We organized a student pow-wow and some of the attendees had clearly studied at the Grey Owl School of Indian fakery.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2015-10-11 20:23Z by Steven

But the longer I spent at that university, the more of them I ran into. People who confused having an “interest” in Indigenous culture with “going full redface.” We organized a student pow-wow and some of the attendees had clearly studied at the Grey Owl School of Indian fakery. They showed up with feathers in their hair and introduced themselves with names like, “Running Wolf.” I remember that name very clearly because it belonged to a man well over three hundred pounds and I remember cattily whispering that a better name would have been: “Sedentary Wolf.”

Dawn Dumont, “That’s What She Said: Red-face,” Eagle Feather News, August 2, 2005. http://eaglefeathernews.com/opinion/index.php?detail=1458.

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That’s What She Said: Red-face

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Canada, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Passing on 2015-08-31 17:17Z by Steven

That’s What She Said: Red-face

Eagle Feather News
Saskatchewan, Canada
2015-08-02

Dawn Dumont

Rachel Dolezal is a white woman who decided one day that she was African-American. This crazy white lady braided in some fake hair, darkened her skin with tanning sessions and then became the leader of Spokane’s NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People).

I had no idea that we could switch races whenever we felt like it. I’ve stupidly been Cree just because I emerged from a Cree v-jay-jay. So, for the rest of the month, I’m choosing to be Tibetan. Since this morning, I’ve already sherpa’d six people up Diefenbaker Hill. (I really should have chosen a less hardy race.)

When I look in the mirror, I see a round-cheeked First Nation female looking back at me, but the world begs to disagree. I’ve been mistaken for Vietnamese, Spanish, Hawaiian, and Mexican-Japanese (which seemed oddly specific.) But I don’t have any identity issues. Probably because I lived on a reserve for the first 18 years of my life where I consumed enough deer meat, bologna steak and KFC family meals to keep me real for a lifetime.

It wasn’t until I got to university that I discovered people struggling with their identity. In my first year, friends would point out First Nations people in the hallways who were passing as white. They would casually say: “That’s Jason, he’s from Kawacatoose but he’s white now,” as if he had just switched banks…

Read the entire article here.

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