Growing up, I hated the Indian stereotypes I grew up hearing. I hated them because they were all too true.
My dad was an Ojibwe man from Manitoba. In 1999, he died of a drug overdose. It was a few years after abandoning my mom, my brother and me. I couldn’t tell you why he left. It didn’t make sense to me – it never will. And once he was dead, it reinforced my hate for those stereotypes I grew up hearing.
I felt so much shame. It was embarrassing knowing my dad chose cocaine and heroin over me – his son. I carried that shame and pain for years. But after a while, I got sick of being ashamed. Why should I fall into a spiral of self pity, like my father did and his father did?
In 2007, I began taking classes at the First Nations University of Canada. And in 2011, I graduated with a degree in Political Science and double minor of English and Indigenous studies. Now I have a beautiful wife, an amazing daughter that brings me more energy than she takes and I work for a multi-billion dollar corporation. I’m not rich – or even remotely close to rich for that matter – but life hasn’t been this good since I was a blissfully ignorant eight-year-old.
I want you to understand what I’m saying here. As a kid, I idolized my dad. And the older I got, the more my idol disappointed me. But, he was disappointing me because I was still idolizing him. That meant, the only way to stop being disappointed was to stop placing him on a pedestal he didn’t deserve. So that’s what I did.
But, by the time I was able to do that, he had been dead for nearly a decade and I had pissed away the first half of my 20s. It took so long to take him off that pedestal because I was still thinking he was the loving, strong, happy, smart and invincible father I remembered. But that’s impossible, because a man like that would never die the way he did.
The truth is, Dad was a flawed human being. Just like me and everybody else on Earth. I’ll never know why he chose to live and ultimately die the way he did, but even if I did understand that, it would change nothing.
Sometime after my dad’s death – maybe it was a month, maybe a year – my mom said to me, “It got to the point where your dad can do more for you dead, than he could alive.” Those words changed the course of my life. They also changed his.
So now, those Indian stereotypes I grew up hearing still bother me. But it’s not because they’re true, it’s because they’re not. The new Indian stereotype doesn’t look back to find shame. The new Indian stereotype looks in the mirror. The new Indian stereotype refuses to fall into a downward spiral. The new Indian stereotype is proud and humble, strong and sensitive, smart and forever learning.
I am the new Indian stereotype and you can be too.
My dad was an Ojibwe man from Manitoba. In 1999, he died of a drug overdose. It was a few years after abandoning my mom, my brother and me. I couldn’t tell you why he left. It didn’t make sense to me – it never will. And once he was dead, it reinforced my hate for those stereotypes I grew up hearing.
I felt so much shame. It was embarrassing knowing my dad chose cocaine and heroin over me – his son. I carried that shame and pain for years. But after a while, I got sick of being ashamed. Why should I fall into a spiral of self pity, like my father did and his father did?
In 2007, I began taking classes at the First Nations University of Canada. And in 2011, I graduated with a degree in Political Science and double minor of English and Indigenous studies. Now I have a beautiful wife, an amazing daughter that brings me more energy than she takes and I work for a multi-billion dollar corporation. I’m not rich – or even remotely close to rich for that matter – but life hasn’t been this good since I was a blissfully ignorant eight-year-old.
I want you to understand what I’m saying here. As a kid, I idolized my dad. And the older I got, the more my idol disappointed me. But, he was disappointing me because I was still idolizing him. That meant, the only way to stop being disappointed was to stop placing him on a pedestal he didn’t deserve. So that’s what I did.
But, by the time I was able to do that, he had been dead for nearly a decade and I had pissed away the first half of my 20s. It took so long to take him off that pedestal because I was still thinking he was the loving, strong, happy, smart and invincible father I remembered. But that’s impossible, because a man like that would never die the way he did.
The truth is, Dad was a flawed human being. Just like me and everybody else on Earth. I’ll never know why he chose to live and ultimately die the way he did, but even if I did understand that, it would change nothing.
Sometime after my dad’s death – maybe it was a month, maybe a year – my mom said to me, “It got to the point where your dad can do more for you dead, than he could alive.” Those words changed the course of my life. They also changed his.
So now, those Indian stereotypes I grew up hearing still bother me. But it’s not because they’re true, it’s because they’re not. The new Indian stereotype doesn’t look back to find shame. The new Indian stereotype looks in the mirror. The new Indian stereotype refuses to fall into a downward spiral. The new Indian stereotype is proud and humble, strong and sensitive, smart and forever learning.
I am the new Indian stereotype and you can be too.
