In Defense of Cultural Appropriation: Malik – The New York Times

2017/06/15 2 Comments

Good piece by Kenan Malik, particularly this point:

“The accusation of cultural appropriation is a secular version of the charge of blasphemy. It’s the insistence that certain beliefs and images are so important to particular cultures that they may not appropriated by others.”:

Critics of cultural appropriation insist that they are opposed not to cultural engagement, but to racism. They want to protect marginalized cultures and ensure that such cultures speak for themselves, not simply be seen through the eyes of more privileged groups.

Certainly, cultural engagement does not take place on a level playing field. Racism and inequality shape the ways in which people imagine others. Yet it is difficult to see how creating gated cultures helps promote social justice.

There are few figures more important to the development of rock ’n’ roll than Chuck Berry (who died in March). In the 1950s, white radio stations refused to play his songs, categorizing them as “race music.” Then came Elvis Presley. A white boy playing the same tunes was cool. Elvis was feted, Mr. Berry and other black pioneers largely ignored. Racism defined who became the cultural icon.

But imagine that Elvis had been prevented from appropriating so-called black music. Would that have challenged racism, or eradicated Jim Crow laws? Clearly not. It took a social struggle — the civil rights movement — to bring about change. That struggle was built not on cultural separation, but on the demand for equal rights and universal values.

Campaigns against cultural appropriation reveal the changing meaning of what it is to challenge racism. Once, it was a demand for equal treatment for all. Now it calls for cultures to be walled off and boundaries to be policed.

But who does the policing? Every society has its gatekeepers, whose role is to protect certain institutions, maintain the privileges of particular groups and cordon off some beliefs from challenge. Such gatekeepers protect not the marginalized but the powerful. Racism itself is a form of gatekeeping, a means of denying racialized groups equal rights, access and opportunities.

In minority communities, the gatekeepers are usually self-appointed guardians whose power rests on their ability to define what is acceptable and what is beyond the bounds. They appropriate for themselves the authority to license certain forms of cultural engagement, and in doing so, entrench their power.

The most potent form of gatekeeping is religion. When certain beliefs are deemed sacred, they are put beyond questioning. To challenge such beliefs is to commit blasphemy.

The accusation of cultural appropriation is a secular version of the charge of blasphemy. It’s the insistence that certain beliefs and images are so important to particular cultures that they may not appropriated by others. This is most clearly seen in the debate about Ms. Schutz’s painting “Open Casket.”

In 1955, Emmett Till’s mother urged the publication of photographs of her son’s mutilated body as it lay in its coffin. Till’s murder, and the photographs, played a major role in shaping the civil rights movement and have acquired an almost sacred quality. It was from those photos that Ms. Schutz began her painting.

To suggest that she, as a white painter, should not depict images of black suffering is as troubling as the demand by some Muslims that Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” should be censored because of supposed blasphemies in its depiction of Islam. In fact, it’s more troubling because, as the critic Adam Shatz has observed, the campaign against Ms. Schutz’s work contains an “implicit disavowal that acts of radical sympathy, and imaginative identification, are possible across racial lines.”

Seventy years ago, racist radio stations refused to play “race music” for a white audience. Today, antiracist activists insist that white painters should not portray black subjects. To appropriate a phrase from a culture not my own: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

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Cultural appropriation: Make it illegal worldwide, Indigenous advocates say

2017/06/15 Leave a comment

The pace of global negotiations is always slow but surprised that Canadian Indigenous peoples do not appear to have been consulted and are not in attendance:

Indigenous advocates from around the world are calling on a UN committee to ban the appropriation of Indigenous cultures — and to do it quickly.

Delegates from 189 countries, including Canada, are in Geneva this week as part of a specialized international committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency.

Since it began in 2001, the committee has been working on creating and finishing three pieces of international law that would expand intellectual-property regulations to protect things like Indigenous designs, dances, words and traditional medicines.

The meeting takes place as concern grows worldwide about the rights of cultures to control their own materials. In the U.S. this week, designer Tory Burch agreed to change the description of one of her coats for women after Romanians protested that it had been described as African-inspired when it actually appropriated a traditional Romanian garment.

Speaking to the committee Monday, James Anaya, dean of law at the University of Colorado, said the UN’s negotiated document should “obligate states to create effective criminal and civil enforcement procedures to recognize and prevent the non-consensual taking and illegitimate possession, sale and export of traditional cultural expressions.”

Anaya said the document should also look at products that are falsely advertised as Indigenous-made or endorsed by Indigenous groups.

That would mean products like those in U.S.-based retailer Urban Outfitters “Navajo” line, Anaya said, including “Navajo hipster panties,” a “peace treaty feather necklace” and a “Navajo print flask.”

The Navajo Nation launched a legal battle against the company for trademark infringement in 2012. The case was settled out of court late last year.

Anaya is one of several Indigenous leaders at this round of negotiations who are questioning just how seriously some member states are taking the negotiations.

The committee has been working on three draft documents for 16 years, and member states are now going through them line by line.

It is a painstaking, slow process, and some Indigenous leaders say they are frustrated and disenchanted about the committee’s future.

“We are only halfway through 2017 and yet the number of occurrences of misappropriation happening to Indigenous Peoples in all regions of the world seems relentless with no relief in sight,” said Aroha Te Pareake Mead, a member of the Ngati Awa and Ngati Porou tribes in Wellington, New Zealand.

“We asked the international community to help deal with a problem that traverses international boundaries and are still waiting.”

Low participation

Mead said part of the problem is that Indigenous groups around the world have no idea about the committee’s work and often aren’t being consulted by member states.

“People at a national level don’t know what’s going on, and there aren’t many processes where you can get information about this or contribute to the positions that are being taken here.”

Mead also noted that WIPO has what she called “one of the lowest” rates of Indigenous participation.

“The issues being discussed at the [Intergovernmental Committee] are also being discussed in Indigenous organizations and communities all around the world on a regular basis. So why are there not more Indigenous representatives here?”

Indigenous participation ‘crucial’

There are Indigenous groups from around the world taking part in this round of negotiations, including groups from New Zealand, Kenya, Mexico, Colombia and the United States.

There is no Indigenous representation in the Canadian delegation.

Officials with Global Affairs Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and Canadian Heritage are taking part in this round of negotiations, but the lack of Canadian Indigenous representatives is drawing criticism from the Assembly of First Nations.

“The elders and knowledge keepers are the authorities who should oversee the creation of guidelines and a process for utilizing Indigenous knowledge in any activities,” Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde told CBC in a written statement.

“We welcome the investigation of such topics on an international stage like the United Nations, but it’s crucial that Indigenous knowledge keepers are part of the dialogue.”

Source: Cultural appropriation: Make it illegal worldwide, Indigenous advocates say – North – CBC News

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When history comes back and bites you: Salutin | Toronto Star

2017/06/12 Leave a comment

Rick Salutin, looking back on his play 1837, with a new Indigenous peoples awareness and perspective. I particularly like his line: “The point isn’t that we were wrong and “they” are right: they too will be found wrong in due time, it’s how history works. In fact, everyone gets a chance to be both wrong and right.”:

I’m having an odd experience: having once used history as material to make writing points, I now find my use of it being judged as I had judged.

When I was a kid studying Canadian history, we were taught that the rebellion of 1837 in Toronto was a “comic opera” event, a farce put down by British imperial authorities that came to nothing.

Then, in university in the U.S., I learned that history was often lied about, to manipulate citizens. So naturally when I returned to Canada and became a writer in the 1970s, I looked around for pieces of Canadian history to set right and seized on that one. Along with a theatre company, using the “collective” process, we made a play, 1837, which became a staple of the Canadian repertoire, even becoming a kind of rite of passage for young actors.

Now it’s been “revived,” decades later, at the Shaw Festival, with a mature, accomplished cast and production.

First irony: at the time of the original show, we considered the Shaw and Stratford festivals the enemy — villains who disparaged Canadian artistic sources in order to foist foreign cultural material on us. We aimed to bring them down. We even included a mocking scene of a haughty Brit travelling to (Shawfest site) Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Now, it appears, everyone from that original production is delighted with the revival and plans to trek down to see it.

But more bitingly, we were certain we represented the good guys — the noble Canadian farmers of the time — versus their imperial overlords and local sycophants, the “Family Compact.” But hey, time moves on, and our show is (relatively gently) charged with overlooking truer victims: the First Nations.

Our play opened with squatting farmers being evicted from “their” land by an arrogant official on behalf of an absentee landlord. They vow to stay and fight on. It never occurred to us to ask who that land came from. People knew in fact but the issue hadn’t, as it were, occupied the main stage, the way it has since. The Shaw version copes with this by having its main set concealed by a native-inflected drop, which is then pulled off to reveal a corduroy road.

But the whole sense of place remains contentious. We set scenes boldly in locations like “Bay and Adelaide, southeast corner,” to show history happened here, as much as at Waterloo. If audiences snickered, actors took it as a challenge to make them respond solemnly to our own reality.

Yet today, events from hockey games to school announcements to political assemblies often open with an acknowledgment that “we” are meeting on the traditional territory of First Nations, based on an Indigenous protocol — great word — as recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was even employed at Shaw this season.

It’s one of the redemptive qualities of Canada that this ritual has taken root with relative ease, even been embraced enthusiastically, like asking fans at hockey games to rise for, “O Canada,” “if you are able.”

It may come easier if you’re younger. My friend, musician Simone Schmidt, who does much historical research herself (like her recent release, Audible Songs from Rockwood), suggests, if you have a hard time with this, repeating the phrase, “settler-colonial” 20 times a day till it starts coming naturally.

The point isn’t that we were wrong and “they” are right: they too will be found wrong in due time, it’s how history works. In fact, everyone gets a chance to be both wrong and right. The only sure thing is, said Hegel — a history buff himself around the time our play is set — “The truth is everything!”

Overall it makes me feel, in light of the ugly phase that nationalism is passing through worldwide, that we may have been fortunate not to have had more success than we did with our nationalist projects back then.

And how’s the revival? First rule regarding your own past work: manage to avoid embarrassment. Alan Jay Lerner — My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Camelot — said when his last play opened on Broadway, that he used to hope for success, now he just wanted to escape humiliation. No problem there. Once past that, I enjoyed the show a lot, especially since I saw the opening with my 18-year-old son — though I’ve never known whether family counts as history or something … other.

Source: When history comes back and bites you: Salutin | Toronto Star

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Mixed race isn’t black and white: Paradkar

2017/06/09 Leave a comment

Paradkar on mixed race/unions:

Mixed-race couples account for only 4.6 per cent of all unions in Canada, according to a Statistics Canada report last updated in 2013.

The offspring of such a couple are often described as being “exotic” or “post-racial.” These positive stereotypes often apply to those who look closer to white or have elitism on their side. Think Keanu Reeves, think Drake.

As the children born of mixed heritages get further from whiteness, problems of racism or colourism crop up, even from within families. White parents who deny their own privilege can also be blind to the racializing experiences of their children, Chang found after interviewing 68 families for her book Raising Mixed Race.

The idea that “by their birth they bridge the divide between races is a myth,” Chang says. “Birthing mixed kids does not fix racial issues.”

Zainab Amadahy, 62, knows this only too well. She is mixed race of African-American, Cherokee, Seminole, Portuguese and Amish descent. Her mother was white, her father Black and in the Jim Crow era that normalized segregation, her mother’s parents disowned her. Internalized racism meant it wasn’t smooth sailing on the racial front on her father’s side, either.

“My father’s people were very shade-ist,” she told the conference audience. “Upward mobility meant being lighter, marrying into light skin.”

Amadahy identified as Black and as an activist, was easily accepted as one. “In those days, to talk about being mixed race was to claim light-skin privilege,” she says.

One of her earliest memories involves waking up to New York City cops rousing her father out of bed one night in the ’60s and then punching and kicking him down the stairs. He came back beaten and bruised the next day. There were no charges against him. Turned out the police had mistaken him for someone else. No apologies either. “That was my introduction to the idea that cops were not safe.”

School? As the only Black in school with her siblings, she remembers being assaulted, beaten up. “It was my white mother, of all people, who taught me how to defend myself, sent us all to karate school.

“She was a follower of MLK and didn’t believe in violence, but I guess that was theoretical when it came to her own kids being beaten up.”

In the days when “mixed” in America meant white mixed with black, her Indigenous roots stayed in the background. It was only when she came to Toronto as a 19-year-old that she got involved with the pan-Indigenous community and felt freer to explore that side of her heritage.

Indigeneity is anything but in the background for Dani Kwan-Lafond, who is Chinese, Indigenous and French-Canadian. She and her partner, who is Jewish, have a little girl.

Mixedness comes with challenges for a parent, not the least of which is, “Do I put her in native school in Toronto? Or do I put into a French school?”

“Certainly, she sees a lot of Asian faces, both Chinese and Filipino,” Kwan-Lafond said.

“But being Indigenous is something different. We have these mixed identities . . . and one of those identities is a really politicized one in Canada . . . we do a lot more in our house around Indigeneity than we do around Asianness.”

Kwan-Lafond wonders: “As a parent, how do I bring her up in a good way with a community of elders and listen to my teachings? How do I also acknowledge those other parts of identity?”

So, they end up celebrating a number of traditions. “We do Chinese New Year, Passover. We do Pow Wows.

“It’s a complicated situation, but it’s our normal.”

Intermingling may not have the inherent ability to solve racial inequalities, but with considered parenting, it can offer a genuine shot at moving past tribalism.

Amadahy considers her background a blessing. “It has allowed me to move in and out of communities, have passion for many, many stories and to question our socially constructed ideas of identity.”

Source: Mixed race isn’t black and white: Paradkar | Toronto Star

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Celine Cooper: The future role of indigenous languages

2017/06/08 Leave a comment

The challenges are real given the diversity of languages and the population sizes:

At a speech to the Assembly of First Nations Special Chiefs Assembly back in December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the federal government would be proposing a Canadian Indigenous Languages Act. While  they announced an allocation of around $90 million over the next three years to support communities seeking to revitalize indigenous languages in the 2017 budget, no actual legislation has been introduced as of yet.

Of course, there’s no denying that such legislation would be a logistical challenge. In Canada, there are more than 60 aboriginal languages, grouped into 12 distinct language families. About 20 per cent of those in Canada who report having an aboriginal mother tongue live in Quebec.

Would this mean Canada having 60 (or more) official languages? And if so, how would that mesh with existing policies and practices around French and English as Canada’s official languages? The reality is that different First Nations groups have been thinking about this for decades. One example can be found in a 2005 report titled Towards a New Beginning delivered to the minister of Canadian Heritage by the Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures. The authors concluded that while recognition of indigenous languages would be national, implementation could be regional.

Marc Miller’s Kanyen’kéha language speech to the House of Commons was a powerful symbolic gesture on behalf of the Liberal government. But keeping its promises to Canada’s indigenous peoples is going to take much more than words.

Source: Celine Cooper: The future role of indigenous languages

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To Honor Canadian Natives, a Lawmaker Speaks in Mohawk – The New York Times

2017/06/05 Leave a comment

Nice:

Cultural appropriation is a touchy topic in Canada these days, with the recent controversy in Canadian media over whether it is appropriate for nonindigenous writers to take on a native voice for artistic expression. But Marc Miller, a member of Canada’s Parliament, decided he was on solid ground in giving a speech in Kanyen’kéha, the language of the Mohawks, in the House of Commons on Thursday.

“Language is one of those things that, if you apply the appropriation rule, would die faster,” Mr. Miller said in a telephone interview. He said he was inspired to learn the language because the district he represents in Quebec covers traditional Mohawk land.

“I stand here to honor the Mohawk language, and I pay my respects to their people,” Mr. Miller said in Kanyen’kéha to mark the beginning of Canada’s National Aboriginal History Month. He said in the short speech that he hoped to hear the language more often in Parliament, and that more Canadians would “be proud to use it to speak to one another.”

Marc Miller delivers a statement in Kanyen’kéha, the language of the Mohawks. Video by CBC News

Indigenous languages are dying in Canada, as they are in much of the industrialized world, largely as a consequence of past government efforts to stamp out their use and force assimilation into the larger population. In Canada, that was accomplished through residential boarding schools where indigenous students were forbidden to speak their native tongues.

The government has tried to make amends for this history in recent years, after a wrenching Truth and Reconciliation Commission laid bare the amount of abuse some 150,000 indigenous students experienced at the government-financed schools over more than a century. The former prime minister, Stephen Harper, apologized on behalf of the government. His successor, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, followed up with a vow to adopt all 94 recommendations from the commission, known in Canada as calls to action.

The government has promised to spend about $90 million Canadian (in United States currency, about $67 million) over the next three years to support indigenous languages and culture, including $69 million Canadian for such things as classes to keep alive native languages.

It has also committed to work with the indigenous population to codevelop an Indigenous Languages Act that will help ensure the preservation and revitalization of indigenous languages.

Fewer than 600 people in Canada cited Kanyen’kéha as their mother tongue in the country’s 2011 census. All but a few of the 60 indigenous languages that still exist in the country are expected to disappear within the next generation.

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Indigenous culture not protected in Canadian law, lawyers and academics say

2017/06/02 Leave a comment

Interesting article about intellectual property and indigenous culture, from both a domestic and international perspective:

“The problem is that Indigenous heritage is often seen as a public domain, free for the taking,” said George Nicholas, a professor at Simon Fraser University who led an eight-year international research project on cultural appropriation.

“That’s not the case. [For] many First Nations, many Inuit and other Indigenous peoples, their heritage is still vibrant…. When it is threatened, when it is used by others in ways that are inappropriate or unwelcome, this can cause a variety of harms, not just economic but spiritual.”

There are a host of barriers Indigenous groups face when trying to use intellectual-property laws to protect their cultural heritage.

Intellectual-property law began to take form in the 19th century in western Europe to protect individual ideas and creations, mainly for economic reasons.

“It wasn’t really designed for Indigenous innovation, which is marked by collective processes, collective custodianship and a very strong spiritual dimension,” said Wend Wendland, director of the Traditional Knowledge Division at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva.

“Some refer to it as a square peg in a round hole.”

Ava the shaman

An illustration featured in the book Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English depicts a traditional design similar to that used by a fashion designer in 2015. (Kieran Oudshoorn/CBC)

The main problem facing Indigenous groups looking to use intellectual-property law is that in order for something like a traditional parka design or carving style to be patented, it has to be unique or original, Wendland said.

But many Indigenous customs and designs have been passed down from generation to generation since time immemorial. They have been replicated hundreds if not thousands of times, often making them unable to be patented.

Wendland also says the current system generally requires some sort of hard copy of what the copyright or patent is supposed to protect. But many forms of Indigenous knowledge or stories are often passed down orally.

Exceptions exist, but model may be fundamentally flawed

Some Canadian Indigenous groups have had success using trademarks. The Cowichan Band Council in British Columbia registered the certification “Genuine Cowichan Approved”. It was created to help differentiate between the traditional Indigenous hand-knitted sweaters crafted by Coast Salish people and non-Indigenous designers selling counterfeits.

bc-091028-cowichan-sweater

Dianne Hinkley shows off a genuine Cowichan Tribes sweater. ((CBC))

There is work being done to help create a broader system to protect Indigenous intellectual property. One hundred and eighty-nine states have joined a special committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization. The organization is working toward an international treaty that would expand intellectual-property laws to protect Indigenous culture. It will meet in Geneva next month to continue negotiations.

Whitehorse lawyer Claire Anderson says using the Canadian legal system is counterintuitive when protecting Indigenous culture.

“If we choose that forum, essentially we would be going to the colonial forum that has taken away Indigenous rights, and we would be asking the non-Indigenous judges to make determinations about Indigenous law,” Anderson said.

Indigenous law has its own remedies

Anderson said groups should look to their own form of Indigenous law to protect their history and knowledge.

“Listening to our First Nation elders or listening to people that understand Indigenous laws and seeking redress through those Indigenous legal forums is a very good starting point because it provides legitimacy to those Indigenous legal forums.”

Anderson says that in Tlingit culture, if someone exploits someone else’s design or steals property, they must apologize in front of the community at a public forum, like a potlatch. She says some sort of compensation is given — whether it’s monetary or the gifting of a song.

Source: Indigenous culture not protected in Canadian law, lawyers and academics say – North – CBC News

 

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‘We’re asking for change’: Emerging indigenous generation flexes muscle over cultural appropriation

2017/05/29 Leave a comment

Thoughtful exploration of cultural appropriation issues with respect to Indigenous peoples.

The graphic is particularly helpful in that it provides greater clarity to what can be considered cultural appropriation and what not, particularly the left and right columns. The middle column is where much of the current debate occurs:

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.

Handout

HandoutOjibwa broadcaster Jesse Wente: “We’re asking now for change, and we’re not going to stop asking.”

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.”

Keeshig-Tobias 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.”

Source: ‘We’re asking for change’: Emerging indigenous generation flexes muscle over cultural appropriation | National Post

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Cultural appropriation: Why can’t we debate it? – Liz Renzetti

2017/05/13 1 Comment

I find this one of the best commentaries I have read yet on the issue of cultural appropriation and writers. Renzetti quotes extensively from the article in question, showing the depth and nuance in Hal Niedzviecki’s article.

More sophisticated than Christie Blatchford: Magazine editor the latest to be silenced for the sin of free speech but with the same underlying message: have the debate and discussion, don’t just try to shut it down and shun:

Yet the great works of literature are great leaps of imagination, sometimes so much so that they seem impossible, from a distance. When it was revealed that Mary Shelley was the author of Frankenstein, long after the novel was published, readers were aghast – how could a woman have conceived something so abominable!

That was 200 years ago. Should modern artists try to inhabit the fictional lives of people whose history and cultural experiences are completely different from their own? It’s fraught territory: Academics and writers have grappled with the concept of cultural appropriation, its proper definition, limits and boundaries, for years. It’s a subject discussed at length in books and conferences. It should at least be something we can discuss, without fear of censure.

That doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment. This week, Hal Niedzviecki, editor of Write Magazine (the publication of the Writers’ Union of Canada) resigned from his post after his short essay about Indigenous writing prompted heated criticism.

“I don’t believe in cultural appropriation,” Mr. Niedzviecki wrote. “In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities. I’d go so far as to say that there should even be an award for doing so — the Appropriation Prize for best book by an author who writes about people who aren’t even remotely like her or him.”

He goes on to counter the old teaching chestnut “write what you know”: “Write what you don’t know. Get outside your own head. Relentlessly explore the lives of people who aren’t like you, who you didn’t grow up with, who don’t share your background, bank balance and expectations. Set your sights on the big goal: Win the Appropriation Prize.”

Some people found this an ill-conceived way to preface an issue dedicated to Indigenous writing, and Mr. Niedzviecki acknowledges in his subsequent apology that he wrote “glibly.” But do glibness and even insensitivity require that he lose his job? Would it not be better if he stayed at the helm of the magazine and commissioned pieces that provided robust counter-arguments?

Mr. Niedzviecki’s essay goes on to say: “Indigenous writing is the most vital and compelling force in writing and publishing in Canada today. And this is because, in large part, Indigenous writers, buffeted by history and circumstance, so often must write from what they don’t know. What at first seems like a disadvantage also pushes many Indigenous writers into the spotlight. They are on the vanguard, taking risks, bravely forging ahead into the unknown, seeking just the right formula to reclaim the other as their own.”

The entire spring issue of the magazine is worth reading for its exploration of Indigenous writing and publishing, from shaping queer narratives to questioning the limits of fictional empathy. Mr. Niedzviecki’s interview with publisher Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm of Kegedonce Press illuminates the challenges facing writers who have traditionally not been seated at the CanLit table: “We still see many beautifully written books by Indigenous writers struggling to fully achieve the sales and wide acceptance that they deserve.” Maybe this issue of Write will cause people to think about how widely they cast their nets when they choose what to read.

Instead of the focus falling on the important content of the magazine, it is now all on one essay written by Mr. Niedzviecki, who has long been a supporter of independent voices in Canadian publishing (he also runs Broken Pencil magazine.) The Writers’ Union of Canada, which you would think would be interested in the free and frank exchange of opinions about the content and quality of writing in this country, has failed to support him.

Even if you think Mr. Niedzviecki is wrong, and his opinions misguided and hurtful – and many people do, and have argued this case strongly – it’s alarming to say that he shouldn’t hold them. Ideas that incite violence or hatred deserve condemnation. But what about ideas that are uncomfortable or provocative or even (to some readers) ignorant? We have lost the appetite for confronting those ideas, for sharpening different, resonant arguments to counter them.

In a statement, the Equity Task Force of the Writers’ Union argues that there are “racist systemic barriers faced by indigenous writers and other racialized writers.” I think this is largely true. The task force writes that Mr. Niedzviecki “dismisses” those barriers. I don’t think that is true, based on the content of his essay. It also calls for the retraction of the essay, among other demands. That would be a mistake: to ask for an unpopular idea to be dismissed from the record is a dangerous precedent.

What I’ve written here is likely to be contentious, which is fine. There will be other arguments (different, more resonant), and I hope we’ll listen to them all. Those are the benefits of writing, and reading.

Source: Cultural appropriation: Why can’t we debate it? – The Globe and Mail

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Ontario school board tosses Shakespeare for indigenous writers

2017/05/13 Leave a comment

The headline is written for attention, the story captures the thoughtful considerations behind the change and how it fits in with the curriculum in other grades, where they do have exposure to Shakespeare and others:

When parents in Ontario’s Lambton Kent District School Board learned the mandatory Grade 11 English course was being replaced with an indigenous literature course, their responses often invoked that 500-year-old icon whose shadow still falls over all English writing.

“So my kid doesn’t have to study Shakespeare?” was the common reply, said superintendent of education Mark Sherman.

As of this September, for those in Grade 11 at least, the answer is no. Instead, they will be reading and studying novels such as Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Medicine River by Thomas King, My Name is Seepeetza by Shirley Sterling, or As Long as the Rivers Flow by former Ontario Lieutenant-Governor James Bartleman.

This indigenous turn of a high school curriculum is an abrupt departure from the Canadian high school standard of mainly studying literature from the two great cultures against which Canadian-ness is traditionally triangulated — Britain and America.

“Hey, I love Lord of the Flies. I love Shakespeare,” Sherman said. “But really, we’re talking about 15th century Veronese landlords (Romeo and Juliet) or something like that. Does that resonate with Canadian kids? Or the British schoolboy class structure?”

Modern plays in the high school rotation are likewise dominated by New York playwrights like Arthur Miller, to the exclusion of indigenous Canadians like Tomson Highway.

Students will still have the chance to study The Catcher in the Rye and King Lear, for example, in the other four compulsory English courses over their time in high school. “This is just taking a part of it and trying to make it more relevant to the modern Canadian student,” Sherman said.

Until now, the board has offered optional native studies courses in Grade 11, focused on history and culture more than literature. Some schools have also occasionally run native-focused Grade 11 literature courses, including several pilot programs designed to test this new curriculum shift. When it comes into effect in September, it will make an indigenous literature course a constant part of every student’s education.

“It has all the same curriculum expectations as any senior English course would have,” Sherman said. It involves writing, reading, presentation, dialogue, construction of arguments, topic choice, all set up in a way that recognizes and respects the sophistication of the curious teenage mind.

He pointed out two current failings of the traditional Shakespeare and Salinger approach in his board, which serves four First Nations communities as well as the regions of Sarnia and Chatham-Kent. Not only do indigenous students not see their culture reflected in their curriculum, and become disengaged as a result, but non-indigenous students are not made to engage scholastically with First Nations until late in the educational game. As a result, they can lack an important Canadian perspective.

“We should start building perspective earlier,” Sherman said. “In a senior level English course, they have a very high level of moral reasoning and dialogue.”

There is also a financial incentive, in that the board gets more funding for offering courses on indigenous topics, money that Sherman said has been used for professional development for teachers, many of whom are not indigenous themselves, and to hire a special projects teacher for indigenous studies.

As he describes it, parents and students could not be happier.

“It’s really taken off,” Sherman said. “Normally with any big change you expect some discontent. There has been negligible negative feedback. I think today’s students, they see things in the media, they want to know more about it, so now it’s just part of the natural course to say ‘Hey, we have some brilliant indigenous writers out there. This was created in Canada. This wasn’t written 100 years ago in Leeds.’”

Source: Ontario school board tosses Shakespeare for indigenous writers | National Post

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