Magdaragat, p.9
Magdaragat, page 9
The predilection toward venerating white and male cultures and ideals was echoed outside school as well, for this was what our elders learned and passed on down the generations. In hindsight, this was also why I was not critical of those divisive and derogatory remarks from the titos and titas in Edmonton in the 1980s, instructing me not to associate with Indigenous people, who were generalized as homeless and worthless, as well as to avoid other heritage communities while making fun of them. I accepted these precepts without questioning them because they were simply extensions of what I had heard my whole life before coming to Canada, which I had already internalized as status quo.
“If you don’t behave, kukunin ka ng bumbay.”
“No, girls can’t do it. That’s only for boys.”
“Ay, ang puti! And what a nice nose. She will go far.”
“Let your kuya have more, because he’s a boy.”
“Why did you stay out under the sun? You’re so dark, mukha ka ngayong busabos” (you look poor and dirty).
I grew up surrounded by uncritical belief and blind adherence to white colonial and patriarchal standards that made me feel inferior, insecure, and fearful about my future. Without truly understanding the underlying reasons, I felt that I was never good enough, that I could never measure up to the ideals and aspirations required of me. There was an incessant mantra in my head, “I will never be beautiful nor rich nor successful enough,” and it was echoed by many around me as well — my siblings, classmates, friends, and relatives, even those who were older. As a response, we all kept striving to be better, we all kept trying harder and harder, not fully understanding that the playing field and rules were not conceived for us to win. I did not realize then that this was intentional and bolstered by systems and structures that profited by intentionally making people like me feel deficient and anxious. We were indoctrinated into believing that our identity and worth were premised upon some standards set and controlled by others, not ourselves. Our precarious self-esteem drove us to constant self-surveillance and self-management mode, and it made us vulnerable to outside approval and submission to authorities.
I believe that generations and generations of Filipinos constantly made to feel inadequate and powerless by colonial principles gave rise to attitudes and values that became embedded in our psyche, which, in turn, were deemed as cultural traits, when, actually, these were responses to trauma caused by inequality and distress: complaisance, deference to authority, conflict avoidance, self-restraint, persistence, determination to work hard, and the urge to excel. For me, this inadequacy complex is a major reason why being a Filipino can feel like we lead a life of constant striving, a life where we always need to be productive, where we need to keep improving ourselves. And we keep orienting the definition of improvement and success on colonial standards, which are mostly unattainable. In the 1980s, to “go abroad” was one of the most prominent signs of success for Filipinos. Specifically, it was to go to America. Many difficult years under a dictatorship contributed to Filipinos wanting to immigrate and “finally make it” in America. America was so revered, I remember some people’s response when I told them I was leaving with a scholarship to study at a university in Canada: “Okay na rin yan, at least you can go abroad. Malapit na yan sa America, maybe you can transfer later.” Not knowing any better then, I secretly wished the same: to someday “make it” to America.
Choosing to Belong in Edmonton
I did not know much about Canada when I arrived in 1984. This was pre-Internet, pre-cellphone days, and a time when travel was very expensive and not as commonplace. Canada seemed harmless. I had not heard of Canada colonizing or being at war with any country. In my limited experience, the people seemed kind and friendly enough. However, as I mentioned earlier, I quickly learned that in a colonial country like Canada, whiteness and white superiority are deeply embedded in its policies, structures, values, and systems, so that racialized groups are negatively impacted in many aspects of our lives: employment, housing, education, justice, social participation, and access to goods and services. Even some of the kind, friendly Canadians I met were not aware or uncritically accepting of the gaps and hierarchies between the dominant white population and those who were non-white. After I learned this, I tried sharing my apprehensions with my heritage community about the power dynamics being sustained in Canada that favoured the colonists’ culture and led to racism. I encouraged the community to fight the systems and values that kept us marginalized and exploitable, instead of comparing and pitting ourselves against other heritage groups. But I was not successful in raising awareness or understanding. Compared to their lives in the Philippines, the Filipinos in Edmonton had jobs, houses, access to health care, schools, and churches. So, they did not perceive the inequality of access to wealth and social participation that I was pointing out. Instead, they told me, “That’s the way it’s always been and will be for us,” and advised me to be grateful to Canada. There was nothing that needed to change, other than Canada should allow more of our relatives to easily immigrate here. People also pointed out that Canada encouraged immigration and multiculturalism and was the first country to pass a national multiculturalism law in 1988. Hence, Canada must love people like us. My contention that multiculturalism did not equate to inclusion and equity fell on deaf ears.
When one is used to being passive and constantly told to sacrifice for the family and community, assertiveness may be perceived as aggression and disrespect. When one is not used to being self-confident, confidence can be misconstrued as arrogance. My dissent and talking back to those who were older than me and who had been in Edmonton longer than me was construed exactly as such — arrogance. I think my confidence was taken for arrogance because it triggered some fear that I was challenging the status quo, just when more and more Filipinos were getting established in Edmonton, enjoying the fruits of their labour and wages. The dream to pursue when we go abroad is to find a job, buy a house and car, raise a family comfortably, and send money back home. At that time, there was really no one in the Filipino community who understood why I was deviating from this immigrant’s dream and asking them to divert their time and energy toward addressing inequality, misogyny, and racism. I think it also did not help that I was a cash-strapped academic living in a rented studio apartment, did not have a car, and was unmarried and childless, which all belied the idea of success within our community.
Still wanting to belong to and be accepted by my kin network, I succumbed to normative social adjustment and toned myself down. To be safe, I tried to only chat about movies, food, people, clothes, children, and houses. I tried to not be critical of conversations and actions even as I perceived them as biased and prejudiced. I tried to make excuses or explain away some behaviours, especially from the older people, in view of their generation’s upbringing and hardships. But it was really difficult to keep ignoring the double standards between genders, the preference for white patriarchal culture and values, the push to conform to white standards of beauty, the constant striving to assimilate into a culture of intensified consumption.
I believe that there is no neutral space between being a racist and diligently fighting racism, no neutral space between sexism and relentlessly fighting misogyny. White centring, together with its patriarchal and consumption-focused ideals, is so pervasive and harmful that we need to be intentionally and actively fighting it daily. It is not enough to stop laughing at some jokes, to keep quiet when someone says a racist or sexist statement, or to ignore news harmful to a group due to race or gender. There is no neutral space. One is either supporting whiteness as a dominant culture or actively opposing it. When I mentioned earlier that my heritage community was racist and misogynistic, and so was I, it was because, by refusing to accept how colonial and patriarchal mentality had impacted racialized groups and we needed to change, my heritage community was being complicit in sustaining the dominant culture. As for me, by being selective in my opposition, by choosing to sometimes stay quiet and not do anything, I was also furthering the damage caused by racism and misogyny.
Edmonton and Change
In 1989, I left Edmonton to move to Germany for a scholarship toward my PhD. I ended up working in Europe, as well as Asia, for quite some time and came back to Edmonton only in 2007 with my husband and son to stay in Canada permanently. Working at the University of Alberta and raising a young child while establishing roots in a new city kept me busy for the first few years after coming back. It was not until 2014 that I slowly started being more involved again with the Filipino community in Edmonton. After twenty-five years, the community had changed tremendously. There were only about six thousand Filipinos in the early 1980s, and this grew to sixty-five thousand by 2016. It was also a much more diverse group in terms of age, profession, educational achievement, and artistic abilities, as well as gender orientation. I was happy to note a marked increase of more progressive, open-minded, and forward-thinking Filipinos, mostly younger than me. I surmised they were not as strongly bounded by the strict colonial education we had pre-1980s.
I had also changed. In 2014, I was not a fledgling academic anymore, trying to lecture my elders out of a world view and mindset that took decades of indoctrination. I had a better grasp of how big and complex socio-racial hierarchies and processes are, the myriad ways both locals and immigrants position themselves within them, and how it will take a very long time to unpack centuries of inequality created by the preference for whiteness. I also learned that it was better to choose a different starting place — to situate all these through a lens of understanding, compassion, and healing, rather than anxiety and anger. With this, I was able to join together once more with my heritage community, gain allies, and better move forward on raising awareness about systemic inequalities.
Now, in 2022, I remain an avid advocate for equity, inclusion, and diversity, and not only for people of Philippine heritage. I believe it is imperative that we go past heritage, past ethnicity, past single socio-cultural categorizations and show how closely intertwined the factors, causes, and impacts of widespread inequalities are: Black Lives Matter, #MeToo movement, rise in Asian hate, LGBTQ+ struggles, the heartbreak of residential schools, climate change and climate migrants, and so on. We get a more comprehensive picture of what needs to be addressed for society to change if we see the interconnectivity among all these. This way, we also better understand the need to bring communities together, sharpen our solidarity work, and transition from organizational silos to wider community-based solidarity. It is encouraging to see many cross-community events and discussions promoted not only in Edmonton, but Canada-wide, many available and shared online. It is encouraging to see there are more and more relevant materials available from diverse sources, from treatises to personal stories showing how real people, real families have been impacted. It is encouraging to see more young people aware of the systemic causes of these inequalities and wishing to be involved in effecting change. It is crucial that we move from our silos and focus on working together to learn, share, and take appropriate action. Only when we amplify each other’s voices and expand spaces for each other, can we offer up and understand truths from many angles, from different perspectives, from a truly diverse population. Then, we are more discerning and do not have to accept one truth from a single white centre.
Maribeth Manalaysay Tabanera
Pagpasok Sa Sarili Ko / Coming Into Myself
Mabuhay! Mayad-ayad nga pad-abot! Welcome!
My name is Maribeth Manalaysay Tabanera, also known as Kilusan, pronouns siya/sanda/they/them/theirs/she/her/hers/he/him/his. I am a Tagalog Visayan Filipinx queer non-binary multi-hyphenate educator, artist, and community organizer born and raised on Treaty 1, the original lands and waters of Anishinaabe, Ininiwak, Anishininiwak, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Red River Métis Nation. My ancestry on my maternal side is Tagalog from San Roque, Navotas, Manila, Philippines. On my paternal side, my ancestry is Visayan from Tamalagon, Tangalan, Aklan, Philippines. In my youth, I would have introduced myself as Maribeth, a Filipino-Canadian from Winnipeg. The evolution of how I identify is a reflection of my journey toward wholeness, as I continue to heal through intergenerational trauma caused by cisheteronormative white supremacist capitalist imperialist patriarchy, as well as my commitment to reclaim my ancestral strengths and ways of living.
I am a first-generation settler-born, raised and still residing in so-called Canada. This context holds me as I continue to ask myself, “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?” These two questions have come and continue to be at the forefront of my life, but especially during times of great challenge, such as incidents of family conflict, a near-fatal car accident, workplace abuse and exploitation, financial hardships, and the end of valued relationships. Growing up, the message I received from society was that a successful life included finishing school, getting a job, finding a husband, getting married, buying a house, and having children. My model of success growing up was a linear one, and when things went wrong, I would often blame myself for “my problems” and “my shortcomings” and felt powerless in changing my outcomes. The model minority myth manifested in my life through self-inflicted pressure to be perfect, hard-working, overachieving, and non-confrontational. I experienced imposter syndrome and was scared to share my ideas and feelings in school and professional spaces, because I thought they were not valuable in places where I was the minority. Whose voice was telling me I was not enough and not worthy of taking up space and making mistakes? Why did I feel incomplete, despite having achieved so much in my life?
Internalized oppression — a condition in which an oppressed individual or group come to believe that they are inferior to those in power or who are part of the dominant group — has been identified by various psychological scholars as a salient and possibly the most insidious consequence of oppression.
— E.J.R. David1
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment of time I decided to begin dissolving my internalized oppression. All I can tell you is that my healing toward wholeness and wellness has been one I have longed for in my body for as long as I can remember. I know that when I began to learn about many different histories — the history of the land colonially known as the Philippines; my family’s history and migration; and the history of Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island and the Philippines — I realized that it wasn’t my fault when I didn’t feel well. Colonialism has been used time and again to erase language, culture, family, and histories around the world, causing intergenerational psychological and physical harm to communities. I continue to learn, unlearn, relearn, and question the (mis)education that was passed down to me through informal and formal schooling in hopes of creating and maintaining a state of well-being that is grounded in my ancestral belief systems.
In this personal essay, I will locate myself in relation to the colonial paradigm and discuss my artistic practice as a healing modality and tool to help build solidarity across communities, my methods of breaking the cycle of capitalistic productivity, and lastly, the help I have sought from my community and their impact on my well-being. My hope is that by sharing my story, you will be inspired to begin and sustain a state of wellness and groundedness in your unique identity, as well as understand the transformative, liberating, and healing possibilities of art practice and therapy, so you may feel empowered to live your fullest and most expressive life.
Locating Myself
I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the late 80s. I am the only child of Francisca Manalaysay and Romeo Tabanera. My parents immigrated from the Philippines in the early 1980s and settled in the North End neighbourhood. For as long as I can remember, I longed to learn the history of my family and the country my parents left. The majority of my relatives stayed in the Philippines. My parents did their best to surround me with a loving community, but I often felt jealous of other Filipinos who had large extended families in the city. I realize now that my family was never able to figure out the sponsorship system and couldn’t afford to bring more relatives to Canada. Missing these family bonds in my life made me feel disconnected and isolated. One of my first experiences of cultural loss and identity confusion was my inability to speak Tagalog and Aklanon, my parents’ mother tongues. Before I began my Canadian education, I spoke fluent Tagalog. Shortly after I enrolled in elementary school, I began to speak exclusively English, even when my parents would speak to me in their first languages. Today, I cannot communicate in Aklanon, and I can only understand Tagalog and participate in basic conversation. Forgetting my ancestral language was and still is a difficult reality in my life. It has made it challenging for me to connect with my family in the Philippines, which made me feel inadequately Filipinx at times. Today, it’s a goal for me to relearn the language of my parents, because I know this will help me further make sense of my identity. It’s also important for me to hold space for language to evolve and reflect my unique experience as a queer non-binary Filipinx living in the diaspora. The term Filipinx is a new way of identifying those with Filipino/a/x ancestry not rooted in a colonial binary identity. Before colonizers came to the Philippines, the Indigenous Tagalog and Aklanon language did not have gendered pronouns and instead used siya/sanda — the equivalent of they in English. I always wondered why my parents would often mix up she and he, but after learning about the lack of gendered pronouns and that gender fluidity was a part of our culture, it all made sense. Learning about Filipino/a/x pre-colonial ways of living has widened my empathy toward myself and how I show up in the world, but before I get ahead of myself, I want to tell you more about what it was like being raised as a Filipino-Canadian.
