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Season 2: Episode 4 – Are you full-native?

[Theme]

HARVINDER WADHWA: People are curious and that's great.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: But there are some questions you just shouldn't ask or at least not like that.

HARVINDER WADHWA: I'm Harvinder Wadhwa.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And this is Inappropriate Questions.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Let's get inappropriate.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Harv, I'd like to introduce you to Falen. Falen meet Harv. Harv meet Falen.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Hello.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: We are currently on a Google call, so it's not really meeting, but whatever.

FALEN JOHNSON: No, but this is how we meet now.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Hi Falen. How are you?

FALEN JOHNSON: Hi. Nice to meet you.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Likewise. Likewise.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Falen's a playwright and also the co-host of The Secret Life of Canada, also on CBC Podcasts. And in researching for this episode, "Are You Full Native?" I talk to feel it a lot about her experiences. So Falen sent me a play she wrote called Salt Baby. It was based on her own experiences. And the very first scene is an incredibly cringy date. And Falen is going to read that for us now.

FALEN JOHNSON: I'm gonna get my partner Patrick to help me out with this. He's going to read the character of Alligator and I will read the title character Salt Baby.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Cool.

PATRICK: So what else are you? You're not full, right? how much Indian shit. Sorry, is that like totally offensive? Native or Aboriginal or any help here would be much appreciated.

FALEN JOHNSON: I say Indian, but I don't like people to say that until we really know each other, you know? First Nations seems pretty safe to me, but everybody wants to be called something different these days.

PATRICK: OK, so how First Nations are you? Because, you know, you don't really, you know, you don't really look like one First Nations.

FALEN JOHNSON: I'm about three quarters.

PATRICK: How does that work?

FALEN JOHNSON: Well, my mom is half Mohawk. Her dad was a Mohawk Chief, a Hereditary Chief. He was married to a white woman and my dad's Tuscarora. Full. So fractions, right? Three quarters, I guess? The government doesn't really agree with my math.

PATRICK: What do you mean?

FALEN JOHNSON: In the opinion of the government, if you have one parent with any white blood, it decreases the rest of your Indian blood. So by their standards, I'm half, I think.

PATRICK: You should find that out. I'd want to.

FALEN JOHNSON: I'm Indian enough to get the card, right?

PATRICK: Ahh no way. Can I see it?

FALEN JOHNSON: All right. But my head looks big.

PATRICK: Even better.

FALEN JOHNSON: Screw you.

[Laughter]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And cut, I guess.

FALEN JOHNSON: And in the theater, we say, "end scene."

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: There we go.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Are we are we allowed to clap? No, snap?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, let's.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Okay. Okay. Okay.

FALEN JOHNSON: Thank you.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So Falen, is this a true story or you just made this as a drama?

FALEN JOHNSON: This is a, I, you know, I used my own experience growing up, you know, on and off the reserve. I'm from Six Nations. So about an hour and a half southwest of Toronto. And there's a lot of me in there for sure. And a lot of my own experience and then I dramatized some things just sort of dramaturgically fill the piece out and sort of make it workstorywise. But yeah, like when I was, when I was born, my family affectionately gave me the nickname Salt Baby because I had really fair hair, fair curly hair, my skin was light and so they called me Salt Baby.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Okay because salt is white?

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Okay okay. Just clarifying.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So when Salt Baby gets asked if she's full or if she like how much she is or how native she is, what is it about asking if someone is full or looking at their identity in terms of fractions that's problematic?

FALEN JOHNSON: Well because I mean and it's in communities as well, right? Like, it's like being considered full blooded, it just, it doesn't compute with the way that our societies functioned, you know, prior to colonization and contact. We didn't measure things like that. You were part of a community. You were part of a group of people and that was your identity. When you take that away and you, if you put it in the hands of the federal government, they are allowed to then define your identity and how much of, how much a part of your community you are. And who gets to make those decisions, right? Full, it like it makes it sound like a contest or something.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right. In that moment, the guy on the date, Alligator, is super unsure of what words to use and I've definitely had moments where like I haven't known the right word. So what words do you use?

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah, well, I tried to be as specific as possible. So when I'm identifying myself, I say Mohawk and Tuscarora from Six Nations Reserve. I'm Bear Clan.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

FALEN JOHNSON: So I think, you know, if you can be as specific as possible when you're talking to you someone about who they are and where their people are from, because that's the thing that I think we should be focusing on or, you know, at least acknowledging is the distinct cultures, languages, societies of the over 500 different nations on this land.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

FALEN JOHNSON: And if I'm speaking sort of, you know, in a more general, I sense, I go Indigenous. But I mean, last ten years, five years, two years, the words change, right? It's kind of an evolving thing. Because it used to be Indian, because that's built into policy and law. Then it changed into native and then you get Aboriginal.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Are any of these terms derogatory?

FALEN JOHNSON: I mean, and this is where it gets tricky, right? I know I say Indian. I say Indian at home. I say Indian around, if they're non-Indigenous, that I have to know them very, very well before I'll use that word in front of them because I can't normalize it. But if I'm back home on the res, we'll ask "Is he an Indian guy?"

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So just for the record.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: If anybody calls me Indian, I'm fine with it, a hundred percent.

FALEN JOHNSON: Great.

HARVINDER WADHWA: I'm not taking any offense

FALEN JOHNSON: That makes sense. That makes sense.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Do we have to get into different kinds of Indians?

FALEN JOHNSON: Well, we say he's Indian. And they're like dot or feather?

[Laughter]

HARVINDER WADHWA: That's a good one. That's a good one.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah.

[Music]

VOICE 1: It's this Hollywood notion that we're all stuck with headdresses on. That we've got dark skin, that we all have dark eyes, you know, but that's not what it means to be Indigenous.

VOICE 2: I mean I'm of the mind that ancestry alone is not sufficient.

VOICE 3: Identity doesn't come from a test tube full of spit.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I spent a lot of people's main exposure to Indigenous people comes from the media and pop culture. And that's not always the most accurate representation, which can be why people ask these kinds of questions. We're speaking to Kaniehtiio Horn. She's a Mohawk actress from Kahnawake, near Montreal. You might know her from her role on Letterkenny or from shows like Hemlock Grove and Barkskins. We'll be talking about her identity as an Indigenous woman and about challenging Hollywood stereotypes. Can you tell us about a time someone's asked you, are you full native?

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Yeah. Most of my career. Most of my life because I'm, I, happen to be a light skin, light eyed, light hair native person. And my dad is non-native. So I guess when I was younger, I looked at myself or I referred to myself as half and referring to yourself as half, kind of doesn't really make you feel like you're whole. And so I've started referring to myself as mixed, which is kinder to myself as well. I've been always told by my family, by my mother, that I'm an Indigenous woman. I'm a Mohawk person and I was raised on my reserve. I always went back and forth between my father in Ottawa and my community. I was went to school in my community. I was named in the longhouse. And for me, I'm a Mohawk person, you know. And it was always other people who are telling me that I wasn't, you know, and it was mostly when I left the reserve and when I was went out into the world, I guess.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Are most of these people or few of these people coming from some bad place or they are just curious or?

KANIEHTIIO HORN: I think they're just coming from an ignorant place.

HARVINDER WADHWA: OK. So non-natives, how do they know that even to ask that question? So I'll give you an example. If I see a white person, I normally don't distinguish whether this person is from Eastern Europe or Western Europe or Canadian-born or whatever, you know, a white person looks like a white person to me and maybe it's just to me. So looking at your pictures, you don't look native at all, or maybe I'm looking at some of those pictures where you don't look native. So I'm just curious, why would they ask that question?

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Well, you think that I don't look native.

HARVINDER WADHWA: OK.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Like that's your perception, right? I mean, what, because I don't have long flowing dark hair or I'm not you know, your assumption of what an Indigenous person looks like is from 200 years ago.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Fair

KANIEHTIIO HORN: I think it's about non-Indigenous people educating themselves on what we actually look like and what it actually means to be an Indigenous person. It's not about what we look like. It's about how we practice our culture, we speak our language, the way we were raised and it's not about our, about our skin color. So I hate that statement and I don't like, you know what you just said. That's really triggering for me actually. But to answer your question, people ask me that question because of my name. My name is Kaniehtiio and I've always been adamant about using my full name. I actually don't like being referred to as Tiio, but I do it just, you know whatever, it's like a nickname, but I prefer when people call me Kaniehtiio. And my mom always said to, you know, be patient with people and be patient because they don't all speak your language. Be patient and teach them how to pronounce your name. And I found that that's been a big, it builds character definitely, having a name like mine. So people might ask me that and I'm a proud (inguahuayon?) person. So if somebody questions my identity I tell them where I'm from and I tell them that I'm in fact a Mohawk woman.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So I want to apologize. I didn't mean to trigger you. That was not trying to insult you in any way or shape. I was just trying to be curious that why would anybody ask that question? I was going from that side.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: What's irritating is when somebody, when you say because you don't look native. It's, if you look at my entire family, if you understood the history of who the people, the Mohawk people or the Indigenous people on the east coast are, if you understood that we mixed since the 1500s, then you would understand why a lot of us have light eyes, have light skin. And it's this Hollywood notion that we're all stuck with headdresses on, that we got dark skin, that we all have dark eyes, you know. But that's not what it means to be Indigenous. It isn't. My sister and I were talking about this before, and she was like, well I've been asked, you know, like oh you don't look full native and she's like well, she's like I asked the person like, what are you? And you're like oh, I'm Polish. And she's like oh, well how come you're not wearing your, you know, Polish headscarf or like you know, it's like we're not, like, sorry, I drive a car. I, you know, I live in a house, I don't live in a teepee. I don't live in, you know. So like what? Maybe it's up to you to adjust your idea of what a full or what an Indigenous person is and what they look like and what they do, you know?

KANIEHTIIO HORN: How do you normally react when people ask these questions? Because if I can share something lighthearted about myself briefly.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Sure.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Because I wear a turban and a lot of people have asked me, what is the significance of the colour? And sometimes I say, well, you know, it depends on my mood. So if I'm wearing a blue, you know, I'm calm. So you can approach me. But if I'm wearing a red, please don't approach.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Stay away. Yeah.

[Laughter]

HARVINDER WADHWA: And the funny thing is a lot of people have bought into that.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Really.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Yeah

KANIEHTIIO HORN: That's something like Indigenous peoples, we do that too. Like just like because you're just so sick of the questions and stuff like that. Like my mom, I remember she said she's like somebody asked me a long time ago, if oh like you're native? Oh you're an Indian? Do Indians still grow feathers out of the back of their heads?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Whoa.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: And my mom was like, oh yeah, but we cut them off now.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh, God.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: I'm like see, like you know, like because sometimes it's just like, whatever. Yeah.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So sometimes it's actually, it's good to give a bullshit answer.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's not even worth it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: You touched on this a bit earlier, but could you elaborate on where you think our ideas about what it means to be Indigenous come from?

KANIEHTIIO HORN: I mean, I think that people's assumption is that, you know, like once they put us all on reserves and everything we were kind of forgotten about and kind of put in this time capsule of like we all look like what we did 200 years ago, 300 years ago. And the fact is is that we're actually pretty adaptable people. My people, my grandfather, all of the men in my family, we're all ironworkers. They built New York City. But then, like, you know, obviously it's Hollywood. So their assumption of what we might look like is Pocahontas or the cigar store Indian.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: As an actor, when you're looking for parts and stuff, do you come across these perceptions, these Hollywood perceptions of indigeneity a lot in like you know, looking for work for yourself?

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Oh, my God, yeah. So like, when I graduated theatre school, I basically didn't think that I would ever be cast as an Indigenous person because I've never seen an Indigenous person on screen who looked like me. I've only ever seen the ones on a horseback or a drunken Indian and they've all got dark skin and dark hair and everything. And so for me, I never saw somebody who looked like me and was Indigenous. But now I've been working as a professional actor for 15 years and probably about half my resumé are Indigenous roles.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Cool

KANIEHTIIO HORN: And early in my career, there was a couple of times where I was like, are you sure you want me to? Like, I don't know. I'm auditioning for this and it says like dark-skinned, curvy native. And then I ended up getting the role because I was, I guess the best one for the job, you know? And that was actually an Indigenous director. That was Jeff Barnaby. So like I said other Indigenous people recognize Indigenous people and they don't question our identity and our looks and everything. And so he.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right

KANIEHTIIO HORN: You know, cast me. And slowly and slowly, I found myself getting, you know, more roles where I get to play Indigenous characters and I get to kind of represent light-skinned Indigenous people. And because majority of us look like me, and you know now I'm on a show on Letterkenny and I play the, you know the head of the natives and over the seasons have become like, I'm kind of just like one of the people now.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: It's not about the fact that I'm native, I'm just like sort of there. We're just, we're just there.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right, yeah.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: I get like messages from people who are like my daughter saw you and sees you on TV and she's light-skinned and she's got blue eyes and she's so happy that there's somebody on screen who is Indigenous and looks like her, you know?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: That's wonderful.

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Yeah, so I'm like, OK well I'm doing something right. And, you know, it's a slow and steady climb, you know over the past like 15 years. And every little part is a small kind of a little battle, right? You know? And a little victory. And I mean it's not what I set out to do when I went into theatre school or anything, but like, you know, by being cast as an Indigenous person I realized, like, wow like I am sort of helping in my own way, in my own very small way, helping to change through pop culture, people may be adjusting their perception of what we look like and how we act and things that we talk about, things that we do. You know?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: This episode we really want to dig in to like what makes up Indigenous identity beyond kind of these misconceptions, like you know, it's about your blood or it's about your heritage. So to you, like what makes you feel more connected to your culture?

KANIEHTIIO HORN: I can only speak for myself because I don't know what it's like to be a victim of the Sixties scoop.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right

KANIEHTIIO HORN: Or adopted out or somebody who is raised in the city. But I think for me, it was really important that I mean, like I said I went back and forth between my mother's and my father's and both equally loving families. My father's like a Canadian man, and my mom was very, my mom's first language was Mohawk. And so I grew up like around the language. I grew up during the festivals and the ceremonies and stuff and going to school on the reserve and growing up with my cousins. For me that's what ties me to my people is growing up with them and being close with my family and close with my extended family. And I feel safe there. I feel I have friends who are, even in Toronto like and I didn't do it on purpose, but one day I was like kind of like taking an intake on like who my friends, my close friends are like my circle there. And they're pretty much like predominantly Indigenous people. That's who my circle has become there. And it's almost like we kind of like all gravitate towards each other because we value community, I think. So my tie to my community is what I feel like makes me Indigenous.

HARVINDER WADHWA: What would you say to someone who wants to ask you, are you full native or thinks it's okay to ask that question?

KANIEHTIIO HORN: I don't know. I think I would say, what does full mean to you? Like, what do you mean by full? You know, are both of my parents Indigenous? No, I have mixed blood, but I have ties to my community, and that makes me full.

[Music]

HARVINDER WADHWA: So Falen, when you were growing up, how did you understand your own Indigenous identity?

FALEN JOHNSON: It took a long time for me to and I think I'll still always struggle with it, like not looking enough. Which is why I wrote this play. I don't know I think in a lot of ways your first play is your therapy play, so you just try and get over all your stuff in it, but I wrote that as a way of like trying to like grapple with some of these things because this, you know, this Salt Baby, the play was all about me trying to decide if I would take a DNA test to figure out how much blood I had. And my dramaturge and the director of the play, Yvette Nolan, she said don't answer that question. She was like, do not do that test until you get, until you write the play because nobody wants to see you know the answer.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: That's really funny.

FALEN JOHNSON: It's the best piece of writing advice I've ever gotten. They're like, we want to see you find the answer. So by the time I got to the end, I said I don't need to do this because I know where I come from and I know who I am. Going home, and you know, I'm like I'm going to cry cause I'm like thinking about my dad now. But getting to like go home and be with my step-mom and my dad and my siblings and my grandma. My grandma right now ugh, but like, I know who my cousins are and I, you know, and so they are who I am and they're where I'm from. Identity doesn't come from a test tube full of spit.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: There's the sound bite.

[Laughter]

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: We wanted to explore more about this idea of how genetics intersect with identity in Indigenous communities. So I spoke to Dr. Kim TallBear

KIM TALLBEAR: I'm Kim TallBear and I am a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate which is a tribe in South Dakota, Dakota people. And I'm also an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: She studies how genetic science relates to notions of race and Indigeneity and has written a book called Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. So this episode we're talking about the question, "are you full native?" Why do you think a non-Indigenous person might ask this?

KIM TALLBEAR: Yeah I think often people will ask a question like that because they have a stereotype in their mind about what a native person looks like. So one of the things that often that I notice in my own community is that those native people who code racially differently, who might code is white or black like my daughter codes is white and my niece and nephew code is black. I think they get asked that question a lot more than I do because they look at them, right? And they don't look like a stereotypical Plains Indian in a headdress. Neither do I. And I think a lot of that question has to do with people just not having a sense of the way that Indigenous peoples moved around a lot, both pre-contact and post-contact. And we've done that for a long time. And of course, colonization made us move around in different kinds of ways. And I think asking that question and expecting people to look "racially pure," or like a stereotype, is actually really shows your lack of historical knowledge and it probably shows a lack of contact with Indigenous people in the contemporary world. And I think it's also a subconscious denial of colonialism. And colonialism was all about moving us around, dispossessing us from our lands, mixing us up together, different tribes or nations within residential schools. And so it's a really uninformed question, actually.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So what does it mean, you know beyond just this idea of amount of ancestry and racial identity, what does it mean to belong to a nation or a tribe?

KIM TALLBEAR: Belonging is defined on several levels. For Indigenous people, it's not like biological ancestry doesn't matter. Right? Of course it matters because that's one way of making kin. So I give birth to a child. That's my kin, but we also have really valued ways of making kin. We have ceremonies among many Indigenous communities to adopt relatives ceremonially. So I think what's most important for First Nations or tribes or other Indigenous communities is adhering to our own criteria, whether those are official bureaucratic citizenship criteria or whether those are more informal cultural kinship rules about belonging, and those things overlap, but they're not synonymous. So I can give you an example.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right

KIM TALLBEAR: There are certain genealogical documents that have to be produced in order to get citizenship. So much like my daughter has to produce her birth certificates to get a U.S. passport, you also have to produce a birth certificate that goes into the tribal enrollment office if you're going to get enrolled, if you meet that tribe's citizenship requirements and they would also have the parents genealogical documents and all of that. So tribal citizenship can act a lot like a nation-state citizenship. But now we have, we have many people in our communities who are not eligible for citizenship or membership. My own daughter is not eligible because she doesn't meet a "blood quantum rule" and we'll probably come back to that.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

KIM TALLBEAR: But everybody knows who her mom is and who her uncles and aunties are and who her grandma is. So as soon as they ask her what her name is and she says, oh my last name's TallBear, they'll be like oh, are you? You know, I know your, I know your uncle. I know your grandma. Right? And so they can ascertain belonging that way. And so that's quite often why we ask people who are your relatives, who do you know? We're trying to figure out, not their authenticity as much as how can they place you in their broader social world?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I wanted to talk about some of your work related to DNA. We've seen such a rise in DNA testing kits in, it seems like the past couple of years, like 23andMe and Ancestry.com. What effect has this had on Indigenous communities?

KIM TALLBEAR: Oh gosh that's a really complicated question. I think the implication for Indigenous communities has more been, that genetic ancestry testing and that phenomena that's been around since the early 2000s now, but really kind of peaked in the kind of public interest in the last few years.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right

KIM TALLBEAR: It has really shaped the genetissation if I can use that word of Indigenous identity. So it's really increased the way that people think about being Indigenous as a genetic condition. I think it's really and that's unfortunate. I think instilling that idea in the mind of the broader public about Indigenous social life and history. Now tribes and First Nations do often use DNA parentage tests or DNA profiles. That's really quite different. It's a common paternity test, but all Indigenous peoples were related. I mean there is you know, a small set of founders in the Americas, right? We're related all the way from the Arctic down to the bottom of South America. We're genetically related. So genetic markers are not tribe or people specific. So really it does, it is going to come down to genealogical documentation, if you're going to find out which Indigenous people are in your ancestry.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So kind of coinciding with this rise it would seem, but also I'm sure since before then, there are lots of non-Indigenous people who claim a small percentage of Indigenous ancestry. And then they kind of they use that in their identity. They it seems like a form of belonging that they claim. What are your thoughts on that?

KIM TALLBEAR: I mean I'm of the mind that ancestry alone is not sufficient. Again, I talked about the fact that Indigenous people consider ancestry and we make kin biologically, but we also make kin in other kinds of social ways. And we hold all of those things together as being together important. I mean when people say to me, oh I'm native, but I don't know which tribe or how do you? What? You, that's not possible.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

KIM TALLBEAR: Because then all you're doing is talking about ancestry. But if you don't have living relatives, a living society to try to reconnect with, that's really important. I mean, I'm trying to think of an example. You know, if somebody came up to me and said, I'm from Peoria, Illinois, I said a town in Illinois, I'm just making that up. I'm a Peorian. And I'd be like oh, and if I was from Peoria, I might say, oh who do you know? Which high school did you go to? Who are your grandparents? Well, I've never been there. My great great great grandfather was from Peoria. And I'd be like, okay.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right, right, right.

KIM TALLBEAR: That's interesting. That's interesting, but it doesn't make you a Peorian. Like where'd you grow up?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

KIM TALLBEAR: Who's your family? You know? I just don't get it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

KIM TALLBEAR: So in a sense, I think it's, I really think it's a claim to originality so one can not feel implicated in colonialism.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

KIM TALLBEAR: And I'm not saying people understand that's what they're doing, but I think that's the broader context of what they're doing because it just makes no sense on the ground to be making a claim like that when. So it shows you that they're more focused on genetics or ancestry than they are focused on the actual community and what it means to be of that community. Now, when you're somebody who was adopted out in the 1960s and you probably still have biological siblings or cousins or aunts and uncles, that's a real community to connect to and they're going to want to know. I mean, communities want those people back quite often, right? We do have ways and Indigenous communities are really interested in helping people who are victims of the 60s scoop or you know separation from family and community because of residential schools, very interested in helping people reconnect. That's different.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right. You mentioned blood quantum earlier. What is blood quantum?

KIM TALLBEAR: It's fractions on a piece of paper. Determining somebody's "blood quantum." This is not a scientific enterprise.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right. Yeah.

KIM TALLBEAR: There's no examination of anything physiological going on. We're talking about symbolic blood. This very ancient idea that circulates around the world. And it is rendered as a fraction on a piece of paper in a bureaucratic document. Historically, for example, when federal agents and agencies had to manage groups of Indians, that's the word that was used then, they want to turn Indians into farmers and citizens and you know, civilize them, they said OK, we're gonna give all you Indians that are a member of this tribe 160 acres for each head of household, which is always a man, and then the wife gets 80 acres and for each of the children, you get 40 acres. Well in order to do that, in order to manage land and a lot it, they had to have a list of Indians, members of the tribe to give the land to. And so the other part of that kind of legislation was if you were, "full blood," you didn't get full title to your land because you were perceived as not civilized enough to manage it. If you were "half blood" or less, you were perceived as more civilized. This is the racial thinking of the day. You're more capable of managing private property, so you were given title to your land. So these fractions are inherited throughout the generations. And this is all part of that history of managing natives on reservations and managing their land and that's when blood quantum comes into being. It's not something that we had pre-colonization.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So is blood quantum still a part of how membership is determined nowadays?

KIM TALLBEAR: Different tribes in the U.S. will have different rules. Some of them don't use blood quantum at all. In terms of those fractions, all they do is say you have to document that you have an ancestor on the base role established in 1890 and we'll give you citizenship in this tribe. You know so that's lineal descent right. Some of them like my tribe, uses that lineal descent, but they also use blood quantum, my tribe. But this is where race comes in. It's really interesting. They want me to have one quarter blood quantum. But they don't make it all be Dakota. That's kind of strange right. They accept my Cheyenne-Arapaho blood quantum. In fact, if I had to have one quarter Dakota blood quantum, I wouldn't meet the criteria because I have so many different tribal lineages in my family, even though I was born and raised on a Dakota reservation. But because my grandfather was considered, "full blood Cheyenne-Arapaho," I have one quarter Cheyenne-Arapaho blood on paper. They add that to the three sixteenths Dakota on paper and I'm almost half. So this is how I meet their one quarter blood quantum. So it's really interesting, right?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right

KIM TALLBEAR: But it is true that that idea and that word is an artifact of colonization and tribal governments and First Nations are in a really, really difficult spot, right? It's like being between a rock and a hard place, trying to work with these colonial ideas in this entire colonial system that's not ours, but now we, we can't simply opt out of it necessarily either.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Falen, instead of questions like are you full native, what do you wish people would ask you instead?

FALEN JOHNSON: Where are you from? Who are your people? What's your nation?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Sounds pretty easy to be able to switch to that.

FALEN JOHNSON: Oh yeah it kind of is. Like where are your people from? I like the way it sounds.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

FALEN JOHNSON: I had somebody once say to me, you, you must be Spanish.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Huh.

FALEN JOHNSON: And I was like no. And he was like Portuguese? And I was like no. He was like Italian. And I was like no. Then he was like, where are you from? And I was like here. And he said, but before here. I said here and I think we have to like everybody has to just recognize that there were people here.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

FALEN JOHNSON: That would help.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Yes.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Cool. Good first step.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah. And I mean, this identity stuff is all tied to the Indian Act. If you want to understand this, that's the place to really look. Especially if you're an Indigenous woman because we've been disenfranchised through the Indian Act. And I think it's something that everybody who lives in Canada really needs to spend some time with because it exists and it doesn't just impact us.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Your podcast actually, the Secret Life of Canada, did an episode about the Indian Act. Do you wanna tell us a bit more about it?

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah. So we, we did an episode on the Indian Act for Secret Life. And I did it because I wanted to know more because I realized I didn't know enough about it. I wanted to find out where it started, why it started, and then how it transformed because it was, you know, it was a part of the military, so that Canada could get Indigenous people to fight alongside them in wars.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I definitely learned a lot from that episode.

FALEN JOHNSON: Oh, good.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: We'll make sure to link to it in our show notes and on our website for people to take a look at if they want.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Thank you so much Falen. This was amazing.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Much appreciated.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And especially getting in the, getting in the closet and getting everything out for us too. Super appreciated.

FALEN JOHNSON: Of course.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And I'm Harvinder Wadhwa. Thanks for getting inappropriate with us.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Big thanks to our guests, Falen Johnson, Kaniehtiio Horn and Kim TallBear. And an extra special shout out to Falen for all of her help with this episode. We also want to thank Kawennahere Devery Jacobs for her help with the episode title.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Every episode has an accompanying web comic and this week it was illustrated by Rhael McGregor. You can find it on Instagram @IQ_ podcast. Also, make sure to visit cbc.ca/iqpodcast for a full transcript and more resources.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: The fierce folks behind inappropriate questions are Sabrina Bertsch, Cindy Long and myself. This show is mixed by Andrew Norton. Our digital producer is Judy Ziyi Gu. The senior producer of CBC podcasts is Tanya Springer and the executive producer is Arif Noorani.

[Music]

HARVINDER WADHWA: An inappropriate question is like a test tube full of spit.

TRANSCRIPT: Inappropriate Questions - Season 2, EP 4

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