“You don’t look Indigenous.”

Why is this racist?

“Many young First Nations people feel confused about their identity and where they belong. At times it feels like you’re too white or too black for non-Indigenous people… It’s hard to feel accepted or secure when you’re constantly being questioned about who you are.” (Source)

It is not anyone’s place to decide whether someone is Indigenous enough except the person themselves. Indigenous people should not have to check stereotypical boxes to prove their Indigeneity to others.

“I’ve had youth ask me if they can say they were Indigenous without a status card. So sad. My reply is: That it is not the government’s job to tell you who you are or where you come from. That is our job. Through teachings, rites of passage, ceremony, language, and more,” says Cheryl Whiskeyjack, Executive Director of the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society 

Other people don’t have to prove their ethnicity and historically, whenever this is done, it is for power and control and with devastating impacts (Holocaust, Palestine, etc). Historically this has been tied to denial of human rights or benefits.     

As Mykaela Saunders writes, when someone says “You don’t look Aboriginal (Indigenous),” what they are doing is: 

• Perpetuating violence control through your embodiment of racist values.
• Acting as a vehicle for oppression, an agent of history and part of the framework that continues the legacies of past assimilation policies.
• Implicitly perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
• Reducing what it means to be Aboriginal in all its gorgeous complexity to an essential list of clinical physical features, to a cold and simple checklist for cookie-cutter authenticity.
• Alerting to the fact that if left unchecked and uncorrected, you will repeat this comment to others, maybe others who are less resilient or strong in their identity than I am. 

Maria Sturm, who created a photo series titled “You don’t look Native to me” says: “Identity doesn’t have to do with how you look. Instead, it comes from a deeper understanding of lineage and history.” Her series calls out “antiquated criteria for constructing identity” and challenges you to “unravel misconceptions of Native American identity in particular, questioning how we absorb stereotypes as fact” and contemplating your own internalized bias. 

Casting judgement about how Indigenous someone looks may also be done by other Indigenous people, in something defined as “lateral violence” as a result of “internalized colonialism” where “anger and frustration about the injustice of feeling powerless manifests itself in violence – not ‘vertically’ towards the colonisers responsible for the oppression but ‘laterally’ towards their own community. The roots of which “lie in ‘colonization, oppression, intergenerational trauma, powerlessness and ongoing experiences of racism and discrimination.’” 

Ultimately, many issues, stereotypes, bias and racism Indigenous people continue to face today have their roots in colonization, intergenerational trauma and an ongoing racist system. That is important context and understanding that non-Indigenous must consider before they make assumptions that can perpetuate harm towards Indigenous communities. 

Note: an Indigenous person not looking ‘visibly Indigenous’ is very different from a non-Indigenous person pretending to be Indigenous. The rise in ‘Pretendians’ is an entirely different conversation.