The Hum ...

I am awake, I am alive, as once again today, I continue to ignore “the hum”.

As an Indigenous woman, my oppression has been internalized, passed in my DNA from my mother and my grandmother before her. Along with resilience and determination, I was passed the understanding that there are certain places I can’t go, certain things I can’t do, certain things I cannot say, and certain things I must not try. It is the song, “the hum” and those things have been reinforced by the life I have experienced – by newspaper articles, online conversations, and racial slurs thrown from the sidelines of my life.

 When I suggest coffee at a coffee shop I frequent, and a darker friend tells me, “They don’t like Indians there”, I know what he means, and I don’t question. He has heard the hum as well after all. No doubt he has felt the sting of those who reinforce it with slurs and fists, with eye rolls and lousy service (when service is provided at all). In his truth, I am reminded that sometimes my fairer skin opens doors that others are blocked by. My privilege haunts me too, after all.

 When I think of my dear Mother, who believed in me and feared for me all in the same breath, I understand, for she too heard the hum. She didn’t want me to go to college, for that would put me too far away for her to protect. She didn’t want me to speak out for she knew what happened to the Indigenous women of her generation who did. She knew what had happened to her.

I thought I was ignoring her “silly fears” but little did I know the seed of oppression had not only been passed to me, but it was growing. The hum, now loud enough to drown out the teachers who told me I could so easily be a lawyer or a doctor, or that I would rock university. They didn’t realize that their words drown along with my teenage dreams, overpowered by the hum.

 When I watched tv and saw no Indigenous shopping, at the movies, or walking on the beach, no Indigenous making “Friends” in a coffee shop, no Indigenous falling in or out of love, my oppression grew. The hum once again reminding me that the world “they” built didn’t include me.

 The hum was a never-ending soundtrack in my life until it wasn’t, until I set out to drown it out with a new song sung by the 3 Musketeers.

In our home, my two children and I talked of the day they would become lawyers or doctors or whatever they wanted to become. Together, we studied and learned so that doors would open for them, any door, and when I chose to quit my job and start my own business, the other Musketeers cheered me on, knowing in their hearts I would succeed as long as I kept dancing to the song we wrote.

 But the hum is not gone, not for them and not for me. It still attempts to play each time I take a bold step, each time I dare to hit “send”, each time I dare to speak my truth, but it is left in stunned silence each time I succeed, each time I am encouraged, each time I am heard. My success is its kryptonite after all, and each day I gather more of that beautiful green gemstone.

Today my journey continues, taking me wherever my heart desires, as free in this land as my ancestors once were. Why? Because I refuse to listen to the hum any longer. I refuse to believe I can’t get in there, that I can’t do this or that. And each day, more brown and black skins join me in dancing to the beat of our hearts and our ancestral drums, rather than dying in the silence induced by the hum.

The journey continues. Feel free to join me. Just please, don’t hum.