12 Jul Real series: Victoria Tenasco

What are some challenges you have faced as an indigenous woman?

I feel like a lot of my negative experiences have derived from systems and certain systemic patterns. We know the education system was created to work against Indigenous people. Despite it being 2019, that hasn’t gone away. That is not to say that there are specific people that are racist, but there are racist patterns in systems that continue to persist that non-indigenous people continue to benefit from. For example, in all levels of my education because I was so passionate about bringing indigenous knowledge into the academy my identity often became “too much” for some people to bear. It is one thing to want to change a process to complete a PH.D or a Master’s Degree than to want to change something completely. I feel like it would be easier if I wasn’t who I am and that I’d have all these degrees under my belt without having to take a break or press buttons about what research I’m allowed to do or what issues I’m allowed to bring forward. It’s not a matter about being allowed, but more a matter of “that’s not how we do things”. 

One thing I am really trying to do in my studies that is completely in line with my identity is that I want to write a thesis using no written verses because for indigenous folks the people were the books and the libraries. Nature, the land and the animals were all primary sources. My identity is so strong that I won’t settle for anything other than what I want and I need space for me to do that. The problem in the academic world is that they want something completely original but when you present that they ask “where are your backup or your sources?”, but how is that original? I refuse to conform to that because that’s how ingrained the indigenous knowledge systems are into my being.

From your perspective, how do you think society views indigenous women?

When I first moved here, I didn’t have this sense of being apart of Canada’s most vulnerable population. I moved here when I was 15 and started college when I was 16 so I was just afraid of becoming lost on campus or being late to class. That was also a result of not learning the history of colonization within my community. I knew there was racism and I had experienced racism because my community was adjacent to Maniwaki and there were some racist situations I had witnessed growing up. But no one ever said that’s racism as in what you are experiencing is racism and no one ever said as a woman I should be more careful than a man. So I came here being pretty naive.

As I started learning about indigenous issues and systemic racism, I started to realize that I am a vulnerable person. As I get older I become more aware and more afraid. I am an online facilitator for a training program that teaches service providers how to work better with indigenous people, so basically it is an anti-racism training. There’s a lot of engagement with people who are hidden behind a computer and so we see a lot of stereotyping and a lot of victim-blaming mentalities like “Well what were these women wearing? Why were they walking there? Why aren’t they staying in their communities?”. Being exposed to that every day makes me afraid to go places more than before. 

I travelled to Nanaimo for the first time by myself and I was terrified to go out alone because I’m not familiar with the area and I’m an indigenous woman. My flight was early and so I was standing outside of my hotel waiting for a cab when a big rough-looking man was approaching me with a large black bag behind him and I just thought “This is it. I’m never going to see my family again.”. He began to dig through the garbage can behind me and then said “Good morning!”. That was the moment I realized that I needed to get out of my own head and start accepting these realities. I had to figure out how to live and still be an adult and walk by myself at night and not be so afraid. But this is not something easy to do. I still walk around with my keys between my fingers because I don’t know what else to do and I’m hyper-aware that I’m a target.