Museums Never Fully Explored the Story of American Art. That’s Why They’re Recruiting Native Curators to Change the Narrative

2022/01/14 Leave a comment

Similar to the National Gallery’s 2017 integration of Western and Indigenous art. More interesting that the usual period rooms:

As a tidal wave of racial reckoning has forced the museum industry to confront its dismal record on diversity, curators of American art are beginning to reassess galleries devoted almost exclusively to Hudson Valley landscapes and Rococo portraits by dead white men.

With the aid of curators and artists from Native American backgrounds, curators across the U.S. are broadening narratives, questioning stereotypes, and collapsing categories.

In Indianapolis, for more than 30 years since the Eiteljorg Museum was founded, the old ethnographic framework dividing Indigenous objects by region has ruled the rationale behind its permanent collection.

But curators at the institution now expect the space to look radically different when it reopens in June after Native American curators and advisors collaborate on new displays focused on themes of relation, continuation, and innovation.

“My motivation is making more Indigenous people feel welcome,” said Dorene Red Cloud, a curator who joined the Eiteljorg in 2016, and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. “For the longest time, museums have been thought of as ivory towers where native people couldn’t see themselves.”

And her institution is not alone. The Seattle Art Museum is undergoing a similar update; its previous emphasis on “masterworks” resulted in galleries predominantly filled with paintings by white men. Those demographics are expected to drastically change when the rehang is finished later this year, with nearly a quarter of the galleries displaying Indigenous works.

Native American artists like Wendy Red Star, Nicholas Galanin, and Inye Wokoma also served as curators for the project, the first reimagining of the space in 15 years.

And in New York over the next year, Brooklyn Museum curators will engage outside advisors for a reinstallation project of their own. It has become a priority for the institution’s leadership, which has recognized the need to have diverse Native American participation in how galleries tell Indigenous stories.

Stephanie Sparling Williams, a curator of American art at the museum, said that the main change will be a shift from a singular story to a “dynamic, multiplicitous, and historically complex constellation of narratives” told through never-before-seen works from the collection while old favorites get recontextualized.

“All viewers stand to benefit from more depth and breadth in an American art collection,” Williams said.

Inside the Delaware Art Museum, conversations about a gradual reboot of the American galleries began in 2017, according to Heather Coyle, the institution’s chief curator and curator of American art.

“We have not collected Native American artists in our collection, but there were works that we were anxious to reinterpret,” she explained.

Coyle recalled walking through the galleries with Dennis Coker, principal chief of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware, when they stopped at an 1840 painting by Hudson River School artist Robert Walter Weir titled Indian Captives, Massachusetts 1650.

“Before, we built context by saying that it was painted nearly 20 years after The Last of the Mohicans was written, but we would not say this was when the Trail of Tears was happening,” Coyle said, explaining how Coker brought new analysis by drawing out the symbolism of a sawed log featured in the work.

“This is what’s happening to native people, their hunting grounds are being cut down,” Coker observed.

“It’s just not something I would have seen looking at the painting,” Coyle said, explaining how collaboration with local Indigenous communities has enriched the museum’s understanding of its collection.

And as these conversations have progressed, many museums are throwing out the old orthodoxies of chronological organization in favor of themed groupings.

“Chronology is something that is imposed onto history,” said Theresa Papanikolas, curator of American art at the Seattle Art Museum. “It gets to be a little deterministic.”

Papanikolas said that viewers can expect a very different kind of gallery experience. She is particularly excited for Red Star’s installation, which is still being completed but will “conjure ideas of portraiture, landscape, and Seattle” while also “literally bringing Indigenous voices into the gallery.”

But before contacting artists for the project, Papanikolas consulted an advisory panel of the museum consisting of 11 paid experts, with three being Indigenous.

“I learned so much about my blindspots,” Papanikolas explained, adding that she hadn’t previously considered how Native artists might feel when they’re approached by museums for collaboration out of the blue.

“They also urged us not to think in terms of comparisons,” she added, saying that institutions often present Indigenous heritage as mere influences on Western culture. “Why can’t these pieces stand equally?”

Financing its two-year overhaul, the Seattle Art Museum received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation and another $75,000 from the Terra Foundation for American Art. (The Brooklyn Museum has also received the same amount of funding from the Terra Foundation, in addition to a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.)

Although the majority of museums are consulting Native American communities and scholars on their reinstallations, very few have Indigenous curators on staff who are leading the rehangs.

For example, the Brooklyn Museum has two American art curators working on its project, but the institution has not brought an Indigenous curator on staff to help with the project; instead, a spokeswoman said that three Native American humanities consultants are assisting the museum.

Critics worry that a lack of structural changes within the museums will leave their new American galleries feeling like empty gestures toward multiculturalism. And some nonprofit analysts have cautioned that museums ignoring systemic racism and inequality will find themselves irrelevant with contemporary audiences. Others point to a historic lack of investment in people of color within leading cultural organizations.

“If institutions want to invest in Indigenous art then they also need to invest in Indigenous curators,” said Joseph Pierce, a professor at Stony Brook University who frequently writes about Indigenous erasure in American culture.

“I have been in some of these conversations and what I keep on saying is that museums have to engage with Indigenous art and artists on the terms that are set by Indigenous peoples,” he added.

“You have to rethink what the space means, and that means hiring people to do the long-term labor.”

In the meantime, curators hope that audiences will get a new perspective on Native arts.

“For the longest time, Native American art has been considered craft,” Red Cloud, the Eiteljorg curator, said. “But this is an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and to look at a future that involves native peoples.”

Source: Museums Never Fully Explored the Story of American Art. That’s Why They’re Recruiting Native Curators to Change the Narrative

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Women, visible minorities make up larger share of latest Order of Canada appointments

2022/01/07 Leave a comment

My working deck highlights more of the findings of my analysis of the close to 1,700 appointments made over the past 9 years, looking at representation of women, visible minorities and Indigenous peoples, broken down by level, province and background. Given that most appointments reflect a long-term contribution, there is a gap between the population and visible minority appointments:

Working on a more detailed analysis but this provides the highlights:

Women, visible minorities and Indigenous people accounted for a larger share of the latest Order of Canada appointments than in recent years — a sign that Rideau Hall’s quest to diversify one of the country’s highest civilian honours is making progress.

Of the 135 people recently inducted into the Order of Canada, 40.7 per cent (55) are women, 12.6 per cent (17) are visible minority and just over eight per cent (11) are Indigenous.

The numbers are higher in all three categories than in the previous three years. Last year, most of the inductees were white men, and in 2019 well under a third were women.

Retired public servant Andrew Griffith, who served as Canada’s director general of citizenship and multiculturalism, said that while the numbers represent a “significant improvement,” it’s too soon to say whether it’s a trend.

“I’m always wary of claiming victory on the basis of one year,” he said. “So what I look at, whether I’m looking at these kind of numbers or other diversity numbers, is are you seeing a sustained change, a sustained increase.

“What I would like to see is two to three years from now comparing, let’s say, the previous three year period to the next three year period, and see if the needle has been moved.”

The Governor General makes appointments based on recommendations from the Advisory Council for the Order of Canada, which advises her based on nominations suggested by members of the general public.

Griffith said this process means Rideau Hall doesn’t have as many options to diversify the Order of Canada as other institutions.

The newest appointees include entreprenuer and philanthropist Mohamad Fakih and former senator Murray Sinclair, who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“The Order of Canada relies on public nominations. The Office of the Secretary to the Governor General encourages people to nominate individuals who are reflective of our diversity, including Indigenous peoples and persons from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds,” a spokesperson for the Office of the Governor General said in a statement to CBC.

“As of 2019, the OSGG has asked new appointees to the Order of Canada to complete a voluntary self-identification questionnaire. We look forward to identifying trends as we gather data in the coming years.”

‘Perpetually vigilant’

Sarah Kaplan, director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said the numbers show improvement but still don’t reflect Canada’s demographics.

“It seems to me that if your population is made up of about half women, or people of diverse genders, and you’re not representing that same proportion in the country’s most prestigious honours, then you are doing a disservice to the community,” she said.

She said she’d like to see Rideau Hall and the advisory council reach out to communities for suggestions rather than rely solely on nominations.

“Who’s going to know about that process and figure out how to navigate the nomination system?” she said. “It’s going to be people who are already in the centre of power, and that’s a pretty closed set of folks in the Canadian context.”

She also said the Office of the Governor General must keep pushing to make the Order of Canada better reflect Canadian society.

“The thing about improving representation in a society that has historically privileged just one group of people is that you have to be perpetually vigilant,” she said.

“And so one year’s progress does not mean that we have now fixed the problem, and that it will naturally trend upwards in subsequent years.”

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/representation-better-order-of-canada-2021-1.6302725

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The Conversation: Native nations are the experts on citizenship

2021/12/14 Leave a comment

Interesting discussion regarding elements of Indigenous identity and citizenship. Would be interesting to know how these vary by First Nation and how differences are resolved:

There is a growing movement to identify and call-out people who have fraudulently held positions by claiming indigeneity like Cheyanne Turions, Joseph Boyden, Michelle Latimerand Carrie Bourassa. 

The fraudulent claims of indigeneity are so widespread that the term “pretendians” has become part of regular vocabulary. 

On the surface, this seems to align with the interests of Indigenous Peoples, but with the call-outs come underlying components of colonialism. Namely, that Indigenous nations are not being recognized as the authorities when determining indigeneity. 

Genealogy as the only factor

Those quick to call-out are often not clamouring for Indigenous nations’ jurisdiction over citizenship, nor are they demanding “pretendians” be held accountable to Indigenous nations. 

Instead, people like non-Indigenous genealogists are being held out as “experts” on what does or doesn’t make a person Indigenous. 

The result of having genealogy as the only factor is that the dialogue is not centred on Indigenous people as socio-political groups, but racial purity which perpetuates colonial stereotypes of Indigenous identity. 

Understanding what makes a person Indigenous is complex. There are the obvious sources of indigeneity, such as kinship and receiving cultural teachings from Elders and knowledge keepers, that are established at birth and strengthen throughout a person’s life. 

Other customs and traditions include adoption of non-Indigenous people by Indigenous families. Adoption is a long-recognized practice across many nations that has resulted the adoptees learning the language, cultural teachings and values necessary to be a part of that nation. 

Whether an adoption is valid is an issue for the nation into which the person has been adopted in to decide. 

There are also examples of communities who have granted non-Indigenous people full membership, based on criteria that the First Nation has established. Fort Williams First Nation in Ontario made Damien Lee a full member, which means he is entitled to vote in elections, run for office and to benefits provided by the First Nation. 

He grew up on reserve, and while he is non-Indigenous and therefore does not have status according to the Indian Act, the First Nation has exercised its legal jurisdiction over identity and recognized him as a member.

The critical question at the heart of this issue is how to distinguish between fraudulent claims and legitimate ones. The answer lies with the nations. 

Jurisdiction as a human right

As self-governing nations with constitutionally recognized Aboriginal rights, Indigenous people should be the only authority when determining who is part of their nations. It should be based on their own criteria, as it was before the imposition of the Indian Act. And nations should have the jurisdiction to enforce the laws they develop.

With that in mind, Article 33.1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) recognizes that “Indigenous peoples have the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their own customs and traditions.”

Now that Canada has passed legislation setting out a framework for implementing UNDRIP, Indigenous nations need to be recognized as the authority for determining who is Indigenous. UNDRIP does not automatically remove Canadian authority over identity, so the government will need to take action to ensure existing legislation recognizes Indigenous jurisdiction in this area.

Both the Canadian government and non-Indigenous experts need to relinquish the authority they have assumed. A failure to do so will continue the discrimination and systemic violence faced by Indigenous people.

Assimilative policies

Since Confederation, Canada’s assimilative policies have actively worked to strip Indigenous Peoples of their identity and deny Indigenous jurisdiction.

The federal government has dictated who is an “Indian” through the status definition in the Indian Act and recognizes “the Indian Registrar [as] the only authority under the Indian Act who can determine a person’s eligibility for Indian status.”

These policies are discriminatory and have led to the denial of indigeneity based on blood quantum and other arbitrary criteria such as marriage, university education or joined holy orders to the forceful removal of Indigenous children from their families into non-Indigenous homes and residential and day schools.

The result is thousands of Indigenous Peoples being traumatized by not knowing who their families or communities are, making it extremely difficult to reconnect.

The funding policies of the federal government — whereby resources and service delivery are concentrated to status Indians living on-reserve — serve to create and maintain a scarcity mentality that reinforces colonial approaches to identity and undermines self-governance.

If the current trend continues, whereby individuals’ claims to indigeneity are going to be interrogated by non-Indigenous people, based on criteria established by non-Indigenous perspectives, Indigenous Peoples are going to face even greater barriers in reconnecting with their families and communities, and decolonizing efforts will suffer.

A better solution to the issue of fraudulent claims is to support Indigenous nations and their jurisdiction over identity.

This approach aligns with the UNDRIP and supports the right to self-government. Indigenous nations have been the authority on who they are for thousands of years, it is time their jurisdiction over this be recognized. The Conversation

Cheryl Simon is an Assistant Professor in Aboriginal and Indigenous Law at Dalhousie University. Prior to joining Schulich School of Law, Cheryl worked with a rights-implementation organization in New Brunswick and has taught classes on colonizing Mi’kmaw identity.

Source: The Conversation: Native nations are the experts on citizenship

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Contrasting pre- and post-pandemic public service survey results

2021/12/08 Leave a comment

For the data nerds among you, you might this analysis of the Public Service Employee Survey organizational and harassment/discrimination indicators, broken down by visible minority and Indigenous group of interest, comparing the pre- and post-pandemic periods.

Conclusion:

There has been comparatively little change between the pre- and post-pandemic period but noteworthy that Black satisfaction with resolution of harassment and discrimination complaints is less than other visible minority groups.

While it appears that the experience of visible minorities is worse than Indigenous peoples, PSES data supports the view that the government has considerable work to improve the workplace organizational culture to reduce harassment and discrimination for both visible minority and Indigenous groups. This needs to take place at the general and the specific group levels by each department given the variances between the individual groups.

As in the case of disaggregated data with respect to employment equity groups, the increased granularity of the PSES provides a richer evidence base for managers and human resources to develop measures to improve inclusion in the public service at the departmental and organizational levels.

Full article:

pses-2020-2019-comparison-hill-timesDownload

Charts colour coded to show variations:

pses-2020-compared-to-2019-summary-chartsDownload

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Long suppressed and forcibly assimilated, Sámi people in Sweden get an apology 30 years in the making

2021/11/29 Leave a comment

Of interest and the influence of and parallel with Canadian experience:

In Uppsala Cathedral, the heart of Swedish Christianity, Archbishop Antje Jackelén sat this week before a circle of Sámi leaders in traditional dress and the television cameras of Sweden’s state broadcaster, listing the past crimes of her church.

“You have told us about forced Christianization and Swedish colonialism. Sámi culture was denied,” Jackelén said, in Swedish. “Today, we acknowledge this and, on behalf of the Church of Sweden, I apologize.”

Wednesday’s apology service in Uppsala, the culmination of more than 30 years of discussions and advocacy, marked a major step forward for reconciliation in Sweden, where the Indigenous Sámi people continue to fight for self-determination and recognition of past wrongs committed by church and state.

Having studied the Canadian experience of reconciliation, church and Sámi figures alike emphasized that the apology must be followed by concrete actions, and came with no expectation of forgiveness.

“As we apologize to you today, we cannot determine how you will receive this apology. It is not our place to demand to know when a response will be given,” Jackelén said in her speech.

“While we wait, we pray to God … that we do not repeat past mistakes.”

As one of its commitments, the church pledged to acknowledge the importance of Sámi spirituality, and even incorporate it into Christian worship after centuries of exclusion and demonization.

Ingrid Inga, the chair of the church’s internal Sámi Council, called it “the starting point of a new relationship between the Church of Sweden and the Sámi people.”

Crimes of assimilation

The Sámi are indigenous to the vast forests and tundra of Arctic Europe, traditionally herding reindeer, hunting and fishing across Norway, Sweden, Finland and parts of northern Russia. For centuries, they have been divided by the borders of those countries, which all embarked on differing programs of forced assimilation.

Though the earliest Christian missionaries are believed to have visited Sápmi, the traditional territory of the Sámi, in the 11th century, Sámi say the church’s process of forced Christianization truly began some 500 years later, when the Reformation unified church and state.

In an 1,100-page anthology produced for the Church of Sweden in 2019 — seen as an essential precondition to the apology — historians documented the way the church supported the state in the process of erasing and suppressing Sámi identity.

Christian preachers condemned Sámi religion as devil worship, banning the joik, a form of spiritual singing used by noaidi, or Sámi shamans, to communicate with the spirit world.

The 17th century saw a wave of puritanical witch trials, in which Swedish church and state authorities waged an intense campaign against Sámi worship, which they branded as sorcery. One noaidi, Lars Nilsson, was burned at the stake, and many others were tried for witchcraft.

In pursuit of converts, the Swedish church produced the first writing in the Sámi languages, in translated bibles. But by the 20th century, it was actively suppressing the Sámi languages in church-run schools.

Reindeer herders were segregated to subpar “nomad schools,” which sought to “protect” them from civilization as an “inferior race.”

As in Canada, these church-run schools became theatres for humiliating scientific experiments and clerical abuse. Racial biologists also conspired with bishops to dig up the remains of Sámi children and elders — many of which still sit in museum collections across Europe.

Other Sámi, deemed not sufficiently nomadic by Swedish authorities, were forced to assimilate, driving divisions in the community that exist to this day.

Christianity an ‘Indigenous religion’

Yet today, many Sámi are still devoutly Christian. A 19th-century revival movement produced an Indigenous form of Lutheranism that transformed communities damaged by the suppression of traditional activities.

“Many Sámi think that Christianity is their Indigenous religion, because the Sámi have for centuries been dealing with Christianity,” said Helga West, a Sámi theologian who studies the reconciliation processes underway in the three Nordic countries. (Her Sámi name is Biennaš-Jon Jovnna Piera Helga.)

“Yet… there are many Sámi who don’t want to be involved with these churches at all.”

Thomas Colbengtson, originally from Tärnaby, was raised in the Lutheran Church and attended a nomad school. He says the experience left him with a “mixed feeling” about his own identity.

“In a way, you’ve got double guilt — guilt [for] being Sámi, guilt [for] being Swedish, guilt [for] perhaps not practising Christian religion, guilt [for] being Christian…. That’s the sensitive thing to talk about.”

In a former glass factory in the suburbs of Stockholm, Colbengtson wrestles with that tension as a Sámi artist. His most recent work, based on a noaidi drum, will be displayed near the altar of the Swedish church.

“Part of it is provocation,” he said, “and … part is to visualize Sámi presence in the area, and Sámi culture that [they have] tried to erase.”

Spiritual destruction — and renewal

Guided by the Canadian truth and reconciliation process, the church has largely focused on documenting historical wrongs. But West says it has not yet come to terms with how it has forever transformed Sámi spirituality.

“Christianity in general brought this hierarchical and linear view of the world that was very different from the Sámi cosmic vision, that was pluralistic,” she said. “They were forced to think differently of the world, of their ancestors, of their practices, that were labelled as pagan and backward.”

Some Christian Sámi have managed to reconcile these identities within themselves. Nilla and Nik Märak, two sisters from Jokkmokk, learned from their father, Johan, a renowned Sámi priest, who broke barriers by bringing joiking into the church for the first time.

“He used to say, ‘God was with the Sámi before the church,'” Nik said with a laugh.

“He knew that by … being a minister in the church, and bringing the two worlds together, he could, just by his presence, actually go quite a long way [toward] reconciliation,” Nilla said.

For Nilla, who handed out communion wafers at Wednesday’s service in Uppsala, the church’s recognition of past wrongs is an important step in and of itself.

“A huge part of reconciliation, and the healing that will come, we hope … is to realize that there has been damage done,” she said. “The Sámi religion has been damaged, and the Sámi soul has been damaged.”

Wednesday’s service included eight concrete commitments to reverse the historic erasure of Sámi culture, meant to counter early perceptions among Sámi that public apologies, like those in Canada, would be merely performative.

Among them are pledges to preach in the Sámi language, educate congregations about past crimes and make Sámi traditions a more visible part of Christian worship.

“I hope that the Sámi people really trust the Church of Sweden, that it’s for real, that we want Sámi spirituality as part of the church,” said Bishop Åsa Nyström, whose Luleå diocese covers the northernmost third of Sweden and includes many Sámi communities. “It is so important the Sámi people can have priests and deacons … from their own people.”

State absent

Some say there is still more the church could do. Northern dioceses like Nyström’s derive income from vast forests they manage. But Åsa Larsson Blind, vice-president of the transnational Saami Council, says they do not pursue international certifications that would require co-management with the Sámi.

To critics, the greatest shortcoming of Wednesday’s church apology may be that the Swedish government was nowhere to be seen.

“It’s only the church doing the work,” said Nilla Märak. “The Swedish government is doing nothing. They’re barely even recognizing that there is a need for a reconciliation process.”

Many of the crimes documented by the church were committed in service of a colonizing Swedish state, which sought to push Sámi people off profitable land and divide them with borders.

Yet the state’s own reconciliation process has barely begun. First discussed more than 15 years ago, the Swedish government only this month announced a truth commission, which will be focused primarily on fact-finding over its four-year mandate.

“It’s very, very important, but it isn’t a reconciliation process,” said Nyström.

Meanwhile, the Swedish government continues to fight Sámi reindeer herders in court for the right to build mines and power plants on their lands. It has refused to ratify international conventions recognizing the rights of Indigenous people.

A landmark Supreme Court decision in the Sámi village of Girjas appears to have established a duty to consult with Sámi people. But the government continues to interpret it narrowly.

“They are dodging the whole issue,” said Larsson Blind. “And by not addressing the issues, they are letting business as usual … just go on.”

As part of its evidence in court, the government’s representative read an 1884 statement that said Sámi herders live “on a less cultured level” and must “give way to the more civilized people.”

Two ministries within the Swedish government responsible for Sámi issues declined CBC requests for comment.

Making an ally of the church

Many of those present at Wednesday’s service hope the apology will be a turning point for the church, making it a crucial ally in the push for restitution from the government.

“I think that the church having the platform and the voice in Sweden that they have, they can actually play a huge part in this,” said Larsson Blind.

Within the church, meanwhile, the long and difficult work begins to regain trust with Sámi Christians and their communities.

“In some time … the [Sámi people may] take this apology and forgive the church,” said Inga, the Sámi church council’s chair. “But this is not the right time for that.”

Source: Long suppressed and forcibly assimilated, Sámi people in Sweden get an apology 30 years in the making

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The power of Indigenous diplomacy as a strategic asset for Australia | The Strategist

2021/11/23 Leave a comment

Of interest with some parallels and lessons for Canada:

International relations sometimes seems like a game that’s all about controlling and asserting simplistic national-power narratives without acknowledging the complexity of each nation’s stories.

But the key to effective public diplomacy is moving from monologue to dialogue, which means knowing when to speak and when to listen. In Australia, this begins with listening to, and reckoning with, the nation’s Indigenous history and projecting that into the international public sphere.

Indigenous diplomacy needs to be seen as an asset in Australia’s strategic toolkit.

‘International interest in Indigenous culture is very high and people see it as unique,’ says Australia’s first Indigenous ambassador, Damien Miller, in an interview with ASPI. ‘It’s a natural part of our soft power.’

Miller belongs to the Gangulu people, traditional custodians of land in Central Queensland’s Dawson and Callide valleys. His grandmother moved to Rockhampton after the 1987 Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act nullified the political and civil rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In the 1960s his father moved to Brisbane, where Miller grew up.

This painful part of Australia’s history reverberates into the present. There are distinct challenges in reconciling these elements in the national story, and Australia has its detractors globally over its treatment of its Indigenous citizens.

Miller acknowledges, but also challenges, these views: ‘Some have very outdated views of our nation based on cherry-picking the most negative aspects of Australian history. But I would say that this bears no resemblance to the reality on the ground.’

It’s important to tell the whole complex and rich story of Australia—the parts where we succeed and the parts where we stumble, especially in relation to the Indigenous experience.

When we do this, says Miller, ‘Australia’s Indigenous diplomacy is a way of showing the world an open, mature country that can explore the light and the shade of our history.’

A world awash with disinformation has shown how important ideas are. Australia traditionally thinks of soft power as education, sport and culture. Those elements are important, but there’s a harder edge to appreciate.

In the context of the grey zone, where information warfare targeting the political culture and reputation of nations is a key tactic, having a strong narrative about national identity, values and history becomes ever more important.

In Miller’s view, having a compelling story to tell about Australia is a critical element of national power. In his work as minister-counselor for strategic communications at Australia’s Washington embassy, he talks about three distinct chapters of our national story.

The first is our unique Indigenous heritage. ‘I’m just so proud of our Indigenous culture—60,000 years of relationship and stewardship between culture and the environment—it’s an incredible story to tell the world.

‘The second chapter is our European heritage, which brought new ideas and values that eventually grew into a vibrant democratic political culture embracing the rule of law domestically and internationally.

‘The third thing I emphasise is our multiculturalism,’ says Miller. ‘Australia is one of the most successful and unified multicultural nations in history and it’s getting more so over time. It’s this story that makes us so competitive, for example, in attracting the best and brightest around the world to our skilled migration program.’

Key to this narrative is how Indigenous Australia is changing, he says. ‘I talk about Indigenous youth graduating from high school, increasing numbers going to university and forging professional paths, and those re-embracing traditional lifestyles, going into business, becoming strong members of civil society.’

This story of education and empowerment is reflected internationally, with transnational Indigenous civil-society networks on the front lines of global systemic crises from Covid-19 to climate change.

It’s important to note that indigenous peoples have ownership, use or management rightsover more than 25% of the world’s land surface and 37% of all remaining ‘natural’ lands. Australian Indigenous interests own or exercise a degree of legal control over close to 80% of the Northern Australian landmass, and considerable areas of sea country.

Indigenous expertise is crucial to building resilience to climate change and preserving the world’s remaining biodiversity. And the transnational, collaborative, non-state-bound nature of indigenous diplomatic networks demonstrates the type of diplomacy the global community will need to manage future crises more effectively.

Miller points to the Kimberley Land Council’s savannah-burning carbon projects, which embrace Indigenous grassfire techniques and have been trialled in Botswana. The program generates around $20 million worth of Australian carbon credit units annually.

Such Indigenous ecological approaches will only become more important. Degradation of indigenous land rights often goes with the catastrophic degradation of carbon sinks like the Amazon Basin. The survival of indigenous communities might be intimately linked to limiting the damage associated with worst-case climate scenarios.

Their ownership of a quarter of the world’s land means indigenous communities are crucial in more conventional geopolitical terms. They often stand at the nexus of resource exploitation, political conflict and economic competition.

On one level, indigenous peoples suffer from similar issues of dispossession, underdevelopment, unemployment, drug abuse, youth suicide and structural discrimination.

On another, international indigenous networks have grown institutionally sophisticated. They’re  embedded in multilateral politics and run media organisations, businesses and sovereign wealth funds with substantial capital and asset holdings. In the United Nations system, important forums for indigenous issues include the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Indigenous groups were a big presence at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

Indigenous geopolitics is also regionally significant. Of the 500 million indigenous people in 90 countries, 70% live in Asia.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Indigenous diplomacy agenda, launched in May 2021, is timely. It has four main pillars: shaping international norms and standards to benefit indigenous peoples, maximising opportunities for indigenous peoples in a globalised world, promoting sustainable development for all indigenous peoples, and deploying Indigenous Australian diplomats to advance Australia’s national interests.

The agenda came out of DFAT’s Indigenous peoples strategy 2015–2019, launched by departmental secretary Peter Varghese in 2015. DFAT has used elements of it for decades, says Miller, working through human rights forums in the UN, in DFAT’s human resources policies, and in its promotion of Indigenous voices overseas.

The agenda consolidates and elevates Indigenous diplomacy as a key element of our national diplomacy. Australia, says Miller, is a global leader in this area, along with Canada and New Zealand.

On various postings, Miller has spoken about Australia’s unique reconciliation movement, Indigenous policy and governance models. DFAT and the National Indigenous Australian Agency discuss Indigenous issues as part of their regular bilateral engagement with the US, Canadian and New Zealand governments. He says Australia would like to do more with the US indigenous community and scholars, particularly on economic governance.

Public health is key to supporting social and economic wellbeing, says Miller, noting that Australia has leading-edge Indigenous networks doing community health work that emphasises place-based solutions while building strong partnerships with governments, corporates and not-for-profits.

Australia’s Indigenous nations have their own traditions of relationship-building and diplomacy. Miller says northern Australian Indigenous peoples had historical relationships based on trade and culture with regional indigenous populations—for example, between Torres Strait Islanders and Papua New Guineans and between the people of Arnhem Land and Indonesia’s Macassans.

Miller says these traditions and cultural values have always informed his work as a diplomat. He uses the example of the Gangalu people, who are passionate about organising and promoting community welfare and partnering with others to find solutions.

‘The ancientness of the Indigenous story in Australia gives you a certain perspective: respect for elders, the importance of deep listening, respect for the heritage and stories of others, the importance of finding common ground, being deeply engaged in community life, giving back and showing generosity of spirit.’

Source: The power of Indigenous diplomacy as a strategic asset for Australia | The Strategist

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Boswell: The dark flip side of Canada’s oldest English coin

2021/11/15 Leave a comment

Good reminder to be more inclusive in reporting such discoveries and include the historical context:

The discovery in Newfoundland of what appears to be the oldest English coin ever found in Canada certainly does “spark the imagination,” as a provincial government press release noted this week.

But there’s also been a failure of imagination in communicating the significance of this 525-year-old artifact dug up at Cupids Cove Plantation Provincial Historic Site, settled in 1610 after a series of English expeditions to the region over the previous century.

Yes, it’s true: As those heralding the find have noted, this silver relic — a two-penny piece believed to have been minted in Canterbury between 1493 and 1499 — symbolizes a landmark moment in the history of European colonization in Canada.

It features the likeness of King Henry VII, who championed English exploration of the “new founde land” and paid sailors to “serche and fynde” the fabled territory across the Atlantic, bring it under his control and spread Christianity to the New World.

However, there’s a flip side to every coin. And in this era of long-overdue reckoning with the Indigenous history of North America and the often-violent dispossession of First Peoples, the province shouldn’t trumpet the unearthing of such an archeological prize without at least acknowledging the dark side of history that’s also associated with it.

Specifically, in this case, that’s the forced retreat of the Beothuk inhabitants of Newfoundland from coastal sites in the face of the 17th-century English settlement of the island, and their eventual extinction.

The vanishing of the Beothuk is one of the great tragedies of Canadian history. Does recognition of this sorrowful outcome of East Coast colonization complicate an otherwise super-cool, time-machine tale about archeologists digging up a coin at Cupids Cove stamped with the visage of the first Tudor king?

Yes, it’s now a more complicated story. Much more. Or we could say the narrative has just become more layered, more comprehensive, more balanced — and more true.

Along with a sense of awe about the efforts of early English colonizers to gain a toehold in Canada centuries ago, we now also need to consider what the coin represented to the millennia-old Beothuk civilization, and what news of the coin’s discovery this year might mean to present-day Indigenous people.

I was a national reporter for many years with a history buff’s fascination for archeological discoveries shedding light on Canada’s past. I wrote many stories in a voice of breathless enthusiasm that, in hindsight, should have been told with a more reflective tone, a deeper awareness of what milestone moments in the European “discovery” and settlement of the Americas would have meant to the people who had already been living here for countless generations.

Granted, that’s not how such discoveries were typically framed by scholars, museums and governments in past decades. But in 2021, just weeks after Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we are in the midst of an ongoing transformation in the way historians shape stories, curators construct exhibitions, and governments manage controversies over street names, memorials and other landmarks of historical commemoration.

In short, across the country in recent years, there’s been an ever-strengthening push to bring other, overlooked, often-obliterated sides of Canada’s history into official depictions of the past.

In recent weeks, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador has taken important steps to rename “Red Indian Lake” – henceforth to be called Beothuk Lake – and erect a statue honouring the disappeared nation outside the provincial legislature.

But genuine reconciliation means going beyond symbolic gestures and reframing many of our historical narratives – at least enough to acknowledge the ultimate impact of contact-era settlements on the Indigenous peoples encountered during the European colonization of the lands that became modern Canada.

In other words, why rename a lake and build a statue to pay tribute to the Beothuk if other historical narratives perpetuate their erasure?

The old coin, to be sure, is an amazing find that tangibly, evocatively recalls “the story of the early European exploration in the province and the start of English settlement,” as Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism Minister Steve Crocker put it in Wednesday’s formal announcement.

But that’s not the only tale it tells. Celebrating the discovery of the coin and extolling its value as a long-lost, newly-found symbol of European exploration and English settlement leaves a glaring gap in the storytelling.

The province’s press release on the find — and, predictably, the subsequent news coverage — makes no mention of the fallout for the Beothuk of England’s colonization of Newfoundland. It’s like all those local history books filling the shelves of Canadian libraries that begin the biography of this county or that township with an account of the day the first white settler arrived in the place, chopped some trees and pitched a tent circa 1820 — as if First Peoples hadn’t already been there for many thousands of years.

There is a lesson here for all governments and all politicians across Canada. If they’re serious about healing relationships with the country’s Indigenous peoples, high-profile gestures of reconciliation must be matched by routine, sincere adjustments in the way they understand, frame and talk about history — especially in the context of the European age of exploration and so-called discovery.

Historians and archeologists, heritage officials and Indigenous leaders, teachers and multiculturalism advocates, municipalities and historical societies — these and many other individuals and groups in Canada are already engaged in difficult discussions about how to rewrite and rejuvenate the nation’s history, to rediscover the many voices and experiences that have traditionally been pushed into the shadows of the country’s past.

The last known Beothuk, a young woman named Shawnadithit, died in 1829. Her aunt, Demasduwit, survived an 1819 kidnapping attempt that left her husband and newborn child dead. But she died in 1820 after helping to create a record of the Beothuk language, and a painted portrait of her held by Library and Archives Canada remains an iconic image of a lost people.

The Newfoundland discovery of the coin stamped with a 15th-century king’s face is exciting and important. But it also illuminates a largely forgotten face of Canada’s history.

Randy Boswell is a Carleton University journalism professor and a former national reporter with Postmedia News.

Source: The dark flip side of Canada’s oldest English coin

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Douglas Todd: What do Indigenous voices say about immigration?

2021/10/26 Leave a comment

Some interesting voices. A more comprehensive survey would be of interest:

As a First Nations leader, what would you think of Canada’s immigration policy?

“It’s a bit late to ask that question,” answers Tsawwassen First Nations Chief Ken Baird, with a wry smile.

Indeed, Canada’s Indigenous people have never really been asked how they feel about immigration policy, despite experiencing wave after wave of newcomers.

A small number of First Nations leaders over the years, however, have said they want more influence in shaping immigration. There came a point more than a decade ago when the Assembly of First Nations resolved to “freeze all immigration coming into Canada until the federal government addresses, commits, and delivers resources to improve housing conditions, education, health and employment in First Nations communities.”

But not much came of the Assembly’s demand. Immigration policy in Canada continues to be made mostly behind closed doors, particularly in the Prime Minister’s Office.

First Nations are often said to be in a double-bind when it comes to the issue of large-scale immigration, which has shaped Canada more than most nations.

“Regarding immigration, Aboriginal peoples are caught between a rock and a hard place,” academics Bonita Lawrence, a member of the Mi’kmaq Nation, and Enaskhi Dua have said. Either Indigenous people become implicated in anti-immigration rhetoric, they said, “or they support struggles of people of colour that fail to take seriously the reality of ongoing colonization.”

Outstanding questions are many: How does increasing Indigenous self-determination fit with immigration? And how does it connect to official multiculturalism, which supports the thriving of all of Canada’s subcultures? Should an umbrella organization for the country’s 1.6 million Indigenous people help set immigration levels, as Quebec does?

While the Tsawwassen First Nation’s elected chief says Indigenous people, like others, have a wide range of views about immigration, he is personally mostly sanguine about it.

“I’m all for people who want to come here and work hard and build themselves a life and have good family values. And 99 per cent of immigrants do. And I think that’s pretty admirable,” Baird said.

While Baird is among the First Nations leaders who don’t intend to push on immigration issues, University of B.C. sociologist Rima Wilkes and colleagues have made public presentations in which they ask questions about immigration and Indigenous peoples. Their questions are designed to urge Ottawa to take First Nations perspectives more seriously.

“What does it mean to settle people on someone else’s land?” Wilkes asks in a presentation. “Why is there ‘consultation’ (with First Nations) on natural resources such as mining, oil and gas and timber, but not on the human resources such as immigration policy? What about real decision-making?”

Veteran B.C. Indigenous leader Bill Wilson, who helped found the First Nations Summit, has said he is open to most forms of immigration, particularly for refugees.

When asked about immigration, the member of northern Vancouver Island’s Kwak’wala-speaking peoples, who is also father of former Liberal cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, told a story about the late Vancouver Sun aboriginal affairs reporter Ron Rose, with whom he became close friends.

“It may have very well been Ron Rose asking me the same question (in the 1980s): ‘What do I think about immigration and the people coming in?’” said the blunt-talking hereditary chief. “I said to him, ‘Well, at least the colour is getting better. He and I laughed. And he said, ‘You’re an a–hole.’ And then we moved on.”

The citizenship exam that is required of all new immigrants, Wilson believes, should include more on Indigenous history in Canada.

“I don’t have any problem with people coming to this country. But what I object to is they’re not required to understand the history,” he said. “Hopefully they could start to embrace some of the laws we are finally resorting to as a country in terms of (Indigenous peoples’) relationship to the land and the water and the sea resources.”

The First Nations lawyer believes a portion of new immigrants, the majority of whom are now non-white, “are basically oblivious to Indigenous issues” at the same time they are becoming more influential. “WASPS are obviously becoming a minority and losing a great deal of their power.”

Baird, who worked as a fisher and water-system specialist before becoming chief of the self-governing Tsawwassen First Nation, believes the coming together of Indigenous people with early settlers and immigrants has “turned us all into minorities in a way. And that’s a good thing.”

Although some wonder whether Canada’s official multiculturalism policy ignores the special status of First Nations, Baird said, “I don’t see a problem with it. At the end of the day, we all want to be treated equal and have the same rights and prosperous lives. And your colour and blood and race and religion shouldn’t matter. That’s part of being in a free country.”

Wilson values bringing in more refugees, but he questions the country’s immigrant-investor programs, both national and provincial, which have urged wealthy foreign nationals to gain Canadian passports by promising to divert money into the economy.

Wilson strongly opposed such “selective citizenship,” saying “money-backed immigration is not sincere and it’s not necessary.” But “accepting refugees makes sense,” he said, because their inclusion “is based on need.”

Although Wilson generally agrees First Nations should get more say in immigration policy, especially over their own traditional territories, he is not sure how that would work.

“How do you implement that? We have a multiplicity of tribes. There are 27 separate tribes in the province of B.C. alone.”

When it comes to questions of Canada’s Indigenous peoples and immigration, the conversation is only beginning.

Source: Douglas Todd: What do Indigenous voices say about immigration?

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Indigenous public servants pursue class-action lawsuit against feds for harassment, discrimination in workplace

2021/09/30 Leave a comment

On the heels of the class action lawsuit initiated by Black public servants (my sense of looking at employment equity and public service employment survey data is that disparities are greater with respect to Indigenous public servants).

Likely coincidental, but announcement happening in parallel to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation:

Systemic racism in federal Indigenous departments and agencies has led to human rights and Charter violations, allege two First Nations public servants—one current, one former—pursuing a multi-million-dollar class-action lawsuit against the federal government. 

A statement of claim—the opening salvo for a possible class-action suit—outlining the experiences of lead plaintiffs Yvette Zentner and Letitia Wells was filed with the Federal Court in Calgary on Sept. 14. The pair are represented by lawyer Mathew Farrell of Guardian Law Group LLP. 

Ms. Zentner is a member of the Siksika Nation in Alberta and has been working for Indian Oil and Gas Canada (IOGC), a special operating agency within Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), since 1997. Ms. Wells is from Kainaiwa First Nation, a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy from the Treaty 7 Territory, and is a former contract employee of IOGC, where she worked from September 2015 until the end of March 2020. 

Both women say they experienced harassment and discrimination at work as a result of their Aboriginal identities, including through belittling gestures, microaggressions, racist remarks, and denial of fair advancement opportunities, but felt disempowered from reporting their experiences through internal processes and were denied “Indigenous practices and cultural methods of conflict resolution.”

The proposed class action, first reported by APTN News, is on behalf of all former employees of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada and all current and former employees of Crown-Indigenous Relations Canada (CIRNAC), ISC, or IOGC who experienced harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, culture, ethnicity, or gender.

The claim outlines that Ms. Zentner has “frequently” been denied training for advancement offered to others and has been denied “promotions for which she was qualified,” with, in one case, the non-Aboriginal family friend of someone she has filed two formal harassment complaints against being hired instead. Both complaints against that individual were found not to meet the threshold for harassment—one having been handled by the individual’s superior, rather than an independent third party—after which, the statement of claim describes that the person laughed at Ms. Zentner at work. 

Numerous complaints of harassment and abusive conduct by the same individual prompted a 2014 Workplace Assessment, reads the statement of claim, but while meeting with the third party hired to conduct it—who was later awarded a multi-year contract at the IOGC—no notes were taken and Ms. Zentner was allegedly told it was because they’d “already heard it before.” That assessment “was vague and resulted in no meaningful change,” and the individual who was the subject of complaints was given authority over the “steps of action taken to remedy the harassment.”

In another instance in 2016, someone found guilty of harassing Ms. Zentner by an external company was later promoted within IOGC. 

Ms. Zentner, through the statement of claim, reports having been “threatened with legal action in slander for bringing harassment concerns to the human resources manager.”  

“The harassment and dismissal of her complaints have taken a serious toll on Yvette’s physical and mental health, and she has experienced significant depression as a result,” reads the statement of claim. 

Ms. Wells is a single mother of two and is currently studying a double major in law and society and international Indigenous studies at the University of Calgary. She is also a survivor of domestic and sexual abuse, she told The Hill Times. 

As outlined in the statement of claim, she said she believes she lost her contract as “retaliation for speaking up about her experiences of harassment at the IOGC.” She reports having “frequently” had her “intelligence questioned”; facing “microaggressions, belittling physical gestures” and overhearing “racist language at the IOGC”; and being “singled out as a victim of aggressive micromanagement.” 

In one instance outlined in the claim, Ms. Wells experienced a “trauma flashback when her supervisor aggressively grabbed her arm in an effort to physically remove her from her cubical to have a private meeting in a board room.” An unofficial complaint over this incident “and the surrounding harassment she experienced” resulted in “no meaningful change.” 

Days after a complaint was launched by a superior over the harassment Ms. Wells was experiencing, she was demoted from her position “as retaliation for filing a complaint,” alleges the claim, and when her contract was terminated roughly two months later—after she had gone on sick leave—“no reason” was indicated. The claim also alleges that Ms. Wells “was denied promotions because she resisted sexual advancements by” a superior.

“The assault, ongoing harassment, and dismissal of her complaints have taken a serious toll on Letitia’s health, and she has suffered serious mental health consequences, including suicidal ideation as a result,” reads the statement of claim.

In an interview with The Hill Times last week, Ms. Wells spoke about her experiences and her decision to pursue a class-action suit. 

She said when she left the IOGC, she had intended to “walk away in peace,” but continued to reflect on her experiences and pray for guidance.

Last April, she was contacted by the APTN’s Brett Forester, who was working on a story about Indigenous public servants’ experiences. The resulting piece, “Death by a thousand cuts,” included interviews with “several former and current employees, many of them First Nations women,” who described a “work environment frequently marred by systemic racism, sexism, bullying, insidious revenge and fear,” reads the piece. 

After it went public, Ms. Wells said Indigenous people across Canada contacted her to thank her for speaking out and share stories of their own. Among them was Ms. Zentner—the pair were acquainted from their time working for the IOGC—and it was then that they decided to find a lawyer and pursue a class-action case, driven by their experiences and “the failure of the grievance processes within” the federal government.

“Within that company, we have seen the violence that we’ve endured, the harm that we’ve endured, the microaggressions, the micromanagements, the piling of the exec team, the tactics of toxic authority,” said Ms. Wells. “It’s a poisonous environment for authentic Indigenous people, and all we’ve ever wanted to do was make a change—make a change and contribute to the federal government, and help them reach reconciliation. And they’re failing at it, they don’t understand it.” 

While she’s now gone from the company and “safe,” Ms. Wells said it’s about “the safety of those that are still in there and the hardships they’re continuing to go through.” 

In May, the plaintiffs began to compile the experiences of other current and former Indigenous public servants as evidence of the systemic harassment and discrimination faced within the federal government and now have “well over two dozen” such accounts. 

Specifically, the statement of claim argues their section 15(1) Charter equality right was unjustifiably infringed “through discriminatory harassment which directly and adversely affects Aboriginal and female workers.” 

Moreover, it argues the federal government owed a duty of care, including to “maintain a workplace that is safe and free of harassment,” which was breached, and that multiple sections of the Canadian Human Rights Act have been breached, including for “differentiating against employees based on their Indigeneity and gender,” “limiting advancement opportunities” based on Indigeneity and gender, and for harassment based on “gender, race, colour, and ancestry.” 

It lays out that they are seeking unspecified damages and $25-million in punitive damages. 

But beyond that, Ms. Wells said she wants to see Indigenous-led, trauma-informed “safety outlets placed within the federal government for Indigenous people to turn to,” something she said wasn’t available to her.

“I felt dismissed right from the top. I felt that nobody understood what I was trying to say because they didn’t carry the inter-related trauma experience … to understand the microaggressions and how they triggered me, and the continuous attacks after that from a hierarchy of management,” said Ms. Wells. 

“Those grievance processes aren’t there to support you, they’re there to support the government,” she said earlier in the interview.

“The federal government has absolutely no safety outlets for Indigenous people who govern themselves by Indigenous laws to turn to.”

The federal government’s response

The Hill Times reached out to all three ministers’ offices last week, as well as the Treasury Board Secretariat, seeking a response to the allegations outlined in the Sept. 14 statement of claim and an update on the “thorough review” that had been pledged. Questions to the minister’s offices were directed to their departments’ shared media relations team.

Danielle Geary, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, said “senior officials” at CIRNAC and ISC “began the dialogue of developing a Deputy Minister Action Plan to address the alleged racism, harassment, and discrimination against Indigenous employees” in April, the “groundwork” for which is being led by the Indigenous Employee Secretariat, which serves both departments “in collaboration with the Indigenous Voices Council and sector heads.” No deadlines have been “imposed” on this effort, which is instead “working with an urgency, while at the same time recognizing that an opportunity to engage with Indigenous employees must be provided.” 

CIRNAC, ISC, and IOGC have developed their own workplace harassment and violence prevention policies in compliance with Canada Labour Code regulations which came into force in January 2021, she said, and between March and August of this year an “initial assessment was conducted with all sectors” of the departments to “identify the risk factors, internal and external to the workplace, that may contribute to harassment and violence in the workplace,” including identifying preventative mitigation measures. 

Ms. Geary highlighted the Centre for Integrity, Values and Conflict Resolution as a “resource available” to all departmental staff, including employees of the IOGC, which “can provide support and explore options” for those who have “experienced or witnessed workplace harassment or violence.” The government is also “actively advancing the creation of an Ombudsperson Office in order to help employees and managers navigate existing systems, services and resources, and provide impartial advice on options for resolution to further supplement existing services and resources,” she wrote. 

She also highlighted the ISC’s launch of a task force on diversity and inclusion, equity, and anti-racism last May, and noted that CIRNAC and ISC have developed Indigenous cultural competency learning policies informed by a First Nations expert advisory committee.

“Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), and Indian Oil and Gas Canada (IOGC) are committed to the health, safety and well-being of all employees. As departmental leaders within the federal government when it comes to advancing reconciliation and issues impacting the lives of Indigenous peoples, we recognize that discrimination against Indigenous employees is unacceptable and must be addressed,” reads the statement. 

“Harassment and discrimination can take many forms and can have significant repercussions. We take all allegations of harassment and discrimination very seriously,” she wrote, noting later that “senior management is committed to continued discussions with employees to address any employee concerns raised and further build a supportive environment, adapted to employee needs and experiences.” 

Mr. Farrell told The Hill Times he expects further documents related to the certification process—determining whether the court will hear the case as a class-action suit—will be filed in the coming months. That includes a certification record from the plaintiffs, laying out detailed evidence from the many stories collected.

Hundreds of current and former Black federal public servants are already pursuing a proposed multi-million-dollar class-action suit against the federal government. Launched in December 2020, it alleges the government has failed to uphold the Charter rights of Black employees by failing to provide a harassment- and discrimination-free workplace and by actively excluding Black public servants.

Nicholas Marcus Thompson, a spokesperson for Black Class Action Lawsuit, said of the proposed Indigenous lawsuit: “We welcome this legal action and we are open to working with this group and providing any support for the Indigenous community, which has been left behind for way too long and it must be addressed now.”

Source: https://www.hilltimes.com/2021/09/29/indigenous-public-servants-pursue-class-action-lawsuit-against-feds-for-harassment-discrimination-in-workplace/319641?utm_source=Subscriber+-++Hill+Times+Publishing&utm_campaign=b6d6e8ec00-Todays-Headlines-Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8edecd9364-b6d6e8ec00-90755301&mc_cid=b6d6e8ec00&mc_eid=685e94e554

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GSS – Social Identity, 2020: A snapshot of pride in Canadian achievements among designated groups

2021/09/29 Leave a comment

Some of the more interesting and revealing findings for me:

  • Recent immigrants have more favourable views than longer term immigrants;
  • Children of visible minorities have less favourable views than than their parents;
  • Visible minorities have more pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society than non visible minorities, with differences between groups;
  • Visible minorities have more pride in how democracy works in Canada;
  • Indigenous peoples have the least pride in how Canada treats all groups and how democracy works; and,
  • Young people have less pride in how Canada treats all groups and how democracy works.

In one sense, this represents integration, as the initial reactions change with the lived experience and immigrants over time, along with their children, move closer to the non-immigrant, no-visible minority population:

“Today’s Daily article presents a snapshot of results from the General Social Survey – Social Identity (GSS SI). This first release focuses on the pride that Canadians feel for selected Canadian achievements and how it is similar or different across diverse population groups. The survey asked respondents about their pride in 13 different Canadian achievements. For this analysis, three Canadian achievements were chosen because of their relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic. These are pride in Canada’s health care system, pride in the way democracy works in Canada and pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society.

As part of the data pillar of Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy, Canadian Heritage sponsored an oversample of six population groups designated as visible minorities for the latest cycle of the GSS SI. This oversample will allow data users to further disaggregate data to better represent the unique experiences of different groups of Canadians.

Canadians are most proud of Canada’s health care system

At a time when Canada’s front-line workers were treating COVID-19 patients in clinics, emergency rooms and hospitals, Canadians were most proud of their health care system. The highest share (74%) of respondents who said that they were very proud or proud of an achievement reported feeling proud of Canada’s health care system. People who belong to population groups designated as visible minorities were especially proud, with 82% reporting feeling proud of Canada’s health care system, compared with 71% of non–visible minorities. Among the different visible minority groups, Filipino (96%) and South Asian (87%) respondents were the most likely to report being very proud or proud of Canada’s health care system.

Almost half of Canadians report feeling proud of Canada’s treatment of all groups in society

COVID-19 shone a light on the systemic inequities that many people in Canadian society experience—the health, social and economic impacts of the pandemic were not experienced equally by all Canadians. In addition, movements such as Black Lives Matter brought greater attention to the systemic inequities and racism faced by Black Canadians and other population groups designated as visible minorities. Against this backdrop, 49% of the population expressed pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society. However, there were differences among Canadians who belong to population groups designated as visible minorities; 64% of respondents who belong to population groups designated as visible minorities felt pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society, compared with 44% of individuals not in a visible minority group. Canadian-born respondents who belong to population groups designated as visible minorities were less likely than respondents in groups designated as visible minorities who immigrated to Canada to report pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society (45% compared with 68%).

It is important to note that there are differences between population groups designated as visible minorities. A lower proportion of Black (52%) and Chinese (57%) respondents expressed pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society. This contrasts with West Asian (77%), Filipino (73%), Arab (72%) and South Asian (70%) respondents, who were more likely to report pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society. This could be partly attributable to experiences with discrimination, which were particularly high for some population groups designated as visible minorities during the pandemic. For example, crowdsourcing data collected in August 2020 by Statistics Canada indicated that Korean (64%), Chinese (60%) and Black (55%) participants were more likely to report experiencing discrimination or being treated unfairly during the pandemic (see the publication “Experiences of discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic“).

Chart 1  
Pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society among population groups designated as visible minorities, Canada, 2020

Chart 1: Pride in Canada's treatment of all groups in society among population groups designated as visible minorities, Canada, 2020

Men were more likely than women to report feeling pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society—52% of men compared with 46% of women. Pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society is the achievement with the biggest gender difference, with only minor differences between men and women for the other Canadian achievements included in the survey.

Canadians are generally proud of the way democracy works in Canada, and this is especially the case for many people who belong to population groups designated as visible minorities

Almost 7 in 10 Canadians (68%) said that they felt pride in the way democracy works in Canada. This increased to close to 8 in 10 (79%) for respondents who belong to population groups designated as visible minorities, compared with 64% of those who did not belong to a visible minority group. Some visible minority groups had a high proportion of respondents reporting pride in the way democracy works in Canada, with 80% or more of West Asian, Filipino, Latin American and South Asian respondents reporting pride in this Canadian achievement.

Canadian-born respondents who belong to population groups designated as visible minorities were less likely to report pride in the way democracy works in Canada, with 65% reporting pride in this achievement, compared with 82% of respondents in groups designated as visible minorities who immigrated to Canada. Similar to Canadian-born respondents belonging to groups designated as visible minorities, 62% of Canadian-born respondents not belonging to a visible minority group were proud of the way democracy works in Canada.

Immigrants who arrived to Canada within the past five years are more likely to feel pride in how Canada treats all groups in society

Immigrant respondents (63%) were more likely than Canadian-born respondents (43%) to be proud of Canada’s treatment of all groups in society. For immigrants, pride in how Canada treats all groups in society is connected to the time since their arrival in Canada; the longer they have been in Canada, the lower their pride in how Canada treats all groups in society. Nearly 8 in 10 immigrants who arrived in Canada 5 years ago or less (78%) expressed pride in this achievement, compared with 65% of immigrants who arrived 6 to 10 years ago and 60% of immigrants who arrived more than 10 years ago. However, regardless of the time since their arrival to Canada, the immigrant population was more likely than the non-immigrant population to report pride. 

The different levels of pride between immigrant respondents and Canadian-born respondents were observed not only for how Canada treats all groups in society but also for the health care system (79% versus 72%) and the way democracy works in Canada (81% versus 62%).

Indigenous respondents also report feeling the most pride in Canada’s health care system but are less likely to report pride in how Canada treats all groups in society and the way democracy works in Canada

As with non-Indigenous respondents, Indigenous people also reported feeling the most pride in Canada’s health care system. Among the Indigenous population living off reserve, 67% were proud of Canada’s health care system. This was the case for 63% of First Nations people living off reserve and 69% of Métis. This compares with 72% of non–visible minority, non-Indigenous respondents. Because of the small number of Inuit respondents, estimates for Inuit are not available. It is important to note that the GSS SI did not collect information for people living on reserve. Thus, the information for Indigenous people reflects only the answers of respondents who live off reserve, which may be different from those of people who live on reserve.

Close to one-third (31%) of Indigenous people living off reserve reported feeling pride in how Canada treats all groups in society, compared with 43% of non–visible minority, non-Indigenous Canadians. Indigenous people were also less likely to report feeling pride in how democracy works in Canada. Overall, just over half (52%) of Indigenous people living off reserve felt proud of the way democracy works (46% of First Nations people and 56% of Métis), compared with 63% of non–visible minority, non-Indigenous Canadians.

These results partly reflect the historical and ongoing impacts of colonization, as well as the long-standing historical inequities experienced by Indigenous people in Canada, including social, democratic and economic inequities. As well, other achievements not listed in the survey may be more relevant to Indigenous respondents.

A slightly lower percentage of persons with disabilities report pride in Canada’s health care system 

Persons with disabilities were most proud of Canada’s health care system (72%), lower than what was reported by persons without disabilities (76%). This could be attributable to barriers that persons with disabilities experience trying to access health care services. For example, slightly over three-quarters (77%) of crowdsourcing participants with long-term conditions or disabilities reported that they required a health care service but were unable to access it because of the COVID-19 pandemic (see the publication The changes in health and well-being of Canadians with long-term conditions or disabilities since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic). Results are based on participants in the 2020 crowdsourcing initiative Impacts of COVID-19 on Canadians – Living with Long-term Conditions and Disabilities (Impacts of COVID-19 on Canadians: Data Collection Series).

Persons with disabilities were also less likely than persons without disabilities to report pride in the way democracy works in Canada (64% compared with 71%). Regarding pride in the treatment of all groups in society, persons with disabilities were less likely than persons without disabilities to express pride in this achievement (43% compared with 53%). Many persons with disabilities have experienced barriers in society, including in the workplace, or have experienced discrimination. For example, almost half (48%) of participants with disabilities in the 2020 crowdsourcing initiative Impacts of COVID-19 on Canadians – Living with Long-term Conditions and Disabilities reported that they were discriminated against during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared with 25% of those without disabilities (see the publication The changes in health and well-being of Canadians with long-term conditions or disabilities since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic).

Younger Canadians are less likely to be proud of Canada’s treatment of all groups in society and the way democracy works

While similar proportions of Canadians of all ages were proud of the health care system, Canadians aged 15 to 34 were less likely than those aged 35 and older to report pride in the way democracy works in Canada and pride in Canada’s treatment of all groups in society. While 62% of Canadians aged 15 to 34 reported pride in the way democracy works, 70% of those aged 35 and older reported feeling proud. Canadians aged 15 to 34 were also less likely than older Canadians to be proud of the way all groups in society are treated, with 43% of 15- to 34-year-olds saying they were proud of this, compared with 53% of people aged 35 to 54 and 50% of people aged 55 and older. “

Source: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210928/dq210928c-eng.htm?CMP=mstatcan

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