| Happy Friday!
This week, we're very excited to publish a guide to Transylvania, by Erika Dragu, a writer who grew up right in the center of Transylvania in the small town of Miercurea-Ciuc in a Hungarian-speaking part of the region, known for industry, ancient ruins nearby, and for a local beer producer's David-vs-Goliath legal spat with Heineken. (The beer story has a happy ending.) Transylvania is a big place, but Dragu knows some good places to start, how and where to end a night of partying, the delights of cooking gulyas outdoors—the way it was intended—and the joys of stores open 24/7. On a continent dominated by postcard-picturesque but densely populated places, Transylvania offers just a little more wilderness and mystery, and all with a boisterous, palinka-fuelled social life. Yes, we also touch upon Dracula's Castle. But if you must do the vampire tourism, lean right into it and come for its Halloween party. Next year? (I wonder how many people wear the same costume to that....)
This week on The Trip podcast, we're in Montreal. Specifically, Cabot Square
—named after the spice trader who landed on Canada's coast 500 years. In Cabot Square today are the descendants of the people Cabot landed on, a semi-permanent population of homeless, mostly indigenous, mostly Inuit, people who live in or around the square. We recorded the episode on Canadian Thanksgiving, which is every bit as problematic as U.S. version, but as host Nathan Thornburgh says, "I'm thankful for a holiday that, in its sheer gouty revisionism, offers at least a chance to raise a question that all non-native people in the Americas should ask of ourselves more often: what the fuck? What have we done? What the fuck are we continuing to do?")
Our guest provides some answers. Nakuset is the longtime Executive Director of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal and general advocate for Inidigenous rights and dignity in Canada. It is an eye-opening, fascinating, shocking and deeply necessary conversation that makes clear Canada's own legacy of land theft, political pillaging, cultural erasure, and other "deeply racist shit" is a contemporary problem, a multigenerational trauma playing out daily in the lives of Indigenous Canadians, including in Nakuset's own family. A Cree born in Manitoba, Nakuset was separated from her siblings when she was 3 years old and adopted into a Jewish family during the 60s Scoop—the practice of "scooping" Indigenous children from families and forcing them so assimilate. As Nakuset puts it, at adoption she became an "instant Jew"—and later, on rediscovering her culture, a "born-again Indian." The legacy of Canada's historical stain on Nakuset's family has been profound: Her mother's struggles after her horrific experiences in residential schools, separation from her sister and first protector, Sonya, and finally finding Sonya decades later only to lose her again—to suicide. "What's the point of all of this?" she asks. "What's the point of being adopted and put into this family and taken away from my Indigenous family and losing my sister if I can't try to make it better?" This interview shows Nakuset's strength, grace, and also, sharp humor—here is her succinct explanation of why many Native people don't like Dances with Wolves: "It's almost like we're the tits and ass of the film. Right? Kevin Costner's the leader."
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