Aboriginal - Girls Action Foundation

50 Kristen Bos
Blossoming Leadership
By Kristen Bos
Ever since I was a little girl, I became fairly accustomed to the faces of the people I
met cocking their eyebrows in confusion as their bewildered eyes searched my face
trying to place the origin of my features. It was if the answer to their question would
somehow tell them about the kind of person I may be. I listened to them intently as they
assigned my eyes to Asia, my lips to Europe and the tousled curls atop my little head to
somewhere that must have been humid. No one ever guessed that the bow of my lip or
the edge of my jaw could be from right here in Canada.
My adoption was planned even before I was born and the mystery of my who my parents
are has always, and probably will always, remain. The truth is that I have no desire to find
them but I imagine that if I were to encounter them that my question would be, “Where
were you from?” Even though I’ve never minded being a chameleon or having the
intrigue of mystery on my side, I have always wondered what place in history was carved
out for me specifically. This desire only grew as I entered university to study Archaeology:
the search for meaning and origins. But my growing restlessness in regards to my own
beginnings were short-lived because just two short years ago I found out that my birth
mother was Métis. Even though I’m newly Métis, it was not something I had to become
accustomed to. I immediately felt the weight of the great history and the similarity
that lay in the faces of the people I met when I stepped into the First Nations House
at University of Toronto. By simply being a young woman whose eyes are more brown
than blue and whose hair is more like that of the inky night sky than of rays of sunshine,
I not only see the need for more specialized Aboriginal women leadership, but also for
all women who might feel the pressures from the world’s ideals or feel the stigma that
stems from being different.
Two words intertwine in my mind when I think about my own path to leadership: choice
and sexuality. Sexuality is such a funny thing because some days I feel like I’ve got too
much of it and on others, too little and the very same thing can be said for choice! The
best thing I ever did was find the freedom not only in the word no, but also, yes. Every