When I walk into academic settings, I often feel the weight of silence before I even sit down. It’s not the silence of a room waiting for a professor but the silence of being the only one. The only one from a rural reserve. The only visibly Indigenous woman. The only person who grew up knowing what dry meat tastes like and what the cabin smells like on a fall morning. Growing up in Wabasca, I didn’t see doctors who looked like me and definitely none who spoke Cree or knew the