With Fallon Farinacci, Winner of the 2025 Feminist Creator Prize

Fallon Farinacci is Red River Métis and a child survivor who testified in the National Inquiry for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, sharing her story of loss and trauma.

Later Fallon joined The National Family Advisory Circle, where she worked closely with other MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ family members and the Commissioners for the National Inquiry.

Fallon continues to share her family’s story and bring awareness to the ongoing Genocide Indigenous women, girls and 2S+ folx face in hopes of bringing change and awareness across Turtle Island.

Transcript

00:00:01 Andrea

Hello and welcome to Alright, Now What? I’m your host, Andrea Gunraj, for the Canadian Women’s Foundation.

Gender equality and justice, where we live, work, learn, and play is the goal, and it makes life better for everyone. This podcast is our chance to connect with insightful people and explore what it’ll take to get there in Canada.

The work of the Canadian Woman’s Foundation and its partners takes place on traditional First Nations, Métis, and Inuit territories. We are grateful for the opportunity to meet and work on this land. However, we recognize that land acknowledgments are not enough. We need to pursue truth, reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship in an ongoing effort to make right with all our relations.

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00:01:30 Andrea

Today I’m speaking with Fallon Farinacci.

00:01:34 Andrea

OK. My first question for you, what kind of gender equality changemaker are you? You took the quiz. Give me your reactions, your thoughts.

00:01:43 Fallon

Yes. So I’m the most is a collaborator at 46.15%. And I mean, I’m not really surprised by that because I do think that, like I always say, there’s there is power in numbers. And so unless I’m collaborating, then I’m doing it by myself. And I don’t think you can move forward by yourself. Well, you can. I shouldn’t say that I don’t think you can’t. However, I think you can, you can cover a lot more ground and a lot more work if you are working with others and together. That’s I think power in number so…

00:02:20 Andrea

Thanks for that. I do wonder, you know, you are somebody with such a strong voice. And sometimes I think people with strong voices, we tend to be in awe of them, love what they’re saying, appreciating and reacting. But we don’t realize what life lessons they’ve learned along the way, they’ve brought with them to today, so give me a sense of about the core life lessons. If you had to answer that question. Today, what core life lessons do you bring to growing gender equality and justice in Canada? In all that you do?

00:02:55 Fallon

I guess it is very community based. Being around community, I would say, again that’s probably where that collaborator comes into play is something I grew up with since I was little. It’s just the importance of community and so coming together with community is how we can advance those changes, so I think that’s a core value that’s been instilled in me since I was young. And I mean now it can make sense to that a little more so…

00:03:29 Andrea

I do wonder, you know, you won the Feminist Creator Prize. You’re one of three amazing winners, and we saw you at the awards ceremony go on stage and share why you do what you do, what this award means to you. Can you share a little bit with us now? Our listeners weren’t all able to be there and it inspired me so much.

00:03:51 Fallon

I was honored to have been nominated, so to have won it was a whole other experience, and I was deeply moved by that because I think often in this space, we wonder if what we’re doing or saying, is it making any kind of difference and do others see that? So just having that that being reaffirmed was really nice and quite emotional as well. So from my own personal experience as a survivor of MMIWG2S+, so for those who don’t know, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirited+, I had lost both of my parents at the age of 9, although my mother was non-Indigenous.

The work that I’ve had the opportunity to do with the Canadian Women’s Foundation has lend itself to what my mother had to endure as a woman here in this country who had to deal with a stalker. So, both my parents had died at the hands of my, my mother’s stalker. But my father was non-Indigenous. And then in this scenario you have me who was nine at the time and I was displaced from my community and I had to move from rural Manitoba to St. Catherines, Ontario, because this is where my guardian lived and my brothers as well at the time moved here with me. And so, it took me years to realize that I was a part of of what had happened to my parents and to realize only at the closing ceremony, so I was a part of the National Inquiry, I had testified, and then I was a part of the National Family Advisory Circle. And it was not until the closing ceremonies, when we handed over the final report and the 231 calls for justice, which, by the way, are still not being answered – and so it was there that I realized, oh, I was the girl, I was this perfect, odd package for assimilation.

You know that I was removed from my community. I lived here in St. Catherines. And well, yes, there is an Indigenous community, it’s much different than you know, your home community with around your Indigenous, I guess I don’t want to say relatives like my community members from my the place that I had grown up in. And so it was, it was there that I had realized that there was, there was a disconnect. Although I’m very privileged, I acknowledge that. And then I also acknowledge that I’m privileged in the sense that I have a community to still call home when there are so many Indigenous people who have been removed from their communities and or don’t even know where they come from. And so, you know, I have lost some of those tradition and cultures or access to it. And then also language, I mean the language aspect, those stems back to my father and my grandfather, unfortunately as well. And so anyway to say all that I had realized only as an adult that I was the girl in that situation of MMIWG2S+. And so it was then that I really started wanting to bring awareness and after hearing from other family members and survivors and two of which were almost identical stories to my own. So I realized at that point I wasn’t alone in what I had gone through in my lifetime so from there I wanted to continue down and and raise awareness and what that looked like. You know, I’m I wasn’t sure at the time, but just using my voice was something I could do. And so yeah, that’s kind of where it started for me.

00:07:47 Andrea

Thank you for sharing that, Fallon. What always hits me when I hear this, what I take away from this is this idea that you can come to different realizations of who you are and what your purpose is in the world all along the way from 2 years old to, you know, 90 years old, you can find new purpose, new positioning. You can see what you’re meant to do, and you’re meant to do different things at different times. And for me, I have a question, then, what is your passion today? If you had to answer that. Your passion for gender equality. Where would you seat that? In what your life is like now and where your work sits now.

00:08:36 Fallon

I mean, I knew this the whole time. And I’ll get to what I’m talking about. But my husband has obviously journeyed through with me for the inquiry. And you know, the honour of sitting on different committees and getting together at gatherings and advocacy work. And one thing for him that he always points out is he always says that the room of those survivors and family members is all the people in there are filled with so much love and the kindness. My work is really centered I feel like about people understanding that that all of us, we are just human beings and if we could just see one another that way, I feel as though like I really do, I think that that, that would bring world peace that would like… I’m getting emotional thinking about it because at the end we are all, we are all made equal.

So I think if we could just all see that and understand that and to hear him feel that way and get moved every time because we’re talking about really heavy, difficult topics, right? And we’re together to talk about MMIW and people going missing and having been murdered or and it’s what it’s based off of, how they look or where they come from. And you know, of course gender as well or… Yeah, it’s just so for me I think where I’m at in my work is and and I’m not surprised that if I look at my test my result that I’m only a 7.69% for a challenger on there, and I think that that’s because I I mean, hey, I wish I had that like in your face I’m going to just like challenge. And I think I do. I just think it’s done in a much different way and now that I’m realizing what’s coming up for me as I get emotional again, I think that kind of makes sense because I I know that there’s so much work so I don’t want to take away from the work that has to get done and the work that has been done so far to say like I want to just simplify it and make it like so that people understand, but I really do think if we could just get to the root of understanding… It’s not a lot that we’re all asking for in this space of gender equality, right?

00:11:07 Andrea

Fallon, you got me emotional here now, too. You got me thinking that such an important part of your work is helping us see humanity in ourselves and humanity in other people. That’s one thing that sexism and racism and all the isms and all the oppressions actually take away from us the ability to see ourselves as human and see one another as human, including those who might be doing the oppression and including us who internalize that oppression, this is all human stuff. And what a gift it is that you bring to people to help us see humanity in one another. These things rob that from us… To do it is a challenge, is a form of challenging. It’s a different kind of challenging than speaking truth to power. It’s speaking humanity to power. And that’s why I love what you bring. And I just appreciate and thank you for that.

00:12:00 Fallon

Thank you so much. And I don’t know, I feel like I I… so I always acknowledge my privilege as being White-Passing as well. And if anyone’s listened to other interviews that I’ve done podcast interviews, I will be sure to say (that) at the end, would you have listened if I like, had looked differently? If I if I appeared to be different, or if I had come from even a different background, you know? And would you have listened? And I’m so happy I said that because I really was… you know, you get in your head after interviews and you think, oh, is that the right thing to say. But I had so many people message me and acknowledge themselves, which was like took my breath away, that they don’t think that they would have listened. And thanked me for for putting that in front of them to to confront that about themselves and their own thoughts and their own biases. And so yeah, I’m not. I’m not a 7%, but I think I do it in a different way and hopefully that is bringing some change too.

00:13:20 Andrea

What a gentle challenge. Gentle, important challenge pushing us, encouraging us to pay attention and listen in ways that we haven’t been pushed and we desperately need in 2025. So please leave our listeners with something that they can take from from you. All your experience, all your work, all the things that you’ve gone through, all the things that you’re doing now, a powerful takeaway that we can bring forward in our lives so we can become better gender equality change makers in Canada, as big or as small and specific as it’s going to be.

00:13:59 Fallon

I feel like I could say so many different things. I am going to say I question this for those who were not at the gathering. I knew right away what I wanted to say it for our last answer because it is quite often something that I will end my talks in. This powerful little piece does not come from me; this is from an elder who had said it to a group of us one time, and I think that it’s something you can bring into your everyday, in your meetings, in your family, discussions around the kitchen table, because that’s where they… that’s where change will begin and happen. And you could have it with some friends when you’re just sitting and you need that. Like, I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of power in perspective, if we can just take a moment and have just a little bit to sit with and this elder said: “You can’t unhear what we’ve shared with you…” and I’m going to say we’ve because you’re going to be listening to to the other two winners as well. “So you cannot unhear what you’ve heard from us. So what will you do with it now?” Are you going to just let this just go through you? And if you are, then you’re probably not actually in the space that we all are in, in this work. And if it’s discussions with your friends, your family, your coworkers, and there is powerful things that are being talked about, challenged. And you’re listening. And you’re just like, OK, I’m just going to move on. It’s like more of what can you do with it now? And it’s giving that… And now what are you going to do? Right. So now that you’ve heard what we’ve had to say, what will you do with it now? I think there’s just so much power. It is not my knowledge this is from an elder, I’m just loaning it for a little bit because I think it is so powerful.

00:16:10 Andrea

And we will borrow it because we need to hear that. So I appreciate it.

00:16:14 Andrea

Alright, Now What?

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