The question of “Where are you from?” and Indigenous Introductions

I recently attended a conference where the keynote speaker was the Indigenous artist, activist and ambassador: Sarain Fox and her vulnerability, her wonderfully open and honest conversation opened me up to a new understanding of the question: ‘where are you from?’

I have a complicated relationship with this question and I’m not alone in my feelings that ‘where are you from’ can be a loaded question for many first or second generation immigrants as a way to place and box people in particular categories and to signal their lack of belonging to the mainstream culture of the country, in my case Canada. To me the question of ‘where are you from’ can be an exclusionary and “Othering” question, signifying the perception of the asker that ‘I cannot place you in our community and I must know where are you from in order to know how to interact with you, and to pigeonhole you with a set of beliefs and perception about who you are’. I’ve had this question asked of me at times with anger and distrust and at times from a pure place of curiosity with no ill intentions by folks whom I assumed had ‘white’ ancestry. In both these cases I have felt angry or sad and always excluded. In fact, whenever I teach on issues of equity and diversity and difficult conversations, I teach about how in our culture the question of ‘where are you from’ is among the questions that ‘ought to be known that is unwelcomed’ and in our Canadian context, I’m not alone in my teachings either. To be sure, this question has been used by gatekeepers to marginalize individuals and prevent them in having access to knowledge, important spaces and people particularly in the workplace.

But this question and my relationship to it is more complex than that. I have had this question asked of me by folks whom I assumed were racialized people and my assumption changed my reaction to the question. Although I still get annoyed by being asked this, and only a little, my annoyance is cradled in something else: closeness and belonging. I often assume - and have had this assumption confirmed - that if a Middle-Easterner asks me that question, they want to know ‘Are we/were we neighbours before?’; ‘Will you understand me more because you are from the same region?’; ‘Can I reach out and connect to you through a shared language or religion?’

The question therefore is full of complexity and nuances and it doesn’t have the same impact in every situation. I say all these to outline how much I have thought about this topic and how my interaction with this fundamental question have resulted into concrete ideas about it. It wouldn’t be surprising then to have a reaction to a talk on the importance of ‘where are you from’ and its incorporation in an introduction. I sat there, watching Sarain Fox tell the audience about where she was from and then in a period of an hour, this Indigenous sister shifted my perception of this question and that concreteness began to change form. 

Sarain Fox with her Auntie Mary courtesy of the Toronto Star

Sarain began her keynote address by introducing herself in her language and then in English. She told us how her Anishinaabe people are from the shores of Lake Superior and that her people are story-tellers, a tradition that has tied them to the land. She told us about how much this Indigenous way of introducing oneself is vital because when we talk about who we are and where we come from, we are in fact speaking our truths. When we introduce ourselves this way we create connections to hundreds or thousands of years of tradition with our ancestors. We are not singular stories and it is wrong to assume such individuality without understanding our web of interconnection with our past and with others around us in the present. 

I sat there and watched in awe of her openness as she told us that introducing yourself in this way is to shed light on your legacy. And if we were to share the truth of who we are mutually and respectfully, with curiosity and openness, we create more space for connection and understanding. In order to illustrate her point, she turned to an audience member (a middle-aged white man) and asked him where he was from. Although at first he only said the town that he was from, through further inquiries by her: ‘okay, where were your parents and grandparents from?’ not only we learned more about his ancestry but we created deeper connections to him through knowing him. ‘Okay, but where were your parents/grandparents from?’ is the continuation of the original question and something that irks me. 

But here’s the important thing and here’s what I have been thinking about: she didn’t ask the audience member where they were from, without first fully introducing herself with so much generosity and vulnerability. The difference in this way of asking ‘where are you from?’ was the reciprocity of the information before she asked that question and the modeling of that type of introduction through her own story. “When you acknowledge the truth of where you come from, who you are, then it’s easier to acknowledge the truth of where you are, which is this land that you are on now”. When we acknowledge and incorporate our past mindfully in talking about ourselves, we are empowered to then acknowledge the truth of the present moment. In this light, the question of ‘where are you from’ takes on a different shape and morphs into something new: ‘what is your story? By what way have you come to be in this space and now?’ 

She told us that this legacy of who we are can often be a burden, a load carrying with it both darkness and light. She told us to think about the burden that we put on others when we ask them where they are from, without sharing where we are from. And simultaneously having the responsibility of knowing who we are, what is our history, and what triggers us. 

“There’s power in sharing your story, you own your narrative” and yet most of us do not share our stories fully. “We hide our truths from each other” by wearing different masks. We may present only parts of ourselves at work and the other parts at home. We may act differently with one group of friends than the other ones. What would life be like if we could share our truths openly and kindly? What opportunities for connections and growth would we create? This question has dogged me for some weeks now, because for me at least, part of the reason that I don’t share the whole of my truth is that I carry a two-pronged shame about where I’m from. On one level I carry shame and disappointment of what some of ‘my people’ do to others, and on another level this is an internalized oppression of the perception that many Westerners have historically held on racialized people and people from the Global South.

But if I were to make space for my shame and still tell the truth, how would I introduce myself? 

I would say: I am Sara, pronounced Saa-ra not Se-ra. My ancestors lived in the southern and the northern part of Iran and I’m a combination of the two. Growing up like many of my ancestors we moved around in Iran for work and made friends with people in different parts of the country. I’m from a large and loving family that is more like a clan. But that love wasn’t enough to counteract the poisons of the environment we were in and my parents picked us up, selling all their possessions, and moved us to Canada in hopes of a better life. I was indigenous to a beautiful land that I haven’t been able to visit for many years and I am a settler on this adopted spectacular land. 

If I were to introduce myself that way to you, and tell you a “bite-sized truth” as Sarain puts it, I’d tell you that I’m a survivor of a revolution, war, and lived under dictatorship for my most formative years. I might tell you that traumas of these events left their scars on my psyche and I might even tell you about the anxiety and the panic attacks that have plagued me most of my life, the part of me that I often hide. I would be open about my truth and instead of making up false stories about why I can’t do certain things, such as hanging out with you late at night, I would tell my truth only. 

And what would living in that truth be like? What would life be like with such ‘meaningful reconciliation’ with one’s past and history? It would be freeing! It would be liberating to not have to come up with euphemisms for my panic attacks; it would be healing to just say ‘oh yeah, my trauma visited me last night’ and perhaps you would also understand me and my actions better. Perhaps it would bring us closer to one another, since we know that sharing such stories can empower others to share their own and there is strength in that collectivity.  

“There’s no time for inauthentic stories”, says Sarain in her TEDX Talk.  “We’re all made up of the same stuff: water, land, stardust and molecules. If we focus on our individual past instead of our collective future, we leave out the best part of being a human: our connectivity. We’re more alike than we’re different…Be revolutionary in your life. Share your stories relentlessly with the hope that you, singularly, will change the future.”