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've been reading Alison Bechdel's "The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For" and it's been a fascinating read so far. Bechdel represents for me a certain group of people in the States whom I've encountered while I was a student at the University of Michigan. I'm going to try to explain the kind of thinking she represents the way I know how, without using Bechdel's (and in general, her type's) method of labelling and ultra-awareness of different categories that people fall into. There is a sense of formidability exuded by someone who can do this kind of categorizing so habitual it seems offhand. They name discourses and articulate concepts which are rooted in a politics that is neat and consistent and which never changes despite what is considered news for the day. It is a form of communicating rooted within American politics, but specifically within a feminist, liberal, leftist section of that politics. It's the kind of worldview which may not be mainstream right now but remains forever in contention with the mainstream. Always vying for power, but in its consistency and unflagging belief in its righteousness becomes itself uncompromising, hegemonic, and alienating.
Something about Bechdel and her politics (this is the main driving force behind her art; her "message" and her worldview is political) reminds me of David Foster Wallace. They both share a strong voice, a way of seeing the world and themselves that sees the wrong. They both have on powerful critical lenses comprised of an ideal view of the world/themselves that keeps focusing on the imperfection they find. And as a result, they are unhappy. There's an aphorism that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who change themselves to fit the world and those who change the world to fit themselves. Bechdel and Wallace belong to the second group of people. They have such a strong sense of who they are and what they believe in that they are incapable of being otherwise. Whether they succeed in changing the world, though, is another story. Biographers of Wallace, especially during the anniversary of his untimely demise, are in the habit of calling him a genius. But what fuels that genius, I believe, is a characteristic absolutism that leads to certain unhappiness, to an inability to adapt to the present situation, to connect to the world. Even as I'm fascinated by Bechdel's and Wallace's works, I also have a certain aversion of them. I'm often frustrated by their stubbornness, their inflexibility to see things in other ways (even as I am sometimes frustrated by my flexibility, my easy-going nature). As I'm writing this, I keep editing myself so as not to seem like I've traded in my rationality and intellect to mysticism and the uncertain space of the spiritual. I keep going back and erasing what I'm typing. There are two elements fighting inside of me. One is the familiar, academic, critical and increasingly staid world of the intellect and the other is the unfamiliar, inclusive, kind, and exciting world of the spirit. I find myself going back to the idea of hybridity, of someone being a hybrid, which in some circles is idealized and romanticized but in the way I experience it--at least for now--is bewildering and ungrounding. I am using my intellectual side right now to articulate all these thoughts. Earlier I was thinking to myself that I retain a troubling feeling of empathy towards Hamlet. His indecisiveness, his overthinking, leading to his inability to act. But, watching "Student" at the Toronto International Film Festival, (Student is adapted from Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment"), at least I'm relieved to say that I am no longer in the same mind state as the protagonist. I finally understand that the protagonist was frustrated by the answers provided to him by the modern world where religion and indigenous values have been eroded by systems and philosophies imported from the West (including Capitalism and Individuality). It is a philosophy that upholds the ego, the individual, that glorifies personal choice as if nothing else in the world mattered. That kind of living is so deadening. You get the sense that if you met that person and even developed a relationship with him, you won't matter to that person--because nothing matters to that person except himself. He is completely disconnected from family, from nation, from nature, from God, from other people. I would feel no empathy towards the person who feels like that, except that I have gone through that kind of mindset, realized I was miserable, and found an alternative way of being. Dostoyevsky likes to write about people like this: men who have lost their moral compass, who nevertheless seek for that connection to others in women. Women who are forgiving, women who are not jaded, women who are understanding. Perhaps for Dostoyevsky women represent hope, represent a connection to all that have been lost, to a meaning of life that is rooted in something other than the ego or individual choice. Great to have supportive, unconditionally loving women like that in your life--in my life. Except, I am a woman, and I have to nurture in myself what it is Dostoyevsk's heroes find in women. I think perhaps that is what I find compelling with Alison Bechdel, beyond the fact that Bechdel's protagonists are women while Dostoyevy's are men--and in general provide more dimensionality to female characters. In comparison to Dostoyevsky's hero, Bechdel's protagonists are very much aware of the politico-economic system in place as well as their position within it-- although perhaps Bechdel's character are very much aware of the system and the struggle that they eat, breathe, and wear it. There is something confining in that, too. The struggle is inescapable. Principle is all. For Dostoyevsky, individual choice and the ego giving meaning is all. For Bechdel, politics is all. Politics gives meaning. Personal choices are directed by politics--even whom to love. Both Dostoyevsky and Bechdel provide templates for how to live. I find Dostoyevsk's suggestion to be too difficult, too selfish. It gives too much responsibility to the individual to the point that s/he is disconnected from the world and the creatures in it. Bechdel's template, although more palatable, is also too difficult to accept. It is too rigid, still too rooted in personal choice, as if one could always choose something else in order to escape the common things that hold everyone together. As if one could always vote for a better government. One could always buy free-range, organic. Sometimes, alternative products can't be bought. Sometimes, choosing not to buy isn't an option. Sometimes, people have no choice, or have to make limited choices within the conditions of possibility afforded by the situation. And I think that's what's missing in both Bechdel and Dostoyevsky. Those moments when people are in it together despite of political differences or personal ideology is really the key towards a more humane world. Those occasions--when our ability to make choices are rendered futile by the common dangers created by generations of human beings on this planet--are what we need to focus on. That is the world we are living in and that is also where the most is required of us. More than personal choice or politics, beyond the individual, there is the truth that we are part of Earth. I don't think that Bechdel or Wallace or Dostoyevsky quite capture that, what with their obsession with the individual. We are in the world and the world is in us. It is when we understand this that we will find the highest expression of our humanity. |
Words, images, & fripperies by Christine Balmes unless otherwise stated. Archives
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