EMERGING INDIGENOUS GENERATION PUSHES BACK
STORIES AREN’T JUST STORIES. STORIES CREATE OPINION, WHICH AFFECTS PEOPLE’S VOTING, WHICH CREATES POLICY, AND NEXT THING YOU KNOW, YOU HAVE CHILDREN BEING TAKEN OFF TO SCHOOLS TO HAVE THE INDIAN HAMMERED OUT OF THEM. — NIIGAAN SINCLAIR
Twenty years ago, a native studies professor at Trent University, published an article in American Indian Quarterly arguing that Canada had moved from marginalizing aboriginal culture to appropriating it. “We love Indians to death,” Peter Kulchyski warned, but his plea went largely unheard.
Even earlier, in 1990, Ojibwa writer Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, wrote an essay in the Globe and Mail accusing the Canadian cultural industry of “stealing ... native stories as surely as the missionaries stole our religion and the politicians stole our land and the residential schools stole our language.” The country’s literary establishment denounced her as a would- be censor.
Complaints of cultural appropriation are clearly nothing new. But the recent uproar over a proposed Appropriation Prize has revealed that an emerging generation of indigenous Canadian creators and academics, empowered by social media, is more equipped than ever to push back.
“We now have a layer of an indigenous intelligentsia in law, in literature, in academia, in arts,” Kulchyski, now teaching at the University of Manitoba, said in a recent interview. “They’re not hesitant about standing up for things that matter to them.”
The results have been s wift. Hal Niedzviecki, whose rhetorical call for an Appropriation Prize awarded to an author who writes about people “who aren’t even remotely like her or him,” resigned May 10 from his job as editor of the Writer’s Union of Canada magazine. Within days, Jonathan Kay, who defended Niedzviecki against what he called a “mobbing” by “identity-politics fundamentalists,” resigned as editor of The Walrus (though not, he says, as a direct result of weighing in on the issue). And Steve Ladurantaye, one of a group of high- profile journalists who jumped to defend Niedzviecki’s freedom of speech by pledging money for an actual appropriation prize, was demoted from his role as managing editor of CBC’s The National.
Indigenous writers, artists, musicians and journalists harnessed the force of social media to criticize Niedzviecki and his defenders and to explain why, to them, cultural appropriation is no laughing matter.
The poet Joshua Whitehead, a member of Manitoba’s Peguis First Nation, wrote t hat examples of damaging appropriation are rampant, from the white artist Amanda PL whose work resembles that of the late Anishinaabe painter Norval Morrisseau to a British pop band called Get Inuit. “Ignorance is a tactic best maintained by privilege and while it may be bliss for you it’s a death-sentence for me,” Whitehead wrote on a University of Calgary blog called The Insurgent Architects’ House for Creative Writing.
Niigaan Sinclair, acting head of the department of native studies at the University of Manitoba, said he has no quarrel with Niedzviecki encouraging writers to step beyond their own experiences. But the notion of a prize for the writer “who can take the most things” was offensive, he said, encouraging theft instead of borrowing done with respect and in conversation with the people affected.
“Borrowing is when you have a sense of responsibility to the people and you understand that your story has real- life impact,” he said in an interview.
“Stories aren’t just stories. Stories create opinion, which affects people’s voting, which creates policy, and next thing you know, you have children being taken off to schools to have the Indian hammered out of them. That’s what policy does. That’s what stories do.”
Sinclair, 41, said he has been impressed with the ability of indigenous voices in their 20s and 30s to be heard in the current debate. “When I was in university there was no such thing as social media,” he said.
“We were saying similar things then, but they didn’t have the same kind of impact, because people didn’t read them very much. Be- cause of the work of the people who came before me, my generation’s work and now the work on social media, it’s all inter- related and it’s all part of a large cacophony of people who are saying similar things, yet we have a bigger platform now on social media.”
Jesse Wente, an Ojibwa broadcaster, told the CBC that the reaction to the appropriation prize is a sign of things to come. “We’re asking now for change, and we’re not going to stop asking,” he said. “We’re in a new paradigm, where indigenous voices are louder because of social media, because we don’t have to occupy chairs in mainstream news media to have our voices heard.”
Writing l ast week on Canadaland, the Métis author Chelsea Vowel said indigenous Canadians “are talking back, despite the abuse we receive every time we challenge mainstream narratives about us. There has been resistance to hearing us, but if recent events are any indication, the Canadian literary and media establishment may no longer have any choice.”
Sage Paul, a Dene artist based in Toronto, has used her art to challenge the fashion industry’s appropriation of indigenous designs. She said her parents’ generation was militant but did not have access to the same platforms for expres- sion. “We can do it not only across Canada and North America, but there’s a global movement,” she said in an interview. “There are indigenous people around the world who all have very similar histories of colonialism and genocide.”
One obstacle encountered by opponents of cultural appropriation is that the term is used so broadly its power can become diluted. How, for example, can cultural appropriation be taken seriously when it is invoked to challenge cafeteria sushi at a U.S. liberal arts college or a burrito shop run by white women in Portland, Ore.?
George Nicholas, an archeology professor at Simon Fraser University and director of the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage research project, argues that borrowing between cultures has shaped societies around the world, and there is nothing wrong with that.
But just as trademarks, patents and copyrights protect intellectual property, he said, there should be protection for elements of indigenous heritage. The historical power imbalance between mainstream society and indigenous peoples has meant that little thought was given to the impact of appropriation, whether it is mass-produced gift- shop totem poles or high- end fashion copied from an Inuit parka.
“If I am taking something that is important to someone’s heritage, whether it’s a particular design or a particular set of stories or songs, my using those, my sharing those, my including those in some sort of commercial product, can result in cultural, or spiritual, or economic harm to the people whose heritage it is,” he said.
Kulchyski’s idea of “loving Indians to death” reflects the fact that often appropriation stems from good intentions. But he said it turns heritage into a commodity.
“By simply saying, ‘ Oh we love your culture. We’ll have you dance during our Olympic ceremony. We’ ll have you say a prayer before our meetings, but we haven’t actually substantively changed the fact that the economy is based on extraction from your lands, and we’re going to continue doing that,’ basically it becomes, at best, a hollow gesture and, at worst ... your culture becomes something for sale.”
Kees hi g-To bias has watched the resurgence of the cultural appropriation debate with interest. The abuse she took for her stand in 1990 still stings.
“I was vilified, by just about everybody ... big names in the Canadian writing community,” she said in an interview. “The complaint was that I was shackling the imagination.”
Her response then and today: “Your imagination comes right up to my nose, and if it goes any further, then I push back.”
She said it is discouraging to hear the “same old arguments” resurfacing but heartening to see a new generation pushing back.
“Hopefully they’ ll listen now. Like I said, we’re in a new era,” she said. “So many things have happened between then and now, and there are so many more wonderfully articulate indigenous people.”
WE’RE ASKING NOW FOR CHANGE.