When i was a little kid I scared my Gramma. How could I not? I was loud, fearless and had a strong belief in my own invincibility. My uncle nicknamed me “Chuksis” which is Cree for Testicles. When I asked him why he said “ Chucksis, you have more balls than brains, and you are a pretty smart little guy.” My father used to say it was easy to find me because all you had to do was look for the kid running towards the trouble. If something was happening, there was a good chance Ryan was somewhere in the middle of it. Some things change, some things never do.
Most of my childhood stories involve me doing something crazy, mostly because I honestly just assumed everything was gonna work out in my favor – how could it not? If you had asked me, I wouldn’t have said that the creator was looking after me, I would have just said “Because that’s the way things go.” I actually believed that the reason things always seemed to go my way was just how it was. Now I know better.
My grandmother was a residential school survivor, She lived through an abusive childhood and then an abusive marriage. But she was one of the most loving people. I have had the luck to have had her in my life. She was tough, and she could be harsh. She had pictures of all her children and grandchildren on a cabinet, and if you visited you always looked – if the picture was turned around facing the wrong way, you knew that person had transgressed and you shouldn’t mention them. I should mention that my picture was never turned around, because I was the golden child for most of my childhood. I was loud, constantly looking for things to do, and being somewhat fearless, was often getting into trouble. But I was really close with my Gramma Bellerose – I just wish I had listened more carefully sometimes.
My Gramma used to tell me stories, but only when we were alone. She would never speak Cree if anyone else was nearby, even family. She would tell me that I had to be smarter than everyone, but that it was important for me to fit in and not show people up. A very common phrase was “They always cut down the tallest tree.” She would tell me to play inside so I wouldn’t get too dark skinned, and she didn’t like when I spoke Cree (mostly because I swore more in Cree!). As I grew, she was very proud of me; she would only tell me though, she didn’t want people to know that I was any different. I know now that was merely a manifestation of the trauma she went through. I wish I had known it then.
When I was in junior high I went to a “boarding school.” I later learned that St Mary’s Salesian was considered to be one of the last residential schools in operation. I noticed there that the Indian kids who sucked up, who badmouthed Indian customs and history, who acted “White,” were much more popular with the other kids, whereas I was pale-skinned but swore in Cree, and called bullshit in social studies (history) class when the teacher taught false things. More importantly, I was unapologetic, so I was constantly fighting.
That’s when the Indian kids would pile on. I couldn’t figure out why kids who were more visibly Indian than I was were jumping into these fights ON THE WHITE KIDS’ SIDE. And literally a half hour later the White kids would be beating them up too. It got to where I wouldn’t even speak to most of the other Indian kids at all. The only Indian kids I was friends with were from Hobemma, and we would literally fight with everyone else.
When I went home for the holidays, my Gramma talked to me for hours. She told me that if I stood out, people would want to take me down, so I had a choice: I could always do just enough to stay in the good but never enough to stand out (She strongly advocated for that choice), or I could stand out and if I did stand out then I had to stand out so much that people would be afraid to challenge me. She said
I got back to school, and I busted my ass. I never relied on being bigger or stronger or faster even though at that point, I often was all of those things. I watched film, I studied the games, I gave myself every possible edge. I did mental reps, I was into visualisation before it became mainstream. I started winning all the time. I was already good at sports, but I also grew, and grew steady so I didn’t have that awkward stage that so many kids have. I was still pretty witty (that’s never been an issue for me) and I worked hard at school. I was almost always the first pick at almost every game. I was getting the best marks in the school and suddenly the kids stopped trying to fight me all the time.
I think it’s rather obvious which choice I made and I have never regretted it. I still looked with disdain at the kids who tried so hard to be whiter than the white kids. I felt they were weak for their choice but I have come to realize that it was self defense. They were so colonized and beaten down, they felt it was their only choice, so to rationalise it, they had to try to tear me down, because if I was proud of who I was, and they weren’t, it meant they were lesser. But for many, they saw me stand up and it gave them the strength to stand up themselves. When I spoke up, it gave them the ability to speak up themselves. Now rather than derision, I feel pity for people like those colonized kids, and I try to help them understand that instead of throwing their people under the bus for a short-lived, feel good, they should be standing up together for their people. They should be willing to paint a big old target on themselves because by doing that, they are becoming the tallest tree – they will be so tall that nobody will think about chopping them down. But in order for them to do that, they gotta start somewhere. We still live in a world where the most popular Indians are the ones who don’t rock the boat, who hide in their reservation and stay out of sight, but that’s changing, because it must change. Indians are speaking up, standing up and it’s scaring people. People felt safer when we were invisible
You might ask why this is on Israellycool. Well my friends it’s rather simple. The most popular Jews on campus are the “good Jews,” the ones who join in when the asshat chorus starts chanting its anti-Israel garbage. The ones who are “balanced” but by balanced really mean are willing to throw their own under the bus. The “asajews” who say things like “As a Jew, I support things that are anti Jew.” Of course everyone politely applauds and ignores the fact that these kids aren’t being moral; they are being cowards who are taking the easy way out. It’s easy to be the “good Jew” – it’s being the bad Jew that is hard. It’s understanding that you will be sacrificing popularity for moral clarity, by doing that, you will in fact be the “Bad Jew”, the Jew who wouldn’t assimilate. But just remember it was the “Bad Jews” who said “screw it, i’m outta here” to Pharoah, the “Bad Jews” who told the Brits to pound sand when the Brits denied sanctuary to the Jews of the holocaust and fought a war of independence, the “Bad Jews” who said “This is OUR land and WE will fight for it” even when every single one of their neighbors said they would push them into the sea. So by being a “Bad Jew”, you will be in good company the right company. You didn’t regain your ancestral lands after 2 thousand years in exile by being good Jews – it was the Bad Jews who did that.
I see some young Jews who get it, who don’t give a flying eff about what other people think, who put a target on their back and speak up because they know they are right, and they are growing into the tree that is too tall to cut down. That’s how we are going to change the world, growing one tree at a time until they are so tall, nobody will try to cut them down.
