ABSTRACT
Jodi Byrd argues that ideas of Indian and Indianness have functioned as the “transit” of US empire, the “ontological ground through which US settler colonialism enacts itself as settler imperialism,” claim that demands close attention in the Philippines, where the US colonial experience has been so formative. Played out directly in relation to Indigenous Canadians, the narrative of hard-working Filipinos does further ideological work. Trading stories about desire for whiteness, whether it be embodied by Colonel Sanders or imbibed as potentially life-threatening prescription drugs, joking about Filipinos’ labour exploitation in Whitehorse, these are small barbed critiques shared across distinctive colonial histories. Temporary migration through low-skilled service work has been a more common experience than migrating through the Live-In Caregiver Program for Filipinos in the Yukon and the new verbatim monologue spoke to the local experience. The observations among Filipinos are embedded in stories about two phases of Filipino immigration to Yukon and within a context of a significant Indigenous presence.
