I went to 2S Glam at Bill Reid Gallery as one of the last activities of my 2025 summer vacation.
I've never been to a drag event before. It was a lot of fun. It was a family event and the host gave us an orientation of sorts at the beginning. Several of the performers (Jaylene Tyme, Beth, Xana) were contestants in Canada's Drag Race, and the King (Theo Rhetical) was recently featured in a series called Long Live Kings. The music was provided by DJ Osho. Everyone put on a great show and the outfits were stunning. I can't believe I have never been to a drag show before. It's so much fun.
Related Podcasts
Today's book is Indigenous Motherhood in the Academy by Robin Zape-Hol-Ah Minthorn, Christine A. Nelson, and Heather J. Shotton. I learned about the book from a University of Washington podcast episode called Indigenous Motherhood in the Academy. While I waited for the book, I listened to another podcast from one of the editors called Indigenizing Higher Education. I thought the Indigenizing Higher Education contained a lot of interesting discussion, including:
- a project in which Robin Zape-Tah-Hol-Ah Minthorn moved to Arizona, which is an area that she is not Indigenous to. In order to do program planning in her new role, she met with the 19 Indigenous communities in Arizona (either tribal leaders or their delegates) to hear about what their priorities were for post secondary and what they wanted their students to learn.
- while planning a doctoral program for University of Washington, she met with Muckleshoot 22 times in order to co-develop a program with them, which was eventually co-delivered with the tribal college.
As an educator, I thrive on concrete examples, and so I appreciated the way that a theoretical concept, Indigenizing Higher Education, was brought to life through concrete examples of structuring programs in such a way that leaders from communities Indigenous to the place where the institution is located have input into what happens in the institution. There are a lot of scholarly debates around "what does acknowledgement of territory mean?" I think that this is an example of how a scholar can walk the talk of acknowledging territory. She also talked in the episode about some of her negative experiences in post-secondary, such as when she had to switch advisors in her doctoral program because her first advisor was not supportive of her vision for her work, and her second advisor was a white man, but he supported her work, and so she was able to pursue what she wanted. I think that these personal stories of navigating difficulties in the academy are important, because current students may be struggling with similar issues, and so it's important for them to know that they are not alone when they are feeling unsupported in pursuing what they want to do, and that if their first supervisor is not supportive, they often do have the option of trying to find someone else who will support their work. In today's academic job market, there is a lot of pressure to only focus on accomplishments. Talking about challenges encountered along the way does not take away from one's accomplishments.
I like academic podcasts for a number of reasons. First, post-pandemic I am still reluctant to travel to conferences. I'm not sure whether or not that reluctance will fade over time, but it's where I am at. Right now, I like spending time where I live and with my family, and conferences take away from that time. Air travel is hectic and uncomfortable and bad for the environment. And it's hard to meet my nutritional and physical activity goals while travelling a lot. So, with podcasts, I can experience people talking about their work without travelling. Someone might say "but if you go to a conference you might be able to talk to the presenter." That's true... but I rarely do. Usually I just sort of hang around with people that I know, and I think most people who go to conferences also mostly hang around people that they know, and so theoretically I could go meet the speaker, I rarely do. Maybe when I go to conferences I should be better about networking. Anyhow, I also like podcasts because when I am on the fence about buying a book, I have this free option to get an idea of what the book is like, and then I can make a decision. I also like podcasts because I can listen to them while I am doing chores or commuting. I'm a big fan of academic podcasts and really grateful for scholars who make their ideas broadly accessible to the world for free.
Introduction
Anyhow, back to the book. This book came about because Robin had a dream while she was holding her newborn baby (Minthorn, Shotten & Nelson, 2022, p.2). She shared that dream with a friend and another friend, and they made it happen. They describe the nature of the book as such:
"Through various methods, like storytelling, letter writing, and poetry, the contributors invite you into their lives to understand what the Indigenous motherhood in the academy journey means for different tribes, different communities, and even different generations. As Indigenous mothers, we are not homogenous, but we are connected by our journeys, including finding a spiritual balance and nurturing our children, who have been given to us and who carry our/their ancestors' bloodline and legacy wit them. Our intention with this book is to tell these stories from a complex place where Indigenous mother-scholars are fostering and sustaining mothering/nurturing spaces while simultaneously challenging the colonial structures of the academy. Before diving into the contributors' narratives, we outline our shared (and ever-changing) definition of what we mean by motherhood in the academy." (Minthorn, Shotten & Nelson, 2022, p.3).
There is a little bit of discussion around rematriation in the introduction (p.5-6) but overall I was surprised that it didn't arise as a bigger theme within the book. The book is about motherhood, but beyond biological motherhood and inclusive of other types of care such as being an aunt. The authors note in the introduction that they wished that they had more gender diversity in the book, and they attributed some of the lack of gender diversity as being reflective of their personal networks as well as due to the ways that gender diverse Indigenous mothers may be systemically excluded from the academy. And so they note that perhaps future books on the same topic will be more gender diverse (p.8). I love it when a movie drops breadcrumbs for the sequel and I look forward to Indigenous Motherhood in the Academy, Vol.2 🌈. I think it is interesting when the authors of a collection note an absence in the collection, and reflect on why the absence exists while also expressing a wish for things to be different. They could have just said nothing, but I think that it was better that they did say something.
The book contains 24 chapters from a wide range of Indigenous mother-scholars. There are a lot of personal narratives, and the contributors are transparent about challenges they encountered as mother-scholars, the help they received along the way, the complexity of bringing children on to campus, and conflicting cultural expectations around parenting. The authors also model the ways that they honour Indigenous motherhood through their relationships with their mothers, even when those relationships are fraught with complexities caused by colonial trauma. There is a lot of trauma in this book, but it is not presented in a sensationalist, stereotypical, or re-traumatizing way. I feel like the authors care about their readers, and talk about trauma in a trauma informed way, while also being role models who openly shared how they sought out support through family, community, culture, and therapy in order to pursue their goals in spite of trauma.
Various Chapters
There were a wide variety of contributors to this book. One of the most prominent contributors was Shelly Lowe. She was the Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities until recently when you-know-who removed her. In her chapter, she spoke to the power of reproduction, literally and metaphorically. And she also spoke to the isolation and alienation of working at an Ivy League where there are very few other Indigenous staff. She included specific examples of anti-Indigenous racism that she experienced, but didn't say whether they occurred at Harvard or Yale, both of which being places where she worked. But she also spoke to the ways that her work was meaningful and important to her, and the way that she felt rewarded when students succeeded and let her know that she was part of her success.
Some of the chapters spoke to the tension between the ideal scholar, or the type of scholar which the institution was structured to reward, versus the Indigneous mother scholar. For example, in the chapter, "My children are my teachers: Lessons learned as a Kanaka Maoli mother-sholar," Nicole Alia Salis Reyes says:
"In the professoriate, following from the ideal scholar trope, there seems to be less variation regarding how to be a so-called successful academic. The master narrative suggests that when you are on the job market, you should cast a relatively wide net and accept a position at the most prestigious institution possible. Next, once you are on the job, you should spend minimal time tending to your teaching and service responsibilities and maximum time researching through the use of widely accepted methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Moreover, you should publish completed research primarily in the most well-respected journals with the highest impact factors. Finally, only after you have achieved tenure and gained national and international status as a scholar through following these steps may you begin to devote more time to the research, teaching, and service activities that you might care most about but are least rewarded in the academy. This master narrative upholds the experiences and intentions of white and male faculty as normative." (Salis Reyes, 2022, p.55).
Similarly, in her chapter "The (time) line in the sand," Miranda Belarde-Lewis says:
"the widely accepted norm to move across the country fof an academic job is what we as academics are "supposed to do" to cross pollinate our ideas and to subject ourselves and our families to the harsh transition of entirely different towns, neighborhoods, schools, friends, cultures of research, and institutional politics." (Belarde-Lewis, 2022, p.92).
I can definitely see how these expectations of the ideal scholar are at odds with things like developing relationships with Indigenous communities, developing deep connection to place, and parenting. As an Indigenous mother-scholar myself (I'm assuming that the term scholar here is inclusive of people who studied, and not just faculty, although I note that the contributors are faculty and/or admin, so maybe I am wrong, maybe scholar only includes people who are scholars by vocation? Thinking aloud her, maybe I should say "as an Indigenous mother who has studied a lot"), I find that there is a pragmatic tension between some key concepts in various Indigenous epistemologies and the ideal scholar. For example, Indigenous epistemologies often put a high value on deep knowledge and engagement with place. Yet, the ideal scholar will not do all of their education in one place. These things are in opposition to each other. And these tensions are larger than any one individual person.
The contributors do not provide simplistic individual solutions to systemic problems, and I am glad they didn't, because that would have trivialized the scope, scale, and weight of these systemic tensions. However, the contributors do model how they rely on the Indigenous identity as a resource in order to navigate these systemic tensions. For example, in the chapter "Mvskoke eckvlke (Muscogee motherhood) in academic spaces," Dwanna L. McKay says that she was a teen mom, and she describes her own culturally informed understanding of motherhood:
"As part of a matrilineal culture, Muscogee mother were traditionally considered the head of the household and women possessed full rigths to their children and to the lands and houses in each town. Within Muscogee culture, motherhood is not a burden, role, or job but rather a sacred space that grounds and connects the people within a larger culture. Mvskoke Eckvlk (Muscogee motherhood) organizes the lives, ceremonies, and histories of our people, marking where and to whom we belong." (McKay, 2022, p.85).
She reflects on her choice to spend time working on her PhD instead of spending time with her mother, and then her mother died shortly after she finished. She says, "the cost for my accomplishments, even for the good of my people and family, felt too high then and now." (McKay, 2022, p.88). She then went on to accept a position at an institution where she faced anti-Indigenous comments, including a department head making a comment about how she is from one of the "civilized tribes." (McKay, 2022, p.88). Eventually she left the institution, delaying tenure by two years (McKay, 2022, p.88). These narratives are sometimes difficult to read, and there were several times where I felt sad about the sacrifices one must make in order to gain tenure. I think an unasked question in the book is whether there is a way to restructure the academy and scholarship as a vocation in order to increase support for Indigenous mother-scholars. The book describes tensions, and describes ways that individuals navigate tensions. The book does not prescribe a systemic agenda for change. It promotes concepts, like Indigenization or decolonization. But it does not contain a multitude of specific structural recommendations.
A unique feature of the book is that it has a collective chapter, where women share their stories without sharing their identities. The author is listed as Indigenous Mother-Scholars and the name of the chapter is "Honouring our relations: Collective stories." It contains unnamed anecdotes. For example, one woman recalls how she received a tentative offer for a postdoctoral position. As part of the process, she went to the university to do a presentation, and her presentation included ways which being a mother informed her work. After the presentation, the private investigator hugged her and told her "let's just forget this postdoctoral and let you just focus on your children, who should be most important." (p.132). Her focus on motherhood led to the offer being revoked. Another mother-scholar says, "I have often thought about what the academy has taken from me, what I have sacrificed to it as my price for admission into this space." (p.129). As an example, she shares that she had a miscarriage in her office and her graduate assistant had to take her to emergency. After having a procedure and while coming out of anesthesia, she asked her doctor if she could still travel to a conference in two days (p.129).
Another unique feature of the book is a chapter written by the editors, which contains both named and unnamed comments from the contributors about the impact of the pandemic on Indigenous mother-scholars. One scholar notes that when she was on campus, she had to do a lot of unpaid labour educating colleagues about Indigenous issues (Minthorn, Nelson & Shotton, 2022, p.188). During the pandemic, she was talking with her therapist about whether or not she should stop the tenure clock, and a motivating factor for not stopping the tenure clock was that once she achieved tenure, she would feel less pressure to do the unpaid labour of educating colleagues about Indigenous issues (Minthorn, Nelson & Shotton, 2022, p.189).
I think the most painful anecdote to read was in the chapter, "A journey of Indigenous motherhood through the love, loss, and the P&T process" by Robin Zape-Tah-Hol-Ah Minthorn. She talked about how she had genetic testing done while she was pregnant, and the testing flagged a potential chromosomal abnormality (Trisonomy 18) while she was midpoint in the tenure and promotion process. In spite of the pregnancy and then the subsequent loss of Emery Rose ten minutes after she was born, Robin kept moving in order to meet the requirements of tenure and promotion (p.153).
The book contains many personal narratives of how being a mother-scholar is shaped by institutions, policies, and various pressures of the roles. However, I found the chapter which was most useful in understanding the lack of support that mothers working in American universities experience was Tria Blu Wakpa's chapter, "A glint of decolonial love: An academic mother's meditation on navigating and leveraging the university." She gives examples from her own experiences. For example, when she was nursing, the lactation room did not have a fridge. So she would have to walk to the lactation room, and then walk to a different area to put the milk in the fridge, and then walk another distance to where she was teaching, and sometimes she had to do this three times a day (p.116). She cites this as an example of how mothers are not supported in the academy and pushed out of the academy. She notes that for both of her births, she started working again a week after giving birth, in part due to the fact that she worried that if she took time off, it might negatively impact tenure and promotion (p.117). She says, "because mothers and other caregivers may have additional familiar responsibilities that can inhibit us from taking on extra work for the university, we may be (mis)perceived as less dedicated to our work than our colleagues" and this pressure is a form of de facto discrimination (p.117). She also notes that if she had stopped the tenure clock, she would have had to wait longer to achieve the merit pay associated with tenure, so even though the option for taking a leave exists, in the U.S. there are financial repercussions to taking maternity leave (p.118). Taking time out for motherhood would have meant lost income opportunities, meanwhile early motherhood is a time of life which comes with significant increased costs such as childcare.
Transformation
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