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Alicia Elliott connects the dots between depression and colonialism

ALICIA ELLIOTT as part of IN HER VOICE FESTIVAL on June 1. 4-5:30 pm, $10. The Centre for Social Innovation Annex (720 Bathurst), benmcnallybooks.com.


The title of Tuscarora writer Alicia Elliott’s debut collection of essays, A Mind Spread Out On The Ground, is a translated Mohawk phrase roughly meaning a person in the throes of depression. Elliott writes about her own struggles with suicidal thoughts as a teenager, and reading the seminal workbook for depression, Mind Over Mood. She notes, however, there’s nothing inside the workbook about racism, intergenerational trauma, sexism or homophobia. As she writes, it’s as if depression “doesn’t ‘see’ petty things like race or gender or sexual orientation.” 

But Elliott can see those things and how the effects of colonialism and suffering from depression aren’t all that different. They both make her feel hopeless, tired and suicidal. “I struggle against colonialism the same way I struggle against depression –  by telling myself I’m not worthless, that I’m not a failure, that things will get better,” she writes.

Throughout A Mind Spread Out On The Ground, Elliott explores the lasting legacy of colonialism in North America while weaving together deeply personal stories of mental illness, sexual assault, identity representation, poverty and racism.

Elliott’s writing is equally fearless as she reflects on intimate details from her life, like her mother’s struggles with bipolar disorder and her own teenaged motherhood, and racism within the Canadian judicial system and the links between suicide within Indigenous communities and colonialism. Treading on these heavy subjects, Elliott remains inquisitive and insightful, while never shying away from biting humour.

Over the phone from her home in Brantford, Elliott speaks about writing the book for other Indigenous women, explaining the Colten Boushie case to her child and accepting vulnerability.

Your book has been out for just over a month now. What kind of reactions have you been getting?

I have been getting a lot of people messaging me on Twitter and Facebook, especially Indigenous women, saying that the book really connected with them, which is amazing because that’s what I really wanted.

I ask because you write that reading Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s Islands Of Decolonial Love was the first time you felt seen in literature as an Indigenous woman. I was curious if for other Indigenous women, A Mind Spread Out On The Ground would be a similar experience.

It’s surreal to think that that’s happening with my work. It’s something I’m really thankful for. It’s great that a lot of people are reading it and liking it, but for me, it was always the most important that Indigenous women and non-binary people really felt held by the book, so that was constantly going through the back of my head while writing and editing it. Is this going to feel that it’s loving them and sees them?

That feels like a lot of pressure to put on yourself.

It is, but it also encourages me to do my best work. I know there are authors who write for themselves and with no one else in mind. That’s never been the way I write. I want to write something that I’m proud of, but I also want to write something that people from my community are proud of, so I put that responsibility on myself very willingly.

In the chapter Half-Breed, you write about your mixed-race identity and “passing,” as in passing as a white person. How has your relationship with your identity evolved?

When I was younger it was something I struggled with a lot more. Now I don’t feel upset acknowledging that I have white privilege. For [mixed] white-passing people, it puts you in a strange position because you know the effects of racism because you see it in your family and you see it all around you, and it can be hard reconciling that with the fact that you have this privilege that your family doesn’t. It makes you feel like you have to overcompensate or deny that you have this privilege, but for me, I’ve moved past that at this point. I don’t think it makes me less Indigenous.

The chapter on the Gerald Stanley case, the Saskatchewan farmer acquitted of murdering the Cree man Colten Boushie, is framed around the concept of “dark matter,” something, you write, that forms the skeleton of the universe and yet doesn’t emit light or reflect it, so scientists can’t detect it. Why write about the case in that context?

It helped me think through some of the things I’d been grappling with around racism, where it seems like nowadays no one can really put their finger on what racism is. People say “That’s not racism” or “Stop making it about race.” It gets to a point where you’re like, what is racism, then? The people who deny racism, it seems like there is never going to be an incident that’s racist to them, especially one that is happening now. They might be willing to concede to something that happened generations in the past that they no longer have to feel any guilt over, but what about everything happening now? These kinds of questions and frustrations have been swirling in the back of my mind as the Gerald Stanley case happened.

In the aftermath of the verdict, you explained the case to your 11-year-old child and then later as a family you went to a protest in Vancouver. Why was it important for you to have that conversation?

When we think about parenting, we tend to think about needing to provide food and shelter, changing their diapers and taking them to school. You don’t really think about how it’s your responsibility to teach them everything. I don’t want my kid to grow up ignorant and have to learn all the things I’ve learned much later in life. I feel like that’s a responsibility all parents should be taking on, really consciously helping them to grapple with this world and sometimes that means the injustices as well. When Sandra Bland was murdered, I remember reading about it as I was taking him home from a basketball practice and deciding then that we have to have these conversations because I didn’t want him to grow up and be someone who is not consciously aware of how racism shapes the world. I want him to fight against it and the only way to do that is to start by educating him.

Did you have these conversations with your family growing up?

Not really. I was raised in a family that didn’t talk about the things that were difficult or hurting. We just pushed it aside and pushed through. For the longest time I thought even crying was a sign of weakness, showing any sign of vulnerability was bad, so it took me a long time to come to terms with how that had impacted me. As I got older and worked through a lot of these things, it became more clear to me that vulnerability was not a weakness, it’s a strength. It was a process to get to that point, but I’m trying to stay on track.

@SamEdwardsTO

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