Below the Radar Transcript
B-Side, Track 3: Story Sovereignty — with Dorothy Christian
Speakers: Samantha Walters, Am Johal, Dorothy Christian
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Samantha Walters 0:03
Hello listeners! I’m Sam with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of the Below the Radar B-Sides, we’re joined by Dorothy Christian, the Associate Director of Indigenous Policy & Pedagogy in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Simon Fraser University. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 0:32
Hello. Welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted that you could join us again. This week, we have a special guest, Dorothy Christian is with us. Welcome, Dorothy.
Dorothy Christian 0:41
Hi. Thank you for having me.
Am Johal 0:43
Dorothy, I'm wondering if we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit.
Dorothy Christian 0:48
Okay, I like to introduce myself in three domains, because I like to cover the things that are not covered in CVs. So I come from a family of 10. I'm of the Secwepemc and Syilx nations. My home community is Splatsin, which is one of 17 federally recognized communities by the federal government, and in our own oral history, we know that we have 32 communities. And the Secwepemc nation has the largest land base in British Columbia. So I'm the eldest of 10. I have one daughter, she's a lawyer. I have over 75 nieces and nephews, great nieces and nephews, and a couple of great, great nieces. And currently my younger brother, Michael is Chief at home. And so that's my cultural introduction. My academic genealogy, I like to give in terms of where I've done my academic work. I did my undergrad degree at the University of Toronto, did a double major in Political Science and Religious Studies. And I did that back in the late 80s, and started even back then, comparing Euro Western thought with Indigenous thought, which, of course, wasn't at all in the academy at the time. And I went out into the working world and worked in film and television for a number of years, and I'll get back to that a little bit later, but I... After working out in the field for a number of years, I decided to go back to, or to go to grad school, because what I noticed as I was doing my work all over Turtle Island and into Mexico, bringing Indigenous stories to the national screen, was that I was doing things differently than my peers on the national team that I was on for a national broadcaster. And I started paying attention to how my cultural knowledge informed how I did things. So I did my masters at SFU once I recognized that, because I felt that it was important as an Indigenous visual storyteller to make note of some of these things. So I did my masters at the School of Communications, and I did that purposely. I didn't want to go into cinema studies or film studies, because it's very elitist discipline, and I wanted to be able to create, so, and do things in an interdisciplinary way. And thankfully, after I got my committee sorted out, I was able to do that because I remember I wrote my first draft of my master's thesis, and I had a meeting with my committee, and I said, I'm going to quit because I really don't like what I've written here. I asked myself, could I stand up in global Indian country and say that I was proud that my name was attached to this? And the answer was no, because I sounded like an uptight white woman scholar, quite honestly. And my committee, thankfully, one of them knew about my visual storytelling, and she said, Dorothy, you're a storyteller. There are all kinds of stories underneath these words. So I felt like I was given permission to do it my way. So then I changed everything and wrote from an Indigenous perspective, and I wrote in four voices and came at it including my dreams, my field experiences, all of those things. And then I went on to UBC to do my PhD, to take that research deeper, to look specifically at how our cultural knowledge informs our production practices. And I spoke to 17 filmmakers, Indigenous filmmakers across the country, one in Inuit country up north, Zacharias Kunuk, and one south of the 49th who's been involved in filmmaking since 1964. And all the rest of the filmmakers are people who are working in the industry professionally. I also spoke to 17 knowledge keepers, because I wanted to hear from all different nations their cultural knowledge about how that informs how we do things. So that's my academic genealogy. So professionally, I have worked in the film and television industry. I have worked in the corporate world as well, and in nonprofit. And so I bring to this whole academic experience a spectrum of knowledge and experience to this whole idea of how we tell stories and how are our knowledge informs that
Am Johal 6:44
Wondering if you could speak to a little bit of the work that you do at SFU currently, and how you arrived into the work.
Dorothy Christian 6:51
Okay, currently, I work as Associate Director of Indigenous policy and pedagogy. And luckily, I was able to be seconded to grad studies, and I worked with Jeff Dirksen there in 2021 and I'm still there today, and I am involved in many different levels outside of graduate studies. I was on the EDI advisory for SFU for a couple of years, and then I was asked to be special anti advisor to Joy Johnson, the President, and Yabome Gilpin-Jackson, who is the vice president of equity, inclusion, and people, I think is, is her title. And so I was not involved with that, but I've also been involved with being a part of the development and ongoing process of putting together the respect project, which is a program that has been created for HR for faculty and staff to create so called cultural safety for people of color. So I was involved in that, and then Jeff and I started working on creating what is now known as the Indigenous welcoming procedure to just put some checks and balances into the processes so that authentic Indigenous peoples are reaping the benefits of scholarships and awards and the jobs and and whatever other benefits that are Indigenous specific. So I've been doing that. I'm involved in grad studies and creating a community of practice of EDI and luckily, Jeff's replacement, Mary O'Brien, is a wonderful woman to work with, and we brought in Indigenous-specific anti racism into our unit. And it's interesting to see how it's evolving in terms of the work, because I've gotten my fingers into all of the various pies, not just scholarships and awards, but admissions and records and all of those things, curriculum development and looking at how to decolonize those processes so that they're more friendly, you know, not just to Indigenous people, but also to people of color. So that's all I can think of right now.
Am Johal 9:41
Yeah, in part of your role in supporting Indigenous graduate students to demystify grad school and look at all the kind of barriers that get in the way of people trying to do good work, that these are still old structures and systems that you know tend not to work in support of people in the way that they're meant to. And a role like yours, becomes so important to kind of navigate that space when issues arise, how to think through that system to what a solution could be for people and a way that they can thrive. Wondering if you could just share a little bit your approach to that, in the sense that, you know, you've probably encountered lots of issues along the way, and like how you, you know, to be a leader to create that space inside of an institution, meaning you're going up against these systems, structures, processes that aren't helping people through the system in the way that they're meant to.
Dorothy Christian 10:43
Well, there's so much. I mean, one area that I can think of right off the top of my head is the scholarships and awards process. And in terms of criteria, you know, the institution's always talking about academic excellence, you know, so that doesn't allow for Indigenous excellence. You know, it's like when you're looking at a person who is either applying to a student admissions process. They don't look at the community work that people do. They tend to look at GPA and, you know, high school experience or college experience. And for many of us, we didn't have a very good experience in those systems, you know? And so when we do work out in the community and give back, that's a huge concept in Indian country, is to give back to your community and to your people. So working with the women in the scholarships and awards, we've had to educate the faculty members who sit on these assessment committees and to get them to understand and to look at the Indigenous applications a little bit differently in terms of what is recognized as good work. And how do you shift the expectation for a 4.0 GPA, you know, to recognizing that the work that happens in community and for your nation is just as commendable as a 4.0 GPA, you know? So that kind of thing.
Am Johal 12:45
In terms of things that SFU has done well, in terms of creating space for Indigenous grad students specifically, what are things that you could point to that are going well?
Dorothy Christian 12:56
I mean, there have been, there have been so many different things. It's like, there's a lot of Indigenous students who register in the interdisciplinary program just because the work that they're doing doesn't fit into any one discipline, you know. So that area has grown quite a lot, because so many Indigenous grad students go into that unit. So working with the Associate Dean in that area to grow that, you know, to develop it further, you know, so that the room is made for them and they're not alone and lost. You know, out in the system. You know, because, as you know, I mean academic studies, particularly grad studies, can be very lonely and alienating, you know. So how do we create ways that we can provide services, you know, for those Indigenous grad students? So one of the things that I've been really focusing on is creating a collaboration between grad studies and the Indigenous Student Services Center, because those services historically have focused on undergrad students and grad students were kind of left off to the side, you know. So, I mean, I know that from my own experience at SFU. I mean, I didn't have any place that I could go as a grad student. I started there in 2006 and I finished in 2010 and I usually had to go to the Indigenous Student Center, which at that time, was flailing and trying to find a place of its own. But it's now well established, and it's really well serviced with all kinds of services, things like— I spoke to one grad student in the middle of COVID. She was on Vancouver Island and she talked to me about her state of mind and how that was affecting her ability to work on her program, because she was looking after, raising her grandson and working and trying to do her PhD program all at the same time, you know. So she shared with me, and I'm of course not going to share her name, but she reached out to the Indigenous Student Service Center, and she found that we have Indigenous therapists there, and she told me how that just helped her so much in being able to deal with all the emotional issues that she was having to navigate at the time, and how the person, the therapist, helped her put her back on track in terms of of her program. So that kind of thing. You know, people aren't aware that the services that are there at the Indigenous Student Center are also available to the grad students.
Am Johal 16:17
Dorothy, you mentioned spending time working in film and television. I'm wondering if you can share some stories about that part of the work that you did previously.
Dorothy Christian 16:27
Oh, wow. I have so many stories. I remember one story. We were working with Arvol Looking Horse, who is a very highly respected spiritual leader in Indian Country. He's Sioux, and he was doing a ride, a unity ride, and a man from my community, from the Syilx community, from the nation, had chose to go on this ride. So I interviewed him at home, and then I took a camera crew, and we flew into Washington State and went across to Montana and Wyoming to find them. And I remember going into this store because, of course, I didn't have any way of contacting them or keeping tabs on them. And I walked into this little store and I said, I'm looking for a bunch of Indians on horseback. Cause they were, of course, were going cross country. And there were all these people in line behind me, and some of them had been in front of me, and one of the guys turned around and said, that would be us. So it was like just finding them having to rely on, you know, right on the ground communications, you know, and not having all of the technology, you know, up to date. And another story in that larger story, I remember, it was filming a meeting between the Cheyenne and the Lakota, who had not been sat in ceremony in over 100 years, because they're historically enemies. And this was a ceremony that was going to take place that I was allowed to to film. And I had given tobacco to Arvol Looking Horse, and I explained to him who I worked for. Because it was a spiritual network that dealt with spirituality and other multicultural faiths. And so he gave me carte blanche access to everything that was going on, but so we arrive into the camp where they're all set up. We followed the guys that were that told us who they were, and we followed them into camp. And my cameraman jumped out of the van, and he started filming everywhere, because that's what cameramen do, right? And I had one of the guys came up to me, and he said, you better get a hold of that guy. He said, otherwise, I'm going to confiscate that camera. So I had to call my crew together, sit them down and talk to them about cultural protocols, because, of course, they weren't accustomed to that. Even though this man that was working with me was Filipino, is Filipino. He's still alive. But he's married into the Syilx community. So he's aware, you know, of certain Indigenous protocols, but he had never experienced it out in the field in terms of filming. So I had to sit down and just tell him, these are the things we're allowed to film. So you can't go and just randomly film whoever you want, right? That there are checks that you need to ask about.
Am Johal 20:19
Dorothy, I wanted to speak a little bit as well around your history and social activism working on Indigenous rights. You were at a number of political protests over the years, as we were speaking earlier, including at Oka and Gustafsen Lake, and I'm wondering if you could share a little bit of that experience and how it shaped you.
Dorothy Christian 20:42
Oh my. Oka was profound for me, and I mean my entry into it is not conventional. In April of that year, I had a dream. I have very strong, significant dreams. And in this dream, all these masks, a row of masks, one would come up to my face and leave, and the next one came. So it was like they were introducing themselves to me, and I wasn't familiar with how they looked. And so I called home, and I said, do we have masks that I'm not aware of? And I was told, no. The West Coast people have masks. We don't use those up here, so I just kind of left that. I didn't... I write my dreams in my dream book to pay attention, because the messages sometimes are not evident right at the time. So then July 4th at, or July 3rd into the 4th at four o'clock in the morning, my phone rang and I was told the army has gone in. So that was my cue to get on the phone and start informing people all over Turtle Island that the army has gone in, and then I just kicked into action. And my people, the Secwepemc and the Syilx people, did a peace run across the country, right from BC across to Kahnawake and Kanesatake. And we were bringing a medicine bundle with us to deliver to the Mohawks. But of course, we didn't tell them that, and before the run was getting organized, or as it was getting organized, the elders sent out a runner to find me, to ask me to do the front end work of that run. In other words, I was moving constantly. I was writing press releases. I was having to talk to the main security forces through which our runners were going through to ensure their safety and to look after, so I was communications on all levels. Taking messages from the people who were on the run home to their families, and being involved on a national level with journalists and other activists that I knew. And we got blocked out in Canada, so I had to go outside into the global realm because we weren't being allowed access. Luckily, I had allies like Victoria Freeman, who's a writer, and she and I had started working together in the late 1980s and she lives in Toronto, and she's a white woman. And she was able to work with the writers union of Canada and pull together people like Margaret Atwood and some other high level writers, and they took out a page ad in The Globe and Mail, so things like that. So I was involved in all different levels of that, in terms of communications. And then, of course, we finally get to Kanesatake. And of course, having to deal with all kinds of horrible racism across the country. I know that the rock throwing incident at Kahnawake has been publicized widely because of Alanis' film talking about that. Our runners had to put up with the same thing when they went through Thunder Bay. You know, so people, of course, our families were concerned, because a lot of the runners were our young people, and we had elders traveling with that peace run, you know, across the country. So in the medicine bundle, we had an eagle feather from the westernmost nation. So the Haida had an eagle feather in that bundle. So we were delivering our spiritual support from the west to them. So once I got there and I was shut off in a motel room making phone calls. Didn't have a cell phone at the time. Had a calling card that I ran up a $3,000 phone bill on, and I was a student at the time. After it was all done, I ended up having to sell my diamond rings to pay my rent. You know, it was like all that, that kind of thing. And I remember at one point, I was working a lot with the spiritual people as well, and I was back in Toronto. By then, the people had come out. This was after September 26th and I got a phone call from some of the pipe carriers, and they asked me to go back to Ottawa to pick up their pipes, because they had left them there for the people. So I went back and I got the pipes. And I remember driving on the 401, I think it is called that highway between Ottawa and Toronto. And I was driving and I was thinking about all of the things that had happened, and I was crying. I was just bawling my head off because I was like, I want to leave this effing country. How can I live in a place where the government will mobilize its military and its police forces against indigenous people for standing up for land? And so I was driving and crying and swearing and yelling. That was my therapy, I think, and I asked myself, but where would I go? This is my damn country. Why should I be the one that should leave? So that really is where I was turned in terms of how I was going to interact with Canadians, because I realized that I had to start thinking in terms of, how can we peacefully coexist with these people who have chosen to live on these lands? So that's a question that's always at the very foundation of whatever I do.
Am Johal 27:50
So great that you mentioned Alanis Obomsawin. I was at the Chan Centre, you were sitting a few rows ahead of me, it was such a beautiful performance, and I saw her later at VIFF, I think it was the next night, in a conversation with Doreen Manuel, with her work. And such an amazing film that really still resonates so deeply. And you also happened to be at Gustafsen Lake, another major flashpoint in the mid 90s here. Wondering if you could share a little bit about your time there and how you found yourself.
Dorothy Christian 28:24
Well, Gustafsen Lake was on my home territories, Secwepemc territories. And I have to tell you, I did not want to go there. Yet again, I had a dream that directed me there. So when I'm shown things in dream, I feel like I don't have a choice, you know? And I remember I went up there with two Okanagan spiritual people, and we went into a meeting with the Secwepemc people, and sat with them, and they wanted to know what our skills were and where we could work. And so I got put into the communications section and back into communications again, right? And I had a cell phone by this time, and the RCMP scrambled my phone so I couldn't use it. So I was forced to use a pay phone that was in the hotel where they were staying, right? And we were working in a garage just beside the hotel. That's where we had set up, kind of an office of sorts. I remember going to the press scrums, and there was this Sergeant Montague, who attempted to eliminate me from the scrum because I was the only person of color. I was there for the last 12 days. And he looked directly at me, and he said, this is only for accredited media. And I just flashed him my F-You look in my eyes, and I said, I am accredited media. I work for a national broadcaster. But he wouldn't answer any of my questions, so I had to get the white women of CBC or CTV or Global to ask my questions for me, and it was a really tense 12 days. What can I say? I was sleeping on the floor. I was sleeping on the back seat of a car. I didn't have any clothes. It was like really intense. And I remember at one point running back and forth between the hotel and the garage because I was making phone calls, you know, to get information out. And one of the guys who was our security pulled me aside and he said, see that sniper up there? He said his red light keeps bouncing around on your head when you're going back and forth. And I just looked at him and I said, don't bother me, please. If he's going to take me out, he's going to take me out. I'm busy, right? So it's like, just let me get to work. So it's like, you're at war, literally at war, and I came there to work to make sure that the people who were behind the lines didn't get killed. That was my main purpose. Because I remember at one point in a meeting with the chiefs. I was really, really upset, because I was listening to some of them talking about bringing the people out in body bags, and when it came my turn to speak, I was really emotional, because part of my dream was that, and I said I didn't come here to bring out people in body bags. I was told in my dream that I had to pray for life. So you guys had better start changing your language, because that's what's going out in the media, and those are the visuals you're creating in people's heads. I said those people behind the lines are my nieces and nephews, my brothers, my uncles and my aunties, you know, so you need to change how you're thinking about this. And then I just started crying, and I left. And I went outside to the fire, and I put some tobacco into the fire, and I was just out there having a smoke because I was so upset.
Am Johal 32:56
Well, we're here at 312 Main right now. We're on the fourth floor, where the Union of BC Indian Chiefs are located, and there's a photograph outside their offices with Grand Chief Stewart Phillip at a press conference related to Gustafsen Lake, with some of the West Coast warriors behind him. And it's an important part of the story, because the other side, oftentimes this part of the story of who was there, what it was actually about, oftentimes, doesn't get out because of the mainstream media narrative about it. Being at two such nationally significant standoffs that were, you know, part of politicizing a generation of people, you know, far before Idle No More in other places, I'm wondering, you know, how that politics has stayed with you in the work that you do when you're working inside of trying to change these institutions in a way that are more welcoming and more inclusive of Indigenous peoples, particularly Indigenous grad students, that there's still these vestiges of colonial orientations and inertias that are present inside them.
Dorothy Christian 34:08
Well, storytelling is a major part, and Indigenous representation is a huge part. I mean, during both Gustafsen and Oka, I was really, really upset with the mainstream media and how they were romanticizing the warriors with the AK47s, you know, because that's not what it's about, right? And and so for me, it's about getting to what's really underneath all of that, like, why are we actually here? And everything always boils down to the land. I mean, if you've read any of Arthur Manuel's books, you'll know, right? It's all about the land, and has been since first contact, you know, the theft of land. And I'm really proud that I'm from BC, because we are so different than the rest of Canada in terms of living on unceded territories on these lands out here, you know. So it is always about the land, you know. And that informs me in so many ways, because after the... what I call the modern day Indian wars of the 1990s because Chiapas also picked up arms on January 4, 1990 and stood up for their rights in terms of their trade and their agricultural trade. So what I got to see and how I got to participate after that was in the arts sector, because up until then, the Canada Council did not have Indigenous specific programs. You know, the NFB had a window dressing program, you know, but to actually fund Indigenous writers and artists and musicians that didn't exist before 1990. So in the 1990s I worked with a collective of people who were elevating what storytelling means to us in a video filmmaking sense. You know, so there was Marjorie Beaucage, Loretta Todd, Jeannette Armstrong, Maria Campbell, Alanis was also involved with us in that, you know. So I choose to work in the art sector, whatever discipline it is, because I know that our stories come from the land as well, you know. And to get to the core of that. What does that mean? So I'm going to be taking a professional development study leave, and I'm actually going to write my book, and I want to call it Story Sovereignty. Hopefully somebody doesn't steal that.
Am Johal 37:15
Yeah, you'll have it half written by the time this episode comes out, they won't have time to take it from you.
Dorothy Christian 37:29
So I'm going to focus on that and lay it out in terms of my academic research, my master's and my PhD, in terms of how story is connected to land, and how what we know from those stories affect how we choose aesthetics, how we lay out the story, how we choose our visuals, all of that.
Am Johal 37:55
Well, that's going to be a very well deserved break from institutional life and to be able to do your own work, because I think obviously you've done your graduate work, and then you're inside the institution and you have all of these other things to say, but not necessarily having the time to be able to write something. Yeah, wondering if there's anything else you'd like to share, Dorothy?
Dorothy Christian 38:18
Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about EDI. I noticed that Wendy Brown was one of the people that you interviewed, and I really, really respect this woman. I used one of her texts in my PhD research, it was called Regulating Aversion, something about tolerance in the time of identity and Empire, because I think people need to look at the EDI, so called EDI policies. I've been critiquing so called multicultural policies since the 1970s and people just seem to stay on the surface of it. What I like about Wendy Brown's book is that she goes deeper and looks at what— I mean, I'm paraphrasing here, and these are, these are my words, not hers. So it's like the whole colonial institution is built on white supremacist ideology, and whiteness is always at the center of that. So all these multicultural EDI policies are all set up to manage us, to manage all the people of color, you know. So do people realize that? You know and what then? I guess, is my question. So once we recognize that, what's the next strategy? How do we attain equality, if you will. Is that really a possibility? And I don't mean to be a downer, but I mean, it's like looking at the deeper issue of it. Where does it go now, especially now in this, this day and age where fascism seems to be taking hold on a global level, and it's eking into all of our national and provincial institutions, you know. So how do we combat that? Or how do we strategize around that? How do we come together and work together around that?
Am Johal 40:40
Dorothy, Thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar.
Dorothy Christian 40:45
Thank you for having me.
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Samantha Walters 40:50
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast originally created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. The Below the Radar B-Sides are supported by Vancity Credit Union. Thanks for listening to this episode with Dorothy Christian. Find out more about her work in the show notes. Thanks for tuning in!