12 Jul Real series: Victoria Tenasco

Would you consider mental health services a crucial part of reconciliation and why?

The short answer is yes and it is extremely important.  once again I feel like indigenous people will have to take the lead on what that looks like and as someone who is experiencing what it’s like to deal with mental illnesses and I believe I should have some say in what that looks like as well. I believe that women should be leading too because women’s traditional roles in communities have been demolished. Before colonization women were leaders and they were making decisions. I feel like as women we are the givers of life whether we want to or not and so we should be at the forefront of seeing what those treatments and processes would look like. That is my opinion and it just so happens to be that my mental health struggles come from a miscarriage and maybe if they came from somewhere else I would think differently, but I think it’s really important when you take into account the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and how we are Canada’s most vulnerable population as shown through statistics as well as how popular is the #metoo movement has been in the Indigenous community. 

I think that my anxiety and my panic attacks not only come from the loss of a child but having to have all these uncomfortable talks about wanting a family and sex and how I was assaulted when I was younger.  I think there’s a lack of comfortability surrounding sexuality and being a woman and it’s hard, particularly for indigenous women. I’m 35 and it was really uncomfortable for me to tell my family that my partner and I were pregnant on purpose because it felt like we shouldn’t be talking about sex or anything related to it. There’s a lot of triggers around women and the decisions we make about our bodies so based on my experiences I hope that women are leading the aspect of mental health in terms of reconciliation. 

In what ways have you helped your community? How would you describe your presence in the indigenous community?

Two weeks ago was our community pow wow and our community pow wow is where we celebrate our culture and it’s when we can invite people from outside of the community to celebrate with us. My partner and I decided that we wanted to host a special which is an opportunity to give back to my pow wow circle. My husband is a drummer and I am a woman’s jingle dancer and the jingle dance is a healing dance based off a story where a young girl falls ill and her father has a vision of dress and that if he makes the dress then his daughter will get better. We wanted to give back to the pow wow circle because when our families aren’t there the circle is our support system. I also wanted to make this an opportunity for decolonization and an opportunity to  uplift other women because women are often in competition with each other, but I wanted women to know that it’s okay to talk about this and that it’s okay to experience this so that women and their families don’t have to suffer in silence when it comes to miscarriages or mental health. For the whole year we’ve collected gifts and we gave them to people who had helped us on our journey, the elders who were present and the jingle dress dancers. Usually these specials are a part of a contest and whoever wins will receive a certain amount of money, but for us it was more than the money. We had baskets and baskets of traditional indigenous art and we had collected art from indigenous women all over Canada and the United States to give to people. 

I also said; “This is about restoring women, restoring women’s roles and restoring our traditional gift economy where money means nothing and we give our goods to show gratitude.”. After doing that a lot of women told me that it was a healing experience that those subjects were talked about in the public and that there was a cultural revitalization and that they got to learn more about the traditional gift economy. So in the social context, I hope the community looks at me as someone who wants to revitalize what we’ve lost.