Mixed Race Studies

Mixed-race indigenous people should get benefits extended to those with Indian status, Canadian court rules

The Los Angeles Times
2016-04-14

Christopher Guly

For decades in Canada, people of mixed indigenous and European ancestry didn’t qualify for “Indian” status and were denied a host of benefits granted to other First Nations people, including government funding, free postsecondary education and health benefits, and hunting and fishing rights.

In a landmark ruling Thursday, that changed. The Canadian Supreme Court declared that hundreds of thousands of mixed-race indigenous people, known as Metis in Canada, along with non-status Indians living off reservations, should have access to the same government programs and services as those with Indian status.

“This is something that will impact about 600,000 people across the country who have been denied recognition or access to entitlements that they now have been declared by the court as having,” said Dwight Dorey, national chief of the Ottawa-based Congress of Aboriginal Peoples…

Read the entire article here.

Toward building a conceptual framework on intermarriage

Ethnicities
Volume 16, Number 4, August 2016
pages 497-520
DOI: 10.1177/1468796816638402

Sayaka Osanami Törngren
Malmö University, Sweden; Sophia University, Japan

Nahikari Irastorza, Marie Curie Research Fellow
Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity, and Welfare
Malmö University, Sweden

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom

Increasing migration worldwide and the cultural diversity generated as a consequence of international migration has facilitated the unions of people from different countries, religions, races, and ethnicities. Such unions are often celebrated as a sign of integration; however, at the same time as they challenge people’s idea of us and them, intermarriages in fact still remain controversial, and even to some extent, taboo in many societies. Research and theorizing on intermarriage is conducted predominantly in the English-speaking North American and British contexts. This special issue includes empirical studies from not only the English-speaking countries such as the U.S., Canada, and the UK, but also from Japan, Sweden, Belgium, France, and Spain and demonstrate the increasingly diverse directions taken in the study of intermarriage in regards to the patterns, experiences, and social implications of intermarriages. Moreover, the articles address the assumed link between intermarriage and “integration.”

Read or purchase the article here.

Blanket Fort Chats: Game Making With Meagan Byrne

FemHype: the safe space for women & nonbinary gamers
2016-04-01

Miss N (Nicole Pacampara)

“Blanket Fort Chats” is a weekly column featuring women and nonbinary game makers talking about the craft of making games. In this week’s post, we feature Meagan Byrne, a Toronto-based Game Design student currently working as a Peer Mentor for her school’s Aboriginal Initiatives office and an active member of her school’s Aboriginal Student Group. She hopes to create games that reflect her Métis/Cree roots and bring new stories to video game players.

Miss N: Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into making games?

Meagan: I actually started out in the live production/theatre field doing lighting design and event planning, but then the recession hit and I couldn’t find full-time work anymore. As my last contract was starting to wrap up, I took a really hard look at the job market. It was clear that if I stuck with this career, I was most likely never going to be able to rise above the poverty line. So I looked at what market was growing, and lo and behold, I saw the gaming industry!…

…Miss N: You’ve previously described Wanisinowin as a game about “being lost or unsure of your place in the world.” What drew you to this theme?

Meagan: I wasn’t told straight up that I was native until I was at least a pre-teen. It wasn’t really a shock, it was more of a “that makes sense” thing. What was hard was the rejection from the native community my aunt brought me to. Almost right away I was dismissed because my skin was too light or I because I didn’t grow up on a reservation. I didn’t feel comfortable going to “native” events or Friendship Centres. Was I going to be thrown out of there, too? My mother was not interested in embracing her identity, neither were my siblings, so I acted like I didn’t care either.

My aunt was my only connection, but it felt too distant that way. I felt that if this is what I am, then why do I feel like a fraud or an outsider? It was really only because of the growing Native community at my school and our Aboriginal Student Success Officer that I was able to find my path and begin to meet with other First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students, and talk to elders.

I know I am not the only Native person who feels this way. I’m sure even outside of the issue of Native identity, many people feel the pain of unsure cultural identity. I wanted to make a game that explored that and maybe work through my own issues of belonging…

Read the entire interview here.

“Race Is Not a Determinative Factor”: Mixed Race Children and Custody Cases in Canada

Canadian Journal of Family Law
Volume 29, Number 2, 2015
pages 309-

Susan B. Boyd, Professor Emerita of Law; Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Peter A. Allard School of Law
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Krisha Dhaliwal
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Statistics suggest that an increase will occur in the number of custody disputes involving mixed race children in Canada. This article considers the extent to which the fact that a child is mixed race factors into child custody determinations, and how courts consider it. It also discusses whether considering a child’s mixed race heritage is helpful in the child-custody context. The article first explains the use of “race” and “culture” in the Canadian context, then reviews the literature on mixed race children and the law, before examining legislation on the “best interests of the child.” The focus of the paper is an analysis of reported Canadian custody cases in which a child’s mixed race heritage was mentioned in the written judgment, both before and after the leading case, Van de Perre v. Edwards. The case-law analysis considers questions such as judicial racism, “race-matching,” and how race and culture are weighed against other factors relevant to a child’s best interests. The conclusion offers suggestions for how courts should deal with custody disputes over mixed race children, based on trends identified in the case law. While racialized parents are not inevitably best suited for primary custody of mixed race children, it is key for any parent seeking custody to demonstrate their ability to foster the healthy development of a child’s multifaceted identity. More directive legislative language might be useful in order to ensure that at least some judicial attention is paid to race and culture. Finally, taking judicial notice of the relevance of race would also be helpful in acknowledging the persistent existence of racism in Canadian society, as would a more diversified Canadian judiciary.

The number of mixed race couples is on the rise in Canada; they constitute 4.6 per cent of all married and common-law couples, up from 2.6 per cent in 1991 and 3.1 per cent in 2001. 2 Although not all couples conceive children and not all children are raised in couples, these statistics suggest that the legal system is likely to see more custody disputes involving mixed race children in the future. Some such disputes have, of course, already come before the courts. In such cases, it is sometimes argued that a visible minority parent may be better able to deal with the child’s experiences of racism or that race should at least be a factor that must be considered in determining the best interests of a child.

This article examines the extent to which the fact that a child is mixed race makes a difference, or should make a difference, in the determination of legal disputes about parental rights and responsibilities or custody, 3 and, if so, how. In order to better understand the issues that arise in such cases, we reviewed literature on mixed race children and law, as well as legislation on the best interests of the child. The heart of our study, however, is an analysis of reported Canadian custody cases where a child’s mixed race heritage was mentioned in the written judgment. In our search for both cases and for literature, we included mixed race children with Aboriginal heritage. Some of the…

Read or purchase the article here.

The Lucky Seven Interview, with Adebe DeRango-Adem

Open Book: Toronto
2016-02-28

Grace O’Connell, Senior Editor

The metaphor of striking out to explore unknown land is a particularly apt one for the act of writing, so the title Terra Incognita (Inanna Publications) fits Adebe DeRango-Adem’s new collection of poetry perfectly.

Exploring racial discourse in both contemporary and historical contexts, Terra Incognita teases out cultural memory and the impact of social and racial histories on the personal experience. Questioning what these forces mean for the creation (and imposition) of identity, Adebe’s deft verse mimics the physical and spiritual movement of those seeking identity within and beyond social and political borders.

We’re thrilled to welcome Adebe as our March 2016 writer-in-residence at Open Book!

Check out our conversation with Adebe, part of our Lucky Seven series, where she tells us about seeing eye to eye with your words, good advice from Ta-Nehisi Coates and the insurgency of a great book.

Open Book:

Tell us about your new book, Terra Incognita.

Adebe DeRango-Adem:

Titled after the Latin term for “unknown land” — a cartographical expression referring to regions that have not yet been mapped or documented — Terra Incognita is a collection of poems that explores various racial discourses and interracial crossings both buried in the grand narratives of history and the everyday experiences of being mixed-race. In my most recent book, the quest for the meaning of identity in the interracial context becomes part of the quest to unearth the territory of those who cross borders — racially, ethnically, culturally and geographically…

Read the entire interview here.

“But how Indian are you?”: notes on being a mixed-race Indigenous person.

A Halfbreed’s Reasoning
2012-11-15

Samantha Nock

I am mixed. It’s not like it’s a secret. I am a mixed-race, mixed-blood, hybrid, mud blood, halfbreed; these things I know to be true. The thing is, I know my identity. I am accepted by my community, yet when I tell folks, especially non-Native folks, I get one of two reactions:

1. “Really? But like, how much Indian are you? Like what fraction of your blood is Native?”
2. They lean in really close, like they’re going to tell me a secret. They cock their head to the left and squint their eyes like they’re searching each line in my face, each pore, each chicken pox scar for some trace of their cigar shop Indian. It’s like, somewhere hidden in my features their untamed savage is hiding: maybe it’s behind my eyes, or maybe its somewhere in the space between my cheek bone and my jawline. When they’re done searching for hidden Indigenous clues, they always pull back, smile, and say, “yeah I can kind of see it! Look at your cheeks!”

It’s not the act itself that bothers me, as a light skinned, white passing, Indigenous individual, I get it. But it’s the fact that people assume that because I am mixed that I am less of an individual, that now, my parts don’t make a whole and each aspect of my identity is up for scrutiny. Automatically, I lose sovereignty over my identity and my body because I become a subject to be “made sense of.” Invasive questions about blood and family are deemed okay, because I have become the embodiment of anti-dichotomous reasonings of identity: “but how can you be more than one thing!”…

Read the entire article here.

Terra Incognita: Poems by Adebe DeRango-Adem

Inanna Publications
2015-05-25
80 Pages
ISBN: 978-1-77133-217-0

Adebe DeRango-Adem

Titled after the Latin term for “unknown land”—a cartographical expression referring to regions that have not yet been mapped or documented—Terra Incognita is a collection of poems that creatively explores various racial discourses and interracial crossings buried in history’s grand narratives. Set against the similarities as well as incongruities of the Canadian/American backdrop of race relations, Terra Incognita explores the cultural memory and legacy of those whose histories have been the site of erasure, and who have thus—riffing on the Heraclitus’s dictum that “geography is fate”—been forced to redraw themselves into the texts of history. Finally, Terra Incognita is a collection that delves into the malleable borders of identity and questions what it means to move physically and spiritually, for our bodies to arrive and depart, our souls to relocate and change their scope.

Adebe DeRango-Adem explores her identity in art and poetry

The Toronto Star
2016-02-26

Debra Black, Immigration Reporter

Adebe DeRango-Adem was recently hailed as a young Canadian author to watch by Canada’s poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke. She is a poet and doctoral student in English literature at University of Pennsylvania.

Adebe DeRango-Adem was recently hailed as a young Canadian author to watch by Canada’s poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke. She is a poet and doctoral student in English literature at University of Pennsylvania.

Adebe DeRango-Adem was recently hailed as a young Canadian author to watch by Canada’s poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke. DeRango-Adem is a poet and doctoral student in English literature at University of Pennsylvania. Her latest work, Terra Incognita, a collection of poetry published last year, examines racial identity. The winner of the Toronto Poetry Competition in 2005, she served as Toronto’s first junior poet laureate. She spoke to the Star about Black History Month and what it means to her, as well as the importance of exploring identity in art.

I’m wondering what your feelings are about the designation of Black History Month and what that means for you as a writer. Is it important?

A colleague of mine, Andrea Thompson, who is pretty well known in the poetry world, described my book as an excellent and complete mapping of racial topography in Canada. We’re still struggling with the notion of post-race world and post-racial identities. My book and how it speaks to Black History Month is about pushing for malleable borders of identity and identification, in terms of blackness. I happen to be of mixed race — black identified mixed race — and so my book kind of inhabits the same questions that I think are important for everyone to consider. Questions such as: What’s our fixation on the attempts to envision a post-racial world all about? Who is to say, for example, that this idea of mixed races — what makes that radical? That term blackness itself is being opened in good ways. So those are the questions that I think my book is asking. It’s referring to the inter-racial experience as a grounding, but it also wants to ask about immigration. I, myself, am a child of immigrant parents. From Italy and Ethiopia. I came to the U.S. to study, also making me an immigrant. My book is also about asking how blackness in Canada relates to roots, movement and differentiation…

Read the entire interview here.

9 Benefits of Being in an Intercultural Marriage

Masala Mommas: An Online Magazine for Today’s Moms with a South Asian Connection
2016-02-17

Alexandra Madhavan

My husband is from South India and I am Canadian. We are the living, walking, breathing epitome of cultural differences – he is Hindu, I am Catholic; he is a strict vegetarian, I am not; he comes from a huge traditional Iyengar family, I come from a very small Canadian family. We met and fell in love 10 years ago in college, and it still stands that he’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I fell in love with him because he was perfect for me – and he just happened to be from a completely different culture than my own.

Sure, we have had our challenges. There were difficulties being accepted by his family, we still have frequent misunderstandings, we get stared at a lot in public, and we feel a bit isolated in our journey as an intercultural couple because our mix is such a rarity. But our journey getting to know each other’s cultures has been beautiful, mind-blowing and so interesting.

For Example:…

Read the entire article here.

An Interview with Poet and Room Poetry Coordinator Chelene Knight

Room: Literature, Art, and Feminism Since 1975
Issue 37.4: Claiming Space (2015)

Interview with Bonnie Nish

Chelene Knight was born in Vancouver and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU. She has been published in Sassafras Literary Magazine, Room, emerge 2013 and Raven Chronicles and is the Poetry Coordinator at Room. Braided Skin, her first book (Mother Tongue Publishing, March 2015), has given birth to numerous writing projects, including a work in progress, Dear Current Occupant. Her work is deeply rooted in her experiences of mixed ethnicity. Her mother is African-American, and her father and his family were victims of the Asian expulsion in Uganda during the 70s, when President Idi Amin led a campaign of “de-Indianization,” resulting in the “ethnic cleansing” of the country’s Indian minority. Chelene is currently pursuing her BA in English at SFU.

Her first book Braided Skin is forthcoming with Mother Tongue Publishing in spring 2015. Her launch will take place Wednesday April 8th, 2015 from 7-9:30 pm as a part of Twisted Poets Literary Salon run by Pandora’s Collective.

ROOM: First of all Congratulations on your new book Braided Skin (Mother Tongue Publishing). Would you like to tell us something about your new book?

CK: Thank you! Braided Skin is a mix of many things…

Read the entire interview here.