A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

Elliott turns her focus to the physical well-being of Indigenous people and other people of color in the US and Canada. The title of this essay refers to the amount of sugar in a serving of cookies, as the author dives into the hardship of accessing healthy food when one is living in poverty. She points out that non-white people are significantly more likely than white people to live below the poverty line. Elliott then elaborates on the theme of intergenerational trauma by drawing from studies on epigenetics, genocide, and starvation. Her examples include Ukraine’s post-genocide high alcoholism and high smoking rates, along with infamously low life spans. She also cites multi-generational studies done on secluded populations who experienced feast-and-famine cycles, then compares the findings to the long-term effects of genocide against First Nations Canadians. In particular, she highlights the starvation First Nations children experienced in residential schools, which were compulsory yet underfunded and spanned about 150 years. She ties the data and research to her own form of starvation in all the empty calories she consumed growing up extremely poor, and the diabetes that runs in her family. Ultimately, Elliott points to the ways Canadian government policies have victim-blamed, framing First Nations peoples as inherently unhealthy compared to white Canadians, rather than taking responsibility for committing heinous acts of genocide against Indigenous populations which have manifested in poor mental and physical health spanning generations.