Mixed Race Studies

Student reflection on the Luther Lecture

Impetus
Luther College at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Fall 2011

Jenna Tickell

Senator Lillian Eva Dyck was the 36th Annual Luther Lecturer.  Senator Dyck presented her personal story in relation to the issues of racism and sexism in Canada.  She began with power-point statistics and ended with a standing ovation from the audience.  Her main point pertaining to statistics was to indicate the reality that statistics can be manipulated in various ways, so we must be cautious of what we take as fact from presumably unbiased numbers.  When looking at statistics, Senator Dyck reminded us not to get overwhelmed with the notion that maybe some race and gender issues are too big to tackle; for one, because statistics can be manipulated in various ways and truth from numbers is always subjective, and two, that the positive changes that have occurred in Canada regarding gender and race equality should be used to empower us to take the next step.  When Senator Dyck began her personal life story, her lecture really blossomed for me.  Through telling her life story, she reinforced what I had learned through my university studies while also educating me on a piece of Canadian history that I had not heard before.  As a Métis woman and as a university student, the value of guest lectures such as this is immense; she educated me regarding her personal history while at the same time empowered my activism and sense of self-discovery.              
 
Senator Dyck comes from a “mixed” racial family; her mother is Cree and her father is Chinese.  Her mother grew up on a reserve where abuse was high and poverty was extreme because of colonialist policies and laws.  During the same time period, there was considerable immigration from China, as workers were first needed to build the railway and then were left to find employment, often resulting in local Chinese cafes scattered throughout the small prairie towns in Saskatchewan.  Due to restrictive immigration policies, Chinese men were forced to leave their families behind but hoped that one day they would have the financial means to bring them to Canada. Unfortunately, immigration laws became even more restrictive, and this created an interesting phenomenon called the Chinese bachelors.  The government allowed their entrepreneurial efforts, but implemented a rule stating that Chinese men could not hire white women to work for them.  Chinese men needed waitresses for their small restaurants and since they could not hire white women it opened the opportunity for Aboriginal women to work with and meet Chinese men.  Thus, the racist laws actually facilitated “mixed” marriages between Chinese men and Aboriginal women within Saskatchewan…

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