{"id":45844,"date":"2025-07-08T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.redpepper.org.uk\/?p=45844"},"modified":"2025-08-22T14:15:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T13:15:44","slug":"telling-our-own-stories-an-interview-with-jen-deerinwater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redpepper.org.uk\/the-spark\/telling-our-own-stories-an-interview-with-jen-deerinwater\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling our own stories: An interview with Jen Deerinwater"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.<\/strong> I also identify as bisexual, a two-spirit and multiply-disabled person. Revealing that there isn\u2019t any one way to be a woman, disabled, queer or Native is an important part of my work as a journalist and community organiser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve experienced and witnessed discrimination in most places I\u2019ve lived.<\/strong> Oppression breaks us down as individuals and as communities and furthers our erasure from daily life. Feeling this marginalisation in my youth fuelled my desire to create impact and change. Today, I am on the frontlines fighting for justice. I have grounded my life and work with Fannie Lou Hamer\u2019s words: \u2018We are not free, until everyone is free.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Indigenous background is more than an ethnic or racial check box.<\/strong> It\u2019s the Cherokee nation that I belong to. It\u2019s our language and our creation stories. It\u2019s our ways of self-governance and sovereignty. Remaining grounded in Indigenous teachings, centering community, the earth, the universe and the seven generations to come are key to growing our sovereignty and the health of our tribal nations. I approach storytelling with this in mind; as such, I think I provide a safer space for Indigenous women and two-spirit people to tell their stories. I\u2019m also able to convey these stories in a richer, deeper way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My degee<\/em> (grandma), was a skilled artist.<\/strong> She encouraged my writing and artistic endeavours. She was instrumental in my decision to live in places like Los Angeles and New York City. I wanted to take the opportunities that weren\u2019t given to her and advance all my communities and be in solidarity with all minoritised and oppressed people around the world. I\u2019ve spent my life constantly challenging colonial narratives in some manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disability community is the largest and most diverse of all marginalised communities, yet there\u2019s rarely any media by us<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America has a very long history of institutionalising and erasing disabled people.<\/strong> Even when we\u2019re not institutionalised, the world isn\u2019t accessible for us. As disabled people, we\u2019re not allowed the same daily freedoms of the able-bodied, such as access to shopping or even public bathrooms. The disability community is the largest and most diverse of all marginalised communities, yet there\u2019s rarely any media by us. The stories I tell include a disability lens and are even what I call crip Indigenous storytelling*.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I founded Crushing Colonialism<\/a> in 2016<\/strong> \u2013 a non-profit organisation that tells the stories of Indigenous people globally and supports our storytellers, artists and journalists. We centre our Indigenous relatives who are the least likely to be given a platform, like Indigenous people from the global south or queer Indigenous people. Crip Indigenous storytelling is a part of our work and magazine, giving space to our disabled and chronically ill Indigenous people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being able to tell your story is very empowering<\/strong> \u2013 all the good, the bad, the ugly of it. No one has the right to colonise my story. Anything worth saying is most likely going to be dismissed or met with force by the coloniser so I might as well speak up, cause a ruckus and fight for myself and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article first appeared in Issue #247\u00a0The Last Issue?<\/em> Subscribe<\/a> today to support independent socialist media and get your copy hot off the press!<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Empowerment comes from fighting marginalisation and discrimination on multiple fronts, says Jen Deerinwater<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":44912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[976,244,2302],"tags":[3033],"class_list":["post-45844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-disability","category-race-racism","category-the-spark","tag-jen-deerinwater"],"yoast_head":"\nTelling our own stories: An interview with Jen Deerinwater - Red Pepper<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Empowerment comes from fighting marginalisation and discrimination on multiple fronts, says Jen Deerinwater\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redpepper.org.uk\/society\/race-racism\/telling-our-own-stories-an-interview-with-jen-deerinwater\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Telling our own stories: An interview with Jen Deerinwater - 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