On avocado toast and the Indigenous millennial resistance

Hi there. My name is Frances Koncan. I identify as follows: Anishinaabe, Slovene, sorta Canadian-ish, a millennial and a self-appointed Knowledge Keeper of Western Popular Culture.

I am originally from Couchiching First Nation, on Treaty 3 land, and I have seen every single movie Keanu Reeves has ever made. I eat avocado toast at least twice a week at my favourite Winnipeg coffee shop, and the only house I own is the the complete DVD collection of the TV series starring Hugh Laurie. I am a writer, a Taurus, a dog mom and a resistor of colonialism.

As an Indigenous writer, you are allowed to write about anything you want as long as it is about poverty. Poverty in the city! Poverty on the Rez! How can we solve poverty? Poverty awareness!

My personal experience with poverty is that I have none. I grew up on the mean streets of suburban Winnipeg. I had my fair share of micro-aggressions to navigate, but there was food on the table and a safe, middle-class normalcy. Poverty was not my experience to live — and it is not my story to share.

As an Indigenous writer, you are allowed to write about anything you want as long as it is about poverty.- Frances Koncan, writer

With that subject off-limits, I'm often left wondering if I have anything to contribute as a writer. People are so conditioned to expect and anticipate the Indigenous poverty narrative that they have trouble viewing us through any other lens. They don't understand that our similarities are so much stronger than our differences. That when they wept for Harambe, so did I. That when Taylor sang to all her haters that she was just going to "shake it off," I too contacted my haters and shook them all off.

While it would be enormously detrimental to ignore the issue of poverty amongst Canada's Indigenous communities, if you read any comments section on any article, it's clear that awareness is not enough to change people's minds and engage their empathy. So what's an Ojibwe writer to do? How do we resist? How do we...whatever the verb form of resilience is? Resile?

There are so many things I want to write about, and so many things I am afraid to, and so many I feel I am not allowed to. I want to talk about the toxicity of Canada's cultural landscape and how it sets Indigenous people up for failure. I want to talk about how excited I am for the new season of Game of Thrones. I want to talk about the intergenerational trauma of residential school, and how I struggle with its resonance across time every day of my life. I want to talk about fashion. I want to talk about the link between racism and environmental destruction. I want to talk about Lorde's latest album, and most importantly, I want to talk about how I asked Josh Groban out on Twitter and he never replied. I've had bigger celebrities reply to a lot less, Josh. How dare you. Huge mistake, pal.

I want to talk about the toxicity of Canada's cultural landscape and how it sets Indigenous people up for failure. I want to talk about how excited I am for the new season of Game of Thrones. I want to talk about the intergenerational trauma of residential school. I want to talk about fashion.- Frances Koncan, writer

So here I am: an Indigenous person with limited direct experience with poverty, writing for an audience that I'm told does not exist because in Canada, there's only one kind of Indigenous person allowed to exist, and I don't look or sound like that. But what I'm learning as a writer is that there are many paths of resistance. Some are traditional, and some are contemporary, but all are valid and integral to reclaiming our identity as Indigenous peoples.

And for those of us who don't fit into colonial Canada's perspectives on what Indigenous people are like, always remember: our avocado toast will bring us strength for the long battles ahead.