over another, together, becomings-braid. With each fold pulled tight, reminding me of my childhood, a braid like this partially represents an organized properness (akin to the individual self and individualism), along with the intimate relationships of family.

Yet, there are many ways to braid and many braiding traditions. For example, braiding bread with four strands, or more, is a beautiful skill. My Ukranian-Canadian relatives braid special breads for occasions like Easter and Christmas. With multiplicity, there are many meanings of braids, always with the possibility that they will fall apart and get loose with time. Hair can be slippery; it tends to resist staying smooth and in place. With a little bit of wind, it twists and tangles and comes undone. Braids are ruptured movements, with turns and crosses, folds and unfolds, slips and strays. Life- letters are also like this—turns, folds, and knots, as lines of flight, braided together as middles. Each strand, each self-story, takes a turn and risks (it)self. Braids are not just things but processes. I write in braids, with somewhat distinct strands of threes as well as BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 34

fours, because Alma Poitras (personal communication, 2017) taught me to do things in fours, in a nêhiyaw way, to respect the four directions. So, I have (dis)ordered most of these life-letters into four strands, each consisting of four smaller strands, which also are made up of fourths. (Dis)organized, these braids are unravelling and unravelled. I unwind and in doing so, get tangled up in the crosses and turns. Disorderly conduct. Dissing order.

To braid, as Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) describes, “a certain amount of tension is needed. As any little girl with tight braids will tell you, you have to pull a bit” (p. ix).

In some ways, these self-stories as braids are also acts of reciprocity, for “it’s a relationship, reader to writer, not a contest, nor an exam” (Chapman, 2005, p. 261).

“Whirls and loops . . . braiding me and my readers into beings and patterns at stake”

(Haraway, 2016, p. 3). Braiding hair, braiding bread, braiding sweetgrass, and braiding stories may seem simply romantic, nostalgic, and perhaps childlike or naive; a nice and innocent project. Yet, I argue that these too are serious and significant spiritual practices;

Kimmerer (2013) considers her braided stories as “medicine for our broken relationship with earth . . . to imagine a different relationship, in which people and land are good medicine for each other” (p. x). I believe we must engage in braiding acts together. Better relationships in Canada are at stake.

The sweetest way is to have someone else hold the end so that you pull gently against each other, all the while learning in, head to head, chatting and laughing, watching each other’s hands, one holding steady while the other shifts the slim bundles over one another, each in its turn. Linked by sweetgrass, there is reciprocity between you, linked by sweetgrass, the holder is as vital as the braider. (Kimmerer, 2013, p. ix)

Desperately, I want to honour Robin Wall Kimmerer’s words and her teachings, along with Alma Poitras’ generous encouragements. For, I cannot (mis)take them for my BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 35

own. Fearing inadvertent acts of appropriation (cultural and methodological), I wonder how I might ethically draw from their cultural understandings; Can I do so, methodologically, without appropriating an attention to fours and braiding sweetgrass?

Rather, this brings me to ponder the impossibilities of not being tied up and tangled in such colonialist moments of cultural desire. Although braiding hair is literally and figuratively meaningful to me, as well as this writing project, using Kimmerer’s Braiding

Sweetgrass simply as a metaphor is another mistaken move towards (my) settler innocence. “When metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 3). I must recognize that braiding sweetgrass is not, and can never be, a cultural practice of mine. I might listen to the messages of reciprocity in Kimmerer’s story, while reminded of the sweetgrass braid that I once (mistakenly) bought.

Sweetgrass for Sale. I recall the moment, some years ago, when I bought a braid of sweetgrass from a local, specialty bookshop. Having just completed a Master of Arts in Environmental Education and Communication, I remember being quite zealous about becoming more attentively ecological. In many ways, I took up environmental identities in a somewhat typical fashion. For instance, in addition to stereotypical ways of being

‘environmentally friendly,’ such as recycling and conserving water, I practiced gardening, often without gloves; went barefoot regularly; paid particular attention to the phases of the moon; and, made great effort to source local and organic food, whenever available. As much as I continue to deny the designation, my family insists on labelling me a hippy. I tell them I have friends who are more legitimate hippies; that I should BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 36

introduce them. Then, they might realize that being ecologically aware does not necessarily equate to some sort of hippy status.

Yet, I suppose, on the hippy spectrum, I am more liberal than they are used to. I was likely even wearing my favorite, soil-toned poncho when I wandered in looking for braided sweetgrass among various energy stones, essential oils, candles, and oracle cards displayed at the entrance of the store. I have a vague memory of asking the clerk if they had any sweetgrass for sale, since none seemed to be displayed outright. Inconspicuously, near the top shelf, they pointed out a few braids sitting in a tan, weaved basket. “Where were they harvested? Do you know?” I probably asked the clerk. It is something I catch myself thinking still, with curiosity about the hands that collected and wove the 2-foot braid. How, when, and exactly where this was done, and by whom, is perhaps a secret the grass keeps – a relation of its own. Nevertheless, I am certain the clerk assured me it was

Saskatchewan grown and gathered. Environmentally, I would not have been satisfied otherwise.

I am not sure why I went into that store looking for sweetgrass, nor do I remember what I wanted it for. For a while, it laid on my windowsill, above the head of my bed, as though I expected it to catch my dreams before they escaped through the glass and/or protect me from any wickedness that might try to enter my room while I sleep.

Once upon a time, I do not remember when or how or by whom, I heard that sweetgrass could be burned, or smudged, to clear a room. Truthfully, I do not know how to ethically use sweet grass for cleansing or prayer. So, I refrain from burning it on my own. Perhaps

I never will. Perhaps smudging as a spiritual practice is restricted from me, unless practiced through relationships with First Nations treaty relatives. For instance, when BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 37

asked following protocol, with tobacco, Alma has brought her medicines to smudge me and the students in some of my classes.

As I attempt to examine my intentions for purchasing this particular braid of sweetgrass, and continuing to keep (own? appropriate?) it, reminding myself that I am likely unable to fully know even my own desires, there is a twinge of guilty privilege – even though a settler-colonial positionality often seems to permit one (me) to have a

‘right’ to claim anything as their (my) own. How is it that this grass came to be for sale?

It was not very expensive, maybe only three loonies. What was the intention of the person(s) who made this available for purchase? What assumptions have I made about its

‘authenticity,’ in imagining the Indigenous hands that braided it, in expecting it to be from the province that I live?

As I contemplate my problematic relation to this sweetgrass, I am reminded of being captivated by southern Saskatchewan, settler-writers like Sharon Butala (1994).

Her whimsical nonfiction urges us to spend time in nature, with prairie grasses. For instance, she wrote “to discover these truths . . . we need only go for walks” (Butala,

1994, p. 65). The sweetgrass, now on my office shelf, partially reminds me of my practice of searching for truths, but also while problematically mis-taking, even along with my hopes for ethical relations with the grass and Indigenous Peoples in Treaty 4 for whom sweetgrass has deeper, cultural meaning. Perhaps the grass calls to me/us, teaching with its quiet presence to go for walks; to be ethical; to write braids; and, to trouble

Truths.

As I write these life-letters, braiding in fours and listening to the call for BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 38

practicing reciprocity, I notice that I wonder and worry about the tensions of attempting to Indigenize settler scholarship. Perhaps “this deconstructive work honors the ethical charge I have set for myself of trying to think differently, of trying to free myself of my self” (St. Pierre, 1997, p. 412), while simultaneously finding that it is impossible to be free of the settler-self; impossible not to engage in appropriation, even/especially with good intentions. Sometimes, I misinterpret Dwayne Donald’s (2009) words about

Indigenous Metissage to mean that it’s permissible for me to use this method for my own purposes:

the use of the term indigenous does not connote an exclusionary type of métissage

done for, by and with Aboriginal people only. The term is used to draw attention

to the idea that the kinds of interactions that I have in mind with this type of

inquiry must be interpreted in a Canadian context. (p. 10)

In settler-colonial fashion, I (mis)took this to mean that I am welcome to practice

Indigenous métissage as a methodology. Although I seek to pay attention to processes of colonialism and to center / listen to Indigenous scholars and voices, with stories like

Sweetgrass for Sale I also (mis)take Indigenous Métissage since, on my own, I am unable to “begin with specific Indigenous historical and cultural perspectives as initial points of inquiry . . . showing how the process of colonialism has filtered and altered those perspectives until something is produced that the larger Canadian society recognizes and comprehends as theirs” (Donald, 2009, p. 9, emphasis added). I wonder about the innocent implications inherent in understanding métissage as mine to try.

Safe and Sound

She sang Qiksaaktuq in a long red dress that hugged the shape of her body—torso BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 39

to hips and legs, red waves spilling out at the bottom in a trumpeted-mermaid style; including panels of diamond shaped fur, a large and prominent piece on the front of the skirt; shoulders bare and shoeless. Her blood red body stood against the proper, black- dropped attire of the violinists and other, bigger string musicians—sharpened knives at times; the wind section—icy, howling air; with percussion hiding in the back—pounding hearts; her voice bubbled up between her red-painted lips and tore through the air with in- out middle breath-sounds of Qiksaaktuq.

Qiksaaktuq is Inuktitut for grief, the program explains; a lament “dedicated to the missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls and to those who grieve for them”

(Regina Symphony Orchestra Program, 2017/2018). It was terrifying. I felt compelled to hold my friend’s hand, sitting next to me, to seek comfort and calm. The white conductor in the black tux-and-tails said it would be sounds like we had never heard before. It reminded me of noises from horror films that I do not watch; the clips I have seen of fictional exorcisms; of internal demons screaming—they are legion; screams of pure fear and fury. He bowed in his tux-tails, looking silly, but I am supposed to say looking dignified. We all stood after; applauded, as is customary in that concert hall. During intermission, I bought her CD and a t-shirt, black with a stark white message: Retribution will be swift—Tanya Tagaq. The second half featured Dvořák’s Symphony #9,

“impressions and greetings from the New World” (Regina Symphony Orchestra Program,

2017/2018), with mostly gentle and lovely sounds.

Following the finale, my friend and I, both white women, walked to our car, safe and sound. Talking of what we thought, noting that Qiksaaktuq was something beyond entertainment, she said it might be good to wait to listen to Tagaq’s album; to not play it BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 40

in the car on the hour-plus drive home by myself in the dark. Almost hinting that its haunting sounds might conjure ghosts, wolves, men. I might become scared; unsettled. I listened anyway and later crawled into my bed unharmed, yet maybe a little more aware of my safely sheltered soul. Perhaps this is partially what Donald (2009) means by engaging in Indigenous Métissage. Qiksaaktuq is a threshold of “specific Indigenous historical and cultural perspectives as initial points of inquiry” (Donald, 2009, p. 9).

While métissage has been framed “as a counternarrative to the grand narratives of our times” (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009, p. 9), different kinds of counter-stories are told by people who have experienced the effects of colonization.

Whispers and Lies

“We aim to open up spaces in which our stories become not merely autobiographical, but are the means to make visible the discursive processes in which we each have been collectively caught up” (Davis & Gannon, 2006, p. 11). For example, in the following self-story, racist discursive processes are highlighted, though nuanced.

Take a moment to remember yourself at 13. How did you learn to fear racial difference?

Our bottoms bump and bounce on the hospital-green vinyl school bus seats. I am used to bus rides, back and forth, each early morning and late afternoon from farm-home to school and back. The first picked up and the last dropped off, we live near the rural municipality boundary, on the edges of the school division. This particular trip is somewhat outside of the normal; an extra weekly trek on Highway 15 instead of traveling the grid roads framing the fields. With some apprehension, I wait for our arrival. For one afternoon a week, 16 of us travel west from our safe, small, Grade 8 bubble, to the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 41

(perceived) rougher, tougher, unfamiliar school at the neighboring town. There, we join with some of its students to learn Industrial Arts, consisting of film photography, woodworking, welding, and drafting, along with Home Economics, which includes mainly baking and sewing—in an alternating rotation. I am pretty good at Home Ec but I don’t really like IA. It scares me as much as being in the hallways.

The shop is filled with too many risky tools, blades, belts, saws; sharp and dangerous. Full of fear, I try my best not to get hurt; to be careful. The same goes in the hallways. Subtly, I learned that I should be wary in class, but especially in the halls. Stay in groups for there is safety in numbers is a common sentiment. A sense that the other students at this school can be fierce pervades. Take care not to get in their way, cross them, or do anything to make them angry. Some of the students are from the adjacent

Reserve. Watch out for them the most, I think. The white kids from that town have had to learn to hold their own and show no fear. This is the story that is sometimes whispered in the corners of the bus, huddling low in the green vinyl seats, friend to friend. It also shows up with just a look, passing from eye to eye with knowing glances of warning and unease.

With such looks, nervousness permeates our bodies as we walk from the bus to class in our large group—half of us to IA and the other half to Home Ec. The administration split our classes so that we have to interact with the other students.

Thankfully, ovens and sewing needles seem less sinister in the presence of flour, sugar, floral patterns, and strawberry pincushions. Still, I almost always feel on edge. Everyone from my class is from farms or our town. There was that one big kid last year, though.

Although the air around his body smelled strongly of urine, he was very nice. I’m not BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 42

sure where he was from, but he was brown . . . I guess he was from a Reserve too but he must not live near here anymore. Anyway, he isn’t in IA or Home Ec with us this year.

We weren’t really friends, so I’m not bothered by his disappearance from our class, nor the lack of farewell surrounding his mysterious departure. I would be much more upset if one of my close friends had to move.

Later, in an alcove by a back entrance, near the workshop, a few of my friends and I are taking silly photos with film cameras. I think we are probably supposed to be looking for angles and shadows to get good shots. I am a good student, but still the instructions were unclear to me. After, we will use some sort of chemicals to develop the pictures. Maybe that’s the point of this activity, I think, as I watch Travis through the lens. Sitting on a vent near the door so that his blue and grey striped shirt billows up with air, he points his fingers to make his hands stiff and holds them close to his ribs so that it looks like he has big boobs. We all giggle and I click the shutter. Good thing it is just us in this little niche between the storm doors. I don’t know what the other kids from this school would think or do if they saw us being so absurd. Somehow, the teacher always lets us choose our groups. We never invite any stranger kids to work with us, preferring to keep our safety bubble intact. More than photography, we learn that we are allowed to choose our friends and ignore the lives of our neighbors, if we want to, especially if we are scared.

Settler-Treaty Life-Writing

I Am Not Racist, Am I?

“You are racist.” It has been about 10 years since the first time, rather, the only time, someone called me racist, outright, bold and fearless, to my face. He was a student BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 43

in one of the math classes I was teaching that year. He is a First Nations person, visibly

Indigenous, but I forget or never really paid attention to which Nation he belongs to. In hindsight, he is likely one of the bravest students I have ever encountered. At the time, his statement infuriated me. Recalling it continues to be emotional. I am embarrassed to share my response.

“How dare he,” I thought. “What nerve. All I ask him to do is to be ready for math class; to be prepared with open book and pencil; to be on time.” I hovered, using proximity, one of those famous teacher tricks that usually works; a passive-aggressive attempt at asking him to behave, to conform. In this case, it was quite ineffective. “Stop it; you’re being so racist,” he said. Surprised, the heat reddens my face, with shaky voice and body, a frown deepening the wrinkle between my eyebrows, I attempt composure and control in my response, “step into the hall with me please.” He complies. My classroom is at the end of a long hall of lockers and classroom doorways. The building exit is to my right; I wish I could go home instead of having this encounter. He’s standing up against the wall, facing me, my back to the hallway, my peripheral vision still taking note of the students we left in the classroom beyond the door frame.

As I assert, with anger, “That,” [pausing-for-effect] “is a serious accusation,” he bows his head a little. “You can’t say things like that; I’m not racist; Saying so is quite disrespectful. You need to be ready for class, prepared, on time, with complete homework. These are the normal requirements of school. These expectations are common, not racist.” Defiantly, he resists apologizing, won’t back down, though my harsh look and tone seem to be affecting his confidence. I refuse to let him return to class unless he rescinds his inaccurate view of me. Perhaps in protest, he holds his head higher. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 44

His uncooperative stance, coupled with his opinion of me, is hard to swallow. “There’s no reasoning with him,” I think, then respond, “Okay, then, let’s take a walk to talk with the principal.” This student has been previously acquainted with that office.

My frustration with him, his seemingly constant lack of effort or care, compounds my anger in this situation. As I relate our recent exchange to the principal, I am fully aware that the rest of the class is waiting for me in my classroom at the end of the west hallway full of lockers, doing who-knows-what-probably-nothing-or-getting-into-some- kind-of-trouble. I rush through it, knowing I need to get back. He can tell I am upset; I don’t even try to hide it. Involuntarily, I feel my mom’s expressions of exasperation and outrage pouring out of my own body. It’s a strange sensation to realize that I must look like Mom in such moments. The principal agrees that the student shouldn’t go back to my class at this time, instead putting him in the adjoining conference room to work alone.

Flustered, I find my way back to the other students, failing at an attempt to shake it all off in order to regain focus on teaching grade 10 math. The rest of the day, and into the next, is a blur.

At home that night, I call my mom, who is also a teacher, to tell her what happened. I want her to console me, to commiserate, and she does. Crying angry tears, I vow to quit teaching. “I hate it,” I say. Mostly, she just listens and lets me cry. Later on, I have a fitful sleep and wake with an aching pit in my stomach, dreading the idea of going to school. How could anyone experience me as racist?! I am, on the whole, so . . . nice; so good. I don’t understand. This completely contradicts how I have imagined myself.

My only intent was to attempt to support him in the ways I know how; the ways I’ve been taught to teach; through accountability and pressure. My expectations are unwavering and BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 45

quite rigid, even stern at times, though I issue them to each student who finds themself assigned to my courses. Doesn’t this equality suggest the impossibility of racism?

On my behalf, the principal has scheduled a meeting with the student’s dad who is also a First Nations person. We meet in that same conference room; the place that, for a while, served as solitary confinement. The dad seems annoyed, but less at his son, it seems, and more at the colonial situation. Perhaps he feigns anger for my sake. Or, rather, for the sake of his son being able to return to class and potentially pass this modified math course so that eventual graduation continues to be a possibility. He knows his son is not stupid. It’s a resistance. So, he complies. In the conference room, he looks at his son to tell him to stop saying such things, to cooperate, to do his work. I am not completely satisfied as no apology seems to be pending, but the student appears to be more contrite during this exchange in the presence of his father. Still, there is a sense that we have agreed to disagree.

The following spring, I resigned. Being called racist partially contributed to this decision. In truth, this instance only slightly furthered my overall state of displeasure and unhappiness with the work of teaching. Although I keep it close and rarely admit it, ‘you are racist’ gave me a tangible reason to make that difficult decision. It helped me to seriously notice the impossibilities of schooling. My principal and colleagues were always supportive of me, we were friends even, yet I was thoroughly disheartened, discouraged, depressed, dispirited. Maybe I take things too personally, especially then.

Maybe it wasn’t me. Nevertheless, at the time, ‘you are racist’ seemed impossible to unpack. No one, especially me, knew what to do with that statement or how to help me sort through it. I felt like a terrible person, judged and perceived to be an awful teacher BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 46

(one of my greatest fears). To reduce these feelings, I blamed the student, interpreted his statement as disrespectful, unwarranted, and as an excuse for not doing well in class; his opinion only, and a faulty one at that.

As far-right politics seem to be more and more prevalent, accusations of individual racism are frequent and almost always paired with various forms of denial, from suggestive to forthright (e.g., “I am the least racist person you will ever meet”).

These common rebuttals (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017) remind me of my own defensiveness, my own white fragility (DiAngelo, 2011). Furthermore, I have learned that my hovering tactic was racist, one that was part of a school system with structural racism at its core. My particular expectations of students, including my good intentions, all favor a colonial way of knowing and being. Since such realizations are caught up in thick middles, I follow this thought with another self-story of mistakes.

Over and Through a Sliding-Door Threshold

Stepping through Grandma’s sliding patio door, into the backyard of the senior complex, I breath in the cool, late summer, morning air. The air is damp, the grass dewed; shaded by a long row of large poplars by the east fence. I remind myself that

Grandma has lived a different life than I have and that we are both a product of the stories we have lived within. The nuns there were very good. Those children learned a lot from there. They were happy. They were well fed. We saw them at the school Christmas concerts and they were clean and singing and they had a good life. She had read the self- stories from my doctoral work, which I had posted online and invited her to read; Mom had shown her the link. I was especially nervous to hear her thoughts about Sod-made, a story she appears in. The last thing I wanted to do was upset her or make her sad. On the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 47

long drive to Edmonton, I fretted about it a little. In the car with Mom, I learned that the last time she had talked with her, during an earlier visit, Grandma had tearfully wondered how many more Autumns she would see. Such end-of-life musings was part of her reaction to the stories.

She said she tried to comment online, but had difficulties. What is your project about? I had tried to explain. During this visit, an aunt and uncle, and my cousin, whom I had not seen in years, were visiting also, along with my Mom, my brother and his family.

Grandma’s little suite was filled with our bodies, blending the kitchen with the living room, seated on her couch, the stool, the few kitchen chairs, the floor. My nieces and nephew sat playing there while we talked. What was it I said in response . . .? It feels all mixed up. Something about Treaty Education . . . that it is often forgotten that the land we live on is Treaty Land. Why is this important? Along with the potential ties to

Environmental Education, such explanations were left unsaid. Is it really so difficult to explain? Surely sharing the stories of becomings-unsettled with others is part of the point.

At least, that was part of my initial intentions. For, “what’s the point of research and theory, if only six other people in the world get it? . . . . I want people to understand my stuff, in their world, their words, in their way, not only the academic way” (Chapman,

2005, p. 261). Yet, perhaps I had neglected to imagine what this conversation with my family would feel like and sound like. I need to get better at this. I have to be able to explain this work; these ideas. I want to be, need to be, prepared to respond to such common rebuttals (DiAngelo & Sensoy, 2017). Those children learned a lot from there.

They sure did.

I thought Grandma might have strong feelings about the way the story called upon BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 48

the memory of Grandpa, and my speculation of her experiences at the family reunion without him, but did not foresee a conversation about residential schools. It spiraled downward, little by little, as my uncle chimed in. I panicked. I hesitated. I feared this conflict. My grandma is known for her strong will. Once, as a child, I straightened all her fridge magnets so that they were neat and tidy. I was very proud of myself and expected her to be pleased. Walking into the kitchen, she exclaimed loudly, Who did that!?

Embarrassed, my face fell and I quietly snuck into the living room, never to admit to her that it was me. My grandma is lovely and I love her. But, in the instant I straddled her patio door threshold, my body felt as it did on that silly magnet day. Escape.

Subtle and Sly Settler-Colonialism

This becomings-unsettled work has led me to moments when I feel an ethical imperative to try to disrupt problematic settler self-stories. Yet, simultaneously, I plunge into silence and hopelessness. I fear that such settler stories will continue, as they have since the dawn of colonialism. This may be one of the limitations of settler self-stories.

Stories are told by grandmas to their families, in little moments after breakfast, as grown granddaughters feel their responses dissolving before their mind’s eye, with the urge to step into the other room, or anywhere else to get away from the responsibility of speaking and creating conflict. Becomings-unsettled is full of such mistakes. Significantly, this is partially how the system of settler-colonialism works. It is bound up with and in our relational identities. In this case, it is how I understand myself in the company of my

Canadian family, during moments of becomings-unsettled.

Calling myself a Settler-Canadian makes a lot of sense to me. Simply put, it honestly notes that my ancestors came to this land from away and I am, along with the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 49

rest of their descendants, here to stay. There is no pretense here. While my euro- immigrant ancestors were farmers, and many of my immediate family members continue to be connected to farming practices, settler as a concept does not necessarily or only connote agricultural backgrounds and occupations. Using the term allows an acknowledgement of my “relationships to structures and processes in Canada today, to the histories of our peoples on this land, to Indigenous peoples, and to our own day-today choices and actions . . . . an identity that we claim or deny, but . . . inevitably live and embody” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 2). It serves to specifically refer to the group of “non-Indigenous peoples living in Canada who form the European-descended sociopolitical majority” (Vowel, 2016, p. 14). Here I am.

However, I am acutely aware that some Canadians consider the term settler as a category and identifier quite offensive, if not somehow racist (claiming a mythical reverse racism). While choosing to use the term, I have personally experienced many emotional reactions from students as well as friends and those closest to me. Usually there is a kind of frustrated anger at being implicated in Canadian systems of colonialism and white supremacy as partially played out through the “deliberate physical occupation of land as a method of asserting ownership over land and resources” (Vowel, 2016, p.

16). It can be difficult to recognize that our Settler connections to this land and place that we call Canada are “forged through violence and displacement of Indigenous communities and nations” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 2). Normative Canadian narratives miss these truths, all the while reproducing nicer stories of the Good Nation.

For a long time, I did not see any problem with Canada. We are peaceful people; welcoming, polite, and helpful. Prairie-Canadians are community-minded volunteers, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 50

considerate, neighborly, and care about one another’s well-being. At least, this is the story that stole its way into myself and my understandings of who we think we are.

Wouldn’t everyone want to be Canadian? Initially, I was surprised and confused to realize that not everyone who identifies as Indigenous in Canada would consider themselves Canadian (Vowel, 2016, p. 21). I recall scribbling little question marks in the margins of Dwayne Donald’s (2009) article Forts, curriculum, and Indigenous

Métissage: Imagining decolonization of Aboriginal-Canadian relations in educational contexts the first time I read it. It was difficult to understand why he continued to use the terms Aboriginal and Canadian as separate from one another. Are Aboriginal peoples not also Canadians?, I wondered. Why would any Indigenous person ever not want to also call themselves Canadian? The reasons for refusing Canadian identities was very unclear to me at the time. Not only was the Indian Act, as it defines status and non-status Indian identities, something I had never been required to consider, I was unable to know Canada as anything but gentle and kindly. I hope settler-treaty life writing methodologies work to be more truthful about these problematic normative national narratives and Canadian subjects, ourselves.

A Settler-Treaty Woman’s Moon Time Mis-Steps

Early morning . . . earlier than I’ve ever been at the University. Earlier than I usually wake up. The sky has begun to lighten up as I walk in after parking my car. The cool October air feels refreshing, though I’m still groggy and maybe only half awake. I’m proud of myself for making it on time; for putting in the effort to be here. I’m a little bit anxious too, not knowing what to expect, but wanting to dwell in such unsettling vulnerability. I believe this is the feeling of discomfort that I teach about and for, a BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 51

pedagogy of discomfort (Boler, 1999; Zembylas, 2015) that I encourage my students to recognize and allow. I recall how useful the feeling is, as an entry point to deeper understanding. I haven’t felt this way for some time.

Upstairs, the tables in the Teacher Prep Center library have been moved aside for the ceremony. Various blankets of solid purple, yellow, green, and others in patterns are arranged in a circle on the otherwise cold, hard, linoleum floor. In the doorway, I chat with a few of my past students before considering where to sit. Kim asks how I am and what classes I’m teaching this semester. Jocelyn joins in the conversation as they tell me about their pre-internship placements. Relief washes over me as I take in their familiar, smiling faces. I notice Casey too, over there, further away. I’m glad she came. She’s quiet and seems shy, so I’m surprised she’s here alone. I had to muster up a lot of courage to come by myself. I wonder if she did too. Even now, I’m not sure where to sit and a little worried that no one will join me—a nagging high school flashback of worrying about fitting in. But, I’m a University instructor now, I remind myself. So, I decide to be confident, to move to the blankets alone, and choose a space to sit.

The green patchwork one seems friendly, like one that might be waiting in my mom’s linen closet, with the familiar, faintly musty smell. It looks like an old farm blanket that we might have a picnic on, with polyester triangles sewn together and yarn stitches here and there that tack the batting down. How comfortingly ugly. I rearrange my long, blood-red-sky-blue skirt and wait. More women choose their spaces on the blanket.

I’m still alone on the beautifully homely, green polyester. There’s a lot of room left. We are asked to tighten the circle, to close it up. We bring the blankets in tighter. I’m not alone anymore. I know the young women to my left: Jen, Kim, Jocelyn, and Mikaela. The BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 52

circle feels good, peaceful and welcoming. Casey is a quarter of an hour away, counterclockwise. And, I notice Claire, at 12 o’clock. I wave and smile. She does too.

Yet, I’m still unsure. I don’t know what to expect. I don’t smoke. What if I make a mistake in the way I hold the pipe or as I attempt to puff on it? Will my students be watching me?

Alma, the pipe carrier, starts explaining about the sweetgrass. It’s a bit damp since she left it in her car overnight. Braided, it reminds me of the one that I bought some years ago; the one that sat on my windowsill and now in my office; the one I hold onto as a reminder of my settler mis-steps. Hers still has a hint of green, looking tender instead of brittle and dry. It lights, but she has trouble keeping it going. Instead, she gets the buffalo sage smoking in her iridescent shell bowl to begin the smudge. As instructed, I’ve removed my glasses. I can’t see her that well. She’s a fuzzy image to my near sighted eyes. I want to see her clearly. I focus on her voice. She’s teaching about the protocol of not attending a pipe ceremony during one’s moon time; to respect the power that a female has then; to take some time for herself.

In class a couple of days ago, there was a moment, as I tried to promote the early morning pipe ceremony, when I fumbled this protocol: “Women are to wear a long skirt, or wrap a blanket around their bottom half”; and, then “It’s suggested that if you are on your moon time that you refrain from attending . . . but to me it’s up to you, since no one will know if you are or aren’t, and you can decide if you feel it is ethical or not”. As these words came pouring from my mouth, I immediately felt a pang of trouble. I thought, this is probably wrong to say, but I’m saying it anyway, as I stood in that room of 37 settler- immigrant students, as a person in authority in that space, reproducing individual choice BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 53

as common sense. In that moment, I held up my settler-self as the one who knows best; the one who allows themselves to critique a Plains Cree teaching even though I know very little about it.

I felt my feminist-academic self resisting telling young females that they can’t attend an event if they’re bleeding. That they should stay away, should isolate themselves from a community circle, seemed oppressive and terrible and off-putting. I wanted them to attend, to explore their settler-treaty selves through a pipe ceremony, as a spiritual and sacred experience. It’s this tension, this mis-step that I live in as Alma asks Claire to offer the smudge to each woman in the circle. I think I would still have chosen to come if I was menstruating right now. However, what Alma said also seemed like an honouring of the female. Yet, here we sit in our skirts, segregated from the men’s ceremony, and I can’t help wondering if it honours our womanhood or if it is really about some colonial construct, a gender binary, that has found its way into this sacred ceremony, to keep me/us/her docile and proper. Yet, who am I to critique this at all. Who am I to say that I know better; that this settler-woman self is being ethical. This treaty settler-woman mis- stepping left-right, here and there.

Ecological Ethics

Ethical Relationality

I want these self-letters to serve as reminders to myself, of reasons for this thinking-writing. What is the point of it all?, Nag often asks. Lately, I have been consumed with such wonderings. More than wondering, I have been distressed and distressing. What if there isn’t a point? What if it makes no difference? Will you quit? It is highly doubtful you will write anyway. Remember, you thought that this would be a BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 54

contribution (you are arrogant and self-absorbed) towards making the world a better place; towards creating better relationships. But, it won’t be. It isn’t. It is pointless; useless; trivial; powerless. It won’t make any difference. All the mighty-hate in the colonial world will continue as it always has, reproducing itself one generation after another, keeping powerful normative narratives in place—safely tucked away in the whispered moments and subtle corners of individual-collective mind/s. It’s hopeless.

Hopeful? Hopefulness? Hopelessness. Hopefulnesslesssss. You cannot, will not, change anything.

Even so, in hopefulnesslesssss, I might attempt to live well in the world. That is it.

What else could I do? Stop hoping. Give up. Give in. Stop questioning, disrupting, interrupting, making trouble. How can I enact ethical ways of knowing and being?; to be and to become ethical as I walk, literally, on the land and, cliché as it is, also as I figuratively walk through life? Becomings-ethical through treaty walking is an “ethical charge I have set for myself” (St. Pierre, 1997, p. 412). My intention with these life- letters is to relate little snippets, possible multiplicities of ethical life processes of becomings; processes of unsettling and unsettling processes. As a citizen of the (settler-) colonial world, I consider my own stories and wonder: Who am I responsible to? What am I responsible for? How do I understand myself in relationship with others—others like me: what are my responsibilities within a Faculty of Education, as a teacher- educator, while commuting from white-settler-Canadian-smalltown-rural-prairie- community living?

Interrelated, how do I understand myself in relationship with First Nations and

Métis peoples of Treaty 4? As Dwayne Donald (2018) has put it, what is your theory of BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 55

the relationship between Indigenous & Canadian Peoples? Within Treaty 4 territory,

Sakimay First Nations (Saulteaux) reserve #74 is a short 15km northeast of my front door in Grenfell. East of Sakimay, Cowessess First Nation (Saulteaux) reserve #73 is adjacent, followed by Kahkewistahaw First Nations (Saulteaux and Cree) reserve #72, and

Ochapowace Nation (Cree) reserve #71, situated all along the south of the Qu’appelle

Valley and north of the Trans-Canada highway, side by side by side. I recall many whispers and lies, during high school moments, about Muskowekwan First Nation

(Saulteaux) reserve #85, nearest my hometown of Kelliher. Pray that your car doesn’t break down if you have to drive on the highway that goes through the Reserve. If you leave it to get help, the tires will be gone and the car on fire when you return. Such colonial fictions about the Rez were often, and continue to be, spread as truths. This

Canadian strategy of fearing FNMI peoples and places works to distance, antagonize, disassociate, alienate, and make strange. When stories like these are believed and reproduced, good relationships cannot be realized or even imagined.

For most of my life on the farm, the idea of being a good neighbor only seemed to apply to the most immediate nearby yards—my uncle’s place; my dad’s cousins who live a few miles away, across fields; my parents’ friends from church. Being a good neighbor meant once a year trick-or-treating visits, babysitting their kids, and acknowledging each other with the little nod and hand-still-on-the-steering-wheel-palm-open-fingers-up-wave as we drove past each other on grid roads to and from town. Living in town, it sometimes means saying hello across the back alley, and pausing my gardening to listen a little to

Marge, an older white lady with whiter hair and a bit of a frown who often seems lonely.

Sometimes it means inviting friends from just down the block over for tea, supper, or BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 56

games. While these neighborly activities are quite normal, I have never been required to consider how to be in good relationships with First Nations peoples living on nearby reserves. The neighborhoods I consider home always had a feeling of separateness from reserves; an unspoken us/them category. For this reason, I am compelled to finally ask:

What are my responsibilities connected to practicing being in good relationships with

First Nations and Métis peoples at school-work and at home, within these communities?

While I note that many of the communities acknowledged above are Saulteaux-

Ojibwa speakers (nakawēmowin), along with Nakota, Dakota, Lakota, and Métis land and languages, I also recognize that there are also many nehiyaw-askiy Cree reserves and

Cree speakers in southern Saskatchewan. In nehiyawewin, miyo-wîcêhtowin [mi-YOH- wee-TSAY-too-win] is an active concept referring to living in harmony together; getting along well with others; engaging in good relations; expanding the circle (Cardinal &

Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 14). Donald (2018) adds that it also invokes a healing energy that flows between beings, calling us to be kinder, more respectful, and to listen to one another. This is my/our treaty responsibility.

It is responsibility to develop an “ethical relationality,” “an ecological understanding of human relationality that does not deny difference, but rather seeks to understand more deeply how our different histories and experiences position us in relation to each other,” as a “philosophical commitment” (Donald, 2012, p. 535). Within an ethical relationality framework, fear of differences is eased as they are openly acknowledged and accepted without shame. This teaches us to practice wahkohtowin,

“the laws governing all relations” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 14). It refers to a kinship-relationship beyond immediate family bonds, and including the more-than- BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 57

human13, that involve acts of being related to others. That is, relationships are not static states, things to define, or simple nouns. A relationship is a responsibility to one another.

To know and treat each other as relatives, as family; to adopt one another. Being in relationship denotes action. Donald (2018) emphasized that this is the meaning of the treaty handshake. It is more than a deal, an agreement, or a contract. It is a sacred promise to one another (kihci-asotamâtowin) (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 25);

“Ceremonies drew the Euro-Canadians representing the government into a circle of kinship. Participation in the pipe ceremony also bound the participants to speak truthfully

. . . . The terms that were then negotiated thus became a covenant” (Miller, 2009, p. 179).

Therefore,

treaties in Indigenous context are living covenants [and] belonging as a [settler-] treaty person means accepting and practicing a dynamic set of responsibilities that will be specific to a given treaty, on the territory of a given nation, determined in an open-ended fashion through dialogue with that host nation or nations. (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 66)

Questions about such actions—how to treat one another, how to be in good relationship with one another—are ethical quandaries which I feel propelled to consider.

Especially, I challenge myself, as a white-treaty4-settler-heteronormative-ciswoman-

Canadian to commit to ethical relationality as one of my responsibilities. “With the recognition of Settler complicity with colonialism comes the revelation . . . of a potential moral or ethical imperative to challenge the structures of colonialism” (Battell Lowman

& Barker, 2015, p. 90). As such, I wholeheartedly disagree with any claim suggesting that treaty work is the responsibility of Indigenous Peoples, specifically Status Indians recognized by the Indian Act, nor that the ethical burden to challenge colonial realities is

13 “More-than-human” is not my own term, though I use it often. Refer to McGinnis et al. (2019) for an instance of the concept being used by others. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 58

only charged to FNMI peoples. As a settler-Canadian, I must ethically respond by asking what my own relational, treaty responsibilities are.

Response-abilities Beyond Earth Day

Climate change. Habitat loss. Species at risk. Air and water pollution. Resource extraction. Industrial mono-agriculture. Environmental racisms. Consumerism.

Capitalism. Colonialism. An inventory of current ecological issues is interminate, much longer than this generalized, summarized list. More importantly, its effects are incessant and merciless; the restorations, tenuous. Compost. Recycle. Carpool. Unplug. Reduce.

Turn off. Conserve. Reuse. Typical lists of cursory solutions are always inadequate.

Being a responsible, ecological citizen might include these acts, but more importantly must go much beyond these small, individual actions-steps-habits. As The Leap

Manifesto (n.d.) implores, “small steps will no longer get us where we need to go. So we need to leap” (para 4).

Call it what you want, consumer-capitalist lifestyles are severely problematic, all the more since they are normally nearly impossible not to be implicated in during these current times. In addition, ‘save the earth,’ a normative environmental education narrative, is an anthropocentric myth which pretends that good people acting individually as responsible citizens can make a difference towards interrupting climate change and global temperature increases. It neglects to point out how consumerist, capitalist, colonial systems are what plagues Earth—askiy land, kîsik sky, and nîpîy waters. We are our own worst enemy. So it goes.

Committing to bringing reusable bags to the grocery store, to growing some of my own food, to reducing and reusing, to refusing and repairing, and to eating meatless as an BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 59

ova-lacto vegetarian (and sometimes, rarely, fish) has been mostly easy for me. I collect recyclables and put them in the blue bin. My fruit and vegetable kitchen scraps are diverted from the waste bag to the compost pile in my backyard, as well as to an indoor vermicomposting system which contains some (captured) red wiggler eisenia fetida beings. Habitually, reusable water bottles and tea mugs are carried along with my laptop and school papers. I enjoy spending time outside, walking, cross-country skiing, swimming in lakes, sitting on an outdoor swing, picking saskatoon berries and raspberries, and quadding in bush trails. With both pleasure and pain, I sometimes instruct an undergraduate course called Environmental Education where we explore how our bodies impact and are impacted by ecological systems. At the same time, I know my individual actions alone are trivial at best and likely mostly inconsequential.

That is, in and of themselves, none of these personal choices really matter if industries and systems don’t change. For example, plastic continues to be a major factor in my daily life. In ubiquitous ways, it’s a component of some of my clothes, many kitchen tools, my toothbrush, my eyeglasses, the electronics I use, some of our household furniture, our house siding, the containers for many personal care-vanity items, and more, including in school contexts. During my lifetime to date, I have personally owned six cellular phones (that I can recall), purchasing my first at 23 years old. Only one of them was previously used and four of which were smart (are they really?). I am energy (coal and oil) dependant—often commuting 250 km round trip to the university in the city, cooking food, running water, using electronics, as well as heating-cooling and lighting the places I frequent (home, work-school, shopping centers, recreation and visiting spots, etc.). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 60

More or less, everything I touch required energy in order to exist in its current form and often continues to devour energy: energy generated by burning coal or other fuel while affecting air quality and climate patterns; damming waters and affecting habitats; catching wind and killing flyers; activating nuclear reactors and risking radioactive waste, and potential catastrophe; and/or, perhaps less frequently, harnessing solar and geothermal energies while altering landscapes and earthscapes. While ‘clean energy’ is generally a myth, it does not imply that all forms of energy production are equal and that anything is acceptable. None of these energy sources are without ecological impacts, though some are understood as cleaner or greener than others in that their contributions to climate change are lower. For example, considering what it takes to create solar panels may serve as a reminder that nothing is perfect. However, ‘clean coal’ and ‘green oil’ are only parts of marketing tactics that serve the static quo.

Moreover, waste production is the bottom line of living. Simply put, my life produces waste. On average, Canadians produce approximately 700 kilograms of waste per person annually (Statistics Canada, 2010). “The eating and excreting body is always entangled, enmeshed, a mess” (Shotwell, 2016, p. 114). Away is a fiction. Or, more accurately, our waste goes somewhere. There. That landfill. This watershed. The air I/we breathe. Even recycling requires energy and produces waste. There is no innocence. In these ways, “an ethical approach aiming for personal purity is inadequate in the face of the complex and entangled situation in which we in fact live . . . . Personal purity is simultaneously inadequate, impossible, and politically dangerous for shared projects of living on earth” (Shotwell, 2016, p. 107).

That’s why, to me, celebrating Earth Day is a joke. It is another creation by BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 61

colonial structures that works to prop itself up, again and again, as an unquestionable common sense (Kumashiro, 2009). Instead, consider every day as Earth Day. Though created with many good intentions, one-day-designations are also quite problematic.

Similar to Earth Day, Canada’s Indigenous Peoples Day (June 21), Canadian

Multiculturalism Day (June 27), and International Women’s Day (March 8) are further token examples that partially work to assuage guilty feelings and continue to hide real responsibilities. Assigning a single day to celebrate difference or attend to inequality annually is a game in which, more often than not, the winner is the hidden player of many names—Patriarchy, Capitalism, Colonialism, Canada. What happens when the day is over? What happens after I have signed an online petition or posted an Earth-Day-everyday overture on social media? How might the carefree return to normalcy become disrupted by welcoming an unease that refuses to settle in once again; to ignore the

Canadian lullaby that sings softly to our settler hearts? Our home and native land . . . with glowing hearts . . . the True North strong . . .

While environmentalist considerations have been entry points for me to open up to anti-oppressive and anti-colonial education possibilities, along with reminding me of my ecological self (as part of nature) and allowing a thoughtfulness concerning multiplicities of becomings-ecological, I am not the first to consider what it might mean to rethink Canada entirely. There are many Calls to Action (Truth & Reconciliation

Commission of Canada, 2015), as well as appeals to leap, which “must begin by respecting the inherent rights and title of the original caretakers of this land. Indigenous communities have been at the forefront of protecting rivers, coasts, forests and lands from out-of-control industrial activity” (The Leap Manifesto, n.d., para 5); and, to Idle No BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 62

More (n.d.), for “all people to join in a peaceful revolution, to honour Indigenous sovereignty, and to protect the land and water” (para 1). Instead of separate and competing undertakings, I view environmentalism, Indigenous rights, women’s rights,

LGBTQ2S+ rights, gender and sexual diversity activism, feminism, anti-poverty advocacy, anti-ableism, and anti-racism initiatives as intertwined invitations to disrupt nationalism and colonialism. Together, along with specific and localized stories of restoration, these movements are larger “antidotes to the poison of despair” (Kimmerer,

2013, p. 339). As Haraway (2016) argues,

We—all of us on Terra—live in disturbing times, mixed-up times, troubling and turbid times. The task is to become capable, with each other in all of our bumptious kinds, of response . . . . The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places. (p. 1, emphasis added)

miyo-wahkohtowin teaches us that we are all related because we are unified by a connection to life, which extends beyond humans and refers to everything that gives life

(Donald, 2018). In such ways, This grasshopper . . . the one who has flung herself out of the grass, one is then able to understand a the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- specific lake or a tree or a who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. grasshopper as their relative, Mary Oliver, excerpt from The Summer Day and thereby potentially respond in ethically relational ways. That is, through ethical relationality as an embodiment of our relationships with one another, of becomings-responsible, I-we become response-able to to all that gives me-us life. “To be embodied is to be placed, sustained, affected by the world, and in turn to affect the world . . . . To say we are entangled is to say we have BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 63

responsibilities by virtue of our relationships with near and distant others” (Shotwell,

2016, p. 107), including near and distant humans, along with near and distant more-than- human beings and beyond-beings, askiy land kîsik sky nîpîy waters. Becomings-response- able demands that every day is Earth day.

Environmental Education: Pretty As a Peacock

The piercing peacock screams seem so close, strangely forlorn. On my first morning here, I was startled awake in the single dormitory room. Every morning since, I have had to remind myself that there is no baby crying, nor has anyone died; instead their song is perhaps a kind of greeting to the sun, even if it is quite awkward and an assault to my human ears. In between the bed and the simple student desk, the only furnishings in the room, I peek out the solitary window at the view, as the morning light softens through. Expecting to see a peacock on the outer window sill, stretching its iridescent royal blue neck and screaming to get in, only the shady side of the hill, home to ferns and other shrubs among the brown ground, comes into sight. Laying back down, I pull the covers over my head, hoping for a few more minutes of quiet rest.

Soon, I will make my way to the common washroom, followed by the sunny shared kitchen for breakfast before heading down the forest path to class. Nearly everyone in my Masters cohort is staying in the dorms for our 3-week, summer residency.

While there are only a few of us who call Victoria, British Columbia home, we are all excited to learn more about Environmental Education. As we monopolize the third floor, these particular peacocks similarly rule the gardens here. We are all visitors here. Like the peacocks and peahens, whose peafowl ancestors were introduced to these grounds by

“settler-invaders” (Newbery, 2012, p. 31), we are part of a colonial legacy. Although I BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 64

am not sure exactly how or why the peacocks came to this place in the 1960s, it is well known that James Dunsmuir, descendant of a coal baron and Lieutenant Governor of BC in 1907, purchased the approximately 565 acre property and commissioned the building of Hatley Castle as “a grand home for his wife to entertain Victoria’s high society and for

James to enjoy the life of a country gentleman” (Hatley Park, n.d.a, para 1). He also hired landscape architects to design gardens of various styles, Japanese, Italian, and Edwardian

Rose, reportedly “to mirror British upper-class life” (Hatley Castle, 2016, para 4).

The Dunsmuir and Hatley Castle story is a quintessential Canadian one. Like the celebrated peacocks, the creation of an Edwardian estate to mimic Victorian England stakes a claim and continues in perpetuity by being lauded as a National Historic Site; a classic example of assumed colonial entitlement. At the same time, Royal Roads

University publicly recognizes that “the property known today as Hatley Park was originally part of the ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish people; the Xwsepsum

(Esquimalt) and Lkwungen (Songhees) nations” (Hatley Park, n.d.b, para 2), while claiming to “continue to maintain a positive relationship with the local Indigenous communities in an effort to learn and understand their rich history and ageless knowledge” (Hatley Park, n.d.c), and acknowledges “that we learn, work, and live on the traditional lands of the Xwsepsum (Esquimalt) and Lkwungen (Songhees) ancestors and families” (Royal Roads University, 2018, para 1).

However, the history of perceived ownership of this property by settlers, and the subsequent sale to the Canadian Government to house the Royal Roads Military College before becoming a University campus, tends to overwrite or at least misappropriate an implied ethical intention. For instance, the contested understandings of the historical BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 65

Douglas Treaty of 1850/1854, along with modern treaty making attempts (BC Treaty

Commission, 2018; Capital Regional District, 2018; Province of British Columbia, 2018), are decidedly absent in the interconnected Dunsmuir, Hatley Castle, Hatley Park, Royal

Roads Military College, and Royal Roads University discourse. This colonial technique is a normal one that seeks to reproduce a claim on the land and the rights to use it solely for Canada’s benefit. As Sheelah McLean (2013) puts it,

Canadians imagine state rights are attained by white-settlers because of their own superiority and goodness, and not through the practices of colonial violence which create political, social, and economic inequality. Canadian nationhood is founded on the removal of Indigenous Peoples from their lands, as white-settlers are produced as the true subjects of the nation. (p. 358)

Here, it is helpful to recall David Orr’s (2004) insistence that “all education is environmental education. By what is included or excluded, students are taught that they are part of or apart from that natural world” (p. 12). Likewise, I think, all education is treaty education. There is a great message, intentional or otherwise, in leaving out historical and contemporary treaty conversations from stories about places like Royal

Roads University. This null curriculum teaches a clear message of colonial-Canadian land acquisition as natural and innocent, without honour, respect, and an attention to good relationships with Indigenous Peoples. Therefore, though it might be a step in an ethical or helpful direction, a simple recognition of ancestral or traditional First Nation lands and knowledges is not enough. If it often only amounts to lip service, environmental education needs to rethink its embodied ethics. Again, as Shotwell (2016) explains, “to be embodied is to be placed, sustained, affected by the world, and in turn to affect the world” (p. 107). In this way, I conceptualize environmental and treaty education as living together. That is, as collective individuals, we live treaties in bodily ways as we are BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 66

ecological beings. As well, treaties are living through our renewed relationships with one another, human and beyond.

Normative environmental education, the common sense kind that “puts an emphasis on the land, tries to slow down and be quiet enough for students to develop a sense of place, a respect for this more-than-human world” (Newbery, 2012, p. 30), is pretty as a peacock. It wears earmuffs, earplugs, noise-cancelling headphones, sticks its index fingers in its ears, and pulls up the covers to silence the screams. It wishes not to hear and refuses to listen, avoids “confront[ing] the traumatic traces lingering in a nation born through colonization” (Newbery, 2012, p. 30). “Many environmental education programs problematically centre ecology in a frame that focuses on the effects of environmental destruction, which depoliticizes and silences primary causes such as colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy” (McLean, 2013, p. 357). That is,

“whiteness as innocence is a national discourse reified by environmental programs which construct wilderness as an essentialized, empty space . . . problematically entitl[ing] white-settler society to occupy and claim originary status in Canada, signifying wilderness and the environment as white spaces” (McLean, 2013, p. 355).

While the Masters of Arts in Environmental Education and Communication program at Royal Roads University might have changed since my time there, I find it important to remember that ethical environmental outdoor education must go beyond saving the earth, mitigating climate change, and (re)connecting with more-than-humans and nature, even through useful deep ecology philosophies like “free air life” (Gelter,

2000, p. 78) which continue to silence colonial moves to assimilate and eliminate

Indigenous Peoples in these places. Instead, Haraway (2016) calls for making all kinds of BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 67

kin, and notes that

kin is a wild category that all sorts of people do their best to domesticate. Making kin as oddkin rather than, or at least in addition to, godkin and biogenetic family troubles important matters, like to whom one is actually responsible. Who lives and who dies, and how, in this kinship rather than that one? What shape is this kinship, where and whom do its lines connect and disconnect and so what?” (p. 2)

It is in these becomings-kin that environmental education may necessarily move towards an ethical-ecological one that seeks to make and understand “kinship with the other members of Creation” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 220). It is an ethically relational response-ability “to build integrated social and ecological justice programs, . . . to frame curricula by centring an interrogation of the impact of white-settler colonialism on

Indigenous Peoples and territories” (McLean, 2013, p. 361). For,

living well in this diverse nation requires a tenacious willingness to encounter and be changed by the stories of others . . . the land we travel through could become canvases for a pedagogy of implication, once we are able to leave behind the easier fantasy of environmental outdoor education as politically neutral and of nature as something that simply is. (Newbery, 2012, p. 42)

Myth busting the doctrine of discovery and terra nullius14, and the role they played and continue to play in constructing Canadian nationalism through wilderness, is one of my settler-invader-treaty-Canadian response-abilities.

Such is an embodiment of ethical relationality.

Reciprocity

During these life-letter writing moments, I often take a little time to make a cup of tea. Habitually, I choose from my favourite trio of strongly steeped mint, sweet Earl

Grey, or milky-spicy Chai. To begin, I fill the electric kettle under the kitchen tap, set it

14 Terra nullius is the notion of empty, unoccupied, and uninhabited land. This allowed settlers to stake claim, title, and belonging in Canada; to break land and to domesticate ecosystems while presuming their labours to be virtuous and blameless. More broadly, it was used to legitimize Canada’s control over Indigenous lives, viewing their lived presence with the land as uncivilized, in order “to justify the seizure of Indigenous Nations land and wealth” (Manuel & Derrickson, 2015, p. 217). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 68

on its base, press the power button and select 90℃. As the foundation begins to warm, causing the water to bubble then rumble with steam-sounds, I ready the cup. Today, I select the wide mug given to me by a student as a semester-end gift. She had presented it to me following a conversation about her final project for the course we called Living

Treaties in Education. While I listened to her share some personal learnings and her commitment to contributing to a better world by using her voice as a strong First Nations woman, I also contemplated the coffee she brought to share with me. In part, her vulnerable generosity taught me a little more about acts of gratitude, reciprocity, and making kin—human kinships but also “kinship with the other members of Creation”

(Kimmerer, 2013, p. 220).

This relational, learning-memory returns to me again today as I pour the heated water in the white ceramic, with the painted bottom half in brooding swirls of lavendery- azureous water-sky-wind-scapes. A teaspoon of unpasteurized prairie honey disappears in the darkening water while the vivid cornflowers and the brown tea leaves rehydrate as their flavours steep. A splash of freshly squeezed homemade almond milk blooms the brew into an inviting creamy caramel hue. The first sip tastes like sweet beauty; one that I too easily take for granted. Tea leaves, cornflower petals, almonds, honey, and water are all simply complex. Considered separately, the intricacies of ecosystems of which they are a part are beyond my comprehension.

Together, through a becomings-tea moment, in the relationship with tea, joyful nourishment is created. Becomings-tea is haecceity, of the cup, the ingredients, the drinker. “A haecceity has neither beginning nor end, origin nor destination; it is always in the middle. It is not made of points, only of lines. It is a rhizome” (Deleuze & Guattari, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 69

1987, p. 263). Becomings-tea is an assemblage of relationships. “It is the entire assemblage in its individuated aggregate that is a haecceity” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 262). Becomings-tea reminds me of “the wisdom of the plants: even when they have roots, there is always an outside where they form a rhizome with something else—with the wind, an animal, human beings” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 11). How might I demonstrate a rhizomatic thankfulness for the flavour? How might I return the favour, the gift of uplifting my spirit while warming my hands and heart? How might I reciprocate, a becoming-reciprocal with a commitment to ethical relationality?

Partially, I wonder about practicing reciprocity with local aquifers and honey bees, along with faraway tea plants and almond trees, as well as the land that is home to me, all my more-than-human and beyond-human relations. Also, I ponder how to show reciprocity in my relationships with humans, specifically, in this case, this particular student. From her hands to mine, the mug traveled one way. I was very moved by her kindness and thoughtfulness. Merely expressing thanks verbally seemed to lack the significant relationality that this cup represented. Internally grappling with how to show thankfulness beyond words, I remembered that not long before, in a gift shop in Fort

Qu’Appelle, I had bought a set of hummingbird earrings beaded by a local First Nations artist. At the time, I did not have someone specifically in mind to give them to. To attempt a gesture of gratitude and reciprocity, I quickly retrieved them from my squeaky old desk office drawer and passed them from my hands to hers.

Giving back directly is perhaps a western way to understand reciprocity, such as

“a token of thanks after completing a project or sharing” (Sadowsky, 2018, p. 132), but a reciprocal return is not a payment. Ethical relationality embodied as reciprocity is more BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 70

than a gesture. They are rituals that tend to relationships. In this sense, it is paired with a consideration of how will I continue to deepen my relationship with her, over time.

Furthermore, how will I continue to attend to becomings-reciprocal with land? “The philosophy of reciprocity is beautiful in the abstract, but the practical is harder”

(Kimmerer, 2013, p. 238). Kimmerer (2013) asserts that “political action, civic engagement . . . are powerful acts of reciprocity with the land” (p. 174).

I ask what my own powerful acts of reciprocity with the land will be. “What else can [I] offer the earth, which has everything? What else can [I] give but something of

[my]self? A homemade ceremony, a ceremony that makes home” (Kimmerer, 2013, p.

174). While I view making tea as a kind of ritual, a personal ceremony which “marries the mundane to the sacred” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 37), I also offer these life-letters, and consider this writing, as homemade ceremony of reciprocity. They are offerings. They are what I can give. You are arrogant, mutters Nag, they are nothingness. Nevermind Nag.

And, I will mind you Nag; thanks for keeping me humble. “This is our work, to discover what we can give. Isn’t this the purpose of education, to learn the nature of your own gifts and how to use them for good in the world?” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 239).

I look to Kimmerer to teach me how to (re)consider my intertwined relationships with more-than-human beings and beyond-beings, haecceity. For example, those plants- trees-grasses-bushes-shrubs-weeds who sustain my breath, a frigidly piercing and unforgiving mid-winter wind, or those bugs that bite me but are integral to ecosystems of which I am a part. “How could we ever reciprocate such a wealth of care? Knowing that she carries us, could we shoulder a burden for her?” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 238). Ethical questions are needed: “Were we to act ethically, don’t we have to somehow compensate BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 71

the plants for what we received?” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 239). What must I do? How will I live? “In a sense, unless we find a way to enter into reciprocity, we are walking away with goods for which we have not paid” (p. 238). Reciprocity is about respect, as a recognition of response-abilities towards making kin by way of ceremony.

Simultaneously, I recall an encounter with another student, who seemed to hold

Fundamentalist Christian perspectives as Truth, and was very upset when I suggested that we might do well to consider how to show respect to our more-than-human relations, and develop personal practices of reciprocity with land. Therefore, with some hesitation, I wonder what the priest of St. Margaret Mary Roman Catholic parish in Kelliher, where my parents attend, might say about personal ceremonies. I might ask Father Andrei, who serves the Ss. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic parish in Grenfell, the next time I have a chance. While I have attended services at both of these somewhat recently, I consider myself to be a non-practicing Catholic, and only more generally identify as Christian insofar as I was baptized as an infant and raised accordingly. I imagine this would upset my mom, who might worry that her parents would be disappointed in her for failing to make me a devout Catholic.

Tea-as-ceremony is certainly not viewed as a Catholic Sacrament, nor necessarily as an act of worship. If normative Christian narratives of sacredness work to limit possibilities for ethical relationality and reciprocities of response-abilities, then perhaps being a good neighbor, Christian, Canadian-citizen is not enough. Perhaps it would be considered sacrilegiously irreverent to afford equal veneration to a teacup as to a communion chalice. The Vatican’s Catechism of the Catholic Church (n.d.) frames the consumption of the Eucharistic bread and wine as a celebratory act of remembrance of BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 72

Christ (Luke 22:19), towards recognizing sacrifice, offering thanksgiving, worshiping the

Creator, and receiving of salvation. This ceremony has traditionally been paired with

“gifts to share with those in need,” a monetary offering to support the church in presiding over and assisting those who find themselves “deprived of resources” (Catechism of the

Catholic Church, 1351).

However, even with all the Sunday school catechism classes, weekly Mass attendance, Hail Marys, Our Fathers and mealtime prayer recitations, becomings- reciprocal with land is an enigma. I fear that, as a settler-Canadian, I am lost. Yet, “the land knows you, even when you are lost” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 36). What must I do?

What are my response-abilities? How will I humbly reciprocate? How will I remember the gifts of askiy land, kîsik sky, and nîpîy waters? What ceremonies will I engage in,

“ceremonies large and small [that] have the power to focus attention to a way of living awake in the world” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 36)? What will I give while becomings-tea?

Braiding Wilderness: a Counter-Wilderness Interbraid

This counter-wilderness interbraid is made of strands of three self-stories, each by authored by different participants: Willow, Audrey, and Morgan. Interbraided here, in between strands of Bungled Middles and Delusional Deleusians, they are another haeccity of mistakes, response-abilities, settler-colonial whispers, life writing methods and methodologies, and participant becomings. These wilderness self-stories were written during an afternoon together, as we sat outside in the mid-March beginnings of Spring

2016, contemplating some of the ‘wild’ places that have shaped our lives and selves. We attempted to focus on our stories of personal experiences in special outdoor places, as we considered what Newbery’s (2012) “settler-invader” (p. 31) identity might mean for us. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 73

The stories may be read in any order, folded and unfolded, braided and unbraided, at the whim of the reader, in relation to each other, the counter-narrative offered, and the reader’s experiences.

The Most Eligible Conifer, by Willow

Somewhere in the forest of northern Saskatchewan there is a tree. The soil beneath it is sandy. The branches are likely dead by now. It’s approximate location is narrowed down in my memory like zooming into street view on google maps. Canada,

Saskatchewan, Big River, to the right. Somewhere between Della’s and Deb’s but closer to Mary’s. Twenty meters in from the gravel and 15 meters from the slope down into the deeper forest. I remember the first time I saw it. The biggest pine, rooted on the edge of the slope looking down onto its legacy. The bark was peeling and the smooth, glossy wood beneath could be touched by small fingers. It must have been very old. Like a grandmother tree from which all the other trees in the forest originated. And it was mine.

Inexplicably named the cubby tree, I would search for fairies in its shadows. Forever frustrated, despite my efforts I never obtained clear fairy results. I divulged my secrets: how I’d stolen that bookmark or the time I vandalized the underside of Della’s stairs; WB

+ TJ in a heart in black felt pen, never to be discovered weighing heavy on my 8-year-old soul. Climbing into the branches I could sit for hours, waiting, watching, talking. I brought Mary’s boys with me once. “Here’s my cubby tree! Isn’t it great?!” But no one, not even my mom, could see. Every time we walked to Della’s I’d run into the bush and play there until mom walked home again. I lost it once. Forgetting the exact spot on the road where I was meant to cut into the forest. I spent hours searching the tree line until I found it again. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 74

I haven’t been back; maybe I will someday. Maybe it is gone. Maybe it’s not mine anymore. I wonder if I will ever feel the same. I’ve tried to meet new trees and it always ends the same way. An awkward conversation and a hug goodnight with no intention of returning and no real connection, at least not like before. The trees haven’t changed though. Maybe deciduous isn’t my type. It’s not them it’s me. I wonder where

I’ve gone after all these years. Maybe if I take some time and search the tree line between

Della’s and Deb’s, somewhere on the sandy soil I’ll find myself again. Or maybe I’m here. Under another tree’s branches, but I just haven’t reached into the bark.

Puddles in Paradise, by Audrey

Elmer turns the yellow school bus into our farmyard, where the trees are still mostly grey but with a spring bud or two peeking out on the limbs. The exhaust wafts around us as the doors open with a swha-hiss-shhh. One, two, three, four—parroting each other as we reach the front of the short bus isle, and then down the three steps with,

“Good night, Elmer . . . Good night, Elmer . . . Good night, Elmer . . . Good night, Elmer

. . .” and his reserved “good night” reply to each of us – four of us in tow onto the gravel driveway. I’m at the back, because I’m the oldest and, I believe, the wisest at 13 years old. Our youngest sister is six this spring, and the rest of us, not too resentfully, bring her along on most of our explorations of our new yard. As we walk up to the house, only a handful of steps really, I recall our morning wait for the bus. We made sure that we stepped on every bit of crunchy-puddle ice, the satisfying shatter and clinking like glass, as well as the frosty, white-tipped grass, stiffly soft under our shoes. While we were all indoors at school, these small puddles have now melted from the warmth of the spring day. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 75

Stepping into the porch, we drop our bags, say hi to Mom, and quickly spread some soup crackers with Cheez Whiz™ and peanut butter for an after-school snack, as is our tradition. But, mostly, we just want to get out to the puddles. Well, actually, we crave to be in the deeper sloughs. We put on our rubber boots – the farmyard kind, the dusty black ones with the brown, grippy soles. Then, our splash pants get pulled over top so that we don’t get a boot-full. Which slough will we explore today, I wonder! We’re all somewhat hushed, busy with our motley gear – I zip up a brightly coloured jacket of purple and fluorescent pink; my sisters don their matching blue, yellow, and purple, in classic early ’90s triangles, fleece pullovers; My brother adjusts his frayed, bright red neck-tube, the one that he has a habit of chewing at the edges, on his head as a toque today. We’re ready.

We start to stroll out of the driveway, then north, down the gravel road, on the lookout for a good slough, one with a layer of ice still on the top, usually around the edges; a good place for an adventure. I’m looking forward to stepping on top of that ice- crust, to feel the sweet-spot when it slowly sinks . . . sinks . . . sinks beneath the weight of my body, opening up to the water underneath – the deep copper brown water, made by the dried up grasses, rushes, and cattails that stewed there all fall, to then freeze during the cold winter, and now thawing again, to my delight. The first slough we come upon we’ve spent time in before. There’s no ice-crust this afternoon, but we still can’t resist.

It’s one of our favourites – deep and big and round, usually with lots of birds. It never dries up. It’s on our neighbour’s land, adjacent to our home quarter, just across the road of our lane.

Hesitant to get a boot full, because that water is pretty cold, we gingerly and BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 76

gently edge into the slough, wondering how deep we should risk it, mostly sticking to the edges. I’m holding Aimee’s 6-year-old hand as we go, for her little legs need more practice with balance, helping her in the shallow area while I stretch our arms to allow myself some deeper water experience. Even though I think we’re protected, for we’ve got our splash pants on and we’ve taken care to only go as deep as the rim of her boots, watching the water creeping closer and closer to the top, it happens, inevitably, as it always does – and I love that moment of embrace, though I pretend to prevent it. As we softly move about, it begins to lap against my calves and nearly her knees, with ringed ripples moving out around us. Then, I can tell that the water has started to seep in, little by little, through our pants. I can feel it – the cold rush trickling down to my toes.

“It’s not too cold, really,” I say, being brave, as the oldest, but mostly not wanting to go back inside yet. “We might as well not worry about getting wet, since I have a boot- full now anyway.” I let go of her hand and go deeper, letting my boots fill up; all-in wading, right up to my knees. The ducks at the other end of the slough take up and fly away as we slowly round the perimeter, finally deciding to exit the slough and climb up the bank of the ditch, with giggling shrieks of “Ohhhh! My feet are freezin’! That was awesome!” I help Aimee with her boot-full, taking one boot off and pouring it out; maybe more than a cup of water splashes onto the ground. She holds onto me, shivering slightly, her bootless, soaked-sock foot raised from the ground. Mom will help her with her wet socks when we get back to the house. Boot back on. Other foot. Then, I use her for balance and do the same with my own boots. Brian and Christina are performing a similar ritual beside us. I plan not to return to the yard until we start to get hungry again, when I think it might be close to supper, or when one of us announces that they can’t feel their BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 77

toes. Ready again, we continue down the road looking for the next slough, the next copper-water adventure, the next great puddle in paradise.

From the Mint Julep, by Morgan

It’s the view I like the best. Where I can open my eyes to the bigness. The bigness of the sky where it melts into the water, glinting and broken into a million wavy pieces.

The bigness of the cascading valley hills that crest the horizon, but seem not to end there

– the bigness of wondering where they lead. The bigness of the wind and where’s it’s been today; maybe over the humps and coulees of the place we named Camel Hill, where the disappearing fox family once lived; maybe over the wing tips of a pelican seeking breakfast at the fish dam; maybe anywhere, before reaching my cheek, my hair, as I stand taking in the view. Where I can see the bigness, and the smallness too. The smallness of the first white-humped-spotted spider I ever saw. The smallness of the split second when we met before it scuttled back into the crack of earth at the edge of my view. The smallness of the chokecherries, dropping silently from the ledge and the smallness of their tiny ‘plop’ in the water below. It’s the view Grandpa sees as he waves and waves and waves until the paddlers and their canoe are too small to see, the place from which he spots them returning and is ready to call out. It’s the view I am rewarded with after climbing the 50 railway ties up from the water’s edge, panting breath, dripping hair, seaweed toes. It’s a view for morning hot-chocolate sipping, especially on foggy days when you’ve almost beat the sun out of bed. At night, it is for counting lightning strikes and shooting stars. On days when the view is especially big, small, and everything-I-need all at once, I can take a few extra minutes sipping it in. No one will mind. They know this view. This is a view for sharing with mothers and sisters, brothers and fathers, cousins, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 78

grandparents, aunts, uncles, and four-legged best friends. It is captured in smeared brush strokes that rest inside on the mantle, a painted-at-sunset, generation after generation after generation view. I stand here and look, really look, at all the bigness of the sky and all the smallness of spiders, and at all the spaces in between. I can see the shape of my family in the never-cresting, never ending hills, and on the wind that travels from maybe anywhere, to reach my cheek, my hair, as I stand taking in the view.

Interbraid: Counter-Wilderness

Examples of wilderness, in our Willow-Audrey-Morgan storied braid, are the slough near the home quarter, the conifer-world, and the Mint Julep’s view. In our stories, wilderness is somewhat romantically remembered, as is common from a euro- western perspective. Yet, as Newbery (2012) argues, “wilderness is neither natural or neutral, but cultural and hegemonic, written through relations of power” (p. 34); “not something that simply is, but rather is a particular and changing story we tell of geographical space” (p. 34). Though we participated in such constructions of wilderness, and continue to participate through these memories of wilderness, we also complicate the common sense, normative, euro-western narrative which constructs wilderness as “empty space, as unpeopled, as not home” (p. 35).

Instead, in some ways, we are becomings-wilderness, akin to “a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the wasp” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 10), in our relationships with the slough, the conifer, and the windy view, in our special home- places. We are wild-erness, with our “dripping hair, seaweed toes” (Morgan), our

“giggling shrieks” (Audrey), our “climbing into the branches . . . sit[ting] for hours, waiting, watching, talking” (Willow), though perhaps not just in the usual sense of wild BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 79

and wilderness. Our stories demonstrate our desire to “be more mindful of the places”

(Newbery, 2012, p. 39) we consider special and those we relate to as home. They show how wilderness is cultural and storied, though perhaps relations of power are buried below the surface of our storied-memories. Although we wish to “travel with a sense of humility rather than entitlement” (p. 39), there are hints of our belief in ownership of the land, an assumption of entitled access to such wilderness – “And it was mine . . . . my cubby tree” (Willow), “it is captured . . . generation after generation after generation”

(Morgan), “which slough will we explore today . . . . a good place for an adventure . . . .

It’s on our neighbour’s land” (Audrey).

Here, we might consider the ways in which wilderness is “coded as symbols of the nation” (Newbery, 2012, p. 31), and be confronted with our own “settler-invader” (p.

31) Canadian-ness. Newbery (2012) reminds us that the land now commonly called

Canada is “also a site of struggle, a tangle of contested meanings” (p. 31). Also, in agreement with her, “learning to form complex relationships . . . and to come to terms with our own implication in colonial history and present is imperative in the endeavour of living together ethically in this nation of great difference” (p. 32). Instead of a “pedagogy of palatability . . . an education that doesn’t rock the boat . . . [that] work[s] to contain conflict and anxiety” (p. 38), we risk a “pedagogy of discomfort [which] recognizes and problematizes the deeply embedded emotional dimensions that frame and shape daily habits, routines, and unconscious complicity with hegemony” (Boler & Zembylas, 2003, p. 111). That is, we seek to realize that “living as a settler-invader subject in Canada implies implication, for our homes, our wealth, our existence here are predicated on a long history of dispossession” of Indigenous Peoples (Newbery, 2012, p. 41). How might BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 80

becomings-unsettled work through our storied-selves in relation? How could we disrupt our common sense Canadian selves, towards telling a more complex story – perhaps one that recognizes some emotional dimensions of white privilege, borderlands, and treaty personhood, along with historical legacies and current practices of colonialism? These questions provoke our Counter-Canadian interbraided stories, those in the middles of

Delusional Deleusians and Blundered Becomings-.

Delusional Deleusians┃miyoskamin Spring

Processes of Thesis-Writing

A 3-Minute Thesis

So, what’s a thesis, anyway? In the process of doing this thing called a PhD, I have been asked many versions of this question in social situations beyond the university setting. Similar to asking how work is going, it serves as a kind of small talk. In this particular moment, it comes while sitting around a backyard fire on an evening in early

May, while the sun begins to set behind us, after we have finished roasting hotdogs on long metal forks. ‘I guess it is sort of like a big research paper,’ I say, feeling it out, wondering how much detail they are willing to listen to and secretly hoping that this response will allow me a slight reprieve. With a pause, I briefly go back to considering whether or not to melt a marshmallow, so that I might smash it along with a chunk of chocolate between a couple of graham crackers. They persist with the next obvious question. What is your topic? Happily, this inquiring acquaintance seems to actually want to have a longer conversation. Yet, I hesitate. How should I begin?

As the sun continues its caress of the horizon, we talk a little about living treaties,

Canadian truths, and ecological selves. How much to say and how much to hold is a bit BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 81

of a dance. Resisting a fall into a lengthy lecture, while openly sharing, is a delicate exercise. Glazed over eyes and tentative nods are reactions I would rather avoid.

Nevertheless, this time it does not really matter because suddenly the 2-year-old child who was toddling over to the dog trips, falls, and frightens the nearby cat who darts away. There is an audible intake of breath from many of the adults, watching for tears.

He is alright, but attention has been broken and the conversation shifts, as anticipated, before enough natural segues develop for elaborating with further detail. Still, practicing how to explain life-writing methodologies, in social situations and academic ones alike, I am often disappointed in myself for failing to adequately invite a deeper discussion. The invitation always seems to close so quickly. In hindsight, now, I wish I would have mentioned self-stories and braiding. Maybe I could have referred to the fire as a helpful metaphor. The process is volatile, risky, fierce, and scorches the soul. I have experienced such regret before.

The frequent expectation to explain a thesis in less than three minutes is frustrating to me. In my encounters, it usually assumes that it must provide a hook, be succinctly interesting, and note uniqueness. These strategies for sharing ideas are quite customary in grad school, especially specific in email announcements for Three Minute

Thesis competitions. Ironically, I have found myself pulled into a conversation about creating elevator pitches while riding in an elevator. The intention is that literal, and that annoying. Developing such a proverbial pitch is more difficult than implied. Either I leave too much to the imagination, tending towards generalities, or clumsily insinuate that I have discovered some kind of wisdom, overcompensating for self-doubt with accidental condescension and arrogance. Furthermore, I wonder about the impulse to BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 82

reduce deep thinking into snippets of palatability. While the motivation to share ideas with others might be virtuous, possibly even useful, perhaps the assumption that it is possible to explain or introduce thesis thinking in three minutes or less is profoundly flawed.

In a 3-minute thesis, I could mention life-writing and braiding as a methodologies, but I would not have time to immerse in particular self-stories and life-letters. Neither would engaging with braiding be possible. Instead, I argue it would be more interesting for us to read storied strands together, to consider what learning it holds in our writer-to- reader relationship (Chapman, 2005). Better still, offering an invitation to engage in life- writing could further help to demonstrate what self-stories do and to explore how relational life-writing works. “Of course you can do it yourself—by tying one end to a chair, or by holding [sweetgrass] in your teeth and braiding backward away from yourself” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. ix), though invoking ethical relationality is more difficult alone. Life-writing this thesis feels like trying to French braid my own hair. It can be done, but it is all elbows held high with blood draining from fingertips. It is an isolated, lonesome, and awkward affair. Hurry up, it hurts. Go faster. You’re not fast enough, jabs

Nag. With frustrated tears, I have partially lost my hold. It has gone crooked, off center, sideways, and there are pieces sticking out in bumps and tangles. The tension here, the ouch of the hair pulled tight, is in allowing a crooked braid-thesis while feeling pressure to make it straight, clear, and easily digestible all at the same time.

In the confines of the elevator, there is very little time or room for mistakes. There is only up or down, this floor or that one. Instead, I push the red emergency-break button, pry open the doors to squeeze through the middle of the unknown, headed for anywhere BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 83

that I might be free from Nag. Giving chase, she hunts me down, yanking at my braided strands, tormenting me. You should really know your research question better. You are unclear and obscure. You should be able to communicate your intentions well. Just say what it is already. Maybe I should be able to say what it is. But, then, when I try to remember it, to verbalize it, to express it, even to write it, I second guess. You were supposed to have had the research question long ago, in your proposal and again during your board of ethics application, dummy. Guffaw. You don’t know anything.

What is it that I am trying to do? If you don’t know, who does? You are in major trouble, girlie. You will never finish. You know nothing. Shhhhh. Let me think. Initially, my questioning was phenomenological: What is the process of becoming-unsettled like?

At first, I phrased this in the singular, without an ‘s’, becoming rather than becomings. I presumed to answer this as I planned the participant sessions. Assuming a relational process was necessary. I also asserted a continual condition. With this reasoning, becoming-unsettled does not suggest an arrival, a point of calling oneself settler- unsettled, but an ongoing process of unsettling, again and again and again. What is your topic? I am interested in becomings-(un)settled and (un)braiding settler-treaty life writing. Well, that makes absolutely little sense. You had better come up with something better; something more understandable, more concrete. Well, it makes sense to me.

Questions of Becomings

The kinds of questionings I have in mind are something like this: How do becomings- . . . , such as becomings-tearful, becomings-humble, becomings-ethical, becomings-unsettled, becomings-reciprocal, and becomings-kin, work? I will attempt to partially illustrate with another self-story. It is set at my friend Katia’s house. Katia and I BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 84

met as doctoral students, both enrolled in one of the compulsory graduate courses. Now, we support each other in writing and teaching, and temper our work with lunches, pedicures, and long talks together.

On the evening of Katia’s birthday party, as she’s fastening earrings and running a brush through her hair one more time before the other guests arrive, I stand on the nearby stairwell proclaiming that if anyone asks me how my writing is going, I will lie and say

‘pretty well.’ We laugh, somewhat nervously, and again I hope that no one will feel the urge to grill us. A few bona fide professors, colleagues, and friends are expected to show up any minute. Perhaps it is almost their duty to inquire about our theses, to push us to talk about it, even during birthday parties, over the promise of confetti cake with brightly coloured sprinkles and slender candles. I correctly assumed that this social event would be no exception. Champagne not yet poured, candles not yet lit, the dreaded quizzing begins immediately, masquerading as small talk.

Very directly, ‘So, when will you finish? What is your methodology?’

Absurdly, I am now wishing they would have simply asked, ‘how’s the writing going?’ Responding with a lie is not an option here, at least not in regard to methodology.

‘Um, soon and life writing . . . as in self-stories, which I use somewhat differently than narrative inquiry.’

(Efffff . . . Did I offer that?)

‘How is it different than narrative inquiry? In what way?,’ they reply.

(Great, now Nag has possessed them.)

‘Life writing is not focused on interpreting the stories.’

‘Isn’t that narrative inquiry as well?’ BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 85

‘Well, these self-stories try to work somewhat beyond the interpretive tradition.’

(Ugh, why can’t I explain myself properly!)

I imagine crossing my fingers behind my back, wishing that this will satisfy them for now. As panic begins to overtake me (this feels too much like an impromptu practice defense for which I did not prepare), Katia returns with glasses of vinho verde and I am relieved from being interrogated. Still a bit shaken, I take a sip. Too bad they did not ask me about my research question. I might have been able to muddle through that a little better.

I am curious about Deleuzian becomings- . . .

Oh, you think you’d have handled that, do you? Hahaha. Very doubtful.

Quiet down, Nag.

Throughout my experience with qualitative research methodology courses, I was always under the impression that a good research question was narrow enough to be clearly explored with some complexity but little ambiguity, those “specific, concrete questions to which concrete answers can be given” (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007, p. 79). Usually, central questions are listed, sometimes with subquestions, in order to provide a focus for the research project, while “tacking continuously between questions that address ‘What’s the big picture here?’ and . . . ‘What, in particular, is going on here?’

. . . the familiar rhythm of qualitative inquiry . . . between breadth of vision and precision of focus” (Schram, 2006, p. 76).

The next day, I spent some time flipping through old course notebooks and previously read journal articles, looking for thoughts and questions hastily scratched in their margins. There were many threads, most of which began to lead to questions like BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 86

these:

● How do white, Canadian women teachers with settler ancestry engage with

life writing self-stories towards unsettling how they view themselves as

settler-Canadians?

● How do I, as a white, settler-Canadian teacher-researcher braid settler-treaty

life writing in ethical ways?

● How does settler-treaty life writing open up possibilities for understanding

oneself as a Treaty Person in educational contexts?

Maybe these questions are fine. Perhaps “the responsiveness of [the] research question” is adequate: “how well it addresses [my] problem, purpose, focus, and assumptions and what implicit claim it makes of being an answerable question” (Schram,

2006, p. 81). Yet, I am bored. These questions seem too pedantic, too dogmatic, too reasoned and derivable. Instead, in another kind of imagining of research design, “it is vital that the question itself be open to evolution through the research process” (Davies &

Gannon, 2011, p. 315). This opening allows me to (mis)step in a process of becomings- theoretical and ask how does becomings-theoretical work?

Since “the asking of research questions in post-structurally informed research must be well-grounded . . . in the post-structuralist philosophy that may help to open up a completely new way of envisaging what it is that might become known” (Davies &

Gannon, 2011, p. 315), I call upon various curious concepts by Deleuze and Guattari

(1987), mainly lines of flight, rhizomes, thresholds, and becomings-. There are other well-known figurations, for example, assemblages, bodies without organs, (literary) machines, haecceity, planes of immanence, deterritorialization, and that I use less BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 87

frequently to think with. Sometimes, these concepts pop up from rhizomatic roots and then disappear again. Regardless of the concept, these figurations need to work, to do something. They are processes instead of things (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 1).

Sniggering—Deleuzian. Ha! Ridiculousness. You are foolish. You don’t know anything about Deleuzian thinking. Processes are too fluid to pay attention to. You are not a good methodologist. That is true. I am not. While “well trained methodologists are carefully taught to be attentive to their field notes and transcription data in order to sort and sift and identify the codes and categorise that emerge from the data” (Jackson &

Mazzei, 2012, p. viii), I have vehemently resisted this from the onset. Although I recorded our participant afternoons, I refused to transcribe, to look for themes, to assume

I might find some hidden knowledge to understand. “We will not look for anything to understand in it. We will ask what it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not transmit intensities” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 4). Differently than interpretative theoretical traditions, a question of becomings- pays attention to processes of tracing lines of flight and mapping intensities. “The research cannot thus be totally planned in advance but maintains its openness . . . to the ethical demands that arise in the encounter . . . , where the researcher will become someone-she-was-not-already” (Davies

& Gannon, 2011, p. 315). Thank-heavens-to-Betsy15 for curiosities like these.

15 This expression is part of the milieu of my childhood. In this context, it doesn't mean anything important, necessarily. I use the euphemism as a way to be weird, not so serious, and as a stand-in for blasphemy since I don't really “Thank God” for such curiosities. I have especially decided to use it since euphemisms are not usually considered good to use in academic writing. So, instead of ‘good,’ I seek to be some other kind of academic writer. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 88

Abstracting an Abstract

It could help to write an abstract, so I am told.

This abstract is another note to myself, but a different one. Beyond a perfectly descriptive summary paragraph, a preview of the intended purpose, it points towards multiplicities of elusive images, to impressions of becomings that drift in and out, folding back and forth, braiding in turn. Another life- letter, though shorter, it is penned on delicate stationery, folded gently, tucked into an envelope for later openings (Figure 5). The following is the typeset Figure 5. An abstract letter. version, the circling hidden.

adrift, living lost.

in the middles of things middles full of mistakes tapwéwin, truth-telling self-stories inevitable settler-Canadian mis takes impermissible mistaken

euro-ancestors who came from away preemptions NW 21 37 24 W3 descendants, like me, here to stay homequarters NW 32 27 12 W2

miskâsowin settler-treaty4 woman uninvited, invader, Canadian coming to terms normativity recentered

good girl, good student, good teacher, good theorist, good Canadian Figure 6. Pre-emption document. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 89

gooder goodie goodness me Nag pokes holes in good better best multiplicities of becomings- -tearful, complicated cries of innocence -humble, innocent and comfortable -ethical, treaty partner response-abilities -unsettled, more virtuous? in the clear ings, the gardens of reciprocities wasp-orchid bee-astersgoldenrods becomings-relatives, becomings-kin ethical relationality miyo-wîcêhtowin and miyo-wâhkôhtowin living treaties lived, spirit and intent kihci-asotamâtowin makes a sacred family extended kin expanding circles treaty walking together on turtle island askîy to share as long as the waters flows and the prairie grasses grow as long as the sun shines

NO TRESPASSING, unless permitted by OWNER ? waters compromised sweetgrass for sale climate change we are (in) a real crisis now terrible trinity consumerism, capitalism, colonialism toxic Truthmyths reproduced schooling as enterprise whispers and lies (I) Don’t buy it un braiding life-writing BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 90

un settling self tangled I pipon winter miyoskamin spring nîpin summer takwâkin autumn Alma, kêhtê-aya nehiyaw iskwew, teaches

‘we do things in fours’ four directions directed to pray in a circle living treaties becomings-relatives becomings-kin becomings-reciprocal

Maybe it is like a poem, though I am not really a poet. I don’t know exactly what a poem is. Or, maybe this “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. poetic piece is a kind of I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, prayer. Could prayerful how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields which is what I have been doing all day poetry be a manner of Tell me, what else should I have have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? method? Roman Catholic Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” prayers appear as I wade (Oliver, 2008, p. 65) into my memories. As I was taught, this is The Right Way to pray: Our Father who art in Heaven . . . . give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses . . . Hail Mary full of grace . . . . blessed art thou amongst women. The cushioned kneeler squeaks as I put it down, lower, bow my head, and interlace my fingers in front of my body.

I close my eyes and move my lips, peeking now and then to catch a glimpse at my BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 91

family beside me doing what we were supposed to, being good, in the midst of the rest of the kneeling people. I remember the first time I noticed that I could see over the pew while kneeling and crossing, father son and holy spirit. Finally, I was big enough and that was a wonderful feeling. I smiled. Another time, surrounded by my parents legs as I played below, I dropped the kneeler with a loud crash, interrupting the Mass for a merciless instant with an ever so slight gasp from parishioners, a holding of breath while pink embarrassment bloomed over my face, head down. Politely, eyes forward, everyone quickly pretended to ignore my transgression though, already noting my parents’ displeased faces as I scrambled to stand properly beside them, I was sure I would hear about it at home later. I imagine they might have worried that my misbehavior reflected poorly upon them, assuming wordless judgement of their parenting skills.

With recited prayers in the pew, bless-us-oh-Lord-and-these-thy-gifts grace before supper, and another at bedtime with Mom as she tucked me in, still, like Mary

Oliver (2008), I admit that “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is” (Oliver, 2008, p. 65).

Yet, though I would not necessarily consider myself a theologian, I am sure there are multiple ways to play and, therefore, to pray. “I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down / into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass” (Oliver, 2008, p. 65). It can be sitting low on the ground, removing eyeglasses, rings, and piercings, to be like we were

“when we were born” (Alma Poitras, personal communication, 2018), preparing to listen to Alma sing a prayer in her language, nêhiyawêwin, while the smudge drifts up and around us. It can be like playing with poetry or playing in the grass. It can be talking, walking, teaching, cooking, or gardening, especially together, or watching laundry on the line flapping with the winds. Gifts, too, are prayers. So is humble gratitude, and BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 92

reciprocity. Maybe a prayer is simply a kind of opening; intimate openings up to one another.

As I write these ponderings, on this middle of the week day, I am thankful that my mom had lovingly taken the day in lieu from her work teaching Grade 8/9 to visit and spend the day with me. She brought a pile of math assignments to correct while I vowed to write. Before we bent over papers and keyboards, I showed her a few new dresses I might wear to the handful of upcoming summer weddings we will attend and she shared her opinions about how they looked. She gave me a mindfulness diary, an early birthday present, and I gave her a quilted floral art piece wall-hanging as a belated birthday gift.

After sharing lunch, we did some of the work we had planned, intermittently taking breaks to pin up some laundry to dry on the backyard line in the afternoon sun or breaking off last year’s brittle raspberry canes from the small patch by the shed.

Suppertime came quickly. While I cut up onions, sweet potatoes, and cauliflower for a sweet coconut curry, she read my poetic abstract and my prayerful thoughts. At first, she wondered aloud about grammar. “Should it be openings or opening?,” she asked.

This question was unexpected. I told her not to worry about grammar, but to just read it and then tell me what she thinks. While she kept reading, I stirred in the coriander and turmeric considering the plural choice of tacking on an extraneous ‘s’. Opening or openings? Decidedly, openings. Without a doubt, becomings. These are multiplicities, not singularities; activities, not things. The line of thinking took flight, veering in directions unforeseen. Happenings happened by putting my fingers to the keys.

Prayer was not on my writing agenda. Certainly, I had no intentions of referring to prayer within this section, in the abstract, or in this thesis at large, never mind praying. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 93

Instead, I simply started with a sketch of ideas, as an attempt to organize some of the thoughts within this thesis. The potential for prayer surprised me. It was in the relationship with my mom, and with Mary Oliver’s poem, that invited such becomings. I asked her, what did it make you think? This is a question I have partially learned to ask from Jackson and Mazzei (2012). Mom inquired about the Cree words, and asked what was meant by reciprocity. She liked the idea of mis-take, written in that way, not having considered that impression before. Talking about theory with her, in this way, felt good.

She said she still did not really understand what my thesis is about, but I think that is okay. Instead, it invites openings. I pray for openings, for living treaty braidings, for such becomings; for living a treaty prayer. Perhaps my devout Christian friends and relatives would agree; perhaps not.

Becomings-data

While I was a high school teacher, I rarely peeked at cumulative student files.

While it was implied that getting to know students through these records was sort of expected, I avoided them with a guilty disposition. They waited quietly, filed neatly in alphabetical order in the school office cabinets behind the desks of the secretary gatekeepers, ready to be pulled for student-parent-teacher-principal meetings in times of trouble. An aura of delinquency fermented around the fattest file folders. Thinner files were assumed to be no-need-to-worry-A-students, the good ones. Once, I pulled the results of the provincial Grade 9 math assessment for a particular student, just to see if the rumors were true. The green summary reminded me of administering the test, with the fill-in-the-bubble scantron answer sheet accompanying the question booklet. The data collected was less than useful, telling me very little about how to help this student BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 94

understand math. Instead, it felt almost like fate had spoken and this student was forever doomed to hate and perform poorly mathematically; another tragic story that the data silently told.

Ubiquitous and relentless, data driven educational culture is, more often than not, highly synonymous with numerical evidence gleaned through various modes of testing, including those standardized by school, division, province, or nation. I wonder if this phenomena has partially gained momentum from a commonsense narrative of research, empirically quantitative. Education systems and normative research processes both focus heavily on collecting certain kinds of empirical evidence and analyzing this data with precisely defined methods. During research methodology graduate courses, while it was a pleasurable surprise to learn about various qualitative possibilities, framed as equally legitimate, assumptions about particular kinds of data-generated-by-good-research lingers. I wonder how our understandings of schooling, learning, teaching, and academic success could be shifted if administrators and teachers, along with education researchers, aimed to center varied storied data instead of quantitative methods. At least, a view of what counts as data could be expanded to include more possibilities. For the purposes of this thesis, I am especially interested in engaging in qualitative research methods that dare to let go of normative data analysis practices, such as those that seek to code, theme, and interpret perceived meaning in the stories.

Therefore, I aim to reconsider what constitutes qualitative data in this context and how to imagine analysis more expansively. Initially, I proposed a qualitative research design that sidestepped interviewing participants, avoided surveys, and subverted codifying or looking for themes within transcripts. Instead of arguing against these BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 95

normative qualitative strategies, those that are perhaps most commonly understood and somewhat easy to defend, I remained vague, with a murky process. I explained that we would engage together in writing workshops and that the sessions would be audio recorded. Imagining data as a slurry, audio recordings and partial transcripts are only part of the data-muck. The data seems to be everywhere and everywhence, as Coyote expresses to Raven,

I mean a rhizome raven as in the geographization of language and verse vice a rhizome as in the center is everywhere everywhence hold two words regarded from different angles at arm’s length mind’s width imagination’s depth and slurry (O’Riley & Cole, 2009, p. 126).

Even with goggles, the way continues to be mostly blurry. What opens up if data is viewed not simply as a noun or a thing, in a limiting sense, but also as a process which is beyond the verbial task of data collection? “Thus opens a rhizomatic realm of possibility effecting the potentialization of the possible, as opposed to arborescent possibility, which marks a closure, an impotence” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 190). Therefore, I have come to regard the storied data together as a pack.

As part of the muck, audio recording our writing afternoons together might have been an arborescent mistake, for I tended to notoriously center these recordings as the proper data. I spent too long agonizing over these sound bites, burned into digital files and assumed to be the most credibly tangible data source, as if memory would not suffice nor be allowed take off in lines of flight. Sometimes, while I walked down a gravel road, on the outskirts of town, I would plug tiny speakers next to my ear canals to listen for unsettled moments in our voices and words. Sometimes, in the middle of things, I would pause my walking and the recording to make voice-memos while the red-winged BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 96

blackbirds flitted from their cattail perches in the watery ditches. Later, back at my computer, I would make little notes like this one:

Recording #4 (2:50-3:10) Audrey seem unsettled while reading aloud from Braiding Sweetgrass (Kimmerer, 2013): “It means the fragrant holy grass, the sweet smelling hair . . . breathe it in & you start to remember things you didn’t know you’d forgotten” (p. ix). [pause] Okay, I need to stop because I skipped over the scientific name & I skipped over—she has a part that says ‘in our language, it’s called wiingaashk . . .’—and, in my head, I was like, I’m not going to read that word because I don’t know how to pronounce it and then, I thought, that's such a colonial thing to do, you know, to skip over . . .’ [trails off; some general laughter; then, quickly continues reading].

With ‘Audrey seems unsettled,’ I attempt to separate myself from myself, closing off and making myself an impotent data object. This clip makes me feel foolish, embarrassed, and misguided, because of my hesitation to mispronounce wiingaashk,16 my decision to be vulnerable in this moment, as well as from attempting to find points of unsettled feelings to submit to analysis while treating myself and the participants as data objects.

Another component of the data muck was the self-stories we wrote together.

These creations resulted from an engagement with autobiographical life writing (Hasebe-

Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009) and collective biographies methods (Davies & Gannon,

2006). The self-stories allowed me to loosen my data-grip on the session recordings and began to analyze the braided stories by writing counter interbraids. As well, I began to consider the counter narrative interbraids as another data set. For example, Braiding

Wilderness juxtaposes The Most Eligible Conifer, by Willow, Puddles in Paradise, by

Audrey, and From the Mint Julep, by Morgan, self stories (data) with the Counter-

Wilderness interbraid (both as a form of data analysis and another data collection moment). These, along with two other interbraids and the audio recordings, are all part of

16 sweetgrass, in the language Potawatomi. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 97

the collected self-storied data muck. Yet, though I now recognize the data as muck, I also notice an impulse to clearly identify the self-stories as data and then attempt to submit them to analysis via interbraid counternarratives. Instead, what if all of this thesis writing, each turn, each fold and cross, each movement, and the whole, could be regarded as formations of data multiplicities? Then, this thesis may be differently conceptualized as made with each storied turn and fold, with all the braiding of life writing, belonging to the multiple. “There is no difference between what a book talks about and how it is made.

Therefore a book also has no object” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 4). A thesis is a data pack because “it has pack modes, rather than characteristics” (p. 239). The story is not fundamentally a characteristic or a certain number of characteristics; it is a storying17. I experience myself as a braid of stories, “according to her variable relations of becoming with the people she approaches” (p. 239).

This is “the weight of your thinking frameworks” (O’Riley & Cole, 2009, p. 126).

To follow rhizomatic multiplicities of storied data, I soberly attempt to take turns subtracting the unique. “The multiple must be made . . . in the simplest of ways, by dint of sobriety . . . Subtract the unique from the multiplicity to be constituted; write at n - 1 dimensions. A system of this kind could be called a rhizome” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 6). What will I subtract? Subtract recorded audio data, subtract transcripted notes, subtract self-stories, and subtract counter narrative analyses. Such data is in the middle of the crosshairs, targeted and then struck out, subtracted. Striking through and striking out,

17 I adapt this from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) idea of “the Wolf-Man fascinated by several wolves watching him. What would a lone wolf be? Or a whale, a louse, a rat, a fly? . . .. The wolf is not fundamentally a characteristic or a certain number of characteristics; it is a wolfing. The louse is a lousing, and so on. What is a cry independent of the population it appeals to or takes as its witness? Virginia Woolfs [sic] experiences herself not as a monkey or a fish but as a troop of monkeys, a school of fish” (p. 239). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 98

data is a baseball movement. Three strikes, you’re out! It is productive missings. Data is a subversion of normative data sets, capitol D, Data. Data put under erasure18 becomes data, “one of those impossible things that we cannot do without” (Burman & MacLure,

2011, p. 288). Subtract the static idea of Data. To hell with paying attention to proper

Data. “Beelzebub is the Devil, but the Devil as lord of the flies” (Deleuze & Guattari,

1987, p. 239) and the lord of Data and data, both.

A Data/data binary is glaring, as I attempt to “hold two words,” Data and data

“regarded from different angles at arm’s length / mind’s width” (O’Riley & Cole, 2009, p. 126). Yet, “the binary law of presence always contains the seeds of its own undoing. It always breaks down under pressure” (Burman & MacLure, 2011, p. 287). To hell with positioning such thinking with either/or instead of and, and, and. Data opens the self- stories, and the self, up to proliferations. “I am legion” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p.

239). Deleuze and Guattari “stretch language and its possibilities by intentionally using words to connote something other than we ordinarily take them to mean, as a way to interrupt and rupture our ways of thinking” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 85). In this way, data as an idea can take on another meaning. Data is Data, but also not as stable as we might normally like to pretend. It is also becomings-data. Becomings-data works to

“disrupt the centering compulsion of traditional qualitative research,” the trap of data that

“inhibits the inclusion of previously unthought ‘data’” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. viii).

Always, Nag is nagging away: At this juncture, all the Data should be

18 Here, I am only playing with Derridian “sous rature,” “under erasure,” which Spivak (1997) explains simply as “to write a word, cross it out, and then print both word and deletion. (Since the word is inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since it is necessary, it remains legible” (p. xiv). In this context, I do not necessarily care if this idea is used properly or as Derrida intended. Deliberately, I do not dwell with the philosophy very much, but rather use the idea as a potential to think something else about data and to move off to still other philosophical ideas. For these purposes, I use the strikethrough lightly, casually, as an attempt to not take data too seriously. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 99

distinguishable, apparent. It is the place to mine for moments of becoming-unsettled. No more data moments can be added, for this is the writing-it-up phase, the report, the thing where we’re supposed to communicate what we know and what we’ve learned from the data. We need to know what we’re talking about. Becomings-data doesn’t make any tangible sense. We need to find something in the Data as evidence to support our thinking.

But what if there is nothing to discover in the data, no meaning within! Part of this writing project is to write without a clear objective, without defined data points, or rather, by considering every written turn to be data.

Then, who gets to do this work if it doesn’t amount to anything? Too much privilege allows for tangents of nothingness. Many Others don’t have time for this drivelling nonsense.

Entertaining such naggings often results in fallout thoughts: Is this a worthless engagement with privilege? Have I mucked it all up? Of course, yes. Yet, for this very reason, I must remember that this ‘report,’ this school project called a thesis, is also a process of becomings-data, the pack of self-stories and life writing that works to subtract the individual of humanism. In this way, there is a potential to move off into different thoughts about Data, beyond Nag’s worries and doubt. All I want to say is that data-muck is everywhere; it is a pack, a slurry, a rhizome. While I suppose some subtractions, I seek to expand connections of multiplicities, to multiply braided life writing data.

Problematically, braiding, like normative education systems and research methods, is also a kind of aborescent pseudomultiplicity (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 8). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 100

Relations

Becomings-Participant: PARTICIPANTS NEEDED

A very normal, lackluster poster was prepared (Figure 7). I thought this was the way recruitment was supposed to be done: It had to seem open and equal; does it not?

Favouritism would be viewed as problematically biased, I reckoned. I thought I had to do it this way, otherwise my plan would not be taken seriously. It was another mistake.

PARTICIPANTS NEEDED FOR RESEARCH IN EDUCATION

Volunteers are needed to take part in a study entitled Becoming Unsettled Again and Again: Thinking With/in and Against Autobiographical Métissage

Topics of Interest: Treaty and Environmental Education.

As a participant in this study, you would be asked to: participate in group interview writing workshops / story telling.

Your participation would involve 1 to 3 sessions, approximately 4-5 hours in length each. Please note: You will be asked to read selected readings prior to the sessions.

For more information about this study, or to volunteer, please contact: Audrey Aamodt

Figure 7. An absurd solicitation technique. Printed on bright galaxy-gold cardstock paper, the posters were ready to be tacked up on a few bulletin boards in the Education building hallways, next to other calls for research participants. In fact, the ink was wasted as the posters were totally unnecessary.

They never had the opportunity to come face-to-face with a potential participant since, before I put them up, three women eagerly committed to writing with me during multiple sessions. Although I likely could have accommodated more, I decided that this group was enough for braiding. Honestly, I was quite pleased, for it was my preference that we BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 101

would all be able to spend intimate sessions with one another on multiple occasions. This would be more difficult to do with many participants.

The posters promptly forgotten, the backside of the galaxy-gold was later put to other use. Of course, it is said that hindsight is always 20-20. Instead, my recruitment approach should have more simply put full emphasis on personally inviting those whom I already suspected might be enthusiastic about exploring processes of becomings- unsettled through life writing. Though I did include this possibility within my application to the university’s Behavioral Research Ethics Board, even when written in a very formal manner, I was doubtful that this alone would be adequate: ‘the researcher will invite specific people via email based on previous relationships; the researcher may have a collegial or friendly relationship with some of the participants, but there will be no power differential.’ Anxiously, I worried that no one would agree to engage with the work and so I included open-call posters in the plan. Frankly, I should have just focused on how to go about asking some friends, close or otherwise. With the poster as a backup, I began by contacting Willow and Morgan.

Willow and Morgan. I invited Willow and Morgan separately by email, with all of the formalities, and also Hi Morgan, I know you are super busy with your own including a little personal note writing for your Masters, but I wanted to invite you to participate in my project anyway. No worries if you when I could. Emphatically, I can't fit it in, but I'd love to write with you if possible :) wanted to write with them. I had imagined this for some time and had looked forward to being able to formally ask them to consider being a part of the project. I figuratively crossed my fingers in hopes that they would have time, energy, and interest to think and write together. Waiting as BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 102

patiently as I could for their response (perhaps patience is not one of my noticeable virtues), I wondered why I felt such an affinity to these women. Both shine with a contagious kind of energy, an interest in life and learning, and glow with caring intelligence. They are soulfully strong, welcoming, engaging, and seriously joyful.

Wilson (2008) describes being “on a journey with my friends” throughout their research and refers to a “web of relationships” (p. 62). I cannot imagine a better kind of research experience. This journeyed relationship research-web goes well beyond the scope of the writing sessions, as well as the research project as a whole. The connections with each other continue on with an ethical responsibility to one another, which involves an effort to stay in touch through life changes and challenges, as well as the ways I introduce you to them through this writing. Therefore, like Wilson (2008), I also seek to

“build a stronger connection between you, the reader, and the other people who have been involved in my research process . . . . to help you come into this web yourself” (p.

62). Likewise, I wonder how I will “go about building this set of relationships” and have decided to “tell you little stories” in order to do so (p. 63). It would be better for you all to meet in person, but of course, in this context, this will have to do.

At that time, Willow was a student in two of the Education classes I instructed the previous year. She had shared some of her self-stories throughout that term, as prompted by our course assignments. Her vulnerability throughout her writing, along with her obvious openness to engage with processes of reflexivity19 resonated with me. Because of

Willow’s attention to a meta-reflexive practice during those courses, along with a

19 Pillow (2003) helpfully noted the “distinction between reflexivity and reflection: ‘to be reflective does not demand an ‘other,’ while to be reflexive demands both an other and some self-conscious awareness of the process of self-scrutiny’” (p. 130). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 103

demonstrated openness towards disrupting colonial normative narratives, I was sure she would be keen to further engage in a settler life writing process together. Luckily, she was also willing and able to spend the time doing so.

Happily, Morgan similarly agreed to spend time thinking and writing together.

Some years before, Morgan had applied to be part of an indoor classroom garden project.

As part of the selection committee, I was moved by her articulation of ecological and social justice education philosophies. As I read her application, tears compelled me to say to my friend and colleague, another member of the committee, ‘this is why we do this ecological education work; to connect with and support educators like Morgan.’ At the time of our co-writing, Morgan was teaching Grade 1 and simultaneously working on her

Master of Education thesis. We had discussed her thesis topic more than once, an exploration of significant childhood nature experiences, and it too included a consideration of the storied self. Furthermore, she had shared some of her eco- philosophies and stories of teaching Grade 1 with Environmental Education students, as a guest of these courses that I had instructed. The first year she did so, Willow was one of the students. Though, as I re-introduced them, they did not immediately recall that moment, I vividly remember a short one-on-one conversation they had together before we all departed that day. Listening to Morgan’s peaceful story of The Mint Julep, and provoked to laughter by Willow’s sense of humour in The Most Eligible Conifer, fortified my fondness for their open-hearted loveliness, their creativity, and their charisma.

Robyn. Robyn became a participant much differently than Willow and Morgan.

Instead of being invited, she surprised me with a request to volunteer. Our life-partners BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 104

have a long history of working together, for the town in which we all live. As it happens,

Robyn and I were beginning to become friends. She is another one of the most warm, kind, and heartfelt women I know. Living only two blocks from each other, from time to time Robyn and I would take long walks together, talking as we went. Often, on such walks, we would discuss school, my doctoral experiences and her struggles and satisfactions as a Kindergarten and Student Support Teacher. We would debate local political controversies and listen to each other’s family history stories, while trying to support one another throughout various (mostly minor) difficulties. For example, we would sometimes debate municipal council decisions, little things like snow removal policies and bigger things like the ways they interacted with town employees, especially how it affected our loved-ones. Or, there might be a recent visit from my sisters or from her Mom to discuss, revealing different layers about our family dynamics.

One evening, we happened to sit together at a Prairie Women on Snowmobiles fundraiser for breast cancer awareness and research, at a town nearby. After supper, bellies full in the midst of pink decorations, she asked me how things were going. When I told her I was on the search for participants, she responded with “Can I be one?” My initial shocked reaction at her interest quickly reverberated into ‘Well . . . yes! If you want to be!’ So, that was that. There were four of us willing to write together. From my perspective, it was the most wonderful result as it was nearly exactly what I had hoped for. Therefore, I was only minimally nervous as I prepared for the early spring Saturday afternoons in March and April. Each began with sharing lunch before easing into reading discussions, writing prompts, and writing time.

miyo ethics. Significant to the intent of good relationships, everyone agreed to BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 105

use their first names instead of pseudonyms. Asking permission to use their real names is perhaps somewhat unusual in terms of dominant academic, ethical research policies

(Wilson, 2008, p. 63). From a normative viewpoint, it could be judged to be an unnecessary risk to confidentiality. Differently, Wilson (2008) explicitly explores how

“aspects of an Indigenous research paradigm [may] be put into practice to support other

Indigenous people in their own research” (p. 7). While this framework intentionally does not include settler-Canadians, the ethics of this Indigenous research paradigm seems highly instructive in terms of affirming an accountability to relationships as foundational for miyo-wîcêhtowin in research practices. The sense of accountability to the research participants is perhaps heightened because of the participants willingness to be named publically.

“In Cree, the word miyo means ‘good, well, beautiful, valuable.’ The word

‘ethics’ is not differentiated . . . In thinking about Indigenous research ethics, the overarching theme is to conduct oneself in a way that reflects miyo” (Kovach, 2009, p.

147). To me, non-Indigenous research frameworks could also benefit from making miyo a central philosophy. In some ways, perhaps applications for ethics reviews are designed with this in mind, though relationships seems to be somewhat secondary in normative narratives about research. Instead of stereotypical questions about anonymity and guarantees of confidentiality, it might be more miyo to ask: “how can I be held accountable to the relationships I have with these people if I don’t name them?” (Wilson,

2008, p. 63).

Likewise, miyo calls for reciprocity, rather than compensation. Will participants be compensated? Check yes or no and please include details. My initial response to this BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 106

item on the ethics application form indicated “NO” with a note that I would pay for their fuel costs if they lived beyond the city limits. This showed my interpretation of this question in soley a monetary sense. The reviewer of my ethics application replied to my response, writing, ‘although you are not required to compensate individuals, I was surprised that participants were not being compensated as they are being asked to participate in at least one 4-hour session.’ There seems to be some sort of unwritten rule about what constitutes adequate remuneration, specifically as payment for research contributions. Also, there is an assumption that no one would agree to take part in research unless they might profit from or be rewarded financially for their participation.

Compensation, which often implies a monetary component, is not the only way to show appreciation for participation. Practicing reciprocity requires going beyond acts of compensation.

Therefore, instead, I made special lunches to share with everyone, provided tea and snacks, and offered a gift of a writing journal with a handwritten letter. I also hoped that my friends would find value in participating in the writing workshops. However, I hesitated to share these ideas with the ethics review board. To me, such plans seemed outside of the purview of the question about compensation, and I feared that the ethics review board would dubiously find fault with it. I wondered if this would be considered ethical practice. Rather, is it miyo? Within pervading capitalist structures, monetary compensation seems to be one of the most important considerations, never mind the cost of research, nor the desire for winning research grants and the associated prestige. But, is money ever enough? The ethic of miyo-wîcêhtowin calls us into a much longer term commitment to one another and to our research practices and desires. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 107

Since we have written together for this project, Morgan has completed her

Masters and become a mother, Willow has opened her home to her younger cousin and successfully finished her Bachelor of Education, and Robyn has moved to another school and has married. If I had simply paid them, it could potentially let me off the friendship hook. I could perhaps be more prone to forget about my responsibility to our friendship, to keep in touch, to make an effort to send a note, to invite for tea, or to go for a walk and talk together. These becomings-participant encounters with each other create a storied friendship alliance, a block of becoming that snaps us up like “a block of becoming that snaps up the wasp and the orchid” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 238). The storied braids are produced by our relational positions. They are becomings-participants and becomings-kin multiplicities.

If I think of these participant friends as kin, as family, this opens up a different understanding of reciprocity that cannot be contained by monetary methods. In this sense, kin does not only refer to bloodline filiation. Rather, kin is relationally expansive, as in

“making kin as oddkin,” a “wild category” (Haraway, 2016, p. 2). Alma taught me the

Cree word nitôtêm by using it in text messages now and then, with “have a good evening nitôtêm!” (Alma Poitras, personal communication, 2018). As a good teacher, she sparks

curiosity and attention. What is it that are you calling me?

In order to better understand her meaning, I used

www.creedictionary.com to find an English translation

(Figure 8). Pleasantly, with the translation referring to kin,

nitôtêm teaches that friends are also relatives and not just Figure 8. Translation, Cree Online Dictionary. in the patriarchal flesh-and-bloodline way. Suddenly, the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 108

uncertainties of who might be participants were eased.

So that was that—êkosi. I had three participants, all women, all dedicated to educational endeavors, all interested in treaties and environment in various ways, all friendkins. It was more than I imagined I could have asked for, simply. Through becomings-participants and becomings-kin, our self-stories are also mirrors for normative narratives about who white women are supposed to be and the ways we should be good.

In this manner, the descriptors I used above—with a contagious kind of energy, an interest in life and learning, and glow with caring intelligence. They are soulfully strong, welcoming, engaging, and seriously joyful; the most warm, kind, and heartfelt women— may also be troubling and troubled.

Settling On An Audience

Imagining who might read our self-stories, along with these life-letters, is worrisome. Regularly, I fret too much about my intentions to topple thesis-as-usual normative narratives. I don't know if this anxious preoccupation with such intentions is part of my method or mostly a side effect of self-doubt. Or, maybe self-doubt is my method. I digress. I also brood about who such writing might benefit, and if it could possibly address an audience in “a new way” (hooks, 1999, p. 146). If so, what might it provoke in a reader? At times, in order to cope with this struggle, to get around it for a breath, I selfishly pretend that these stories and letters are only intended for me. What might this writing provoke in me? I write so that I might read these words again at a later date and perhaps be prompted to engage again with some of the learning processes that storied writing invites.

Yet, as Butler (2005) discusses, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 109

I speak as an ‘I’, but I do not make the mistake of thinking that I know precisely all that I am doing when I speak in that way. I find that my very formation implicates the other in me, that my own foreignness to myself is, paradoxically, the source of my ethical connection with others. (p. 84)

The idea of being a foreigner to myself as a source of ethical connections with readers reminds me of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) asking “why have we kept our own names?”

(p. 3). They go on to answer, “Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves unrecognizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think. Also because it’s nice to talk like everybody else” (p. 3). This dialogue is one of my favourites. It recognizes the tensions between the habitual humanist self in relationship with others, and becomings-unrecognizable to ourselves. This is how I experience writing self-stories, both as a reproduction of the self as well as processing an element of self-foreignness. The writing highlights the visceral tensions of self/other.

To extend, I will use Butler (2005) again:

I am not, as it were, an interior subject, closed upon myself, solipsistic, posting questions of myself alone. I exist in an important sense for you, and by virtue of you. If I have lost the conditions of address, if I have no ‘you’ to address, then I have lost ‘myself’ . . . one can tell an autobiography only to an other, and one can reference an ‘I’ only in relation to a ‘you’: without the ‘you,’ my own story becomes impossible. (p. 32)

I like weaving with the words others have written, to behold ideas that have been shared with me as a reader. I won’t apologize for these serial quotes. Do what you will with this, as we tend to bell hooks (1999) advice, that “writers should not dwell on the issue of audience,” but trust that “readers are ready to receive our words—to grapple with the strange and unfamiliar or to know again what is already known in new ways” (p.

152). So, I will try “not . . . to worry about whether our words can carry us across the boundaries of race, sex, and class. Words invite us to transgress, to move beyond the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 110

world of the ordinary” (p. 152). If words invite a transgression of the ordinary, and saying

‘I’ necessitates a responsibility to ‘you,’ the reader, then lets transgress together. To illustrate an attempt at transgression, consider the gender binary—woman/man categories

—as problematic for authors and readers alike.

All of the participants, including myself, are women. Certainly this is not meant to imply that this writing is for women alone. Hopefully, I would also like to believe that

“irrespective of the subject matter, whether it reflects a common experience or not, readers are capable of great empathy” (hooks, 1999, p. 152). For instance, although we are all women, I hope that people of diverse gender identities and expressions, especially those to whom the gender binary is best ruptured and breached, may find the offered self- stories useful somehow, if only as examples of how normative narratives (i.e., the gender binary) operate in lived moments. Whether or not I consider a general audience with respect to gender, it is important to examine what else about our participant selves must be said, instead of left missing or silenced. Importantly, hooks (1999) reminds me to look for what is hidden or assumed within statements that suggest womanness as a generality.

Statements like ‘all the participants are women’ speak more loudly when we look at what is not said. That is, woman is a category constituted by cis-privilege and heteronormativity.

Additionally, “when the category of woman was evoked [within the feminist movement] it was made synonymous with white women” (hooks, 1999, p. 145).

Regrettably, within euro-western discourses, we continue to be “accustomed to using language in ways that perpetuate existing structures of domination, hierarchies of race, sex, and class” (hooks, 1999, p. 145). We are all women: By what is left out, this BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 111

statement perpetuates heteronormativity, cis-privilege, and whiteness as the norm and, therefore, seem to need not be mentioned or considered.

A white woman can concentrate solely on white experience . . . and she will be perceived as writing a book for a general audience. Racism creates a mindset that allows everyone to see white experience as the ‘norm,’ ‘the universal,’ and more particularly as the most significant. (hooks, 1999, p. 146)

Of course, this is a great problem. White supremacy, as a system of racism, along with cisgender privilege, allows me to be able to focus on the warmth of friendship in terms of our shared womanhood, without requiring me to situate, contextualize, and specify any racial or heteronormative implications on our lives. “Whiteness is rarely overtly named.

The politics of white supremacy allow the experiences of white people, usually those who have some degree of class [and cis-] privilege, to count as normal—as universal” (hooks,

1999, p. 148).

Considering this, towards taking an ethical stance, I feel compelled to ask who gets to write self-stories in ways that leave out race and heteronormativity, both deliberately (pretending it holds little bearing on the story or the self) and inadvertently

(thinking little of it; neglecting to consider racialization or heteronormativity)? Since it is so normal for both whiteness and heteronormativity to be assumed unless otherwise mentioned, I must venture to answer my own question by overtly revising my original statement to specify that we are all white cis-women. Additionally, I must do so especially because, as our stories do not outrightly identify us as such, the tendency to assume heteronormative whiteness unless otherwise stated is upheld. We write as a white, cis-gendered women. The ways the self-stories engage whiteness is tied up with settler-

Canadian normativity.

While all of us are Canadians, if not proudly so, identifying as settler-Canadians BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 112

was not as forthcoming. Though one of our shared writing prompt readings incited

“settler-invader” (Newbery, 2012), it was quite easy for all of us to skirt around such identifiers. Instead, we joyfully wrote personal storied experiences of puddles, tree branches, and valley views without any reflexive attention to how our bodies live out colonial histories on treaty land, or how our self-writing is always already nationalist and colonial. We are all descendants of settler immigrants to Turtle Island within the latter part of the last two centuries, roughly referring to settler history (‘early settlers’) and community though hesitating to name ourselves presently as such. Processes of settlement is always upon us, while at the same time, like our corresponding whiteness, easily left out, purposefully or otherwise. More likely, settler-colonialism requires a kind of silence. Unmentionable. Taboo. Even offensive. Forgetting our settlerness is how normative Canadians are born. For white settler-Canadians, and for cis-women like us, life writing can partially story how Canadian normative narratives are formed by settler- colonialism.

If writing necessarily implies an audience, are we only writing for those who are like us, settling on an audience of white settlers? Even if so, it is useful to acknowledge that “nonwhite readers are always being challenged to look beyond the biases of white writers to appreciate the substance of their work, yet rarely are white readers encouraged to believe they should do the same if the writer is nonwhite” (hooks, 1999, p. 147).

Additionally, white readers may also be invited to recognize biases in white writers work, and white writers to attempt to notice it in their own writings. More broadly, white, settler-Canadians might seek to notice how our own engagement with life writing processes, and our interactions with the world more generally, operate normatively. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 113

It is useful to distinguish that “a work is not racist simply because it is by and about white women. [But], an underlying covert racism operates when the experiences of white women are represented as synonymous with those of all women” (hooks, 1999, p.

149). Self stories and these life-letters are intended to be specific, not at all offered as universal experiences of white, settler-Canadian cis-women in general, and, more importantly, certainly never to be interpreted as a representative expression of all women.

Naming ourselves in this way, as white-settler-Canadian-cis-women, is a strategy for making normativity visible and to thereby question its pervasiveness. Perhaps this kind of seeing may go beyond simply benefiting me, my friendkins, and other white, settler-

Canadian, women like us. Ideally, collective engagement in an unsettling ethics may serve as reprieve for those who are tired, for whom the system of white-settler supremacy never favours. Sometimes a little optimism may be found despite the blinding whiteness.

Still, an unsettling ethics urges me to wonder if this is another delusion, a mis-belief that reframes this writing as helpful (and condescending), while reproducing the myth of the good white woman writer. Escape routes from white-settler supremacy are perhaps found in writing moments that work to simultaneously transgress and disrupt normative category machines through becomings- . . .

A Goose Moon, Niski-pîsim

On our first afternoon together, after some introductions and visiting over a shared lunch, we felt ready to attempt a bit of self-story writing. Together, Willow,

Morgan, and I decided it would be enjoyable to begin to write outside. It was a mild winter that year. The very little snow, accumulated during briefly colder months, had already melted. It felt a bit strange for spring to be so early. March on the prairies usually BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 114

drags on with mighty storms and stubborn snow cover. In my high school years, on early morning and late afternoon rides home, I would expectantly stare out the windows of the bus longing to see tilled black soil peeking through at the hilltops of the crop fields. That was a sure sign of spring. This year, waiting for warmth was not required. Maybe it was a sign of these climate change times. Either way, the walk to the park across from the university campus felt refreshing in the same, spring-is-here-after-much-anticipation, kind of way. We kept chatting while the cool wind blew around our bodies, catching in our clothes and carrying our voices to one another, up, over, and then gone again. Finding a nice spot next to a bluff of trees, we nestled in the autumn-browned grass, still dormant in its winter rest, using rectangles of sample carpets as sit-upons which were passed onto me by a local church Sunday school.

As we acclimated, with bites of homemade chocolate chip almond cookies, our conversation was very obviously punctuated by the sounds of Canada geese calling as they drifted overhead. hoounk hooounk ooounk. I am sure I had noticed them already this season, but, for me, this sound confirmed it. The geese had returned. Only now am I struck by how we did not recognize them in our conversation. We kept on with the assignment I had tasked us with, ignoring their exclamations. Of course, colonial biology frameworks teach that it would be inappropriate to imagine that these geese could be considered participants as well, that their soundful interjections could have been a request to join our stories. Without a doubt, Canadian Geese, Branta canadensis, have been used as part of Canada’s nation building agenda, propping up stories of Canada with wilderness discourse. For instance, geese calls in March is another signal of spring in

Canada. “The spectacle of Canada Geese migrating in long, honking, irregular ‘V’ BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 115

formations across spring or autumn skies is always thrilling. It is one of the most dramatic portents of the change of seasons in Canada” (Environment and Climate Change

Canada & Canadian Wildlife Federation, 2003, Description, Signs and sounds, para. 1).

In Cree, March is called niski-pîsim, the goose moon, “when the geese announce the arrival of spring” (Johnson-Laxdal & Körner, 2016). Announcing spring suggests an active participation, more than a detached indication, and so their ability to teach us other lessons should not be surprising. With an Indigenous ontology, geese are some of our teachers and relatives.

Humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn— we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out. (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 9)

What do the geese teach us in this moment? Maybe hoounk is also an exhortation: Who else have I ignored or dismissed as participants? I do recall the sleeping grass poking me,

I felt through my pant legs, as I stretched out beyond the sit-upon mat. What could they have been trying to tell me? The strong wind was there, too. It whipped within the tiny crevices of the microphone, through the screening foam meant to sharpen and keep our human voices clearly centered. On the wind, other city sounds found their way into our talking. A siren (hopefully everyone is okay) blared in the background while Willow read some of her newly written story aloud. Was its warning for us too? Pay attention! There are others here!

Her first draft, self-noted as a warm up story and one that she chose not to include in our braided collection, was about playing a “game” with the wind, “learning to anticipate a gust by the precursors of the rustling leaves, something I had forgotten from BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 116

my childhood” (Willow, audio recording). Morgan responded with a family story about how, when she was young, her great-uncle Hugh thought that “the trees created the wind by moving their branches around, instead of the other way around” (audio recording).

She also wrote about the wind in her story entitled From the Mint Julep: “The bigness of the wind and where’s it’s been today; maybe over the humps and coulees of the place we named Camel Hill, where the disappearing fox family once lived; maybe over the wing tips of a pelican seeking breakfast at the fish dam; maybe anywhere, before reaching my cheek, my hair, as I stand taking in the view” (Morgan). The wind interacts with long grasses too, creating a mirage of watery waves in fields and pastures, and with our hair, our cheeks, our breath as we sit in this park: “the wind that travels from maybe anywhere, to reach my cheek, my hair, as I stand taking in the view” (Morgan, From the Mint

Julep).

This was the context of our memory-telling, our storying, our memory-writings, and oral readings and listenings (Davis & Gannon, 2006). “Our stories become not merely autobiographical, but are the means to make visible the discursive processes in which we each have been collectively caught up” (Davis & Gannon, 2006, p. 11). The

Counter-Wilderness interbraid20 begins to elaborate on how we are caught up in settler-

Canadian discourses about ownership of land and notions of wilderness that prop up entitlement claims (literally and figuratively speaking), while treaty responsibilities are again made absent and ostensibly (mistakenly) nonexistent. “Major sources of settlers’ fantasies of entitlement and certainty emerge from philosophies and legal systems based on the doctrines of terra nullius and Discovery” (Mackey, 2016, p. 38). Land was viewed

20 To engage with the details of the Counter-Wilderness interbraid, reroute to page 78-80 of this thesis. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 117

as occupied but legally unowned since it was “uncultivated and therefore not possessed or owned as property according to European standards . . .. empty of people and societies that mattered” (p. 48). Problematically, this forms a large part of the basis of settler-

Canadian life and livelihood.

At the same time, while seeking to transgress the settler-Canadian myth of wilderness, we continue to situate ourselves as wildly at home, or becomings-wild, forming blocks of becomings with the winds, the geese, the grasses, the waters, and the trees. Our braided collection of autobiographical wild writings play with with countering- disrupting-interrupting settler-Canadian normative narratives, though are never able to be completely free of them.

When fall came, the skies would darken with flocks of geese, honking ‘Here we are.’ It reminds the people of the Creation story, when the geese came to save Skywoman. The people are hungry, winter is coming, and the geese fill the marshes with food. It is a gift and the people receive it with thanksgiving, love and respect. (Kimmerer, 2012, p. 30)

Maybe all I/we can do is listen to the geese, to ask “how, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again?” to “behave ‘as if’ the living world were a gift” (p. 31), to remember that this land was never, in any way, empty. For, “you are answering to all your relations when you are doing research” (Wilson, 2001, p. 177).

Surprise? Choosing Easy

I’m surprised by this response. One of the probing questions for participants is ‘I am a

Treaty Person because . . .’ (Behavioral Research Ethics Board Reviewer).

In order to respond to the reviewer’s surprise, a statement that I initially BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 118

interpreted as unnecessarily passive-aggressive, I attempted to restrain my frustration and gather my manners: My intention in selecting ‘NO’ to this item was to indicate that my research is not focused solely on involving FNMI peoples. I was advised to check ‘NO’ in this case, although I have no issue with revising this to ‘YES’ if that helps to specify the possibility of accepting volunteer-participants who identify as First Nations, Métis, or

Inuit. To clarify, all people21 who live within the numbered treaties in Saskatchewan are

Treaty People, including people who are of settler or immigrant ancestry. (For further clarification, refer to, http://www.otc.ca/pages/about_the_treaties.html). Responding in kind, with a slight clarifying bite, I speculated that their comment suggested that they did not consider settler-Canadians, as well as more recent immigrants to Canada, especially those living on treaty land in Saskatchewan, treaty people. On the other hand, maybe I am too sensitive. They may have simply been wondering if I would welcome FNMI participants as well as settler-Canadians. In any case, their ambiguity annoyed me, although it contributed to provoking me to again consider who to personally invite and how to ethically ask for their participation. I wondered, should I make more of an effort to involve Indigenous participants?

With this in mind, I considered contacting an acquaintance who worked at the

Kahkewistahaw First Nation school nearby. I had substitute taught there once, and met a few of the teachers, and at least two who identified as Cree. Perhaps someone there would like to participate? But, then, I wondered if my intention was only to look good, like a better settler; an unsettled one; an ally. Maybe I wanted to be good too, though

21 This is not quite accurate either, since the Métis Nation was left out of the numbered treaties and therefore not all Métis peoples consider themselves treaty people. Likewise, Inuit did not historically enter into treaty with the Crown, though there have been contemporary land claims and agreements. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 119

distinguishing between being perceived as good and actually being good is sticky. Worse yet, I definitely did not want to risk using them, as Other, to help unsettle me, both in perception and in result. At the time, I did not have a close enough relationship with someone who identified as First Nations or Métis to feel confident that the storied writing project would be of interest to them instead of a burden. Maybe that is irrelevant anyway, since unnecessary exposure to euro-western normative narratives through white settler- colonial self stories seems highly likely, as well as callus, selfish, and potentially unjust, and is probably always a burden. Furthermore, it seemed better to avoid the potential for settler-Canadian participants to mistakenly request sacred cultural teachings about treaty, i.e. without following protocol, from Indigenous co-participants. Kovach (2009) reminds,

infringement on Indigenous communities by Western research is not localized to one specific research methodology or its procedures. A neo-liberal standpoint suggests ethical misconduct is a predicament of researchers having a lack of cultural knowledge but good intentions, while a critical analysis points to a power dynamic sustained by societal and institutional structures that allow the privileged to take, take, and take. Seen from a decolonizing lens, ethical infringement through research is an extension of the Indigenous-settler colonial project. (p. 142)

Primarily, this research is not about Indigenous Peoples, or directly for

Indigenous Peoples, per se. Neither is it with Indigenous Peoples, as individuals nor as specific communities. The academy aptly reminds that “research involving Aboriginal peoples in Canada has been defined and carried out primarily by non-Aboriginal researchers. The approaches used have not generally reflected Aboriginal world views, and the research has not necessarily benefited Aboriginal peoples or communities”

(Government of Canada, 2014, Introduction, Preamble). Furthermore, Kovach (2009) has summarized how “Western-constructed research processes (qualitative or otherwise) triggers recollection of the miserable history of Western research and Indigenous BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 120

communities” (p. 24). “The result has been, and continues to be, that Indigenous communities are being examined by non-Indigenous academics who pursue Western research on Western terms” (p. 28).

Throughout this research project, there was great potential, even if unintended or under good intentions, for colonial oppression to happen, once more, over and over, even in moments of working towards ethical relationality and friendkin reciprocity. For instance, Indigenous participants would be in a position to offer counter-narratives to normative discourses, but since story work is complex, situating this possibility within the confines of prior and informed consent is quite tricky if not impossible. Within

Critical Race Theory, these “stories of experience are used to generate nuanced argument

. . . [as] a response to prevailing understandings about the experiences of minority people, this narrative is often referred to as counternarrative” (Fletcher, 2008, p. 6). While this is practice is not generally viewed as harmful, insisting participants engage in telling counterstories, or inadvertently creating the conditions for such opportunities, may be ethically questionable. For example, hooks (1999) believed that “racism and sexism directly targeted at us [black women] would never change if dominant groups (men and white women) did not learn more about black female experience” and so chose to address this with her theoretical feminist writings. However, the cost to FNMI participants who would share such counternarrative self-stories, without necessarily having envisaged such a contribution, is very difficult for me, a white settler-Canadian researcher, to ascertain and avert.

At the same time, “a relational research approach is built upon the collective value of giving back to the community. It is the miyo ethic” and a “collective responsibility” BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 121

(Kovach, 2009, p. 149). “Giving back what was learned to the community” (p. 149), as dissemination, is also probably inadequate in this case, since research about becomings- unsettled, may not need to be a priority for FNMI peoples and communities, even if I dare to argue that contributing to a disruption of settler-colonial narratives, systems, and worldviews might benefit FNMI peoples and communities indirectly. Still, if this is not a stretch of the imagination, the question of relevancy continues to be an important one.

“Ensuring that the research is grounded in community needs, as opposed to the needs of the academy” (Kovach, 2009, p. 149), or my own intentions, is quite remote. So, the tension persists as an unintentional reproduction of settler-colonialism remains a possibility.

Therefore, with my gut, I made a decision to stay with the easy three, or four, rather, as I also view myself as another participant. Ain’t nobody here but us chick(en)s, us white settler-Canadian women. If I am honest, I was largely relieved that we could focus on a mutual agreement to explore our storied settler selves, along with processes of becomings-unsettled, and that our self stories would be somewhat similar in this way. Or, maybe this is more about my own anxieties of making inevitable mistakes, a fear of getting it mostly all wrong, of fumbling through protocol. To not include, or invite, any

Indigenous participants lets me continue to feel safe. “Indigeneity prompts multiple forms of settler anxiety, even if only because the presence of Indigenous peoples - who make a priori claims to land and ways of being - is a constant reminder that the settler colonial project is incomplete” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 9). My instinct to take it easy, to write with friendkins of similar backgrounds, who I felt more responsible for challenging rather than being challenged by, may be another insulating “move to comfort” (Battell Lowman BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 122

& Barker, 2015, p. 99). However, recognizing that any choice of participants would be problematic is likely better than seeking resolution, exception, or “dwell[ing] in guilt and self-punishing confessional as a method of proving — if only to ourselves — that we are doing everything we can and therefore have nothing to feel bad about” (Battell Lowman

& Barker, 2015, p. 99).

Analyses With No Meaning

Countering and Unbraiding Settler Narratives

A braid might come undone even if the tie is still held fast. The middles may start to fray, in the wind and waters. Or, pulling on a shirt, it sometimes catches on the tag, a button, or the edges of a zipper. Snagged, it comes apart, with portions of the strands getting loose and poking out, this way and that; here and there. “To get ready often means being prepared to be undone” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 27). So, to get ready to go about my day,

I braid, fully expecting the frays, the snags, the tangles. Tending to my business, it moves back and forth as I walk, in between and hanging down my back. Sometimes, placed over my shoulder, it rests next to my ear before I flip it backwards again. Motion disrupts the order of things, the careful folds, the turns and crosses. Though braiding hair is partially an attempt to prevent knots, nevertheless they come, unbidden, along the lengths and ridges.

In the middles, tiny tangles happen as tendrils swirl around each other, while rubbing against car seats, couch cushions, bed sheets; while swimming, regardless of the blue silicone cap snug carefully over my skull. Later, removing the tie, showering continues to swirl and bind, despite generous dollops of conditioner eased through with deft fingertips. Wring, then try to brush them out smooth once more. Tangles catch on the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 123

bristles, the teeth, causing pain. Resisting smooth transitions, they are reminders that taming is a normative modality. Inescapable, normative narratives demand obedience to the Pattern. Yet, even with a small breeze or gentle waters, twisted tendrils become knots, caught up in each other, both bounded and bounding, painfully beholden to normative smoothness.

In the knots, “we begin to identify how what happens to me, happens to others.

We begin to identify patterns and regularities . . . this sounds too smooth. It is not an easy or straightforward process because we have to stay with the wrongs” (Ahmed, 2017, p.

27). If I cannot totally escape domestication, perhaps I might come to see at least a glimpse, a glimmer of the processes of subjectivity,22 so that I might keep an eye out for what some normative narratives do; how they work to make settler-Canadian, white women subjects, even my self. Seeing the knottings, knotty, naughty, the naughtyings, writingbraids becomings-unbraids are messy and troublesome. Braiding the stories we wrote, while simultaneously making knots in unbraiding writing moments, helps me to try to conceptualize processes of telling counter histories, counter stories, or counter narratives with counter writings.

I can’t see or hear [normative narratives], because I am in it, even though it configures my talk, my walk, any one or all of my bodies, my actions, my thoughts, my intuitions, all my perceived-as-essential reactions . . . with a colonially tuned ear, I see and hear it. When you’re in it, it’s like the sky, it sits overhead and covers everything, darkens and lightens scenery and landscapes, but you don’t notice it—no one goes out in the morning and says, Oh, I’ve got to keep an eye out for the sky today, unless they’re sailors or gardeners. (Chapman, 2005, p. 264)

Looking out for the sky while life writing, and in the stories we wrote together,

22 Processes of subjectivity refers to the ways that subjects are made through discursive practices, those that life writing may highlight. Egs., subjects of a nation, gendered subjects, socioeconomic subjects, racialized subjects, etc. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 124

fictions are noticed, even ever so slightly. Little knots. That is, these stories are partially- totally fictional, in that they are artistically embellished memories but also because stories are reproductions of fictions and myths, disguised as truths. Along with hooks

(1999), “I was compelled to face the fiction that is a part of all retelling, remembering”;

“the category of writing that Audrey Lorde . . . calls bio-mythology,” (p. 84). In other words, normative narratives, the patterns and regularities, the sky, are only fictions. I too am a fiction, which does not mean I am not real. “If we imagined the position of a fascinated Self, it was because the multiplicity toward which it leans, stretching to the breaking point, is the continuation of another multiplicity that works it and strains it from the inside” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 249). The loosened tendrils, some forming knots, dishevel the Pattern, strain the braid, stretch and break open normative fictions, asking questions of the colour of the sky, as multiplicities, as becomings. For, “the self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities” (Deleuze & Guattari,

1987, p. 249).

So, I try to see my self as a door, ourselves and our self-stories as becomings.

Step over the threshold into the middles of the self, in between multiplicities. Therefore, I do not mine for meaning in the stories nor in the interbraiding of them, pieces offered as some kind of small counter of settler narratives. It is not exactly like Kovach (2009), who notes that her “writing often shapeshifts to other forms. Like sweet grass, it has three braids, comprising three writing styles: expository, analytical, and narrative” (p. 21), but the braiding shifts and the knotting strains. The ‘I’ comes undone, since this problem of attempting to narrate the self is forefront:

Subjects who narrate ourselves in the first person encounter a common predicament. There are clearly times when I cannot tell the story in a straight line, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 125

and I lose my thread, and I start again, and I forgot something crucial, and it is too hard to think about how to weave it in. I start thinking, thinking, there must be some conceptual thread that will provide a narrative here, some lost link, some possibility for chronology, and the ‘I’ becomes increasingly conceptual, increasingly awake, focused, determined. At this point, when I near the prospect of intellectual self-sufficiency in the presence of the other, nearly excluding [them] from my horizon, the thread of my story unravels. If I achieve that self- sufficiency, my relation to the other is lost. (Butler, 2005, p. 68, emphasis added)

In this way, the not self-sufficient ‘I’ must come back to considering relations to others: to friendkins and also, rather than Indigenous participants, to Indigenous writers, theorists, and scholars as academic kin. Since I attempt to come alongside Robyn Wall

Kimmerer, Dwayne Donald, Margaret Kovach, Sean Wilson, Eve Tuck, Alma Poitras and more, I am also ethically responsible to them. They are among my teachers, although

I have not met them all face to face to shake their hands. “Citation is feminist memory.

Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before; those who helped us find our way when the way was obscured because we deviated from the paths we were told to follow” (Ahmed, 2017, pp. 15–16). Their texts are companions for me: “a companion text is a text whose company enabled you to proceed on a path less trodden”

(Ahmed, 2017, p. 16). In this way, as companion-kin, they help me/us grapple with countering normative settler narratives.

“As settlers, working to see ourselves as treaty peoples, and learning to think and behave like responsible treaty partners, can be a fruitful way to begin to imagine respectful co-existence” (Mackey, 2016, p. 130) with Indigenous Peoples and more-than- human beings on shared treaty land. Being with friendkins opens up to understanding ethical relationality in the context of who I am responsible to, beyond moments of co- writing—such as, moments at home, in my classrooms, with students, with other friends, with my partner. As a treaty partner, unbraiding processes could contribute to countering BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 126

normative settler narratives. Is it possible for me, a settler-Canadian white woman, to claim an ability to respond with counter stories? Strictly from a critical race theory tradition, where counternarratives can only be provided by the voices of those who are viewed as marginalized subjects, it is inappropriate, intolerable, and inconceivable.

As much as I want to argue that settlers have a treaty partner responsibility to upset normative narratives that we are a part of reproducing on a daily basis, and that unbraiding could be one way to do so, I also see that this works as another move to comfort (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015). “Discomforted by Indigenous peoples taking an active role in critiquing Settler Canadian society, we tend to respond by seeking a resolution to these critiques that reinforces the absolute validity and universality of Settler spaces” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 100). In this way, try as I might to listen intently to Robyn Wall Kimmerer’s, Dwayne Donald’s, Margaret Kovach’s, Sean

Wilson’s, Eve Tuck’s, and Alma Poitras’ words, the way I use their ideas for my own becomings-unsettled purposes also problematically works to create a space for settlers once more, to belong and be able to critique my own part in the reproducing Canadian society.

This unravelling of self sufficiency is indeed knotty. As Poppet, the red-haired girl of The Night Circus who sees blurs of the future in the stars, describes, “‘it was a bunch of things overlapping . . . A feeling like everything was unraveling or tangling, the way the kittens pull yarn into knots and you can’t find the beginning or the end anymore’” (Morgenstern, 2011, p. 224). Learning to braid, both with hair and with stories, and coming undone with knots and flyaways, unbraids as ethical movements could be more than merely noticing how Canadian myths are reproduced. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 127

I could hand you a braid of sweetgrass . . . but it is not mine to give, nor yours to take. Wiingaashk belongs to herself. So I offer, in its place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world. This braid is woven from three strands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most. It is an intertwining of science, spirit, and story—old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with earth. (Kimmerer, 2013, p. x)

To me, life writing is an offering for healing too. The processes of braiding self-stories, and of letting them unravel, may be medicine for a settler-colonial project of entitlement, racism, and broken relationships with Indigenous Peoples and the earth. Especially, these overlappings come undone, unraveled, tangled, which both hold us to settler normativity as well as present opportunities for multiplicities anew.

Feminist Bewitchings

“Beatrice shook her head. ‘But I’m not quite clear on what it all means.’

‘I’d say it means we’re good company for each other,’ Adelaide replied. ‘We’re better together than apart. This bodes well for everyone’s future—yours, mine, and

Eleanor’s’” (McKay, 2017, p. 270, emphasis added).

With a bedside lamp aglow, while a cool nighttime breeze softens through the open window above the pillows, I tuck in to read a novel before nodding off to sleep.

Tonight, The Witches of New York (McKay, 2017) offer distractions from my writing woes. Three witchy women—Beatrice, able to see and speak with spirits of the deceased;

Adelaide, a perspicacious mind reader, seeress, and entrepreneur; and, the eldest,

Eleanor, grimoire author and keeper of spells, tealeaf wisdom, and an astute raven called

Perdu—are good company for me too. Although their fictional tales of becomings-witch primarily serve to indulge my imagination, the feminist tones remind me of Willow,

Morgan, Robyn, and me. Are we witches? Are we really so easy? Are we chicks? BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 128

“Feminism as a collective movement is made out of how we are moved to become feminists in dialogue with others. A movement requires us to be moved” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 5). How do becomings- . . . move? Do we move together, like a pack of feminist witches?

Before this, I had shelved feminism and waived any possibility of claiming to specifically draw from feminist theory. Though not necessarily situating myself in any particular feminist movement, without precisely seeking to disrupt the gender binary and

heteronormativity, ethical relationality is “‘I think she’s a witch,’ Marco says. ‘And I mean that in the most complimentary largely a concern. As a feminist, I would manner.’ rather call myself a witch. Maybe that is ‘I think she would take that as a compliment, indeed,’ Celia says” not very feminist of me. Maybe other

(Morgenstern, 2011, p. 285). feminists will find this term demeaning,

as well as my use of the name Nag. In this particular minute, Witch seems more effectual than terrible, while Nag is often both.

“Although it is easy to say one discourse is good and liberating and another bad and oppressive, our analysis shows this to be a fictional and misleading binary” (Davies &

Gannon, 2006, p. 65). Maybe simply asking too many questions is a witchy thing to do. I am, she is, we are, this is, “a killjoy: a project that comes from a critique of what is”

(Ahmed, 2017, p. 249). “A killjoy manifesto thus begins by recognizing inequalities as existing. This recognition is enacted by the killjoy herself: she kills joy because of what she claims exists” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 252). Patriotism is dangerous (Willow), as is patriarchy. Are they not one and the same? And,

Living a feminist life . . . might mean asking ethical questions about how to live better in an unjust and unequal world . . .; how to create relationships with others BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 129

that are more equal; how to find ways to support those who are not supported or are less supported by social systems; how to keep coming up against histories that have become concrete, histories that have become as solid as walls. (Ahmed, 2017, p. 1)

As a white woman (settler-Canadian) sorceress, I cast these stories, these writings, these braids and unbraidings, like spells; a kind of grimoire. Included are tricks, such as those that normative narratives play on us and with us. Also, these spells, these tricks, these “multiplicities, continually transform themselves into each other, cross over into each other . . .. Defined not by its elements, nor by a center of unification or comprehension . . .. continually transforming itself into a string of other multiplicities, according to its thresholds and doors” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 249, emphasis original). Do not look for meaning in the tricks. Instead, look for leakage, maybe the

“possible leakage of one discourse into another” (Davies & Gannon, 2006, p. 65). The spells are “universe fiber[s]” that stretch, “strung across borderlines constituting a line of flight” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 249). As writing witches, though our readings are not of palms or tea, our flight takes to the sky. Our trials are always pending. “Toward what void does the witch's broom lead?” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 248)

Within the academy, the word theory has a lot of capital . . . some materials are understood as theory and not others . . .. Theory is used to refer to a rather narrow body of work. Some work becomes theory because it refers to other work that is known as theory. A citational chain is created around theory: you become a theorist by citing other theorists that cite other theorists. (Ahmed, 2017, p. 8)

Am I a Deleuzian witch? Deleusians! “Are you a Derridean; no, so are you a

Lacanian; no, oh, okay, are you a Deleuzian; no, then what? If not, then what? Maybe my answer should have been: if not, then not!” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 15). Are you a critical BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 130

theorist? A feminist? Not strictly. Then, post-structural? Post-critical? Post-colonial?

Post-humanist? Post-feminist? New materialist? “This ‘freeing of difference’ is about divergence, dispersed multiplicities, the possibilities of that which is in excess of our categories of containment” (Lather, 2006, p. 47). You have to choose, Nag scolds. But do we? Perhaps not. It is all leakage; all in the excess. There is “uncontainable proliferation

. . . in its multiplicities without end” (Lather, 2006, p. 43). All of these form heterogeneous symbiosis of multiplicities: “Each multiplicity is symbiotic; its becoming ties together animals, plants, microorganisms, mad particles, a whole galaxy. Nor is there a preformed logical order to these heterogeneities” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 250).

“It is to the both/and . . . we are both working in an oppressive regime that often silences us and we are the wild women who will laugh at it and name its absurdity and violence”

(Davies & Gannon, 2006, p. 86). These are some of my witchful citation chains. Ahmed

(2017) “adopt[s] a strict citation policy: I do not cite any white men. By white men I am referring to an institution” (p. 15). At times, I cite The Man, but only with the potential of undoing the institution itself.

Cackling, with special spellwishes, “all becomings are written like sorcerers’ drawings on this plane of consistency, which is the ultimate Door providing a way out for them” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 251). For,

there’s still plenty of work to be done. How many times are women told that their stories, their testimonies, their ideas don’t matter? Or that they’re only meant for our own gender? How many girls are scolded each day for not smiling? . . . Or teased for being too smart? . . .. Something witchy this way comes. (McKay, 2017, p. 511)

Who are you, who am I, who are we to say that this is theory and that is not: This is allowable, this is philosophical, and that, just a story. “Each of these [Virginia Woolf] BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 131

characters, with his or her name, its individuality, designates a multiplicity . . . Each is simultaneously in this multiplicity and at its edge, and crosses over into the others”

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 252).

What if, for women, dichotomous oppositions didn’t make sense as they did for men, at least not without a radical submission to the phallic, masculine world, which leaves them mute or reduces them to mimetism, the only language (langage) or silence permitted them in this discursive order? What if women didn’t constitute themselves in the mode of the one (consistent, substantial, subsisting, permanent . . .) and its propping-up of the contradictions that are at once active and occulted in a proper hierarchy? What if women were always ‘at least two,’ without any opposition between those two, without reduction of the other to the one, without any possible appropriation into a logic of the one . . . Always at least two, which never boil down to a binary alternative . . . What if they always spoke many at a time, without the many being reducible to the multiple of one? (Irigaray, 1989, p. 197) As the clock struck twelve they recited a special spell they’d crafted to mark their first I am beginning to notice some All Hallows’ Eve together. frayed flyaways, many at a time. With By new moon and twinkling stars, Bless this night and make it ours a kind of feminism, I think I could, To those who dare to wish us harm, We cast on them a wicked charm. should, say some things about To those who aid us in our powers, We grace their lives with happy hours. And to ourselves one wish remains, becomings-woman, speaking many at a That we might ne’er be lost again. Hecate dear, we ask of thee. time, in pack-modes. “Becoming- So may it be, so may it be, so may it be. woman . . . implies two simultaneous (McKay, 2017, p. 493) movements, one by which a term (the subject) is withdrawn from the majority, and another by which a term . . . rises up from the minority. There is an asymmetrical and indissociable block of becoming” (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987, p. 291). The white, heteronormative, cis-woman subject is withdrawn as a molar category in “the production of a molecular woman” (p. 276), because a cis- gendered concept of woman limits a multiplicitous understanding of becomings-woman. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 132

“Becoming-woman or the molecular woman is the girl herself . . . defined by a relation of movement and rest, speed and slowness, by a combination of atoms, an emission of particles: haecceity” (p. 276). Always more than two, becomings-woman does more than teeter-totter with the man-boy/woman-girl gender binary. Between us friendkins, we could forgo tethering this open concept. To resist in witchy ways, I keep becomings- woman as a frayed end and as a representation of knotted writing, that which is not tied up nice and neat. As an intentionally loose end, consider what might be said and thought, and what could be done with it, what could we do with it. At another time, perhaps.

On the near side, we encounter becomings-woman, becomings-child (becoming- woman, more than any other becoming, possesses a special introductory power; it is not so much that women are witches, but that sorcery proceeds by way of this becoming-woman). On the far side, we find becomings-elementary, -cellular, - molecular, and even becomings-imperceptible. Toward what void does the witch's broom lead? (Deleuze & Guattari, 1897, p. 248)

Call Me a Settler

Once, riding in another elevator, a classmate seemed compelled to warn me, ‘You should be careful about calling yourself a ‘settler’. It assumes that you can only act like one. It’s limiting.’ Yet, like whiteness, it is there, hidden, normalized, and often stuck in historical times of slavery, settlement of the west, segregation, political speeches about

Canadian confederation and the perceived benefits of residential schools23. Society is better now, right? More equal? No one should have anything to complain about. These common rebuttal techniques, these lines of flight “get bogged down and fall back to the

Oedipal family animal, a mere poodle . . .. The risks are ever present” (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987, p. 250). Not calling myself settler, not using the term, also has big risks.

23 This is a reference to problematic statements made by Canadian Senator Lynn Beyak, such as “the positive story of the good in the residential schools, and to open a dialogue on that” (Tasker, 2019). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 133

The twins Patriotism and Patriarchy strive to produce docile dogs, the family bitch, or— dare I—Canadian citizens. Though the twins would argue otherwise, I am Canadian simply is not enough. Life writing to interrogate settler-colonialism attaches settler to

Canadian, to whiteness, and to the problematic and systematic supremacies that are produced by white, settler-Canadian normative narratives.

On multiple occasions, in the car during commuting home from the city and in our living room or kitchen during heated discussions about current events, my loving partner, with vulnerability, has shared honestly that ‘being called a white settler is offensive.’ Okay. I understand that this term may seem strange, since normative narratives work to make both of these systems invisible. Here, it is useful to “be clear that

‘Settler’ should not be assumed to be pejorative or an insult” (Battell Lowman & Barker,

2015, p. 18). Aiming to assure that it is not meant to be so, I begin to point out that

‘settler’ helps to denote that we are European descendants24 who, through immigration and settlement processes, have come to live in Canada indefinitely as part of the

“sociopolitical majority” (Vowel, 2016, p. 14), the Canadian ‘norm.’ “Settler people come to identify through ways of doing things — particular processes — that bind them to the lands on which they intend to stay” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 15).

Farming is a notable example of such bindings. Yet, there is a great prohibition on admitting this with such naming. Never mind. Drop it. You’re creating too many waves.

Is it worth it? Is this necessary at home? Can’t you keep it neatly compartmentalized,

24 For the purposes of this inquiry, I focus on white settler-Canadians. While descendants from non- European homelands have also immigrated to Canada, the relationship Peoples of Colour have to the sociopolitical majority is different than settlers’ access to white privilege. Assimilation and adoption of Canadian normative narratives does not necessarily afford “non-European migrants . . . the power to bring with them their laws and customs” (Vowel, 2016, p. 17) and apply them in hegemonic ways. Furthermore, “the term settler does not, and can never, refer to the descendants of Africans who were kidnapped and sold into chattel slavery” (p. 17). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 134

tucked away at school? Hurt feelings, feeling insulted and offended, are difficult to soothe with such replies. White settler-colonial supremacy persists, strongly insisting it not be named.

When “we identify ourselves as Settler Canadians . . . we are declaring that we benefit from and are complicit with settler colonialism and therefore are responsible, as individuals and in collectives, for its continued functioning [or otherwise] . . . a shared burden” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 18). In this way, it is “an interrogative identity” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 18). In the kitchen, in the car, most of this makes me sound condescending and hard feelings easily persist. Still, with killjoy witchiness, I cannot put it aside. Using settler as a term and identifier asks us to consider:

“How do you come to be here? How do you claim belonging here? And, most importantly, can we belong in a way that doesn’t reproduce colonial dispossession and harm?” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 19) These are unusual ways to think of ourselves as Canadians.

We need a name that can help us see ourselves for who we are, not just who we claim to be. For that we need a term that shifts the frame of reference away from our nation, our claimed territory, and onto our relationships with systems of power, land, and the peoples on whose territory our country exists. (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 1)

Veracini (2011) contends that “colonialism is not settler colonialism: both colonisers [sic] and settler colonisers move across space, and both establish their ascendancy in specific locales” (p. 1), but settler colonizers seek to have Indigenous peoples disappear, in whatever form that might be (as displacement, assimilation, genocide, etc.). This construction corresponds with the normative narrative of the ‘good’

Canadian. Therefore, the term ‘settler’ signifies particular things. Applying Derrida’s BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 135

concept of différance – potentially deferring the meaning related to a person to particular acts of colonialism, even as each settler would differ from one another in their particular contexts – a deconstruction of the term is possible (Derrida, 1997).

As Veracini (2011) makes clear, the term settler (signifier) is in relation to colonialism (signified) and perhaps must give way to this context, for settlers are specific kinds of colonizers. Terribly, in this way, it seems as though (my) settler subjectivity becomes unable to become decolonized or engage in decolonization, since a settler is a necessarily colonizer. But, through a deconstructive process, the term settler can be put

“under erasure” (Spivak, 1976, p. xiv), thereby putting a strike-through (myself as) settler. Instead, I might call myself a settler, in Derridian fashion, to acknowledge “that it is one of those impossible things that [I] cannot do without” (MacLure, 2011, p. 288).

Settler acknowledges the problematic connections to systems of white, colonial supremacy, as well as offers a potential for disrupting the reproduction of these systems and our complicity in them. So, call me a settler and a settler. Both are useful and neither personally slanderous. As thresholds, they both make the necessary defamation of problematic Canadian normative narratives possible.

Blocks of Becomings, Intensities, and Turning Over Theory

“The child is the becoming-young of every age. Knowing how to age does not mean remaining young; it means extracting from one’s age the particles, the speeds and slowness, the flows that constitute the youth of that age” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p.

277).

Across the campsite, a sister stands in the sun braiding our little niece’s curly, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 136

sunkissed-brown hair in two plaits above, around, and behind her ears. They are getting ready for an afternoon at the beach, on the sand and in the shallows of lake waters. She sits patiently, while her auntie pulls strands tightly over one another, turning them over and over and over again. I will stay behind to write, to keep turning over theory. Full of curiosities, my 5-year-old nephew, after hearing that I would not be joining them, asked,

‘What will you do in the camper?’

‘I will write stories,’ I said.

‘What kind of stories?’

‘Stories for school,’ I replied.

‘Oh.’ It is quite obvious that he was thinking seriously about this claim, with a furrowed brow and a questioning look in his eyes, considering what this might entail.

This morning, I showed him how to write some letters in a handmade HAPPY

BIRTHDAY card to his cousin. ‘The H looks like this: make two lines beside each other, joined by one across. Good job. Do you know how to make an A? Do you know the little a or do you want to make a big one? Well done. Here is a P. You need two of those. Next a Y’. He was excited that he knew the B, I, R, and T since they are also in his own name, but in a different order. This was very interesting to him. He was quite concerned about these letters spelling his name, instead of BIRTHDAY. But, he trusts me enough to believe it when I said that this makes a different word. Suggesting that I could write an entire story, unthinkable until I declared this daring feat of the imagination, was cause for even more consternation.

Later that afternoon, returning from a bike ride, he caught me by the campfire reading a novel instead of writing stories inside, as a recluse, as I had earlier pronounced. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 137

Peeking over my shoulder, with wonderment, he inquired, ‘Is that the stories you wrote?!’ How amazing that would have been! Expecting this writing process to pick up speed, to flow more quickly, to be surprising, in this moment I feel I must “either stop writing, or write like a rat. . . If the writer is a sorcerer, it is because writing is a becoming, writing is traversed by strange becomings that are not becomings-writer, but becomings-rat, becomings-insect, becomings-wolf, etc.” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p.

240). Write like a rat? Write like an ant? What kind of sorcery is this? What blocks of strange becomings traverse and crossover with writing? What are the particles, the speeds, the slowness, the youth of this age too, at this particular moment of today?

In becomings-young, intensities have been haunting me: the idea of intensities, as in, what are they and how do they occur? “Where else but in wide expanses, and in major upheavals in those expanses, could a tiny rivulet of new intensity suddenly start to flow?”

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 34); and, how might I find myself within such flows, the

“transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle” (Deleuze & Guattari,

1987, p. 25)? Who participated? Why is writing together significant? What do braiding and unbraiding in tangles create? How do becomings work? I have been trying to explain, to appease Nag, yet doing so seems to somewhat hold up the flow of intensities.

So, I will try to remain within certain upheavals in the middles. Life writing is an upheaval and the stories are intensities.

I have said ‘we are all women,’ as if being-women is a thing, a state, or a defining structure; which normatively implies a this is this (femininity) which is not that

(masculinity) binary structure. “‘We as women . . .’ makes its appearance as a subject of BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 138

enunciation. But it is dangerous to confine oneself to such a subject, which does not function without drying up a spring or stopping a flow” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p.

276). In this way, ‘we are all women’ is a kind of confinement, a reproduction of an imposed and locked gender assignment with implications that close down. However, “the question is not, or not only, that of the organism, history, and subject of enunciation that oppose masculine to feminine in the great dualism machines” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 276). Therefore, as well as women-human rights activism, we are all becomings- woman. All genders. Men too. “Writing should produce a becoming-woman as atoms of womanhood capable of crossing and impregnating an entire social field, and of contaminating men, of sweeping them up in that becoming. Very soft particles—but also very hard and obstinate, irreducible, indomitable” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 276). Is becomings-woman really a contamination? An impregnation? This isn’t to say that women are obstinate and indomitable in a degrading way, but that becomings-woman is an intensity.

“Although all becomings are already molecular, including becoming-woman, it must be said that all becomings begin with and pass through becoming-woman. It is the key to all the other becomings” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 277). Naming ourselves as part of a pack of women-witches, Morgan, Willow, Robyn, and Audrey, we “brought each other into copresence; we render each other capable” (Haraway, 2016, p. 136). This is how we are good company for each other. That is, “becoming-with, not becoming, is the name of the game; becoming-with is how partners are . . . rendered capable”

(Haraway, 2016, p. 12). This becomings- project is a becomings-with, not of the individual alone, my self. “In writing, they become-women” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 139

p. 276), which is not a “molar entity;” “the woman defined by her form, endowed with organs and functions and assigned as a subject. Becoming-woman is not imitating this entity or even transforming oneself into it” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 275). In this way, becomings-woman is an intensity that produces something other than the white, cis- woman subject. “Rather than viewing ourselves as being in relationship with other people or things, we are the relationships that we hold and are part of” (Wilson, 2008, p. 80).

This is the block of becomings- . . .

Mis-takes: Appropriation Problematics

Treaty 4 Gathering: Am I a Treaty Partner? Becomings-TreatyPartner?

“Of course you’d be here,” Jonah25 exclaims with a wry smile once he catches my eye. We stop to chat in the middle of the treaty four grounds, on the edges of the circular powwow grandstand, along with a few other education students he is with. Partially, his reaction amuses me. I am tickled that he associates me with treaty, if only from our brief interactions during an environmental education course the winter semester before. It is as if running into me at the annual treaty four gathering is perfectly expected and quite normal. This interaction feels like some kind of strange reward, similar to those I thirst for. It reminds me that it is important to be here, being seen by these students, able to ask them about their treaty experiences and how they are engaging in the gathering. At the same time, I notice a subtle contempt in Jonah’s voice, the kind that suggests that he would not be attending the gathering if he had a choice. A somewhat nasty prideful

25 This is the only pseudonym I apply in this thesis. I have decided to employ it here since their personal information, as a past student, is not relevant to the story. Our relationship is peripheral only, standing in for the pack of students I continue to interact with. In perhaps one of the most well known parts of the story from the Hebrew Bible, Jonah gets swallowed by a large fish and is later vomited out. I chose this pseudonym partially for the Christian connotation, to indicate that Christian narratives are part of Canadian normative narratives and therefore also affect understandings of the spirit and intent of treaties. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 140

feeling is bubbling, quietly simmering, secretly comparing myself to other colleagues who did not make the trip. See? This is how you become respected and set apart within the faculty institution. You show up, especially when it is not required of you. This is how your writing matters.

Furthermore, I recall my mood earlier this morning and all the internal bargaining

I entertained as the rain poured out of the sky. Upon waking, the gloomy skies incited hope that I could use this as an excuse to not attend. ‘Thankfully Jonah and the other education students won’t ever know that I almost didn’t come,’ I thought, as I listened to their thoughts about the gathering so far. I was dreading the drive, but more so the awkwardness of mingling. I said I would go. It will be fine once I get there. It’ll be fine. I continued to repeat this internal monologue as I poured tea into a travel mug, poorly attempting to convince myself to happily step out into the dreary weather. Borrowing a rain jacket from my partner, I headed out only after talking to Katia, a friend, co- instructor colleague, and fellow PhD thesis writer, who was almost there.

Previously, I had agreed to help her facilitate a KAIROS Blanket Exercise for the elementary education students who would be attending. I was glad that the rain allowed us to cancel the exercise. Either you’re just lazy or you are avoiding the more difficult work of having conversations about why and how this is problematic in this context. For example, we didn’t ask for permission to do so on the grounds, or seek to develop relationships with the gathering organizers. It is another entitled good intention without a deeper consideration of who it mainly benefits. Slim chance of living up to these ethical expectations. Still, I had told her I would meet her there. Generating excuses, I wondered which could take hold to assuage any guilt if I chose not to go altogether. But, the rain. It BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 141

feels like work and I don’t have a very good rain jacket. I know there will be a lot of school kids there too, with their teachers. It will feel busy and maybe a little bit frustrating.

Sticking with such flimsy pretext proved difficult. The gathering is not far from my house, only an hour drive, and only a little effort. This isn’t really your hesitation. It’s much more about your own disconnection to your treaty responsibilities. The sound of her voice reminded me of the commitment I made to spend time with her there, to support each other mentally and emotionally by being physically present. Additionally, as she affirmed that the rain was holding, and with my partner’s jacket packed in my bag, I had no other reason to avoid or evade. Ten minutes away, she asked how long I would be before arriving. ‘I’m about to step out the door,’ I said, ‘see you in an hour.’ It was finally decided. I would follow through on my commitment to go.

An hour later, after pulling into the parking area staked out on a flat, grassy place in the low of the valley, rain jacket donned, we walk the circle. Round and round and round we meander, mostly clockwise, incidentally and without a predetermined direction or agenda, pausing now and then to exchange pleasantries with education students we recognize. Food trucks selling lunch choices like bannock and soup, Indian tacos, bannock burgers, and coffee, along with learning and sacred tipis, make up the perimeter of a large circle that encompases the powwow grandstand in the center. We consider attempting to visit one or two of the tipis. Finding the tipi activities list, we agree to keep an eye out for tipi ‘No.9, Elder Female Storytelling,’ ‘No.11, Seven Teachings and

Stories,’ or ‘No.18, Tipi Teachings’.

We wander more, noticing a lot of school children as we peek into tipi doorways BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 142

from afar as we walk past. Anxiousness of interrupting diminishes any persistence I may have mustered. Slowly, without mentioning it, I give up on any tenacity that would have assisted us. Instead, briefly, I watch part of a buffalo hide tanning process by the Buffalo

People Arts Institute and hear from students about how they saw a rabbit being skinned for stew. Twice throughout midday, I notice some ladies walking around with shiny, thick, and freshly green sweetgrass braids. I consider how I might ask them about where they got the braids; if they made them in one of the learning tipis. Instead I stay shy, thinking that it might be better to keep watch throughout the day. If sweetgrass is meant to come my way today, perhaps it will.

Though feeling drawn to sweetgrass and wishing for sweetgrass teachings, I also remember Kimmerer’s (2013) words: “how, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again?

. . . even in a market economy, can we behave ‘as if’ the living world were a gift?” (p.

31); “There are those who will try to sell the gifts, but, . . . of sweetgrass for sale, ‘Don’t buy it.’ Refusal to participate is a moral choice” (p. 31). If I embrace that sweetgrass is not an item to purchase, I wonder about how to have a good relationship with it, miyo- wîchtowin and wâhkôtowin. I remember Kimmerer describing sweetgrass as the hair of mother earth, of skywoman. Cajete (2000) has a similar understanding. He wrote, “there is a widespread traditional Native belief that the Earth feels the pull every time a plant is taken from the soil. Therefore, humans must always make proper offering and prayers”

(p. 111).

As much as I have come to a realization that calling myself a settler-treaty person is not enough, to wondering what my treaty responsibilities are, to considering BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 143

becomings-treatypartner, the fear of appropriation plagues me, makes me frozen. Perhaps

I am not ready for the teachings of sweetgrass kin, for that knowledge. I have been hesitating to ask Alma, to hold some tobacco in my hand as I offer it with a question cistêmâw ohci (for) wihkaskwa inohtî (want) nisthtohtaman (understand) wîhkaskwa

(sweetgrass). “Aboriginal spirituality is open to anyone interested” (Danny Musqua, cited in Stonechild, 2016, p. 63).

Indigenous peoples have been entrusted with an important package of memory, feeling, and relationship to the land that forms a kind of sacred covenant. Modern Western peoples are challenged to strive to educate themselves about this knowledge and associated forms of education. This covenant bids modern Western peoples to reclaim their own heritage of living in a harmonious and sustainable relationship to the land, thereby fulfilling a sacred trust to that land. (Cajete, 2000, pp. 265–266)

Once, Joseph Naytowhow (personal communication, 2018) asked us26: “how has your Indigenization been going? If you really want to do this, if you are serious about becoming indigenous to this place, you’d get a name, fast, go to ceremony, and round dances. If you want to ask an elder about something specific, you could take them some tobacco, don’t look them in the eye, but a little bit down and hold your tobacco in your hand while you ask. You might say, I have some tobacco and I want to know about . . .” sweetgrass. cistêmâw, kiskeyitamowin wîhkaskwa (wîhkask—a braid of sweetgrass).

“You might need to be patient. Wait. They will feel if you are asking with your heart and if you are ready for the knowledge.” Maybe this, and waiting while walking in a circle at a treaty gathering, is how becomings-treatypartner works.

26 During ESCI 310: Elementary Science Education (Methods), Oct 11, 2018. “Joseph Naytowhow is a gifted Plains/Woodland Cree (nehiyaw) singer/songwriter, storyteller, and voice, stage and film actor from the Sturgeon Lake First Nation Band, Saskatchewan” https://josephnaytowhow.com/about/ BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 144

Prairie Detours: Treaty Inheritance

I order a coffee at a converted warehouse spot on Broadway, originally occupied by the John Deere Plow Company, pre-First World War until 1973 in Regina. Taking a photo of the heritage plaque affixed to the brick, I assume that my dad might be interested in this building because of his affinity for John Deere. Maybe it all started when he was young. He has said that one of his earliest memories was of the John Deere

G parked down by the pig fence and the sound it made when his dad started it up—putt putt putt—before the tractor was sold, when he was 4 or 5 years old. It is almost like being a Maple Leafs hockey fan, loyal and blue, never uttering a #GoHabsGo cheer for the Montréal Canadiens. With green swag, the ‘Nothing runs like a Deere’ sentiment is as familiar as asking about the weather.

Reminded of our recent trip to get a new front-end loader for his tractor, a

‘jobber,’ but at least a green one, I sip the foamy, cappuccino milk. With snow sticking to the highway, packing into bumpy brown ice as each set of tires passes over and onward, we follow behind a line of semi-truck trailers this Canadian Thanksgiving Monday, hoping for an opening to pass. My dad talks while he drives, as mom dozes beside him and I listen from the dusty backseat, next to our pile of luggage and leftover party items—stacks of paper plates, napkins and a half eaten apple pie. We are on our way home from Edmonton, where we celebrated Grandma Aline’s 90th birthday with aunts and uncles, cousins, and their families, only a couple of hours into our daylong road trip home.

Centering Grandma with a bouquet of 90 roses, surrounded by fall centerpieces of rusted leaves, squash, chrysanthemums, and a potluck buffet of tarts, pickles, buns, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 145

turkey, and ambrosia-marshmallow salad, we pose for family photos. Grandma smiles for many mobile phones, pulled from pockets and purses, all pointing towards her, relatives gathering like a paparazzi mob. Throughout the brief visits with some of my cousins and aunties, while exchanging greetings after church or while filling our supper plates, no one asked me about my work. Unexpectedly, an interaction of this sort was happily avoided:

‘What are you up to lately?,’ they might have asked, mildly curious, making small talk.

‘I am in the middle of writing a PhD thesis in education, curriculum and instruction. I plan to finish this year,’ I could reply, partially guarded.

‘What is your thesis about?’

‘I am exploring white settler-treaty responsibilities.’ As before, I doubt I would be this clear. The larger conversation that this may kindle is not exactly well suited to church foyers and buffet lines.

—Awkward pause—

‘Then what will you do . . . after?’

Solemnly, ‘I have no idea.’ Maybe this is why I am taking so long to write. I am too afraid of what could happen next; what might be required of me. Quickly changing the subject, I would inquire, ‘How are your kids doing? They have sure grown.’

Turning off of the highway, we follow the signs to the wrecker. One mile south, another east, and a third turn down a gravel road where a farmer has acquired a vast collection of old machinery and made a business of selling used parts. It’s a busy place, even on a holiday morning in this rural setting. Phones are ringing, answered by five employees who sit behind a long, raised counter covered with requisitions and receipts. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 146

Dad asks for Josie, who he previously spoke with on the phone, who had taken his credit card number and has already processed his probe about the loader. Dad’s John Deere bucket has corroded over time, from years of moving snow and leveling soil in the yard, compromising its strength. Josie assures him that these off-brand loaders are made with heavier steel than John Deere’s; therefore they are known to last longer. Used originals in good shape are too hard to come by, she says, then tells us to head outside to meet the forklift driver.

Backing the sales shop and surrounding the yard, acres of donor machines rouse both feelings of optimism and mourning in me. Dad explains that this business did not exist 25 years ago, when we lived in this region of the province. Earlier, during the drive, he admitted to seriously considering selling their five quarters. He has heard that some local farmers and neighbors have gotten good prices for their farmland from a Chinese investment group. While Mom recoils at the idea of retirement, I also sense another hesitation about selling, especially to a Chinese company instead of local people. “Land will always be there and money doesn’t last. If you have land, you will always have an income,” Dad says with a heaviness in his voice. As I sit with this cup of coffee in the old

John Deere building, I wonder about our family covenant with this land.

During the Roman Catholic Mass, the morning of Grandma’s birthday celebration, the priest’s homily focused on the sanctity of marriage, insisting that the only legitimate reason for dissolution is in the case that one of the partners did not enter into the marriage of their own accord. Leaning over, with a wink, I whispered in my sister’s ear, ‘don’t pay attention to this bit. He doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.’

Worrying about how this would make her feel during her divorce process, I also wished BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 147

that religious leaders would teach about treaty as a sacred covenant, contextualize historical contributions of the Church to the project of colonization, assimilation, and genocide of Indigenous Peoples, and the responsibilities of the Church as well as those parishioners (white, settler-descendant, landowners) who continue to benefit from treaty making processes that have allowed for the formation of Canada.

Comparing treaty to marriage, as sacred promises to one another, kihci- asotamâtowin—The Treaty Sovereign’s Sacred Undertakings (Cardinal & Hildebrandt,

2000, p. 25) may help (Christian) settlers understand treaty like the sacrament of marriage, as a spiritual commitment to nourishing, nurturing, and tending to relationship along with the responsibilities and devotion therein. This is allegiance, a betrothal of becomings-alliance (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 238), is something different (more than) than simply being allies. “Something very important transpires at the level of relationships” (p. 234). Not only a state of being, treaty is, more importantly, a process of becomings-devoted, becomings-faithful, becomings-trustworthy, becomings-allegiant.

While devotion and faith are usually molar states of doctrine and dogma, I wonder if becomings of these kinds can offer a way to move off towards molecular devotions and faith, trust and alliances. I’m using these strategically, or playfully, only to move off towards becomings-different.

Then, what is our family covenant with land? In the truck, on the drive, I do not think to ask this question. Also, framing our livelihood and education, one both directly and indirectly yet intimately tied to land, as a mistake, a mis-take, as an unspoken entitlement, a literal reference to our family land titles and also implying a normative

Canadian attitude and expectation, is something I hold back from voicing. If now is not BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 148

the time, as my parents struggle with considering selling their land as a form of retirement pension package, when is? Movements and calls to ‘give back the land,’ to repatriate, while interesting examples of potential reconciliation actions, are contingent upon the system of settler colonial ownership. For the gift of my life, I refrain from asking my parents to bear this burden too. In curbing conflict or offense, I remain complicit in a Canadian project of land mis-takes.

Instead, I consider Grandma Aline’s 90 years and her legacy of 30 grandchildren and many more great grandchildren. What responsibilities have I inherited? What (small) contributions to future generations, and treaty kin (Indigenous relations, settler relations, student relations, ecological relations), might I give? How will I walk with Cajete’s

(2000) direction: “Western society must once again become nature-centered, if it is to make the kind of life-serving, ecologically sustainable transformations required in the next decades. We must collectively reassert our sacred covenant with the land” (p. 266). I do not wish to view the land Dad farms (and owns according to the Canadian

Government) as my inheritance because it too closely suggests a time of passing and the collapse of our family farm, the disintegration of the bucket that holds us up. However, understanding a sacred covenant with the land, along with a sacred treaty covenant of the

Crown with First Nations, allows me to ask myself if I would give the land (my inheritance) back. Even if it is the right thing to do, would I do it? What would this look like? Who would I return it to? There is more to this than a romantic bequest. It is not a donation. Charitable intentions may too easily ease settler-colonial conscience and reassert innocence. A covenant is not (only) a monetary agreement.

The coffee has gone cold. What will I do? Give the land back? It seems as though BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 149

many Canadians, represented by Canadian governments, have no intention of giving land back. Not even the ‘good ones’ or those who want to do the ‘right thing’ (like me).

Maybe such honesty is too negative, too hopeless, too depressing. Mis-interpretations of treaties by the Crown and by Canadians has always benefited both the Crown and

Canadians. Maybe telling such truths works to kill joyfulness, to erode Canadian pride.

Yet, maybe this is a point of possibility and optimism for it may allow Canadians to imagine another kind of belonging with the land. What if we came to understand treaties as a sacred covenant, as a marriage, as kihci-asotamâtowin? Then, we might be able to:

strive to become naturalized to place, to throw off the mind-set of the immigrant . . . to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit . . . to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities . . . to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do. (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 214)

Here, giving the land back cannot just be an individual response. A self-solution is always insufficient, agonizingly so. The coffee has gone cold. I put the mug in the wash bin and go.

Land Learnings

Outdoor environmental education often goes something like this

Outside, starting in a circle, with sticky elbows. A sunny day. Someone, a teacher or maybe a student, asks What are these called?

Blank stares. No one knows.

Let’s get to know this plant. What do you see? Hear? Smell? Feel? Taste? Can you taste this? How do we know it’s safe to try? BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 150

(the teacher27 knows, then shares that Indigenous Peoples would gather them for winter) It has tiny ripe-red, sour berries, with a candy-like flavour. It is soapberry! If you try to make jelly with it, it gets very bubbly. Careful that it doesn’t boil over! A sticky mess. Now, come over here. Look at this tree! What are the needles like? In pairs, clusters of 2. Look at the cones. Fire is needed to release the seeds. It’s a pine tree! Pine needles in pairs PP - Spruce needles are spiny, sharp and square SSS - Tamaracks have tufts TT - Fir needles are flat and fat FFF.

There are birds floating in the marsh waters. Divers and dippers. Is that a mallard? Geese fly in V’s.

Line up like that, students. She’s the head goose. It’s aerodynamics! What happens when she gets tired? Ever wonder why one line is often shorter?

A tromp through the bush to see what we can see. Various kinds of seed pods—flyers, floaters, hitchhikers.

Put your arms around a tree. Look up. Stand back. Take it all in.

Time’s up. We start towards inside.

Learning outside is for every teacher, every student, every class. It’s not as hard as winter camping. It’s not an extreme sport. An expert naturalist is not required.

Yet, we could use a weave of treaty understandings. What are our treaty partner responsibilities as we walk on the land, at the nature reserves, the school grounds, the nearby parks, and the back alleys?

Paying attention to trees and seeds and birds and berries is good, but treaty is missing. For this settler-Canadian, treaty education is a process of becomings . . . What are / will be your multiplicities of treaty-becomings? What is my sacred (treaty) covenant with the land and kin?

27 The teacher in this story is the Outdoor Environmental Education Manager for the local, urban school division who visited our Environmental Education course as an invited guest. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 151

Métissage Mis-takes: How Has Indigenization Been For You?

Métissage methodology juxtaposes distinct self-stories from research participants and conceptualizes this arrangement as a weave (Donald, 2009, 2012; Hasebe-Ludt,

Chambers, & Leggo, 2009). Late at night, tossing and turning, twisting up the sheets, sleep is delayed by brooding about métissage research possibilities. How might I, and settler-Canadians like me, engage in such life writing research processes? I wonder what and whose purposes it might serve? How could it work towards becomings-ethical?

Feeling eager, I think I have an idea, maybe even a good one: What ethics are needed for settler-Canadians to attempt Indigenous Métissage?

To hold on to this idea, I looked to Donald’s (2012) words for permission by proxy. With sincerity and seriousness, I searched for how to be included. Firmly placing most of my attention on his assertion that Indigenous Métissage “does not connote an exclusionary type of métissage done for, by, and with Aboriginal peoples only” (p. 541),

I practically ignored the context. I was transfixed on acceptance and belonging, i.e. being allowed to engage in Indigenous methodologies and being part of this scholarly endeavor.

However, this Indigenous Métissage framework also emphasizes a “focus on interpreting and reconceptualizing the historical and contemporary interactions of Aboriginal peoples and Canadians,” “informed by Indigenous values, ethics, and ways of knowing” and

“interpreted in a Canadian context” (p. 541). At first, these details were obscured by desire to be consoled, encouraged, and justified to work with métissage methodologies as a settler scholar.

Returning to Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, and Leggo (2009) explanation of métissage BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 152

etymology,28 I continue to wonder if métissage Indigenizes storied research and if, as a research metaphor, it is another form of appropriation.29 Lowan-Trudeau (2012) declared that “métissage as methodology does not mean misappropriating a Métis identity. It would be inappropriate for a non-Indigenous or non-Métis researcher to simply adopt a métissage approach” (p. 125). While I adore métissage methodology and understand the usefulness of the analogy, I wonder if coming to revere it as an attempt to Indigenize is also mistaken, i.e. mis-taken, by settler scholars—in this case, by me. Perhaps métissage should not be used metaphorically. As well, since sweetgrass is a sacred Indigenous medicine, using it as a methodological metaphor for braiding settler-life writing would be another mis-take.

Whether or not it would be right for me to engage in Indigenous Métissage is partially a question of appropriation. Certain kinds of obvious cultural appropriation might be easily avoided, i.e. respecting restricted items like headdresses and pipes

(Vowel, 2016), refraining from dressing like an Indian princess for Halloween, or choosing to wear mukluks bought from Indigenous-made and owned companies instead of supporting industrialized fashion trends. Considering how Indigenous methodologies, like métissage, become viewed as available to white, settler-Canadian scholars and researchers is another matter. Engaging with Indigenous methodologies as a settler scholar is a more nuanced and complex question of appropriation. Am I mis-taking them for my own purposes and prosperity? Partially, yes. While there may be ways for settler-

Canadians to ethically engage with Indigenous methodologies, such as Indigenous

28 “The weaving of a cloth from different fibers . . . disparate elements into multi-valenced, metonymic, and multi-textured forms, unravelling the logic of linearity, hierarchy, and uniformity” (p. 35). 29 To align with the problems of thinking of decolonization as a metaphor (Tuck & Yang, 2012), envisioning métissage as weaved stories seems to misappropriate Métis sashes. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 153

Métissage processes, this doesn’t mean I/we are relieved, absolved, or released from self- examination. For instance, even if Indigenous scholars join settlers in métissage writing, this too may be inadequate. That is, if the result works to help settler scholars gain legitimacy, this may be a mis-take of Indigenous time and voices.

To further contextualize how settler scholars might ethically practice Indigenous métissage, broader questions may also be entertained: “Are there ways for Settler people to ‘belong’ on Indigenous lands that are not reliant on settler colonialism?” (Battell

Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 63). Treaty Education seems like An Answer to All

Canadian-Indigenous Relation Problems. “Treaty education requires all students to consider how their own lives and privileges are connected to and may be traced through, treaties and the treaty relationship” (Tupper, 2012, p. 147). It requires teachers to do so, too. Yet, with further provocation, some argue that treaties have only ever benefited settlers (McMahon, 2018). So, who and what is treaty education really for? There is a risk that it simply continues to benefit white, settler-Canadians, allowing for another opportunity to assert individual belonging without interrogation of settler-Canadian political systems, institutions, and ideologies.

As land has been mis-taken through a mis-interpretation of treaties as “one-time political agreements that cede land” (Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 63), am I attempting to co-opt Indigenous methodologies for my own gain, to reassert my settler belonging here, assuming that I am entitled to take/use anything that seems available to me? Attempting to apply or practice Indigenous methodologies as a settler scholar could seem like a good thing, honorable, principled, and harmless. It could seem like a move away from settler- colonial research towards Indigenization of the academy. Nevertheless, this is potentially BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 154

another settler-colonial echo, a quieter rendering of an imaginary innocence. Are there ways for settler scholars to engage in research that is not reliant on settler colonialism? In what ways might settler scholars engage with Indigenous methodologies that are not reliant on settler-colonialism via appropriation? Coming to understand treaties as an ongoing, spiritual relationship of “mutual non-interference . . . maintaining a respectful distance, neither seeking to control the affairs of the other” (Lowman & Barker, 2015, p.

64), peace, kinship, and respect informs settler belonging and research differently than settler-colonial narratives. A different kind of settler-Canadian belonging and research includes a disruption of settler-colonial myths.30

“As the academic landscape shifts with an increasing Indigenous presence, there is a desire among a growing community of non-Indigenous academics to move beyond the binaries found within Indigenous-settler relations to construct new, mutual forms of dialogue, research, theory, and action” (Kovach, 2009, p. 12). So, I continue to hold a handful of question loose ends. When settler researchers engage with Indigenous methodologies, who benefits? How could settler-treaty life writing be part of mutual forms of dialogue, research, theory, and action? What does mutual métissage look like, feel like, and how does it work; what does it do? How could settlers engage in storied braiding as an ethical mode of self and system interrogation?

“Indigenous methodologies prompt Western traditions to engage in reflexive self- study, to consider a research paradigm outside of the Western tradition . . . It calls for the non-Indigenous scholar to adjourn disbelief and, in the pause, consider alternative

30 Common rebuttals like these should be disrupted: My ancestors have come from away and I am here to stay. This is our home now. I was born here. Canadians know how to better make use of this land. You, go away (or, at least, be a good Canadian). Treaties? Treaties are a First Nations thing. That’s just history. Stop complaining about what happened in the past. Let’s move on. It’s the future that’s important. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 155

possibilities” (Kovach, 2009, p. 29). To suspend disbelief and engage with Indigenous methodologies as a settler scholar, considering alternative possibilities does not necessarily mean that all Indigenous methodologies are up for grabs, ready for the taking, to be put to any use. The ethics involved includes asking how appropriation problematics are at play and who benefits from the research. Research possibilities that dethrone settler-colonialism include engagement with humble heedfulness to Indigenous methodologies, especially because settler mis-takes can probably never be avoided completely. This is partially how Indigenization of the academy provides opportunities for unsettling normative western research paradigms. For settlers, engaging in

Indigenization and with Indigenous methodologies, like métissage, may always involve a consideration of our mis-takes.

Braiding Canadianness: a Counter-Canadian Interbraid

This counter-Canadian interbraid is made of strands of four self-stories, each by authored by different participants: Morgan, Robyn, Audrey, and Willow. Interbraided here, in between strands of Delusional Deleusians and Blundered Becomings-, they are another haeccity of mistakes, response-abilities, settler-colonial whispers, method and methodologies, and participant becomings. The braid of self-stories was mostly written during an afternoon together, in the middle of April 2016 – one of us showing great dedication to the process while recovering from a wisdom tooth extraction from the day before, resisting the urge to smile because it hurt; another with the courage to confront conflicting feelings and embrace the discomfort of ideological incongruence (Solomon et al., 2006); a third at home not feeling well, to write their self-story later on, when health returned; and a worried researcher . . . worried that I’m asking too much of these women BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 156

who have offered their heartfelt stories and time and patience for the process.

After reading and briefly discussing Tupper and Cappello’s (2008) story called ‘A prairie drive’ – which notices the signage for the “Motherwell Homestead as a National

Historic Site” (p. 560) while recognizing the lack of Federal or Provincial signage to mark the historical significance of the place where Treaty 4 was signed in 1874 – along with a summary of Daschuk’s (2014) Clearing the Plains, we attempted to focus on telling stories of being Canadian, of considering ourselves as Treaty People, intellectually but also as we have lived and felt such identities. The stories may be read in any order, folded and unfolded, braided and unbraided, at the whim of the reader, in relation to each other, the counter-narrative offered, and the reader’s experiences.

Such Experiences are Educational, by Morgan

I proudly stand at the front of the class with my three group members as we give our presentation about the tipi. For grade four students, we know we’ve done an excellent job. We’ve made a 3D model and everything, out of crumpled up brown paper that almost looks like real hide. We even coloured some symbols on the outside – bison, eagles, things like that. My pride grows when our classmates clap for us and my teacher praises our teamwork and creativity.

—

Grade six Social Studies: I sit in my desk, filling in the answer on the test. Who was Louis Riel? I confidently write that he was the leader of the Metis during the Red

River Rebellion and the NorthWest Rebellion.31 I’m still not sure if he was supposed to

31 Morgan kept this term to reflect how these Métis resistances have been problematically framed as rebellions, contributing to the reproduction of normative narratives that position Métis leaders as traitors and the Canadian government as justified in prosecuting and killing them. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 157

be the ‘good guy’ or the ‘bad guy’ in either of these. But I know he was hanged. Wasn’t there something about that being an injustice? There were a lot of people mad about that, weren’t there? But anyway, he had a trial in court and everything, so I’m sure he was guilty of something. I’m still confused, but anyway, my answer works and I ace the test.

—

We’re lying on the floor of my twin brother’s bedroom, on a make-shift bed made from couch cushions and blankets and one rather large stuffed elephant which makes an excellent pillow in a pinch. It’s our tradition when something monumental happens . . . first dances or first parties, things like that. This time it’s nothing too big, just that we finally got to go on our first outdoor school trip with the other grade sevens. Man, it was awesome! We played predator and prey in the bushes and I got caught pretty quick but he was a predator and he practically won the whole game. I tell him how Courtney sat straight up in the middle of the night and said a swear word four times and then fell right back asleep. And then Mrs. Dens came over and interrogated us all and accused us of lying. Pffff. Teachers, right? Anyway. He tells me about how he and the guys snuck up on the parents at the campfire after curfew and saw them drinking beer, even Mr.

Mackay! The real downer was when I ran into that tree branch at night and scraped up my eye. I whine that I’ll probably never live it down – wearing a gauze eye patch for the whole next day in front of everyone? Unfortunately he agrees – yup, probably won’t ever live it down. Gee, thanks. Of course we obviously had to do some educational things too

– like when we toured Fort Carlton and saw the battlements, or palisades or whatever they were called, and we even got to walk along the parapet like real soldiers used to.

From up there you can see so far, I guess that’s how they would protect themselves from BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 158

their enemies back when there were real enemies and real soldiers and Fort Carlton was in full swing. Yeah, we learned some stuff about the RCMP and the clothes and tools and stuff they would use, but mostly we learned about cooking for ourselves and building fires and food chains. Oh, and of course we learned that Courtney swears in her sleep.

I Am Canadian, By Robyn

I am Canadian. It’s simple enough to say and when I say it, I’m reminded of where I’m from. Not who I am, but where my residence has been since birth. To ask myself – what makes me Canadian? – means I must pause and take stock. Really look at the bigger picture. Hmm . . .well I’m free, live with quality health care, feel safe, and am educated. To be Canadian, to me, is to think almost automatically about belonging to a group of people who bravely left their homes and families to begin a life in a new place.

Yet I realize, as an educated adult, that this isn’t the entire scope of being ‘Canadian.’ I must consciously remind myself that Canada is a quilt of cultures – differing in colour, texture, patterns. Yet, I do not automatically conjure this image in my mind – it takes a few moments before I see the quilt. To know this, to admit this, to face this stirs that ever uncomfortable feeling of guilt – a stomach clenching discomfort. Why the discomfort?

Why the guilt? Because I’m afraid and ashamed to admit that, yes, I am far more privileged than others in my own country? That being white, of European descent, of settler history has been advantageous for me? It’s an awful thought – one I disdain to entertain. A thought I resist to entertain. More recently, the strength of my resolve to resist this guilt is breaking down. Here’s why.

When I moved to Saskatchewan to teach in a small community, I first heard the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 159

phrase ‘we are treaty’ in relation to First Nation/Métis culture32. The phrase came to me in a Youtube video that my former superintendent had sent out to all new staff members.

He was reminding new staff that we are responsible for teaching treaties in the classroom.

For me, however, this was not a reminder – it was brand new information I was not aware of. However, being the flexible and over responsible teacher that I am, I ensured I followed suit with what was delegated to me.

Back to the Youtube video: confusion ensued. The word ‘treaty’ did not make sense to me within the context of the phrase ‘we are treaty.’ Putting confusion aside, I knew I had a duty to teach treaties – it seemed even more important since I was living and working in a Northern Métis village. The scope of my knowledge was very limited but I did what was expected of me. I could not connect my own personal self to the content I was instructed to teach. I’m sure my lessons were rather awful. How could I make them memorable if I didn’t understand them? Oh – there’s that guilt and discomfort again.

After 2 years in that community, I moved to a new town. Again, I was instructed to teach treaties. Again, I could not connect at a personal level and found it even more difficult to motivate myself into teaching it. Was this because I was in a dominant white,

European, settler community again . . . as I had been until the ages of 27-29? Oh there they are again – Guilt and Discomfort rear their ugly heads!!

32 It seems as though Robyn’s treaty understandings at the time included the Métis Nation so I asked for clarification about this detail in her story and how she knew that the community she was teaching in was Métis. She noted that some of her confusion came from being new to Saskatchewan. As well, her perceived responsibility to teach treaty curriculum was in tension with working with Métis women who would tell her, for instance, “we don’t do that,” when the principal would ask the school community to participate in Cree ceremony (Robyn noted that there was a Cree Nation reserve nearby as well). This is an example of how treaty education paired with normative Canadian narratives conflates treaty to apply to all Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations in Canada. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 160

A few years later, I was signed up for treaty training – as were all teachers in my school division. I honestly won’t say that I was excited but I feigned it for my job – to look like the ‘professional’ I was supposed to look like, to look like the person I was supposed to look like, to look like the person I WANTED to look like: non-prejudiced.

I did not expect to leave the 2 days of training with the emotion, confusion, and knowledge I left with. The training did not teach me that First Nations and Métis peoples were cruelly mistreated, starved, stolen from their families – this I already knew.

However, it taught me HOW early settlers and early Canadian governments stole First

Nations and Métis peoples identities. I heard stories of EARLY CANADA’S plans to decimate a population – real, living humans with emotions, lives, families, knowledge, and spirits. To hear the stories disgusted me. Enraged me! Furthermore, I could now formulate what it meant to be Treaty – a partnership built on trust, respect and honour.

An agreement to share the land and help one another.

To be quite candid, the knowledge I left the training with is not the awakening I had hoped for. The knowledge is still with me and when I recall it, when I bring it forth –

I know its truth. But I am still faced with the ‘yeah but what about now?!’ question. This history happened so long ago. Should I feel guilty? I wasn’t one of the settlers. I wasn’t the government! There is still that struggle within me: a lack of knowing, of understanding – a lack of non-prejudice. And the guilt and discomfort ensue: I do not know yet how to reconcile being the ‘Canadian’ I automatically reflect on and being

‘Treaty’.

Sod-Made, By Audrey

We’ve arrived in time for supper, a bit early even, which is quite unusual for me. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 161

We’ve driven 6 hours across southern Saskatchewan to a town called Unity – where

‘OpportUnity is waiting,’ as their signage declares – for our Zunti Family Reunion. I’m glad we’re not late, for at least one of my sisters has come to expect it from me . . . I’m not really bothered by the reputation except that it irks Mike, who very much likes to be on time. We park behind the hall that is just outside of town, in its exhibition grounds.

Smells of cooking food – I think some kind of meat, chicken perhaps – float in the air.

There are many campers and vehicles on the grounds, and people milling about: some people over there are playing Frisbee; there’s a bunch of kids running around near the bleachers. I don’t seem to know anyone that I’ve seen so far, yet somehow we’re related through my mom. I want to find her, or my Dad, or someone from my immediate family that I recognize. Holding hands, we wander into the hall, which is built like a quonset, through its big door that is open wide to the outside, letting in the late afternoon, summer- scented breeze.

We see my petite Grandma Aline and I give her a hug and introduce her to Mike.

We chat a little about how she’s doing in Edmonton, at the Seniors’ complex where she lives with its self-contained Catholic Church, pharmacy, restaurant, and indoor courtyard.

It’s good that she moved there, for she is still quite independent in her 86th year. I wonder if she’s lonely, since Grandpa passed away some years ago. I imagine she misses him quite a lot, especially at events like this. Perhaps it feels bittersweet to be here without him, among his look-alike brothers and nephews. Many of them are tall and trim and strong like him – like the long, Swiss alphorns over there on the stage – while she is ever so short, just under 5 feet, and lovingly round.

Oh! Just now my 7-year-old niece bounces over and hugs me tight around my BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 162

waist; she saw me from across the room. Then here’s Dad, and Mom, and I finally notice other familiar faces – my brother and his very pregnant wife, along with their other child;

My youngest sister is over there, with her baby girl. After Mike and I have made those quick rounds to say hello, Dad asks if we want to go to the museum to see the ‘soddie’ before supper. The museum closes soon, so we have to hurry, he says. I think I went to see it the last time we had a reunion.

I vaguely recall the sod house replica that some of our relatives built on the museum grounds, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of my great-grandparents’ first soddie on their 1908 homestead. During the reunion before that, we were required to wear ‘Casper’s Clan’ t-shirts – blue ones with a silly silk-screen ghost on the front that looked nothing like Casper the Friendly Ghost. I wore it anyway, but my 12-year-old self wasn’t that cheerful about it. My Grandpa was named Casper after his Dad, my Great- grandpa the homesteader. The story goes that Great-grandpa Casper immigrated from

Switzerland to settle on the prairies with his brother Jacob, who had ‘wanderlust.’ So, I suppose the t-shirts were also meant to distinguish us from Jacob’s descendants at the reunion. Thank goodness we don’t have to wear them this time, though I think I’ve recently seen one or two of the relics still shoved at the back of dresser drawers at my parents’ house. Maybe we should have brought them along for the fun of it, and given them to my nieces and nephews to wear. Some of Jacob’s descendants are reminiscing by wearing their old, bright green or yellow or pink or orange fluorescent caps from that ‘92 reunion.

We hop into my Dad’s truck, roll down the windows to cool out the cab. Before we are even in gear, someone tries to give him a can of Bud Light beer through the truck BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 163

window. When we’re safely on our way, back onto the highway and towards the museum grounds, I ask Dad who that was. He tries to explain how we’re related, but it’s too confusing and I don’t grasp the entire explanation, so I just nod and say okay a few times.

The museum area is like a small version of a Western Development Museum – with machinery lined up around the edges of the fence in neat rows and some buildings that are intended to simulate a turn of the century settlement – boasting the usual school house, blacksmith shop, town hall, a church, a harness shop, a barn, along with a few other structures, and a boardwalk. Near the machinery, close to the entrance of the museum area, stands the sod house. We look around it a bit – yep, the walls are sod.

Simple layers upon layers of rooted prairie grass and soil. And, we’re invited inside. It has wooden floor boards, and one of my relatives (who I don’t really know, a second great uncle maybe? Dad tries to explain who he is, later . . .) is there, giving an improvised tour. There’s a wooden bed, a little stove, a few tools, and even a scythe (I think) hanging on the wall. I try to imagine what it might have been like to build it in

1908, like my great-grandpa did . . . and, then, to live in it, as a wife.

There’s another short family story of Great-grandpa going back to Switzerland in the winter of 1914. While he was there, he married Anna Widmer. That’s the whole story, retold over and over. There’s a photo to go along with it though, from when they returned: the four of them in their Sunday Best – Great-grandpa Casper standing behind a seated Anna in a light coloured dress, a spotted dog in her lap, his hands on her shoulders, and Jacob beside him with his new bride Mary Brundler, also seated in front, his hands framing her body – with the soddie to their backs and somewhat stern faces, yet with hints of smiles at the corners of their mouths. I wonder if that was a happy time or if they BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 164

often felt heavy, homesick, or hopeless. I’d bet that they felt both and all of those things and more. Probably they were also proud of what they made, I assume, proud of their sod house residence, proud of the land they ‘broke,’ the land that they were able to claim as their own through the Dominion Land Act. One thing is for sure, there remains a palpable sense of pride within Caspar’s Clan as we remember them and what they built for us.

These family stories, these roots, cause me to wonder if I am, like their first house, also sod-made.

~SE 21-37-24-West of the 3rd Meridian.

Patriotism is Dangerous, By Willow

Mountain Equipment Co-op: the Canadian dream. I stood in the camping section for hours imagining myself huddled up in a tent on the edge of a snow covered mountain, cooking a meal on that one-of-a-kind camp stove. Oh and the clips! You can never have enough clips on your backpack! I bought . . . 22 . . .

Sleeping mat, bag, tent, check! Stove, toiletries, camera, check! Water bottle, first aid, candles, check! This was going to be the start of my life. Travelling overseas for 6 months. No home. No borders. No country.

“Here! Look what I’ve found!” My travelling partner came skipping through the mountaineering aisle towards me and plopped a rectangular patch into my hand. I ran my fingers over the embroidered threads of the red and white stripes and the maple leaf of the

Canadian flag. “We can sew them on our bags! Everyone will know where we are from and be nice to us.”

I looked up at him hesitantly, recalling the maple leaf tattooed on his arm. “Yeah, but why?” I asked. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 165

“You wouldn’t want to be mistaken for an American do you?” He laughed.

I ran my fingers over the flag again, looking down. All the red threads of the leaf were pulled into the centre. “Well no . . .” I murmured.

“Patriotism is dangerous!”

I could hear my Dad’s voice ringing in my 10-year-old ears. My father, the anarchist. I would later stitch the symbol into a black neck warmer, hand knit for

Christmas so he would stay warm in our harsh Canadian winters.

Ten years old and very impressionable. When fellow travellers inquired into my country of origin, my 19-year-old hippie would say ‘I’m from the Earth.’ The Canadian flag patch stayed well hidden in the first aid kit of my back pack for the entire 6-month trip, much to the dismay of my travelling companion.

“Patriotism is dangerous!”

I remember asking ‘why? What was patriotism? Why was it dangerous?’ as I stood in the mountaineering section of Mountain Equipment Co-op, the Canadian dream.

Falling into Canadian stereotypes: snowboarder, snow lover, picture of a soldier in her wallet, says ‘eh?’ too often, sorry, excuse me, you first, cool sled bro . . . and always coming home to Canada but still convinced patriotism is dangerous.

Interbraid: Counter-Canadian

Upon an examination what our Canadian stories seem to leave out, it is not surprising that these snippets (un)intentionally hide or continue to make absent certain details about Canadian history. Specifically,

to open the land for our immigrant ancestors, the Crown negotiated treaties throughout the 1870s. The completed treaties, an exchange of commitments and responsibilities for both First Nations people and representatives of the Dominion of Canada, are the legal framework that prairie society was founded on. Without BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 166

them, none who descended from the settlers would be here. (Daschuk, 2014, p. 37)

For example, Sod-made skirts around explicitly stating that my family and I would not be here, living in, on and with this place, if not for Treaty 6 and Treaty 4. Nor are the others deliberately specific about the origins/history of their family or their story locations.

However, while this kind of recognition is more relationally ethical (Donald, 2009, p. 6), becomings-unsettled does not necessarily follow.

For, we also notice our problematic desire to get it right – to be the good student who does “an excellent job” with “pride,” applause, and “teacher praise” (Morgan); to be the good teacher, “feigning excitement” in order to be “flexible and responsible” who

“follows suit,” recognizing “a duty to teach treaties” (Robyn); to be a good settler with

“Casper Clan pride,” who “remembers them and what they built for us” (Audrey); to be the good daughter, with contradictory yet unwavering devotion to one’s father, espousing his belief that “patriotism is dangerous” (Willow). All of these show our longing to “ace the test” (Morgan). But, what happens when the test challenges what we think we know about Canada and ourselves? What happens when we find ourselves unable to “connect at a personal level” (Robyn) to the spirit and intent of treaties? Still, we want to know the answer to this Canadian problem: as Robyn put it, “how to reconcile being the

‘Canadian’ I automatically reflect on and being ‘Treaty’.” How might I/we “connect my own personal self to the content” (Robyn) in ways that would help lead to ethical relationality, in a process of becomings-unsettled? Looking at our self-stories again may help to begin to ascertain how Canadian normative narratives have shaped our understandings of land and our relations, while opening up possibilities to reshape personal connections to the spirit and intent of treaty through ethical relationality. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 167

Sod-made “confirms/represents/reproduces the dominant vision of the Province vis-a-vis the lens of pioneer” (Tupper & Cappello, 2008, p. 576); e.g., “I try to imagine what it might have been like to build it in 1908, like my great-grandpa did . . . and, then, to live in it, as a wife.” (Sod-made, by Audrey). I am Canadian, by Robyn, highlights a

Canadian discourse of multiculturalism. “I must consciously remind myself that Canada is a quilt of cultures – differing in colour, texture, patterns.” This argument is often misplaced or used as excuses to continue to silence Aboriginal stories and history (see St.

Denis, 2011) in a Canadian context. Such experiences are educational (Morgan) shows how schooling often works to reinforce misunderstandings – e.g., “our classmates clap for us and my teacher praises our teamwork and creativity”. Patriotism is dangerous, by

Willow, exposes the irony of choosing to conceal being Canadian, to embrace “No Home

. . . No Country,” yet “always coming home to Canada.” We find ourselves being able to easily always come home to Canada. As white people “of European decent, of settler history” (Robyn), privilege and belonging has been afforded to us. We have come to expect such advantages as normal and natural, often without being required to think beyond our own stories.

Through this interbraiding, we invite an “unmaking of the dominant narrative”

(Tupper & Cappello, 2008, p. 576). We ask: how am I implicated in colonial practices?, whether that be through interactions (Willow) and celebrations (Audrey) with family and friends, remembering our grade school moments (Morgan), and considering how to

“teach treaties in the classroom” (Robyn). Here, we might begin to “interrupt the commonsense story of the history of Saskatchewan” (Tupper & Cappello, 2008, p. 560).

Through braiding our familiar Canadian self-stories, we hoped to highlight how Canadian BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 168

normative narratives work in small moments to prop up nationalism and settler- colonialism, while deadening the possibilities for us to live treaty understandings in becomings-unsettled processes.

So if “to be Canadian . . . is to think almost automatically about belonging to a group of people who bravely left their homes and families to begin a life in a new place”

(Robyn); if we desire to be rooted here, to belong here, as a true Canadian; If, perhaps,

I/we all the more want to say, I’m not a settler, I was born here, raised here; If the stories prompt thoughts like, ‘Yes, sure, my great-grandparents settled here but they had the right to do so because they worked hard and proved themselves Canadian, making our family what it is today – strong and free;’ If “you wouldn’t want to be mistaken for an

American” (Willow); If being Canadian is remembering that “they would protect themselves from their enemies back when there were real enemies and real soldiers and

Fort Carlton was in full swing” (Morgan); If these self-stories reaffirm common rebuttals of Canadian belonging, authority, and entitlement; If they reproduce colonial fort logics

(Donald, 2102), framing FNMI peoples as to be feared or in the past; Then, bring on some discomfort.

Instead of allowing “guilt [to] rear its ugly head” (Robyn), I/we believe that a different kind of discomfort significantly contributes to “getting free of oneself” (St.

Pierre, 2004, p. 328)—free of the settler position who perpetuates the pioneer perspective of Canada as the key story, the loudest position, even while aiming to “look like the

‘professional’ I was supposed to look like, to look like the person I was supposed to look like, to look like the person I WANTED to look like – non-prejudiced” (Robyn). Instead of just feeling guilty for being prejudiced, discriminatory, or more specifically, racist, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 169

I/we believe that it is impossible to be neutral as teachers or otherwise. It is only possible to pretend that being non-prejudiced is a possibility. Instead of continuing to silence that,

“as our immigrant ancestors took up free land and established a society that became the breadbasket of the world, it was the Aboriginal people who paid the price with their freedom, their health and even their lives” (Daschuk, 2014, p. 37), we, “as citizens of

Saskatchewan and Canada, [agree that] it is time to come to terms with the uncomfortable parts of our past” (p. 37), by interrupting the very stories, ideas, and beliefs that we hold most dear. One of these beliefs is that of the good, neutral teacher. Neutrality is not a useful ethical position for educators. The good teacher disrupts the good stories about being Canadian, the ones beyond the easier “Canadian stereotypes: snowboarder, snow lover, picture of a soldier in her wallet, says ‘eh?’ too often, sorry, excuse me, you first, cool sled bro” (Willow).

Although this seems like we’ve reached a good answer, again demonstrating a desire to get it right, becoming-unsettled is not a conclusion or a thing to be possessed. It is a heightened awareness of the process of ethical relationality of treaty-kin, which is always in the middle of things. I/we leave this challenge hanging in the air, on the tip of our tongues, with lumps in our throats and knotted stomachs. We tangle it up with our stories, hoping to find “those junctures, those rhizomatic routes, that open vacant spaces, heightened states of possibility . . . practicing the double move of both being and subverting” (St. Pierre, 2004, p. 330) settler. This is part of how life writing self-stories might be put to work. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 170

Blundered Becomings-┃nîpin Summer

Becomings-Tearful

Tearful Discomfort

I cried, again. I tried not to. I’m probably just tired, I thought. We have been getting up early and going to bed late. Yet, I suspect that it is something deeper than that.

It happened while I was reading Lake Living aloud, for the first time publicly. I think of it as one of my race stories. Parts of it caught in my throat: “They must be from the Reserve

– they have dark, long hair and that kind of skin.” It In the car this morning, making last minute revisions to my presentation slides on my smartphone, re-reading this piece, tears threatened to overtake me. I pushed them down; shut the phone off; hoped that I could hold it together during the presentation; told myself that I’ll be fine and it is all okay. I do not feel guilty for this story or how it implicates me as racist, though the tears may seem as though comfort would be welcomed. Yet, what a problem it is that “when white discomfort is comforted, white women are relieved from all accountability” (Applebaum,

2017, p. 865). Furthermore, it is not simply that I was nervous, or feared repercussions from the telling. Beyond seeking comfort, ironically, it is somewhat likely that I might be praised for being honest and vulnerable or perceived as being able to bracket my guilt, looking instead to the structure of white supremacy, for it is common for “whites [to] subvert a structural study of racism with personalistic concerns over how they are perceived as individuals” (Leonardo, 2004, p. 140).

Yet, this particular story seems highly personal and such sharing requires some level of vulnerability, an attention to how individuals are complicit in structural racism.

“Instead of responding with violence or tears, white people might respond with BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 171

vulnerability” (Applebaum, 2017, p. 871) and “encouraging vulnerability is key to countering white fragility” (Applebaum, 2017, p. 873). Perhaps I am embarrassed at my lack of virtue as I recognize my own racist prejudice, even as a child, an uncomfortable moment that counters the good white woman trope. At the same time, I think that all of this uncontainable bubbling is ridiculous. It is not just that it is tied up with being mortified to seem weak, less credible, too emotional, crazy, or irrational—that is, definitely not a good, objective academic. There is something else happening here as well: a tearful acknowledgement of the impossibility of being good; of ever doing it right, because being right, being innocent, is always impossible, and highly conflicts with the normative narrative of the pure and moral white woman.

Moreover, crying as a partial act of contrition and atonement works to reaffirm my good intentions, while admitting that I am racist repositions me as another kind of good white woman—one that applies a method of “self-evaluation so that we can recognize when we as educators exhibit these defense modes [i.e. denial, rationalization, false envy, benevolence] when our sense of entitlement based on privilege is challenged”

(Accapadi, 2007, p. 213). What happens when I recognize that I am racist, personally, and have a part in reproducing white supremacy and systems of racism? How possible is a recognition that “despite the fact that white racial domination precedes us, whites daily recreate it on both the individual and institutional level” (Leonardo, 2004, p. 139), even with attempts to disrupt white supremacy? Could such a recognition work to shift modes of being innocent towards processes of becomings-unsettled? In the car, swallowing hard, for now I hold the tears at bay.

Time jumps, speeds up, and then slows down again. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 172

Since [her] emotional reaction aligned with the 'standard of humanity' which is rooted in White norms, she received consolation, absolution of guilt, and ultimately, validation of her position, without a critical inquiry of the situation. From the point that [she] started crying, she was no longer held responsible for her actions. (Accapadi, 2007, p. 213)

While planning participant writing sessions, I had hoped that the writing moments with each other would have caused some agitation, inciting some level of discomfort, even triggering tears. Interpreting my initial ethics review feedback, I noted a hesitation to accept discomfort as a research method, worrying about potential emotional and mental impacts to participants. The reviewer asked, “is it also possible that exploring one’s identity in a group setting could pose some risks?” Offering peer support possibilities was not perceived as sufficient. As requested, I contacted and then listed a counsellor for participants. As well, they speculated that “First Nations individuals are probably aware of the treaties, but their presence could make ‘settlers’ very uncomfortable. Will you be mixing your group sessions? That is, would you include First

Nations individuals with individuals with white settler backgrounds?” I was agape with surprise. There was no worry from the ethics reviewer that First Nations participants could be negatively affected by settlers white fragility (DiAngelo, 2011) and discomfort with treaty.

During writing sessions, participants were mostly unfazed by using the term settler for ourselves and some of us had previously practiced embracing a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler, 1999; Zembylas, 2015). Therefore, only one brief interaction addressed particular feelings of discomfort during attempts to complicate settler-

Canadian normative narratives and writing treaty self-stories. It became clear that we did not all have a shared understanding of the term settler when one participant became very BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 173

quiet. While she eventually expressed her reluctance to question settler-Canadian normative narratives, we hurried to resolve any discomfort and sought to help each other to feel better. Overall, any discomfort experienced was slight. “Instead of focusing on organizational change, the self-centered strategies of white feminists comforting one another serve to preserve white moral self-image and to deflect attention away from the concerns and emotions of feminists of color” (Applebaum, 2017, p. 865). We tended to employ comforting preservation tactics in our discussions with one another, and in our writing processes, if not also in our self stories themselves. Perhaps such preservation tactics are difficult to evade in life writing, since attempting to story the self likely bumps up against humanist notions of coherent autonomy.

Setting up the life writing processes as invitations to provoke one another to learn through uncomfortable experiences would have potentially produced different self stories. For instance, I wish that our stories were more explicit about race, racism, whiteness, and white fragility, as well as the ways our self-stories reproduce whiteness as innocent and moral. These could have entered into other intensities, “nothing but affects and local movements, differential speeds” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 260). Contrary to composing ourselves, becomings-tearful could be an embodiment of a pedagogy of discomfort, moments when

you are longitude and latitude, a set of speeds and slownesses between unformed particles, a set of nonsubjectified affects. You have the individuality of a day, a season, a year, a life (regardless of its duration)—a climate, a wind, a fog, a swarm, a pack (regardless of its regularity). Or at least you can have it, you can reach it. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 262)

Tear Stains

There are tear stains on my t-shirt. This time the droplets ran down my pink BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 174

cheeks and onto the neckline because I have been avoiding writing, about tears but also about anything. It is too hard, I tell a friend,33 after I have controlled my sobbing; after I wiped my face with the back of my hand, and also the edges of my sleeve, and finally blew my stuffed up nose with a few tissues, in private, before I drove there for tea. I have not written for 3 weeks. Desperately, I grasp at any distraction. This time, visiting a friend is at least a healthy one, I tell myself. For days, I have binge watched old HBO series-episodes to numb overwhelmingly toxic self-talk: the fear of not being good enough and of never finishing this writing. Both the unhelpful thoughts and behaviors amplify the writing-paralysis. It is too hard, I think, as I look in her guest bathroom mirror and notice the salty circles near the neckline of my shirt, faint but slightly darker grey. Maybe it is just the lighting. Maybe no one but me has noticed. Even so, it reminds me that coming to terms with tears is necessary.

Life writing helps with coming to terms with tears, as well as the terms of my self; terms like white settler-invader, uninvited visitor, mis-taker. Me. I. This ‘I’ that is something other than Individual. Self-stories might also work to come to terms with an acknowledgement that identities are tricky and shifting, while simultaneously perceived to be stable, understandable, unproblematic, and, in the case of white settler-women for example, often innocent. It’s too hard, I said, and hoped that this meant that I could get out of it . . . somehow. That I would not have to think about why writing about this feels hard. But, coming to terms makes the settler-self impossible to live in continued ignorance and innocence. I have no excuses not to write. I have not experienced any

33 We met as coworkers at a Science Center, while we were both undergraduates in Education. Then, we decided to live together during my semester-long teaching internship. She continues to practice teaching at an elementary school and is also interested in living treaties, both professionally and personally. She is a cherished friend, but I leave her name out of this story since her questions about treaty have been like mine too, at times. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 175

personally troubling trauma that could make life writing more difficult. As I attempt to consider how I am implicated as a settler-Canadian, along with associated treaty responsibilities, maybe it is an inexperience with trauma that freezes me. I am unable to fathom anything other than innocence, even while ecocides and genocides continue to occur around me.

Over black tea, with heavy milk, squinting in the mid-morning sun, we talk about the agony I feel when I attempt to write. To relate to the writing, we also begin to discuss her professional goals related to treaty education. My friend says, I want to be part of their circle; don’t you think the circle should be made larger? I just don’t know how to start making connections. Innocence, I think. We always claim innocence. She echoes my thoughts, those that have repeated at various points in my life, again and again. And, of course, we believe it is not our fault. We are open to it—to better relationships with

Indigenous peoples, to Indigenization, to a shared future—so we say. She mentions attending a short course on making ribbon skirts and makes another vague reference to valuing Indigenous spirituality. Why don’t they want us? It has to be about relationships, I reply. We cannot expect Old Ones to always have time and energy for us settler-

Canadian women. We are not a part of their communities. There are important things the

Old Ones are involved in besides teaching me/us.

I encourage her to connect with the designated treaty support people at her school division office to help her begin to make connections with teachers and students at affiliated First Nations Band Schools, many On-Reserve. I advise that she does not have to have an elaborate plan; simply, ask about protocol and be okay with being corrected. I feel good in this interaction; confident; reminded that people like me need people like BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 176

me, to challenge each other. Here, in the form of a challenge, my own good, kindhearted intentions are recentered. But, “benevolence as a defense tool shifts the conversation to make the person with privilege, and her good intentions, the central focus on the discussion, further privileging her identity” (Accapadi, 2007, p. 213). I am not crying anymore, but I tell her about the tears. Along with benevolence, tears also seem to center my privileged good intentions even as they well up from listlessness.

A few days later, as I am again wallowing in self-pity and disgust, hating myself for not writing, for avoiding a coming to terms with myself, staring into the depths of the television, blinds drawn, the sound of a text interrupts my self torture. Watching a raven hop around still thinking about your words of wisdom you shared with me last week about relationships with land. Thank you for visiting and sharing your wise thoughts. I need more of that soon! It takes a lot of effort to respond. Thesis writing has been an unhealthy process for me. Regularly, I curl up in a ball, close my eyes, and try mightily to shut off my brain. TV is used to sabotage writing. Litres upon litres of ice cream have been consumed, along with much chocolate, eaten in secret, in an attempt to feel the quick satisfaction, the comfort, the relief of something sweet. All of my usual clothes are too tight, frustratingly unwearable. This thesis feels awful, like a punishment. Maybe they all do. Maybe they are supposed to. Maybe life writing and tearfulness are still valuable, even if I’d rather stop rethinking goodness and reworking settler-colonial Truth. Are such tears a penance for the ruse of goodness?

Settler Tears

Motion sickness creeps up on me. I had hoped to use most of the 4-hour train trip from Toronto to Ottawa to write a self-story, or at least read a little. Avoiding the view BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 177

from the large Via Rail passenger car window, surging past railway shrubbery and nearby tiny-towns with rushing colours, I close my eyes in an attempt to manage the mild nausea. Focusing on the horizon for composure is impossible. As this is my first journey by train in Canada, I thought it would feel more momentous, a truly Canadian experience.

Partially, I expected the trip to embody the ways the railroad has been used to create national normative narratives of unification and afford settlement of the west, perhaps reminiscent of the first trip to Winnipeg that my maternal great-grandfather took before seeking a homestead in Saskatchewan.

Instead, this message is relevant only by what is taken-for-granted, hidden, and silenced. The oppressive policies utilized for the construction of the Canadian Pacific

Railway are not apparent in memory or in practice. Train travel in Canada appears to be mostly benign, rendered into a somewhat outdated way to get from one place to the next.

Yet, another story, a more truthful one, can be told about Canada, its confederation, and its problematic historical-contemporary policies, and not only in spaces like the Canadian

Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba. That is, coming know myself as

Canadian could include a recognition that all railway travel for both passengers and freight, even this one, has been made possible by the historical Conservative Party’s

National Policy and agenda of development, under John A. Macdonald, which worked for full-scale settlement of the prairies by starvation of Indigenous Peoples in order to coerce First Nations into submission on reserves (Daschuk, 2013, p. 128). Beyond motion sickness, such movement, while also sitting still in the train car’s slightly reclined ergonomic seat, disturbs with an irksome burden.

Proud of myself, mostly for making it off the train without vomiting, but also for BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 178

my internal critique of Canadian train travel, I finally meet a dear friend who agreed to accompany me to Parliament Hill. Visiting her was the primary reason for traveling to

Ottawa; the train, the cheapest option. The writing fodder is mostly incidental, but also quite auspicious. With anticipation, I walk with her downtown, past the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights with its inscriptions “of the words ‘Equality,’ ‘Dignity’ and ‘Rights’ in

73 languages of Canada’s First Nations peoples” (Government of Canada, 2017a, para 2).

Pausing with awe, we express praise for the monument and the good intentions of the

United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights sentiment: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (United Nations, 1948, Article 1). At the same time, we note how this ideal is often used as common rebuttal that appeals to a universalized humanity, with statements like “we are all just human” as a “response to evidence of oppression . . . a way to deny that oppression exists at all” (Sensoy &

DiAngelo, 2017, p. 189). Walking north through the monument portal, on our way again,

I think that these tensions are important, and, quietly, how good I was at applying critical theory in this tourist moment.

Up ahead, turning the corner, Parliament Hill comes into view. There is already a small crowd forming to join in The Blanket ExerciseTM, “a unique, participatory history lesson – developed in collaboration with Indigenous Elders, knowledge keepers and educators – that fosters truth, understanding, respect and reconciliation among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples” (KAIROS Canada, 2018). Removing our shoes, and finding a blanket to stand on in the midst of the assembly, we have arrived at our destination. The evening is warm and calm, with the threat of rain darkening the light of early summer. I am glad to be here, experiencing this exercise in the shadow of the Peace Tower, and BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 179

again a feeling of self-satisfaction swells within me. Taking part in this event, in this place, on the year of Canada’s 150th anniversary of confederation, seems like a good thing to do. With an estimated 800 people, this Kitchi Blanket Exercise (2017) is a

“really big” experience, “a coming together of hearts and minds in a collective commitment to build reconciliation based on justice for Indigenous peoples” (para 2) and

“also about bringing a different focus to Canada 150 – Canada’s formation includes stolen land, broken promises and cultural genocide, and we do not want this glossed over in celebrations” (para 4). Still, the group only fills a small portion of the area inside the

Queen’s Gate, near the Centennial Flame.

While the deed for the Parliament Hill Lands is dated 1823, kept in the Library and Archives Canada (Government of Canada, 2018), and gives the impression that the

Crown owns this land by legal sale, understanding that the Canadian Parliament

Buildings are located on unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Peoples, with associated and ongoing Indigenous land claims (Austin, 2017; Chan, 2016), is more accurate. Though Prime Minister J. Trudeau makes note of this frequently (Austin, 2017), the History of the Hill (Government of Canada, 2017b) conveniently omits any reference to Indigenous Peoples and their territories in that region, thereby reproducing a terra nullius narrative. The Blanket ExerciseTM explicitly recognizes this normative Canadian narrative as a problem, and seeks to tell a counter-story.

Its counter-story includes many other moments of such truth-telling, relaying some 400 years of Indigenous and Euro-Settler relations that culminates with a call to repair these relationships with real change. Always, during every other Blanket Exercise I have participated in, some tears would well up and quietly spill over. Especially, I find BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 180

myself crying throughout the account about residential schools, as I think of my own nieces and nephews, my parents, and my siblings and how terrible it would be to be separated from family at such a young age, notwithstanding the other abuses that were perpetrated by those meant to care for the children (Truth and Reconciliation

Commission of Canada, 2015b). I imagine my oldest niece (she’s 9 now) and three of my nephews (one of them 8 and the other two 6 years old). What would it feel like to hug them before they left for boarding school? A knot appears way back in my throat. I pinch my nose with my thumb and forefinger, my hand making a fist to hold it back. I fear they will be lonely, homesick, and heartbroken. A whole year is too long to be away from their mother. They are too small.

Though I consider what it would be like for the little ones I know to be taken from us, a poor attempt at empathy, it is impossible to know what this is like without living it, along with the many intergenerational effects. With mournful and upset feelings, I tearfully react to the slight hint of residential schools (not even) happening to my loved ones. Relatively easily, such terrible thoughts can then be pushed from my mind. I can recite: not them; not us; not me, until the troubling feelings begin to pass. Except, those little ones were taken from their families, required to cut their hair, only speak English, forget their languages, stop their songs, their dances, their ceremonies, to become someone else; forced to be Canadian without the familiarity of their loved ones, their mothers and aunts and sisters and grandmothers (Merasty, 2015; Truth and

Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015b). It is difficult to imagine, though worthy of heartache and thoroughly reprehensible. This should be enough to prompt sorrowful weeping. However, in this context, is crying an appropriate response for me, a white BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 181

woman settler? This question of praxis folds with the story and may further inform a pedagogy of discomfort. What does discomfort feel like, look like, sound like? What responses are suitable, respectable, fitting? What are the implications for white settler teachers?

One of the health support workers wandering nearby, an Indigenous woman with long grey braids down each side of her face, on the lookout for anyone in need of care, stopped to offer me a tissue, a smile, and a full embrace. Cheek to cheek, we stood, her soft skin next to mine, as I marveled at her ability to comfort me. I wondered at it.

Afterwards, once she had left me to tend to another, I promised myself that I would stop crying in situations that would require an Indigenous person to extend support to me. Are these simply tears of sympathetic innocence? Are they another way to demonstrate the goodness of my white settler womanness? Are my tears empathetic? Do they show compassion? They might be a useful response to an abhorrent reality, an expression of shared humanity, as well as something else, something less useful. They may be just another way to be penitent, to show remorse, to atone. They are like apologies without making amends. I’m sorry, weeps the good Canadian (me). Who will comfort me? Tears arouse warmth and gentleness, while assuming virtue and safety/weakness, risking an exploitation of those who would extend their care. Tears are not enough.

As tears position me as in need of being comforted, they also problematically recenter white-settler experience. No more tears, I tell myself. I promise to stifle, suffocate, and suppress these settler tears. However, not crying might also work to reposition me as a good white woman settler who does not need to be comforted. That is, the settler subject’s tears may also allow for an embodiment of careful attention to such BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 182

difficult truths that should be felt. Yet, there is always the possibility that even these tears are moves to comfort (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 101). Or, maybe both of these things about such tears are true. Both, not simply this or that. Therefore, this is more complicated than choosing to be tearful or not, either allowing tears to fall as rain opens up in the sky or vowing not to cry as a detachment of the heart. There may be ways to weep without accessing comfort, along with ways to curtail crying while still embodying discomfort.

Tears and Pee

Gerald Stanley’s gun fired accidentally, a hang fire, they say. He was acquitted, found not guilty in the shooting death of Colten Boushie (Hill, 2018). This news was released on a midwinter Friday. Along with a general sense of shock and sadness at the verdict for many, it aroused important questions about how racism operates through

Canadian systems and institutions of white supremacy, citing “centuries of oppression” of

Indigenous Peoples (Barrera, 2018). The following Monday, some faculty members at the

University organized an impromptu smudge in honour of Colten Boushie. Following the smudge, a talking circle was held to invite sharing of thoughts and feelings. Since it was during the regularly scheduled class time of the treaties course I was instructing, I attended with some of the students of the course. Many of them passed when it was their turn to speak. Most of them were white women settlers. I knew I wanted to say something, but I wondered what would be appropriate, as well as instructive to the students who attended with me. Suddenly, it was my turn and I jumped in, limbs flailing.

‘I know that the world doesn’t need more of my white-woman tears, so I will try not to cry.’ The heat started to rise in me. My face began to tremble and my hands started BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 183

to shake, not from nerves but from anger at the verdict. ‘But . . . all of this is very terrible.

When we question our systems, we risk our relationships and this is wrong,’ I burst out, referring to the near impossibility of changing the justice system, as tears dropped down.

Part of the tension I felt was carried over from the heavy discussions with my partner, all weekend, who was satisfied with the result and viewed it as right. A younger white woman in the circle moved to pass me the tissue box that was in the center of the room, a typical gesture of kindness. kokum Brenda stopped them by seizing the box, exclaiming,

‘we don’t have to wipe away our tears.’ She walked around the circle to stand behind me.

Then she whispered in my ear while holding my head, ‘the kokum’s tell us that if you hold in your tears you will pee more,’ presumably to make me laugh, which produced a weak smile on my face. Again, I am consoled by a strong First Nations woman, even after proclaiming that I imagine I should and can control my emotional expressions. I am a little embarrassed, slightly worried about what the students might think of me now, but mostly my anger obscures this foreboding and I remain shaky and too warm, ears ringing with outrage.

The talking circle proceeded, with others sharing some of their own emotional thoughts. No one else made such a scene. Near the closing to the circle sharing, a Métis colleague stated that while he appreciated being asked into our classrooms and supports our work, he has decided to focus all of his attention on his own community from now on. He noted that, during emotional responses, he of course feels compelled to react with care as it reaches to his humanity, but that he does not have the energy for it anymore.

Maybe he was not intentionally directing these comments to me, but the feedback was clear. This smudge and talking circle is not about me, the white-settler students I interact BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 184

with in course work, my/our hopeless responses to the verdict, or what we think should be done next. It was not simply to debrief the result, recognize the racism inherent in

Canadian systems, or discuss strategies for having courageous conversations with our friends and family who are pleased with the outcome.

Although I thought I already knew that the purpose was to honour Colten, I found that I did not know how to do so. Instead, my tears and my cryptic words recentered my own experience and fear of losing one of my most precious, personal relationships. If I- we (white women) question Canadian systems of oppression, and the very act of calling attention to these injustices risks our relationships, am I willing to risk it all? Often, I think not. Again, I get this choice. And, this is white settler privilege propping up systems of white settler supremacy. Maybe my tears of anger had no place in that circle. Or, maybe angry tears are also a way to honour Colten. Maybe these angry tears are part of what I can do; a trickle on the cheekbone moving forward towards another turn. Though this may not have been a good time to release them, in such a hopeless way, potentially adding to burdens carried by these strong Indigenous teachers, they may be both inappropriate and useful simultaneously. I guess I may be peeing more often, unless I want to drown in a pool of my own hopeless tears, while I make way for some kind of shore. And, I suppose I shall also go for a bit of a salty swim along the way.

But to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Alice, “a great girl like you” (she might well say this), “to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!” But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears until there was a large pool all round her. (Carroll, 1960, p. 15)

“I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! (Carroll, 1960, p. 18)

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 185

Beyond this or that. This and that, both. Tears and pee. Also, more than this and that. This and this and this and that and that, and that one too. Multiplicities of water works, becomings-fluid, becomings-tearful “since becoming and multiplicity are the same thing” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 249).

A year later, I hear myself saying “thank you for your tears” to a white, settler-

Canadian woman, as we share in circle to debrief another blanket exercise. She explains that she was given a babydoll while she was pregnant, to represent Indigenous children stolen from their families. I did this to her, made her cry and then snatched it away. Did I know she was pregnant at the time? I may have. It took nearly a year for the personal impact to be shared with me. This illustrates a pedagogy of tears, which involves complicated ethical circumstances with various ethical effects and relationalities.

Becomings-Humble

Cookies Don’t Count: ReconciliACTION Troubles

Telephone calls were made and voicemail messages left: Tawnshi, it’s Audrey. I just wanted to let you know that some of the Education students I work with have planned a ReconciliACTION event throughout the university halls on Monday morning, as part of their treaties course. I know you are all very busy, but I would like to invite you as well as your students if you would find it useful. I am expecting that some mistakes will be made. Feel free to give me a call if you have any questions. Maybe I’ll see you then.

Spelling mistakes on a student-made poster (Figure 9) were the least of the troubles. Apart? How ironic. Applying only a brief pause, a bit of space, could have broken such subtle settler-colonialism and changed everything. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 186

Challenged by a co-

instructor to incorporate a

reconciliation event as a

major course assignment, it

was framed as a way to

partially implement some of

the Truth and Reconciliation Figure 9. The spelling mistake was unintentional and the students were embarrassed by their error. Yet, it shows how the settler- colonial machine even uses mistakes to grease its gears. Commission’s (2015) Calls to Actions. In particular, the assignment invited students to build “capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect” (#63 iii). It sought to promote acting together, as part of a supportive course community, along with the possibility of inspiring these teacher-candidates to imagine designing similar events for their classrooms, schools, and communities once they graduated. Focusing on action as a treaty-responsibility and a practice, it was suggested that they attempt to prompt and contribute to more difficult and honest conversations about Indigenous-Canadian relations in their wider University learning community, beyond the Faculty of Education, without always expecting someone else (i.e., FNMI elders, Indigenous knowledge keepers, and survivors of residential schools) to do all the work for them.

Desiring to avoid an overreliance on First Nations and Métis educators carrying most of the responsibilities and weight, to potentially relieve some of the burden, the assignment was designed with the intent that each student, however they identified, would contribute to sharing some truthful treaty or Truth and Reconciliation content in BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 187

some way, as a tâpwêwin34 practice. Each person, as a group member, was expected to be responsible for proposing a contribution, as well as negotiating and carrying out their respective tasks. Various committee groups were formed and topics were chosen for each of them to host particular conversations, somewhat compartmentalizing the experience within an overarching purpose/theme (Niessen, 2018). However, problems arose as students un/intentionally positioned themselves as confident experts of historical and contemporary social issues, including effects of systemic oppression (e.g., residential schools, racism, Métis identities and relationships with the numbered treaties, MMIW).

Most students were in processes of coming to understand themselves as part of white, settler-Canadian histories, presents, and futures. In this context, the temptation to self- identify as allies to Indigenous Peoples and communities, separate from developing and maintaining respectful relationships and seemingly without realizing the tensions of being interpreted in such ways, was apparent.

For example, one group decided to accept donations for their home-made, individually wrapped cookies, with affixed stickers suggesting potential reconciliation acts, “small, everyday acts that average Canadians can undertake, but others are more provocative that encourage people to think about Indigenous-settler relationships in new ways” (Fraser & Komarnisky, 2017, para 1). Examples of selected actions included:

● 96. View @resistance150 on Twitter and learn why Canada 150 can be viewed as problematic. ● 144. Read about the story of one missing or murdered Indigenous woman in your region. ● 13. Learn a greeting in a local Indigenous language. ● 45. Find the Indigenous section at your local library.

34 speaking the truth with precision and accuracy (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 48), in nêhiyawêwin (Cree). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 188

● 95. Consider the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. Chelsea Vowel (2012) has a good blogpost about this.

Their desire was to encourage and empower their peers to view actions as possible and tangible. Yet, there was a lack of attention to their own engagement with these proposed actions, as well as a hesitation to question their potential impact, if any. Are these actions adequate? useful? challenging? significant? Encouraging others to act worked to shift responsibility, from considering one’s own commitment to action to instead focusing on actions others could presumably take. Understanding the facilitation of educational opportunities as a kind of personal and collective action in itself seemed to stand in for an active engagement with the suggestions themselves. That is, sentiments like ‘I will educate my students (or my peers) about these topics’ limited the perceived need for other forms of action. In this context, the application of this list potentially allows for an implicit reproduction of do as I say, not as I do narratives by failing to model a follow through on such commitments to action.

Repeatedly, I have blamed myself for widely embracing the inevitability of mistakes as an indicator of ethical engagement with social justice. For instance, I should have required these students to be more clearly critical about their choice of logo (Figure 10) which was silkscreened to the front of the event t-shirts they fashioned, as Figure 10. Student created, event marketing material. well as on all of their promotional materials. Instead, my silence allowed them to co-opt the raised fists associated with civil BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 189

rights and black power (Blakemore, 2018) as a signifier of white-Canadian solidarity with Indigenous peoples. While “the raised fist is at once a symbol with powerful historical resonance and one that can shift in its meaning and intent” (Joseph, 2016, para

3), failing to explicitly denote this or assume that its meaning would be interpreted without irony was troublesome. There is a sense of similarity with instances where white feminists have attempted to adopt black justice movements for their own purposes, such as #metoo and #takeaknee (Araujo, 2018). My affinity for allowing mistakes as a way of practicing humility somewhat limited how much we could expect of ourselves.

Another group decided to attend to local stories of MMIW by drawing from Jaime

Black’s (2014) REDress aesthetic response, along with #sayhername initiatives (Say

Their Names, 2017). The attempts at tâpwêwin during this event were somewhat misguided. While I mentioned the importance of citing Black’s work in particular, along with slight concern about misappropriation, some of the media stories they chose to include tended to frame the victim as culpable, and reproduced stereotypical tropes of the deficient Indian (Vowel, 2016), as did the printed photos of the victims placed above the dresses (Figure

11). The students explained to me that their hope was to highlight the humanness of the victims and the truth of the tragedies. This group also aligned with the event promotion via social media, encouraging visitors to post selfie photos with #reconciliACTION to be entered to Figure 11. Red dress exhibit. win an extra event t-shirt with the hope that this would BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 190

inspire them to check in with the other stations. Of the 35 students enrolled in the course, one of the two students who identified as a First Nations woman decided to participate as part of this group by wearing a red shirt to symbolize and embody the truth that she is more at risk than her white women group members and classmates.

Throughout the morning, as I made my rounds to check in with each group, students told me that those Métis colleagues I had invited via voicemail had indeed brought their students, and many expressed feeling challenged in these interactions.

‘Someone talked with me about their own MMIW advocacy work,’ shared the student who chose to wear a red shirt as part of their red dress exhibit.

‘Oh? That’s great,’ I replied, as the hallway rushed with students passing us on their way to their next classes.

‘It didn’t go well,’ she said while tending to some broken glass in their exhibit area. ‘They said we shouldn’t have used the photos of the victims; to be more careful about how we use their stories; and, that the selfie-prize advertisement was inappropriate and disrespectful. They asked if we had permission from the families.’

She looked decidedly distressed, the glass clinking into the dustpan, as I attempted to assure her that the feedback she received was very useful and that experiencing tension is part of the practice of becoming involved in social justice movements. Some days later, during a long conversation with the colleagues who brought their students, I tuned into another perspective. ‘She should be embarrassed,’ said one who did not feel that wearing a red shirt was bravely disruptive. ‘The context for sharing such stories and knowledge is very important,’ said another. It was a very honest, yet tear-free, conversation. Listening without a drop, I asked how I might show them BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 191

reciprocity, as a grateful colleague. ‘Keep showing up,’ they advised, for simply buying gifts, of wine or whiskey, donuts or coffee, could imply a kind of transaction more than a developing friendship. Admitting mistakes and being open to humbly listening to such feedback did not prepare me for the lamentation that followed.

After parting, walking fast through the quieting, late afternoon halls, blinking, blinking, blinking to hold myself together, my vision is nearly kept clear from tears.

Sending a quick text message to MC, one of my mentor-colleagues, Are you still at school? Can I come to see you quickly? I pick up the pace with a confirmed reply.

Bounding up the stairwell after cracking through the doorway, I climb to the third floor as quickly as my legs and lungs allow. The physical distraction helps to extend my composure a little longer. As soon as the safety of MC’s office envelopes me, once the door snugs the frame, the sobbing starts. A release. I am upset mainly because of the position the student deciding to wearing red was put in, and the level of critique she was put under. Should she really be embarrassed? Perhaps I should be embarrassed because settlers (me) always do stupid things. It’s par for the course. MC tells me a story about expecting more from ourselves, with the theme that Indigenous people expect more from us too.

Nothing so upsetting happened with my writing participants. We were all too gentle with each other and I was not willing to take a big risk. I didn’t invite an engagement with more vulnerable truth telling or social justice activism. Rather, I did not or could not imagine movements that might actually risk the good, white woman teacher.

With this in mind, what learning about the connection between mistakes and humility do these event considerations offer? In an interview for a faculty magazine about the event, I BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 192

shared that one of

the most important overall learning that could potentially come out of this experience for us was that listening to and reflecting on critiques takes practice and is necessary. Treaty Education, along with potentially associated reconciliation, decolonization, indigenization, and social justice efforts should always be submitted to critical reflection and none are without tension. So, we ask who benefited from this event and if it was truly ‘action.’ Perhaps it didn’t amount to anything of significance, except to make us feel good. (Niessen, 2018)

Is it enough to say that what we learned is to be critical of our actions and intentions?

Humility framed as naming mistakes could be another move to innocence. See how good

I am?: I can recognize all of the mistakes we made, and how regrettable. Look, I can even make a list without any tears. The list that follows are some of the critical reflections that I shared with the students that made this reconciliACTION event. As their instructor, these are my responses to them.

Reminder: Critiques aren’t personal attacks or meant to cause guilt/blame, but invite us to continue to recognize that Treaty Education (and associated endeavors like Truth, Justice, Reconciliation, Decolonization, Indigenization, etc.) are always full of tension. Everything we ever do may (and should) be submitted to critique and this is good (i.e. useful). Instead of never attempting to do any of this work ever again (or to interpret these points as grumpy/negative), we might use this experience to confirm that we can survive critique and become better at engaging with the complexities of practicing treaty pedagogies, perhaps through miskâsowin, miyo-wîcêhtowin, tâpwêwin, kihci- asotamâtowin, wîtaskêwin over the long term. This in no way needs to negate any of your good feelings about your contributions or the event as a whole. This was a very wonderful risk that we all took and I hope you continue to be glad about it all, critiques included. We also might recall that good intentions can have unintended consequences and be prompted to consider how only talking about reconciliation is a very small beginning; it isn’t enough. ~Audrey

● It is important to always situate your own identities (e.g., When we speak about or make reference to FNMI identities, it is good to name yourself as well). What are your identities? Who are you? Where do you come from? Settler-Canadians will never understand what it is like to be FNMI in Canada. That, for sure, is impossible. ● At some points along the way, the t-shirt giveaway and hashtag selfie photos were interpreted as disrespectful (e.g., MMIW); The #ReconciliACTION social media BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 193

can also be contested in general. Phrases like ‘help us to mend’/heal could be considered condescending or arrogant. Mending/healing/reconciliation is wholly impossible with one event, especially if justice is not made central. ● What assumptions are you making / what are you implying when you use words like ‘rebellion’ (e.g., Red River Rebellion) instead of ‘resistance’? Ask questions about how you are framing a discussion and where various concepts come from. ● MMIW & red dresses: the photos of the missing-murdered individuals (their faces) over the dresses may be distressing to some. Although the intention was perhaps to humanize statistics (#saytheirnames) and note the number of MMIW from Regina, it’s also important to ask: What are your relationships to these stories and the families? How might you ask for permission from families to share these stories of injustice, while not requiring the families to relive the tragedy? How could installations like this potentially be retraumatizing for victims of sexual assault and relatives of victims? ● ReconciliACTION: What are your own commitments to action for truth & justice? Can you articulate what your own actions continue to be? How critical are these? How can we put pressure on the Canadian/Provincial/Municipal gov’t systems towards justice and social response-ability/responsibility? (e.g., why didn’t we offer a letter writing station?- were our reasons for not doing so, e.g., no one will stop / time constraints, valid enough?) ● In a lot of ways, the event was noted as really “great” and it continued in the vein of “feeling good” about ourselves—recall Pam Palmater’s (2018, Feb 21) talk title from earlier this term: “If it feels good, it’s not reconciliation.” Events like these are still mostly “just talk.” So, what are settler-Canadians doing to support FNMI peoples in the move towards repatriation of land and resilience and resurgence of FNMI languages and cultural practices in schools and communities? In what ways do Canadian systems need to change to open up space for this to happen? ● Recognizing treaty land must always be part of relationships with FNMI peoples who are acknowledged in specific territories. Attached to such acknowledgements is the call to make land repatriation more than a discussion, but instead a physical reality. ● We need to go beyond simple facts of residential schools, treaty signings, and historical events/acts/laws. How are these legacies at play today? How will they impact the future? ● Gestures aren’t enough. Perhaps they are places to begin, and then might work towards becoming deeper, more complex, over time and through good relationships. ● Languages are complex, cultural systems. How might you engage more deeply in learning some (or a lot of) michif, nehiyawewin, nakawe, nakota, lakota, dakota, and more. How might this contribute to disrupting thinking primarily through English (in schools and communities, including Canada as a whole), i.e. as the most important? ● Awareness/education/discussion about reconciliation may be useful only if something greater (i.e., action for justice; reimagining of Canada; complicating identities . . .) comes out of it.

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 194

Now what? How do I try again, take another turn, but along different groves?

How do I move again, knowing that “I have learned how I might better invite mistakes will always be made, and that students to consider who might be the right people to talk about particular issues, [and] this realization cannot be a barrier to some of the problems with being perceived as positioning ourselves (settler-Canadians) doing something; to acting? as experts about MMIW, residential school legacies & intergenerational trauma, FNMI Furthermore, how can I practice a kind identities-histories-cultures-communities, FNMI languages, reconciliation, decolonization, indigenization, and even of humility that anticipates and identifies treaties”. (Niessen, 2018) mistakes, while expecting more than that? While I think I have learned some important lessons, and am perhaps more prepared to ask different questions to future treaty students: Why this topic? In which context is this teaching appropriate? Who is your audience / community to share with? Who are we responsible to? What mistakes could we be unintentionally making? I instead refocus to consider humility as a process of multiplicities, including mistakes, regret, remorse, tears sometimes and dry eyes at other times, listening, asking questions, taking another turn and then another and another, being truthful with each other and ourselves, contributing while considering the context, and more.

Humilities, for white-settler-Canadians, might be found somewhere in between becomings-active&useful and becomings-insignificant. Humilities take up treaty- responsibilities, contribute to telling difficult truths about Canada’s relationship with

FNMI peoples, while looking to FNMI activists and educators as resilient leaders of this work. Becomings-humble and becomings-alliance could mean washing the dishes

(Wilson, 2015), or asking how to help in certain contexts, but also taking initiatives to disrupt problematic settler-colonial normative narratives in our own settler-Canadian BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 195

communities. Such communities are the places where we are part of the pack of becomings. “In the changing constellation of the pack, . . . [they] will again and again find [them]self at its edge. [They] may be in the center, and then, immediately afterwards, at the edge again; at the edge and then back in the center” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p.

33). This is what becomings-humble is like, movements in the pack that unsettles settler- colonialism. “Yes, we must always think in terms of packs and multiplicities” (Deleuze

& Guattari, 1987, p. 52), since “packs, or multiplicities, continually transform themselves into each other, cross over into each other” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 249). In such becomings-humble, maybe cookies do not count and mistakes are (not) quite welcome.

Critical lists are only part of the pack. Becomings-humble moves cookies, red dresses, spelling mistakes, critiques, tears, and misguided reconciliation attempts from the center to the edges, back and forth, transforming individual acts of humility into multiplicities that pry open the space between letters: from apart to a part.

An Easy Mistake To Make?

Obsessively, I keep refreshing my email inbox, waiting with bated breath for a response to my admitted mistake. I did a stupid thing. This is quite usual for me. I am foolish sometimes; maybe even more often than not. That cruel voice inside my head tells me it is because I am obtuse, insensitive, and careless. In some of its nastiest moments,

Nag whispers, you are very dumb and you will never be good enough. You do not deserve to be extended any kindnesses or fragments of forgiveness. So, in an alternating fashion, I sit here fidgeting and then pacing around—back and forth to the kitchen, through the living room, into the writing room—wanting to escape my shame-filled and worried feelings; the fear that I will be disliked, discredited, dismissed, and deemed to be BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 196

untrustworthy. They are right to make me wait. I apologized, but apologies can also be stupid. Maybe they are mostly worthless, I think, as I recall Stephen Harper’s apology to students of Indian Residential Schools, on behalf of the Government of Canada

(Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 2008). Reminded of the way The Blanket

ExerciseTM (KAIROS Canada, 2018) problematizes this, “apologizing means you have to change what you’re doing,” I think about the changes I need to make.

In the hurried moment as I clicked ‘send,’ a tiny, almost imperceptible irritation pestered and ruffled at me. Although I had read over the email a few times, with a smidgen of minor edits, and tried to make it perfect, it still felt like I was risking goodness in that send-action instant. A teacher-friend had asked me if I would inquire with a couple of my Métis colleagues on her behalf. She was looking for someone to teach Métis dance with her elementary school class. My email request seemed a bit off; I even googled Métis jingle dance quickly to check on the accuracy of the ask; something in my gut was not sitting right. In the search results, there was a YouTube video called

Jingle Dress Dance + Metis Red River Jig (Legal Follies, 2017), but I was in a rush and did not watch it. With an internal shrug, ignoring my intuition, I continued. Scrambling to tick this off of today’s to-do list, I noticed time was slipping away again. I was supposed to be writing, not emailing. I resigned myself to it: if that is what my friend wanted to ask, I would pass on her message. However, here is the rub. Of course, my friend had written Métis jigging, not jingle. I had remembered her text message incorrectly, a foolish mistake. I should have double checked what she had written, especially as I was experiencing doubts and turning to Google.

Excuses might be made—I was hurried, thinking of other tasks, feeling run-down BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 197

and a little under the weather when she text, so I ignored the responsibility to find out and be helpfully appropriate. My partner tells me not to worry, that everyone makes mistakes.

My friend expresses something similar, after I admit all of this to her, believing that we cannot always hold everything together. At the same time, I need to be more careful; more thoughtful. I cannot continue to require my Indigenous friends to always be kind, gentle, patient, and forgiving to me. These colleagues quickly responded in the most generous ways, including an ‘lol. Easy mistake to make.’ Is it though? I think it is only in the case of not paying attention, without having deep and full, experiential understandings of these very distinct Indigenous dances. I am sure they have other, much more important things to address besides my misread jingle-jigging, my white-settler- woman silliness. I am ridiculous. Or, at least, I am impatient with myself and what seems, to me, like my constant errors.

So, when another friend, a principal this time, emails me to ask about how to foster support for school initiatives (like reconciliation) in a toxic, racist, and entitled school-community climate, I am stumped. After a long pause (2 long months), I look at her message again to wonder what (if anything) I have to offer. She asked if I have heard of anywhere in Canada with a similar situation and some positive results. Have I? I expect many are in a similar situation, but I am not sure about any results or more of the same. She asked if I know any authors to reference or books that deal with the school as a positive anchor in such a toxic community climate. Do I? Are there any colleagues I could introduce her to? Maybe there is one or two, but, is that passing the buck? What kind of help could be offered here? Then they would get all the credit. I want to have a long conversation with her, over coffee and chocolate, to discuss strategies together in BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 198

detail. I want to be a part of this. There is no humility here.

As well, I think that she is looking for clear answers or practical solutions when this is much more complex than consulting a book or attempting to apply a case study.

My belated response is found somewhat lacking, a tenuous way forward suggesting that teachers continue to work on such issues with their students as part of their classes and to dream about a student-led Treaty 4 group. She doesn’t respond. So, I waffle from responding too quickly and then with too great a delay. And, I neglected to encourage her to ask for guidance from those Indigenous knowledge keepers she already has connections with. While I’m unsure if harnessing mistakes is possible, recognizing multiplicities of easy mistakes to make seems to be part of a process of becomings- humble.

Treaty Land Acknowledgements: That’s Stupid

Audrey Aamodt Faculty of Education, University of Regina Treaty 4 Territory

He said ‘Treaty 4 Territory,’ with an almost mocking tone, and then, ‘That’s stupid. Who cares about that.’

‘Teachers care,’ I responded, trying to stay calm and hoping this won’t instigate a serious conversation that might lead into one of our recurring arguments. ‘I do not have time for that today,’ I thought.

‘Well, it’s stupid,’ he maintained, beginning to walk out of our home office, on his way to do his own homework. The last word.

‘No it’s not!’ I suddenly snapped. ‘And, I have already explained why a bunch of times!’ raising my voice. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 199

Busily trying to put the final touches on the letters I am preparing, references for a couple of students who are putting together application packages for teaching positions, I feel distracted and irritable. I can think of better things to do with this late Sunday morning, beyond facing a computer screen instead of a lovely sky and having this conversation rather than light-hearted laughter. Yet, I had requested his help. Since it was the first time I had ever been asked to write reference letters for teachers, I was preoccupied with worrying about my ability to be good at it. Yes, that common torment of my life. So, I asked if he would quickly read through the letters and tell me what he thought; if I was missing anything or if he thought I should change something. ‘That’s stupid’ was his only note and we left it at that. Later, I apologized for my sharpness, hoping that he might do the same. Rather, happily, he shrugged, seemingly unbothered by our stupid interaction. Letting out a breath that I did not, until then, realize I was holding,

I felt relieved that we did not have to have an afternoon fight about treaty acknowledgements.

Sometimes I explain our differences in understandings by observing that he has not had the opportunity to read the same theory that I have, or had as much practice engaging in critical conversations with others who are working in anti-oppressive

Education contexts. This is true, but it also does not mean I should so easily and quickly dismiss him and his thoughts, even if they are sometimes and somewhat problematic.

There is an interesting lesson in his feedback, however harsh. What if this treaty acknowledgment is stupid, period. Most likely he would not interpret his statement, or share his reasons for believing it, in the same ways as I am about to, but I am thankful that he has challenged me to seriously reconsider why I acknowledge treaty 4 territory as BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 200

part of my signature, on letters and emails alike, as well within course syllabi. Have I chosen to include these because it is a liberal trend, another move to innocence (Tuck &

Yang, 2012) and comfort (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015), without actually contributing to tangible changes in land policies and repatriation? Distressingly, maybe that is all it amounts to.

While such land acknowledgements, as part of a larger political movement, perhaps have the potential to disrupt Canadian settler-colonial normative narratives of property and nationalism, towards miyo-wîcêhtowin and miyo-wâhkôtowin (Cardinal &

Hildebrandt, 2000; Voices of Amiskwaciy, 2016) between Canadians and FNMI Peoples, they also risk the suggestion that these are another box to check off the imaginary reconciliation-to-do-list (âpihtawikosisân, 2016). As one Canadian teacher declared,

“action rather than disingenuous words is the only way to achieve true reconciliation. So please – enough with the territorial acknowledgements. Stop talking before I become so desensitized that I no longer care about the plight of my fellow citizens” (Mascoe, 2018, para 9). Or, as âpihtawikosisân (2016) describes,

What may start out as radical push-back against the denial of Indigenous priority and continued presence, may end up repurposed as ‘box-ticking’ inclusion without commitment to any sort of real change. In fact, I believe this is the inevitable progression, a situation of familiarity breeding contempt (or at least apathy). (Purpose, para 6)

However, I hope there is also opportunity in stupidity, contempt, and even apathy.

And, what if “rural/Indigenous alliances have the potential to be the most transformative relationships in this country, even as they remain the least likely to occur”

(âpihtawikosisân, Spaces, last para 7)? Reflecting on Responding to Racism workshops in southeast rural Saskatchewan, Common Weal Community Arts artistic director noted BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 201

the struggle potential allies have in speaking out against racism in small towns. ‘In a small rural community, everybody who exists in that small town is somehow intimately connected to your life’ she said. ‘How do you have a voice when it may create these huge rifts within the community?’” (Ackerman, 2018)

These rifts are deep. I feel them not only in the general sensation of the rural communities where I grew up and now live, but sometimes also in my home, in stupid moments. Paying attention to such moments, stupid, apathetic or otherwise, are part of my writing methodology. In this way, life writing practice might begin to address the problem of institutional check boxes like treaty acknowledgements.

So, when I am told ‘that’s stupid,’ I might not need to react with fuming frustration. Instead, it could be another opportunity for me to consider how treaty responsibilities could affect real change, rather than simply getting angry at those who have different understandings, while believing they are without any insight, using them as an excuse for hopelessness and inaction.

Maybe now it is time to start learning about your obligations as a guest in this territory. What are the Indigenous protocols involved in being a guest, what are your responsibilities? What responsibilities do your hosts have towards you, and are you making space for those responsibilities to be exercised? To what extent are your events benefiting your hosts? (âpihtawikosisân, Into the Beyond, para 5)

Does the treaty acknowledgement in my signature benefit FNMI peoples, my hosts?

‘That’s stupid’ reminds me about processes of becomings-humble; that probably, at best, any benefit is small and very indirect. Becomings-humble seems to insist that I attempt to personalize treaty acknowledgments with a connection to the responsibilities it incites.

Likewise, maybe this is another becomings-unsettled in the middles, a part of a becomings-animal pack, “the multiplicity that fascinates us already related to a multiplicity dwelling within us” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 240). Additionally, this may be another stupid thing that I have done and will do, another mistake with good BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 202

intentions, a modality within problematic politics of recognition narratives. Becomings- humble is made by multiplicities of stupidities and mistakes.

I am reminded of the treaty acknowledgements I have included at the top of course syllabi:

Winter 2017 With recognition of Treaty 4 territory on which this course is located, as well as Treaty 6 territory where the U of R also offers programs, gratitude to the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Lakota and Nakota peoples of Treaty 4 territory as well as the 4 historically Métis communities in this region—Lebret, Fort Qu’Appelle, Willow Bunch, and Lestock.

Wait. Gratitude?? This may be somewhat condescending, I think. Although, in contemplating a perspective of humility, perhaps “gratitude is our only responsibility . . .

[with] caution against the arrogance of thinking we have the capacity to give back to

Mother Earth anything approaching which she gives us” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 238).

Nevertheless, we “have gifts in addition to gratitude that we might offer in return. The philosophy of reciprocity is beautiful in the abstract, but the practical is harder” (p. 238).

Could a slight revision in word usage begin to relate humility differently? I tried it:

Winter 2019 With recognition of Treaty 4 territory on which this course is located, as well as Treaty 6 territory where the U of R also offers programs, and acknowledgement of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Lakota and Nakota peoples of Treaty 4 territory as well as the historically Métis communities in this region—Lebret, Fort Qu’Appelle, Willow Bunch, and Lestock.

Acknowledgement. Okay, maybe that’s better. This wording seems to be used by those I could look to as an example. For instance, the following was stated by the

University of Regina President during her 2019 State of the University Address presentation as well as part of her introduction to a monthly email message, “in part to pay respect to the peoples who first inhabited and continue to inhabit the lands that are BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 203

now home to all of us. I also do it to remind us about the obligations we have to those communities and treaties” (Timmons, personal communication, February 2019).

With an acknowledgement that the University is located on Treaty 4 territory, with a presence in Treaty 6 territories – the traditional lands of the nêhiyawak (Cree), Anihšināpēk (Saulteaux), Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda First Peoples, and the homeland of the Métis/Michif Nation.

Right. So there it is. What could decidedly be a more correct acknowledgement? I might just use this from now on and be on my merry way. Box checked. However,

instead of ushering in an era of peaceful coexistence grounded on the ideal of reciprocity or mutual recognition, the politics of recognition in its contemporary liberal form promises to reproduce the very configurations of colonialist, racist, patriarchal state power that Indigenous peoples’ demands for recognition have historically sought to transcend. (Coulthard, 2014, p. 3)

Perhaps this well phrased treaty acknowledgement is virtually meaningless, and in the worst case reproductive of white-colonial supremacy, without the footnote comment to both pay respect and be reminded of our own obligations to live such acknowledgements.

Therefore, perfunctory acknowledgements may only become unsettling as a threshold for renewal of treaty relationship responsibilities to these acknowledged hosts. “This is our work, to discover what we can give. Isn’t this the purpose of education, to learn the nature of your own gifts and how to use them for good in the world?” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 239). So, what are my gifts and what can I give?

Along with articulating the following living treaty land acknowledgement, I reemphasize that the box should never be checked. To do so, to fix it and forget it, would make it inactive and void of any acts of alive reciprocity. Instead, I offer the following more personal treaty responsibility acknowledgement:

My mother birthed me on Treaty 6 land in Southern Saskatchewan. In those years and beyond, my family, like many other white settler-Canadian families, did not attend to treaty acknowledgements nor consider our treaty responsibilities. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 204

Excuses are easy to find. I could say we didn’t know we should, but that is a lie we willingly gobble(d) up. It is a lie that was and is offered to us by national narratives that pretend we have rights to this land; that we are entitled, both literally as we obtained land titles for farming (or owning property—town lots, lake cottages, etc.) and figuratively in our attitudes and beliefs about ourselves and our relationship to this land we walk and work. It is my responsibility to resist such willful ignorance in myself and to lovingly, and with confidence, encourage the same in those white settler-Canadians whom I have relationships with. It is my responsibility to disrupt white-colonial supremacy, in both small moments lived in a tiny town in Treaty 4 territory and in big moments as a citizen of the world engaging in “powerful acts of reciprocity with the land” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 174) and with each other. Attending high school one town east of Lestock, near Muskowekwan (Saulteaux) First Nation, I learned to be a good, racist white woman who was fearful of Indigenous Peoples. Southern Saskatchewan is my home only because of how treaties were misused by the Canadian government to remove First Nations and Michif communities as a settlement project. My great- grandparents were participants in that occupation. As their descendant, I am a benefactor of treaties without ever being formally required to give anything of myself in return. Therefore, it is my responsibility to continually ask what my part is as a treaty partner, living together with nêhiyawak (Cree), Anihšināpēk (Saulteaux), Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda First Peoples, and Métis/Michif communities in the Treaty 4 territory, which include Lebret, Fort Qu’Appelle, Willow Bunch, and Lestock. “How can you be in good relationship with Indigenous peoples, with non-human beings, with the land and water? . . . it’s a good thing Indigenous peoples are still here, because our legal orders address all of those questions. So why aren’t you asking us?” (âpihtawikosisân, Into the Beyond, last para 7). It is my responsibility to ask, then to listen, and then to act accordingly. Who will I ask? It is my responsibility to show up and to keep showing up. Who I will ask will be determined only in wîtaskêwin (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 39) relationship moments.

I nearly added, ‘it is my responsibility to ask and act with humility. Specifically, today, I am responsible to Alma and Evelyn, to Brenna and Russell, to Melanie, Anna-

Leah, Langan, Brenda, Emily G, and Pamela. I can humbly ask and listen to them, then act in turn.’ Yet, I hesitate, for claiming humility can be misused to reassert my innocence. Is this just another excuse to let Indigenous Peoples carry all the weight, while

I sit back and seem good? Instead, becomings-humble refers to a process of relationship rather than a quality I might profess achieving. Maybe talking and writing about actions and responsibilities is simply stupid if recognition stops there. An acknowledgement is BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 205

not action. Could we be “more impatient with each other, less likely to accept gestures

[of humility] and half-steps, and more willing to press for acts which unsettle innocence”

(Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 10)? In the context of being responsible to relationships, acting differently must come from acknowledgements of our stupidities and mistakes.

Openings To Humilities

Opening the door Humility between the classroom and the hall there is Alma, passing by. Poems arrive ready to begin. Poets are only the transportation. Surprised, she smiles. I smile too standing in the threshold. ~ Mary Oliver

Oh hello! It’s so good to see you! An honest hug and we make plans to have tea soon. A wonderful impromptu opening of the door.

Opening the door I enter the ladies’ Where a student stands by the sinks, obviously unsettled Are you ok? Yes, yes, she smiles. midway.

I smile too, with a doubtful chin. Are you sure? All in a rush: Another white student just called me racist in class. She said I am just championing Indigenous Peoples—that that’s all this treaty class does, that I don’t know what I’m talking about. But, I’m not racist.

My advice to you is to try not to take it personally consider white fragility common rebuttals and how to possibly communicate differently . . .

The door to our classroom is ajar, held open by a heavy brick, wrapped with fraying red and grey tape. I pass through the threshold, wondering, who said that to her? and about her reaction that reasserts innocence. Wondering about

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 206

opening the doors

Becomings-Ethical

‘To Begin In a Good Way’

One of the reasons I write self-stories is to find some openings for interrogating how ethical I (think I) am, how to enact ethical modes of being, and how I might become more ethical. This is not really a factor or a measurement. For me, life writing is a methodology for considering ethical ontologies, ways of becomings-ethical which is something different than simply being good, moral, right, or proper. This life writing explores ethical ontologies to story how becomings-ethical works through “attempts to live and work ethically . . . in the academy and as human beings within our daily life world” (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009, p. 1). Here, I make a break, a pause, a space, for another storied moment.

While walking towards my office . . .

‘Oh! Hi Melanie. It’s so good to see you! I’m glad we ran into each other. Do you have a minute? I wanted to ask you if you would mind taking a look at an email draft, inviting faculty to my class’s Treaty Talks event? A student made an attempt, but I thought it needed major changes. I decided to add some greetings in various languages and a treaty land acknowledgement. What do you think about this: Are land acknowledgements something you practice doing in an email context? I worry that it seems too much like we’re ticking a box.’

Patiently, Melanie waits for me to finish and then replies, ‘Well, I don’t use land acknowledgements in emails, but you could. During introductions at gatherings, I was BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 207

taught to acknowledge where I’m from and who my family is. The one thing I would suggest is that you say that Alma will help begin the event in a good way.’

Standing together, we talk a little more about problematizing land acknowledgements, check in about how the semester is going lately, and suggest a conversation to debrief our experiences with the treaty course overall. After parting, I continue to mull over what I think are my intentions for including a treaty acknowledgement in this email. Moreover, I dwell on my hesitation to use the phrase, ‘to begin in a good way.’ Is this a communication cue, to share that I have a good relationship with Alma and that this event is supported, validated, approved, sanctioned, endorsed by her? Is it a way for me to signal my own goodness? How easy it is to claim to do something in a good way, without asking what responsibilities are associated with this statement. Despite all of these questions, I listen to Melanie and revise the email draft

(Figure 12).

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 208

tan'si, Tawnshi, Aaniin, Hau, Aba Washded, bonjour, hello*,

We would like to invite you to join us at our event—Treaty Talks: An Open Conversation—on Wednesday, March 27th. During that afternoon, we will be hosting a series of interactive and participatory sessions towards fostering a deeper understanding of treaties, treaty relationships, and our treaty responsibilities.

Alma Poitras will smudge with us at 2:45pm to help us begin in a good way. The opening session will follow (at approx. 3:00 pm) along with two sessions of your choice. Feel free to invite your students, colleagues, friends, etc. All are welcome, tawâw!

In the interest of attempting to disrupt settler-colonialism and white supremacy, with the associated problematic ideas of empty land and claiming Canadian belonging, we acknowledge Treaty 4 Territory on which this event is located, and the nêhiyawak (Cree), Anihšināpēk (Saulteaux), Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota First Nations of Treaty 4, along with Métis-Michif communities in this territory, specifically Lebret, Fort Qu’Appelle, Willow Bunch, and Lestock. We seek to make mindful and meaningful land acknowledgements that prompt us to honour the treaties, as treaty-partners with accompanying responsibilities. miigwetch, maarsii, merci, thanks. We hope to treaty-talk with you then!

Sincerely, Students of ECCU 400-020 Living Treaties, (Instructor: Audrey Aamodt)

*In the spirit of treaty relationships and responsibilities, we are working towards disrupting English as an exclusive language used in educational contexts. Therefore, we have tried to learn and extend some greetings in local Indigenous languages, and we are still learning. Corrections are welcome as we continue to learn and to try to find the right words.

Figure 12. The revision to the email is underlined. After counseling students about how to offer Alma tobacco to ask her to smudge

to begin the event, I encourage them to meet with her on their own. Later, they tell me

she accepted the tobacco and so I assume all is well. On the afternoon of the event, Alma

is confused that we want her to smudge. ‘I didn’t bring my medicine bag today. Usually

people give me a reminder,’ she says, ‘and often a helper will smudge and I will pray.

Maybe Langan will be able to smudge for me.’

Knock knock, on Langan’s door. Thankfully, he’s in the office he sometimes

shares with Alma, across the hall from the event space. ‘What’s going on over there?’ he

asks, looking disconcerted. Immediately, my stomach sinks. How terrible it is that I did

not communicate with him and especially invite him to participate in his role as Cultural BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 209

and Traditional Knowledge Keeper Leader for the University’s Office of Indigenization.

‘I am afraid I have missed or forgotten something,’ he adds. With a deep breath, I think,

‘well, this is not beginning in a good way . . . definitely a mistake.’ I apologize, briefly explain, and then bring him to Alma. Quickly, they discuss the situation. After some nods, Langan goes back to their office to prepare for the smudge and I clamber up a floor to my own, to get some tobacco to offer him.

Upon my return, following the ask with tobacco, he continues to prepare and, as he does, he begins to tell me that to understand treaties, we need to understand seven things. Trying to listen intently as he lists them for me, I want to remember them all. But, my mind wanders across the hall, where the students and some of their guests are sitting in a large circle waiting for us, and I notice myself wishing that he was sharing this with the event participants. Distracted, I become worried about starting on time, about being perceived by invitees as being late and disorganized, and, simultaneously, about forgetting what he is attempting to teach me.

Once we are all seated together in the circle, the students in charge of the welcome begin and fumble a bit with introductions. With smoke rising from the shell,

Langan comes around to each person to invite them to smudge. Alma prays in nêhiyawêwin. They are invited to say something if they would like to, and both decline.

The welcoming committee dismisses everyone to their first session. A few people stop to thank Alma and Langan, shaking their hands. It is obvious that they know this as a way to show respect. Most of the participants quickly rush to the next place on the schedule. I stay back and talk with Alma for a few minutes. My mind is also racing about having to visit each session in time. Somehow I need to supply feedback and assessment of this BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 210

event, as I have framed it as an assignment for credit. To attempt to manage all of these things at once, I make a proposal: ‘Alma, would you like to come with me to one of the sessions?’ As we make our way to one of the classrooms around the corner, I wonder if

Alma feels welcomed, interested, and/or perhaps obligated to stay.

I feel some tension in asking her to spend more of her time to participate in a session. She engages in conversations with some of the individuals in the session room, but there is little time afterwards to talk about what she thinks, wants, or needs. For the rest of the afternoon, I rush back and forth, caught up with having to visit all the sessions at once, and regretting that the responsibility to tend to being in relationship with Alma and Langan was overlooked. These relationships should have been one of the most, if not the most, important things that afternoon, and being unable to attend to them in good ways was troubling. While this event perhaps felt better, even more ethical, than last year,

I am unconvinced that we began and continued in a good way.

It may be that asking Alma and, in turn, Langan to pray and smudge at the event was only something I knew should be done, as it could help us ‘begin in a good way.’

Perhaps it was also the right thing to do, ethically attentive to a spiritual dimension and

Indigenous ways of being. However, in practice, this requires following through on doing things ‘in a good way,’ as a responsibility, and is something that I/we neglected. Perhaps hesitating to use that good phrase, both in the email and at the event, was because I did not understand the implications of it. Initially, I thought it was because invoking that line could be another move to comfort and innocence, with ‘Look at me: I am doing things in good ways; I am good’ interpretations and intentions. Yet, this is a somewhat oversimplified analysis. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 211

More seriously, the problem here also is that this is an example of “when a Settler individual or group seeks the approval and approbation of an Indigenous person, and uses that as justification for violating boundaries that, if others were to do so, would be considered unjust or unethical” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 102). That is, “it is clearly an attempt to distance themselves from uncomfortable accusations of colonialism and racism” (p. 102). Students and participants could potentially say, ‘it was a good event and an Elder was there too at the beginning,’ suggesting that all that we have done is taught each other to make another item on the list to check off.

Event Planning:

❏ chairs ❏ signage ❏ registration list ❏ welcoming notes ❏ Elder - opening prayer ❏ session materials ❏ food ❏ closing remarks

(Nevermind that Alma calls herself kêhtê-aya, old-one, in nêhiyawêwin instead of using the English term Elder. This would make the list too complicated.)

Check. Check. Check. Check. Now go away.

That could have been the underlying lesson, the hidden curricular message that the treaty education students and their guests informally learned. I took on most of the responsibilities for ongoing relationships and reciprocity without guiding students to develop a longer term relationship with Alma. Nag chides me, you didn’t even prepare thank you cards. Of course, it seems silly to add ‘relationship with Alma’ to the list. We should not have had to be reminded to treat her well. We don’t have to remember to be BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 212

good to our friends. We just are. Here is a ridiculous, and, hopefully, an unnecessary becomings-ethical list.

❏ begin in a good way ❏ relate in good ways ❏ continue to be in good ways ❏ treat Alma & Langan with kindness and care, be good to them, like family ❏ practice miyo-wîcêhtowin, good relations ❏ remember wâhkôhtowin; we are kin; we are all related.

Whenever ‘to begin in good ways’ is uttered, there are multitudes of responsibilities that require slowing down and taking care in order to ethically tend to relationships. So, I break again, with a pause, to consider how life writing is one method for slowing down to tend to ethics.

Life writing stories can be helpful as a reflexive practice, though it does have many limits. Besides that I remember these moments how I remember them, and perhaps my memory cannot necessarily be trustworthy, I can only interpret the experience only from my own social positions and I can only critique it from such lenses. As it goes, I don’t always know what I don’t know. “In telling my own story, I am aware that it embodies the contradiction of any personal narrative: it is the story I know best, but I am unaware of the salience of the considerable amount that I have failed to include” (Schick,

2000, p. 299) and analyze/critique. Therefore, “a certain humility must emerge in this process, perhaps also a certain knowingness about the limits of what there is to know”

(Butler, 2005, p. 69).

Humility deconstructs privilege and its smugness and so is crucial to affecting real and transformative change with respect to the world’s oppressive structures of dominance and domination. To practice humility as a critical pedagogue is to supplant righteousness and egoism with critical assessment and a spirit of BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 213

generosity and to vigilantly remind oneself that not ‘everything important lies in our awareness’ (Powell, 1997, p. 10). The point of humility is to engage with and take seriously diverse and even contradictory knowledge claims, to enable dialogue, ‘to learn and relearn again and again,’ and ‘to know with those whom we help to know’ (Freire, 2001, p. 145), including the privileged amongst us. (Montgomery, 2013, p. 15)

Furthermore, critical self-stories could also be viewed as a move to forgiveness, for these may, albeit unintentionally, “function as confessions of privilege and complicity in order to give the appearance of taking responsibility while neatly avoiding actually doing so” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 102). Furthermore, they may also serve as

“pre-emptively [sic] claiming awareness of their status in hierarchies as a way of limiting the opportunity of others to critique them on this involvement. You can’t call me a colonizer, I already did that!” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 102, emphasis original). In this sense, self-stories that point out one’s failings may work in this way as well. I already told you I have made many mistakes (look how humble I am; look how good I am at being critically reflexive), so there’s no need for you to mention them. No, thank you very much. This is one of the contours of the ethical challenges of life writing.

So, I continue let some loose ends fly.

To acknowledge one's own opacity or that of another does not transform opacity into transparency. To know the limits of acknowledgement is to know even this fact in a limited way; as a result, it is to experience the very limits of knowing. This can, by the way, constitute a disposition of humility and generosity alike. (Butler, 2005, p. 42)

A reflexivity that pushes toward an unfamiliar, towards the uncomfortable, cannot be a simple story of subjects, subjectivity, and transcendence or self indulgent tellings. A tracing of the problematics of reflexivity calls for a positioning of reflexivity not as clarity, honesty, or humility, but as practices of confounding disruptions – at times even a failure of our language and practices. (Pillow, 2003, p. 192, emphasis added)

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 214

Catholic Confessions

I learned to confess

when I was 7 in catechism and

in the tiny booth with a private door one on either side of the center, the priest’s door

(think of all your sins and pray while you wait your turn)

kneel inside next to a little window with a little sliding door opening up whenever he is ready with a view of his nose in shadowed profile

a dreaded recital forgive me father for I have sinned this is my first reconciliation . . .

next time, with similar trepidation

my last confession was . . . last year at Eastertime since then I didn’t always listen to my parents, I fought with my brother and sisters, I . . . ummm . . . said bad words?

at least once a year, I said this little speech maybe only during Lent if I’m lucky

lucky to go to church in a small town that has to share the priest with another parish so they don’t have time for weekly confessionals maybe they don’t like it either BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 215

your penance is 5 Our Fathers and 10 Hail Marys

return to the pew kneel Inthenameofthefathersonandholyspirit Holymarymotherofgodprayforussinnersnowandinthehourofourdeath andleadusnotintotemptationbutdeliverusfromevil Amen

I learned to confess

when I was 7 I knew I should be a good girl my confession script changed as I got older, but not much

after a while, when I could make my own choices, I stopped kneeling visiting that little room altogether

but I look at that door sometimes

when I visit church with my parents sometimes for Easter and hope my mom isn’t too disappointed

What Is a ‘Good’ White Settler Teacher To Do?

Flustered, I am 5 minutes late. ‘Okay, I have you booked for 3pm on Thursday the

25th. I need you here by 2:45pm to complete the new-patient intake forms before your appointment,’ the receptionist firmly said when I called to ask if a chiropractor would be able to see me soon. Adhering to the sign in the foyer, I rush to remove my shoes, with an inward cringe. ‘Damn, today I wore sandals and have bare feet.’ There are no blue booties available to borrow, which is fine with me. They look so silly anyway. Upon a BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 216

cursory mental plea, I attempt to stave off any potential foot diseases lying in wait on the public flooring. I would shrug if I could, but since there’s no time to worry, I take a breath and resign myself to whatever warts may emerge between my toes. Padding through the waiting room to the chest-high desk, I hope I won’t be in trouble for my tardiness. I check-in, with a tentative smile. A friendly enough receptionist passes me a standard brown clipboard. Its straight silver mouth grabs at the forms, holding them tightly in order. I take a seat in one of the functional-but-not-so-comfortable waiting room chairs, near a blonde kid looking at pictures books with her adult close by.

As I begin to get down to the task, I struggle to hold my purse along with the pen and the clipboard all at once. So, I put my purse on the seat next to me. The child has some books stacked there too. She gives me a glace, with a flash that seems to indicate that I am encroaching on her personal space a little. ‘Sorry,’ I reply, internally berating myself for both this stereotypically Canadian response as well as for letting a look from a little girl make me wonder if I was rude to assume I could share the vacant chair with her.

Yet, I quickly move to reduce the amount of property I have claimed on the seat between us. With most of my focus on my pain, my lateness, and the imminent questionnaires, I had neglected to thoroughly consider how that part of the seat might not be perceived as available for me to use. Intending to pair my apology with some eye contact, I try to look over, but because my neck currently resists any sideways movement, my whole upper body awkwardly turns. In doing so, a migrating memory surfaces.

Once upon a time, somewhere and someplace, I heard someone say that a sore neck means that you aren’t seeing both sides of a situation. ‘Just another old wives’ tale,’

I think. ‘Good thing I’m not a wife and am only nearing midlife.’ I like to believe that I BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 217

am quite practiced at looking for multiple viewpoints. And, I can even pat myself on the back pretty well. Maybe this is why my neck is sore: it’s a swivel sprain. But, as I grip the pen, the tightness extending from my right shoulder blade seems to jeer at that joke, with an unkindly jolt in the upper back. Back to the ticking of the clock and the blank forms.

At the top of the first page, following a space for my name and contact information, there is a spot prompting me to identify my work. Very simply, as if this is as easy as listing a telephone number, it compels a response under OCCUPATION. I assume that this information may be somewhat helpful to the chiropractor, especially in the case of work related injuries. However, I pause the pen and consider deliberating, as I have on other forms, in other offices, at other times. No time. Hurriedly, I scratch in

TEACHER as my response. I’m sure they don’t care about all of my thoughts and critiques about this subject position and subjectivity. They only want to know that I spend a lot of time at the computer, typing and clicking on my laptop, with a lack of good posture at a non-ergonomic desk.

The rest of the questionnaire is focused on indicating where it hurts today, along with a comprehensive checklist of possible medical history, including many serious afflictions but also sinus infections and whether or not I use birth control. There isn’t a space for fear of foot warts. Nor a space to explain that I spend a lot of time in a car, commuting to the city for work, or that I visited my parents during the Easter long weekend and slept in their spare bed that seemed to aggravate everything. I’d like to laugh about this with the reader-girl, but, of course, that would be very inappropriate.

Besides, she’s busy reading. I wouldn’t want to interrupt. Lastly, there is a space for my BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 218

signature to acknowledge associated risks of and consent to treatment. Gingerly, I stand to hand in the form and peek at the clock. It is 2:58pm. I made it. Since there is a minute or two to spare, I ask the receptionist for slight clarification. ‘Am I supposed to check this off if I’ve experienced seasonal colds or does sinus infection and sore throat refer to a more serious, recurring experience? Also, does the contraceptives question matter?’

She shrugs, ‘it says, experienced any of the following, now or in the past,’ then pauses briefly before asking, ‘are you currently on birth control?’ Negative. ‘Then it’s probably fine to leave that question blank.’ With raised eyebrows, I check the box next to sinus infections, still confused about the need to know all of these details. A few minutes later, in the chiropractor’s office, he reviews the forms and asks again if I’m on any medication or have any current medical issues. ‘Well, you make my job easy,’ he says, after scribbling a note in my chart about my ‘No and no’ verbal response. ‘Please,’ I think, ‘just make my neck feel better. I need to read student assignments all weekend and then write like mad. I can’t have a sore neck.’

This self-story is quite mundane. Moments in waiting rooms, filling out forms, feeling pain, apologizing for no reason, accessing health care, driving, sleeping, dreaming, questioning, reading, these are the stuff of life and life writing. The story might seem to especially avoid any interrogation of normative narratives about teaching. Yet, with a fine toothed comb, there are nits of goodness that are also attached to the follicles of normative education—being a good student, a good teacher, a good person, a good girl. Be on time. Follow directions. Cover your feet in public. Bring your indoor shoes.

Be polite. Make eye contact. Tell the truth. Be humble. Sit up straight. Be self-aware. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 219

Don’t take up too much space. Be neat. Communicate well. Be thorough, yet efficient. Be appropriate. Take care of your body. Don’t ask too many questions. Don’t interrupt.

Don’t worry so much. Figure stuff out on your own. Be independent. Don’t think so much. Follow the rules. Keep it simple; make it easy. Be good. This is an example of how life writing is a method for observing processes of interpellation and subjectification.

Always feeling the pressure, the desire, to be a good woman and a good teacher, these normative narratives act within me and around me, “a role and the norms to accomplish it had already been prepared for me and by me” (Schick, 2000, p. 300). In my teacher education and experience, I learned that to be classified as a good teacher, one must be hard working, care about students, keep a tidy and quiet classroom, discipline students in ways that are productive, be kind, be independent and autonomous but open to collaboration, be punctual and professional, be rational, and work within the system of education without pushing any limits. “For white working-class women, becoming teachers provides access to public respectability in ways that both confirm their racial dominance and simultaneously reproduce socially conserving roles expected of white middle-class women in Canadian society” (Schick, 2000, p. 299). Life writing illuminates some of these normative narratives and the ways they are reproduced in an ordinary, humdrum moment.

That is, self-stories may help us

to see some of the invisible threads within which we are entangled and to make visible and open for interrogation the discourses in which we have constituted others and have ourselves been constituted as particular kinds of subjects — as girls, or boys, as students or teachers, as moral or immoral beings, and so on. (Davies & Gannon, 2006, p. 11)

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 220

These are opportunities to critique the teacher subject, my own teaching practices and assumed goodness, and the discourses that constitute identities, for “the norm of teacher is accomplished by a set of practices and discourses marked by identities within race, gender, class, sexual orientation—identities in which I most often participate as unconsciously as breathing” (Schick, 2000, p. 300). Life writing incites questions like

‘What is a good white, settler teacher to do?’ towards

undermin[ing] the conceit of the good teacher by demonstrating how teaching and learning about difficult knowledge (such as racism) must be connected to something bigger than one’s own ego, one’s own abilities and effort, and even one’s own noble aspirations and goals. (Montgomery, 2013, p. 15)

Becomings-ethical is bigger than individual ego, abilities, and effort, bigger than good intentions and goodness. They are little-big moments when all the Goodness is contaminated and becomings-ethical are particles of good teacher, a molecular good person.

Catholic Education for Reconciliation?

While it may be relatively easy to talk about reconciliation, it seems rather more complicated “to practise reconciliation in our everyday lives—within ourselves and our families, and in our communities, governments, places of worship, schools, and workplaces” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015c, p. 17). A reconciliation ‘to do’ list might include the following items:

● Go to the annual Treaty 4 Gathering. Better yet, contribute. ● Read the Truth & Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report Summary; or, at least the Calls to Action, especially #63 on education. ● Be anti-racist (Battiste, 2016) ● Give the land back (repatriation) ● Recognize and respect FNMI inherent rights BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 221

● Name genocide (residential schools; sixties & millenial scoops; MMIWC35) ● Stop taking indigenous children (social services & foster care systems) ● Support Indigenous language education and resurgence ● Disrupt colonial normative narratives that uphold white supremacy ● “dismantle [colonial] systems of exploitation and extraction” (Flowers, 2015, p. 36)

How do I contribute to doing any of that? In light of such lists, how can we disrupt our own systems of schooling that too often frame learning and teaching through a colonial lens? What is the role of the ‘good’ white, settler teacher? How might I contribute to disrupting Education? Someday, I might be brave enough to send a letter like the following one, to return to the school division that was my home, to work together on catholic reconciliation and the implications for Christian ethics. In short, I wonder about contributing to collective, and long-term atonement.

35 Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/, specifically includes a Legal Analysis of Genocide as a supplementary report. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 222

Box 184 Grenfell, SK S0G 2B0

March 20, 2018

Director of Education Christ the Teacher Catholic Schools RCSSD 45 A Palliser Way Yorkton, SK S3N 4C5 (306) 783-8787

RE: Treaty Education and Indigenous-Canadian Relations in CTTCS

Dear Ms. Director,

As a former Sacred Heart High School teacher, I am writing to inquire about Treaty Education in Christ the Teacher Catholic Schools (CTTCS). I am interested in how Treaty Education has been and is embodied throughout the division, especially as a mode of atonement for the role the Catholic Church played in colonial assimilation projects in Canada (i.e., Catholic-run residential schools), towards strengthening Indigenous- Canadian relations. My curiosities in this context have been nourished by doctoral research, along with experience as a teacher-educator at the University of Regina. As well, I continue to be personally invested in CTTCS, with all of my nieces and nephews currently attending elementary school in the division.

Humbly, I would like to request a meeting with you to discuss how CTTCS teachers, students, and schools engage with treaty responsibilities, including “building student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, 63iii). If I may be of any assistance in this regard, I would be very willing to consult with leadership and teachers about possibilities for living treaties in education.

Furthermore, I am reminded of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report (2015), which asserts that “for churches, demonstrating long-term commitment requires atoning for actions within the residential schools, respecting Indigenous spirituality, and supporting Indigenous peoples’ struggles for justice and equity” (Volume 6, p. 17). In such ways, I believe that focusing on a practice of reconciliation in school and faith communities is an ethical and spiritual imperative.

Personally, as a baptised Catholic, I feel compelled to share the skills and knowledge I have been privileged to develop throughout my graduate degrees, especially with Catholic Education communities. As a teacher-educator, I have found that one of my strengths is to provoke young teachers to work towards better relationships between First Nation Peoples, Métis Peoples, and Canadians living in the prairies.

BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 223

To me, contributing to the treaty responsibilities of Christ the Teacher Catholic Schools would feel like returning home again. I cherish the time I spent teaching at Sacred Heart High School (2004–2008 school years). While challenging, it was also exactly the position I had trained for and desired. In many ways, it was a great fit; I felt a belonging with the staff as I practiced teaching mathematics and biology. Yet, although I wasn’t able to identify it at the time, something was missing for me. In the last 10 years, I have pursued a deeper and more complex understanding of myself as a white, settler-Canadian, a descendant of farming immigrants on the prairies, benefiting specifically from Treaties 4 and 6. This experience has reframed my understandings of curriculum, the purposes of schooling, and our ethical responsibilities as educators.

Please consider this letter as a formal request for a meeting with you to discuss, at your convenience, these treaty understandings and the potential of working together to deepen Indigenous-Canadian relations in CTTCS.

With heartfulness,

Audrey Aamodt

Becomings-Unsettled

Sod-Made Memories

Of late, Dad is thinking more and more seriously about selling their farmland.

There are some buyers. A Chinese company is paying top dollar, more than imagined. In the last few years, Dad has also talked with me about their will. If something were to happen, heaven forbid and knock on wood, though of course it is an eventuality, I would inherit a fourth of their six quarters. “Though the details are not fixed or agreed upon, in our view, decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the repatriation of land . . .; that is, all of the land, and not just symbolically” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 7). Is this a treaty responsibility of private citizens who ‘own’ land? Perhaps land returns of the private kind could buttress public demands that the Canadian Government retract cede and surrender treaty clauses. Could I, would I, give this small chunk of land back to First

Nations and the Métis Nation? To explore my willingness to do so, I traipse around in BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 224

some of my sod-made memories with life writing.

When we moved from Treaty 6 during the summer I turned 12, my parents sold the farm that my mom grew up on. With fascinated anticipation of a new beginning, a new life at another farm, and a new school, I also felt the grief in my mom’s eyes. With speculation, I guess that a lot of that was probably about losing the tether for her childhood memories, and especially of her mom who passed away too young. As a going- away present, an artist friend painted a portrait of her childhood house, forever framing the wide yellow and brown horizontal stripes with greenery, sunshine, and happiness.

Inconspicuously, it hangs in my parents’ living room, around the corner by the bookshelves with the set of encyclopedias. Volume A—Agriculture.

I have my own untethered memories. The kitchen was a light green, with a walk- in pantry that my brother and I would sneak into to see if there were any tasty snacks in the saved cookie tins. Waste not, want not. My brother and I spent time exploring all of the details in that museum-like house, which was exactly as my grandparents had left it.

In my aunt’s room, a brown and orange shag stuffed dog, circa 1972 and as large as a pillow, sat on her single bed, waiting patiently for her return. Faux-fur bobble head animals and costume jewelry cluttered her dresser, adjacent to her bureau which burst with old clothes—a leather jacket, a polyester dress.

My mom’s room, next to the formal dining room with the wooden table set that we later moved to the new farm, had a navy bedspread with floral print as big as our child-sized heads and matching curtains. Sometimes we were becomings-mice,36 nibbling

36 I use becomings-mice as a becomings-rat figuration (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 233). Becomings- mice are multiplicities of nibblings which work to crumble settler-colonial structures that are only a facade. Becomings-mice make nests and burrows, getting in, even in places where the normative narratives don’t BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 225

at the icing of my parents’ wedding cake tiered keepsake, stored there, complete with the plastic bride and groom topper standing together for their nuptials. The styrofoam form was covered with time-hardened, white sugar paste that chipped off in a satisfying way and melted on our tongues. Cunningly, we tried to only take from the back or along the bottom edges. No one would notice then. How devious we were! Mom would never suspect us (except that, some years later, we told her of our transgression). Speaking of mice, I had almost forgotten about the time we found a nest, a mom with her babies, in one of the drawers of linen. Disgusted, Mom asked Dad to deal with them so he carried the whole drawer out of the house, dumped it out onto the driveway, and smashed those little pink bodies with a garden spade. The shock of it has remained in my memories.

Behind the house, in the trees, there was a sky blue play house the size of a shed.

Originally built for my aunt and mom, as children, we were invited to use it too. In another part of the yard, there was a secret garden, a grassy space with a small entrance through the thick, side hedges. It was a place to run and play lawn darts, croquet, and bocce ball. You could get to the vegetable garden by the road, but it was more fun to go through the bush from the secret garden, picking a path and sometimes getting hung up by shirt sleeves caught on branches. Mom helped us build a fort in the bushes between the gardens at least once, with fallen sticks and rotting logs. It was like the blue playhouse, but opened up to the wind through the leaves and the sky above.

In the garden, ants crawled over pastel pink peonies in early summer, and sweet- red jewels dotted the strawberry patch that Mom detested weeding. In autumn, the crab- apple orchard was heavy with low-hanging fruit and a faint scent of fermentation

want them. Over and over, normative narratives smash them with their blunt steel, but becomings-mice are a pack and some scurry and hide to gnaw and to tunnel other things, later. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 226

underfoot. One harvest, while Mom was digging potatoes, we leaned the dried up corn stalks together to make a little hut. Collecting some rejected vegetables, left behind for being sunburnt or having the beginnings of rot, we crushed them together using half of a hollowed out squash as a dish and a stick for a spoon. After some emphatic convincing, my brother decided to trust me that the mishmash mixture would be so yummy.

Tentatively, he touched the tip of his tongue to the batter held by the end of the stick, with my deceitful smile not far behind the hand that held it up.

To the north, the machinery was lined up in the bin yard to await their next turn around the fields. Nearby, a home-made pontoon platform, a creation of my Grandpa

Zunti and his brothers, longed for another float in Grass Lake. Now, I assume that the old pontoon has either become mostly part of the grass and the soil again, or it was piled up by the new owners and burned or left to rust and decay. The cake couple that had lived in that bedroom, on top of that cake, has moved to collect dust in another room, in another farmhouse. The old house’s windows are likely broken, if it is still standing at all. It is the stuff of settler-colonial nightmares. Instead, we rebuild sod-houses in small town museums, we retell our homestead stories, and we tether ourselves to land, to gardens, to farming and family and memories. It is easy to pretend that these memories are only viable when we have title to land, a literal entitlement; when we own a parcel of property neatly delineated in one mile square quadrants. It is a way of occupation, of proclaiming and maintaining a belonging as a settler-Canadian. Property is a violence.

Land is what is most valuable, contested, required. This is both because the settlers make Indigenous land their new home and source of capital, and also because the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence. This violence is not temporally contained in the arrival of the settler but is reasserted each day of occupation. (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 5, emphasis added) BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 227

While self-stories like these sod-made memories are quite self-indulgent, they may also invite settlers (myself) to consider how their/my sod-made memories produce a sense of innocent belonging, while silencing treaties and the violence of settler- colonialism. Using treaty to further reify settler-colonial belonging is also problematic.

For example, Sod-made, as a strand of Braiding Canadianness, is not the same kind of story as Donald’s (2012) Indigenous Métissage that is “focused on interpreting and reconceptualizing the historical and contemporary interactions of Aboriginal peoples and

Canadians” (p. 541), though interrogating the silences is perhaps one way to interpret such interactions. Therefore, we might ask that such sod-made memories, that self-stories help us consider settler treaty responsibilities of land repatriation, rather than simply reinstating our entitlement.

Or, at least during land conflicts,37 life writing may help us to see how the use of land, in ways that could be called exploitation, comes from a legacy of the Dominion

Land Act. This legislation encouraged settlers like my ancestors to homestead by inhabiting, clearing, and cultivating the land, to make families and memories on that land, and to own it and prosper for a very small administrative price of only $10.38 Assuming a settler-colonial right to access and own land, for agriculture and recreation without responsibility for the violence it induced and continues to induce on Indigenous Peoples, is partially produced by a historical relationship to sod. This is not just a metaphor but a materiality that houses memories and stories. For this reason, disrupting land entitlement

37 For example, some white settler-Canadians from Grenfell and area, where I live, cabin on Crooked Lake, leasing land from Sakimay First Nations Reserve. In recent years, Sakimay decided to increase the lease cost to a newly appraised price, as rates were kept low for many years. There has been an ongoing legal dispute and an impact to relationships between the land tenants and the First Nation. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sakimay-crooked-lake-court-ruling-lease-spike-1.5074074 38 https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/dominion-lands-policy BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 228

is more complex than simply decolonizing our memories, for “when metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future” (Tuck &

Yang, 2012, p. 3). Somehow, we have to make restitution by returning the land, both publicly and privately. Yet, still I wonder, will I give up my sod-made inheritance?

Inheritances of memories are not necessarily in need of land titles. “A time of beginnings, a time for ongoing, for freshness . . . can be full of inheritances, of remembering, and full of comings, of nurturing what might still be” (Haraway, 2016, p. 2). Unsettling sod-made memories comes with unsettling land ownership and property rights.

Suspended Indigenization

There is a secret boardroom suspended above the Pit, up up up, on the top floor.

From the view below, craning the neck, the floor of the University President’s special meeting room simply looks like a lighted ceiling; the cloistered top of The Ivory Tower.

Beneath, the Pit is carpeted with grey and purple; a space for students to gather, to read, and sometimes to take a stolen nap. Lying on the perimeter bench, the decorative panel- banners hanging from the ceiling-floor seem to invite geometric dreams of green and orange, purple and teal. In the elevator, the fifth button is pressed so that a little red dot lights up in the chrome center and the doors automatically close. With a lurch, we are lifted up, passing levels that house Admissions, the Registrar's Office, Financial Services,

Human Resources, and offices and classrooms for the English Department and the School of Journalism.

With a bing, the elevator doors open. The tall, double doors to the private boardroom are just to the left. Their heavy stature makes them seem aloof and self- BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 229

important rather than welcoming and approachable. Timidly, I pass through into the large, rectangular room. Inside, some attendees are beginning to find a place around the tiers of seating with countertops. Not recognizing anyone, I take a seat on the top level, perceiving it to be out of the way. Soon, to my delight, Joseph Naytowhow39 decides to sit nearby. Framed photographs, of past university chancellors, mostly men, preside over the room, enveloping us from their circumscribing vantage points. It’s a strange setting for an Academic Indigenization Forum. During her welcome, the Executive Lead of

Indigenization, and an organizer of the forum, alludes to this as well, noting how she believes having discussions about Indigenizing academia here, in this space in particular, is disruptive by our very presence.

As their poster advertised, the forum sought to answer the following questions, together with Elders, knowledge keepers, students, community members, and faculty:

What exactly is meant by the concept of Indigenization and what methods can be used to apply Indigenization? For example, one session by Bill Cook40, was titled ‘Being humble, seeking guidance and building relationships;’ What are the distinctions, the differences, between Indigenization and decolonization?; Who are Indigenous peoples, on local, national, and international levels? i.e. Who are First Nations and Métis peoples? What do we mean when we say Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples?; And, what are some practical approaches to Indigenizing teaching practices and learning spaces? Before lunch, a participatory session asked small groups to ‘unpack applications of Indigenization methods.’

39 “Joseph Naytowhow is a gifted Plains/Woodland Cree (nehiyaw) singer/songwriter, storyteller, and voice, stage and film actor from the Sturgeon Lake First Nation Band, Saskatchewan” https://josephnaytowhow.com/about/ 40 Bill Cook is a Rock Cree, TH dialect speaker and Cree Language Instructor https://creeclass.com/ BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 230

Choosing to attend, I hoped to gain some clarity about the tensions of engaging in

Indigenization for settler-Canadian teachers, like me, working in colonial-capitalist institutions like this one. The possibility that it might also confirm some of my pedagogical choices and practices was additionally in the forefront of my mind. Months later, during a presentation for a lecturer position, I would be asked: What does indigenization look like? I hoped to be able to respond to such challenges, thoughtfully and with some complexity. Thereupon, I think about how to continue to deepen my own relationships with Indigenous knowledge keepers and old ones, about attending

Indigenous ceremonies, about expanding my understanding and practice with Indigenous languages, about engaging with the work of Indigenous authors, filmmakers, musicians, speakers, and activists, and about drawing from such ways of knowing to further create

Indigenized course experiences for becomings-teachers.

Towards becomings-unsettled, I wear a ribbon skirt41 to ceremonies. Throughout an environmental education course, I work to disrupt normative narratives of Canadian wilderness as empty land.42 In a treaty course, I work to center nêhiyawêwin43 concepts.

As an entry point, my Indigenizing efforts have primarily drawn from nêhiyaw perspective, in relationship with nêhiyawak. Once, very recently, I slept in a tipi. Nag heckles, What, are you an Indian now? Do you pretend you can be Indigenous? “The challenge, therefore, should be the subversion of that standing by refusing what settlers are, to allow new subjectivities to emerge” (Flowers, 2015, p. 34). Following Kimmerer

(2013), “I want to envision a way that an immigrant society could become indigenous to

41 Gifted to me by kokum Brenda during an impromptu meeting 42 Terra nullius is one of the dominant discourses that presumed settlement innocent and necessary 43 Cree, y dialect. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 231

place, but I’m stumbling on the words. Immigrants cannot by definition be indigenous”

(p. 213). Furthermore, settler-immigrant does not simply mean non-indigenous.

According to Flowers (2015), the term refers to “a set of responsibilities and action” (p.

33), “a position of privilege and enjoyment of standing” (p. 33), “a relational term that signifies the settler’s relationship to colonialism . . .. The category of settler is both a structural location and a product of social relations that produce privilege” (p. 34). So, what does it mean for a settler to engage in Indigenization? Along with becomings- unsettled, there may be becomings-indigenous, where “becoming is to extract particles between which one establishes the relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness that are closest to what one is becoming, and through which one becomes” (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987, p. 272, emphasis original). Becomings are intensities of relations, rather than assuming indigeneity as identity.

Becomings-indigenous? How do becomings- work? “Becoming-woman, becoming-child; becoming-animal, [-bird], -vegetable, or -mineral; becomings-molecular of all kinds, becomings-particles. Fibers lead us from one to the other, transform one into the other as they pass through doors and across thresholds” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p.

272). Which fibers lead towards becomings-indigenous?44 What movements are between settler-colonialism and indigenization particles? Passing through writing doors, across wordy thresholds, becomings-unsettled, becomings-naturalized, becomings-indigenous fibers transform each other. “Singing or composing, painting, writing have no other aim: to unleash these becomings” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 272, emphasis added). Does

44 For this discussion, I purposefully do not capitalize the word indigenous because I am not suggesting that setter-Canadians can become Indigenous in any specific sense. This discussion is meant to provoke a theoretical exploration of indigenization processes that snaps up settler-colonialism, transforming settlers into unsettled particles. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 232

becomings-indigenous work? It might not work. It may be mightily problematic, but it also might be a way to describe unsettled movements of settlers engaging in indigenization multiplicities.

Nanabozho45 reminds us that “we humans are the newest arrivals on earth, the youngsters, just learning to find our way” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 205). In Kimmerer’s interpretation, Nanabozho has becomings-naturalized teachings for settler-immigrants too. “To become naturalized is . . . to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 215). In some ways, becomings-naturalized may be conceptualized as adjacent to becomings-indigenous, to engagements with indigenization processes. Nevertheless, naturalized and indigenous are not exactly synonyms, and becomings- are minor. They are made up of formations of minor multiplicities and packs, rather than dominance, hierarchies and binaries. They are minutiae, which is not to just say that becomings- are trivial, trifles, petty, inferior, or subordinate. Becomings- disassemble normativity. Becomings- form assemblages of multiplicitous kinds.

Becomings-naturalized of the settler-Canadian is a molecular movement, passing through becomings-unsettled doorways, intertwined with becomings-indigenous.

Concurrently, becomings-indigenous suspends the notion that I, that settlers, will ever be

Indigenous people. “Becoming is a verb with a consistency all its own; it does not reduce to, or lead back to, ‘appearing,’ ‘being,’ ‘equaling,’ or ‘producing’” (Deleuze & Guattari,

1987, p. 239). “Becoming is not to imitate or identify with something or someone”

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 272). Instead, the distinction between being and

45 Nanabozho is said to be the “First Man” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 205) and “an immigrant too” (p. 206) who “tried to become native to his new home” (p. 207); Anishinaabe. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 233

becomings, becomings-naturalized and becomings-indigenous, is in striving “to be useful, to fit into small places, to coexist with others around the dooryard, to heal wounds” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 214). Becomings- are movements rather than things or identities.

Consider the striving of becomings-plantain.46 Paying attention to the edges of sidewalks and roadways, cracks in parking lots, verdure in campsites, rebellious lawns, and interlopers to garden patches, I begin to notice the common plantain almost everywhere. It is abundant in some places, with broadleaves and unassuming floral stalks, and more sparse elsewhere. Though it has many medicinal properties,47 I only ever knew it as a weed. In some ways, settlers tend to act like weeds too. Becomings-plantain meddles with the notion of Weed, as becomings-unsettled tampers with Settler-

Colonialism. Becomings- are lowercase moments that undo capitalizations. Becomings- unsettled happens in the cracks of mistakes while striving for careful coexistence.

Becomings-naturalized and becomings-indigenous are particles of coexistence rather than to, uninvited, claim space and belonging for individual purposes alone.

Becomings-unsettled, becomings-naturalized, and becomings-indigenous all refer to blocks of coexistence, rather than a certain kind of fixed subject, a singular identity.

Becoming produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we

say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself, the

46 Plantago major, or the common, broadleaf plantain, also called “White Man’s Footstep” because it “arrived with the first settlers and followed them everywhere they went” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 213); “every part of the plant is useful” (p. 214). It is not to be confused with the cultivated, starchy, banana-like edible, genus Musa. 47 See https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/indigenous-medicinal-walk-1.4235900 and https://www.encyclopedia.com/plants-and-animals/plants/plants/plantain BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 234

block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which

becomes passes. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 238)

Like the boardroom setting for the Indigenization Forum, the notion of becomings- indigenous is also problematic, suspended, and disruptive. Is it not impossible for settlers to suspend the Settler-Colonial social position, this systemic privilege; to be free from colonialist legacies and presents? Yet, Kimmerer (2013) believes that “to be indigenous is to protect life on earth” (p. 209). Additionally, “by honoring the knowledge in the land, and caring for its keepers, we start to become indigenous to place” (Kimmerer, 2013, p.

210). Settler-Canadians might also protect, honor, and care, in blocks of becomings- molecular with Indigenous relations and indigenizations.

Becomings-indigenous, then, involves an involutionary48 block of becoming that snaps up settler-Canadians in indigenization, but from which no settler-Indigenous and no

Indigenous-settler descends.49 Such becomings do not simplify to marriage between

Indigenous peoples and settlers, nor is it conditional on progeny. “Correspondence of relations does not add up to a becoming” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 237). “A becoming is not a correspondence between relations . . . neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 237). Rather,

“becoming . . . concerns alliance” (p. 238).50 Such blocks of becomings take hold of settlers and Indigenous Peoples, running rhizomatic lines “between the terms in play and

48 “Becoming is involutionary, involution is creative” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 238). It is not regressive, hereditary, or an evolutionary phenomenon. 49 Here, I play with words wasp-orchid block of becoming: “There is a block of becoming that snaps up the wasp and the orchid, but from which no wasp-orchid can ever descend” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 238). For an example of not reducing to identities of settler-Indigenous or Indigeous-settler, refer to Dwayne Donald’s (2012) discussion of some of the complexities of his identities and ancestry (p. 534). 50 This idea is beyond settler assumptions and self-identification as allies, i.e. in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 235

beneath assignable relations” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 239), but not necessarily with mutual relationship causes and cooperation. Indigenous Peoples are in alliance with settler-Canadians through treaty thresholds, in blocks of becomings-treaty.51 Blocks of becomings-unsettled, becomings-naturalized, becomings-indigenous, becomings-treaty might include moments of being moved by learning concepts and communications in

Indigenous languages, participating in Indigenous circles and ceremonies, attending treaty gatherings and Indigenization forums, reading and writing with Indigenous theory, and and and. I won’t venture to elaborate more on becomings-, for now, except to allow some further obscurity. What does it make you think about and how does it cause you to move? For me, it is not a science or something particular to render. It is a movement idea.

Life writing is also a movement for becomings-.

Becomings-indigenous does not indicate that settlers become Indigenous through such blocks, and visa versa. This is a structural misunderstanding, a pitfall.52 Or, maybe it is too tricky and I can’t make becomings-indigenous work. The contours of becomings- unsettled, becomings-naturalized, and becomings-indigenous are somewhat opaque.

Attempting to explain, I bump into blocks of becomings and am provoked but, still, I’m not explaining clearly. Oh clarity. Explanations are also pitfalls. Becomings-indigenous are moments for multiplicities of ambiguity and uncertainty for the Settler. “When he

[Nanabozho] came near the territories of others, he did not just blunder in as if the whole world belonged to him. He learned to sit quietly at the edge of the woods and wait to be

51 Which is not to forget the legacies and impacts of the Indian Act, residential schools, reserve and pass systems, Métis land scrip, and other assimilation policies and genocide practices on Indigenous bodies. 52 Refer to Deleuze & Guattari’s (1987) discussion of how explaining becomings as a correspondence between two relations, as in becomings-animal where it is thought that the human simply becomes animal and the animal becomes something else/other, is impoverished. Also, becomings-animal is not to be understood as absolutely equivalent to becomings-woman, -child, or, in this context, becomings- indigenous. It is only an example of becomings-molecular, of becomings-particles. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 236

invited” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 210). Probably it would be better to stop wondering about if becomings-indigenous works, to sit quietly for at least a little while, to wait to be invited into the woods of becomings-. Looking around, the foliage is wordy writings which both limits (i.e., the limits of language) and releases (moves towards) becomings-.

Tipi Teaching

I wish I would have brought more blankets. I didn’t think it would be this cold.

It’s too bad that I didn’t bring the tube-scarf that I usually wear while cross country skiing, so that I could easily cover my eyes and block out the floodlights from the pow wow grounds. The bright lights are pouring into the top of the tipi, making it seem like we’re in the city rather than in the valley next to a lake where treaty 4 was signed. Hiding my face as best as I can under the light sleeping bag, I wish I would have looked harder for the warmer one. It must be pushed at the back of the cubby underneath the stairs; too difficult to reach. I was trying to pack quickly. The hood of my UNIVERSITY of

REGINA bunnyhug is pulled tight around my face. How cool the midnight is, very unexpected after such a hot afternoon, hitting 30℃ for the first time this season. I was worried I’d be too hot.

If I was in a better mood, I might laugh at the trick the day played on me, but I don’t feel up to it. Plus, Sheena has already fallen asleep so I should be quiet. She’s softly snoring closeby, perched on her inflatable single bed mattress. My thin Thermarest sleeping mat is fine, but I can’t get comfortable. Ugh, I have to pee again. Maybe if I turn to the other side, it will subside. Dozing, I don’t want to get up. The ties to the canvas door are fastened. I did it myself, before we zipped ourselves in our sleeping bags. It seems like a lot of work to emerge from the bag, crouch to untie, and then crawl through BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 237

the door in order to walk to the portable biffy, nevermind then having to be in the smelly little receptacle of human excrement. Probably, this entire botheration should be blamed on the iced coffee I imbibed during lunch.

A writing thought comes: ‘For the breaking up with life writing turn—It’s not you, it’s me. It’s not me, it’s you.’ I try to save it, pack it away tightly for the morning when I can go get my computer. Plugged into the socket, charging, it’s sitting on

Sheena’s solid wood dining room table, the one handmade by her husband many years ago. Thinking of her warm house reminds me of her daughter, who kindly brought us piping hot chocolate in a thermos before bed. A latte at lunch and late hot chocolate: no wonder my body is currently rerouting all of the heat from my extremities to warm the liquid filling my bladder. Remembering my quick response when Sheena invited me to come camp with her, to be with the tipis overnight, I was so excited to be here. But, now, this feels like it was the worst idea I have ever had. It’s only because I’m cold, tired, and annoyed at the needs of my body and the lights that are too bright.

This is a special chance to sleep in a tipi, I remind myself. I should read the tipi teachings pamphlet I picked up at Wanuskewin Heritage Park early this month. There was also a similar sign in the foyer at the Globe Theater, when I was at the production of

Making Treaty 4 last month. Both of these briefly described the values that the 15 poles are said to represent. Earlier, over hot chocolate, Sheena was telling me about how one of her past students has been given these teachings, even more than some of the older knowledge keepers that helped her class put up the tipis; that this student has passed some of the older men in spiritual understandings. So, perhaps these signs and pamphlets are only very surface level information for a general audience. I don’t know. I understand BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 238

that sacred Indigenous teachings aren’t supposed to be written down and are often only shared in certain conditions while following particular protocols. I wonder if the pain I’m feeling in my shoulders and neck is a kind of bodily ramification of the assumptions I have made about tipi teachings. I have romanticized. Was jumping at the chance to stay in a tipi simply for writing fodder? Maybe. And, maybe it was a desire to be Indigenous.

Becomings-Curricula: Curricula for Mistakes

‘But, it’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made!’ my 8-year-old nephew wails, cheeks wet with tears, his face buried in his hands and his hands in the seat of the couch, body slumped on the floor. Family conflicts tend to be part of our annual camping holiday at Good Spirit Lake. This season, the parent-child communication rules have not yet been clearly charted, and this discord is one of the early consequences. Without letting any of the adults know, he and one of his cousins went too far on their bikes looking for hills to ride. They had crossed the boundary without realizing it, taking a trail from the loops of campsites, passing behind the mini-golf and ending up on the hill to the rear of the recreation hall, thinking this was part of the campsite area. His mom went looking for him, circling for nearly half an hour, worried, frustrated, and increasingly furious. For her, time stretched out with feelings of dread, a torment. Fearful that one of them was hurt and that they needed help, it was a long half-hour. For them, time was sped up, the joy of being in the moment and a surge of independence fueling their feet on the pedals. With little sense of time, half an hour didn’t seem long at all. Eventually, they came back on their own, their cue to return a mystery.

With their arrival and dismount, my sister started walking to her campsite with a somber ‘come talk with me’ directed his way. He followed her with his head down, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 239

suddenly understanding that she was worried about him, waves of guilt-filled remorse swelling and then crashing. In their camper, he continues, ‘I knew I didn’t want to have this conversation! I knew it would make me do this and then I wouldn’t want to go to the beach this afternoon!’

‘Everything is okay. Just stand up for a minute.’ I try to console him, to help my sister talk him out of such self-beratement. His body is like jelly as I coax him to at least sit upright. ‘Can you tell me what you learnt from it?’ Through sobs he manages to say, ‘I learned I have to check in and not go so far without letting my mom know. But, it was such a big mistake!’ Attempting to help him shake off the perceived disgrace of mistakes,

I offer, ‘You know what? The good news is that you will make more mistakes. I make lots of mistakes and I’m way older than you. Maybe it’s what we do with our mistakes that is more important.’ I think about my own mistakes and how often I let myself risk making them. Likewise, I wish I would listen to this very advice, especially when my writing is slow, when I take a break from it, or when it feels inadequate to address settler- colonialism and its insidious forms.

Furthermore, I think about grading norms—assessment words and categories like excellent, outstanding, very good, good, average, satisfactory, below expectations, needs improvement—and the limitations these produce. I wonder about the curriculum of perfection. Instead, could there be curricula for mistakes? Cees get degrees. How could curricular outcomes and indicators, objectives and essential learnings of science and social studies and mathematics and language and arts and physical education and health- wellness and treaty-reconciliation education and and and, together, espouse mistakes as a condition for learning? Where might the curriculum of perfection, the kind of curriculum BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 240

that states that ‘students will be able to demonstrate X, Y, and Z’ by the time they are this old and this high and this educated, go to die? Don’t forget to get your little ones ready for kindergarten; can they spell their name, do they know the alphabet, can they colour in the lines? In elementary and middle school, make sure they are at grade level. Be sure they are prepared for high school. High school will equip them for the Real World. You can’t get a Very Good Job without post-secondary education. Help them so that they will be active, contributing citizens; so that they make the least amount of mistakes. Teach them that mistakes are unacceptable. Punish them for making mistakes. How could an ethical pedagogy of mistakes disrupt and replace curricula of perfection?

Towards a pedagogy of mistakes, if we conceive of curriculum as currere,53 running the race course of life, then we might think of curriculum as living. We might also live curriculum as a process of becomings-curricula. These are the moments when we Try a Tri, where we swim-bike-run beyond the walls of classrooms, beyond the limits of curriculum guides, where we transgress boundaries, where inter-transdisciplinary pedagogies roam, where all sizes of mistakes are made, tears flow, and multiplicities abound. Curricula for mistakes, as multiplicities of becomings, rather than a curriculum of perfection, may work to invite the potential to consider the many mistakes of settler- colonialism, to pick ourselves up from the biggest mistakes we’ve ever made; to envision how to collectively take responsibility for our societal actions and how to make amends.

A clear articulation of a postmodern process vision of curriculum development that includes the concept of currere is urgently needed, and this vision could be a prophetic statement for a world in turmoil and denial . . . reflected in the fragmentation of disciplines and departments in schools . . .. Interdisciplinary,

53 Currere indicates that “curriculum is a verb, an activity, or for Pinar, an inward journey” (Slattery, 2013, p. 66). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 241

aesthetic, and multidimensional alternatives must be incorporated into schooling. (Slattery, 2013, p. 289)

Perhaps a vision of curricula for mistakes, a becomings-unsettled curricula, is what settler-colonial schooling systems greatly need. Becomings-unsettled and becomings- mistake run rhizomatic lines between the cracks of Goodness

Braiding Water Places: A Counter-Ripples Interbraid

This counter-ripples interbraid is made of strands of three self-stories, each by authored by different participants: Robyn, Willow, and Audrey. Interbraided here, in between strands of Blundered Becomings- and Unbraidings and Tangled Tales, they are another haeccity of mistakes, response-abilities, settler-colonial whispers, method and methodologies, and participant becomings. These stories were written on the incredibly warm and sunny, final afternoon of April 2016. After sharing lunch together, we began to engage with what Donald (2009) might mean by story-telling that pays attention to artifact and place. For example, his story about visiting Fort Edmonton introduces “the fort as a colonial artifact” and a “myth,” in that “myths are actually truths about culture and conventional views of history that have both been deeply influenced by the stories of our country” (p. 3).

Therefore, we attempted to (re)consider some specific artifacts and places in our own lives – “artifacts are imbued with meaning . . . when humans conceptualize them as storied aspects of their world” (p. 11)—as the myths that shape our continued understanding of ourselves as Canadians, implicated as settlers becomings-treaty. With this in mind, we agreed to focus on an artifact-place that could be shared by all of us, soon deciding that water would be central to this particular self-storytelling process.

Counter-ripples of these specific water-place experiences illustrate some of the ways that BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 242

our “Canadian perspectives . . . are rooted in colonial histories and logics” (p. 11). The stories may be read in any order, folded and unfolded, braided and unbraided, at the whim of the reader, in relation to each other, the counter-narrative offered, and the reader’s experiences.

Transfer Beach, By Robyn

Ahh . . . the moment I’ve been waiting for. We left Saskatchewan 3 days prior and, after stopping to visit friends and family on the way, we were almost there. I took the driver’s seat when we stopped in Chilliwack. I knew the way to the ferry terminal and

I was eager to get there. When I grew impatient, I sped to get to the ferry on time. It’s always been irritating when you get to the ferry terminal only to find out that the ferry just left or – even worse – that you’ve literally missed the ferry by one, yes ONE, vehicle!

Finally, I see the terminal in sight! I see the ocean; I can smell the salty air and I suck in a huge breath once we are through the terminal. We made it!! We are on our way to Vancouver Island to visit my family and the place I grew up. I’m ecstatic and bubbling with excitement!

We step out of the car – we have to wait 45 minutes until we can load. My eyes are glued to the scene I’ve been waiting a year to see – the huge, expansive, exquisite ocean! The ocean I’ve known my whole life. The ocean I played in, beachcombed at, had coffee with dad at, the place where my grandmother’s ashes rest at. It’s a sight I didn’t realize that I’d taken for granted until I couldn’t gaze upon it whenever it fancied me.

This is just the start of my senses being re-awakened by the glorious sight – I’m most excited to share these moments with my love. To show him where I grew up and one of BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 243

my most favourite places – Transfer Beach. The beach has been front and center in my life. No matter where in town I was, I could look down and there it was.

There’s a big horn sounding indicating it’s time for us to load the ferry. Once we are all settled, I eagerly suggest we go upstairs and sit in the open salty air and watch the waves crash against the ferry. And maybe we will even see a school of dolphins swim by!

Or a whale! I’m so content sitting there, holding his hand, both of us drinking in the scene.

An hour or so later, we exit the ferry terminal and make our way to the place that helped to shape my existence. It’s almost as I remember it. There are more houses and people I do not know. But the post office is right where it should be and that enormous tree in town by the Aggie Hall is still standing strong. But my favourite part of all – as we drive through town we can still view the ocean. I’m eager to drive to Transfer Beach and soak in the feeling of standing on the rocky beach – knowing that there are hundreds of crabs beneath those rocks. Ooh and maybe we’ll find sand dollars as black as night! I used to love finding sand dollars when I was a kid. But dad is waiting and the salmon is on the barbecue waiting for me to devour it!

We finally make it out to Transfer Beach a few days later – after all, the family was excited to meet my dear love and that took precedence over my beach thirst. We head out to the beach at one of my favourite times to view it – just before sundown. We have two pails in hand for blackberry picking, two big smiles, and two pairs of legs walking to the ocean’s edge. It’s just as remarkable and stunning and I’ve always known it to be – perfectly timed waves are crashing in, families are laughing, the sand is crunching beneath our feet, the tree branches are swaying and shuffling – it’s the most BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 244

beautiful music. With the berries picked, we make our way over to the Amphitheatre nearby. The sun is going down and it’s getting darker and just a bit cooler. We stay a little longer, though, to watch the kayakers go by and the tugboats bringing in the logs that were just dumped by the barge. We will stay a little bit longer still – just to soak this moment in.

The Drop Off, By Willow

My hands grasped at the bottom of the lake and retrieved nothing. The slippery grains of sand spilled from between my small fingers and settled again in the water. I saw a movement further down the drop off and reached for where the bubbles had formed.

My hand plunged down into the sand and I felt the smooth lines and round shape of the clam. My lungs begged for air as I tucked in my knees, grinned wide, and kicked off the from bottom surfacing like a mermaid. I clutched my prize above my head waving it around frantically. I walked to shore, ‘sploosh’ and dropped the clam into a five gallon pail with its friends.

‘Seven!’ I declared grabbing the white plastic on the metal handle and dragging the yellow bucket up to my mom through the sand. She was laying on her stomach on a blue and grey sarong. ‘Seven!’ I cried again trying to get her attention.

Mom smiled from behind her book. Looking up, ‘you must scare all the fish away with those big teeth grinning down there.’

I laughed, satisfied, and I ran back to the water splashing violently. Secretly hoping not to see the elusive and gigantic sturgeon I’d been warned against, whose teeth were definitely bigger than mine, I walked up to my waist and squinted along the edge of the drop off, scanning for tell-tail bubbles of a clam squeezing through the sand. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 245

‘Ah ha!’ I dove, springing up at first and then head down into the darkness. I had practiced holding my breath in the bathtub all winter. My hair was braided into tight rows to prevent drag. This was my lake and I was the master of the drop off. I clutched at the bubbles and found nothing. I continued to swim along the bottom, my stomach grazing the sand as my lungs and teeth ached from the pressure. I kicked from the bottom and surfaced again. Forever disappointed at the shortness of my distance from shore. Too bad

I couldn’t practice distance swimming the bathtub.

I found five more clams before dark. When the sun goes down, the waves pick up and the hunting is over. I am not allowed on the drop off after dark.

We lit a fire in the backyard and cooked my catch. Seasoned with garlic and butter, it smelled good but I couldn’t bring myself to eat them. Greg ate three and got sick. Maybe we should’ve thrown them back like we always do. As the last of the clams cracked open in the heat of the fire, I thought it was okay because they couldn’t see it coming. But maybe the water tasted different in the yellow pail. The way pool water tastes different than the lake. Maybe they knew they weren’t on the drop off anymore.

Lake Living, By Audrey

It’s finally summer holidays! School’s out! We’re so excited to get to go camping for 2 whole weeks! We get to live at the Lake! It’s awesome . . . the best thing ever, really. Mom spent most of last week getting the two-toned, green-and-tan Prowler ready.

She washed the windows and cupboards out, stocked the food in the small fridge, and packed the sleeping bags and pillows. We have our bathing suits and towels and beach toys. My clothes drawer is the one under the orange, circa 1975, cushioned seat of the table that folds into a bed. Sometimes I sleep there, and other times, especially when I BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 246

was a bit smaller, I would share the top bunk – the cupboard that we store the bedding in during the day, which also folds into a bed, above the couch that does the same – with my brother, usually. He fell out of it one year, that was pretty funny. At least I thought so.

It’s a tight fit in the camper for all six of us, but mostly we only sleep in there anyway.

Most times, we cook outside on the fire instead of on the propane stove. We do the dishes outside too, in a big old metal bowl that must have come from the Old Farm. It has a few chips in its white ceramic, with the red rim. Often we heat dishwashing water over the fire, but we also have this strange element thing that can be plugged in and submerged into the water. I think it was borrowed from the cows’ watering bowl, maybe. Mom does most of the work too – but sometimes she asks me to help, so I grudgingly do. Anyway, those are the less exciting parts.

What we really love is spending ALL DAY at the BEACH! We live in our bathing suits; mine is an evergreen one-piece this year. Our campsite is an easy stroll to the shore, but we always pack lunch and snacks and drinks so that we don’t have to waste time going back and forth. We lay out large old sheets for all our things to sit on, and for

Mom to lie on while she reads. She doesn’t like the water too much, just wades in no deeper than her knees to cool off once in a while, because she never really learned to swim. But we love the water! We take swimming lessons during these 2 weeks, at the nearby town’s pool. But, today is a great day because it’s Saturday and lessons are only during the week. So far, while Mom had her nose in a novel, we’ve done all our usual moves – swimming out to the buoys; practicing handstands with tricks, in the water above our waists . . . legs up, feet pointed, scissors!; spending at least an hour running and jumping off the dock into the bright yellow tube that we brought. Until, by accident, BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 247

we popped it. Our landings were that good.

There weren’t that many people here today. I guess it’s because it’s a bit cloudy and grey. So, we basically have had the lake all to ourselves, just the way we like it. The afternoon is getting on and my sister and I are still here, at the playground just up from the water’s edge, next to the ice cream shop, even though the rest of our family already started back to the campsite so that Mom can start supper. Just now, I notice a handful of kids show up, put their towels on the sand, and noisily head into the water. They must be from the Reserve – they have dark, long hair and that kind of skin. They don’t have proper bathing suits on, just shorts and t-shirts, and the littlest is wearing only a diaper, a white disposable one that gets big and bulky and soggy and saggy as she gets wet. Some of the older ones are making their way to the dock. We’re sitting on the top of the slide, the one with blue edges, our damp skin squeaking against the metal surface as we shift our weight now and then. We don’t say much. But my sister is watching them too. I can feel it. It feels kinda weird. Like we’re letting them play on the dock, and, at the same time, I don’t want them to play there or be here. It feels like it’s not our spot anymore, like we’re strangers. I don’t say anything to my sister about that. But, we’re both quiet, perched there, looking down, watching and wondering when they’ll leave. Soon, we give up and turn to go. With a backward glance, I see a splash at the end of the dock, with sounds of amusement, as I longingly hope that it’ll be just us again tomorrow.

Interbraid: Counter-Ripples

Feeling self-beholden to offer a third counter-narrative, I meet these ripples with a level of emotional resistance that I have come to intellectually expect, yet am continually surprised at how thoroughly uncomfortable I experience the counter-process in my body. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 248

In re-reading these stories, again and again, I am initially struck by how tranquil and pleasurable they mostly are. Many times, I notice myself smiling wide as I remember and resonate with certain special times with loved ones – “Mom smiled from behind her book. Looking up, ‘you must scare all the fish away with those big teeth grinning down there’” (Willow), “I would share the top bunk . . . with my brother . . . He fell out of it one year, that was pretty funny” (Audrey), “in the open salty air and watch[ing] the waves crash against the ferry . . . I’m so content sitting there, holding his hand, both of us drinking in the scene” (Robyn); the swimming in fresh water – “practicing hand stands with tricks, in the water above our waists . . . legs up, feet pointed, scissors!” (Audrey),

“My lungs begged for air as I tucked in my knees, grinned wide, and kicked off the from bottom surfacing like a mermaid” (Willow); the leisure time – “We have two pails in hand for blackberry picking, two big smiles, and two pairs of legs walking to the ocean’s edge” (Robyn), “We lit a fire in the backyard and cooked my catch” (Willow); of belonging – “It’s almost as I remember it . . . the post office is right where it should be and that enormous tree in town by the Aggie Hall is still standing strong” (Robyn), “we basically have had the lake all to ourselves, just the way we like it” (Audrey); and, of peace – “We lay out large old sheets for all our things to sit on, and for Mom to lie on while she reads” (Audrey), “waves are crashing in, families are laughing, the sand is crunching beneath our feet, the tree branches are swaying and shuffling – it’s the most beautiful music” (Robyn).

All of these bits are so lovely, aren’t they? However, if I become quiet and listen a bit closer, I sense a very tiny, niggling whisper inside of me that scoffs, who gets to tell such picturesque stories? Yikes, I don’t like that question. Something feels unsettling in BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 249

it. I resist it, with internal reasoning that goes something like: There’s nothing wrong with these self-stories. There’s no need to ask that question. We are innocent here. It is good to remember the nice things in life, to share them, to perpetuate love of the world in remembering moments of joy and fun and tenderness. I stand up from my chair, looking for a distraction. Recognizing the urge to run away from interrogating this thinking, I sit again, sideways on my perch. Rubbing my face, I scrunch my eyes; cross my legs at the ankles – an attempt at self-restraint maybe. My contact lenses are dry. My left wrist- elbow aches. I slouch and then force a more upright posture. Purposefully, I soften my jaw and deepen my breath, for it seems shallow and constricted. There are butterflies in my insides, just behind and to the center of my lower ribs. My wide smile has vanished at the edge of leaning into this discomfort.

Could it be that the way we tell such stories also “reinforce the innocence of whiteness” (Leonardo, 2004, p. 138)? Provoked, I consider to what extent white privilege is apparent throughout our self-stories. How often do I move about my day seemingly without a care, assuming that all is well in the world, focused on my enjoyment of life? I might begin to list the many privileges that has afforded us such stories. Yet, Leonardo

(2004) cautions that “the discourse on privilege comes with the unfortunate consequence of

masking history, obfuscating agents of domination, and removing the actions that make it clear who is doing what to whom. Instead of emphasizing the process of appropriation, the discourse of privilege centers the discussion on the advantages that whites receive. (p. 138)

Furthermore, I notice my hesitation to draw more attention to my racism, for

“many whites subvert a structural study of racism with personalistic concerns over how they are perceived as individuals” (Leonardo, 2004, p. 140). I have an obsession with BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 250

being perceived as good, which is in conflict with recognizing how I am racist. This obsession obstructs an attention to the racist structures and systems of which I am a part.

With goosebumps, I invite another look at some of our masked statements of white supremacy (Leonardo, 2004), to highlight assumed possession of land, space, and place along with a colonial attitude of belonging and dominance. It seems that the settler self must be confronted with the concept of invader (Newbery, 2012, p. 31).

● “This was my lake and I was the master of the drop off” (Willow).

● “The ocean I’ve known my whole life” (Robyn).

● “It’s a sight I didn’t realize that I’d taken for granted until I couldn’t gaze

upon it whenever it fancied me . . . The beach has been front and center in my

life. No matter where in town I was, I could look down and there it was”

(Robyn).

● “Like we’re letting them play on the dock, and, at the same time, I don’t want

them to play there or be here. It feels like it’s not our spot anymore, like we’re

strangers . . . I longingly hope that it’ll be just us again tomorrow” (Audrey).

● “Maybe we should’ve thrown them back like we always do. As the last of the

clams cracked open in the heat of the fire, I thought it was okay because they

couldn’t see it coming. But maybe the water tasted different in the yellow pail.

The way pool water tastes different than the lake. Maybe they knew they

weren’t on the drop off anymore” (Willow).

● “ . . . that kind of skin. They don’t have proper bathing suits” (Audrey).

As Robyn “stay[ed] a little longer to watch the kayakers go by and the tugboats bringing in the logs,” let’s linger “a little bit longer still – just to soak this moment in” BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 251

(Robyn). For our

ethical desire is to reread and reframe historical understanding in ways that cause readers to question their own assumptions and prejudices as limited and limiting, and thus foster a renewed openness to the possibility of broader and deeper understandings that can transverse perceived cultural, civilizational, and temporal divides. (Donald, 2009, p. 5)

With a cursory read, these water place storied strands are quintessentially Canadian. I’m reminded of Morgan lingering at the Mint Julep: “I can take a few extra minutes sipping it in. No one will mind. They know this view.” What would it take for us to know the view of ourselves as complicit rather than comfortable? Rereading our own stories to question our own assumptions and prejudices can be one way to begin to reframe the normative national narratives found within, perhaps allowing openings for more truthful understandings of Canadian subjectivity processes. To recall the introduction to these storied strands, perhaps taking a few extra minutes to sip in some counter-ripples may help us to see that our “Canadian perspectives . . . are rooted in colonial histories and logics” (Donald, 2009, p. 11). Here, counter-ripples partially consist of highlighting narratives of ownership, belonging, and entitlement that are inherent in the ways settler-

Canadians (e.g.,. Robyn, Willow, and myself) speak, think, and tell stories about places of water and land.

Unbraidings and Tangled Tales ┃takwâkin Autumn

Breaking Up with Life Writing?

All along, and especially as I began to come upon writing something that stands in for a last chapter, or near what might be regarded as the end of this collection, I’ve held fast to the idea that I would not seek to conclude. Fiercely striving to avoid any perceived and imagined template for a thesis and vowing that I would not suggest BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 252

recommendations for further research, I chance(d) exploring life writing methodologies rather than presuming to be prescriptive about writing-becomings. Also, there was, and is, a sense of attempting to evade boredom, the readers’ as well as my own as a writer.

These are movements to move; to get moving. Nevertheless, I suppose not concluding is also a kind of conclusion.

I wonder, again, about the purpose of the whole thing. A summary might go something like this: I am a white, settler-Canadian woman who learned, as a student and a teacher, to follow the rules of school and of society. I was taught I should be Good, which had/has various understandings attached. A pursuit of Goodness propelled me towards repetitions of innocence. Yet, bad copies led elsewhere. Through writing life stories, assumptions about tearfulness, humility, ethics, and decolonization are challenged. Fancifully, I thought I might organize the writing like a book, as an edited collection of short, creative nonfiction, autobiographical essays. Assembled in a braid consisting of nesting strands of four, these nice and neat braids fall apart. The upgraded54 settler-becomings-unsettled becomes undone again and again.

In the wake of losing control of purpose, of the writing, of the self, I surround myself with stacks of books as I struggle to write. These offer a kind of protection, to degrees of more and less. Some of them I have spent expansive time with, while others I have read only briefly and sporadically, flipping to chapters and sections, finding places to dwell from keywords and indices. Sometimes I think of this as rhizomatic reading, or reading rhizomatically. Likewise, others I have only opened to the table of contents, and are kept waiting for a stolen hour or 2 of attention. Propped up by their words, their pages

54 This is meant to be tongue in cheek. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 253

that have come before my own, I draw from their energy. As the tomes accumulate, the ideas mound, though not always easy to access. Those revisited the most often find themselves at the tops of the piles, the others steadfastly holding them up. Often, I forget about the pieces that have become the temporary understructure.

Suddenly, like a spark, I remember an article by Tuck (2010) that I began to read virtually ages ago while writing comprehensive exam papers. It feels both long ago and also like just last week. It’s the one where she wrote about breaking up with Deleuze, to creatively trouble Deleuzian desire. I try to find it in the heap. It must be here, somewhere. Pulling some papers from the very bottom (it must be in there), one of the stacks slightly topples. The Knowledge Seeker (Stonechild, 2016), Treaty Elders of

Saskatchewan (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000), and Indigenous Writes (Vowel, 2016) slide into Difference and Repetition (Deleuze, 1994), Christian Animism (Sanford Beck,

2015), A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), and Evening Thoughts (Berry,

2006). Everything shifts, as is the wont of an assemblage. With a quick glance, I realize it’s not there. It must be somewhere else. Could it be in the filing cabinet, my brief attempt (largely unused) to have a functional system for organized thinking? Again, no luck. Maybe I never printed it.

Instead, imaginably, it was her provocative title that had taken a position in the stacks of my inner thoughts. Some sort of shift in the formation allowed it to collide with this writing movement. As I reflect on my intentions for this thesis as a writing exercise, some of which I’m still not sure about (i.e., a bookish edited collection; the pretense of becoming-unsettled), I recall that I planned to braid stories as well as undo the braids.

Becomings-undone is my undoing, and at the same time I want to stay in control of the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 254

falling apart. Yet, moments between letting go and control are mystifying. Furthermore, articulation beyond a dichotomy, of control or relinquishment, is bewildering. It’s like the blocks of becomings of the wasp-orchid.

Must it not be admitted that myth as a frame of classification is quite incapable of registering these becomings, which are more like fragments of tales? . . .. there is still room for something else, something more secret, more subterranean . . . expressed in tales instead of myths or rites. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 237)

Since I promised to refrain from concluding, I feel unsure about what and how to write some turns as tangled tales. Laden with a desire to predetermine what else needs to be written to satisfy doctoral requirements, along with the self-imposed commitments, I lurch and stall. For a while, I had planned to attempt to complicate my offered counternarratives—counter-wilderness, counter-Canadian, and counter-ripples—to circle back on mis-stepping, and to focus on centering Indigenous knowledge, scholarship, and voices as another opportunity for truth-telling. Writing another turn in this way, to presumably have a complete and full braid, seemed too much like what I tell teacher- candidates to forgo: a regurgitation of what is perceived to be the write-right answers; the game of telling your teachers what you think they want to hear. I notice myself playing this game still, while I consider feedback from early readers as I edit this writing.

Like Tuck (2010), “my attraction to Deleuze and Guattari was first sparked by the rhizome,” as well as lines of flight and thresholds concepts. “As a novice in these ideas, I looked at the rhizome as metaphor to work literally” (p. 637). Indeed, it does work literally. I expected becomings- to work literally too. “Becomings-animal are neither dreams nor phantasies. They are perfectly real” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 238). At the same time, this inquiry through life writing is a venture in “this beyond-structure of the rhizome . . . No roots, no starting place, no sequence, no ending place; only multiple BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 255

sources, interruptions, interceptions, foldings, mergings, partings, multiple entry ways, exponential sequences, always, always the seeking out and out.” (Tuck, 2010, p. 638).

Becomings-undone is like that too. The strands are flying wild.

Becomings- is another Deleuzian philosophy that “operates and resonates while scaling up and scaling down” (Tuck, 2010, p. 637). Irreverent life writing gambols, and gambles, to make becomings- work, towards creations of ethical texts with “scaled validity,” “at micro and macro levels,” both in the abstract and with “regard for lived lives” (p. 637). Perhaps it’s curious that this has brought me to consider breaking up with life-writing, with braiding, and with Deleuzian concepts like becomings-. Or, at least we might take a little break from each other. Generally, I’ve not been very good at break ups.

It could be that I get attached too easily and too quickly. In love, I say, ‘I’ll never leave you.’ In this state, breaking up is not an option. When the dreaded phrase, ‘let’s just be friends’ worms its way into my ear canals, my reaction is morose and mournful. Tears fall, snot wells, and over analyzing minuteness ensues.

It’s not you, it’s me.

It’s not me, it’s you.

Let’s just be friends.

Yet, “walking away ensures walking back” (Tuck, 2010, p. 649). Being a friend of life-writing and becomings-, instead of a lover, could be helpful. Rather than wholehearted devotion, friendship may allow another kind of experience, one where it becomes possible to be distant for a while and then come together again to catch up over coffee and cake. Purposefully trite, I play with this idea of taking a break from pulling the stories together, from folding and crossing, just so. Thresholds and lines of flight and BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 256

rhizomes move me towards a thoughtfulness about life writing as a “mode of the pack or swarm” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 241), towards becomings-. “There are more demonic animals, pack or affect animals that form a multiplicity, a becoming, a population, a tale” (p. 241). Braiding-unbraiding life writing multiplicities are an assemblage of becomings; a pack of tangled tales. Sometimes they are demonic.

Therefore, I resist the urge to braid, to fold and cross just so. Envision these storied strands as part of a tangle, the tales and ideas as an assemblage of life writing methodologies, rather than as presented in single file. As you read, consider where theory crosses and folds and gets knotted up with other storied threads. Life writing is useful, sometimes, as part of multiplicities of theoretical writings. While continuing to engage with self-stories, I am also aloof about them. Separately, they are little things. Together, they form a pack that circles and swarms. Beyond a discussion of method, I turn over the writing and the reading with a contradictory treatment. At the salon, with head relaxing backwards over a sink, while a cream is gently massaged through hair, the throat is exposed and vulnerable. Likewise, becomings-undone is an intimate affair; a kind of infidelity. Breaking up with braiding life writing moves to create a critical distance. It is an attempt to again make everything in the thesis—including the methodology—shaken, untethered, unsettled. miyo-wîcêhtowin, Making Good Relationships

There is someone sitting with Alma in her office, but the door is cracked slightly and it seems potentially like an invitation or a kind of welcoming: tawâw, come in, there is room. It’s been a little while since I have seen her. I just want to check in, to practice making time even when I don’t need anything from her. Sometimes I worry that it might BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 257

seem like I only make sure to see her when I need to ask her to hold ceremony for a treaty class. Yet, maybe bothering her when she seems busy is selfish. I’m not sure if I should, but I risk being rude. Softly knocking near the edge of the door, it opens a little more so that Alma sees me standing in the threshold.

‘Audrey,’ she says my name with a smile and warmth in her eyes, though maybe a hint of surprise in her voice. I didn’t tell her I would be stopping by.

Cued to enter, I step through, ‘Hello. Alma, I don’t mean to interrupt your meeting,’ glancing back and forth to include her guest as well, ‘I just came to say hello and to see if you need anything . . . a snack? Would you like me to get you some vegetables or fruit, or some tea maybe?’ I remember that she has to watch her sugar levels. Damn diabetes.

‘Oh, isn’t that nice,’ looking to her other guest and gesturing towards me, ‘she always takes such good care of me.’

After brief introductions, she responds to my earlier question, ‘Well, maybe I wouldn’t mind some vegetables from that little place in the cafeteria. And some water.

That would be good,’ then, lightly teasing me, she adds, ‘Remember, you are supposed to say tan’si, not hello.’

Corrected, I blush and nod, then start down the hall with vegetables as a goal. I know she likes it when I practice nêhiyawêwin, speaking the Cree language. My proficiency is very limited, but I do know the common greeting. Alma has been teaching introductory nêhiyawêwin to a group from the faculty, during sessions called ‘Tea and

Cree,’ so she knows I’m interested in learning. As a beginner, I find it extremely challenging. I am inept with learning languages and have no aptitude for it. This is the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 258

story I have told myself since Grade 10, the last time I engaged in additional language instruction.

One of the only phrases I remember from elementary Core French is ‘Je suis une pizza, avec du fromage.’ Singing it apparently helped with retention. In my rural high school, after Core French was no longer offered due to a lack of both interested students and a fluent French teacher, I decided it would be a good idea to enroll by correspondence. Rather than French language acquisition, only grim memories remain— of painstakingly listening to provided cassette tapes of pronunciation, the torture of audio recording my own oral practice, then mailing them along with the module workbooks, completed only after much procrastination, through Canada Post for judgement. I am a pizza, with cheese. It is pitiful. Learning nêhiyawêwin with Alma has been very different.

On the walk back from the cafeteria, with a serving of sliced vegetables in hand, I consider my intentions for language learning. In high school, I was under the impression that being able to speak French would open doors to different kinds of jobs, such as positions in the federal government. My reasons were purely out of self-interest, an overrated attempt to be highly employable, as if finding a good occupation is the only purpose of learning. The correspondence catastrophe wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

I have begun to understand that my reasons for learning nêhiyawêwin is much different, and that viewing school only with the frame of future work is limiting.

Instead of focusing on learning vocabulary, verb conjugation, or interactive phrases, I am trying to practice some nêhiyaw concepts as pedagogies for engaging with living treaties. With Alma’s help, these concepts have helped to frame the treaty course I instruct. However, they aren’t just for my job. For instance, miyo-wîcêhtowin is a BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 259

nêhiyawak55 core value, “to conduct [oneself] in a manner such that they create positive or good relations in all relationships, be it individually or collectively with other peoples”

(Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 14). miyo-wîcêhtowin is a treaty responsibility. Part of learning nêhiyawêwin is so that I can show Alma that I care about her, that I value our good relationship. It’s a way of listening and understanding our relationship through treaties, not simply because I owe her for coming to hold ceremonies in my classes or even because I admire her. It’s also not only because she reminds me a little bit of my

Grandma Aline. It’s not for self-aggrandizement. Good treaty relationships are a sacred undertaking.

The relationship created by treaties were founded upon the doctrines of wâhkôtowin and miyo-wîcêhtowin for they constituted the essential elements of an enduring and lasting relationship between the [treaty partners]. These relationships were, in part, to consist of mutual ongoing caring and sharing arrangements between the treaty parties, which included sharing of the duties and responsibilities for land, shared for livelihood purposes. (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 15)

Without realizing it would be an issue, I was carrying the package of vegetables at an angle. The ranch dressing has oozed beyond the little plastic barrier meant to keep it separate from the vegetables. As I pass it to Alma and she thanks me, I am embarrassed by my carelessness. I should have said tan’si before. I hope she doesn’t mind ranch. wâhkôhtowin, Kin

My purpose is to make ‘kin’ mean something other/more than entities tied by ancestry or genealogy . . .. The stretch and recomposition of kin are allowed by the fact that all earthlings are kin in the deepest sense, and it is past time to practice a better care of kinds-as-assemblages (not species one at a time). Kin is an assembling sort of word. (Haraway, 2016, pp. 102–103)

55 “Elder Jacob BIll describes the Cree as ‘Nêhiyawak,’ a Cree term meaning ‘people of the four directions’” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 39). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 260

The Ladybugs

It’s such a nice day! In the backyard, the trampoline draws me near. ‘Maybe I’ll jump for a while,’ I contemplate. Glowing light in brightened sky-blues, sun-yellows, and flora-greens surrounds me. I remove my flippy-flop shoes and hop onto the springy, stretched screen. Before beginning to bounce, I notice an assembly of ladybugs teeming on the mat. Deciding to watch them for a while, I lie on my tummy, nosy-ly close to their gleaming, smooth backs. The red-orange palette is quite magnificent and complementary to the lighted colours of the day, while their black head and spots correspond with the dark surface of the tramp. Gently inviting one to crawl on the back of my hand, its many legs tickle as they disturb the soft, subtle hairs on my skin. ‘I know! I’ll be a scientist!’

The heart-leaves of the trembling aspen shudder over our heads. Without worrying about my shoes, I excitedly bound barefooted back into the farmhouse to gather some instruments. Finding tweezers in my mom’s make-up case, I hold them tightly in my fist and steel my mind for the task at hand as I return to my field-of-study.

Very seriously, I resume my observation. ‘Scientists take things apart to learn what they want to know. We dissected those long green worms in science class,’ I remember the feeling of the scalpel slicing down the length of their grey-green formaldehyde bodies and the pins we used to hold open their flesh. ‘So, since I want to know how the ladybug’s wings fit under their shell, I could take it off and see for myself.

That’s what I’ll do. It’s all very scientific. I think maybe I’ll probably be a scientist when

I grow up.’ I proceed. Subject 1: successful removal of the left side of the shell-case.

Likewise for the right. Interesting: Very bug-like. Subject 2: successful removal of the left side of the shell-case. Likewise for the right. Again, very bug-like. Not much else to BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 261

see. Carefully, so that I don’t cause any damage, I pluck off the wings. I line up the parts.

Bodies, shells, wings. After the eighth bug, I sigh, an eerie feeling creeping over me.

Some cloud-cover has partially shadowed the light. ‘Maybe I’m just bored,’ I deliberate. I don’t feel like jumping anymore. With little fanfare, I dust off the remains, letting them fall onto the grass below. Donning my shoes again, I saunter into the house. After replacing the tweezers, I plop onto the couch and click on the T.V. Searching the channels with the remote, I hope that I might find a cartoon to distract me from the afternoon demise.

Eisenia Fetida

Introductions have been made: each environmental education student has been invited to hold a red wiggler56 worm in the open palm of their hand. First, they lined up at two of the sinks in the science education classroom, to wash some of the oils of their skin with dish soap and water so that we might not interfere with their breathing.57 Then, in another line, they took turns holding out their hand so that I might place there one or two worms from the bin, along with some semi-closed system compost. It was like lining up for a strange sort of communion. Amongst the din of chatter, there were some red faces

(fear?), as well as one or two squirming squeals followed by friendly laughter. Raising my voice to be heard, I instructed them to observe closely: Look at their skin and the way they move. What do you notice? What questions could you pose about them?

Later, once all the wormly beings were replaced in their makeshift plastic home,

56 Eisenia fetida are also commonly called red wigglers. Their habitats include warmer climates where they prefer compost piles (rotting vegetation or manure) to soil. In more temperate regions like Canada, this species cannot survive the cold winters since they do not burrow or hibernate like their common earthworm cousins, instead populating the topsoil layer. Therefore, these worms are considered an ideal choice for indoor vermicomposting systems. 57 Worms do not have lungs. Oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged via their skin mucus. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 262

we discussed bonding with the vermicomposting classroom project as a pedagogical opportunity for inquiry. To accompany students’ initial questions and thoughts, I suggested our collective responsibility to these worms. As well, I provoked: What if worms are just as important as humans? Might they deserve the same amount of respect and care that we would show to each other? How could we treat them with reciprocity?

The general response included some raised eyebrows, a few attempts to avoid eye contact, and somewhat reluctant expressions that I interpreted as internal shrugs of indifference. These reactions were fine, perfect even. My only aim was to work to disrupt the common sense idea that humans are the pinnacle of a perceived hierarchy.

During a follow-up activity in the second half of the class time, one student seemed particularly unwilling to participate. He stood outside of the interactive groups, pacing. Patiently, I watched from the corner of my eye. Eventually, while others were busily engaged, he pulled me aside and nervously asked to speak to me privately in the adjoining room. ‘I can’t participate in this. It goes against my Christian beliefs. The bible says that God made humans above all else. I believe we are set apart. Worms are not equal to people.’

‘Oh dear,’ I think, ‘I’ve stepped in it now.’

Understanding ladybugs and worms as relatives, and grass and trees and water and air and soil and on and on, can be difficult from a eurowestern Christian perspective, but I would like to believe it is possible. “Cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. The tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 7). Perhaps BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 263

part of the issue is a common interpretation of the Christian Genesis story,58 one that surmises humans to have dominion over, to rule, to subdue, and to be masters of all life.

We talked a little about this and how even well intentioned stewardship can be problematic, or, at least, decidedly anthropocentric. Moreover, juxtaposing Indigenous creation stories, such as Skywoman59 or wîsahkêcâhk60, with Genesis translations could work to reframe people as part of nature, understanding plants and animals as relatives rather than simply something to be tamed and controlled for our own gains. That is, we might come to understand that “human beings are not in charge of the world, but are subject to the same forces as all of the rest of life” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 112).61 peyak aski kikawinaw, we are one with mother earth.62 wâhkôhtowin, we are all relatives on this land. “We are all related” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 209). miskâsowin

Purslane and Raspberries

Since I’m feeling a tad discouraged about getting down to writing this morning, I venture into the backyard to check on the garden first, hoping for some small inspiration.

58 “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, to be like us. Let them be masters over the fish in the ocean, the birds that fly, the livestock, everything that crawls on the earth, and over the earth itself!” (Genesis 1:26 International Standard Version). Other translations interchange “be masters” with “have dominion” (King James Version), “have power” (Good News Translation), “rule” (New International Version), or “reign” (New Living Translation). 59 Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) tells an Anishnabeg version of the Skywoman story, briefly noting the differences with the Christian story of Eve (p. 7), and Thomas King (2003) juxtaposes his rendition of the Woman Who Fell from the Sky with the “thunder of Christian monologues” (p. 21) like that of the Christian creation story. 60 Alex Wilson (2015) refers to her Cree understandings of Weesagachack as a “creative force or energy that keeps creating” and is not in conflict with western science stories of how the earth and organisms came into being (1:20-4:40). In The Birth of Wisahketchahk and the Origin of Mankind (Archibald-Barber, 2018), the editor notes “the presence of Christian narrative elements integrated into the Cree oral tradition, though the basis of Cree culture still remains most prominent” (p. 75). 61 Quoting Frieda Jacques from the Onondaga Nation School, in the context of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address teachings. 62 University of Regina’s Strategic Plan (2015-2020) uses this phrase as a centering framework https://www.uregina.ca/strategic-plan/assets/docs/pdf/sp-2015-20-together-we-are-stronger.pdf BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 264

Ten minutes plucking Portulaca oleracea from amongst the overgrown, gone-to-seed spinach, I consult my mom’s unsolicited garden counsel turning over in my thoughts.

Almost 3 weeks ago, on Canada Day during her most recent visit, we went out to the garden together to inspect the new growth. ‘You have portulaca!’ she exhorted, ‘It is a noxious weed and will take over! Make sure you pick it out and put it in the garbage; don’t put it in the compost or leave it in the grass.’ Her contention that it is a noxious weed connotes pestilent propagating rather than toxicity. Over the years, this phrase has passed over Mom’s lips more times that I have cared to count. The potential for an invasive takeover is what she dreads most. In such encounters with the plant, she often makes a vague reference to the year she weeded portulaca all season, with little success.

We never think about it as edible purslane, scoffing at the possibility of adding it to salads. Following her orders, today’s handful of portulaca, held tightly in my fist, is tossed in the bin along with some young sow thistles and pigweed.63 “In a garden, food arises from partnership. If I don’t pick rocks and pull weeds, I’m not fulfilling my end of the bargain” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 126). A garden is a responsibility.

On my way to the trash barrel, I happily notice that a few of the raspberries have started to turn plump and crimson. Returning to the patch with a modest plastic container,

I begin to gently separate the delicate drupelet clusters from their soft cores. The flesh, warmed by the midmorning sun, is tempting. One melts on my tongue, compressed to sour-sweet juice. All in all, the harvest amounts to a plentiful handful, this one not for the bin. Another memory surfaces, an older one, of picking raspberries with Mom in her

63 Both sow thistles (Sonchus spp.) and pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus) are also edible, though not according to my family’s gardening teachings and practice, or our cooking habits and eating preferences. https://northernbushcraft.com/topic.php?name=sow+thistle®ion=sk&ctgy=edible_plants https://northernbushcraft.com/topic.php?name=pigweed®ion=sk&ctgy=edible_plants BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 265

garden, ice cream pails hooked by our forearms or belts.

As teenagers, all of us would go out, seldom voluntarily, often coerced with promises of her jam and raspberry milkshakes. It was our version of the classic Little Red

Hen children’s story: Who will help me pick the berries? Who will help me eat the berries? We knew our reward. In this way, I learned that my contribution to a collective goal would be beneficial to us all, a necessary responsibility and not just an imposed expectation. The smaller patch in my backyard is the progenitures from her canes. My first summer here, she dug up some of the rogue offshoots, those she would have rototilled under to control the expansion, and brought them for me to tend. Kimmerer

(2013) believes that “the land loves us back. She loves us with beans and tomatoes . . . with blackberries and birdsongs” (p. 122). She loves us with raspberries. “She provides for us and teaches us to provide for ourselves. That’s what good mothers do” (p. 122).

I’m inclined to agree.

These thoughts stay with me as I round the house, carefully agitating the berries to see if there are any hitchhiker insects to part with. Pausing to open the door, two bright berries fall from the tilted container and land on the grungy cement pad, one rolling off and into an overlooked corner of cobwebs. I almost leave it for the spiders, forgetting their carnivorous disposition. With a resolved breath, I bend to bravely reach my fingers into the clutches of the creepy corner. Its gloom is in stark contrast to the ripened berry.

My mood has been tempered. Rinsing it under the stream of tap water in the kitchen sink,

I think over the teachings about weeds, propagation, and benefiting from plants. With a controlling mindset, even raspberries can be weeds. Along with love, there is also an arrogance in colonial gardening. In autumn, I will again scatter seeds of mauve poppies in BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 266

our front flower bed. Saving newly created seeds each year, these flowers also used to grow in my Grandma Zunti’s garden. Wistful, my mom tells me they transport her back to her childhood in that place. Poppies and raspberries, purslane and pigweed, we cling to choosing which seeds to sow and which are weeds to dispose. It might help to ask “about our relationships with land, how we are given so much and what we might give back”

(Kimmerer, 2013, p. 122), of “loving and being loved in return” (p. 123). Who are we to decide which plants grow and which need to be uprooted and destroyed?

tell me coyote does deleuze talk about tip layering as in raspberry canes where the growing tip becomes the root which puts forth a growing tip the growing tip being becoming every/where/whence/will be will be was wert in all tenses and conjugations and in the case of slow verbs

Coyote & Raven Talk About the Land/Scapes, (O’Riley & Cole 2009, p. 126)

Understanding Who We Are

Who are you? Who do you think you are? Who the hell do you think you are?

These questions could have very different intonations. A level of harshness could produce a kind of challenge, a provocation to confront settler-Canadian normative narratives. Sharply stern, but not necessarily cruel, it asks for serious rumination.

Understanding who we are, who I am as a settler-Canadian, in relation to each other, land, treaties with Indigenous Nations, and more-than-human kin elicits an ethical responsibility to interrogate settler stories about ourselves. All along, I have used life writing as a mode of miskâsowin, of “finding one’s sense of origin and belonging,” of

“finding ‘one’s self’ or finding ‘one’s center’” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 21).

Also, miskâsowin may inform ethical settler-treaty life writing. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 267

miskâsowin is a nêhiyawêwin concept that, in the context of colonial Canada, also relates to disrupting negative stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination, and racism of

Indigenous Peoples that have been produced and reproduced by assimilation and genocide policies, procedures, and systems. In particular, eschewing “shame about being an Indian . . . inculcated in the minds, souls, and hearts” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 21) may begin to “restore among First Nations peoples a positive sense of origin and belonging” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 22). Creation stories that “speak of their sense of origin and belonging to North America” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 23) are important to “establishing and recognizing the legitimacy of the First Nations perspective . . . to unravel the destructive effects of colonial mythology about First

Nations” (p. 23).

Accordingly, what could miskâsowin mean for settler-Canadians? “Repairing the treaty relationship with the Crown, bringing healing to First Nations, and bringing about good relations (miyo-wîcêhtowin) between And you hold these questions and among the people of all treaty nations in your heart not daring to ask the indigenous people who hold requires that the parties take the steps themselves aloof from settler voices chattering. necessary to eradicate the negative You know they think no one listens and you understand stereotypes and the effects flowing from the stillness it requires and the faith them” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. and the faith to hear the heart beat of the land 22). I would not presume that self-stories as one solitude not two.

~Excerpt from For All the Settlers Who would be enough to eradicate racism, nor Secretly Sing, by Beth Cuthand (2018). repair treaty relationships and bring about healing in and of itself. Yet, I would compare the responsibility to pull weeds in your BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 268

own garden, while wondering about ethical relationships to land, to the possibilities that self-stories can illuminate settler-colonial constructs. In addition, miskâsowin life writing includes a responsibility “to see some of the invisible threads within which we are entangled and to make visible and open for interrogation the discourses in which we have constituted others and have ourselves been constituted as particular kinds of subjects”

(Davies & Gannon, 2006, p. 11).

Sadowsky (2018), a môniyâskwêw64 teacher, developed a miskâsowin framework for self-story analysis, with guiding questions which “allowed entrance spaces for inquiry as [she] moved towards understanding [her] place as môniyâskwêw” (pp. 60–61). Her suggested questioning includes: How am I seeing myself in this moment? (spiritual);

Why am I choosing to tell this story? (mental); How did this experience shift (or not) my relationship with community? (physical); What did emotions prevent me from seeing at the time of the experience? (emotional); along with volitional questions, such as, what assumptions have I made? These are some of the kinds of questions that could support settler-treaty life writing through a lens of miskâsowin.

Am I a settler who sings “secretly to the land,” so “then she knows sister/brother, that you belong here too” (Cuthand, 2018)? As a settler-Canadian, I might have to do more than sing in secret. That is, I will have to do more than write life letters. At the same time, life writing is a means to simultaneously interrogate settler-colonial sense of self, belonging, origins, and implications for living politics ethically. It can provide opportunities to pull a bunch of my own weeds, and dare to dwell in creepy corners of

64 Cree: white, Canadian woman. http://www.creedictionary.com/search/index.php?q=m%C3%B4niy%C3%A2skw%C3%AAw&scope=1&c wr=28438 BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 269

colonial normative narratives. “Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 215). One responsibility for settler-treaty life writers is to engage ethics with politics as part of self-stories. Since writing is an action in a sense, perhaps even a different form of political activism, these writing movements could be understood as contributing to ecological and social justice possibilities.

Collections of self-stories may create potentialities for politics, towards strengthening demands for systemic changes. Do the stories change the system of schools? Not really.

And, maybe they do, a little bit, as rhizomatic stories magnify the cracks of normative narratives and begin to re-story things like who the hell we think we are and what education is for. tâpwêwin, Telling Difficult and Necessary Truths

Mike seems upset. Almost imperceptible, I might be the only one who has noticed. Quietly barbequing the hotdogs for supper, he stands apart from the group gathered in our backyard, wrapping up Canada Day 150. He is a quiet person in general, but there is something about this quietness that seems heavier than usual. There is a possibility that I am being too sensitive, misinterpreting scarce eye contact as an adverse response to this afternoon’s Blanket ExerciseTM experience (KAIROS Canada, 2018).

Under the shade of a circle of cottonwood poplars at the elementary school grounds, a couple of colleagues helped me facilitate the activity and have stayed to visit and eat together before heading back home to the city. Thankfully, some friends from town had also attended, along with my sisters and Mike, whom I had asked to participate. I told them that I would appreciate the support and might need the numbers to make the visual work well. But, to be honest, I mostly wanted to involve them in disrupting normative BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 270

Canada Day celebrations, as well as to provide an entry into the kinds of topics I have been thinking, teaching, and writing about these past few years. It was my way of attempting to tell a different story about Canada, perhaps a more truthful one, a solemn

Colonization 150 story rather than a celebratory one. Today, I believe it was an ethical choice of activity. Perhaps he is just feeling shy, having little in common with our pedagogical interests.

Once our stomachs are satisfied, topped off with ice cream fudgesicles and revels purchased from the local Co-op grocery, folks begin to depart. After thankyous, some hugs, seeyoulaters, and waves from the driveway, Mike and I are left to tidy up.

Hesitantly, I venture to ask, ‘how did you find the day? What did you think about the

Blanket Exercise?’ I would not be surprised if this questioning opens a can of conflict.

We have been living together for 3 years, and continue to work on understanding each other’s perspectives of politics, ethics, economics, and more. If there happens to be opposite positions to have about a particular issue, then, more often than not, we have clashing views.

‘Actually, I didn’t like it. I found that some of the statements were too broad and could be misinterpreted. For instance,

I don’t think that the statement about Over half the drinking water systems on drinking water on reserves is an reserve pose a significant risk to human health. —Office of the Auditor General, 2011 accurate fact. You should do some more research about that to see if that is really true.’ Since water systems work is part of his vocation, and water treatment is one of his areas of expertise, this particular claim irked him intensely. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 271

There is much more to this interaction, which included agonizing miscommunication and some anguish, that I would rather not re-live in storied form. Life writing allows for choosing what to share and what to leave out. So, I will generalize by saying that we were both furious. He was frustrated and disheartened that I would not be more thorough with the facts. I felt disparaged, discredited, and denigrated as he implied that I was uneducated about such issues. ‘I am working on a PhD for goodness sake!’ I thought. Such discord has become a recurring sore spot in our relationship, one that we are learning to tread more carefully. For this reason, I offer this self-story as an example of a moment when I was confronted with tâpwêwin. It brings up fact sharing, honesty, truthfulness, and truth-telling as an ethics as interrelated and relational discursive practices.

Using settler-treaty life writing as a mode of truth-telling,65 I take up tâpwêwin, telling the truth “with precision and accuracy,” “with great care and with careful consideration” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 48), as a treaty responsibility. Life writing as a methodology for truth telling is something I have been exploring now, and then (Aamodt & Bazzul, 2019). For me, in many ways, this involves an ethical commitment to truth-telling about Canada, a disruption of innocence which can result in unsettling, emotional reactions and interactions. Additionally, “simply getting used to feeling unsettled is not the same as engaging in active struggle against colonialism”

65 While I do not wish to use Foucault’s (2008) analysis of parrhêsia as a primary framework for understanding truth-telling, some of the ideas are pertinent. For instance, I view life writing as a form of parrhesiastic practice: “It is a stance, a way of being which is akin to a virtue, a mode of action . . . . regarded as a modality of truth-telling” (Foucault, 2008, p. 14). Furthermore, I do not seek to center parrhêsia as the best or only way to understand modes of truth-telling, but hold it in juxtaposition, not as sameness, to nêhiyawak and Nishnaabeg teachings about truth. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 272

(Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 107). Aligned with this commitment is a responsibility to be as accurate and precise as possible. We might ask, of the statement included in the Blanket Exercise, as well as of self-stories, is this true?

Treaty relations, by their sacred nature, require an ethics of truthfulness. From a

Nishnaabeg perspective, debwewin, the art of truth is also considered as the “sound of the heart,” as trustworthiness (Simpson, 2011, p. 59; p. 124). According to Basil Johnston (as cited in Simpson, 2011), “the speaker is exercising the highest degree of accuracy possible given what they know . . . the term conveys the philosophical notion that there is no such thing as absolute truth” (p. 59). Truthful life writing does not necessarily suggest that it is possible to tell self-stories in full, exactly as they happened. Rather, life writing is a form of carefully and creatively making memories truthful, as an opportunity to be thoughtful about one’s perspective on what happened, what is missing, who is silenced, subjectivity processes, reproductions and disruptions of problematic normative narratives, and the limits of the possibilities for seeing. Making memories truthful through life writing forms a truth pact, reader to writer, writer to themself, and writer to all their storied relations. It is a “parrhesiastic game” that involves the “courage of truth in the person who speaks and who, regardless of everything, takes the risk of telling the whole truth that he thinks, but it is also the interlocutor’s courage in agreeing to accept” the task

(Foucault, 2008, p. 13). A settler-treaty life writer, as a parrhesiast, has a “duty, obligation, responsibility, and task to speak, and she has no right to shirk this task”

(Foucault, 2008, p. 18). She is the “unbearable questioner” (Foucault, 2008, p. 18) who BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 273

risks agitation.66

In the context of drinking water issues on reserve, there is much to grapple with.

The statement in question cites a 2011 Status Report by the Auditor General of Canada, announcing that “more than half of drinking water systems on reserves still pose a significant risk to communities” (Ferguson, 2018, 2011 Status Report). The United

Nations have affirmed water as a human right, “the right of everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable and physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses” (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d., para 2).

According to the UN, safe water is defined as “free from microorganisms, chemical substances and radiological hazards that constitute a threat to a person's health. Measures of drinking-water safety are usually defined by national and/or local standards for drinking-water quality” (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d., What is . . .?). Part of the issue is that urban water systems are regulated provincially, but reserves fall under federal jurisdiction and therefore have a gap in regulation. Health Canada and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) have shared this task, but with some unsatisfactory results. Because of the “regulatory gap”

(Vowel, 2016, p. 217), the precautionary principle has been applied, designating many community’s water supplies at mid-high risk.

The federal government has a treaty responsibility to ensure the human right to safe water. How might settler-Canadians hold the federal government accountable to being good treaty partners? “All Canadians need to be aware of the severity of the

66 Again, I am reminded of Foucault’s (2008) analysis of parrhêsia, and “the discourse of truth which the subject is likely and able to speak about themself” (p. 3). “In speaking the truth one must open up, establish, and confront the risk of offending the other person, of irritating him, of making him angry and provoking him to conduct which may even be extremely violent. So it is the truth subject to risk of violence” (p. 11). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 274

problem, and I would further ask that they stand with Indigenous peoples as we ask to be consulted properly in any proposed solution” (Vowel, 2016, p. 22). It isn’t just about terminating long-term water advisories or about campaign promises,67 rather it is about an ongoing relationship of responsibility. Truthfulness is part of such commitments.

As Pam Palmater (2018, Feb 21) said, to complicate cursory references to reconciliation, first truth, then justice, and then, maybe, reconciliation (19 min). First truth.

To make community, we need to be able to know truth, to speak openly and honestly. Truth-telling has to be a spiritual practice for many of us because we live and work in settings where falseness is rewarded, where lies are the norm. Deceit and betrayal destroy the possibility of community. (hooks, 1999, pp. 120– 121)

So, life writing can help us to potentially complicate truths; to question assumptions made, reactions, and possibilities. Using this story as an example, we could ask to revise the statement to one that is more accurate and reflects complications. It might go something like this: Instead of merely noting that “more than half of drinking water systems on reserves still pose a significant risk to communities,” we call the Canadian government to address all drinking water advisories on First Nations, in addition to communities that are without access to safe water and sewage services (Vowel, 2016).

While drinking water advisories do not necessarily mean that water is unsafe, rather that it cannot be guaranteed to be safe, these are precautionary and necessary. Municipal towns and city communities are regulated provincially, with support. Water systems on reserve are under federal jurisdiction, by Health Canada and Indigenous Services Canada

(previously INAC). More needs to be done to provide access to clean drinking water and

67 The Liberal Government, PM Justin Trudeau, promised to end all long-term water advisors on First Nations reserves by 2021 (Mcclearn, 2019). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 275

water treatment systems on reserves. Water is a human right.

“I made a commitment to be a seeker on the Path, a seeker after Truth. I was determined to live a life in the spirit” (hooks, 1999, p. 108).

“Indian Treaties are not relics of the past, but rather a blueprint to guide relationships between Indian nations and mainstream society” (Stonechild, 2016, p. 31).

wîcihitowin, Reciprocity

“I had been fooling myself that I was the only teacher. The land is the real teacher

. . . Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 222).

What is life-writing? Is it only for myself? Is it necessarily personalized?

Solipsistic? Perhaps it is, and perhaps not only. Rather, I attempt to use settler-treaty life writing as a form of paying I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. attention. As a form of I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, ethical relationality (Donald, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. 2012), it may open our Tell me, what else should I have done? attentions to response- ~Excerpt from The Summer Day (Oliver, 2008). abilities (Haraway, 2016) and espouse an ethic of love (hooks, 1999). Self-stories are only thresholds, “doors where becoming itself becomes” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 249). For, as I have cited BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 276

previously,68 “the self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities”

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 249). Life writing potentially opens the self up to the world, “might help open passages for a praxis of care and response—response-ability—in ongoing multispecies worlding on a wounded terra” (Haraway, 2016, p. 105).

I don’t know exactly what life writing is. I do know how to pay attention, how to play into wordings, how to portray worldlings, how to feel unsettled and tangled up, how to struggle through becomings, which is what I have been doing all morning, all week, all yearssss. Tell me, what else should I have done?

We bought a door to replace a window in our kitchen, an opening to a future deck.

First, measurements and markings were made before beginning to cut out the surrounding drywall. A utility knife slices. A hammer claw prys. Things don’t go as planned. They rarely do. Underneath the drywall, a surprising layer of plywood obstructs smooth dismantling. Water stains, from temperature changes, winter freezes and spring melts, indicate the opportunity for mold in the wall. An outside always wants in. In always wants a way out, becomings-reciprocal in the world. The material merges with metaphor.

This is what life writing is like. There are unexpected blocks of becomings that move in- out-in-out-in. Effort, as an attention to human-beyondhuman ecological relationality, is necessary. “Becoming-with is how partners are . . . rendered capable. Ontologically heterogeneous partners become who and what they are in relational material-semiotic worlding” (Haraway, 2016, p. 12). Respectively, life writing engages with possibilities for creating ethical space for Indigenization: “The new partnership model of the ethical space, in a cooperative spirit between Indigenous peoples and Western institutions, will create new currents of thought that flow in different directions and overrun the old ways

68 I also used this quote in Delusional Deleusians, Countering and unbraiding settler narratives, p. 123. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 277

of thinking” (Ermine, 2007, p. 203).

Life writing is an act of reciprocity, an act of love, of sakihiwawin.69 Self-stories are love letters. “Confronting myself with compassion, I learn to practice the art of forgiveness. I learn how to love myself in a way that strengthens my capacity to love others” (hooks, 1999, p. 119). “To be guided by Love is to live in community with all life

. . .. It is when we are able to empathize, feel with and for experiences that are not our own and may never be” (hooks, 1999, p. 120) that we practice ethical relationality and response-ability. In this way, settler-treaty life writing is an ethical methodology of wîcihitowin, which means “helping one another. Here, it refers to the mutual assistance and respect between land and people” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 80).

Negotiating treaty is about patience and persistence. It is about ensuring the relationship for the long term. The relationship comes first above all else, above the pain. It is about commitment and compassion. It is about a love of the land and a love for the people. (Simpson, 2011, pp. 107–108)

“To be guided by Love in every action of daily life enables the individual to act politically and intellectually in a manner that embraces always a collective good” (hooks,

1999, p. 118). Stepping through a door, into the world, requires an ethics of love, of reciprocity, which is our response-ability. “We are embodied in one another . . . I am continually giving to community as community is continually giving to me” (Sadowsky,

2018, p. 132). “Elder Gordon Oakes said: And the relationships between wîcihitowin and wîtaskêwin, they are all the same. They all have the same connotation with respect to the relations of the land” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 41).

69 Alex Wilson (2015) describes sakihiwawin as a Cree, “natural law” that means “showing love in our actions,” and is embedded in their creation story (4:50). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 278

“Every being with a gift, every being with a responsibility. He considered his own empty hands. He had to rely on the world to take care of him” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 211).

This becomes even clearer if we think of becoming-animal: birds are still just as important, yet the reign of birds seems to have been replaced by the age of insects, with its much more molecular vibrations, chirring, rustling, buzzing, clicking, scratching, and scraping. Birds are vocal, but insects are instrumental: drums and violins, guitars and cymbals. A becoming-insect has replaced becoming-bird, or forms a block with it. The insect is closer, better able to make audible the truth that all becomings are molecular” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 308, emphasis added).

This series of serious quotations is like a talking back and forth in the world. It is a stepping through communal wordings as though stepping through doorways. The words are reciprocal formations, all molecular truths. They are also representations of a dynamic tangle, flying this way and that, in and out, and back again. They help each other, wîcihitowin and wîtaskêwin. wîtaskêwin, Peaceful Coexistence

Medusa

Last autumn, I went to Spain for a holiday. At first, it was meant to be a reward, something to motivate moving towards a first draft of this thesis. Quickly, the reality that

I would not meet that goal set in. Nevertheless, having already purchased tickets and booked accommodation, I went anyway and reframed as a reset, a way to push forward into the 7th year of this work. Once more, I tried to reassure myself that writing takes as long as it takes, that being on time is only important when you need to catch a flight. In guilty moments, I pretended that I would write a little while I was there. It could be like a mini-retreat. Even with such internal negotiations, I still felt somewhat conflicted. BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 279

However, having only vacationed abroad once before, I allowed myself to indulge. ‘It is not like I go on a hot holiday every year,’ I conceded.

Arriving in Marbella by rental car from the Málaga airport, the week there was spent enjoying the beauty by the sea. Most meals were taken on the apartment balcony overlooking the beachfront, followed by strolling on the boardwalk, stopping in souvenir shops, or swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. One morning, a curious flag was raised nearby featuring two mauve, tentacled creatures centered on a white background. Unable to find the meaning of this symbol in the provided hotel guest pamphlets, but suspecting it to be a warning about jellyfish in the swimming area, I went down to confirm. Some beachgoers were continuing to swim, but perhaps they too were tourists and unfamiliar with the local signal. Tentatively, I decided to wade in the salty waves with a keen eye.

There! What is that!? There it is again! Look closely where the water swells a bit.

Doubting my sight, it seemed to be visible one moment and disappear the next. The bell is transparent, like floating plastic in water, with brownish purple edges and spots.

Including the tentacles, it was about the length of my hand. Reacting, I hopped out of the water in three bounds, remaining on the edges of the swash, observing. A few swimmers were still splashing around, but then I noticed some kids with nets, searching, hunting, as if they were fishing for minnows.

Consequently, visiting the ice cream parlour that day seemed like a better choice, in lieu of a swim. Asking the waitress about the flag, she confirmed that the jellyfish are mauve stingers, mildly dangerous. They won’t kill you, probably, but the sting would be painful. She thinks the swimmers are crazy for being in the water with these ‘medusa.’ BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 280

Online search results showed photos of Pelagia noctiluca, along with news articles70 of closed Costa del Sol beaches that season due to outrageous numbers. The next day, cautiously taking a walk along the coastline, the telltale mauve floats were more abundant and obvious, once I knew what to look for. One group of children created a pool in the sand, for their catch. Now and then, washed ashore jelly bodies were left dehydrating on the hot beach. In some ways, the flag is a way for humans to live together peacefully with

Pelagia noctiluca on the land and in the waters. Cree Elder Simon Kytwayhat refers to wîtaskêwin as “a peaceful existence” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 32).

“From the perspective of Indigenous Peoples, treaties were viewed as sacred relationships between independent and sovereign nations, including agreements between humans and non-humans” (Simpson, 2011, p. 109). Of course, the context of Spain is much different than colonial Canada, and treaties may have a different meaning there.

However, wîtaskêwin sacred relationship comes with us wherever we go. That is, I have a treaty responsibility to live “harmoniously and peacefully with one another” (Cardinal

& Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 80), including more-than-human beings, land, waters, air and and and and and, wherever I am. wîtaskêwin, “living together on the land” (Cardinal &

Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 39), is not necessarily easy. It might sting sometimes. Yet, with care and attention, it is clear that “our relationships . . . extend to the land and how we interact with the natural world” (Simpson, 2011, p. 109). Life writing, as a storied relationship with land, may help us to engage with wîtaskêwin as a treaty responsibility.

This is a different engagement than normative environmental education contexts, which often center environmental degradation discourse, such as species loss, habitat and

70 Eg. “Spain holidaymakers banned from sea as 11 TONS of jellyfish flood waters” (Couzens, 2018). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 281

ecosystem destruction, water and air pollution, climate change, global warming, and more. While these are important conversations, what if, instead of or along with anthropocentric stewardship and conservation initiatives, we framed our relationship with land and earth beings as a treaty responsibility. wîtaskêwin is a treaty responsibility to each other, between sovereign Indigenous Nations and Canada, but also between humans and the rest of creation. What might it take for us to live peacefully among the plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms, with waters, surrounded by air, and together on the land? The contemporary Buffalo Treaty (n.d.) is a good example of this. “First and foremost, treaties are about maintaining peace through healthy relationships. They require commitment and work, but when done correctly can bring about a lasting peace for all involved” (Simpson, 2011, p. 111).

On the flight home, I re-read Kimmerer’s (2013) story about following “in the footsteps of Nanabozho” (p. 205).71 Soon, the internal conflict about traveling to Spain returned. This trip was not necessary. My selfishness and the arrogance of global travel was challenged as I read. “The urgent work . . . may be to set aside the ways of the colonist and become indigenous to place. But can [North] Americans, as a nation of immigrants, learn to live here as if we were staying? With both feet on the shore?” (p.

207). Medusa don’t have land feet, but they know their place. Sometimes they get caught up on the shore and perish. Humans are getting caught up too, though in self-indulgence.

Self-stories might help us to practice staying “close to the ground that each step is a greeting to Mother Earth” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 215).

71 “The last of all beings to be created, First Man was given the name Nanabozho”; “part man, part manido—a powerful spirit-being—is the personification of life forces, the Anishinaabe culture hero, and our great teacher of how to be human” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 205). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 282

“The treaty outlines a relationship that, when practiced continually and in perpetuity, maintains peaceful coexistence, respect and mutual benefit” (Simpson, 2011, p. 111).

kihci-asotamâtowin, Sacred Promises

~ living treaties as sacred undertakings, as sacred promises to one another.

Elder Danny Musqua stated: Everything came from our Creator, all things, and all the laws . . . we learned our relationship in four orders [the Creator, the spiritual universe, the natural universe, and man as a universe]. The Creator sets out the laws that govern our relationship[s] . . . sets out all the ways by which to understand who is God and what He is, and how He created the universe and how we come from our Creator through a circle of life, and how we return there again. (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 30, brackets original)

‘What if Grandma Aline really did just arrive in heaven,’ I wonder. ‘Are these cloudy contours her horizon now?’ Craning, I press my forehead up against the oval porthole-like window to view the dips and valleys in the land formed by the carving of the last ice age, the movement and melting that created the watersheds, the snake like pattern of a flowing river fed by the rains passing onto, into, and over the highly industrialized, quilted fields below. Devoid of wild bush and grasses, it seems that no prairie acre has been left uncultivated nor unplanted. As a child, heavily influenced by

Christian art, I imagined heaven as a hidden place up in the clouds, high above the troubles of the world, populated by nearly naked angel-beings with wings. Those who had died were there too, aimlessly walking around on the clouds, without a care, all their mistakes forgiven. ‘Perhaps they are quite bored,’ I speculate. God is supposed to be there as well, sitting somewhere on a throne with Jesus next to him, both too important to BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 283

mingle much.

Interrupting my thoughts, the cabin begins to bounce and shake as we pass through some rough air, with white fluff below and sunshine at our tail. Protectively, I grip the sides of my laptop to steady it on the tray that is attached to the back of the seat in front of me. Bing! ‘The captain has turned on the seatbelt sign. Please remain seated with your seatbelt securely fastened. Bumps are expected for the remainder of the flight and throughout our descent,’ announces the flight attendant. This trip home from

Grandma’s funeral seems like the stuff of dreams, as I envision this realm above the clouds as the place of the heavenly spirits and beings, as the afterlife.

Considering that I may be trespassing (blaspheming?), I am not sure if I should even be writing about this. It could be that the only purpose for such self-indulgent stories is for me to work through things, such as my grief, even when couched in attempts to make becomings-undone work. Maybe self stories are problematic for reasons other than simple self-absorbed solipsism. It might be indecent to tell this story; to use my

Grandma’s funeral as part of a thesis for a degree; to profit from life-writing. What is life-writing? Surely I might interrogate the Death of the Self and the Death of Education in another way. Yet, the priest’s words echo in my ears.

Near the altar, he looks towards the center of the isle at the box that contains her body, which is now closed and covered solemnly with an embroidered golden cross on an opulent white pall. ‘You have finished the race. You have fought the good fight. You have been a good and faithful servant. We pray that you will be welcomed into the

Kingdom of Heaven.’ He reminds the gathering, ‘As Catholics, we profess that this life is in preparation for the one that comes after.’ Do we? Is it? Could thinking such questions BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 284

be too sacrilegious? I don’t believe in this Kingdom of Heaven. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20: 29 New International Version). Different than Thomas the Doubter (John 20:24–29), I don’t require evidence in order to believe, I simply don’t believe there is anything to see. The afterlife in the clouds is a fantasy; the platitudes serving solely to help people cope with the loss of loved ones, the difficulties of living, and our own impending deaths.

Without pausing for my thoughts, he continues, “We don’t celebrate Aline’s life of prayer and devotion; her life well lived. Instead, we look to what comes after. It is normal for you, her family and friends, to feel a great loss. There are many different emotions you might be feeling, such as sadness or anger. Feel what you need to feel.

Grieve and know that there is hope in the life that is to come.” A condolence message from my Godmother mirrors this theme: ‘She is gone to be with the God she knew closely in this life, and now knows fully . . .. I hope it would be a comfort to you knowing you can still talk to her, knowing she hears, and she will still be blessing your life in some way’ (Rosalie Boots, personal communication, June 10, 2019).

The sisters of the Catholic Women’s League, each with a dark blue sash draped over their shoulders and holding a white tapered candle, are invited to circle her and to pray. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen. Grandma prayed the rosary every day, so this may have been a kind of tribute to her commitment. As in beginning the rosary, they repeat the Hail Mary three times, presumably signifying the trinity as a supplication for faith, hope, and charity. I have never asked Mother Mary to pray for humanity, my BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 285

kneeled prayers of penance only another assignment to complete while tickles of disbelief went unattended.

By way of including everyone in the communion ceremony, whether or not they would melt the thinly coined wafer on their tongue, the priest invited all to receive a blessing. With a slightly teasing tone, producing polite giggles from the congregation, he ribbed, ‘If you don’t think you need a blessing, come see me immediately after Mass.’

One of my nephews, 10 years old now, leans in to me, ‘was that a joke?’ I smile, ‘sort of,

I guess.’ As our family pew all stands to line up to receive communion, I notice a few brave souls elsewhere who choose to stay in their seats. It is highly doubtful that they intend to see Father afterwards. They’d miss the lunch.

One of my many Aunties ascends to the lectern to read the Beatitudes. She recites in French, but the cadence is easily recognized. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”

(Matthew 5:3–4 New International Version). Instead of blessed, I think I am only a small part of a kin-dom on earth. Earth has created all of us. Our bodies will all return to the land, another dispersal, distribution, and allocation of molecules and energy. For this reason, I detest embalming for preservation of bodies, made up for viewing and inlaid with satin cushions.

Who am I to be so bold? I am not a theologian, a cosmologist, nor a Gaian. I am not a trained ecologist nor an exceptionally informed philosopher. What about the soul, the spirit, and the sacred? I dare to presume that Earth is Creator. “We made a covenant with Her Majesty’s government, and a covenant is not just a relationship between people, it’s a relationship between three parties, you [the Crown] and me [First Nations] and the BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 286

Creator” (Elder Danny Musqua, in Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 32, brackets original). From a Catholic perspective, a treaty covenant is like a marriage covenant.

When we are married in the church, with God as a witness, two become one family. It is viewed as a sacred commitment. Likewise, the sacredness of treaties is a result of a spiritual undertaking and kinship of three parties: humans, more-than-human relations, and the land.

“In their [ways of] worship, they [the parties of treaty] are talking about the

Creator, understanding, communication, worshipping the Creator [each in his own] way”

(Elder Peter Waskahat, in Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 32, emphasis added).

Throughout my life, this Roman Catholic tradition has predominantly framed a particular

Christian conceptualization of God (as the Trinity) and the purpose of life. This includes the ways I was taught I should worship, understand, and communicate with Almighty

God, the Creator. Elder Danny Musqua (Cree), of the Keeseekoose First Nation, has said that “the Creator . . . sets out all the ways by which to understand who is God and what

He is; how He created the universe; how we come from our Creator through a circle of life, and how we return there again” (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 30, brackets original).

While Grandma is certainly not walking about in these clouds this afternoon, life writing about her funeral is a kind of therapy, a catharsis, even as the sacred links between covenants and death is beyond my understanding. Nevertheless, it seems that it is a treaty responsibility to seriously contemplate a spiritual belief. Good relationships, miyo-wîcêhtowin, seem to depend on it.

The first principle affirmed by the treaties was the joint acknowledgement by the treaty-makers of the supremacy of the Creator . . .. In the pipe ceremony, treaty BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 287

parties signified their oneness in the undertaking that nations represented in the treaty would place their new relationship created by treaty in the hands of the Creator. (Cardinal & Hildebrandt, 2000, p. 31)

During the lunch after the funeral, my mom’s cousin proudly tells us, ‘Alison just got her first job teaching!’ Alison & I played together when she was two and I was one. Nearly

40 years later, she will begin teaching high school English and Christian Ethics, while I continue to wonder about ethical Christianity and kihci-asotamâtowin. Turbulence is expected during these lines of flight. Fasten your seatbelt. tapahtêyimisowin, Humility

After all of this life writing, I don’t really know what humility is, how to be humble, or the shape of becomings-humble. I wasted this morning looking for answers.

Using indexes and library search engines, humility is a needle in a haystack. Dismally, this experience feels too familiar. Broad keywords—humble, humility, spirituality, education, pedagogy, teaching, anti-oppressive—generated a long list of thousands, of which I had neither the time or energy to spend filtering. Briefly persevering through feelings of frustration, I forced myself to skim the abstracts of a few articles at the top of a quickly pared list. One or two may prove potentially helpful in the interest of exploring problems with humility, yet I continue to notice my inclination to assume that this is the proper, academic way to find out. In this moment, worrying about what I have missed, who I haven’t read yet, and my general scholarly inadequacies, I feel greatly lacking in literature review proficiencies. Here, I seem to dwell in a form of negative humility:

being humble in the sense of lowly or insignificant, submissive, ranking low in a hierarchy or scale, having a modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance . . . [a] ‘pathological humility,’ the condition of considering oneself and one’s deeds of little or no value, experiencing feelings of worthlessness, saying of oneself, ‘I’m no good, I’m lower than a worm,’ and the like. Pathological BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 288

humility can be misleading when considering humility as a virtue. (Waks, 2018, p. 430)

A pathological humility clouds possibilities of looking beyond written texts.

Damn it. I forgot to also search the database for the intersections between humility and ethics, or humility as an ethic. This is humiliating. Root hum is clear—human, humble, humiliated. Hummmm, I am pathological, suffering from a disease of settler self-scorn. In many self-stories, have gone on and on about making many mistakes, and am not alone in pairing settler mistakes with humility. “Despite my best intentions, I will still make mistakes. I need to be humble and seek guidance when this happens” (Sadowsky, 2018, p. 131). Here, humility seems like another settler move to comfort (Battell Lowman &

Barker, 2015). As well, self-policing via humiliation is a method of emotional disciplining for social control, “to internalize ideologies as commonsense truths” (Boler,

1999, p. 32), such as a binary of being either good (humble) or bad (humiliated). Along with religious “moral rules of obedience,” “capitalism and the social sciences have framed good students in terms of their utility, their social efficiency and skills” (Boler,

1999, p. 32). This could lead to pathological statements like, if I am not efficient and skillful, then I am of no use. If I am humiliated, then I am worthless.

Life writing as a mode of becomings-humble has partially helped me practice worrying less about efficiencies. However, within moments of engaging with what might be considered humility, becoming vulnerable to humiliation, there is a possibility of also rendering prideful feelings of greatness, goodness, glory, and superiority. “Well intentioned Settler Canadians must be driven to seek discomfort or risk falling into complacency and self-congratulations for hard work already done, missing the vast struggle that remains” (Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015, p. 106). A tension of identifying BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 289

as a humble person is that it may also contradict humility and shut down becomings- humble. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5, American

Standard Version). Is inheritance a goal of humility?72

Is arrogance simply to be tempered by being humbled, if not by humiliation? “I spend an afternoon . . . writing about myself with equal parts humility and bravado. It’s a fine balance” (Gay, 2014, p. 27). “In order to keep that ego in check, we have to look after our spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual selves in order to maintain balance”73 (Simpson, 2011, p. 126). Suspending the remote possibility of producing an equal balance of perceived oppositionary parts, an interplay between humility and fortitude is a becomings that results in something else, a grounded tenacity, like humus.74

Through transhumble self stories, authors may “turn attention from themselves to others, making of themselves the humus, the structure and nutrient matter for others’ growth”

(Waks, 2018, p. 434). Haraway (2016) conjures becoming humus as reciprocal stories,

“the side-winding, snaky shape of becoming-with” (p. 119). In this way, self-stories are not simply about the author, in this case, not just about myself.

hooks’ (1999) refers to her “religious [Christian] belief that it was important to deflect away from self and ego” (p. 114), with “moments of prayer that remind [her] of

[her] spiritual task . . . [to] temper the ego and deepen [her] compassion” (p. 119).

Likewise, life writing can also be viewed as a kind of “spiritual exercise,” like moments

72 “Happy are those who are humble; they will receive what God has promised!” (Matthew 5:5 Good News Translation). Perhaps I should not be attempting to critically interpret biblical passages with limited theological understandings, even if only implied. However, the language of the beatitudes could be potentially misconstrued as ascendency, which troubles me. Seeking meekness and humility for the purpose of inheritance, reward, and happiness could stymie and elude becomings-humble. 73 Simpson (2011) shares a Nishnaabeg understanding of the art of humility. Dbadendiziwin “means to look after or maintain oneself” (p. 126), with attention to these four parts of the self. 74 According to Waks (2018), humility is derived from “the Latin humus, meaning ground, soil, earth” (p. 429, emphasis original). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 290

of prayer, a “spiritual practice requiring that I remain open, ever willing to change and let go, . . . to create a meditative distance between me and my writing” (pp. 114–115), between me and storied understandings of self, ethical relationality, and reciprocity. That is, life writing of this form is “apophatic, a term borrowed from theology where it refers to the suspension of thinking so as to be open to the unthinkable, infinite, incomprehensible God” (Waks, 2018, p. 435). This collection of braided stories and tangled tales is a small thing. Life writing, and I, are of little consequence. “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14–16 New International Version).

Self stories, faulty representations of an I, are mist, fog, vapour, smoke.75 However, recognizing temporality in this way need not be reduced to pathological worthlessness.

Rather, it allows for decentering the importance of the self. “They are insignificant and unimportant in their own eyes, not because they judge themselves negatively, but because, with their attention focused on others, they see themselves as relatively minor characters even in their own lives” (Waks, 2018, p. 435). “Writing becomes then a way to embrace the mysterious, to walk with spirits, and an entry into the realm of the sacred”

(hooks, 1999, p. 130).

From a Nishnaabeg perspective, Simpson (2011) discusses humility as an art.

75 Various biblical translations of this scripture use different metaphors for life—a mist (New International Version), the morning fog (New Living Translation), a vapor (New King James Version), a puff of smoke (Good News Translation). ● “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14 NIV). ● “How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone” (James 4:14 NLT). ● “Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:14 NKJV). ● “You don't even know what your life tomorrow will be! You are like a puff of smoke, which appears for a moment and then disappears” (James 4:14 GNT). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 291

“Dbadendiziwin is the art of being humble or humility, to never look upon oneself as being better than anyone else” (p. 126). How familiar this sounds. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians

2:3–4 New International Version). “Nbwaakawin [the art of kindness in knowledge] means to put others before one’s own self . . . you can think about yourself after you have thought about others”; “If one follows Nbwaakawin, one will know how to handle [the highest form of] wisdom and also remain in a humble state” (Simpson, 2011, p. 126).

Juxtaposing Nishnaabeg Kokum Dibaajimowinan (grandmother teachings) with similar Christian biblical scripture was unexpected and somewhat surprising to me. I had not intended to draw from the spiritual teachings of my Christian family traditions, as part of broad Canadian normative narratives, thinking them outside of the purposes of this academic pursuit attempting to unsettle colonial (Euro-western, English, Christian) discourses. “Self-critical humility resides in the willingness of the self to question the correctness of its own perspectives in the face of challenge and to self-correct as it deems necessary” (Waks, 2018, p. 433). In considering similar spiritual understandings of humility from Christian and Nishnaabeg perspectives, there is a risk of oversimplifying to sameness. While traversing these similarities, these connections, it becomes especially important to carefully treat them as discrete, not simply homogenous. As Donald (2012) suggests,

We need more complex understandings of human relationality that traverse deeply learned divides of the past and present by demonstrating that perceived civilizational frontiers are actually permeable and that perspectives on history, memory, and experience are connected and interreferential. The key challenge is to find a way to hold these understandings in tension without the need to resolve, assimilate, or incorporate. (p. 534) BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 292

Life writing, as a spiritual mode of searching for “a way to hold together the ambiguous, layered, complex, and conflictual character of Aboriginal and Canadian relations without the need to deny, assimilate, hybridize, or conclude” (Donald, 2012, p.

536), can also be a form of transhumility, a way to demonstrate such permeability.

The transpersonally humble view themselves and others as functions in rich biological and cultural fields, and they understand that their energies, capabilities, and achievements are utterly dependent upon these contexts and relationships. Thus they do not strive to make themselves autonomous; rather, they submit to and even embrace their dependence on larger wholes. (Waks, 2018, p. 434)

Nevertheless, I continue to ask, what the hell is humility? Life writing does not necessarily outline definitive answers, definitions of, or guidelines for practicing humility, even self-critical or transpersonal (Waks, 2018) becomings-humble. Humility as a virtue, or as an aspiration, is difficult. As soon as you think yourself humble, it vanishes. “Their personal selves then become less determinate, and they become, as individuals, relatively less important in the whole situation as they experience it” (Waks,

2018, p. 433).

In nêhiyawêwin, a word for humility is tapahtêyimisowin. However, there is tension as I use this word because I don’t know its etymology and I haven’t tried to access a source beyond the library database and the few relevant books that are on my shelf. Another day, if it feels appropriate, I will offer Alma some tobacco and kokum cloth and ask her about her tapahtêyimisowin ways. As she explains why we remove our jewelry and glasses to prepare for ceremony, ‘I am a pitiful being.’ She says that humans are not at the top of things because we have the most needs. That is, plants and animals don’t need us, we need them. I wonder if, maybe, we are lower than a worm.

---- BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 293

Another day . . . I print a draft of this collected writing and highlight every time I mention Alma and the things I thought she taught me, marking each page with a florescent pink sticky note. Many poke out between the pages. Bringing it with me during a visit in her office, not sure how to invite her to review these words, she asks what I have there. I explain and she seems happy to look at it. She packs it with her things and tells me she will start reading it when she gets home. The next week, on the way to have breakfast together, she begins to talk about mother (nikâwiy) earth, father (nôhtâwiy) sky, grandfather (nimosôm) sun, grandmother (nôhkom) moon. She tells me they are all equal.

That everything is in the circle together, that water is equal, not above or below. She says we are all in a circle together. In the English language, lower is thought of as less than. In

Cree, being lowered refers to remembering that humans are equal to all else. She laughs a little as she says, “not ‘lower than a worm.’ Worms are very important. And, they don’t need us.” This keeps us humble.

“To create a critical pedagogy . . . to live more fully in the world, one that would speak to heart, soul, mind, body, and spirit” (hooks, 1999, p. 116).

Trouble

We sit together on cobalt blue airport style hallway chairs a precipitous meeting

You’re not in trouble begins The Dean, a reassuring beam. Oh, looks and sounds like trouble.

Reveals concerns from the Office of Indigenization BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 294

misunderstandings, unease

palpable mistrust - but the spirit and intent of treaty! frustration infestation

Just checking the box? But the treaty gathering is for all! Would you want to pick a fight?

Of course not. Never. Rather, deepen heartfelt relationships We are treaty relatives.

mandatory trust receiving the benefit of the doubt settler-colonial itch Inexperience navigating institutional mud Together, we will fix it.

Forgo the fixes. In becomings capable of response our task is to make trouble.76 Tearful indignation behind closed door, kincentric77 trouble could create trustkin.

76 “The task is to become capable, with each other in all of our bumptious kinds, of response”; “Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places”; “staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present” (Haraway, 2016, p. 1). 77 “Kincentric ecology pertains to the manner in which indigenous people view themselves as part of an extended ecological family that shares ancestry and origins. It is an awareness that life in any environment is viable only when humans view the life surrounding them as kin. The kin, or relatives, include all the natural elements of an ecosystem” Solómon (2000). Kincentricity is a “regard [for] all of the earth's beings as relatives, different from humans in form but not in substance” Turner (2005, p. 70). Also, see Turner, Burton & Van Eijk (2013), and Bhattacharyya & Slocombe (2017). BECOMINGS-UNSETTLED? 295

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Appendix