I remember clenching my fist as the words “You fucking dirty Indian!” left his mouth.

It was recess, the sun was out, and we were playing a game that was some parts rugby and other parts football. For a split second, I thought about the words and what they meant. What part about me being native made me dirty? I didn’t understand, but it still hurt me. For the first time, I felt ashamed to be who I am, as if somehow his white skin made him superior. The other kids, pretty much all white, stopped playing and stood around in excitement, knowing that a fight might break out. He was tall and round and easily the biggest kid on the field — a farm boy from a nearby town. I marched forward, but before I could land a blow I ended up on the ground, desperately covering both sides of my head as punches rained down. Then they stopped. I looked up to see my friend Arthur, the only other native student in my class, riding the boy like a rodeo bull and landing a few hooks as the boy dropped to his knees.

In the aftermath, only myself and my bully got sent to the principal’s office. A TA that was supervising the recess had seen what happened and let Arthur get off free. I wasn’t surprised. He had a charisma and charm that made him liked by nearly everyone, including the white kids. It was his armour and I had yet to find mine. In the principal’s office, we sat in two separate chairs, side by side, while the principal looked at us from across her desk.

“So what happened?” she asked, her eyes glaring darting back and forth at both of us.

I pleaded my case — he called me a “fucking dirty Indian.” I’m not sure what I expected, perhaps some sort of outrage or at the very least that she would believe me. But her face went unchanged, like the words didn’t mean anything, like they couldn’t possibly hurt someone. The boy was quick to deny my claim: “I didn’t say that!” And I could tell that she believed him, that she was on his side and not mine, and I immediately regretted saying the f-word in front of her. When I realized that I had lost, that nothing I could say would prevent this from happening again, my stomach sank.

This was 2002 and I was 10 years old. It was my first encounter with racism as an Indigenous person in Canada, racism that was perpetuated for hundreds of years, intended to make me feel like there was something wrong with being Indigenous. At the time I was attending a school in Eriksdale, Manitoba, a municipality about 20 minutes away from my reserve along a single-lane road. But it felt like a different world.

