Just Watch Me

It is 1969. Paulette Steeves, a ward of the provincial government and
incorrigible runaway, has been incarcerated here since the age of 13.

“We
were extremely poor,” says Steeves. Born in Whitehorse, her childhood
was cut from the cloth of aboriginal marginalization. “My mom was an
alcoholic. My parents split when I was five. My stepdad used to beat the
shit out of her.”

By the age of 12, Steeves was running away regularly.
She dropped out of school, picked apples, panhandled, and made her way
to Vancouver, where she survived as a street kid before landing in
Willingdon at age 13.

“My mother, who was 80 per cent native, warned us
never to tell anyone we were Indians,” she says. The reason was
heartbreaking: Long before Paulette and and her siblings were born, her
mother had two children who were taken from her by authorities and put
up for adoption.

“She never saw them again, and she never, ever got over
it,” says Steeves. “Because of that, it was really important to her to
hide our Indian-ness.”

Part of racism is who is included and who is
excluded, socially, economically and historically. Steeves grew up on
the outside, excluded first from her own culture, and also outside of
mainstream white culture.



READ: ‘Just watch me’: Challenging the ‘origin story’ of Native Americans | Vancouver Sun

[http://vancouversun.com/news/national/aboriginal-anthropologist]