Interview with Monique LaPlante

 SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: My name is Sadie Phoenix Lavoie, and I'm interviewing...

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: Monique LaPlante.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: At the Two-Spirited gathering at Beausejour on August 4th, 2018. So, do I have your verbal consent to do this interview?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: Yes.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Do I have your consent to do audio recording?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: Yes.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Okay, great. So this shouldn't take too long, I'm hoping it may be half hour or whatever because you obviously want to check out the no talent show. I'll just go through it; you can share whatever you like. I'll be quiet. I'll probably do just nods or whatever. If you see me touching this, that's not cued for you to stop talking or anything, it's just me adjusting. We'll start with that. Is there any questions you have before we start?

MONIQUE LEPLANTE: I think I'm alright.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Is this your first time at the gathering?

MONIQUE LEPLANTE: Yes.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: What brought you to the gathering?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: A desire to learn and be with community. Earlier this year, I started making a point of collecting my friends who had been inquiring about having a specifically indigenous group to just be able to chat with, and explore information with, and what is culture identity etcetera. We reached out to the elders and they brought us in and really recommended that we came to it as part of our learning.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: What is your take on the gathering so far?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: From my experience so far, I've found that it's very educational. I find that it's a very emotional and free space in which to just 00:02:00have room to do anything at your own pace and development - - and connections, the development of connections, learning, and just being within that and figuring it out. I think that's nice, so that's my take so far [laughs].

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Maybe you want to explain where you're from, where you come from?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: I'm trying to figure out because everybody has a definition of what that is in many ways. I was born in Winnipeg, and I grew up in the Pembina Valley Hills with my mother. And I come from my mother, right? And I come from my father. My mother is European descent and my father's Cree. I grew up with my mother, visited my father sometimes. And then I left home when I was a teenager. I've come from Winnipeg, so that's it for my experiences. Then I come from a 00:03:00long history of colonization and also abuse to my indigenous family, so there is no recordings and understanding of what our history is. So I come from that.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: How do you identify yourself?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: In pronoun? Or in general?

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: In both.

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: I identify myself in pronoun as they/them she/her. But I also identify myself a lot with how- - my work and how I relate in the community. What I do for community or what my status or relationship with community is how I identify myself. Identity informs my value.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Well the second question is have you always identified yourself as that way?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: Okay so, I identify - - yes. And then if this is to do with 00:04:00the Two-Spirit, then Two-Spirit is new to me as a label, because I've been out since the nineties', and lesbian and gay was the terminology. So I'm just going to be more specific because we're at the two-spirit gathering. Then as things like gender fluidity started coming about, and Two-Spirits, and queer, it started making more sense to me. Two-Spirit is something really new and I'm still figuring that out. Queer is something that I'm much more comfortable with. Being gender fluid makes the most sense to me. It's all new and it's always changing, ever-changing, as the language changes.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: I know you touched a little bit about community. Can you tell me more about that?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: Like who is my community?

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Yeah, how would you define community in...?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: That's layered. So, specific community to me is my friends, and those are my chosen family. That's my community - - and who I spend time with, and share, and learn with. There's an external community, like the queer community beyond that, that maybe aren't my friends and family specifically, but that I feel connected to, and that we do learnings with, and I help, and develop events with or for, and do healthcare for. And then there's the community of Winnipeg and the indigenous community at large that I feel connected to. So it's layered for me, but I feel involved on every level in that. And even just being part of earth [laughs] and in the world and even considering ... yeah anyway that's it.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Can you tell me a little bit more about your journey as a two-spirited person, you know two-spirits? Spirituality? Activities you've done?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: For me, if you're touching on Two-Spirit and spirituality specifically--Two-Spirit for me made the most sense when it came to gender fluidity, not spirituality, and that's because I'm not very spiritual as a person. It's something that I'm trying to figure out, and to be quite honest, quantum physics and quantum mechanics makes the most sense to me. Basically, looking at the world in terms of how everything is interconnected, like the butterfly effect, we're all one in everything is everything and nothing all at once, makes the most sense to me. I think what I'm trying to understand is language can be really confusing, and so the term spirit is really hard. The term soul, with Roman Catholicism being my history with my mom's side, has really affected my ability to venture into that, and develop that, because I 00:07:00resisted it, because I didn't like that. Because it makes you so individual and isolated from the rest, and I couldn't identify. The science of all that made more sense to me - - that we all became one and we're all cells and it explained it. Then I started understanding and looking at Buddhism and the philosophies in there, and that made more sense, and I was trying to find it but it didn't ... it wasn't me, it wasn't my culture. I think understanding the two-spirit spirituality thing, is just understanding that I am part of something and everything all at once, and that's the part I can make sense. But I can't see a higher power that is separate of me. That's where I'm at with that [laughs].

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Maybe touch a little bit about your history, and when you came out, and things like that.

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: In 1998, I was seventeen, and I came out with my girlfriend 00:08:00that I had met when I was living by myself in Osborne Village. I was living with some roommates, and I met this girl and her partner, and we were all just a bunch of punk kids all in Osborne Village at the time. It was a very big scene, and where the queer community would feel safe as well. She and I were friends, and we ended up together. We lived together, and we ended up at Kelvin High School together. It was special in that we did a lot of work developing - - there's some alternative programming at Kelvin High School, so unusual high school courses. Part of that was really helpful because we ended up in a health 00:09:00and wellness peer support program. The leader of that program was a lesbian identifying individual. And at that time, GSA's [Gay Straight Alliance] didn't exist, and she actually legally couldn't tell that she was gay. If we told anybody that we knew, she would get fired, because she wasn't allowed to be in a high school setting as a teacher or a leader. We were really scared about that. It was hard to be out, but we were. But it was hard to be out and feel really safe, and that actually had an effect on my post-secondary choices. I always wanted to teach, and I always liked kids and wanted to really be in the middle years and help in that. I thought about it a lot, and the risk of being fired, and the risk of being blackmailed for being gay, and worried about sexual assault charges even though I wouldn't ever touch a child. But that threat, and being afraid I'd go to jail as a teacher, made it so I never did that. Being 00:10:00part of the lesbian/gay community in Winnipeg - - I was really in the indigenous community. That community, and myself, there was a lot of healing that needed to be done. There was a lot of drugs and alcohol, drug abuse that was happening, and that had me lose my way a lot. It had me spin in university for years, and it had an effect on me being able to become a professional. I ended up ... it took me - - I was there forever, it took me till I was thirty to really start my business and move on and be in a healthy place. So, there was that. I guess now, in the last - - because I'm thirty-seven, so in the last seven years it's been a little bit easier, there's been a lot more language and acceptance in community. Even though I was with an indigenous community in my early twenties and the 00:11:00early 2000s, this wasn't ... I was looking for it but I couldn't find the people that were part of this two-spirit gathering, that they had been talking about, that's been in existence since 1990. I could only find it within the bar scene. I'm really thankful that there's that healthier component that is - - for me healthier, separate of the alcohol and drugs because it can very easily... I'm very susceptible and worried about that connection and that while needing to be with people? You know, that know me? Or understand being indigenous?

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: How would you define family and maybe talk a little bit about that.

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: Family has always been really important to me because there was a house in Winnipeg that my grandmother, my mom's mother had, and I grew up 00:12:00with my mother when my father left. My grandmother was the most important person to me, my best friend, sat with her till four A.M. talking and telling stories, it was so important. We'd play cards. That house was where all my mom's siblings, all five of them, would congregate and their friends would be. So that was family and home all the time. But living with my mom in the country - - it was really toxic, and my mom was really abused by her father. He was actually a psychopath, it was really serious manipulative, and physical, mental abuse that my mom went through. It made her very dysfunctional, and it triggered a bipolar issue and that made a really - - wonderful, beautiful mother and a very hostile abusive mother. I started separating myself. Then that house, that home in 00:13:00Winnipeg, had to be sold because my grandmother went through financial crisis. It had to be sold and the family no longer got together. There wasn't a place for them to come together. I was with just my mom, and that's why I moved to Winnipeg was to get away from my mom, because it was really abusive. My father wasn't there. Anytime I saw my father he was very broken. He's an alcoholic, and he never went to school. He did farm slave work as far as - - like in his terms, that's what he said. So he never actually went to school and learnt anything in school and just became a labourer. He didn't understand family. What I ended up finding on my own in Winnipeg were friends that understood me, and showed me love and care, and partners and their families that I could observe what love and healthy love was. I ended up finding that family was with those that care 00:14:00for you, and love you, and that you can select them, and so it can be chosen. It's about that support and care and network regardless of it being someone that is genetically connected to you.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Maybe about your chosen family? Maybe you want to talk a little bit?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: For now, the people that I'm with are friends that I've had for years, and new friends that are queer- some? And some aren't. There's little kids involved that some have given birth to, and that I'm considered an aunty to that I spend time with. There are transgendered women, men, non-identifying 00:15:00gender fluid folk, there are people that are young, young adults, and elderly. I have people that have been in the community that I grew up in Roseisle that still I'm connected with that show me care and check in on me. I'm not too sure, that's...

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Where do you feel most safe and why?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: I feel most safe in my own bed. Because it's quiet, I'm an introvert, and it's quiet, and it's my space. It's something probably that I can control. Only those invited are welcome in that space, and that's my own. Again, like I said, it's quiet, and peaceful, and comfortable, and warm [laughs]. That's why. That's what I need. That's why.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Is there anything that I haven't asked that you'd like to talk about?

MONIQUE LAPLANTE: No, that's good thank you.

SADIE-PHOENIX LAVOIE: Okay, thank you so much for sharing. It means a lot.