Kahsennenhawe Mandy Jacobs
“Your accent carries the story of who you are.” Mari Matsuda 1996
On a recent trip to the city with my family, we headed into Footlocker. The store was jam packed with tourists, awesome, because English was the language of majority in the store.
My son goes off by himself and my daughter and I continue shopping and talking.
Then I noticed this guy staring at my daughter and I. He maneuvers his stroller to get closer to us. I try not to make eye contact. He is obviously heading right towards us and listening to our conversation.
When speaking, we switch between both English and Kanien’kéha all the time. But, like the generation before me, we immediately switch to speaking Kanien’kéha, it’s like a survival mechanism. Mainly because we don’t want this guy to know what we are saying about him.
Growing up, when the elders spoke in Kanien’kéha we always knew that they were taking about something important or about something they didn’t wants us to know. Our elders seldom spoke to us in Kanien’kéha because they also didn’t want us to suffer like they did for speaking their Language.
A majority of our community members, 4,5 and 6 year olds were physically torn from their parents’ arms and sent to residential schools that were hundreds of miles away. Some were schooled here in the community at Indian Day Schools. Both school settings used corporal punishment to deter the students from speaking their Native Languages. The ugly truth: Residential school horror stories at least ‘cultural genocide’
“Residential schools were part of the federal government’s assimilation policies. And the schools were hell-bent on trying to wring every last drop of “Indian” from each child that walked through the door.”
As this guy comes closer to where my daughter and I are standing, he looks at me and says,
“Hey you’re from Kahnawà:ke, Right?” in his heavy Listu.guj accent.
“How do you know” I replied.
He smirked and said “Your accent. I heard it from across the store”
“I don’t have and accent, you have an accent!”
So grateful that I speak with an accent!
Just as an aside, there is a happy ending to my story. We came to find out that his uncle was married to my aunt. Small but mighty, Indigenous world.)
#Accent #happyending #uglytruth #culturalgenocide #residentialschools
The first time I ever heard about the residential school system, I was a first year undergraduate (2008). Did I hear about it in a history class? Nope. An English class. The professor for that course had decided that all the texts we read would be by Indigenous authors about their experiences, and one book was about the aftermath of the residential school system on a family. I’ll never forget that day because of how sad and angry I was that I was 20 years old and just then learning about this incredibly horrific chapter of Canadian history that somehow my high school teachers and even Canadian history master’s degree holder mother had never told me. I grew up watching and listening to the CBC, and I never once heard about that part of our history in all its other Canadian historical programming. I hope that you and other members of your community keep speaking Kanien’kéha and making connections with people like this man. I have no doubt that he was heartened by hearing a familiar language!
-Victoria
I had a similar experience to Victoria. In high school I learned about racism in the deep south but never residential schools. I first heard about them in general when I was on a student exchange in Australia, then about the Canadian context during undergrad, and even then because I enrolled in an Aboriginal Studies class! I recommend the memoir, They Called Me Number One by Bev Sellars, in which she describes her experience. That book should be required reading in high schools! Because there’s such a (willful) lack of knowledge about this, it is extra important when indigenous people share their experiences, even though I know it’s painful.
I went to high school off reserve. Just across the river. My community is clearly visible from their side of the river and would constantly be asked if we still live in tepees. Joke on them we lived in longhouses LOL In my social studies classes there was never a mention on First Peoples of Canada, but plenty of mention about the so called founders of Canada. We were not the ones who were lost, it was Columbus.
First off, I really like the quote you used “Your accent carries the story of who you are.” Because it is so true. Recently, I was mistaken for “an American” after my brother and I were in a store and he called me ‘dude’. I guess the Quebecois clerks who were serving us were not accustomed to that word nor were they accustomed to ‘American’ accents’. I really don’t find there is much difference between my accent and most people from the USA. But then the clerk asked: “do you get offended when people think you’re American?” Literally, no. He was trying to claim that Canadians were better than Americans and it’s like no DUDE.
Bottom line: accents carry baggage with them and people all too often confound accents with random stereotypes or pre-existing attitudes about that person. Not cool man, not cool.
Shayne Crawford
I loved reading your post Mandy, the part about switching language to not be understood is so true!
Thank you for sharing this with us, Mandy! I am certain it was not easy to write.
– Lucía Ringuelet
I have accent when I speak English or French so I found your blog interesting and the quotation so inspiring. I sometimes have experiences like what you had. On bus or in subway, when people speak English or French with accents, my ears become sharp automatically to detect if any of them speak those languages with accent that expects of Persian speakers. Sometimes, when they ask for address or time and I become sure that they have an accent familiar to that I Persian speakers, I answer their questions in Persian and they like it.