After thirty-six years, I have stopped interacting with yet another friend (and they were friends with each other, the last one I lost – they even travelled together). I was having problems with her from the moment she came into my life, but kindness and an ability to tolerate bullshit and being very passive about things kept her in and out of my life. Anyway, she defended racist speech. I got very troubled when she went to some organization or other to ask for a Metis card, and then I read Chelsea Vowel’s “Indigenous Writes” on the subject and kinda went WTF? If you’re not born to that specific Red River culture then you’re of FN ancestry but calling yourself Métis is heaps wrong appropriation. She’d argue the point, but I’ve unfriended her and any emails she sends me are going into the bit bucket in the sky. I can’t stop her from calling me, and I imagine once she’s no longer stony broke that’s what she’ll do.
She has been claimed by a number of FN families, and good for them. I wish them joy of her. She has not been able to safely or healthily live on any FN territories, nor make a living. Not that I’m doing a special job of living on Sto:lo lands, but I’m not trying to appropriate a culture that is not and cannot be mine; nor do I defend the word gypsy in public
I woke up, sweating, thinking that I must go into work early, and found out that my predecessor on shift was planning on leaving, relief or not, at 10:30. By dint of running like an idjit I got here at 10:35.
I’m going out to brekky with Sue tomorrow, ever supposing that I actually get relief at the correct time, and then apparently me and Paul and Keith and Jeff (if he likes) are going to a good noodle place in New West for an early dinner. Also, apparently there’s a new family practice doc taking new patients in New West, if anybody needs one. Dr. Michelle Zeng, ForeMed clinic.