Take Me Home Tonight

I fly to Boston on Saturday morning to attend Graduate Horizons. Since it's a workshop that focuses on applying to graduate school, naturally it has me thinking about an eventual academic career.

I know I want to do a PhD someday and I would love to be a professor. As a huge nerd, reading and writing is my dream career. (Don't hate!) I haven't done teaching in the literal sense, but I do enjoy sharing the knowledge I have with others when they ask (and sometimes when they don't) and engaging in respectful debate.

(And, I choose to ignore anyone who tells me there are no jobs, I'll have no money and no life. Ha!)

But there are some questions that tug at me...

What will it be like to potentially be the only Anishinabekwe in my grad program?

Do my reasons for wanting to do a PhD differ from those of settlers?

How can I involve my family/community/nation in the application or research processes?

How might having a PhD affect how I am perceived within Indian Country?

To be honest, I sometimes feel very gloomy and Eeyore-esque about it all.

Already, I live and work away from my community and it can be hard to stay/feel truly connected when I'm not there in my day-to-day life. I worry that a feeling of disconnection might worsen if I move even further away to pursue another degree.

But, yesterday I started to read Indigenizing the Academy by Devon Abbott Mihesuah and Angela Cavender Wilson and it was like a lightbulb went off in my head.

What if doing a PhD can bring me closer to home--literally and figuratively?

Doing research for my MA *did* bring me home. How could I have forgotten? I remember driving to Kitigan Zibi on frigid, sunny winter days, my grandfather greeting me as he took his old Indian showshoes off his feet, and us sitting by the fire with tea, cookies, and stories. (There was a tape recorder involved--sorry if that spoils the image.)

My family has so many stories to tell. Stories that aren't written in history books, but told to grandchildren who are willing to listen. Stories begging to be memorized or recorded and told to future generations. PhD dissertations require original research topics, right? Well, it doesn't get realer than this.

Maybe grad school can take me home.

Two-Minute Book Review: Life Stages and Native Women

Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings, and Story Medicine (Kim Anderson)

So, you're supposed to read the entire book before you write a review, right? Well, I have a confession: I've only read the foreword and introduction.

In my defense, I'm a firm believer that the introduction is the most important part of the book. (Ask R.J.--I was aghast to learn that he skipped the introductions to his books and, needless to say, he doesn't do that anymore.) Why? The textbook answer is that "it sets the tone." As an aspiring writer and scholar, I am interested in the story of the person writing the book: why they chose this topic, what their processes were, how they feel now that they've finished it. The introduction is where you listen to that story.

I got my book in the mail the day after attending Kim Anderson's book launch here in Ottawa at the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health. A shame that I couldn't get her to sign it, but they say everything happens for a reason. I was half an hour late for the launch (working at a university in September, it's impossible to leave by 5) and Kim was well into her reading. The room reminded me of gatherings at the community hall back home. Hectic. A baby was crying, couches and chairs all spoken for, a girl lying on the ground in the fetal position. (Okay, maybe that last one didn't remind me of home.) But, Kim's voice rose above the bustle, as she spoke from the heart about the tradition of finding a tree at whose trunk to lay an infant's umbilical cord; the role of old ladies in cleaning/preparing dead bodies and feeling "death without loss" (thanks Kat); and her love for Maria Campbell.

Kim describes her intimate relationship with Maria Campbell. She talks about how, dejected and discouraged at not being able to get an interview for the book, Maria took her by the wrist and pronounced, "We'll do it together!" (I can picture Maria, now an elder, just as energetic as she was in the youth/adulthood she describes in Halfbreed, determined to get everything from her family's stories to political clout to an escape from the streets.)

In reading texts like these, I look for opportunities to identify a relationship with the seven sacred Grandmother/Grandfather teachings: wisdom, love, humility, courage, honesty, respect, truth. Writing with an honest voice, Kim's introduction is both courageous and humble. In the margins of my copy of the book I've scribbled "honest" as Kim references her anxieties in the introduction's opening paragraph, and "humble" next to where she writes:

I have not lived long enough nor have I done all of the work that is necessary to carry this knowledge.

Perhaps that's why I've found it easy to refer to her as "Kim" in this (slightly longer than) one-minute review rather than "Dr. Anderson" or, *shudder,* the detached "Anderson."

But, the most important pencil scribblings I've made in the margins are these: ask Nanny this question; Mal & R.J. to do this; where does Grandpa fit in these categories?

Kim's book, although adapted from her dissertation, is not an academic text. Sure, a student can reference it in their papers and no professors will think twice about it because she "is" a PhD. It caused me, as I'm sure it will others, to situate myself and my partner and my grandparents and my family in the text. It isn't written in some distant academic jargon; Kim promises teachings about pregnancy and vision quests and how to deal when you're "stuck" in one life stage. Her book will for me act as a "guide" (for lack of a better word) to understand myself and reconstruct my spirituality and relationships with those around me.

This book is so much more than just a book for us as Native women, families, communities, nations.

It is us.

"Life lived like a story."

"Well, I've tried to live my life right, just like a story."

-Angela Sidney

I've always loved this quote. It is from one of the three Elders whose life stories are told in this book, through "author" Julie Cruikshank (my thoughts - although not necessarily fully formed - on non-Native people doing research "about" Native peoples is an entirely separate post, which I have no immediate plans to compose).



Angela Sidney's quote speaks to the power stories have for our people. Our stories and our storytellers are our greatest teachers in life; this is not something that is new to our people. (Yet, it seems that writing academically about our stories is a burgeoning field - how did that happen?)

I want to dedicate my life to stories. Listening to them, learning from them, picking them apart, putting them back together. And, maybe even someday, telling them to grandchildren of my own. My research for my master's was about stories. My essay looked at the theoretical/ethical/methodological considerations put forth by Native writers, and was punctuated by my grandfather's oral history and my self-reflexivity. Off the record, I called my essay "a story about stories."

It was well received by my readers. They called it "innovative" and "an excellent contribution." (All of these things, I am not going to lie, went straight to my head.) What's ironic about this is that my essay was the complete opposite of innovative; I was writing about some of our oldest traditions in their modern manifestations. We've always known that stories have power to decolonize, that stories and their tellers have responsibilities, that stories tell us where our home is, and allow our nations and cultures to survive. This is old news!

Now that I've graduated and am working at a job I love, I should feel fulfilled. But I feel like something is missing. It is no longer my main task, as it was when I was a student, to listen to my grandfather's story, to think about my own, and to read the stories, and stories about stories, that other Native writers tell. How can I get back to that place and still make a decent living for myself? One route surfaces as an option: PhD.

And, in strolls irony/trickster, once again, to laugh at me.

In the western world, the modern age, 2010 Canada, in order to "return" to a life lived like a story, I must complete what is commonly accepted as one of the most gruelling career paths out there (not to mention be a broke student for yet another five years of my life). To live and breathe stories, something that was embedded into community life in our "less colonized" days, and still pay my rent, I have to rise to the top of this academic game.

Oh irony/trickster, you've got me again!