Season 2, Episode 30: The Harms of Misrepresentation, a Two-Spirit Perspective
with Kerrie Lynn Sparvier
In this episode, I speak with Karrie Lynn Sparvier, a two-spirit trans woman and knowledge keeper from the White Bear First Nation. Karrie Lynn shares her journey of self-discovery, her experiences as a residential school survivor, and the challenges she faced growing up. The discussion also delves into the importance of genuine representation, cultural appropriation, and the need for inclusive policies that respect human rights. Karrie Lynn emphasizes the significance of maintaining open communication with indigenous communities and the broader implications of anti-trans legislation. This episode highlights the intersection of identity, community, and environmental stewardship, advocating for a more inclusive and balanced approach to societal issues.
Karrie said to me today, “It is my responsibility to pass on this knowledge and anything else you want to know from me. Call me anytime.” She added, “If there is any message to relay to people, it is that there is no greater gift than to be yourself.” In this conversation, you hear that Karrie worked in the military for twenty years and is now an active member of the Calgary Police Service. Thank you for your service, Karrie Lynn!
Welcome to Karrie Lynn Sparvier
Jenny:
Welcome to The Gravity Well, here, we break down heavy ideas into small buckets you can handle. Our mission is simple. Help us work through your dilemmas in conversation and process. Together we and our community will face your dilemmas and make the world a better place for all. In the spirit of truth, I acknowledge I’m a settler on stolen Blackfoot Treaty seven in Metis districts five and six territories. I take Reconcili-Action by seeking the wisdom of elders and individuals who aim to restore water, air, land, life, or community, and a healthy living relationship with the earth. And each other is our guide. I’m pleased to be sitting down with Karrie Lynn Sparvier. Thank you so much for joining me. The reason why we’re here together is my friend Holly Standingready brought us together after an incident that occurred on our show. We had a guest that we supported over four episodes without appreciating that we were misrepresenting him. Has credentials in terms of education around Blackfoot knowledge, but is not a member of the Blackfoot community. We seek to hold conversations with people that we are working together with in bringing people through the crisis that we’re facing. That’s the social environmental economic crisis. Holly connected me with you and I’m so glad to sit down with you. Why don’t we start with a little bit of an introduction of yourself, please?
Karrie Lynn:
The name I go by right now is Karrie Lynn Sparvier. I’m a Two Spirit trans woman. And my definition of two-spirit is that I identify as both genders inside. I had hidden my true identity as a two-spirit for 52 years presenting as a male. And the last three and a half years since I’ve come out and publicly acclaimed as Two Spirit, I have walked the feminine path. For me to understand that half, I don’t know how long that journey will take or whether or not there will be a balance. I am hoping at some point there might be, but at this point, I have to walk the feminine side of my journey, well, of my identity, as well. It’s quite a journey. I’ve learned a lot, that’s for sure. And as a two-spirit knowledge keeper from the White Bear First Nation, which is in southeast Saskatchewan. I am Lakota, which is Lakota Sioux. We are descended from down in the States. Well, our descendants came up from the States right after the battle, a little bighorn with Chief City. So we are descendants of that group that came up. My legal name is Gary Cassette. I am starting the process to change. I am not taking away the Gary cassette part. I’m adding the Karrie Lynn portion to that name. I’ve started that process. My traditional name is Chi Shingwaak Waywayseecappo, which is a combination of Anishinabe and Lakota Sioux. It means Big Pine Tree and Anishinabe and waywayseecappo, means “standing tall against the wind” in Lakotayepi. The short form in English is Big Pine Standing Ready. That’s my traditional name.
Jenny:
That’s beautiful. Was your name given to you at birth?
Karrie Lynn:
The name I was given, my birth name was Gary Sparvier but I am from the Waywayseecappo, Lakotayepi family.
Karrie Lynn:
That’s the traditional name and my name, how I came about to get the name Karrie Lynn. I’ve had that since I was five and a half years old. I’m a 60 scoop and residential school survivor. For the first five and a half years, after I was taken away at one month, I was in five different foster homes. I went through six years of residential school starting at five and a half years old. It was in residential school that I found out that I was different inside that I had both a boy and a girl and me born or assigned male at birth. I went to a Catholic residential school. And then the Sister Superior kind of took me as a pet project to convert me to being right-handed because at that time, being left-handed was considered evil. The word for left in Latin is the word sinister. They interpreted that being left-handed people was evil; therefore, they needed to be brought to the light and be converted to right-handed. They were very unsuccessful with me. Part of the punishment for continuing to use my left hand is they did what some call petty coating. They put me in the girls’ uniform and made me sit on the girls’ side of the classroom as we were segregated between boys and girls.
Eventually, I moved into the girls’ dorm and lived as a girl for five and a half years. I realized very quickly after that happened that it was not wrong, that it felt right that I belonged there. That was very revealing to me. I spent five and a half years as a girl in a residential school. Then when I got taken out and permanently placed in another foster family, I had to learn how to be a boy again. I was going to a rural school, like a public school in rural Saskatchewan, and it was in a Catholic area of the province of Saskatchewan and not a place to be different. And being born, boy, I had to be very boy, football, soccer, hockey, boy stuff.
Was very frowned upon for being a girl. However, the funny thing was that the best friends I had in school from grade seven to grade 12 were girls. I had friends who were boys around grade nine when other boys realized that I was hanging around with the three cutest girls in the class. And so they made friends with me to make friends with the girls. And we ended up for four years being a core group. If you saw one of us the other five or somewhere close, when I turned 16, I had a big, well, I had a 1972 Ford Granada convertible. It was red and they could hold a ton of teenagers back then. They didn’t have a seatbelt.
Jenny:
On, right? Yeah, I remember piling in the back of trucks.
Karrie Lynn:
And we burned purple gas in that car. We had purple gas and never got stopped by the cops. Funny enough, it was a big land yacht, but it was very interesting growing up from there. I went to university for two years and took engineering. I was very “mathy” and engineering at the University of Saskatchewan was not… There were no girls. I didn’t see any girls. But after two years I realized I didn’t want to be an engineer. I kind of thought engineers were a little weird, even though I was taking it. We’d go to a bar and all we’d talk about was engineering.
Karrie Lynn:
Instead of chasing girls. And I was very interested in girls too. I withdrew at the end of two years and I went and worked in the oil patch for three years and then again another very male macho, very, very alpha male kind of work. And I did that for two years. Then the National Energy Program hit from Trudeau Senior and the oil industry here in Alberta took a hit and I got laid off. A real sucker for punishment, I joined the military. Again, not an environment to be different. Continued hiding the Karrie Lynn side, presenting a very alpha male, Gary. It ended up being for 27 years. I got married in my third year and continued on. I am a lovely little Acadian girl from Nova Scotia. Again, very Catholic. I’ve been married now to her. We have been married for 38 years, but a 27-year career in the Canadian forces in the Navy.
Got to travel the world. And I ended up, my last seven years in the military was actually, I got posted here to Calgary as a recruiter. I did a three-year stint and then I transferred over to the primary reserves as a recruiter, still in the same office, but I took over the role of Aboriginal Recruiter for Western Canada. I covered everything from Thunder Bay West, including the three territories. I had a chance to, as a recruiter, reconnect with my indigenous heritage and started going back to my traditional beliefs and everything. In the mid-nineties, I had done a healing circle or a healing journey with an elder out on the West Coast. She was up, I worked with her at the Longhouse on the song Hes Reserve. I was suffering from PTSD from my residential school experiences, and it was starting to affect my work.
Becoming Karrie Lynn Sparvier
Karrie Lynn:
I had a very good boss who decided to help me and he said, if I could get you help, would you take it? And the smartest thing I did was to say yes. And so I was working with therapists, psychologists with the elderly three days a week, and that helped me. I did that study for two years and then I got posted out here to Calgary. It was right before my posting. Something happened about three and a half years ago. And that was when they found the 215 unmarked graves at the former site of the Kamloops residential school. And that triggered my PTSD badly. And to try and bring it back under control, I decided to, well, I offered that work to do a healing ceremony. My coworkers and I went out to where our flag was and in front of the office and did a circle around it and I smudged a circle.
We did a prayer, prayer circle. Each one was allowed to say a little blurb, but whatever. At the end of that, I drummed the flag to half mast, and then I sang a healing song with my drum. The staff sergeant brought in coffee and doughnuts to our staff room and we were just having a little social. And somebody from across the room asked me why I was using an old woman’s hand drum, not a man’s. And I just think anybody would know the difference. But there is, in the Lakota, a woman isn’t allowed to touch a drum, right? She loves to sing but not touch a drum. But I am two-spirit, and therefore I am allowed to touch the drum. The drum I have was given to me by another elder, but it is a woman’s hand drum from the Anishinaabe nation and it has sides and it’s not very deep.
It’s only a couple of inches deep, whereas a man’s drum is either four to six inches deep. And the reason why it’s called a man’s drum is because it has a deeper voice. The deeper base, A woman’s hand drum is a little lighter base. It’s still a base, but it’s a little higher pitch. And that therefore it talks with a woman’s voice. So therefore it’s a woman’s hand drum. So they asked me that and caught me off guard. And when they asked me a second time and everybody was silent and waiting for an answer, I decided that I can’t hide anymore. It was time. And so I took that big step and I came out and I said, it’s because I’m two-spirit that I use a woman’s hand drum course right away you get, I got an F slur from somebody, older person in the room. And I looked at him and I said, no. I said that’s a sexual orientation. I said, I’m not me. This is a gender identity. And I explained to them what two-spirit means. And I looked at ’em and I said, I said, and for your comfort, so that I said, my male half is straight, it’s my female half that’s gay. And I said, so you have nothing to offer me.
He kind of left an embarrassment because everybody kind of laughed at him and then came and congratulated me for coming out. I got some very good support at work. In the meantime, they also made a gender-neutral washroom for me at work. I work for the Calgary City Police, I am not a police officer. I’m a peace officer. I’m only doing certain things. Don’t respond to domestics or anything violent or anything like that. I don’t do that. However, I do work with Calgary City Police and as a result of me coming out and then making a gender-neutral watch woman in my precinct curse, if you make a change in one city building, you have to do it in them all. All the precincts now have a gender-neutral washroom, and City Hall and various other city buildings are doing that, as well. Regarding that as a result. As far as I know, I am the first openly transgender woman as a member of the Calgary City Police. I believe in 2016, there was a transgender man, I don’t know their name. And even if I did, I wouldn’t, don’t have the privilege of outing them. But gender-neutral washrooms are now the norm, which is good. And that’s a very big step forward because everybody uses gender-neutral washrooms every day. Your bathroom at home is a gender-neutral washroom, there’s no reason for
Jenny:
They should all be gender-neutral.
Karrie Lynn:
Yeah, exactly.
Jenny:
In Europe, it’s very common to have just a room and then a central sink. Right?
Speaker 3:
Right.
Jenny:
Yeah. And I know a lot. I have two boys in high school and most of the high schools have that set up. It’s just a private room.
Karrie Lynn:
Yeah, private little stalls that have…
Jenny:
Central services.
Karrie Lynn:
You close the door and it locks the door. Right. And it’s fully enclosed. I recently had been to a couple of places this summer where, and one of ’em was convention centre and it was just long rows of little cubicles. You go in and you go to do your business and then you come up and you use comments. And I think that’s wonderful because that makes sense.
Jenny:
It does. It just makes sense.
Karrie Lynn:
It makes sense.
Jenny:
Practical sense. I think of a show, and this is a diversion, but Allie McBeal had this back in the nineties.
Karrie Lynn:
How this came about at my precinct was that five months in, one of the staff sergeants asked, he says, I’m just out of curiosity, what washroom are you using? And I said, well, I’m not using a washroom here. And he goes, why not? And I said, well, out of respect for the women, I’m not using the women’s washroom. Because I said, I know the girls in my office would be okay with it. They support me. I said, but they’re not the only women in the building.
I said, out of respect for them, I’m not using the men’s washing. I said, because lipstick doesn’t go, female attributes don’t go over well when you walk by the urinals and you give people stage [fright]. I said, I’m not using the men’s washroom either. I’m going across the road to Tim Horton’s or the McDonald’s and use the women’s washroom over there because they don’t know me over there. And he says, that’s not right. He said you need a facility. They converted one of the single-stall men’s washrooms in the building to a gender-neutral washroom. And they also, he said, would you like a locker in there as well? Because when I was presenting as Gary, I had a locker in the men’s locker room. And so they put a locker in there as well. So I have a private room to change to go to the gym.
Jenny:
Yeah. I’m so glad that your journey has been a remarkable one. I don’t want to step over what you’ve shared here. It fits in with why we came to this conversation, too. Cultural appropriation is a word that comes to mind for me.
Discussion of Cultural Appropriation
Karrie Lynn:
Cultural appropriation, there are a few different aspects of it. One of them is the one that we see most commonly in costumes. People made costumes that resembled our secret and traditional regalia. They’re selling it in costumes in costume stores. Not only how it’s very demeaning to us. Not only is it demeaning, but it also perpetuates bad stereotypes. One of the biggest bad stereotypes is the Hollywood movies of the early twenties, thirties, and forties. Westerns that all natives were savages and they were all on the warpath, and they were all out to kill white people and they attacked every waggon train or whatever it was or whatever. And that’s simply not true. Again, it was Hollywood, it was sensationalised, and it was made more sensational to sell the movies. And then you had the hero that always came to save the day, like the lone ranger type ranger. If there was an Indigenous person, they were the sidekick like Tonto growing up, I hated the Lone Ranger. I hated that show. I hated Tonto. And the reason why I hated him was because he looked like me. He looked like me. Whereas previously you had actors that were made up to…
Jenny:
That’s interesting.
Karrie Lynn:
They were white actors made to look native, right? Yeah. Gus Hoffman, you had Steve McQueen. A lot of those Hollywood actors, if there were actors, actors, if you needed an actor, they didn’t put an indigenous person in there. They put a white person made up. Again, it was the worst form of cultural appropriation. And that is our version of Red Face. It’s our version of blackface. Right, right.
Jenny:
Absolutely.
Karrie Lynn:
And that is the worst type of cultural appropriation in my mind, is to do that and then take things out of context from Indigenous people. Our powwow is a celebration. It’s a ceremony. The powwow dancing, it’s cultural appropriation to call an office get-together a “powwow” because you’re using the name of a ceremony for an office. Get together, it’s a meeting, let’s all have a powwow. But no, that’s not a powwow. Right. The powwow is sacred. That’s again, another cultural appropriation of it. It’s not only just clothing, articles of clothing. It can be words. Absolutely.
Jenny:
Well, one, and I think this might be a reach, but I want to put in here as somebody, as I mentioned geophysicist background in oil and gas. One of the things that really concerns me is “redwashing”. I dunno if you’re familiar with this term, but it’s when something is presented as a collaboration with Indigenous communities when it is “You can participate”, provided that you also are doing industrial harm.
Karrie Lynn:
Exactly.
You talk to one Indigenous person, “Oh, we did our cultural obligation, we consulted with the Indigenous community.” When you only talk to one person, that’s not Indigenous consultation, right? Indigenous consultation is when you approach the band either through the chief and council, talk to the elders. You need to talk to the elders, not just the chief, not just one or two counsellors. You need to talk to the elders, arrange a meeting with the elders, get the elders together. And that is how you consult. But you have to allow them an active voice in the decision-making and listen to them, not just do your due diligence. Oh yeah, you talk to them and then whatever they say, you disregard. That’s not consultation again.
Jenny:
Well, and that sort of leads into my second question for you. So I agree, there’s a lot of assumption, box-checking exercise where we’ve spoken to chief and counsel, we gave them three weeks, they didn’t complain in those three weeks; therefore, moving forward.
Karrie Lynn:
Well, that, and that’s the thing too, A lot of companies, they’re money, money, money, money-driven, right? Money-driven and time is money. Well, in the Indigenous cultures, things happen when they happen. And you know what? If it takes three weeks, if it takes three months, it might take three years for them to think about it and get back to you on things. You can’t put a time limit on it because in the indigenous culture, take for instance, I’m wearing a watch, and what I do when I go on the res is I take it off because when I go to the res, things happen. When they happen, I’m back with my people. When we meet, we meet when it’s supposed to happen. Right. Got it. Seven, I’m not on a timetable. Right.
Jenny:
Very different. And as you said, there’s this ingrained time. I wanted to touch on a question we touched on before we started here.
The History of Binary Thinking
Jenny:
From your two-spirit angle. One of the things that I think persists in our decision-making is the idea of binary thinking. So this idea that this consequence, as long as it’s successful, I can keep moving forward. If each incident is a win, then we’re moving forward rather than thinking about the consequences of the things we do and how they come back around to us. I think this is part of why the trans community is being isolated in terms of your representing this different way of thinking. And I’m curious what your thoughts are on that, from your experience. Do you think that there is an opportunity for people to learn to think more consequentially?
Karrie Lynn:
Okay, first of all, you mentioned the word binary. Binary thinking stems from a way to control the masses. Starting with the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, it was a way the churches and the rich used to subjugate and keep the word poor and weaponize religion, weaponize religion. And in that is binary thinking, only male, female, only male, female, marry for procreation to get more followers of the church is the ultimate goal. And the rich, rich, the economy to keep the rich, rich and has permeated all of European culture, right? Well, what we call Western culture, however, wasn’t the norm if you looked at the grand scheme of things on the entire planet, other places, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, look at North and South America, which wasn’t discovered yet. Different cultures had different ways of thinking, they didn’t think in the binary gender, for example, was a spectrum everywhere else in the world.
But because they had the church’s influence to use that binary thinking in brainwashing the masses and keeping them, I like to think that the Catholic church was the original gatekeeper. They were the ones that brought in, if you don’t listen to us if you don’t be good, if you don’t give us all your crop and everything and you don’t listen to the clergy, you’re not going to get to heaven. If you do any act that is not approved by the church, you’re not going to get to heaven. You have to go through us to get to heaven. So that’s gatekeeping in its finest form. And that’s what the church has pushed.
Jenny:
Right.
Karrie Lynn:
Everywhere else there were different genders.
Jenny:
Well, even in Greek mythology, right? We’ve learned about this as well. Hermaphroditism was revered.
Karrie Lynn:
Well, Julius Caesar was known to be the man’s woman and the woman’s man.
Jenny:
Right? Men dressed as women when they performed.
Karrie Lynn:
Yeah. But he was, you would probably consider him bisexual Julius Caesar.
Jenny:
Right? I didn’t know that.
Karrie Lynn:
Yeah, right. The Romans, well, I mean, look at ULA took sexual deviation to the extreme.
But the gist of it is that the Christian churches weaponized religion and had to push binary to control the masses, and they use that, and you start at a very early age to accept that. And that’s the norm, and that’s expected. And you try to fit in that. When you’re raised in that environment, even if you aren’t different you’re different. But if you read the Bible, God loves all his children. God made them the way they were supposed to be. God doesn’t make mistakes. And if I’m a mistake, then God is God’s flawed.
Jenny:
Right? Yeah. Well, this is just it. And, again, I always like to bring it back to the scientific perspective.
Karrie Lynn:
But even from the scientific perspective, you want to go get into genetics. There’s not just X, Y, there’s X, X, Y, there’s X, X, X, X, there’s X, X, Y, Y, and there’s a combination of all the X’s and Y’s. And how do they determine gender? You’re trying to fit them into two boxes. When they don’t fit.
You’re trying to put round pegs in square holes. For a lot of people, there’s intersex, there are men born with women’s brains, which is what I was.
Jenny:
Right.
Karrie Lynn:
Right.
Jenny:
Yeah. Well, this is just it. It’s a spectrum. And another example of this hierarchical decision-making like you’re describing, is in the medical system, mostly tested on males, most things, right?
Karrie Lynn:
Exactly.
Jenny:
And then we only see when we’re treating people, we’re not necessarily treating them properly because we didn’t look at the spectrum when we made these medical decisions.
The Harms of Juvenile Transgender Policies
Jenny:
That’s right. For example, this potential trans policy that our provincial government is pushing, which is to not allow, don’t think we started on that, to not allow children to have proper hormone balances as their gender can be fluid.
Karrie Lynn:
The trouble with this is that is not only going to affect trans kids, it’s also going to affect straight kids and cis kids. That’s what a lot of people don’t realise. What about that girl or that boy who starts puberty at six, seven or eight? They’re different. You have to think with a six, seven or 8-year-old mind, they’re different. They’re going to be ostracised, they’re going to be picked on. They’re going to be bullied because they’re different. On the other side of the spectrum, there are the 15, 16, and 17-year-olds that haven’t gone through puberty yet or started yet in the locker room. They have no hair. They still got a juvenile body in a room full of young adults. They get picked on.
Jenny:
That’s so true.
Karrie Lynn:
And the thing is, that also can lead to suicide. Like bullying. I like to say bring a little bit of pride in here. Pride isn’t about making your kids different. It’s not about making them gay or trans or anything. Pride is about stopping queer kids from becoming dead kids. That’s what pride is actually about. And this legislation, again, not allowing any kind of gender-affirming care for kids, you’re affecting cis kids too. Not just trans, there’s going to be a higher percentage of cis kids affected by this than trans kids.
Jenny:
Just by the numbers themselves.
Karrie Lynn:
Just by the numbers.
Jenny:
Yeah.
Karrie Lynn:
Right.
Jenny :
That’s such a great point.
Karrie Lynn:
What’s the percentage of people who are trans versus the percentage of cis people, but who are early bloomers or late bloomers? You would rather want to be with the rest of your peers and be in puberty at 10, 11, 12, and 13, not at 6, 7, 8, 15, 16, or 17.
Jenny:
Absolutely. No, I fully get that. As a parent. It’s a concerning thing that your child is developing at the same rate as other kids, right? Throughout. Yes. I mean, the more that we allow this to be, the abnormal to be considered normal, the better we are. Right?
Karrie Lynn:
Well, look at my class going through school. I have 12 probably in my class right out of that 12, there were two, a boy and a girl that started puberty early, and there were two that were very late, a boy and a girl, coincidentally in that small.
Jenny:
Group. Yeah,
Karrie Lynn:
That’s so true. That’s two out of 12.
Jenny:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s such an excellent point.
Karrie Lynn:
It’s not, and how many of them were trans? Well, that was me.
Jenny:
Right?
Karrie Lynn:
Well, yes, me. Out of the 12, one out of 12 in my small group was trans. Nobody knew, but four of the 12 were affected, early or late. And so you got to look at gender-affirming care also affecting those. Five out of 12, that’s pretty close to 50%.
Jenny:
And as you said, it’s a spectrum in so many ways. As you said, it can be just, well, not just, but mentally, or it can be physically or it can be emotional.
Karrie Lynn:
And you have to listen to the medical and scientific community too because the thing is that here in Canada, there is no transition before 18,
Jenny:
Right? This is just it.
Karrie Lynn:
There is none. Anyway.
Jenny:
Nothing’s happening here.
Karrie Lynn:
They’re making a political thing about nothing.
Jenny:
Right? Yeah. This is not a problem. I’ve never seen anybody say that I’ve been forced to become transgender. If anything, it’s the opposite. Like you’re saying, my child is suicidal because they know they’re different and they want to be accepted, and we accept them for
Karrie Lynn:
It. Right? Exactly. They want to be accepted and they try to fit in and it’s not working, and they get depression.
And guess what? Depression lies to you. I’ve been there. I’ve had two serious suicide attempts myself, and I just about was successful in the last one. The only thing was that I got stopped, but depression had convinced me that the world was better off without me because what I was was not acceptable to society. And it convinced me that I better not exist. The world would be better. The thing is that what it doesn’t they don’t tell you is that taking that extreme affects all those above you, right? Yeah. You don’t see the pain that it’s going to cause the people who love you, even though you are in so much pain that that’s the only option you see.
Jenny:
Of course. Of course. Yeah. Yes. And this is the opportunity that comes from your experience and people understanding your experience.
Karrie Lynn:
But with depression, you only see your hurt. That’s it. You only see your pain.
Jenny:
Right? You can’t see.
Karrie Lynn:
Somebody else because you’re blind. You can’t see anybody. And that’s what’s going to happen to kids who can’t be given puberty blockers. Puberty blockers are not HRT. It’s not a formal replacement therapy. It’s not transition therapy, puberty blockers. All it does is stop the puberty that the child doesn’t want at that time. In my mind, it is almost child abuse to not give them puberty blockers, if they identify and they know they’re a girl, but they’re born a boy, and to make them go through the boy transition, the boy puberty, that makes them so dysphoric later on, and it will make them suicidal. It gives them depression. And to me, that is a form of abuse.
Jenny:
Especially, well, not especially also as you said, intersex children. Yeah. Some kids have, from what I understand, they have an absence of hormones and they need them to develop as an adult.
Karrie Lynn:
Exactly.
Jenny:
We have to make sure that we’re not looking at this as necessary.
Karrie Lynn:
As a binary black and white situation because it’s not. Again, it’s a rainbow.
Jenny:
Right? It’s a rainbow. Well, and this is what’s so interesting because when I think, again, like you said, how it relates so many ways in science, when we use colour, we use colour to show many things, and we use it all the time. For example, when I’m showing the variables that I’m looking at when I’m doing my work, you do that through multiple colours, and yet for some reason, when it comes to society, we are still trying to put people in two categories.
Jenny:
Exactly, and it is hurting all of us in doing that. I’m just so glad to hear your point of view.
Karrie Lynn:
Okay. Think of this as, okay, the Fisher-Price toy, the ball with the different shapes that you got to put the blocks in, that’s gender. Gender is like that. You can’t put the different shapes in only two holes. There are only two that go in them, but there are all those other shapes, and that’s what the actual true gender spectrum is. It’s all those different shapes.
Jenny:
Well, I appreciated all of this, and there’s so much to what you’ve offered me, Karrie, and I appreciate it. The one question I do want to circle to you again, I want to make sure that the work we’re doing is honouring what our goals are. So just to be clear, we’re trying to have conversations about the social, environmental, and economic crisis and how it’s impacting us. Transgenderism is a big part of this because it is about non-binary thinking and being able to think differently and all of that. My question is, I got here because I had a guest that I misinterpreted what they were offering, and so how do we do a better job? Again, I’m working on what is our process to make sure that we have the right people in the room and that we’re having the right representation moving forward.
How to Avoid Misrepresentation
Jenny:
I’m curious, let’s just look at it from an Indigenous perspective or from a trans perspective, whichever you prefer. I mean, let’s pick one of them. If we’re having conversations about Indigenous communities, I mean, it means clearly what’s changed for me after this incident is to trust myself that the people that I’m meeting with when I’m seeking environmental justice and social justice things, those are the people that I should potentially be in conversation with. So that’s one way I think that I’m going to help myself make sure that I’m on the right path. But if I have somebody, let’s say, approach us, or I just meet someone and think they’re worth having a conversation with over this, what’s some advice you can offer me in terms of making sure that this person has a genuine interest in?
Karrie Lynn:
I’m going to sidetrack just a little bit because you’re talking about an incident, and that happens quite often where you’ll have somebody that approaches you, that claims to represent the community, right? Turns out that they’re not who they talk about. The thing is, is that to engage the Indigenous perspective, talk to the communities, approach a band office, talk to the elders. Talk to the elders. A good way for the general public is to approach native friendship centres. They are a good resource to initially approach the Indigenous community because they will know how to get ahold of elders and get in touch with elders of different communities, and different nations. Be very wary of somebody who comes up to you and claims to be a representative, because that’s how you’ll run into incidences where you find out that the person is white and pretending to be Indian. So-called Pretend Indians, even if they are a big advocate for the Indigenous community, might not be indigenous or legitimately indigenous heritage. Again, you found me through a referral, somebody who knows me, and you knew Holly is indigenous as well. She happens to be my cousin. That’s how you will be able to engage the right people finding your Indigenous friends, who are status card-carrying or card-carrying members of the Metis nation. That’s how you get in touch with them and engage, right?
Jenny:
Yeah. Well, and it seems so obvious now, but I think it’s because I’m not defending myself, but I’m in my other work. Let’s leave trying to make sure we’re moving towards indigenous ways of life. Quite honestly, why I am engaging with indigenous communities because I understand we have to move away from Western culture, which is using too much of the Earth’s resources, and we need to start caring for nature and restoring nature, right? This is, that’s right. This is my focus.
Karrie Lynn:
Take the resources out, but then reclaim the land, right? Put it back. Put it back,
Jenny:
Right. Yeah. That’s my focus and why I’m engaging with the community. And so now it seems so obvious that I do that with the people that are engaged in that work, which is great. And that’s what this has allowed me to do to connect with those people, as you said, and trust that community and build from that community.
Karrie Lynn:
Let’s get back to that last question that I’ve covered a little bit.
Jenny:
Thank you. Yeah. I’m trying to make sure that moving forward, I want to not only find representation but have conversations that are maintained. How would you…
Karrie Lynn:
Opening and keeping communications open with communities. The biggest way to do that is to touch base every once in a while and regularly, not just…
Jenny:
When you need something.
Karrie Lynn:
Not when you need something like two or three years down the road, but would say you talk to a band office or an elder and a couple weeks later just shoot a quick text. How are you doing? It’s something as simple as that. Keeping the communications open and checking in. Is there anything you’d like us to do that is also important, quick, critical, give and take? Give and take because you ask stuff of the community, but then what can we do for you?
Jenny:
A lot of times an expectation of reciprocity is so important.
Karrie Lynn:
To that. You have to remember that you’re talking to a people that we operate on treaty. We didn’t just do treaties with the crown with white European colonists, but we also did treaties with each other between each Nation. We’d often have, we had gatherings gathering of the nations, which happened to be what Custard had attacked the battle with little Big Horn, but it was a bunch of different nations that were together. It wasn’t just the Lakota, but there was Kaya, there was Komaci, there were different nations there. And that’s where they sort out territories, where they’re going to winter, where they’re going to hunting and stuff like that, and cooperation. And that’s also how many young Native people got partners, and mates because you didn’t want to marry within the tribe because all chances were you were too closely related and the elders knew that. So there was oftentimes you arranged sort of, and then they would retaliate and steal a couple of the horses that were actually out to be stolen. But yeah, so I mean, there was always a give and take. Indigenous culture is also about balance, right? Balance, balance of power, balance of spirituality, balance, everything’s in balance, and that’s what we’re looking at. You have to balance the harvest of resources with maintaining the environment, which up until this point, big corporations have had a very, very poor track, very poor, right?
Look at all the abandoned oil wells.
Jenny:
Yes, thank you. It’s a $260 billion problem and opportunity is how I look at it. It’s our economy going forward to me, and that’s what’s going to bring us together, and that’s why I’m doing this conversation.
Karrie Lynn:
Yeah, no, exactly. You didn’t balance the harvesting of the resource with maintaining the environment or maintaining or even thinking about the cleanup afterwards, right? You didn’t balance that. No, no. Didn’t have the time.
Jenny :
It’s been pushing it off, pushing it off, and again, pushing it off. That’s that binary thinking. If we keep winning, if we keep growing, eventually we’ll be able to do this.
Karrie Lynn:
Wells were sold between companies wells, were sloughed off between companies. Oh, this company went bankrupt. All their oil wells are just abandoned. And it’s like, no. So nobody’s responsible for, well, I’m sorry, but the whole industry is one hundred per cent right. I’m sorry, but all of the companies are held accountable for every single oil well. It’s not just the ones that own the well, it’s the entire community of companies.
Jenny:
Right? That’s right. The orphan. That’s precisely how they defined the Orphan Well Association, whoever is here is responsible.
Karrie Lynn:
It’s not just the one that, the defunct company that owned it.
Key Takeaways
Jenny:
Is there anything that you’d want to touch off before you’re welcome to bring up anything that you’d love to just share with people either about your journey or about as I said, I don’t want to step over what you went through being a sixties scoop kid and also hearing, I didn’t appreciate that they would do things like dress people in another gender to punish them. In a sense, it’s remarkable to me what you’ve,
Karrie Lynn:
But they’re talking about the government policies. They’re talking about trans people going into our trans schools, making kids trans. No, guess what? The nun did that to me. That was a white person who put me in a dress, not another trans person. Don’t tell me that. It was trans people. Trans people aren’t doing that. Trans people. We just want to exist. And I’m going to tell you, there is not a single place that is more full of love and acceptance than when you walk into a room full of trans people or even rainbow people. I joined a couple of different organisations, one of the main rainbow elders, and you walk in there and you instantly feel safe because you’re in a room of queer lgbtqia plus people, all the letters of the rainbow, and there is nothing but love for each other in there. And if there was that kind of love for our fellow men everywhere else in society, there wouldn’t be war. There wouldn’t be conflict.
Jenny:
I fully get it. I went to my first pride festival two years ago, or three years ago now, and I remember leaving here thinking that everybody’s just so loving and supportive. What a wonderful community.
Karrie Lynn:
We’re not trying to spread the hate. We’re not the ones being hateful because all we want to do is love everyone for who they are. Beautiful message. We want to exist. We want to just be us, be allowed the right to just be us bringing in policies like anti-trans policies, anti-gay or lesbian or whatever. Those to me, are anti-human rights. I cannot wrap my head around how you can use legislation to override human rights or even their villa human rights. How can you do that? How can you use the withstanding clause, what UCP once threatened to use the non-withstanding clause? How can you do that to override the Bill of Human Rights? How can you use it? I literally can’t think how that is even possible.
Jenny:
Yeah, it’s a great question. Yeah. I think this is definitely in the discussion point and yeah, I’m going to make sure to follow up on that. Thank you for that. Right. Yeah. Thank you so much, Karrie.
Karrie Lynn:
Somebody asked me, me. How did you choose, or why did you choose to be trans? I didn’t choose. Why would I choose to risk losing everybody that I loved in my life, all my family, all my friends? Why would I risk that? Why would I risk the hatred coming out and being the target of transphobia and homophobia and everything? Why would I risk becoming the target of my own government that would rather see me cease to exist? Why would I do that? Of course. Yeah. Right. I didn’t choose. I didn’t choose. I didn’t have a choice. I mean, if I’d had a choice, I would’ve wanted to be part of general society. I would’ve wanted to be considered normal. I would’ve wanted to be hetero. Whatever gender I was assigned, I was assigned male at birth. I would’ve wanted to be feeling my thinking and being. I would’ve chosen that if I had the choice, but I didn’t have the choice.
Jenny:
Thank you for being brave to be yourself despite all of, as you said, the pressure on this community right now because of what it means for society. I think it’s a really big opportunity for us here to really come together in our human rights and human care for each other as humans, period. And come through this a better people, a more aligned people.
Karrie Lynn:
And the reason why I’ve seen this in other jurisdictions and the reason why they’re using this issue and making it such a big issue is they’re using it as a smokescreen so that they don’t have to address the other really important issues like housing or economy. Again, reclamation of those abandoned orphan wells. Big issues. They’re using the trans issue as a smoke screen, as a distraction, and people have got to realise that. And it’s only a very small minority of one political party that has the power to drive the conversation. Right.
Jenny:
Yeah. And it’s funny, I really do believe, and I think it’s going to become more evident as we go on, that these issues are so tied with the environment too. Because we don’t follow data when it comes to the environment either like you’re saying. This is all, let’s just let people be people. Let’s make space for being in community with people who have a genuine interest towards helping us.
Karrie Lynn:
And don’t just pay lip service, listen to what they’re doing, and work with them in coming up with policies. Absolutely. Get them truly involved, and that’s what you have to do, even on corporate levels.
Jenny:
Yeah. Hundred. Yeah. Thank you. S has been amazing. You’re very welcome. Thank you so much for your time, and I hope we get a chance to chat again.
Karrie Lynn:
Yeah, thank you for having me.