Claim Game

As a kid, growing up in Odawa and Tkaronto, on lands stewarded for millennia by the Anishinabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Huron-Wendat, I went to a lot of powwows. My mixed Anishinabeg-Kanien’kehá:ka family and I would admire the dancers and swoon over their regalia. We’d eat enormous Indian tacos and wash them down with strawberry drink. We’d laugh at the emcee’s corny jokes. We’d move to the powerful wailing songs and feel the booming heartbeat of the drum. Most importantly, we would spend time with family, friends, and community members, re­affirming our shared cultural connection.

Amid these sights and sounds was another powwow fixture: we called her the White Hippie Lady. With her faux-buckskin halter top, long blond hair and beaded headband, and pale skin made red only by the sun, she was a cartoonish misinterpretation of Indigenous cultures. She’d step out to dance her wild hippie dance, eyes closed, arms flailing, awkwardly twirling, unconcerned by the...