Fighting for the Future: Kajan Johnson’s long road to activism

The former UFC lightweight and fighters’ rights activist sat down with Bloody Elbow to share his journey toward becoming a voice for change, both in his industry and his community.

In late 2018 the UFC made it clear that they no longer wanted to be in the Kajan Johnson business. After four years (five if you count time served in The Ultimate Fighter) and seven fights, Johnson departed the world’s leader in mixed martial arts. The severance wasn’t a shock; he’d lost two fights in a row (after a four-fight winning streak). But, his recent results weren’t the only reason. During that run he was doing what very few fighters ever did; he was speaking up.

For half a decade Johnson has been extremely vocal regarding the unfair playing field fighters compete upon. And all that time he has called out the owners who control those fields, including the UFC. Because of his vocal stance, few were surprised to hear that he would no-longer be under contract with ZUFFA. Forewarning his release, earlier that year the company had parted ways with Leslie Smith—herself a strong public advocate for fighters’ rights.

And while it’s not unquestionable whether Johnson’s advocacy for collective bargaining and the Ali Act cost him his opportunity with the UFC, Johnson feels certain that it did. All along the way, he knew the risks, but still spoke out.

That’s something many others, who aren’t afraid to engage in unarmed combat inside of a cage, don’t seem to have the nerve to do. But, asking why Johnson decided to be different is a foolish question—if you know the man and where he’s from. For those who know him, the only question that comes to mind is: why wouldn’t he?

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Duane Conlon/Wikimedia Commons

The boy put two shards of broken rock on a wall made from hundreds more. They’d come from the sweat lodge; burst by the fires lit beneath them, but not before playing their part in the ceremonies. Splashed with lake-water-soaked boughs, from the spruce that grew yards away, each piece of the wall made steam for the sweat. The boy had felt years of that steam against his mosquito-bitten skin. From the wall he walked to the woodpile. There he chopped the lumber needed to cook food, boil water, and heat the nearby log house. As he worked, he was watched by dozens of moose and bison skulls, hanging from the willows all around him.

This is Ts’il Kaz Koh First Nation, the land of the Dakelh; Kajan Johnson’s home.

“I grew up very isolated,” said Johnson, on a call from his gym in busy Vancouver, as he prepared to describe – in vivid detail – his formative years around Burns Lake in Northern British Columbia. Johnson filled each breath with excitement as he spoke of treks across the frozen lake, starry nights, eagle nests, and kinnikinnick. He grooved on choice syllables, elongating and instilling power in the words that mattered most.

Courtesy of Kajan Johnson

He described how he’d come to Burns Lake when he was two-years-old with his mother, a European Canadian of Norwegian and British ancestry, and father, who is African-American and Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) and originally from the Chicago-area. His parents had moved up north to find a use for their teaching degrees. Four years later, they separated. Johnson’s mother remarried, to the then Chief of the Ts’il Kaz Koh First Nation (also known as Burns Lake Indian Band).

T’sil Kaz Koh First Nation is a member of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council (CSTC). It is home to the Dakelh, as are a number of other CSTC nations. T’sil Kaz Koh’s currently recognized territory is centered around Burns Lake between the Bulkley and Nechako river basins. The land has four reserves. Some of this reserve land overlaps with the town of Burns Lake, which is home to many settlers and is administered by Nechako County and the Province of British Columbia.

Johnson had been living on one of the reserves, but his newly formed family decided that a move further into the bush would be better. “My stepdad had grown up on the rez,” explained Johnson. “But he saw that there was a lot of turmoil there, a lot of stress there, a lot of broken people. So he kind of wanted to get away and live more of a traditional kind of life, not so much the colonized band reserve experience.”

Before Europeans arrived on the shores of what they would call Canada, that land was distributed among a diverse multitude of nations. Those nations largely defined their relationship to the land, and each other’s lands, through treaties. And these treaties went beyond pieces of paper. According to Hayden King, who is Anishinaabe and the director of the Centre of Indigenous Governance at Toronto’s Ryerson University, treaties were practices designed to endure over time.

Europeans entered the treaty process in the late 1700s. From then, through to the early 1900s, a number of treaties were signed between Indigenous nations and European powers; most notably the British Crown. In 1867 Great Britain started to confederate the entire north into a nation-state called Canada. This broke agreements previously recorded in their treaties. While confederating Britain also claimed enormous stretches of land inhabited by Indigenous nations that had never ceded territory to the Crown (including the vast majority of British Columbia).

In 1876 Canada’s fledgling parliament enacted the Indian Act, which defined how the Government of Canada would interact with Indigenous Peoples. The act also created rules for Indigenous Peoples to live by. Many of these rules concerned the setting up of reserves to house Indigenous populations and the bands which would govern them. Reserve land was selected by the Federal government. The band system was designed by the Federal government, with little to no consideration regarding how thousands of different Indigenous communities had previously governed themselves. The Indian Act also established rules over who was and was not Indigenous.

The Indian Act is still law in Canada. One of the act’s most devastating amendments came in 1884; when it was ruled that Indigenous children were to leave their homes and attend residential schools to receive education in English. The residential school system was responsible for forced religious conversions and all manners of abuse. Thousands of children died; from sickness, malnutrition, and ‘unknown causes’. Those who survived the residential school system returned home deeply traumatized.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) – set up in 2008 – classified what happened at residential schools as cultural genocide. The TRC also highlighted how, by separating families and interrupting the passing of knowledge between generations, the system had severely diminished traditional language and culture across all lands where children were taken.

The residential school crisis had a direct effect on Kajan Johnson’s family. “My stepfather suffered many abuses in a residential school, as did my grandfather, as did my grandmother.”

Johnson noted that residential schools “severed the connection of language” between his grandfather and his stepfather. His grandmother’s ability to speak Dakelh (also known as Carrier) did survive the school, but she was unable to gift it forwards before passing away.

“Very few people passed it down because they were almost scared to, because of everything that happened to them in their lives for speaking their tongue,” said Johnson. The Endangered Languages Project (ELP) classifies Dakelh as ‘critically endangered’. A 2011 survey listed just 680 speakers out of an estimated population of 6,000. The number of speakers are declining rapidly.

In addition to the Dakelh language being critically endangered so is knowledge of traditional Dakelh traditions, customs, and ceremonies. “Colonization very close to wiped out all the understanding of ceremony from the Dakelh people,” revealed Johnson, sadly.

When asked how he felt this cultural genocide had affected the generation of people he grew up with in Burns Lake, Johnson spoke at length. It’s a subject that matters greatly to him, since he feels his connections to both his African and Niitsitapi heritage, along with his adopted Dakelh culture, have been frayed, if not torn completely.

“It makes you feel lost, you know? Like, everybody has something that you just don’t have. And it manifests in a whole bunch of lost people. A whole bunch of people who are searching for something in all the wrong places. Right now we’re in Canadian society and Canadian society is dominated by settler society and settler culture. So if you don’t feel like you’re a part of that, like that’s not a part of you, then you automatically feel like you don’t belong.

“It almost makes you feel lonely to not be connected to anything,” continued Johnson, as he explored the roots of why there has been so much pain on the reservation he grew up on. “And loneliness is very, very dangerous. Loneliness, from what I understand, is the number one prerequisite to addiction. And what do a great many of our First Nations people struggle with? Addiction. Addiction is huge on the rez; it’s massive. It’s like eighty-five percent are addicted to something. Addicted to garbage food, addicted to alcohol, addicted to drugs.”

Johnson said his stepfather tried to fill the cultural vacuum at Burns Lake by studying with the Nêhiyaw (also known as the Cree); whom he believed had a lot in common with the Dakelh. He introduced a number of Nêhiyaw teachings and ceremonies to Johnson and the rest of the reserve. Recently Johnson’s stepfather and mother were in the process of adapting some Nêhiyaw teachings to even better fit the land the Dakelh live on.

Though he was raised in a Dakelh community, participating in traditional Nêhiyaw ceremonies, Johnson was never able to gain ‘status’ in the T’sil Kaz Koh First Nation. ‘Status’ in a First Nation means voting rights and other benefits. The rules around gaining status were defined by the Indian Act. By those rules, Johnson’s low Indigenous blood quantum has made him ineligible. He would have gained status if his stepfather had adopted him, but Johnson said that would have, “pissed my dad right off.”

Despite not having status, or being ‘seen’ as Indigenous by many around Burns Lake – who often identified Johnson as primarily a Black Canadian instead of multi-racial – Johnson still considers Burns Lake and the Dakelh as his community. Their struggle is his struggle. And that struggle is something he’s experienced firsthand.

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Johnson’s first memories of oppression date back to when he was 8-years-old.

“The municipal government of Burns Lake decided that they wanted to put a mill on land belonging to my grandfather,” explained Johnson. “Now this was very beautiful land. This is land that the First Nations people were actually able to use for hunting, for fishing, for ceremonies — it was amazing land. And the municipality wanted to put a mill there. So [my grandfather] was moved onto a really garbage piece of land.”

Courtesy of Kajan Johnson

After the mill was constructed, Johnson’s step-father decided to take action. According to Johnson he started attempting to tax the municipality for use of the land under the mill.

“The municipality hated that,” said Johnson, with barely veiled pride in his voice. “They really didn’t like my stepfather because he was so militant about the rights of the land for Aboriginal people.”

The government’s response to this was, per Johnson, cutting off the water supply to their home. “They were like, ‘Oh, OK, you want to tax our mill, eh? You’re not going to share your land with us for free? We’re not going to give you all of your basic human rights for free.’”

“How are you going to survive if you don’t have water?” mused Johnson, thinking about his old log home and the elders who were also affected by the water stoppage.

“These are elders who aren’t able to go and gather water, to collect water. Most people don’t have cars, they can’t just go to the grocery store and get those jugs and lug them back to their houses. It was a huge issue. And they did it in the middle of winter.”

In the midst of this battle for resources, the local government did something else that caused hardships for Johnson’s family. “They decided they were going to barricade the road that lead to my little secluded house on the other side of the lake.”

The barricades, Johnson explained, were installed because the government had decided to build a sub-division on the land that surrounded the reserve where Johnson lived. The land the government was developing was crown land—literally owned by the British monarchy. Road access to Johnson’s home in the woods relied solely on a route that cut through this crown land. In developing that specific area, and dumping huge mounds of earth to block local traffic, the government had effectively cut off Johnson’s home from the rest of the reserve and the town of Burns Lake.

As Johnson explained, this happened quickly and resulted in the family’s vehicle being trapped at their home. “So now we are without a vehicle, it’s like -35°C (-31°F) and we have to lug in drinking water every day along a 2.5 kilometer road in between these 7-foot high mounds of dirt.”

Along with drinking water Johnson and his siblings also had to carry in diesel fuel for their generator and batches of laundry.

“I remember thinking, how is it possible that we are being forced to do this?” said Johnson, remembering those exhausting treks in the bitter cold. “It was just so wrong to me.”

That feeling of injustice was strong when Johnson was a kid. But, as he now regrets, when he grew older it got tamped down, thanks to a typical teen desire to fit in.

For schooling, Johnson – and other kids who lived on reserve – had to travel in to the town of Burns Lake. The small town is currently home to around 1,700 residents. Johnson remembers the student body in Burns Lake being close to fifty percent Indigenous and fifty percent white, with him somewhere in-between.

Johnson found himself feeling different from everyone, and he hated it. He was desperate to belong to a community that felt ‘normal’. This lead him to the white kids.

“I actually acted hella racist,” confessed Johnson as he spoke about mirroring anti-Indigenous behavior he witnessed in his new crowd. Johnson spoke heavily when admitting how this chapter in his life created a lot of animosity at home and that some of those wounds are yet to fully heal.

Johnson’s time in Burns Lake ended when he was expelled from the only high school in town. He was 14. Johnson admits to having made bad choices as a student, but also believes prejudice played a factor in his expulsion. “I feel like I was treated more harshly than others who committed similar things.”

After his expulsion, he moved in with his biological father, in Prince George, an almost three hour drive east along what is known as the ‘Highway of Tears.’ The road gets its sad moniker from its notable role in the crisis referred to as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). At least 40 women and girls have been killed or gone missing between Prince George and Prince Rupert since the 1970s. In all of Canada, the missing and murdered may number in the thousands.

Johnson dealt drugs in Prince George. He also began his MMA career there, before moving to Vancouver at age 21. After arriving in the big city, Johnson started re-examining his life. During this process, to his surprise, his mind kept drifting back to his childhood in Burns Lake.

Throughout this period, the most stark moments of clarity for Johnson came via an unsuspected source; laced throughout the rap lyrics of an artist Johnson reveres to this day. “I got to thank Immortal Technique for that,” enthused Johnson. “He saved my life.”

Immortal Technique (born Felipe Andres Coronel ) is an Indigenous Peruvian-born hip hop artist, who moved to Harlem, New York as a child. Coronel’s family moved to the US to escape the Peruvian Civil War, which began in 1980 and remains active in various hot-spots throughout the country.

Throughout his career, Immortal Technique has collaborated with artists such as Dead Prez, Mos Def, Pharoahe Monch, and Chuck D to create politically themed music, calling for social justice; especially for marginalized communities.

“[His music] made me look at myself a lot and go, ‘OK, I’m seeing all these things that are wrong with the world, but I’m not really looking at myself.’ And then I started to think about what I’m doing that’s causing harm throughout the world,” said Johnson.

To start, dealing dope had to go. After that he began to think more about the teachings he had received as a child. A lot of them coincided with the political activism he was hearing in his favorite music. Notably, that a person should do what they could to make sure the world was preserved for the next seven generations.

Teachings like that, and the ceremonies he had experienced, were things Johnson had pushed himself to forget when hanging with his predominantly white circle of friends. His involvement in these ceremonies, which were more frequent and intense than most Indigenous kids experienced (thanks to his especially traditional stepfather), felt like just another thing that made him stand out. Something he hadn’t been brave enough to do.

As his resistance to fitting in among his peers eroded, a desire to drastically change his life’s trajectory intensified. It was then that Johnson decided that reconnecting with his upbringing and heritage might be what he needed most.

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At 23-years-old Johnson traveled to the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in central Alberta. He’d gone looking for a re-birth, but he didn’t know how close to death he would have to get in order to achieve it.

At Saddle Lake Johnson embarked on an intensive six day fasting practice. The schedule included two days of preparation – including time in a sweat lodge – then four days alone in the bush, where no food or water could be consumed. The last day of the fast finished with a feast.

“That was the most difficult thing I ever did in my life,” admitted Johnson with a startling severity to his voice.

Johnson said he started feeling sick on the first night. He was scared and wasn’t sure if it was safe to go on with the fast. His instructor soothed his concerns, however, telling him not to worry and that “the Creator doesn’t give you anything more than you can handle.”

And so Johnson continued. “Two days into the fast I got really sick,” he said. “Anytime I would move, anytime my heart rate would increase, I would puke. I had a fever. It was crazy.” Despite all this Johnson completed the fast and made it to the feast.

“[The ceremony] taught me so much. There are so many things that I learned, like I truly reconnected to nature. I learned the power and beauty of Mother Earth. Like when you’re in nature for four days … you really learn how to communicate with nature on a different level. And one of those things for me was realizing how healing and how nurturing the earth is.”

When Johnson was at his worst in the wild, he found laying on the ground was the best way to lower his body temperature and give himself some comfort. “The ground would cool me and it was almost like it would hug me back and that just hit home so hard for me, how much the earth will take care of you.”

It was a lesson his stepfather had tried to give him early on, but as a child, Johnson wasn’t hearing it. “My stepdad used to always tell me when I was pissed off or upset or something, ‘You should go and sit on the ground and let that energy drain into the earth and let the earth energy drain back into you, it will help you.’ I remember thinking, this is f—king bulls—t, yeah OK bud, I’m going to get rid of my life’s problems by sitting on the f—king dirt. Thanks, you’re a f—king idiot. But the reality of that is staggering.”

But, a new appreciation for the earth was just one of many lessons Johnson said he took away from Saddle Lake. “It really solidified my past and understanding that there are truths in these traditions; that there is great knowledge in the cultural traditions and practices of First Nations people. They are often neglected and written off by modern day society, but the elders – the ancestors – knew a great deal about life and it is very important for us to delve into that. I feel like today’s society has lost a lot of those truths.”

Johnson didn’t come away from Saddle Lake a new person, instead he feels he became the person he would have been, had he not moved away from the knowledge that was first given to him as a child. As an adult he has become determined to not only keep this knowledge, but fight for its protection.

In the decade since Saddle Lake, Johnson has honed himself into an activist on multiple fronts. One of those fronts that is most dear to him is the battle for Indigenous Rights in Canada.

“The First Nations people of Canada have really embraced me, and I feel blessed for that. And I also feel like it’s up to me to do what I can to stand for these people and to speak for these people,” said Johnson. “Because there’s a lot going on that is wrong right now.”

Among the issues Johnson named as being important to him were large resource extractions, dispossession of land, lack of self-determination, and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Johnson agreed that all these issues stem from, and in many cases have been made worse by, a powerful actor – Canada’s Federal government – acting unilaterally and not in the best interest of the people who are most affected. It’s a familiar feeling for a professional fighter.

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Johnson made his pro MMA debut in 2002, when he was just 17-years-old. He won that bout – in Lethbridge, AB – by verbal tapout due to punches. He lost his second pro contest months later, in Olympia, WA.

Over the next six years Johnson fought twenty times across Canada and the Pacific Northwest. In his last fight of 2007 he came up against future UFC title challenger Rory MacDonald for the King of The Cage Canada lightweight championship.

Johnson, who was on a five fight winning streak, was unable to beat the current Bellator welterweight champion that night. It was after this loss that Johnson traveled to Saddle Lake to fast and experience a re-connection with his ancestors.

After returning from Saddle Lake, the 23-year-old Johnson went on a 7-1-1 run of success; winning a title with XMMA, and securing a place on The Ultimate Fighter Nations: Canada vs. Australia series.

Johnson won his elimination bout on TUF against Brendan O’Reilly to set up a semi-final versus Chad Laprise. He lost to Laprise, but did well enough to get a UFC contract when the show was finished. His first pro fight in the promotion came at 2014’s UFC 174 in Vancouver, where he took on Tae Hyun Bang. Johnson lost that fight, but took home a Fight of the Night bonus.

After that loss, Johnson won his next four UFC fights in a row, defeating Zhang Lipeng in the Philippines, Naoyuki Kotani in Saitama, Adriano Martins in Edmonton, and Stevie Ray in London. The run of victories came to an end thanks to an Islam Makhachev armbar in Calgary. Johnson’s final UFC contest was a split decision loss versus Rustam Khabilov in Moscow, on September 15th, 2018.

Months later Johnson learned he would not be offered another contract with the UFC.

Johnson’s pro-fighter association/union stance was on full display over the months leading up to his UFC release. However, Johnson said, he’d been ruminating on workers’ rights for fighters for years before he went public.

“I really started realizing [the inequity between fighters and the UFC] was an issue when the first tax happened [in 2009],” said Johnson. “We used to get our own sponsorships before the first Reebok deal went into effect. In the very beginning whatever company was sponsoring us, we would get one-hundred percent of that revenue. If I had Monster Energy on my shorts, then Monster would pay me and they would only pay me.

“Then the UFC made a unilateral decision that all companies that wanted to sponsor any athletes in the UFC had to pay a tax. That tax was about $100,000 per six months for the right to sponsor UFC athletes. Once they paid that tax, now they could sponsor as many UFC athletes as they wanted. The issue here was a lot of these companies that were sponsoring MMA didn’t have a whole lot of money. So if they’re spending the majority of their budget to pay the UFC, they have very little left to pay the fighters. So a lot of fighters took a pretty big hit when that happened. And I was like, ‘Yo, but why? Why is this happening?’”

Despite feeling like fighters were getting a raw deal in 2009, Johnson decided to limit his dissension to private conversations in gyms and locker rooms. But, in his mind, this was only a temporary measure.

“My idea at the time was; I was going to get the UFC title, I was going to get the belt and once I had the belt I would have leverage and they wouldn’t be able to get rid of me. They wouldn’t be able to treat me unfairly because I had this belt.”

Unfortunately for Johnson his career path in the UFC didn’t lead to a championship belt. He began to feel that prize would escape him in 2015, after suffering a severe shoulder injury that required surgery. It was at least his third surgery from an injury caused by MMA.

“I realized, OK, you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” said Johnson. “I could get injured in training and be done forever. That could be my next training session. … So I knew then if I was going to [start speaking out] then I have to do it now. I couldn’t wait until I got to the UFC title otherwise I may never get to do it.”

Johnson’s first acts of rebellion emulated his hero; Immortal Technique. “I started putting out some rap music. There were subtle messages in the music which were speaking out against the company, speaking up for fighter rights.”

According to Johnson, these messages were decoded by at least a few people, leading to communication with the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Associations (MMAFA); an organization that models itself on the Major League Baseball Players’ Association and the Screen Actors Guild. The MMAFA was founded by Rob Maysey in 2009 and has since worked closely with fighters including Jon Fitch, Wanderlei Silva, Brandon Vera, and Randy Couture to develop a professional association for fighters. The MMAFA has also advocated for the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act to be extended to MMA.

2015 was also the year the UFC announced an exclusive deal with Reebok that eliminated the majority of fighters’ abilities to wear individual sponsors in the cage. Instead they would wear official Reebok fight kits and be compensated based on tenure with the UFC.

“The Reebok deal reinforced my knowing that I needed to do something to create some sort of equality in this organization, because it’s so dear to my heart,” said Johnson. “I’m so passionate about this sport that I plan to be in this sport for the rest of my life. Not only just for me, but for everyone who is a part of the industry and especially the kids that are coming up that are dreaming that they’re going to be able to pull their whole family out of poverty by becoming a UFC champion.”

Post-Reebok deal Johnson was looking for an opportunity to take a public stand against the UFC. Then, in 2017, the UFC provided him just that. “I had my coming out party to the world at the UFC athlete retreat,” chuckled Johnson.

The UFC athlete retreat took place in May 2017. The Las Vegas convention saw around 300 fighters partake in a weekend of seminars, panels and a Snoop Dogg concert. The retreat also marked the opening of the UFC Performance Institute.

While it heralded the creation of a new wing of the UFC’s combat sports enterprise, the event didn’t feel like the total win the UFC were hoping for. The most memorable incident from the weekend was a scuffle between Angela Magana and Cris Cyborg Justino. Other notable happenings included the presence of an allegedly drunk beer company executive on one of the panels and widely mocked handouts of ‘fifty percent off’ Reebok coupons for fighters.

More discomfort for the UFC was caused by the actions of two fighters at two different panels. During a talk between Karyn Brant and Kobe Bryant, Leslie Smith stepped up with some questions for the future NBA Hall of Famer. She asked him about the importance of a player’s association in professional basketball. Bryant — who likely didn’t know of the UFC’s anti-union policy — enthused over collective bargaining before the crowd of fighters. Smith would later champion the MMA unionization effort Project Spearhead.

The second fighter to speak up at a panel was Johnson. His stand was made before a representative of Reebok (and the aforementioned beer company exec).

“I figured OK, there’s not going to be another time or place when I can get in front of this many of my peers and also in front of all the UFC execs,” said Johnson. “I figured that was a great time to stand up and start to build some momentum for this cause. Try to bring the cause to a couple of more eyes to help people wake up, hopefully inspire some people to start standing up for us all.”

“I said that we know the deal for Reebok is very good for Reebok and very good for the UFC, but the athletes are on the losing end,” recalled Johnson. “It took eighty percent of our sponsorships. It took food out of our mouths, out of our kids’ mouths, and I asked them how they sleep. ‘How do you sleep at night?’ He told me he sleeps very well.”

Once the discourse between Johnson and the panel grew more intense, Johnson was escorted from the room by security.

“He’s a sociopathic capitalist,” said Johnson, talking about the Reebok executive he sparred with that day. “The UFC is also sociopathic and capitalist. They have no empathy. They have no care for the people they are doing business with. All they care about is their bottom line and that’s very apparent with their business practices.”

Johnson sat down with UFC executives shortly after this incident. At the time he told media outlets that the talks were productive and he was hopeful for their working relationship going forwards. Two years removed from that meeting, though — Johnson has very little positive to say about the company.

“They do not care about us,” he railed. “We’re just a number. All we’re worth to them is how many asses we put in the seats. They do not care about us. When I started saying that, people started to understand that, ‘OK this guy doesn’t give a f—k and he will actually stand up for us, he will actually stand up against the company.’”

Johnson knew he was putting himself out on a limb, by showing open dissent toward the imbalance of power between the UFC and the fighters who compete in its Octagon. But he did so because he believed it was for the good of the collective. And he believed, if he took that step towards uniting fighters behind a cause, he wouldn’t be alone for the next steps.

“Unfortunately I wasn’t joined by too many people,” sighed Johnson.

After outing himself to the UFC, and his community of fighters, as someone who would publicly object to UFC policies, there was no turning back. Johnson continued to speak about fighter associations and the Ali Act at every available opportunity. And he continued to do this even after the UFC removed Project Spearhead advocate Leslie Smith from its roster.

Johnson, who now serves on the board of Project Spearhead, knew he was risking his position in the UFC and he understands why that same risk has prevented a lot of other fighters from speaking out. However – for him – that risk meant little compared to the challenges others have faced.

“There are some people in this world who would do the right thing when it benefits them,” said Johnson, when asked why he continued to advocate for fighters even when he felt his job was on the line. “My true purpose here is to do the right thing whether it benefits me or hurts me. For me to do the right thing – for the collective good – regardless how it affects me personally; this is the only way things ever really change.”

To illustrate his point, Johnson contrasted his fight for fighters’ rights to the civil rights movement in the United States. “Those people who are marching down the streets being pelted by rocks and dealing with the threat of being imprisoned for however many years, for the threat of death, these people are risking their lives for their people. So what am I really risking? What am I risking with the UFC? What can they really do to me? OK, they could cut me. I could lose my job with the UFC. I’m still alive. I’m still breathing.”

Johnson also minimized the risks he was taking within the field of MMA in comparison to the 2016/17 Standing Rock protests in the Dakotas and Great Sioux Nation, the 1990 Oka Crisis in Quebec and Haudenosaunee Territory, and the 1995 Ipperwash Crisis in Ontario and Kettle & Stony Point First Nation.

“[The risk I took] is not like the risk that First Nations people are having to take these days, when you look at the happenings at Standing Rock where people are being gassed, being pelted with freezing water in the middle of winter when they’re camped. Mine is not the same kind of threat that the Mohawk people faced in the Oka Crisis, or Anishinaabe people faced when Dudley George actually lost his life and many people were imprisoned.”

George was an unarmed protestor who was shot and killed by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) in Ipperwash Provincial Park. George and other members of the Stony Point Band were occupying the park to dispute the Federal Government’s claim on the land. Canada had seized the land from the Kettle & Stony Point First Nation to create a military base during the Second World War and then reneged on a promise to give it back.

George was shot a day after Ontario’s Premier Mike Harris told the OPP “I want the f—king Indians out of the park”. This is according to Harris’ former attorney-general.

The Oka Crisis flared over a land dispute between the Quebec town of Oka and the Mohawks of Kanehsatà:ke territory. In 1990 a court granted Oka permission to develop a golf course and condominium complex on land where Mohawk ancestors were buried. Courts had previously rejected Mohawk claims to the land, which they had lived on since at least the early 18th century. Activists responded by erecting barricades. Months of stand-offs and armed skirmishes with the RCMP and Quebec’s special police force followed. Joe Armstrong, a Mohawk elder, was killed when a mob of local residents threw stones at protesters. At least 75 other activists were wounded during the crisis. A police officer, Marcel Lemay, was killed during one of the firefights. It was never determined who fired the fatal shot.

“I’m not risking those kind of things,” said Johnson; thinking about people who had died for Civil and Indigenous Rights. “If I’m not willing to risk my job for the sake of my peers and for the sake of my people; it’s very difficult for me to look myself in the mirror.

In addition to doubting whether he was taking a significant risk in speaking up for fighters’ rights, Johnson also doubted whether what he was doing was even a choice. “I was groomed for this,” he said.

“My dad was a Black Panther after he came back from Vietnam. My mom has been an activist her entire life. I’ve marched beside her in many protests. My stepfather was a very revolutionary chief for over 20 years and he stood up to the municipal, provincial, and federal governments in many different ways and there were many negative repercussions for him and his family that happened because of that.

“So this is just part of my past and part of my reason for being on this planet; to stand up against injustice. So I’m seeing injustice happen within an industry that I’m so passionate about — it’s impossible for me to just turn a blind eye for the sake of my own profit.”

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When asked for his hopes for the future of MMA, Johnson answered quickly: anti-trust, Ali Act, and unionization.

The anti-trust lawsuit is an ongoing legal battle between a cadre of former UFC fighters and ZUFFA LLC. The lawsuit alleges that the UFC has created a monopsony; a system where, as arguably the only major purchaser of goods and services from a multitude of sellers (in this case fighters), a company exerts inordinate control. And because of the power and control the UFC exerts over MMA markets in North America – and potentially around the world – fighters argue that, acting as independent contractors, they have found themselves subject to detrimental contract clauses and abuse of power in their dealings with the UFC, within a market where the WME-IMG organization is arguably the only major player.

“Ideally we win that [lawsuit] and it hurts the UFC’s pocket books enough that they have to take us seriously and have to conduct business differently,” said Johnson.

The Ali Act, if expanded to include MMA, would – according to Johnson and its supporters – prevent coercive contracts between promotions and fighters, increase transparency regarding how large a percentage of revenue a promotion makes, and give fighters more mobility in their careers (through use of an independent sanctioning/ranking body).

The unionization efforts, currently championed by Project Spearhead and the MMAFA, if successful, could potentially result in mixed martial arts functioning more like the NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLB with collective bargaining between athletes and owners.

“When [unionization] happens, along with the Ali Act, this will decrease the amount of time that a promotion is able to lock up a fighter for,” said Johnson. “It will increase the amount of mobility between these organizations. So say we have the top three: UFC, Bellator, ONE FC, we have a union and all the union fighters are only able to fight with those three organizations. And those promoters are only able to hire union fighters. Then I can go fight in the UFC and say I have a title, I have a mobile title, it’s not a UFC title. That title can be contested in Bellator, it can be contested in ONE FC, we can fight for it anywhere. It would be an independent title that would be independent of the promotion.”

Johnson enthused that the Ali Act, combined with a union, would also mean that fighters in all organizations are put into the same rankings and that they would keep that ranking no matter what organization they fight for at a given time. Within Johnson’s dream scenario, he would also see a fighter union having a different collective bargaining agreement with each promotion.

“There will be a different minimum wage depending on which organization you’re fighting in and what they are able to pay without them going bankrupt or going out of business and are still generating profit.” Additionally, Johnson hoped, the CBA would mean fighters get a fair share of profits the promotions see for video games, TV deals (like the UFC’s $1.5 billion ESPN deal), and streaming services (like UFC Fight Pass, which Johnson said makes $200 million a year).

Ideally, Johnson wants all three of his hopes to come true, but added “even if one of those things happen,” that will still greatly benefit fighters and allow them “to monetize and maximize their careers.”

When asked for his dream scenario for the future of Canada and how it interacts with Indigenous Peoples, Johnson was thoughtful in his response. “That’s more complicated.”

“I think first Canada needs to hold up its original treaties,” said Johnson. “It needs to hold up its end of the treaties and negotiate on a nation-to-nation basis, not pass down unilateral decisions like we are a monolith.”

Johnson made it clear that equal to the importance of Canada dealing with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples from coast-to-coast-to-coast in a way that reflects the diversities of their communities, is Canada meeting the international community’s standards for governing with Indigenous Peoples.

“Canada needs to abide by the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People. And it needs to really enforce that, because that’s like the Ali Act for the colonial situation that we’re dealing with here in Canada. It’s legal language that will determine how the country interacts with all of the individual First Nations on this land that we share.”

The United Nations Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) was adopted by the UN in 2007. Within the declaration is a framework for how colonial states should work with Indigenous Peoples to create self-determination, cultural protections, health rights, and land rights. At the UN, the declaration passed with 143 votes in favor and four votes against. The four member states who voted against the declaration were Australia, New Zealand, United States, and Canada.

In 2016 the Canadian government promised to implement the frameworks of UNDRIP into Canadian law. However, shortly after that declaration Canada’s Ministry of Justice stated that, “adopting UNDRIP as being Canadian law [was] unworkable,” due to its incompatibility with the Indian Act. In 2019 British Columbia announced it would be the first Canadian province to implement UNDRIP into its legislation.

Regardless whether the dream scenarios, in Canada and in MMA, become reality in his lifetime, Johnson is committed to advocating for them. The reason he is so committed to both causes isn’t just because, as he sees it, they have such strong similarities. For him, it’s because they are both part of the same fight.

“It can be Indigenous people struggling against the government in Canada, it can be Africans struggling against globalist corporations that are exploiting resources there, it can be the UFC fighters struggling against the company; the struggle is always the few against the many.

“There will always be a few people who are looking to oppress a larger population in order to control the majority of the profits and keep people down so they can lift themselves up. It’s all the exact same thing. Which is why my childhood and everything I’ve learned up until this point has prepared me to take on this role as a man now.

“It’s all the same fight. It’s always the few against the many and I’m sure it will continue, but we will also continue to fight. We’re not going anywhere.”

If you’re interested in learning more about Indigenous Issues in and around British Columbia and wish to support an Indigenous Peoples’ legal defense fund, see RAVEN – Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs.