Crossing Cultures

A Q&A with Jamie John, a local artist whose work explores concepts around identity, autobiography, Indigeneity, and relationships to land and water.

Hi Jamie. Could you please tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

I’m Jamie John. I’m a multidisciplinary trans, queer, and 2spirit artist living and working in northwest Michigan. I’m a dually enrolled member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and the United States of America. I identify as Korean-American and Anishinaabe and create art that seeks to communicate my lived experience under settler colonialism and relationships to land, water, culture, family lineage, and ancestral memory.

My mom is Anishinaabe, and my mom is Anishinaabe because her father, Raymond John, was Anishinaabe and his two parents were Anishinaabe. I don’t have a relationship with my biological father, who was born in Korea and immigrated to the United States with his own mother before 3 years old. My mom tells me stories of my Korean grandmother but I don’t really have a familial or cultural connection to my Korean heritage. The little I do know about Korea mostly comes from history books I’ve read and cultural stories gifted to me from other Korean people who are connected to their culture. I grew up in and around Traverse City for a large amount of my life. There was a period of time before my younger sister was born when my mom, me, and the person I call my dad now lived near his family in California, but it was brief and we moved back to Michigan when my grandfather, Raymond, started to pass away.

I made this film about my relationship to my dad that gives a little more insight into my family relationships and transitioning from father and daughter to father and son.

Being Anishinaabe and growing up with my Anishinaabe community with aunties, uncles, cousins and my other elders gave me an environment filled with generational stories, teachings, powwows, ceremonies, and the language of Anishinaabemowin, although even after hearing Anishinaabemowin for years I’m still learning how to speak it and am nowhere near fluent. I come from a long line of people who maybe didn’t call themselves artists but who still made birch baskets, created quillwork, or carved stones, told stories and made regalia for one another. As colonialism bulldozed its ways through Indigenous lives we held onto our arts because this was a way for us to pass on our histories, our teachings, and stories. I suppose I’ve always thought of myself as an artist in one way or another. Even before I was given money to make art I was an artist. I’m a powwow dancer, I make films, I write poetry, I make prints and watercolor paintings. My values as a Native person are very much tied to how I go about practicing art. There’s this philosophy of 7 generations that permeates throughout Anishinaabe life, thinking about how your decisions impact the generations that came before you and the generations that will come after you. I carry this idea with me wherever I go in order to be someone that both my elders can be proud of and be someone that my younger generations can see themselves in.

After my grandfather passed away my mother enrolled me in classes with the Children’s Garden at the Traverse City District Library taught by Barbara McIntyre for grieving children. This is when I remember feeling most connected with plants, animals, and the Earth. This was my first experience with making art that communicated the loss of my grandfather and the connection I had with him. I’d like to think my most powerful and resonant work comes from when I draw inspiration from my personal relationships and lived experience being Indigenous, Korean-American, growing up cross culturally, along with being queer, trans, and 2-spirit.

Thank you for that, and thank you for sharing that short film. It seems to me that your work and words have heft to them — in line with the native concept of seven generation thinking, you’re aiming to consider what the world was, is and could be. What do you think a better world for trans folks looks like?

When I think of a building a better world for trans folks, I imagine a world that doesn’t require state violence to enforce the primitive hetero-patriarchy; a social hierarchy that places white, cisgender, and heterosexual men at the top and punishes those who deviate from perceived gender roles, norms, and identities. Hetero-patriarchy, or cisheteropartiarchy, is a word that emphasizes that the discrimination faced by women and LGBTQ+ folks is derived from the same sexist principles.

I say this because if cisgender and heterosexual were the only natural way to be then we wouldn’t need laws that make gender non-conforming, trans, and queer people into criminals for living their lives.

And we can talk all day about representation and visibility, but the fact is that visibility doesn’t guarantee trans safety. It is a fantasy to think that increased visibility leads to change. In fact, I think the most recent legislation is the result of proud visible emerging trans voices, bodies, lives, history and people. In nearly 45 states, bills restricting or outright banning gender affirming care for young adults have been introduced and/or passed. In places like Oklahoma and Florida, hormone replacement therapy isn’t even a possibility for those under the age of 26. Kansas and Virginia now have legislation in place that bans hormone therapy for trans people under 21. This legislation is forcing people to pick up and relocate for affirming care, consider detransitioning, and actively making life harder for trans kids to be alive.

The rapid rise of fascism, the ongoing destruction of land and water for profit, and anti-trans violence are all interconnected. Those who desire control and domination over the Earth also rely on the control, erasure, and yes, eradication of trans and queer bodies. It’s a very stressful and difficult time to be making work about trans and queer life, especially queer and trans life that refuses the logic of settler colonialism and white supremacy. But it’s needed. It’s needed because too many people think these injustices are completely separate or disconnected or see anti-trans legislation as a “distraction” from “real issues,” as if attacks on trans lives aren’t “real issues.” The sooner people realize the roots of transphobia and environmental destruction live within settler colonialism and white supremacy, the sooner we’ll know how to effectively fight against all forms of oppression and violence.

I want trans people to be remembered and cared for while they are still on Earth with us instead of being only thought of in death. My ideal world for trans people is one where Black trans femmes get to grow old and happy. My ideal world for trans people is one where we never feel fear walking home at night or going to the pharmacy to get our hormones. A world where we never have to worry about being houseless because we came out to our parents or thinking about the possibility of being killed for being trans. My ideal world for trans people is one where trans kids are protected and safe to grow up to be beautiful trans adults and elders. Until then, I need more cis people to make a ruckus about the efforts to eradicate us from public life. Until colonialism and white supremacy have no ruling over trans lives I need more cis people to speak up and fight alongside us while we’re still here.

You mentioned the roots of transphobia and environmental destruction living within settler colonialism and white supremacy. I’ve seen some of your support for the land back movement, which I think is able to address those. Can you tell me a bit more about your understanding of land back and why it’s so important?

When I think of land back I think of my auntie Evelyn. By the time I knew her my auntie Evelyn was already an elder but her and my mom were always close. After the Durant Roll cut up reservation land into individual family allotments, my auntie Evelyn fought hard to keep her house with her husband Clarence in the middle of a commercial cherry orchard on the peninsula. As the monetary value of the land increased, there were more than a few times she was offered a lot of money for the land her house was on, and everytime, without hesitation, the answer was “no.”

She held onto her land until she passed away. Before people were even saying things like land back or putting it on t-shirts or making artworks about it, my auntie Evelyn was living it. She knew that no one could put a price on what a reciprocal relationship with land really means.

Land back is both simple and complex. It’s the return of land to Indigenous peoples globally. That includes the full return of private properties, college campuses, national parks, lands held in-trust, public parks, ceremonial sites and burial grounds, and urban spaces as well. The process of decolonization remains incomplete without the realities of land being returned to Indigenous care and stewardship.

Under the logic of capitalism, the land and all of her gifts are resources to be exploited or extracted for capital gain. Just as capitalism robs agency, autonomy, and dignity from its workers, it robs from the land as well.

White supremacy works the same way, by stripping away the power and dignity of those Black, brown, Indigenous and other folks of colors as well as the animal, insect, and plant nations belonging to these lands as well. Capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy work with each other to remove, rob, and violate the land and those who live closest to it. This goes for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. We have places in the United States called “cancer alley,” entire towns and cities without access to drinking water, pipelines in the water that violate the river and countless treaties, and designated sacrifice zones because this country would rather further imperialism than support Indigenous sovereignty and climate justice.

Land back to me, means repairing our relationships with the land from the years of harm extraction has caused. It means being able to hold our ceremonies where our ancestors did and in the same ways they did. Land back to me means no more borders separating us and no more police or border cops to criminalize our migration paths. No more city planners and urban developers debating our connections to land and waterways and no more museums holding our remains and ceremonial objects behind glass. No more false promises on climate change that favor fossil fuel investors. The return of Indigenous land to Indigenous care is the start to a world where the land is protected, valued, respected, and looked after like kin. It’s the start of the undoing of colonial hierarchies and reinstating our traditional ways of governance. It’s the abolition of borders and nation states that benefit from Native erasure and disappearance.

You wrote a poem that explores some of that history and needed mending. The sketches incorporated throughout this Q&A were originally drawn for that very booklet. Could you share more about Transgender Water Carrier, and the process of self-publishing a zine? [Note. all copies of T.W.C. have been sold. A second printing is in the works.]

The poem Transgender Water Carrier draws on my relationship to the element of water. I’m Indigenous to the Great Lakes region and I went through ceremony to become a water carrier before I finished elementary school. Water carrying is typically a responsibility of Anishinaabe women, with fire keeping being the responsibility of our men. Being 2spirit person I learned to carry water first and learned how to tend fire as I furthered my transition and gender journey. Along the way I learned more and more about gender expansive and gender variant Anishinaabe people and historical figures. Still today I am decolonizing my understanding of gender and relationships and working to undo my ideas of sexuality, gender expression, and gender presentation.

My connection to water and my need to care for and respect her reminds me of this: queerness is also an ability to shapeshift: we pour water into all kinds of vessels and she takes shape to fit all of them. Water is in everything, water is required for life. Water is the lifeblood of the Earth. Even just within my lifetime I’ve seen water continually be disrespected, harmed, polluted, and commodified. I’ve seen the land be cut up into private property and sold to the highest bidder. And I think of the prophecy given to water walker and water protector, Josephine Mandamin, who said that an ounce of water will cost more than an ounce of gold by the year 2030. This prophecy propels me to protect and defend the water and land in a way that honors what they’ve been through as well.

I chose to self-publish because I think part of me still struggles with relinquishing control over stories so close to me. Self-publishing allows for a sense of autonomy that I like having when talking about Native and trans and queer stories. I’m still learning about zines and how to make them but I really look forward to making more zines in the near future. My big dream is to use the text of Transgender Water Carrier for a short film I’d like to make as I feel those poems/zines speak to both the ongoing and constant land destruction and the onslaught of recent anti-trans legislation being enforced.

You’re working on a live-aboard bus, right? Could you share a bit about that?

I found the Mothership in the summer of 2021 when I was working a summer at Interlochen Center for the Arts as a junior art instructor. In the middle of camp, an email went out announcing an auction for a 2001 bluebird 40ft yellow school bus.

Months prior I had been discussing with my parents about obtaining my license and living out of a renovated van. This way I’d have a living space and art studio without having to pay rent for both spaces. While a school bus is very different from a van, I still went ahead and bought the bus for a little more than $3,000.

My big dream is to have the Mothership be my art studio and living space. I’d be able to travel to powwows and residencies and ceremony without having to leave behind any of my art supplies or works in progress. The build is coming along pretty slowly, I’m not so experienced with power tools or construction but I have a layout of what I want the bus build to look like. Hopefully someday this spring I can host a “work party” where I invited folks to come out and help with construction.

Thanks for your time and your work, Jamie. I appreciate it a lot. Is there anything else you’d like to add, mention or ask?

More personally, I’m trying to make more films and video work. I’m kind of in love with this idea of moving pictures and storytelling. I’m trying to write more about being queer and trans and Native and how those intersections inform each other. I can finally announce that I am a Sundance Trans Possibilities Initiative Fellow for the 2023–2024 year! My big dream is to submit and show at some film festivals or something like that within the next year or so.