Featured Image: Courtesy of Kinga Michalska and Phoebe Heintzman Hope
At the 2017 Native American and Indigenous Studies Association conference in Vancouver, Jeneen Frei Njootli spoke on behalf of the Indigenous feminist arts collective Rematriate about burnout and community care (or lack thereof). “I’m running on empty,” said Frei Njootli, “Because that’s what’s expected of us.” So, when I say, “I’m exhausted,” I am one of many Indigenous women, gender variant, and sexually diverse peoples who have burned out on the community of institutional Indigenous thought (academia, publishing, and art), and who have worked themselves to a point of exhaustion because of the emotional labour that is expected of us, especially by Indigenous men.
Jas M. Morgan 