Rachael White-Simard: Blue-Eyed Métis

Rachael White-Simard says she was always a curious girl growing up, asking a lot of questions, looking in a lot of corners where her mother didn't always want her to look. Although her last name was literally "White," there were parts of her family tree that weren't white at all. With her blue eyes and fair complexion, Rachael easily passes as white, but as the years passed she kept digging for her roots, and found out more about her hidden Indigenous ancestry and came to this part of her identity. When she was a helper in the Return of the Buffalo retreats, she received a spirit name that echoed her journey of emergence: Turtle Woman Coming Out.

In this interview, Rachael shares some memories from the Return of the Buffalo retreats and talks about a life as a helper who continually is moving in the tensions between different worlds and worldviews.