‘An Ode to My Family and the Downtown Eastside’

When jaye simpson walks through the streets of Vancouver, she sees glimpses of her mother in the playground at Grandview Park, in the falling leaves on Commercial Drive and when bumming a smoke on Hastings Street. “I see her everywhere,” simpson says.

Her mother resided in the Downtown Eastside for many years and died 17 years ago, when simpson, an Oji-Cree-Saulteaux poet, writer and activist, was 13 years old. She is the central focus of a short film called I’ll Tell You When I’m Ready, which follows simpson as she grapples with the loss of her mother and wades through childhood memories in the Canadian foster care system. Indigenous children are overrepresented in the child welfare system. They represent 53.8 per cent of all children in foster care in Canada, but comprise only 7.7 per cent of the child population, according to the 2021 census.

Directed by Hayley Morin, the film is a textured portrait of grief and youth trauma. And when, as simpson says, “Indigenous stories are [expected] to be stories of trauma,” I’ll Tell You When I’m Ready offers something more fulsome in its explorations of joy, community and healing.

In the film, simpson notes that her mother faced considerable hardships in her life as a young Indigenous woman with four children — an experience that simpson holds with immense tenderness and compassion. “[The film is] not just an ode to my mother, but it's also an ode to my family and the Downtown Eastside,” she told The Tyee.

In the 13-minute film, simpson reviews her foster care file and sifts through the words that social workers, teachers and foster parents used to describe her. One school expelled her for writing down her accounts of the trauma she experienced as a child in her journal.

“I was telling the truth as a kid, and that’s why it’s dangerous,” she said in the film. “That interrupted the narrative that these foster parents and social workers had put on me.” She calls it her “villain story,” one that she’s eager to explore and give teeth to.

Interspersed with recitations of a poem dedicated to her mother and scenes of the East Vancouver streets her mother once walked, the film highlights the forms of creative expression, like poetry and drag, that have brought healing and catharsis for simpson in her adult life.

There’s a nod to the old Eastside Studios warehouse, where simpson often performed under the drag name Persephone. Adjacent to the Downtown Eastside, the venue was a space for simpson to express joy while also feeling close to her mother. Drag, providing the kind of boisterous physical audience that she craves, is an extension of the mechanisms she learned as a child in expressive arts therapy to make sense of big emotions.

She has also written about her experiences in the child welfare system. In 2020, simpson published it was never going to be okay, a poetry collection with Nightwood Editions that explores intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness through her lens.

Her work is raw, emotional and incisive — critical of systems of oppression that target trans Indigenous people through themes of the body, land and generational memory. Being a published writer, simpson says, is the most “delicious revenge,” especially as an Indigenous trans woman who was told as a child she would never be a writer.

In I’ll Tell You When I’m Ready, simpson holds her own story for all its complexity, resisting pressures to be palatable for others. Here, the love, grief, angst and warmth of her life is on full display.

The Tyee sat down with simpson to talk about her creative process, her thoughts on the foster care system and the experience of making a short film about her early life.

The Tyee: The film was such a beautiful ode to your mother. How did the process of making this film impact how you relate to her?

jaye simpson: I've always related to my mother strongly. She passed away 17 years ago, and I had a lot of distaste [and complicated feelings towards her] for a very long time because of the things that social workers and foster parents were saying.

I kind of had to unlearn all of that to realize that she was a child herself. She was 18 when she had me. And what was I like at 18? Of course, I was this fumbling little fool, you know? There's no way that I could have been able to raise four children at 23. That's so hard and difficult, especially for an Indigenous woman living in the Downtown Eastside.

I think the film is my chance to very loudly say that I love this woman, and I've always loved this woman, and I am a reflection of this woman. If I don't love this woman, in a way, it's me not loving myself.

What was it like reviewing your child services file for the film?

It’s one of the hardest things I've had to do in front of people. That’s the first time I've ever let anyone see the file. It took all day to film, and there were nearly 5,000 pages. I think we got a good 16 hours of footage, but only a couple minutes of it made it into it.

Did you have any apprehensions about reviewing something so personal to you in front of the cameras?

Well, when Hayley [the director of the film] asked me, I almost wanted to say no. And then I did some reflection, I [thought], I've been talking about the stuff that I've gone through for a while, and I feel like people don't fully believe me.

If I'm vulnerable like this, this gives people an opportunity to physically see how big that pile of paper is and how it, in a way, is an account of my trauma. This is just a sacrifice that I'm going to have to make in order to be believed a little bit more.

In light of your experiences, are there ways you’d like to see the child welfare system reformed?

I don't think there can be reform. I think it just needs to be destroyed. I think that whole system was created to cause and to further propagate these roots of genocide that have formed the foundation of this very society that we exist in.

You’ve said before that music is integral to your process as an artist. What was your approach to selecting the music for I’ll Tell You When I’m Ready?

When we were talking about music for the film, I was like, “Let's actually sink into our local community, because I love local music so much.”

I was such a huge fan of Wallgrin, whose music is featured in the documentary. My friend Izzy Cenedese also has a song in there. And my friend Bella, from Belle Tower, has two songs.

It was really nice to have local musicians who create music, who I also have danced and laughed and had these moments with. That was really beautiful for that process. But for writing, I'm usually listening to Ethel Cain and Florence and the Machine on repeat.

In one of the early scenes in the film, we see you writing in your journal with a poster hanging on the wall that says, “Words are meaningless and forgettable.” What does that quote mean to you?

I'm really glad you caught that. It's a tapestry I've had for a decade, and I love it because it's so ironic, especially for me. I like to consider that I'm so full of juxtapositions and nuances and multitudes, and so oftentimes I say to other people, “Your words are useless unless your actions align with them.”

Morals and ethics are verbs and not just ways of thinking. It's my way of [remembering] that what I write and what my words become are actions.

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‘I’ll Tell You When I’m Ready’ screens as part of the opening-night presentation at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival at the Vancouver Playhouse on Sept. 11. The screening will be followed by a drag performance by simpson as Persephone.