Here are some beginning thoughts from the early part of December 2012 on the issue of settler-indigenous alliance from my position as a person of colour, which I had texted to a friend and who has generously kept my thoughts for me and re-sent them by email last week.
In late 2012 I was going through a questioning phase about what the correct position was for me knowing who I am (an immigrant to Turtle Island, a.k.a. Canada from the Philippines, a post/colonial nation that has its own Indigenous populations) and what my goals are as a person of knowledge and responsibility. Expressing my thoughts has been further complicated by the fact that writing in English has become problematized for me since I started becoming aware of and deeply thinking about the fact that English has been the main way that I have formed my thoughts and expressed them to others. Even though I work as a Filipino language instructor, when attempting to explain complex ideas to myself and to others, I rely on English, the language used to educate me and the language used on things I often read. This self-awareness and critiquing meant that I couldn't rely on writing (in English) to work out difficult concepts. So in resistance and response, I've tended towards having discussions with friends in person (in cars, walking across Toronto, etc.). Instead of writing, I started talking with people. One time, heading home from a night out, these thoughts I had been harboring came tumbling out and I started texting my friend, Jo, who is a colleague from the Kapwa Collective, with whom I had been having discussions about this sort of thing. Thankfully, it has worked out that she has kept my words for me and I have been able to express my thoughts (in English!) in a coherent way. With some minor edits, here are the text messages: I went through a process of critiquing within me the act of writing in the English language, the language of the colonial and the imperial and the hegemonic. So writing in English for me has become belaboured and problematic. At the same time it is the language that has the most facility for me and even as a part of me resists, another part just chooses the easiest path, for the sake of necessity. What I've been turning and feeling and twisting in my mind is this idea as a Filipino Canadian of my privilege and its twin, responsibility. As someone who has my particular history and experiences, I often feel this kind of gratitude and deep sense of being blessed when I go out for dinner where I could order what I wanted, to be in places with my friends and intellectual equals and people who understand me, living well. Not worried about my health or my basic needs. Maybe because I have known in my life how it was not being able to have what I wanted because my family couldn't afford it, now being able to buy what I want when I want (not everything, but there isn't a lot I want) highlights for me my good position. Precisely because I have experienced being with and sharing stories with Indigenous People, this sense of having a good position brings with it a sense of deep responsibility. In order to pay more attention to what that discrepancy means, the universe has conspired to make me unemployed and out of school so that I have a wealth of time available to me. Rather than just making me feel well, I also have a sense of guilt like a thin film of dust over the surface of my days. So to assuage that guilt I have seriously problematized and centralized myself. I am very mindful and aware and I am listening. My sense of guilt and awareness has pushed me to contact Filipin@ professors and ask them about the state of Filipino studies around the world. The globalized, diasporic and multicultural millieu where we are right now, as well as my doubly privileged position as a student of both Western academia as well as having access to professors of colour who resist and make room for indigenizing and decolonizing processes makes it possible ...to be continued 2:59am Christine Balmes For me to conduct this research. As a diasporic Filipino I am fighting for decolonization, for equality, against oppression, against racism. I pledge solidarity with minorities, the prosecuted, those who could not practice the good life as they define them because another, more powerful or richer group is preventing them from doing so. But as a Canadian immigrant I am complicit in the oppression, the ravaging of natural resources and stealing of land from indigenous people. 3:25am Christine Balmes In my period of questioning and crisis I thought deeply about where my position lay. Because of my sense of disorientation and not knowing my place I even thought of returning to the Philippines. I thought the simplest way was the best way. Since I want to work with IPs then I should go where the IPs are in the Philippines. But at the same time I know that to go there isn't as easy as packing my bags and going. I had to prepare. There are a lot of logistical things I couldn't quite figure out. What would I do when I got there? These were the questions I tried to figure out and which led me to search by asking. 4:16am Christine Balmes This asking took the form of actually asking: teachers who are concerned about similar topics like Lily Mendoza, Leny Strobel, Sarita See, Paul Dumol, Analyn Salvador-Amores. But also it meant adopting a mindset and being that was both open and seeking. And a constant self-checking to see how I was doing. So that in the process of living my life and reading things and being in the world I was still seeking. And things I read or thoughts I had became part of that mound of knowledge that I was accumulating to help me in my search. In a way I was like a bird collecting odds and ends that although they seemed random were put together according to their own logic and intuition. The logic and intuition have a mysterious quality to them, that slowly is making sense. As the year inches slowly towards the end, or even that enigmatic 12-21-2012 date that some are spreading now to be the purported end of the world according to the ancient Mayan civilization, the bird that is in me is readying to move on to the second stage. The collected odds and ends will be the material for my nest where I can lay my egg and incubate it to hatch the plan: my offspring, my continuation, my contribution to the continuing of life. 4:32am Christine Balmes Something I read today that I want to add to this is the instance of the Dalai Lama explaining Dharamsalla, the Tibetan community in India where he and his people live in exile, as a kind of sanctuary place where he and his people can continue to practice and nurture and grow their spirituality, their culture and language, since they face prosecution from the Chinese in their own homeland of Tibet. In a way it made me think that my placemaking in Canada is just as important as being in the Philippines because this is where I can practice my culture(s) and language(s) and help my kapwa Filipinos have a deeper understanding and appreciation for indigenous philosophy, knowledges, systems and practices. I can nurture that love and grow that awareness even in exile in Canada. As much as that sounds like a solution though I'm aware that there is an important piece missing here, which is: what is my responsibility to indigenous people in Canada vis-a-vis my role as an immigrant settler? As important as this question is, I feel that I cannot yet handle trying to answer this alongside the first goal of working for my people. But I will just leave it here as a reminder that it continues to be an issue that is important. Perhaps in my work of educating and nurturing Filipino hearts and minds I can keep this question in mind and I can then seek for an answer in the same way. xx
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I read this article on Ted Kaczynski's theories on the negative aspects of technology several days ago. My interest in the article is not the moral implications of listening to the ideas of a convicted mass murderer, but on Kaczynski's idea that technology is changing the way that we view ourselves and the world. I am interested in such a question because for me 2012 has so far been a year of questioning. I am 28 years old this year and there has never been a time where I have been more unsure about my place. I am a Filipino woman living in Canada and encouraged and privileged in my education that I was able to study what I want. Despite growing up in the Philippines, when I moved to North America I became a part of the generation the Western press now call Millennials. Our defining characteristic is that we were made to think that the world was our oyster, that we could accomplish anything through our newfangled tools called Facebook and Twitter. But when we graduated we entered an uncertain world. Our reality is a global recession, a state of constant political crisis, and most importantly, a planet on the verge of an ecological tipping point leading to devastating and irreversible effects. And despite all our technological gadgets, we feel powerless and afraid.
When I was an undergraduate, I chose to study the Philippines and my people within a U.S. university. When I graduated and moved back to Canada I was fortunate enough to find a community of young Filipino Canadians who were concerned with representing their Filipino heritage positively. Now, the third stage of my development as a 20-something combines both of these. I am situated within the academic and artistic communities of Filipinos in the diaspora. And faced with the task of transforming possibilities into actualities, I am busy with the task of exploring where best to situate myself. Using my knowledge of self and my hybrid identities, I often go into bouts of questioning on a variety of subjects. Everything is fair game: what to do for a living, what to write my thesis on, my spirituality, my sexuality, what language I should think in, whether I should move to the Philippines or stay in Canada. And more often than not, these ungroundings occur in conversation with people, and on my Facebook page. Which leads us back to the beginning of this essay. Facebook is going through a lot of controversy, a lot of it having to do with their protean privacy terms. Since I joined the site, I have become more of a mind exhibitionist, representing myself in all of my identity-seeking glory. In the past, I was able to be a furtive mind exhibitionist under Livejournal aliases. Now I have become manifest to all of my Facebook contacts. And like it or not, Facebook plays a big role in my identity development. Which makes me feel utterly fragile, the company being so totally untrustworthy in terms of how they handle my information. All my paranoia about being discovered and revealed is concentrated on it. It's as if I have surrendered a big part of my power to control how people from various aspects of my life see me. Totally unfair of me to portray Facebook as some malevolent Big Brother, but then they make it so easy... Have you noticed how much I have been talking about Facebook as if it were an extension of myself? On the one hand, it makes sense that I talk about it so much, since the topic of my post is how much I have invested in my FB persona. But on the other, a part of me is able to distance myself and critique the totalizing effect of this technology on the way I think about myself. It's an addiction, really. I spend a lot of my time on the site. I get my ideas about the world from articles posted by my FB contacts (people as well as organizations). I share ideas about the world to my FB contacts. I do all sorts of things on it. Once I finish this post, I am going to link it on FB. It's like FB has coopted both the means as well as the ends. I'm kind of scared by how little resistance I have to it. No wonder that article on Kaczynski's ideas is so memorable to me. His extremist stance seems to be a stable counter to my FB addiction. "Halt," he seems to say, "do you even understand the full implications of a Facebook-facilitated journey of self-discovery?" |
Words, images, & fripperies by Christine Balmes unless otherwise stated. Archives
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