Ancestry & Lineage
I recently realised the limited view I hold of who my various ancestors are. This was not a spontaneous realisation; I’ve been doing quite a lot of work around my experience of being white, and the intersection of race that influenced my upbringing as the child of a maternal Métis heritage and paternal white European heritage. There is a lot of juice there. I don’t get to claim my Cree ancestors and dismiss the Mormon ones or those who came over on the Mayflower. To acknowledge all my ancestors is to come up against the edges of privilege and oppression carried in my blood and what it means to be descended from both oppressor and oppressed, with the advantages of one and no risk of marginalisation from the other.1
Still, I equated ancestry to something we inherit through birth alone. It was while listening to a talk by Lama Rod Owens that the radical notion of community ancestry struck me. Which is to say, I have an ancestry as a member of the QILT2BAG+ community.
Despite my awareness and gratitude for the defiance and resiliency of folks like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, I had never thought of either of them as ancestors until Lama Rod named them as such for himself. The shift gave me a sense of connection like I’d never had before. It reminded me of when I was in elementary school and we learned about Louis Riel. The information was boring, poorly presented, and uninteresting to my ten-year-old self, until I went home and told my mum. She told me we were related to him, actually. That he was a distant cousin and one of his aunts was our direct ancestor.2
Despite how tenuous this connection was I felt an immense sense of pride and, more importantly, curiosity. I wanted to know about Louis Riel as a human being and not just a historical figure given two paragraphs in a text book. I researched what I could at the time, pre-Internet. This turned up very few results, but the curiosity lingered, and as an adult, I was delighted to encounter the graphic novel of his life, by Chester Brown.
Reading Brown’s illustrated account of Louis Riel’s life, I felt a strong sense of something that ran deeper than a biological connection. Louis Riel was not merely someone with whom I shared a family tree, but someone who had also struggled with mental illness and been an agent for social change. He was driven and passionate. When he saw injustice he went to work to address it. He didn’t wait for someone else to take up the gauntlet of liberation. My view of him, and connection to him, suddenly included not just a sense of ancestry, but a sense of lineage.
Arguably, by dictionary definitions, ‘lineage’ and ‘ancestry’ are synonyms, but through a Buddhist lens, I would say there is a distinction. The ancestry of my queerness has always been there. I am a member of the community regardless of my involvement with QILT2BAG+ organisations or events. I don’t even think a sense of belonging is necessary for community ancestry. It’s like a family tree that way — we don’t choose our relatives any more than we choose the communities with which our identities align. We do have a choice when it comes to carrying on the work of those who came before. That, to me, is the distinction between ancestry and lineage.
Without realising it, I stepped up to carry the lineage of Marsha ‘Pay It No Mind’ Johnson when I chose to establish an organisation that would provide safe spaces for QILT2BAG+ youth in my hometown. I carry on the lineage of Sylvia Rivera by claiming the label ‘queer’ and exploring the performative nature of gender through doing drag. And as a lineage holder, I seek to grow my appreciation for these brilliant, strong mothers of a movement, a movement which made it possible for a project like the Miscellaneous Youth Network to exist and thrive. A movement that means I can live without fear of losing a job because of my sexuality. A movement that helped secure my right to marry the person whom I love. A movement that allows me to explore my gender without violent repercussion.3
An ancestry rooted in social activism — whether around culture, race, or gender — rather than one based on biology alone, seems to carry with it this encouragement to become a lineage holder. I think about the obligation I have to speak up and go to the frontlines of this kind of work for everyone under the same rainbow umbrealla. As long as cisgender conservatives and bigots continue to support and pass legislation aimed at erasing and criminalising transgender folks, I will carry on the lineage of activism handed down to me from Sylvia and Marsha P.
Originally published on Medium. Edited from original.
If you enjoy this piece you would probably also enjoy listening to this collaborative episode of Everything is Workable with advocate, speaker and role model Jack Saddleback.
That being said, I also spend a lot of time considering what was lost and what managed to survive against all odds. My great-grandmother spoke Michif, and possibly some nēhiyawak. This was not passed down but the cultural approach to child rearing was, something for which I am immensely grateful.
She also told me that when she was in school they were taught he was a traitor to Canada (because, I mean, he was) and was cast as villainous. She marvelled that my teacher described him as a “Canadian hero.”
This line in particular lands so differently in 2023 than it did when I first published it in 2017. Fight for trans liberation now. Support trans kids. Support trans adults. Protect trans folk. Protect bodily autonomy and the right to live as the gender we are without the threat of violence and retribution.