Critical Rage

Are Indigenous women really “intimidating,” “crazy,” and “aggressive,” or are Canadians more likely to be forgiven for feeling and expressing settler rage? Jennifer Komorowski and Cara Peacock discuss Indigenous women’s rage and madness.

Jennifer Komorowski: My dissertation research focuses on women’s masochism and rage. My research about rage began in 2017. I took a Ph.D. course on Indigenous critical theory and read the play The Unnatural and Accidental Women by Marie Clements. The play is kind of a revenge fantasy. In the play, the main character’s mother was murdered by someone called the “boozing Barber:” a real-life serial killer in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He would pick up women at a bar, bring them back to his barbershop, and encourage them to keep drinking with him. When the women passed out, he would pour a bottle of vodka down their throats. He murdered them. He kept doing this over and over again. Even though women were turning up dead at his barbershop, he got away with the murders for a long time. The deaths were ruled unnatural and accidental but he was murdering these women.

There is a revenge fantasy in the play. The main character finds her mother’s killer and murders him as revenge. All the spirits of the women killed by the “boozing Barber” encourage and help her kill him. I read the play to study the aesthetics of rage and negative affect. Indigenous women expressing our rage, negative affect, and emotion is a radical action that goes against the settler colonial state. Indigenous women, such as Lee Maracle and Leanne Simpson, have written about the stereotype of the unfeeling Indigenous woman. We’re expected not to show emotion. We’re expected not to complain or whine.

Sky Woman goes through hardship and sacrifice. In stories from Six Nations, she goes through trials. She prepares corn mash to be splattered on her naked body that burns her. Then dogs come and lick the corn mash off Sky Woman. The dogs have sharp tongues that cut her body. But she can’t show any pain and can’t complain. There are stories about women in our culture who can undergo painful things—figures like Mohawk Saint Kateri Tekakwitha—as a kind of sacrifice. I think about masochism and moral masochism within this context.

I read Pauline Johnson’s story Red Girl’s Reasoning about a girl named Christie who leaves her husband because he’s ashamed of her. He doesn’t recognize that Christie’s parents are married through what she calls “Indian rights” (rather than through a Christian marriage). He finds out her parents weren’t married in the church and he’s ashamed of her. He’s upset. Christie says she doesn’t recognize their marriage and she leaves.

At the same time, Christie is also suffering because she loves her husband. She leaves and never comes back. He tracks her down. She refuses to come back. She has active refusal while she’s suffering. She’s not going to be subservient to anyone even if she loves them. She admits she loves him. At the same time, she’s doing this because she’s not going to give in. She’s getting revenge on him.

I’ve been thinking about active refusal; an active refusal of things to do with reconciliation. Scholars such as Glen Coulthard argue the language of reconciliation has been co-opted by settlers. What does this mean in terms of Indigenous sadomasochism?

Cara Peacock: I wrote a chapter for the new edition of Making Space for Indigenous Feminisms. I write about mad Indigenous womanhood and the psycho-mythologizing of Indigenous women. Often the expressions, feelings, and rationale of Indigenous women get portrayed as crazy and fall into gendered ideas about hysteria. These gendered ideas feed into established logics of settler colonialism like containment in prisons and the result of biomedical power. Indigenous people who are suffering from mental illness will end up frustrated and led to their confinement within mental asylums. I look broadly at the history of mental health asylums and the treatment of Indigenous peoples. I draw on the instance of my grandma. She’s an Anishinaabe woman. She was in mental health asylums in Northern Ontario for most of her adult life.

I’m thinking through how her story fits into the larger logics of settler colonialism. My thesis looks at Idle No More as an instance of Indigenous feminist philosophy from the ground up. A lot of the rhetoric surrounding Idle No More emphasized Indigenous women’s love and care, or framed Idle No More as a peaceful movement. Of course, those are obviously aspects of the movement. But part of the thing that I draw out—that I think is worth noting and similarly valuable—is women’s rage or even, at times, violence. Especially because rage is so often warranted. Yet, there is an expectation that people who are made to bear the weight of settler colonial violence should always respond in a way that is palatable. Rachel Flowers has a piece that reminds me of Indigenous women that rage. I’m thinking about that piece in terms of some of the work I’m doing. Indigenous women’s rage can be a conducive and generative feeling, and an important part of doing necessary decolonial work.

JK: What about the idea of ambivalence? You can feel love and enjoy the movement at the same time you’re feeling hate. You don’t want to forget. It’s important to recognize that we can feel love and joy at the same time that we will feel hate and refusal. I was looking at the Rachel Flowers article, as well, in my final dissertation chapter “Refusal to Forgive: Indigenous Women’s Love and Rage.” That title is so perfect. It’s normal to feel anger and to feel rage in the face of settler colonialism and all the things that Indigenous women have to go through. When you’re talking about madness and mental health, feeling anger is something that’s totally normal. But we’re expected to be happy and forgiving. It’s a stereotype that you have to be peaceful. It’s a new stereotype: reconciliation.

CP: Another part of my thesis looks at the phrase, “we are all Treaty people.” It falls into the reconciliation narrative of wanting to move us to this place of pretending that everything’s good now we’ve honoured the Treaties; now we’re all Treaty people. This supersedes tangible and practical structural changes. Rage is important. There is refusal in anger at “we are all Treaty people” not being genuine. Anger is not only justified. It can be necessary.

There’s an emphasis on healing, in the same way you’d deal with a personal problem or issue with a person. It’s important to sit and deal with your feelings, and process them before you’re able to move on, because you’re a human who needs to heal. In the same way, we have a big group of people who are taking on problems hundreds of years in the making. Indigenous peoples need to be able to be angry, and heal and move on. Anger is a necessary approach, even though Indigenous peoples are often positioned as “never getting over it.” We’re told “it’s never good enough for you” and “you always find something to be angry about.” Anger is an important part of protecting our own cultures, traditions, and political institutions, like Treaties, from being empty and hollowed out of their meaning. Anger protects words like reconciliation from being empty and hollow of their important critical stance.

JK: You never “get over it.” This idea of “moving on” means that something has come to an end. Settler colonialism hasn’t ended. Six Nations is still in court fighting about money that was taken by the government. There are instances of Indigenous women being treated badly by medical institutions. Day School settlements were filed in 2022. There are people who are younger than myself who went to Day Schools. These things didn’t happen hundreds of years ago. These things are still happening today. They’re not a distant memory. This idea of, “Oh, when are you going to get over this:” it’s a form of gaslighting. “You shouldn’t feel upset. You should just get over it.”

CP: That kind of framing, where it’s almost pathologies, is unfair rationale. It falls into these same old tired logics: the Indians just always blame the white man for their problems and never move on. Indigenous peoples are persistently being stuck in the past. That’s the new way of making us old and outdated, and unable to move into the modern world.

JK: When coming to terms with our feelings and working through trauma, it is important to have catharsis. Recently, I was looking at aesthetic creations like plays, literature, and artwork. With performances of plays, a large audience is seeing it. With Greek trauma or Shakespearean tragedy, there’s catharsis that happens when you watch it. But it’s our stories that are being told. You’re seeing this revenge fantasy play out: an act of revenge and a playing out of rage that can actually happen in real life. Revenge has this cathartic affect on the audience, who think about aesthetics. There’s such a large body of Indigenous artists, writers, and playwrights. All these people who are in artistic creation can be a big part of expressing those feelings.

CP: Expressions of rage, revenge, or refusal are important, even on an individual level. Refusing to take seriously notions of Western politics for instance, even though some people think I’m engaging in bad faith. I am but, after everything that this tradition has done, I think it’s fine if I do this sometimes. I don’t always have to take it seriously, especially when it still doesn’t take me or the political traditions or institutions of Indigenous peoples seriously. For me, there’s a catharsis in just being like, no, I don’t want to. I’m not going to sit there and explore it or appreciate it on its own terms. Even those small instances can be generative in the sense of enabling you to think seriously through your own things. That type of thing can take place on an individual level and be really important too.

JK: I totally agree with what you’ve said about refusal on an individual level, and embracing a refusal to forgive, because I think it’s not just about aesthetics or large movements. Indigenous rage is also the way that we, as individuals, live our lives. I just went through a divorce. I wanted to leave a lot earlier and it was a really bad relationship. I finally realized I do have to refuse to forgive and move on with my own life at the same time. You can’t continually forgive someone for treating you badly. Our own lives would be so much better if we embrace that negative aspect.

CP: I went through a breakup at the end of last year. A lot of people commented, “You should keep trying and keep on working on it.” But, for me, it’s no longer working and she doesn’t fit anymore. But I felt frustrated and continued to feel like I was wrong to be upset. I wanted to leave. There is an expectation, and it’s gendered, to make peace and to continuously forgive. It reminds me of broader politics and settler colonialism. When Wet’suwet’en was happening, Justin Trudeau made a comment about doing “things in the spirit of reconciliation,” and how these protests essentially weren’t very reconciliation of them. Thinking about forgiveness, like making mistakes and being forgiven, Canada is the only one who is allowed to be forgiven. Canada is the only one who gets afforded this endless grace to continuously do wrong, and then expect us all to move on together. Indigenous people are never allowed to make mistakes in this way. Who is allowed to make mistakes and be forgiven and who isn’t allowed to make mistakes and be forgiven? Even thinking about the notion of a marriage: I think about Treaty and how Canada frames a relationship like this as a marriage. “We just need some counseling and everything will be okay.” Canada is like an abusive husband who keeps on gaslighting us and saying: “I’ll be different now.”

JK: Canada is built on this foundation of multiculturalism and the idea that Canada is so welcoming to people. Multiculturalism leaves Indigenous people out and its foundation is that we’re left out. That can’t exist while excluding us, having us on reserves, and taking the resources. Taking the land, it’s continual. They just want to rehabilitate their image constantly and not actually change anything underneath the surface level. Who is allowed to be forgiven?

There is an idea about what’s acceptable in public protest. On Canada day in 2022, there were different orange shirt marches in different cities across the country. We had one in London, Ontario. Everyone came out to the park downtown wearing orange shirts. There were around 10,000 people that marched through downtown London. This is an example of an acceptable public protest. You know you’re coming out. You’re wearing an orange shirt. You’re walking through downtown. Maybe some drivers are inconvenienced but that’s it. On the other hand, before the pandemic began there were also blockades of the railways. Freight cars are being disrupted by various First Nations across the country in protest of lack of clean water and other issues. They were coming out and blocking trains. Many Canadians were enraged. Canadians are allowed to be enraged by Indigenous people doing something to disrupt the system of Canadian settler colonialism like the railways. It’s symbolic when they’re disrupted. It’s like disrupting the economy by disrupting their goods getting from point A to point B. For most everyday Canadians, it’s probably not actually affecting their lives to have these railways blocked. They have this fear that maybe they won’t have enough toilet paper or whatever. I saw on social media that these people were just enraged that these protests are going on and these blockades are happening on the railways. There’s this acceptable form of protest. You can come out for one day, walk around in your orange shirt, and support Indigenous people that way. But you can’t disrupt our railways. Of course, the railways are symbolic of settler colonialism, especially since so many First Nations were cleared off their land for those railways to be built.

CP: So often when those protests happen, it does evoke Canadian rage and deep-seated resentment at things always bubbling under the surface and under the rhetoric of reconciliation. When people talk about bettering the lives of First Nations communities it’s through that lens of economic development and through the desire to continuously enter into Indigenous lands. But when Indigenous people express any kind of economic autonomy outside of that, like when they blockade trains coming through their reserved land, these can be economic sanctions. Canada has violated a relationship. No, you don’t get to move through our territory. Those kinds of actions are never okay because that desire to make Indigenous people economically independent is really about capital accumulation. There’s certainty: Canada gets the autonomy to be angry or to express their interest in a way that is never applied evenly or the same to people.

JK: The blockade is representative of the fear that settlers have of Indigenous people rising up. I’ve been studying the poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott because he is the settler sadomasochistic. His poetry has this really sadistic quality to it. At the same time, he’s basically normalizing the disappearance of Indigenous people. He’s the one responsible for Indigenous people being sent to Residential Schools. Scott worked for the Department of Indian Affairs and is famously known for saying he wanted to “get rid of the Indian problem.” In 1920, he made it mandatory under the Indian Act for Indigenous children to attend residential schools, all while writing poetry about Indigenous peoples being a doomed and dying race. I think his poetry represents this strong undercurrent of fear of Indigenous people rising up and Indigenous resurgence. I talk about Indigenous resurgence in my work. It’s something that’s good and I’m happy and excited about. For settlers, Indigenous resurgence is something they fear. They fear the phrase Land Back. They wonder, does that mean I’m gonna lose my house? They’re worried about their personal property. It represents a deep investment in capitalism as part of Canadian identity.

CP: They have a fear of disappearing. There’s an anxiety about Indigenous people rising up and that ongoing presence. Despite the myth of the disappearing Indian, Indigenous people are the fastest-growing population in Canada. In some places, like in the prairies, the population is growing fast and soon they’ll represent around a third of the population. That fear of Indigenous resurgence goes deep.

JK: When we’re talking about Indigenous women’s rage, Indigenous people are met with this anger on the side of settlers. There’s this expectation that we don’t show our emotions. We don’t show this anger and rage. This expectation is drawn out of exactly what we’re talking about with settler rage. The more that we show these things, the more human we are. These are all normal human emotions. When settlers have to come face to face with this, it’s like they’re being confronted with the reality that we don’t fit in this little box that they think about: the vanishing Indian or Indian princess. All the negative stereotypes they have, we don’t fit into these little boxes because we’re normal human beings, with a wide range of emotions. We are capable of doing all these things and Canadians don’t see us this way. When we rise up, we express emotion. When we have blockades, they have to come face-to-face with our emotions and it’s a confrontation, in a way.

CP: Challenges to Canada can cause an existential crisis to Canadians by challenging the ideas they have about their country. It undermines their self-Indigenizing narratives: “my family came over here a hundred years ago, they worked really hard, and they built their life from the ground up.” That narrative is challenged and they realize it’s not that simple. It’s overwhelming and, instead of confronting that and thinking about the reality of what that all entails, it’s often easier to reject because of a desire to retain that normalcy or retain that sense of your country. Your identity is more important than thinking through the actual history or what reconciliation, and a desire to make things right, should entail.

JK: When the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report came out, at first there were all these headlines in the news talking about how it was genocide. Then, of course, there’s the knee jerk response where Canadians deny. There are people I went to university with and they’re on social media where they’re playing devil’s advocate, and having these debates where they’re trying to argue that it’s not genocide. They’ll have 100 comments where people are arguing against or for their point. Then they just simply delete the post and delete this argument from their timeline. They want to delete the mass Right. They want to get rid of the anger and deny that this exists. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are an example of the Canadian existential crisis. People will recognize that it’s a problem but they don’t want to recognize how Canada itself, and the society that they participate in, benefits them.

I was teaching an English class this year on Indigenous women’s resilience. We were reading Helen Knott, Tenille Campbell, jaye simpson, and Terese Marie Mailhot. We read poetry and personal narratives. I had a couple students in the class who were resistant to thinking about this outside of the way they framed Indigenous narratives before they came into the class. They were defensive about certain things. They would put up their hand and say, “Well, the Washington Redskins changed their name.” Great, it only took them whatever number of years and people demanding that they change it? They had this subtler defensiveness about it. They were trying to go back to the stereotypes such as all violence against Indigenous women is coming from rural communities, when there are statistics that prove otherwise. The Canadian existential crisis is something that I’ve come up against in my own classroom.

CP: That desire is located in Indigenous problems, even anger: “Oh, you people don’t understand the reality of our situation,” “Colonization is in the past,” or “The problems in your communities, with violence against women and girls, that’s because of how your communities function.” It’s a generous desire to make white Canadian hands clean. They are retaining control by portraying us as consistently incompatible and unable to do these things accurately.