Jan 11 2019
Indigenous Realities of a Bush Métis - Blake Desjarlais
CW for intergenerational trauma topics, oppression against indigenous people
So… I post a lot of political shit on facebook because I feel like that reaches the kind of audience that I’m trying to get through to. And recently my mom and I have connected with some cousins on my grandma’s side–the other people who’ve become distanced from the Yurok nation but very involved in research and genealogy… some of them have been doing this for decades??
Recently I had written a post about the emotional abuse I went through in middle school because I had seen an article from the ACLU where a student is being forced to wear a bright red badge to indicate that she has poor grades, and it brought back a lot of feelings and memories from when I had been mistreated at school. So, I wrote about it. I don’t talk about it at length hardly ever because it’s a difficult topic for me to really get through, and it’s complicated in the ways that my parents were and were not involved. I got a lot of supportive responses from people, even the ones that were personally involved in my life but had no idea it was happening, and it was nice.
Well, one of our cousins we’ve reconnected with messaged my mom about it and my mom showed me at work today. Not only was this cousin right out of the gate respectful of my pronouns, but had commented that I was very articulate and somebody that our ancestors would be proud of.
MAAAN
I have a hard time accepting compliments, especially if people comment on my intelligence (when you spend years believing you are a worthless failure at life, and are still struggling to heal from that, it’s hard), but the fact that it she was telling my mom about this and not me like… I think cements that. It’s a nice little moment. She also said that she was showing what I wrote to her great-niece who is just a teenager and being bullied in school and aaaAAAAA
