Dear Gossips,
I recently interviewed Shanese Indoowaaboo Steele for ETALK presents: IMPACT & INFLUENCE – Celebrating Indigenous Changemakers, a 30-minute special airing and streaming tonight at 7pm on CTV and CTV.ca. Shanese is a public speaker, an advocate and an activist, a writer, a culture critic. She facilitates workshops that provide education on Black and Indigenous issues. Through the Aazhganan Project she works to “build bridges between Black and Indigenous peoples living on both Turtle Island” and around the world. She is an amazing resource and for those of you who are looking for a consultant to lead equity and awareness conversations in your workspaces or communities or in academic settings, check out her website here.
Or you can watch her on the first season of 1 Queer 5 Queens. Because there is no narrow definition for who Shanese is. She identifies as “an Afro-Indigenous fat femme” and in addition to all of the above, Shanese also has thoughts on makeup:
When did you first get to play around with makeup?#1Queen5Queers is now streaming on @CraveCanada. pic.twitter.com/vZ6F8lULGY
— 1 Queen 5 Queers (@1Queen5Queers) March 9, 2022
And that reminds me of this twitter thread by poet Erica Violet Lee who sums it up best:
When I tweet anything other than hot takes about racism & colonialism, my follows & interactions slow. Why?
— Erica Violet Lee (@ericavioletlee) February 4, 2022
Indigenous people on here are expected to be one-dimensional, constantly performing political rage or grief for the settler gaze.
Sometimes I just wanna talk about music.
For more about Shanese, in her own words:
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
