Movement: How coming to Newfoundland shaped my experience as a migrant

Maria Dussan, a writer, facilitator, and anti-racist activist, was invited to share her perspective in CBC East Coast "all in" a monthly CBC newsletter featuring stories and ideas that reflect all the ways we're different on the East Coast.

Movement and migration have defined my life. Without intendingto, a lot of things I create become an attempt to weave a narrative that moves from south to north.

I arrived on Newfoundland's west coastat dusk. I came because Memorial University had the only education in the country I could afford, and I did as my mother said and just "let the path open up." A university employee picked me up at Deer Lake airport and drove me to Grenfell Campus.

The highway parallels the Humber River, but in the darkness of the early morning all I could see was the line that separated the mountains from the sky. The Long Range Mountains were massive sentinels veiled in darkness. I could sense the vastness in the landscape, and at that moment it occurred to me:I had no idea what I was doing, thousands of miles away from anyone or anywhere I knew.

That was 10 years ago.

It wasn't the first time I uprooted my life to migrate into unfamiliar territory. When I was 14, my family moved from Bogot to Belize City. From the altitudes of the Colombian Andes, to the heat of the Caribbean coast, to the Rock: these three latitudes have complicated my sense of home as it relates to place.

The act of migrating changes you. For a long time I wore my non-belongingness as a crucial part of how I understood myself.

Then, three years into my degree in Corner Brook, I met people who had cars. This opened up the west coast beyond the limits of public transportation and into the land so extensively advertised in airplane ads and recruitment packages.

I loved the Bay of Islands and Gros Morne. I loved the stillness and the scale and how often I got to return to dip my feet in frigid water surrounded by people who knew and loved this land longbefore I did. I experienced belonging viscerally; the land did not demand that I assimilate, adapt, integrate or change for me to feel at home.

This experience with belonging is fundamentally different from my experiences with immigration.

I found my sense of belonging shaken by a system that demands proof of your worth for basic rights. A system that creates precarious labour conditions, denies health care and splits people into "good" and "bad" immigrants those who are good enough and those who will be disposed of.

I came into community organizing in Newfoundland for the same reason I sought refuge in nature: to reclaim a sense of belonging. As a queer, Latine migrant, I turned to migrant justice and anti-racism as a need to assert my own humanity and the humanity of other racialized people.

This was my way of finding home here moving through land and community. A bridge connecting all the ways I wasn't supposed to belong and all the ways I did.

All about Maria

What advice would you give your future self?
Listen to your body, give yourself permission and love fiercely.

What is your motto?
There's a quote from adrienne maree brown that I repeat to myself a lot: "What you pay attention to grows." It's a reminder and an invitation to myself to be very intentional about where I put my energy.

What is your favourite wintertime/summertime activity on the East Coast?
Building a fire, regardless of the season.

Can you share a recent event or experience that gives you hope for positive change?
Whether it is folks organizing for Palestine, to end homelessness, or Status for All, a migrant-led movement working for permanent resident status for all migrants (including undocumented people), seeing people and communities show up for each other gives me hope.

Who are your favourite writers?
Dionne Brand, Ursula K. Le Guin, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Octavia E. Butler, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Walt Whitman, adrienne maree brown. I could keep going for a while.

Maria's Picks

1. Read: Santiago Guzmn on silencing his inner critic and letting his star shine
2. Read: Immigrants say they're forced to 'gamble' on health decisions without medical coverage