Tag: colonialism
What We Lose with Cultural Extinction: The Red Thread Cut
In 1995, China abducted six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima—the recognized 11th Panchen Lama—severing the chain of mutual recognition at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist succession. Meanwhile, Michif, a language born from Cree verbs and French nouns that belonged to no one but the Métis People, has nearly vanished within living memory. Both losses are the same act: colonialism's weaponization of continuity. On the extinction of languages, the cutting of red threads, and what it means to inherit a chain with links already missing.
Fort Street
May 9th. Sunny. I'm walking past the Winnipeg Police Service headquarters at 11 in the morning when I turn off Graham onto Fort Street and the timing is what it is. Two men coming from the gym, laughing, easy with each other and with the morning. They glance down at the man on the sidewalk...
Consequence as Weather
The coffee shop near the Palais des congrès is already full of Liberal Party of Canada convention delegates when I join the line outside. Cop cars are parked down the street. Inside, every table has a staffer. Suits. Baseball caps. #LIB2026 lanyards. Louboutins under a table where someone’s set a Prada bag on the chair...
Structures of Warmth and Violence
The sun is warm on my face at the port, and I don’t trust it.Midwinter light has no business feeling this gentle.The river is frozen hard enough to refuse reflection, to hold its surface without depth.Ice tightens everything into place.And still, the sun presses against my skin, insistent, intimate, as if it has selected me...
There Is No Word for This Grief: On Gaza, Famine, and the World That Watches
I wasn’t supposed to be writing this. I’m supposed to be writing a comprehensive exam about temporality and health. About how Black queer people live and care for one another in timeframes not designed for our survival. I’m supposed to be providing therapy tomorrow—offering calm, presence, holding—for clients navigating their own overwhelm, grief, burnout. I’m...