7. GRIEF IS A PORTAL w/ Ayako Gallagher

Yeah, I love that you start your podcast with this because, you know, I feel colonialism and capitalism, it thrives on disconnection.

It thrives on us being disconnected from our lands, from our culture, and it doesn't want us to confront the hard things.

truths about the history of, you know, living on Turtle Island.

So, yeah, I live in what is colonially known as Richmond, British Columbia and so-called Canada, which is just outside of Vancouver.

And so for Americans, that's just north of Seattle.

But all of these names, right, they're colonial markers.

on unceded territories.

So I live on the unceded territories of the Musqueam Nation and other Huncomenem language-speaking nations.

And I know, I'm not sure if unceded is always used in the States.

So that means that land that was never lawfully transferred or surrendered through treaty or war, it was literally just taken and occupied without consent from the Indigenous people who have always been the original caretakers and stewards since time immemorial.

So as a diasporic person, I hold a lot of complexity with living here because I'm ancestrally estranged and I'm longing for this village and belonging and rootedness.

But also I'm a beneficiary of colonialism for being here, right? And it's being honest, like what you said, that my parents were only able to immigrate here because of colonialism was already firmly entrenched on these lands.

So the ability for us to immigrate here, like that did not emerge neutrally, right? That was built through an ongoing dispossession of Indigenous land, their culture, their governance, community.

So I feel marginalized within white supremacy, but I can also simultaneously feel benefit from it too.

So yeah,

it's like always, you know, teetering on this, like we can't collapse all our experiences of oppression together in a way that erases Indigenous

reality.

Yeah.

How do you feel like that analysis shapes how you show up as a caregiver and mother? On one hand, there's like Where I

am, there's incredible like mutual aid and there's cultural diversity and grassroots organizing and people trying to build alternatives to like the hyper individualism.

But there's total burnout.

You know, it's so expensive.

I think it's more expensive to live in Vancouver or to buy here than New York.

Wow.

You know, I live in a suburb, so I got to deal with the suburban zombie moms.