Coming Home - A Story of Mixed Identity
To honour Black History Month and Women’s History Month, we sat down with an emerging leader from one of our member Nations, Charsanaa Johnny, to hear about navigating life as an Afro-Indigenous woman, and the message she has for Youth. Charsanaa worked with us at Kw’umut Lelum Foundation as the Project Coordinator for the PhotoVoice project, where Indigenous Youth took photos to illustrate how participating in canoe racing and Tribal Journeys contributes to their cultural identity and wellness. One of the things she liked best was “working with diverse youth from the nine different Nations - the athletes, the artists, the quiet ones - we wanted to capture the voices of all of them…the transfer of knowledge isn’t just from Elders down…when Indigenous youth can share what they’ve learned with others, it strengthens their sense of Indigenous identity, wellness, and confidence.”
“no matter how disconnected I may have felt at times. I always knew that I was going to come home.”
Charsanaa is a member of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on her mother’s side, and African American on her father’s side. She grew up with her mom in Seattle, Washington in what she describes as a multicultural community, and came to Nanaimo every summer to spend time with her family here. The times she spent with her dad’s family, especially with her grandmother from Louisiana, she felt celebrated, spoiled, and showered with love and affection, but didn’t know much about their culture. Until about age seven she identified as “predominantly Black, because that’s what everybody saw in me and so that’s what I believed…it was a huge part of my identity.” When she joined a predominantly Black church at age 15, she “really started reconnecting to my African American culture because Christianity - and church and praise and worship - that's all a huge piece of African American culture…What I’m learning now is culture is so much more than just one practice. I think sometimes we get caught up in that belief.”
When Charsanaa moved to Nanaimo in 2015 and began working in her community, she at times felt like an outsider, and thought maybe it was because of the colour of her skin. Over the years she realized that everyone gets pushback from people for different reasons, and that she is accepted and embraced by her Snuneymuxw community. She also recognizes how special it is to carry more than one identity: “It’s because I’m mixed that I have the connection to territory that I do, that I have the relationship with community that I do, and that I have this whole other identity in life, in community, and in spirituality and culture. I’ve always had that growing up, no matter how disconnected I may have felt at times. I always knew that I was going to come home.”
Charsanaa is graduating this year with a Master of Social Work in Indigenous Trauma and Resiliency from the University of Toronto and is currently working as a Wellness Coordinator at the Orca Lelum Youth Wellness Centre in Nanoose. She is considering continuing her education with a doctorate, especially when she sees Black and Indigenous women doing it, because “my ancestors didn’t have this opportunity, and I do.”