Somewhere In Between

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Like many young people, I worked in retail to pay the bills while figuring out what came next in life. I spent years as a store associate in the seasonal department of Canadian Tire. Like my coworkers, I got questions about lawnmowers and holiday decorations, but unlike them I also got constant, uninvited questions that had nothing to do with the products I was selling. Customers would pause and stare at me for a moment before asking, “Where are you from?” I would respond with, “from here,” referring to Winnipeg, but I knew what they really meant. 

Some customers even spoke to me in Portuguese or Tagalog, only to apologize when they realized their assumptions were wrong. Others were more direct, flat out asking about my ethnicity after analyzing my face for a moment, unable to figure it out.  

Their curiosity outweighed any consideration for whether it might be offensive or hurtful to ask. I usually responded with a shy and awkward giggle, deflecting my internal discomfort — I wasn’t able to proudly express that I’m Indigenous.

This all part of a familiar pattern. After I tell a nosy stranger that I am Indigenous, they often respond with “You don’t look native,” a phrase I’ve heard countless times or remark about how pretty I am — like it’s astonishing that an Indigenous person could look so presentable. 

I often find myself trapped in an internal battle between whether I should feel honoured or hurt by the comments? 

But what does it really mean to look Indigenous anyway? And why is it something people feel compelled to comment on? 

This is the reality of growing up as an Indigenous woman who’s assimilated into Western society. There’s a constant tension between wanting to fit in with mainstream non-Indigenous culture and the inherent feeling of being different and feeling like I stick out like a sore thumb. It’s as if I don’t belong to either world, I’m somewhere in between. 

Appearance

One of the most notorious methods for assimilating Indigenous Peoples was the creation of residential schools in Canada, where children were forcibly placed in these schools with the intent to “get rid of the Indian problem.” This process included stripping Indigenous children of their cultural identity — removing hairstyles, clothing, and even names. Indigenous children were forced to wear European-style garments to look “civilized,” and adhere to westernized rules and behaviours, or they would face significant consequences.  

When I started high school, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t walk out of the door until I looked “suitable and pretty.” I’d wake up, eat my breakfast, do my skincare, and start my 40-minute make-up routine. I didn’t leave my house until my frizzy hair was perfectly curled, my eyebrows were drawn on symmetrically, and my outfit was put together.  

It didn’t matter if I missed my bus or my first class, all that mattered was that I looked appealing and attractive. 

You could say I was vain, but I’d argue, I was insecure.  

The truth is, I was anxious to look a certain way. I didn’t want people to see me and see an Indigenous person. I thought if I looked messy, I’d be perceived as dirty and disheveled, or worse, as one of the many unhoused Indigenous people I’d see on the street — lost and struggling. 

So, I used to use my appearance like armour, shielding myself from judgement, stereotyping, and discrimination. I would get pretty, so I could feel powerful, reclaiming control of my narrative. 

The pressure to conform is a survival mechanism. It isn’t just personal; it’s a collective, historical wound that continues to shape how we, as Indigenous Peoples, navigate the world. It influences the spaces we enter, the ones we avoid, and the way we move through society today.  

Impact of Place 

One night, when I was 15 years old, I woke up to yelling. Not shouting, more like desperate wails.  

I sat up in my bed and locked eyes with my sister. Her face mirrored mine, sleepy and scared. 

The next thing I remember was my mother’s face as my siblings and I watched our dad shove her out the front door. He slammed it with so much force that the walls shook.  

I fell into my brother’s arms and let out the heaviest cry I’ve ever felt, like my body knew this moment was breaking me. I don’t recall much after that night, except that my mom never returned home. 

As a result of becoming a single-income household, my dad, brother, four foster siblings and I moved to the North End of Winnipeg — an area some people refer to as the “ghetto” side of the city.  

I was in grade 11 at the time and refused to switch schools with only one year left of high school. I wasn’t ready to let go of my life in the south end of Winnipeg even if it meant long exhausting commutes, so I chose to take the bus for over an hour each way, just to stay at my school. 

With each ride home, I felt increasingly isolated — away from my friends, my familiar surroundings, the home I had known for 16 years, and all the comfort that came with it. Every ride felt like I was leaving one world behind and entering another. 

I hated living in the North End. Even though I was surrounded by families that looked like mine, I felt like I didn’t belong there. Walking to the bus stop alone made me anxious, and I was afraid to dress nicely for fear of drawing unwanted attention. I’d avoid eye contact with everyone and kept my head down. My anxiety wouldn’t ease until my bus crossed into the south end of the city, blocks away from my school. It was only then that I could really breathe. 

I was so embarrassed by my new life of poverty that I would get my dates to drop me off at an apartment downtown. I’d then take the bus the rest of the way home just to avoid the shame of them seeing where I lived.  

When I look back, I can see I was a bit dramatic.  

But moving felt like a jarring shift, one that pulled me out of a place where I had roots and pushed me into a place that felt foreign and unsafe. This sense of displacement is something that countless people experience. It’s a feeling that is not unique to me — it mirrors the broader reality of Internal displacement, where people are forced to leave their homes but remain within the borders of their own countries, essentially becoming refugees on their own land. In Canada particularly, Indigenous Peoples have been driven out of society and forced to survive under systems that were never designed with their well-being in mind. 

In 2023, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre documented over 190,000 internal displacements in Canada, with around 30,000 of these affecting Indigenous Peoples living on reserves.  

Much like the colonial practices that forced Indigenous Peoples into reserves in the first place, Indigenous people are still being forced to move, adapt, and survive under circumstances beyond their control. 

Displacement isn’t just physical, it can be a psychological and emotional battle, often leading to feeling lost and disconnected. 

Family Dynamics 

When I was in elementary school, I spent a lot of time outside the house. I was disconnected from what was happening within my family — partly because I was a naïve kid, but also because I was the baby of the family and my siblings shielded me from household toxicity. They were my protectors, stepping in to handle tough situations and allowing me to stay in my own little world of innocence.  

They chose to deal with the arguments and stress, while I lived a carefree life. I spent evenings with my friends playing Manhunt and Truth or Dare, coming home to a warm meal, a good night’s sleep, and waking up to do it all over again — never realizing how much my siblings took on to let me stay happily unaware. 

This is something I will forever be grateful to my siblings for, but it’s also something I will always feel guilty over. They had to bear the weight of everything happening at home, hiding their own pain and emotions to protect me, all while I got to be a kid for as long as I could. 

After my parents separated, my siblings and I did our best to hide the messiness of our lives from everyone. Everything was a secret. Nobody knew I watched my dad go through depression and self-medicate with a six-pack, or that I developed abandonment issues when my mom and siblings left. Nobody knew the truth, sadness, and dread I felt every single day. 

But as I’ve gotten older and reflected on my life, I’ve come to a few realizations about my family. 

It wasn’t that my dad didn’t love me, it was that our house and family was a product of displacement: the result of a broken system that never gave my father a chance. 

It wasn’t that my mom wanted to leave me; she had to love herself enough to leave my dad and focus on becoming her best self. By doing so, she was better able to love and care for her children. 

Intergenerational trauma runs deep in my family. My parents were trapped in the patterns they were taught and carried burdens that were too difficult to shake. 

My dad grew up in an environment where he was left to fend for himself. His parents were consumed by their own issues and tuned them out with alcohol. This led to a childhood of hardships and neglect, where survival became the focus.  

The absence of love and support created deep wounds for my dad, and he lacked the emotional tools to process or heal them. These unhealed wounds carried forward and without the support or knowledge of how to break the cycle, he fell into the same destructive path — alcohol became his way of coping with the pain.  

My mom grew up in an environment where expressing emotions wasn’t the norm. Her parents were loving, but their love was quiet and reserved. Emotional vulnerability was never modeled or encouraged, leaving her with little guidance on how to process her own feelings and express them aloud.  

She learned to suppress her emotions, and the lack of open communication created a sense of isolation, leading her to feel like she had to handle everything on her own. Like my dad, she repeated patterns from her upbringing, unable to break the silence and emotional repression. She followed what her parents taught her and passed this down to my siblings and me. 

When we understand intergenerational trauma, it becomes clear why my parents had trouble navigating life, relationships, and parenting. They were products of a broken system — trying to survive without the right tools and winging it as they went. 

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This broken, dysfunctional family structure isn’t unique to me. It’s a direct result of systemic colonial policies like the Sixties Scoop — when Indigenous children were removed from their homes at alarming rates and adopted by white families or placed in Residential schools. 

Because of these policies, parents were denied the opportunity to provide the nurturing and guidance their children needed, and children were denied the opportunity to be loved and cared for. As a result, Indigenous families were denied the opportunity to build strong, supportive foundations. 

These children grew into adulthood, unsure of how to raise their own children with love and discipline, creating a cycle of tarnished emotional connections and dysfunctional parenting patterns.  

As a result, many Indigenous families were and continue to be disrupted and fractured. 

The overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the Canadian foster care system is a direct outcome, accounting for 53.8 per cent of kids in care despite making up only 7.7 per cent of the overall child population. 

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My seven nieces and nephews are a part of the 53.8 per cent.  

My parents have fostered many of them throughout my life, both together, and individually after they separated. Their mom — my half-sister — didn’t have the capacity to care for her babies because of her dependency on drugs. 

As a result, all seven of her kids have been through the system, shuffled through my home and filling the bedrooms down the hall or sharing a room with me. 

As of today, I’m a great-aunt to three thriving babies, and I’m happy to say this cycle seems to be changing. 

But stopping that cycle isn’t easy. Echoed through generations, it’s incredibly difficult to heal from wounds of disconnection, abandonment, and the emotional scars of being mentally and physically torn apart from your family. 

How do you navigate rebuilding family bonds that were intentionally torn apart? 

Socialization and Role Models

Take a moment to think about a person in your life who has pushed you to be your best self — someone who encouraged you to do well in school, pursue passions, sports or hobbies, and taught you the life skills needed to succeed. Now, imagine if you didn’t have that person, and all the other parental figures around you were dysfunctional. Who would influence your thoughts, behaviour or direction in life. Without someone to guide you, how lost would you be? 

If no one taught you the tools to be successful or pushed you to aim higher, you might follow the same path of someone close to you. In my case, this could’ve meant dropping out of school, becoming an addict, or drifting through life. 

Luckily, I had people who forced me to play sports, which turned out to be a key factor that differentiated me from my family. I feel fortunate to have someone who pushed me to participate. 

In elementary school, Mr. P, my amazing gym teacher, encouraged me to play on every sports team. He gave me confidence and provided me with the resources to excel. Once I got to high school, his wife — Mrs. P — was my guidance counsellor and she pushed me to continue. Let’s just say I will forever be indebted to this couple. 

You hear it all the time: “Sports are transformational,” and in my case, they were. They taught me patience, how to celebrate wins, handle loss, be proud of myself, work in a team, and most importantly, they gave me a sense of belonging. 

The students in my elementary and high school were predominantly white middle-class. I, on the other hand, came from a lower-socioeconomic background and a dysfunctional family dynamic. Yet, I seemingly fit in. I believe this was largely due to my involvement in sports. 

Through the teams I was part of, I found a community that accepted me, a place where my background didn’t matter as much as my skills and dedication. Being involved in sports was a lifeline, offering me opportunities I otherwise wouldn’t get. 

While my siblings and I shared similar struggles, the one constant difference in my life was that sports gave me a sense of purpose. I was like my family, but I was also like the other girls at my school. I dated the hockey guys, I went to parties, I had sleepovers and great friends. I spent weekends at tournaments and competitions, and as far as I could tell, nobody thought I was different.  

The only difference is that I went home to chaos. I’d wake up for my Saturday morning games to the smell of Budweiser and the sound of sad country music playing on the computer.  

But with sports, I got the opportunity to be somewhere else entirely, surrounded by people whose lives were vastly different than mine. I got to see the kind of life I wanted — families who ate dinner together, parents who would set curfews, and siblings who had close, open and supportive relationships with each other, compared to the more parental role mine played. 

I got to see how different life could be and it influenced how I envisioned my future. 

Colonization in Everyday Life

My 13-year-old niece says I “act white.” 

Let me clarify, I think I act like many other millennial/Gen Z females. I like to sit in coffee shops and ‘yap.’ I wear tote bags and dress trendy. I love taking “aesthetic” photos and posting to Instagram. I crave trips to HomeSense and Marshalls, and I enjoy pilates and yoga classes in my free time.  

But these normal, mundane activities are seen as “white” behaviours in my niece’s eyes. 

I think her opinion of my behaviour reflects her own internalized perceptions of what it means to be Indigenous and what behaviours are “appropriate” or “normal” for someone of our background.  

When I don’t fit this mould, it becomes a reminder of the confusion we, as Indigenous people, feel about where we fit in the world — about how fraudulent it can feel to try out different things that society portrays as out of our scope. 

Little does she know that I still experience the same prejudices as other Indigenous women. I still get followed in stores and treated with suspicion when my appearance doesn’t fit the norm. I still have trouble managing money, facing challenges in school, and feel the quiet self-doubt creep in when I walk into certain places. I’m still affected by societal standards, oppression, and personal insecurities. I still fit into the stereotype I’m categorized in.

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Someone recently asked me “How did you turn out so good?” after I shared with them what’s going on in my life. At first, I thought it was a compliment, but then I felt a wave of guilt. It was like I had inadvertently reaffirmed the narrative of Indigenous Peoples being broken and less capable. She was genuinely shocked at how “well” I was doing despite only hearing a glimpse of my family life and hardships. 

People often don’t see the weight on our shoulders that never seems to leave — the systems that slow our progress or the restraints that only allow us to go so far. But they also overlook the resilience, humour, light-heartedness, and strength that define us. These qualities are just as central to who Indigenous Peoples are.  

Vulnerability

I always say that Indigenous People are some of the funniest, most easy-going and chill people to talk to. We’re naturally laid-back and we love to laugh at ourselves. The dark truth is that humour helps hide the absurdity of what our people endured. Laughter acts as a shield, deflecting the pain to keep the weight from crushing us. 

This was a learned trait passed down through generations of people who were silenced — a tool to navigate the harsh realities faced, and a way to avoid talking about things we were too hurt by or too embarrassed to admit. 

When I was a teenager, I vowed to myself I’d never let anyone see me cry. I refused to look weak, and I’d never open myself up to anyone past a certain point. 

I wouldn’t ask for help and always denied needing it when my guidance counsellor offered.  All my problems were mine alone, stored in a part of my brain that was inaccessible to anyone but me. 

This wasn’t just a personal choice, it was something that felt deeply ingrained in me, like if I were to open the door just a crack, everything would come pouring out and no one would understand or relate. It was easier to keep it locked away.  

My parents and my siblings never really talked about feelings or the soft stuff, but we sure did have a lot of laughs. 

I masked my emotions by being quiet, nice, and funny, depending on who I was around and what I was coping with at the time. Some days I would go to school happy, social, and engaged. But at night, I’d sit on my bed in tears, begging God to help me, questioning why I got stuck with these issues and why I couldn’t just be happy. 

Eventually I realized how therapeutic talking, sharing, and letting people in is. I’ve worked hard to break my barrier of being silenced, and I’ve let people close to me have a spare key to that part of my brain.  

Speaking out loud to myself and others about my struggles my insecurities and my fears, gave me a chance to understand why I feel the way I do, and why I am the way I am. 

Through this process of self-reflection, I began to realize how much control I actually have over my own life. It wasn’t just about figuring out why I feel the way I do, but also about realizing that moving forward isn’t something that happens to me — it’s something I have a say in. 

Choice

The difference between moving and being displaced is having a choice. Displacement means not fitting in, not fitting anywhere, being stagnant, or moving constantly with no spot to land. The decision to move comes from the inside, but being displaced comes from the outside.   

For most of my life I’ve felt trapped by circumstances beyond my control. I was confined behind an invisible, impenetrable wall, unable to move toward the life I wanted. It’s easy to feel trapped and scared when you’re surrounded by forces you can’t see but can feel, such as social bias, historical traumas, and stereotypes. These can keep you tethered to a place and a life that isn’t the one you want to live. 

Even with this wall in place, there’s always the choice to try and break free. There will always be the possibility of cracks or weak spots — you just have to be willing to find them and tear the wall down. 

For a long time, I wanted to push past the wall and escape the limitations placed on me. But I couldn’t recognize the opportunities, and when they did appear, I was too afraid to take them. 

Now, I seize every opportunity so I can move forward. I lean into the positive aspects of my life — the strength and resilience passed down from my parents and the grace they had in navigating hardships. I choose compassion and acceptance.  

It started with small choices: Understanding the root of my behaviour and thoughts, spending more time with my family, forgiving and empathizing with my parents. Then, I started making bigger ones: Going to post-secondary, saving money, creating healthy relationships.   

Today, I work at an Indigenous non-profit, helping people in the community who are impacted by the same systems that shaped my family’s life. 

I’m choosing to take up space and reclaim my narrative. I’m not just doing this for myself — I’m doing it for the future of my family, for my nieces and nephews, hoping they chose to move alongside me.

Healing

As Indigenous Peoples, we’re all identified by a collective pain, a pain that nobody but us can see. Our history is alive inside us. 

Many of us yearn to heal but are often constrained by our restricted parameters for movement. We’re restricted by daily barriers — lack of resources, opportunities, discipline, role models, and support — along with the immense weight of loss: lost land, culture, pride, and identity. On top of that, we continue to have to wrestle with the lasting effects of forced displacement, which for some is on-going. It’s no wonder so many of us are lost and have trouble finding our place.  

Displacement is not just shift in geography, it’s an ongoing battle to maintain identity, belonging, and dignity. For many, the feeling of being stuck or torn between two worlds is a shared experience that continues to shape our lives. 

As I’ve learned to navigate this “in-between” space where both my roots and my present intersect, I’ve come to understand that finding peace in both worlds and recognizing my place in each, is a crucial part of reclaiming my power and healing. Collectively, progress happens when we, as individuals and as a society, make the effort to understand the root causes of pain and obstacles that continue to affect Indigenous Peoples in a society that has long oppressed us. Only then will we move toward a future where all Indigenous Peoples can stand firmly and confidently declare “I’m Indigenous and proud,” in both worlds, and anywhere in between.