ayahciyiniw pîtosaskîhk
By Chelsea Vowel
Art by Michelle Campos Castillo
I’ve never left the Americas before, nipîkiskwêpayin/I blurt out, as the unsmiling border control agent at the Flughafen/airport in München/Munich studies my passport. I was trying to apologize for not responding to his questions in Deutsch when I’ve learned âkayâsîmowin/English, Spanish, and wêmistikôsîmowin/French, and I can mostly understand—though not speak—Portuguese. 1 But nitêyaniy/my tongue stumbled over my anger, because that’s already too many colonial languages and if it were up to me I’d be multilingual in nêhiyawêwin, Siksiká, Anishinaabemowin, Dënesųłinë́, and Nakoda Isga tâpiskôc nikihci-âniskôtâpanak instead.2
His gaze catches on my asâsowihkwêwin, my chin tattoo, which doesn’t appear in my old passport photo. His eyes slide off it, recognizing nothing. I guess the German obsession with Winnetou hasn’t kept them current, that this is a resurgence.3 Stuck cosplaying us in their strange powwows on the other side of the world like it’s still the 1800s. I wonder if this man dresses up in buckskin on the weekends with his friends, if maybe he’s spent hundreds of hours learning Apache, imagining himself as Old Shatterhand, just feeling real authentic compared to me the otipêyimisow, even though we both look white as piyêsîsimêyi.
He stamps my passport and releases me into the ôtênaw/city. I’m in a cab, I get to experience the famous Autobahn—speeds that anyone driving on Highway 2 to otôskwanihk has seen before, though perhaps less chaotic. I stare into the strange darkness of constantly clear-cut and replanted forested areas devoid of amiskwak, maskwak or mahihkanak. Here, those animals are all just stories now, painted cartoonishly on the sides of quaint German lodges for rent. I see a sign for Nuremberg, and feel weird about it, because I wonder if I’ll be able to avoid bringing up Nazis on this trip, and the thought is becoming intrusive. But shit. It’s a real place.
I kept expecting to be disinvited from this trip, because pâyêstîniyiniwak otaskîwâhk kâkikê katipêyimisowak ohci sîpîhk isi kihcikamihk/FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE forever—words that can get you fired in Canada, and charged with a criminal offence in Germany—and plenty of others have been told they weren’t welcome here any longer for having the same opinion.4
A môniyâw professor—tenured as I never will be— tells me I should boycott the trip. Just not go. I’ve never left the Americas before, nipîkiskwêpayin/ I blurt out. I was trying to apologize for not being able to cancel plans so easily, for not really understanding how not going to a place I’ve never been would help, when Canada is complicit in this genocide and its own, and I can’t really boycott living here. But nitêyaniy/my tongue stumbled over my anger, because he’s been to Germany multiple times, and probably plenty of other places too, and he’s got job security on my territory, shouldn’t he boycott that?
I’m jet-lagged at a conference in a skiing village in Bavaria. The hotel reminds me of the Banff Centre, but we aren’t in a national park that was created through the displacement of Indigenous Peoples. I don’t know how to relate to these lands, but the sâkahikanis/pond they call a sâkahikan/lake, ein See, is rumoured to have eine Meerjungfrau/mermaid that drove a German king mad, and powerful water beings are familiar. So too the fat namêkosak and mâsamêkosak swimming around, uneaten in the way I’m not allowed to eat the wâposwak hopping around campus back home.
During my presentation I talk about Canadian settler-colonialism, and heads nod in solemn condemnation. I explain that in nêhiyawêwin we call Germans mâyakwêsak. It just means speakers of a foreign language, it’s not as descriptive as asiskîwikamikowiyiniwak, the earthen lodge people/Mandan, or cîpwayânak, the pointed foot people/Dene, or even sêkipacwâsak, the ones who wear a braid/Chinese. Well we have another word for Germans too, pîwâpiskwastotinak, the metal hat people.
That causes a stir. I think it’s a term from before, like the 1800s, nipîkiskwêpayin/I blurt out. Different metal hats, different metal hats! I was trying to apologize for conjuring up Nazis when it’s been like trying to stop thinking about pink elephants. But nitêyaniy/my tongue stumbled over my anger because it’s not a faux pas, this history is being used to justify another genocide, how can we talk about Canadian settler violence and not this, and actually I wish I’d worn a keffiyeh, and stuck watermelons and Palestinian flags all over my presentation, and maybe gotten disinvited so sorry we the organizers agree with you but our funders you see—
For the next two days different people offer their theories about the pîwâpiskwastotinak—I learn about Hessian soldiers who were hired out to the Brits in the Americas, I’m shown pictures of their strange metal hats, but I don’t have the deeper knowledge, I can’t confirm anything. I’ve never left the Americas before, nipîkiskwêpayin/I blurt out. I’m trying to apologize in advance to niwâhkômâkanak/my relatives back home if grant applications are written and approved and this becomes a thing. But nitêyaniy/my tongue stumbled over my anger at myself, because I forgot that you have to be careful about what you share, that people, even really nice people, make careers off careless comments.
Now I’m in Austria, where the people are still mâyakwêsak—nêhiyawêwin isn’t concerned with the details of national borders. Graduate students share how they dissect my work, and the work of people I invite to karaoke at my local dive bar when they come into town. We’re still alive, I point out, you can ask us if your questions make sense—but remember what the folks from the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust remind us: all requests of Indigenous people are requests for Indigenous labour.5
I’m a little embarrassed, and relieved that it’s been missed just how Prairie-centric their source materials are—it’s all Cree, Anishinaabe, Métis, Blackfoot, Cree, Anishinaabe, Métis, Blackfoot (with a sprinkle of decidedly non-Prairie Unangax̂) and it’s comfortable and familiar to me but I know other Indigenous nations are fucking sick of us sometimes. mêtoni niwîci-iyiniwitik êkosi mîna nimiywêyihtên ka-ayamihtâyân kimasinahikaniwâwa kitaskîwâhk ohci.
I’m relieved that these folks are not trying to be us, but it’s also strange to be spoken about, studied, analyzed so intimately. Enormous intergenerational déjà vu even if this work proves that Winnetou can be buried and forgotten and there are better ways to learn about us. During lunch I learn more about how western Europe has reinvented itself over and over—it’s being offered as a possible explanation for the way the Imaginary Indian has endured there—all that nonsense with the Renaissance and the ancient Greeks and Romans, the architectural follies made to look like ancient ruins just because. In Austria they have the Ostarrîchi myth, I’m told, moves to innocence—just in the context of the Third Reich, not Decolonization is Not a Metaphor—but I’m exhausted, I tune out and miss the important bits.6
Instead I’m thinking about how we keep telling môniyâwak back home that môniyâwi-kîkway/whiteness is not a culture, that they should reconnect with their distinct heritage/s, English, French, German, whatever. Just stop propping up white supremacy, fuck sakes. I’d never considered that perhaps some of their countries of origin may not have a rooted sense of self either. So many Europeans committed linguicide and epistemicide on themselves first, flattening distinctions and marginalizing ethnicities to invent unified national wholes, re-re-re-rewriting their own histories, and in a way erasing themselves. That’s how they got so good at it. Shit.
nimisi-nêstosin I can barely keep niskîsikwa/my eyes open and niyitihp/my brain isn’t working right. Maybe mwêstas I’ll write grant applications, get approved to do some ethnographic studies over here. Some really extractive research, written in nêhiyawêwin so they don’t know what we’re saying about them. Have to beg us for access, while we make that sôniyâw/money speaking for them, giving voice to the voiceless, touring the world telling everyone about western European culture, singular, a ridiculously inaccurate mishmash of Lederhosen and Bastille Day and bangers and mash and double cheek kissing and fado.
câh/as if. That’s môniyâwi-mâmitonêyihtamowin. That we’ll just turn around and become them, do what they’ve done because they think it’s universal, just human nature.
Well Vienna is the whitest city I’ve ever seen—the racial uniformity is disquieting, and there’s no way it’s by accident. The buildings are all so beautiful they stop being interesting. People leave their bikes unlocked, their shiny new sneakers safe in open duffel bags at the skating rink, and I don’t generally have the urge to steal things, but it feels like a provocation and I know when I say this certain people will claim it proves that exclusion creates security, safety. It makes nimihkom/my blood boil. Security and safety for whom.
I walk like I’m on Alberta Avenue, scanning everyone and everything for the recognizable and the dangerous and it’s making these people nervous. I don’t know how to relate to these môniyâwak who aren’t actively colonizing my lands, but whose histories and societies are still super fucked up. Before this moment, before it became an absence, I didn’t realize I carried a strange sense of comfort/familiarity in niyâw/my body—an embodied relationality with settler-colonials on my homelands that somehow extended to every place I’ve been in iyiniw-ministihk/the Americas.
I’m welcomed into the Canadian embassy for an author reading, and the ambassador greets everyone by playing up some tired Canadian stereotypes about saying sorry all the time, and liking the cold—just needs to throw maple syrup in there for the triumvirate—while I eye up the gorgeous art-deco mansion thinking gosh I wish I could reinvent myself on other Peoples’ lands and get this. But not really. môniyâwi-mâmitonêyihtamowin ôma.
Folks notice that the portrait of the Queen hasn’t been replaced by a portrait of the King, it’s just Ningiukudluk—nitatamiskawâw/I greet her—and Trudeau—namoya nitatamiskawâw/I don’t greet him—on the wall. I guess the King’s absence is significant, but to me it’s in the way that it matters whether unicorns smell like cotton candy or horse, because it’s all pretend.
The ambassador launches into some platitudes about coming together especially when things are tough but he’s hedging his bets, letting his guests draw their own conclusions about whether he’s for or against the genocide in Palestine. Because just like back home, despite the official governmental position and sanctions, some Germans and Austrians chant FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE and being a diplomat means you try to play all sides.
I’ve never left the Americas before, nipîkiskwêpayin/I blurt out, as I’m unwillingly ushered over to meet the ambassador. I was trying to apologize for not greeting him like a fellow countryman, because that’s not how I feel about it at all, trying to apologize to my hosts for how uncomfortable I am in that space. But nitêyaniy/my tongue stumbled over my anger, because in Canada he’d just be another môniyâw but here he is my colonizer, he represents the settler-colonial occupying force that asserts we are not sovereign, only subjects, that brought a Gatling gun to Batoche, and raped and murdered and rapes and murders, and investigates and forgives itself after saying sorry too much, and that styles itself a nation-state that of course supports ongoing genocide perpetrated by another settler-colonial nation-state while it pretends to acknowledge its own genocides, so sorry, so sorry, really we’re awfully sorry.
I planned to read a piece from my favourite story about a fox transforming into a woman on Alberta Ave, but now I count coup, and read the bit about John A. MacDonald getting violently trampled to death by a Two-Spirit Métis rougarou, about General Wolseley burning to death in the long-grass prairie instead of taking Fort Garry, of the paskwâwi-mostoswak thriving as the nêhiyaw-pwat/Iron Confedercy allies with the Blackfoot Confederacy, about Canada never existing. In the now it’s just speculative fiction, but it was and it will be for nikihci-âniskôtâpanak.
Before I leave these lands, nikiyokawâwak/I visit two stuffed paskwâwi-mostoswak in the natural history museum, a bison bison bison and a bison bison athabascae. I wonder if the museum is holding the remains of any of my other relatives. We’ve never left the Americas before, pîkiskwêpayiwak/they blurt out. They were trying to apologize for never returning, for being so lonely, for being as out of place as I am. But otêyanîwâw/their tongues stumbled over their anger, because they never asked to become a curiosity, a rarity, through genocide. Whew, nîsta mîna niwâhkômâkanitik, I reply.
I dream of jailbreaking them and taking them home, floating them across the kihcikamihk. Instead I can only nipimihân isi/fly towards iyiniw-ministihk/the Americas, a little ashamed to be relieved it’s not me behind that museum glass. The taxi driver asks me where I’ve been. I’ve left the Americas for the first time nipîkiskwêpayin/I blurt out. I’m not apologizing for anything. It’s good to be home, I add.
And all I’m really thinking is niwîci-iyiniwak nitaskînânihk kâkikê nika-tipêyimisonân ohci sîpîhk isi kihcikamihk mîna piko itê/ FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA AND WHEREVER ELSE THEY MAY BE, OUR PEOPLES WILL BE FREE.
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Notes:
1. nêhiyawêwin doesn’t have specific names for Spanish or Portuguese as the colonizers on these lands were using different pîtosipîkiskwêwina/foreign languages.
2. nikihci-âniskotâpanak: my ancestors/descendants. I’m not just yearning for the past, I’m claiming space for future generations who will once again be multilingual in our languages. As is always my practice, I respect nêhiyawêwin spelling conventions by not using capital letters.
3. Drew Hayden Taylor’s 2018 film Searching for Winnetou really gets into the over 100 years of cultural appropriation of Indigenous cultures in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, all kicked off by a book series written by German author Karl May from 1875 to 1910. Neil Diamond’s 2009 film Reel Injun also touches on this phenomenon.
4. Palestine contains sounds that don’t exist in nêhiyawêwin, so pâyêstîn is my approximation of the Arabic pronunciation (we do not have an f sound as would be used in Arabic either). pâyêstîniyiniwak: Palestinians, though nêhiyawêwin prefers to create more descriptive terms for Peoples rather than transliterations of their own names—work yet to be done.
5. “How to Come Correct,” Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, accessed February 28, 2024, https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/how-to-come-correct/.
6. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.
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Chelsea Vowel is Métis from manitow-sâkahikan (Lac Ste. Anne) Alberta, residing in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton). Parent to six children, she has a BEd, LLB, and MA. She is an Associate Lecturer and Cree language instructor at the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta.
Chelsea is a public intellectual, writer, and educator whose work intersects language, gender, Métis self-determination, futurisms, and resurgence. Author of Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada, she and her co-host Molly Swain produce the Indigenous feminist sci-fi podcast Métis in Space, and co-founded the Métis in Space Land Trust. Her first collection of short fiction, Buffalo is the New Buffalo, was published in 2022 by Arsenal Pulp Press.