Looking white and being Indigenous, a complicated relationship with identity - Regan Burden

This presentation will discuss my own personal experiences of being an Indigenous person with a light complexion. Growing up in southern Labrador in an indigenous community, my identity and my understanding of my culture was never something that I had questioned. But upon moving to St. John’s to pursue a university degree I encountered people who would make racist and derogatory comments about indigenous people in front of me. When I called out their behaviour, stating that I was indigenous and they were being offensive, I was told that I was overreacting and that I couldn’t be ​that​ indigenous. For me, this brought up a lot of questions in my internal dialogue about what being indigenous was and what it meant to be indigenous.