Indigenous cultural support stagnant
Indigenous cultural centres have never ceased to be critical community hubs, tasked with an array of cultural tasks, from teaching craft and language, to housing archaeological objects and art, to providing historical resources, to hosting contemporary art.
But left adrift in by an ill-fitting funding environment, their support has stagnated, and their missions along with it.
Not a half-hour drive down the road from the Woodland Cultural Centre is a case in point. In the spring, the Joseph Brant Museum, administered by the city of Burlington, announced a $12 million project that will relocate the 1937 historic house and expand its footprint from 5,000 to 17,000 square feet. The project, funded jointly by the city, province and federal governments, as well as the museum’s own foundation, broke ground in October.
For Whitlow, the irony is thick. Brant, also known as Thayendanegea, was the Mohawk chief who struck a deal to support the British army in the American Revolution in exchange for nearly a million acres of land on either side of the Grand River.
What remains today, the Six Nations reserve, is “a postage stamp,” Whitlow said, of less than 50,000 acres. It serves as an emblem for Indigenous communities’ tenuous grip on their own cultural heritage. Places like the WCC have no municipality to support it, no formal relationship with the provincial government, and only INAC’s static support at the federal level.
So while the Burlington museum, which draws only 18,000 visitors a year, prepares for an historic multimillion-dollar redux, the WCC just
“There is an historic inequity. We have a cultural genocide committed by the state. These things we know.” STEVEN LOFT CANADA COUNCIL DIRECTOR FOR INDIGENOUS ARTS
hangs on.
“We’re a class-A facility, despite our appearance,” sighs Whitlow, meaning the museum has the environmental standards to welcome the most sensitive artworks, whether a Rembrandt or a Monet. But as it stands, nothing remotely so grand will ever happen here.
“It’s enough for us, sometimes, just to keep the lights on,” she says. “I realize that’s not very ambitious, but those are the limits of what we can do.”
For culture in Canada, on reserve and not, government funding is the elephant in every room. When the Trudeau government gave word in 2016 that it would double the budget of the Canada Council, the main fed- eral funding agency for culture, within five years, a glimmer of optimism — maybe the first — settled over the Canadian cultural scene.
As its specifics were revealed, Indigenous communities had reason to believe: In the doubling of its budget, funding for Indigenous culture would triple.
“I like to think of it as reparation,” said Loft. “There is an historic inequity. We have a cultural genocide committed by the state. These things we know. And what we have now is a critical mass of organizations who have been through a hellish time, frankly, and are doing amazing work, and it’s time to step up our commitment to them.”
At the OCF, Beam, like many others, was drawn to its glow. It seemed to promise what the institution had never achieved: stability, and a way forward.
Beam put together a three-year plan for the Council. It included some eye-popping art names: Duane Linklater and Tanya Lukin Linklater, who have just shown at Documenta in Athens; the towering artistactivist Christi Belcourt; a two-per- son show featuring Christian Chapman and Barry Ace.
But by fall, the initial blush of optimism had faded. In October, Beam received a letter from the Canada Council that the OCF had received a long-term project grant, spread out over three years, of $163,000.
It is, Beam allows, a step. It will mean she can keep as many as eight people on staff, at minimum wage, if she’s careful, to arrange contemporary art shows, teach language and, critically, keep an elder-in-residence to impart traditional knowledge.
But the brass ring, core funding — with a permanent commitment and long-term stability — remains, for the moment, out of reach.
“I was on the phone with them, and they said we aren’t eligible because of institutional instability. I almost cried,” Beam says. “Isn’t that the definition of an institution that needs core funding?” (At the Council, Loft said, new permanent funding decisions will be announced in the new year.)
And so, the OCF waits — for another bureaucratic shift, another wheel to turn, as it always has. And, Beam says, they’ll make do, as they’ve always done.
Her mind turns back to the summer, when, with a staff of two, the most extraordinary thing happened.
“It was tough, because there was hardly anybody here to keep things going. It just wasn’t active,” she says. “But then, there was this day, where everything seemed to happen all by itself: Someone had a porcupine that had died, and they brought it here. Then some young people showed up, and set up a table. Someone else came, and started cooking chili. Some people laid out quilts, and then more people came in, native and non-native, Islanders, community members. And we sat, and we ate, and we sorted out quills, and someone said, ‘hey, let’s try this.’ And we made these little pieces, these amulets, of porcupine quill in resin.”
She laughed, a little incredulous — something from nothing, through the fog of constant futility, a ray of hope.
“If nothing else, that’s what I want to see here,” she said. “A place, even if it has to be in spite of everything else, that’s alive.”