00:00:00.000If you want to support the Missing Witches project, join the coven, find out how at missingwitches.com, or buy our books, New Moon Magic and Missing Witches, and check out the Missing Witches Deck of Oracles.1.00
00:00:14.140You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch.1.00
00:14:54.520right because I grew up in the evangelical church so there's one univocal reliable narrator for the
00:15:00.620whole bible and now I'm like no there isn't there's a whole bunch of unreliable narrators
00:15:05.880with their own ideas and their own beliefs their own nation building their own looking
00:15:12.660backwards and trying to create a narrative out of what may have been isolated incidents
00:15:17.920and that's okay that doesn't have to make the text itself unreliable that means we can still
00:15:24.200go to it to help us understand how we fit into the world. It allows for much more expansive
00:15:30.240reading of the text. And I think that's a little more consistent with Jewish readers themselves.
00:15:35.440Oh, I love it. I have 75 follow-up questions. I want to read this piece because it really
00:15:41.980jumped out at me when I was reading Becoming Kin. And I think it ties into what you're saying about
00:15:50.480your own god fucking heartbreaking journey working in social services you wrote contemporary0.89
00:15:57.860theorists see iniquity as a lack of access to social resources they talk about racism in our0.98
00:16:03.220social structures rather than analyzing land ownership itself and that's interesting to me
00:16:07.760because disconnecting iniquity from access to land any social justice action that we take
00:16:13.440reinforces settler colonialism we're simply making settler colonialism fairer and more just
00:16:19.900which means that our movements are built on Indigenous erasure.0.91
00:16:25.200Just thanks, first of all, for putting that so clearly, right, that when we make access to1.00
00:16:31.160services and to systems easier, which I don't think we've made them very easy, but that we're
00:16:36.760still hiding the underlying injustice, the underlying genocide. And I think it's so exciting
00:16:44.140to sort of rip that off and say, let's talk honestly about what land back means. How does
00:16:49.740it work? How can it be fertile and future forming instead of something that maybe feels really like
00:16:58.460too scary to talk about if you are a settler colonizer or descended?
00:17:02.940Well, for me, I mean, in Canada, 92% of land is publicly held anyway, right? So releasing all of
00:17:11.160that land back to native people like most people wouldn't even notice extraction industries would
00:17:18.060notice we we as native people would now be like no you can't actually pull diamonds out of the
00:17:23.120ground for free but that's also just a change in ownership right and that's i think where people
00:17:28.120get hung up on land back is what about my house am i going to lose my house and it's really on a
00:17:32.920good day we're six percent of the population what are we going to do with 15 houses each
00:17:36.520And we take everybody's house and send them back to wherever. And so it really isn't that. It's shifting our relationship to land. Because we can do so much about inequity if we just abolish land ownership.
00:17:49.320If people could just live places and have access to land and thinking about my own relatives in Northwestern Ontario who have to have a job as a hunting guy in order to access their own traditional lands that they're, I don't even want to say like ancestors, which puts it like so far back in the ancient past, but that their grandparents and great grandparents accessed without any barrier.
00:18:15.240This really hasn't been around for that long, you know, the way that we conceptualize land ownership now. And when the Europeans got here, they didn't think about land the way we think about it now either. The enclosure process was just getting started. You know, so these ideas about the way we treat land right now is just so recent, and so devastating.
00:18:34.940W.E. Du Bois talks about this as well. That's just before the quote that you mentioned. I talk about Du Bois, who connects access to land with racism. And we can see that. And so Land Back, it's really about shifting our relationship to land. And that's something that we can do long before we get the government to abolish it.
00:18:55.100And if we think that that's never going to happen, slavery got abolished.
00:18:59.620And that was billions of dollars that just evaporated from the economy when enslaved people were set free.
00:19:15.020And a change in ownership is not necessarily a bad thing.
00:19:18.540If the churches gave back the land that they're sitting on to the tribes from which it was taken, that would be immensely helpful.
00:19:29.040And also would profoundly change the way they operate right now if you're afraid of being evicted, because you've just given your land back, you know, to the Mohawk, right, the Catholic Church in Montreal gives their land back to the Mohawk, but they want to keep operating their churches.
00:19:43.200And so now they've signed lease agreements.
00:19:45.880They're going to behave differently because they want that lease to be renewed.
00:19:49.660And so it really is also about thinking who's got authority over the land that you're occupying.0.76
00:19:55.320Because if we acted as if Indigenous people had authority over our land, then we're going to be submitting building permits to them as well and land use plans to them as well.
00:20:09.000and there are examples of churches that have done this that have wanted to expand and the tribe did
00:20:16.320offer other alternatives because of waterways that had been covered which is why the ground
00:20:22.300keeps flooding because water will keep moving so they did offer other things and it created a really
00:20:27.540good relationship and so while we work towards just like while abolitionists work towards the
00:20:33.420abolition of slavery, they adopted different relations, you know, with enslaved people,
00:20:41.100including teaching them how to read, you know, as reading changes our lives, you know, including
00:20:47.060doing other things. We can do that too. We can think about the way that we use land. And for
00:20:53.300Native people, that makes me think of our obligation of generosity and our willingness
00:20:59.180to take that risk too and make our spaces available to people who need it, to people
00:21:04.380who are unsafe in other places. They should be able to find safety in our land. But scarcity,
00:21:10.880right? You know, we worry that we don't have enough even for ourselves. And we don't. There's
00:21:15.960a reason for that. And it's not the immigrants' fault. It's the government's fault. So internally
00:21:20.120ourselves, we also need to think about who are we really fearing and who are we really working
00:21:24.740against and who is our obligation of generosity who should that be directed towards yeah for us
00:21:31.760it was important to bake in reparations from the beginning so that there's a month of all of our
00:21:38.820earnings that goes to reparations so we don't have to think about it it's sort of like church's
00:21:43.700you know the idea of tithing just bake it in and then as you grow you can grow that
00:21:51.060that reparations that repair and it can kind of help ease the path like use the weight a little
00:21:58.540bit you know because the fact is that we live in a world where things cost money yeah i run a
00:22:03.480foundation the nikonagana foundation payyourrent.ca and just last year we got a lovely donation from
00:22:11.380international jewish voices who has a very similar practice to yours every year they'd give i think
00:22:16.840it's 1% of their operating budget to a Native organization. And last year it was us. And that
00:22:23.940was wonderful because we then turn around and we spend it on Native people and on Native organizers
00:22:29.700because that's mutual aid, right? You deal with people's material survival needs, but you also
00:22:35.500deal with the reasons for those needs. And so we also support organizers like there's two in
00:22:41.380of Montreal, actually, the Black Indigenous Harm Reduction Network. We support them and we also
00:22:46.480support Resilience Montreal and some of the work that they do. We'll make sure that your
00:22:51.620organization and those ones are featured when we do our reparations fundraiser in May when we direct
00:22:57.820folks to make their donation and then we do our raffle to augment what we donate. I want to talk
00:23:04.600about your new book, Bad Indians Book Club. First of all, what a great title. I told my husband I
00:23:11.860was talking to you today in the title of your new book. He's like, oh, that's fucking badass.0.99
00:23:15.300Isn't that an amazing kind of title? Yeah. Can you first talk about, yeah, this idea,0.99
00:23:20.920what is it to be a bad Indian? And how do we learn from this to become more ungovernable?1.00
00:23:27.720Yeah, so I've always thought of bad Indians kind of internally, right? As you know, we got called
00:23:35.920Indians, and there are good Indians who kind of align with the political system. Sometimes it
00:23:41.060allowed them to keep their language and to keep other practices by kind of behaving well public
00:23:48.000facing. And so I don't want to drag them too much like that good Indians are not like the good1.00
00:23:52.820minorities, they're not necessarily terrible people. They can be, but they're not necessarily
00:23:57.920terrible people because surviving and protecting things is also valuable. And they did do that.
00:24:03.780But bad Indians just reject that altogether. And sometimes we're also just not very good1.00
00:24:07.960at being Indians. We don't speak our language. We don't do ceremonies. So sometimes we're also
00:24:12.420just not very good at it. But bad Indian kind of leans into that idea of being Indian. And an1.00
00:24:20.160elder of mine you know my local community one of the elders here had said that there was also
00:24:24.820the lower eye indian which is the derogatory term but then the uppercase indian which is when we
00:24:31.840take it on ourselves as a collective identity and i thought that was really interesting way of
00:24:36.240thinking about it as well so it can be read as a thing of defiant i'm going to be a bad indian i'm
00:24:42.560not i'm not going to go along with your nonsense but then my editor was like you know what i love0.54
00:24:47.780this title but also southeast asians may not be thrilled with it so i messaged a handful of friends
00:24:54.940to say are you not thrilled with this like is there is there something i'm missing that i should
00:25:00.580be aware of and we can come up with a different title and what i learned was that they didn't
00:25:06.200think of themselves as indians either right that indian even applied to them was something that
00:25:13.120happened by europeans who got there in the 14th century and named them the people of the indus
00:25:18.780valley that's not what they call themselves so indian has always been the local people who we
00:25:26.000can't be bothered to get to know right whether it was the people of the indus valley or you know
00:25:33.660africans or people in the so-called americas or south america or anywhere that seems to be the
00:25:40.240general usage of it by the colonial powers, even as far back as the 14th century, is the local
00:25:46.180people, we can't be bothered to get to know, but we're the boss of them now. And so that makes it
00:25:52.320a very broad term. And so this book is also about, you know, there's black authors, Jewish,
00:25:56.800Palestinian, you know, queer and two spirit and all kinds of people. So for me, understanding
00:26:03.120that kind of global use of colonizers of the term Indian, we are all pushed to the margins. So
00:26:09.940instead of trying to just rehabilitate whatever state we're part of and find that inclusion into0.90
00:26:16.060a system that's built on indigenous erasure, what if we just stayed in the margin? I use the motif0.96
00:26:21.600of the swamp, partly because that's what's in my backyard, but also because swamps are just
00:26:26.620teeming with life. They're a place of layered life, right? It's not exactly dry land. It's
00:26:32.140not exactly water. It's a place of layered boundaries. And I love that image so much
00:26:38.580of layered boundaries where we all live together. Aaron Mills talks about that. And I talk endlessly
00:26:44.240about his dissertation, which is way more interesting than the title sounds about
00:26:48.720Anishinaabe governance. And so for me, that that's what bad Indians are. It's when we've all been1.00
00:26:53.800shoved to the edges. And instead of trying to make our way back in, we decide, you know what, fine,
00:27:00.400we're gonna stay here. And we're gonna build something ourselves. And no, you can't play.
00:27:04.120you've got your spot you can keep it we're gonna build something else here and so then it's very
00:27:11.400much about building those relations with others who have also been pushed so instead of trying to
00:27:16.540build our own little nationalisms out on the edge what actually comes together when we listen to and
00:27:23.240talk to each other and how can we bend together towards a common purpose instead of you know and
00:27:30.300that's the two epigraphs, right? It's not about blood. Our ancestors matter. They absolutely
00:27:35.820matter. But they're not the only thing. We can bend together towards a common purpose.
00:27:41.100I felt a thrill when you said, what if we stay in the margins? What if we stay in the margins
00:27:45.880together? I think definitely the witches in our coven would feel very electrified by that too.
00:27:51.500As you know, so often people from chronic illness, neurodiversity, trans, queer, just being1.00
00:27:58.680the fucking weirdo in their family you know weirdo in their family0.97
00:28:02.540just been out here in the margins yeah exactly and we want to you know declare our allegiance1.00
00:28:12.080to the people we meet there in the margins in bad indians book club there's so much like deep
00:28:20.380reading i had to stop every paragraph to write down things i wanted to read but you also alternate
00:28:25.700with a story and I felt like I knew her I I had like a an experience in a meditation before I
00:28:37.500started Missing Witches where I saw a woman with deer antlers and I didn't know who that
00:28:43.160was but it was really part of me wanting going down the road of doing this work and I never
00:28:48.880really understood it and I still don't it's not but when I started reading about Kwe I was like
00:28:54.340I need to know I want to know her story so much and I felt like yeah I just felt like you treated
00:29:00.120her with such love can you tell us more about her and why how she works in that book yeah so
00:29:06.980this is confession time originally the book was supposed to be primarily about dear woman
00:29:12.900and not just as she exists in Ojibwe culture but as she exists kind of broadly in other cultures
00:29:19.820including around the world because there's shapeshifters and you know cryptids whatever
00:29:26.000you want to call them all around the world and so that's what it was supposed to be
00:29:29.420unfortunately I don't like doing research and that would have required a lot of research
00:29:35.380I am troubled believing you because your book is very deeply researched and not what it is it's a
00:29:41.840reflection of what I'm reading what I love is kind of following rabbit trails all kinds of ways but
00:29:47.240the discipline required to research a specific thing I don't like, which is why I deeply admire
00:29:53.440all of my friends who go to graduate school. I don't want to be that person. I deeply respect
00:29:58.560them. I love the knowledge that they're creating and the questions that they're developing and
00:30:01.840questions that they're asking. But as you can tell from the book, I ping pong around
00:30:08.020into all kinds of different topics and interests. But Dear Woman was still really important to me
00:30:13.880as a figure, as you just said, like she showed up in your meditation. She shows up for me in all
00:30:21.700kinds of ways, which I mentioned a little bit in the book. And you look at the medicine that shows
00:30:25.820up and you say, okay, so I don't like doing that kind of intense research. I still want her to be
00:30:31.520part of the book. And I thought, well, what if I just made her up? What if I imagined my own story
00:30:40.060based on the things that I do know and based on conversations and some reading and stuff. I didn't
00:30:46.380completely make everything up, but I did kind of make things up. The little interlude on Prince
00:30:51.080Edward Island was written while I was on Prince Edward Island. The interlude in Belize, I had
00:30:56.820been to Belize. So I kind of allowed her to follow my own path as well. But I wanted to think about
00:31:03.760who she was, because when we write anything, because Bad Indians looks at history, science,
00:31:13.560you know, gender, memoir, fiction, it's all about trying to figure out how we fit into the world.0.80
00:31:20.080What our place is in the world. And we're telling different stories about these different things
00:31:25.260from different perspectives, trying to figure it out. And that's what she's doing as well.
00:31:29.640I always say that I never read enough fiction. So I wanted to try writing it. And I love her. I want to do something more with her. You know, thinking about how I was going to move her from one place to another. The incident where she unleashes violence for the first time. I had to rewrite it. It comes before the chapter on gender. So I was also thinking about each chapter. How did each chapter kind of fit into her life?
00:31:57.660you know like she sits with stones and learns from them for a very long time like i'm trying
00:32:04.000to convey the idea that she sat there for thousands of years with them learning and
00:32:08.380being a stone except the raccoons knew she knew that she wasn't knew that there was something
00:32:13.860different about her because raccoons are smart but the original story the way i had written the0.98
00:32:18.700story about her violence was maude was the one being burned at the stake because maude had
00:32:25.660developed this relationship mod the midwife had developed this relationship and i'm sure that1.00
00:32:30.140happened right you know white women developing relationships with native women and then that
00:32:34.380resulting in their death but halfway through writing that chapter on gender i realized
00:32:40.060that i had tagged the emergence of quay's violence to the protection of white women
00:32:46.540and i was like oh look at me doing exactly exactly what i'm writing against
00:32:54.800and so I went back and I changed it her violence is unleashed because of what's happening to her
00:33:01.240own people and the betrayal of Maude and her friends as they look at her and now they don't0.99
00:33:08.120want anything to do with her anymore all the ways that white feminism betrays us I really enjoyed
00:33:13.600writing Quay and then when the voice shifts and we realize she's been talking about herself
00:33:18.620because that's what memoir is and then imagining her in the future and what the rebellion that
00:33:25.780she's leading is you know the rebellion to stay here you know to invest here and that comes from
00:33:31.520adrienne marie brown's a short story that she tells in fables and spells way is very much me
00:33:37.620she's very much indigenous women broadly and it was a lot of fun getting to know her you always
00:33:46.500hear authors talk like that and it sounds really weird until you're the author who writes that way
00:33:50.420and he said yeah I actually was kind of getting to know her because there were some things that
00:33:55.440I tried and it just didn't fit she was like absolutely not that's not a thing I would do