Month: March 2013
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Silver linings
The sun finally came out so I am busy looking for silver linings. The entire Isle of Arran is trapped under many feet of snow. They have no electricity and elderly people are trapped in their farm houses. Grey Aberdeen doesn’t seem so bad by contrast. (I hope the storms eventually pass and yield a…
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Decolonizing the City
I have been away from Edmonton since December 12th. In that time a lot has happened back home. I left Alberta just as Idle No More was gaining traction, and over the holidays I watched videos of round dance flash mobs in West Edmonton Mall, Kingsway Mall, Churchill Square and elsewhere with tears in my…
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Birds at Play
Yesterday I headed over to the sea after work. It was a windy day, cold. But not miserable. There were great, tall clouds in the sky and the sun was peeking out between them. I felt comforted by the cold wind buffeting me, and as I drew closer to the beach the smell of sea…
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It’s Complicated (“Are You Really Metis?”)
I’ve been thinking about identity for a long time; how identity manifests for each person is complex. I’ve struggled for a long time with the inherent tensions and ironies in being a Metis woman who looks so blatantly, blaringly, undeniably white. It is difficult to reconcile my appearance (“You look Irish!” one elderly man told…
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Movement
“I’m looking for a soft place to land/the forest floor/the palms of your hands” – Kathleen Edwards, Voyageur (2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vV1J3cQnj0 I have been looking for a soft place to land for a while now; the road can be rough and sometimes I don’t know if I’m going to find a friendly home at the end…
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decolonizing the body
I want to return to a topic I first broached on this blog last year, one that I have been engaging with for a very long time: body image and eating disorders. A friend recently shared this thought during a conversation about recovering from an eating disorder: “When you deny yourself food [in whatever form…
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