12 Jul Real series: Victoria Tenasco

Could you please introduce yourself; what you do and what is your background?

That’s a big question. So my name is Victoria Tenasco; I am indigenous. I am Algonquin Anishinabekwe from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg which is about an hour and a half north from here on the Quebec side. So where we are right now is the traditional unceded territory of my people so that’s why I live here and not in my community because it’s still sort of like home to me. As often as I can I go home to my community on the weekends. But I live and work and go to school here. With that being said I was born and raised in my community. I grew up very close to my family, the land, the language and the culture. It’s funny to say I grew up close to culture because when you ask indigenous people to describe culture it is a really hard question to answer since in our language we do not have a word that describes culture. In my language, the closest word we have translates to “a way of life”. So in that sense, I guess you could say I grew up very close to the Anishinabekwe way of life. 

I moved away from my community to pursue post-secondary education and I have been in school ever since then. Most currently, I am pursuing a Ph.D. in education at the University of Ottawa, but I am on pause since December. I really think that how I grew up learning the traditional education and also coupling that with more of a western education really encourages me to keep going so that I have validation from both my community and the academic community which is really important to me. In my community, whenever we introduce ourselves we mention our family, our parents and our grandparents so that is how people figure out who we are. However, in these types of interactions, I always like to talk about education because that’s been a really important piece of my life. That is me in a nutshell. 

Could you explain how your identity has shaped you? 

Growing up in my community despite being very attached to my family, my land, and the language it’s almost like I didn’t notice and I took those things for granted because I didn’t know anything different. So when I moved to Ottawa-Gatineau to pursue post-secondary education I experienced culture shock despite coming to Ottawa for weekend trips as a kid. This was because in my school we were all Algonquin there were no other races. The pace here was also very different which lead to me having difficulties in college and university when it came to figuring out who I was and what I had to offer. I knew that leaving my community I wanted to pursue a future that would allow me to give back to my community and encourage future generations. In my culture, we talk about how as people we have to think about the seven generations behind us and the seven generations ahead of us. It was always a goal of mine to do something where I could come back and help people. 

For a long time I wanted to be a doctor, but when I studied mathematics and science in college I realized this is not for me. Afterwards, I came across Aboriginal Studies programs and I thought; “Why would I do that? I’m already aboriginal so why should I go and learn all that stuff when I’m supposed to know it already?”. The interesting thing is despite growing up in my community I didn’t learn about things like residential schools because when I was younger people didn’t talk about it as openly as they do now. We knew they existed but we didn’t know the far-reaching impacts, the levels of abuse and all the percentages surrounding that as well as the kids who never returned home. So I began learning about all of that in the city during my post-secondary education. I started to realize I don’t even know what I thought I knew. There’s also such diversity amongst Indigenous people that all those experiences in education made me understand who I was as an Indigenous woman. It helped me figure out where I fit and what are my goals for my life.