Alert Bay / British Columbia / Canada
There are many stories within me. There are many stories within people I know. We get together and shape our relationships with the stories we share with each other and what we decide to disclose. Stories that reinforce who we are or ones that jerk us into a different reality that we did not know we possessed. Most importantly, there are stories that define who we are and how we came to be ‘us’. Stories that have shaped our identities and continue to negotiate them as new stories take us to different destinations. This story is about ‘someone’ within me that I did not know even existed. A story about coming to Canada. A story about an unforeseen collision. A story that continues to weave its threads to this day.
Canadians always have questions. Specifically, ‘white’ Canadians always have questions that come with pre-packaged answers. Everywhere I go, I frequently get asked, “Where are you from”?
I generally reply, “I am Indian”, which is usually received with great confusion.
“You are Indian”!!!?
I can see the wheels of identity categorization churning in their heads and to avoid awkward silences and bring the conversation to an end, I follow up with, “Yes, Indian, as in from India.”
“Oh! So you are East-Indian. Why didn’t you say so”?
When I came to Canada, I had no idea that I was East-Indian. All my life I had considered myself to be Indian. I suddenly felt the weight of my new identity on my shoulders leaving me wondering if I was in the right temporal location. The identity of East-Indian comes from the time of British colonialism in India. They had established the East-India Company to manage trade affairs and it eventually became a part of the colonial enterprise. When I hear the term East-Indian, it automatically inscribes upon me the identity of still being a colonized subject. It seems like no one informed my interrogators that India gained its independence some seven decades ago.
I am a colonized time-traveller in Canada.
After spending some time in Canada, I started hearing horrendous comments about the ‘backwardness’ of Indians.
How they were lazy.
How they were drunks and unfit parents.
How they were living off welfare and spending the money on alcohol and drugs.
How Indian women were loose.
All of this infuriated me to no end and I wanted to find these Indians that people were talking about. Where are these Indians you speak of? Maybe if I could find them, I could find out what all this talk was all about. They are making all of us look bad. And then it all came crashing down.
In my first year of university (my third year in Canada), I had gone out to a restaurant with some of my dorm-mates. All of them ‘white’. We ordered our food and drinks and paid casual attention to a hockey game going on. As the evening progressed, my friend Tom introduced us to his friend Jared (who is ‘white’) who had come to join us. We had the usual introductions and as I said above, he asked me where I was from. To which I replied, “I am Indian.” We sat down and enjoyed our meals peppered with light conversation. After that, I got up to have a cigarette. As I put on my jacket with a cigarette dangling from my lips, Jared looked up to me and said,
“You must get cheap cigarettes, huh”?
I had no idea what that meant. He thought that I hadn’t heard him properly and went on to explain himself.
“I mean, cigarettes must be quite cheap on your reservation.”
For a nanosecond, I was completely dumbstruck. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, two different worlds collided without being asked.
He thought I was aboriginal.
My being was abruptly intertwined with aboriginal peoples’, without our consent, and a mistake of six centuries of colonial hubris was shaping who I was/am.
Let us rewind for a minute. The story of Columbus is well known. He sailed the high seas to search for India and landed in what is known as the ‘Americas’ in modern day linguistic currency. The peoples’ he encountered were labeled ‘Indian’ and Columbus continued to believe he had landed in India till his death bed. The identity of ‘Indian’ was/is violently inscribed onto the lands, bodies, languages and a multitude of aboriginal nations that were/are richly diverse.
Fast forward to present times and the label of ‘Indian’ is still being upheld by Canadian institutions and modern day racist vernacular. Aboriginal peoples’ are still being dehumanized and defined by the colonial legal framework of the ‘Indian’ Act. The immigration of ‘Indians from India’ threw a wrench in this neat tidy category of Other. There could not possibly be more than one ‘Indian’. A whole new twist to the ‘Indian’ problem was afoot.
No worries. An easy fix.
The ones coming from India are ‘East-Indians’.
Aboriginals are ‘Indians’ or ‘Red-Indians’ depending on the grade of racism one subscribes to.
‘East-Indians’ taken from India to the Caribbean during colonialism as slaves and/or indentured labourers are ‘West-Indians’.
Done and done.
My alleged East-Indianness is derived from two different colonial projects. One through the direct subjugation of my people’s and the other through the subjugation of aboriginal peoples’ of the Americas. It might not have been apparent above, but I was not offended that I was mistaken to be aboriginal.
I was, and still am, upset about the superimposition of a history of a diverse group of aboriginal peoples’ on my being to which I have no authority to represent.
I was, and still am, angered by the fact that my being was not under my control, and with the careless utterance of a label I was asked to bear the weight of pain that was not mine and could never be even if I wanted to shoulder some of it.
I was, and still am, enraged by the fact that I am continuously portrayed as a colonized subject and forced to fit within a colonial category of individuals that my forefathers died fighting against so that we could be free.
I was, and still am, disturbed to see that the only type of aboriginal person that can be imagined is one who lives on a reservation apparently living off the largesse of Canadian tax payers.
This seemingly benign account about identity-politics is one of the stories that has shaped me. It is one that has sharpened my senses to how colonialism still affects our lives in overt and covert ways. It is a story about ‘becoming Canadian’ and the swallowing of colonial baggage required in the process. It is about immigrants and aboriginal peoples’ caged in stratified colonial spaces that overlap at the behest of colonial masters. It is about the inextricable alliance between us in the anti-racist/anti-colonial struggle that needs to be nurtured and brought to the forefront.
I refuse to be East-Indian. I was never East-Indian and I never will be. I was born Indian and I will die as one. If these colonial labels are discarded by state institutions and in daily discourse, then maybe I will die as a Canadian.
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You just tied a bunch of irrelevant facts into someones confusion. (the indian act, the misnomer etc.)
All this comes down to is lack of exposure.
It real sounds like a lot of self pity over nothing. I am WEST indian with ancestors from EAST India, and when I went to China, they thought I was african, but I just concluded its lack of exposure.
I dont agree with claiming you’re Indian and then get mad when people confuse you for the only kind of Indian they know. Simply say I am East
Indian, and then start a conversation from there if need be.
When people ask me who I am, I say, ‘my parents are from Guyana, South America. I am from Canada’
An interesting read (recommended by thesubjectivelistener), but the optimist in me believes that this problem is less and less of one every day. If someone was to tell me they are Indian my first thought would be that they are from India since few natives call themselves Indian anymore. Don’t let ignorant anger you, all you can do is give them a brief education and move on.
As far as I am concerned, we are all Canadians.
Perhaps the eloquent writer could also be an ardent listener. Next time someones, where are you from, you reply with a fitting answer. An answer that is in keeping with the question. Try saying something such as, I am from Toronto. This will keep conversation moving along better than the non-answer, “I am Indian”.
There is no Indian Problem here. No simply an issue of identity crisis. The crisis is not that society likes to segment and categorize everything. The crisis here is that the writer wasn’t the one you decided on the linguistic handles that should be used.
I appreciate your comment, but somehow you have missed the entire point of the post. Thank you for reading.
HarshZ.
Yes that was harsh. To miss the point entirely. I must admit you almost hurt my feeling there. That is until I reread the article and found I didn’t miss anything. The writer may have been attempting to convey a message different from what was written. I’ll never know. All I am commenting on is what is written.
Bodhigirl:
Are you serious? I guess I just didn’t understand the rules of the english language. So when I ask a “white” person
where they are from I am asking them; Where in Canada are you from? But if I were to ask a person who is obviously not “white” or has an accent, where are you from?” I am actually asking them; “Where in the world are you from other than Canada? Because either by the colour of your skin or by your accent I have determined that you are either here on vacation or you are an immigrant and I am terribly interested hearing about your beautiful but troubled homeland.”
Ok that may have been a bit rantish. So a long story short.
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
When the question “Where are you from”? is posed to someone who is obviously not “white” or has an accent, it is not meant to determine where they live in Canada. The questioner is asking where else they are from. To answer “from Toronto” would almost certainly only lead to another question.
Humans are wired to look for patterns (groups and categories) and trying to determine where another person is from is evidence of this. This hard-wired search and the establishment of patterns can sadly make us prone to bias, stereotyping and prejudice. The question, “Where are you from”? can, in my opinion, be a way of fitting someone into a particular category, from which we often make assumptions (eg. you get cheap cigarettes).
This is not to say that any time a question regarding a person’s place of origin is posed, that it is done so with malice. It is doubtful that those who asked the writer about his had any ill intent. Unfortunately though, lack of intent does not prevent us from making mistakes, acting in ignorance or perpetuating divisive labels and ways of thinking.
Evolution has given us, through the development of the neo-cortex, the ability to monitor our beliefs, attitudes and actions and to do our best to be master’s of our own wiring. I believe that Harsh has asked us to take a look at ourselves and see if we need to do any re-wiring. I know that I need to self-monitor and appreciate it when someone gives me the opportunity to do this. I am not an immigrant, I am not a person-of-colour and cannot know what that experience is like. I appreciate that Harsh has given me insight into his.
Unbelievably well written and enlightening. The subtleties of racism go unrecognized, no, rather disregarded in far too many situations with very overt, damaging effects on real, rounded, and deep people that cannot be minimized into broad, inaccurate categories. I hope that many people read this and understand it.
Thank you for your kind words. Feedback is always appreciated.
I completely agree. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m posting it- and crediting it to you at racismfreeontario.com.
Feel free to email me about it you want. deena@cassa.on.ca