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But Beaudin-Herney says the initiative has also put a target
on her back. In addition to the incident in the parkade,
she says her petitions have been vandalized with swear
words, a swastika, and, in one unsettling case, a death
threat. Each petition has the phrase “Your Future Family
will THANK YOU!” printed at the bottom. Underneath that,
someone scrawled the words “by murdering you violently.”
It’s hard not to notice Beaudin-Herney in a crowd. She
has delicate features and stylish asymmetrical hair,
short on one side, long on the other. She can pull off
an all-business look with a blue and white striped blazer
or a dress with combat boots. She stands just 5’3”, but
her presence is much larger. When we meet, she’s holding
a copy of Jack Weatherford’s book Indian Givers and
has a backpack looped around her other arm. A year ago,
she looked much different. “I’ll be honest. I was about
162 pounds,” she tells me. “I was heavily involved in the
club scene. You can just leave that to the imagination—
whatever that meant. I had no self respect. I didn’t like
school. I didn’t have strong connections with my family.
And there were times when I had suicidal thoughts.
(It’s) because, you know, I didn’t have an identity.”
Beaudin-Herney grew up in Regina but says she wasn’t
immersed in traditional First Nations culture, even though
her dad is from the Membertou First Nation in Nova
Scotia and her mom from Cowessess First Nation, near
Broadview, Saskatchewan. “Before I started the petition I
was going through a rough time,” Beaudin-Herney says.
She was in an abusive relationship. She felt she didn’t fit
in with her friends and had no First Nations friends. Then,
after a weekend binge in the spring of 2011 she had an
epiphany. She said to herself, ‘’What are you doing? You
are killing yourself.” She’s been clean and sober ever since.
With her newly sober eyes, she began noticing things.
Like the way young women on campus dressed up as ‘Indian
princesses’ for Halloween. Beaudin-Herney says this
was especially offensive after hearing a classmate claim to
be “just like an Indian princess” because she had a feather
in her hair. “People were, well, I’m not going to say people,
white girls were wearing Indian princess costumes and
they were making it more scandalous.” Some of the costumes
were made of faux-suede and featured short skirts
with tassels. One was sold with a tag that read, “Many
a warrior she did delight in her teepee late at night.”
“The image that it displays is extremely detrimental
to First Nations women. It depicts us as romanticized,
sexualized, and disposable. Almost non-existent,” she
says. “If you want to be what people portray as a ‘squaw’
and if you allow them to call you that and you laugh at
it because it’s funny, you’re doing something wrong.”
She had assumed university-educated people would be
more respectful and knowledgeable, and she wondered why
they weren’t. That’s when she got the idea for the petition.
She was already well on her way to becoming an activist,
reconnecting with her First Nations roots and
taking on the directorship of the Students’ Associa-
She had assumed university-educated people would be more respectful
and knowledgeable, and she wondered why they weren’t. That’s when
she got the idea for the petition.
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