Blog Link: Media Indigena
August 30, 2010
Check out Media Indigena, a collaborative blog by 7 indigenous contributors. The blog focuses on indigenous issues from around the world and topics range from politics, culture and the environment. A couple of their recent posts focus on the election of Australia’s first Aboriginal MP and Stephen Harper’s visit to the Canadian Arctic. They’ve also posted about the Indian Residential School system and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For example, check out Sorry is Right and Reflections of a Residential School Survivor.
A Dialogue in the Calgary Herald
August 9, 2010
On July 30, 2010, the Calgary Herald published a short article entitled “Residential Schools Generate Anger But Also Pride,” written by Lea Meadows. It told the story of Meadows’ parents, Harry Meadows and Elsie McLaren Meadows who worked as teachers at Indian Residential Schools in Manitoba. Elsie was also a student at an Indian Residential School and it was her positive experience there that inspired her to become a teacher. Meadows writes against painting everyone who worked at the schools as an abuser. She also notes that the word “survivor” may not be the best or most suitable term for all former students. She writes:
I do not deny there were people in those schools who greatly harmed students. We all must speak out against such abuse. But to label the schools themselves and all who worked there as evil, and to describe everyone who attended a school as a “survivor” is facile — and it dishonours those who were truly abused and did have something horrific to survive.
I have wondered about the way IRS history will be told. Undoubtedly, it is a complicated history, and trying to create one cohesive narrative may disallow for this complexity to come through. In addition, I think Meadows brings up an interesting point about the term “survivors.” It is a term that is commonly used for former students, but I wonder if everyone identifies this way. And I wonder too if its association with other historical traumas empowers or disempowers its use.
In an article entitled, “Many Threads are Woven Into the Fabric of Truth,” published on August 5, 2010, Justice Murray Sinclair responded to Meadows’ piece. He wrote:
We are grateful for people such as Meadows, who speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Their memories and contribution to history will be preserved. The input of former staff is of tremendous value because their number is declining. Each story lost to us represents an experience that will be missing from the public record, diminishing our ability to reflect the reality of the schools and assess their ongoing impact. While the TRC has heard many experiences of unspeakable abuse, we have been heartened by testimonies which affirm the dedication and compassion of committed educators who sought to nurture the children in their care. These experiences must also be heard.
I’m glad to see that this dialogue is happening in public and that the Commission is welcoming differing viewpoints and memories to come forward.
Recently, I’ve been reading about the role that indigenous literature can play in the process of
reconciliation in Canada. I’m currently finishing Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing where she explores the work of Aboriginal authors including Basil Johnston, Maria Campbell and Beatrice Culleton Mosionier. But this post will focus on a short story from the collection, Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada’s Past (published in 2005).
Although the book is filled with excellent writing, the narrative that I found most striking was Thomas King’s piece entitled “Coyote and the Enemy Aliens.” Here, King tells a tale of a coyote who becomes involved in rounding up “enemy aliens.” The story is set during the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. As the definition of enemy alien changes in the story, King illustrates the fickle nature of dividing people into categories of “us” and “them.”
I have been curious for some time about how the process of redress for historical injustices in Canada has taken shape. In particular, the demand for an apology and reparation for Japanese Canadians interned during the second world war is one that I have followed closely. And I have often wondered how to relate these two experiences (of Japanese Canadians and Aboriginal peoples) to each other without erasing the important differences. Thomas King’s work in his short story is impressive in this regard. He uses the familiar character of the trickster coyote to tie the two historical narratives together. In his foreword to the story, he explains his intentions:
“I know the story of the Japanese internment in Canada. I know it as most Canadians know it.
In pieces.
From a distance.
But whenever I hear the story, I think about Indians, for the treatment the Canadian government afforded Japanese people during the Second World War is strikingly similar to the treatment that the Canadian government has always afforded Native people, and whenever I hear either of these stories, a strange thing happens.
I think of the other.
I’m not suggesting that Native people have suffered the way the Japanese suffered or that the Japanese suffered the way Native people have. I’m simply suggesting that hatred and greed produce much the same sort of results, no matter who we practice on” (158).
King’s story captured my imagination. Not only because it is a well-told tale, but because it opens up a way of creating a particular type of Canadian narrative, one that incorporates many voices while maintaining ties to an indigenous mode of story-telling. It also works to close a gap between seemingly disparate histories, drawing attention to similarities rather than differences. I recommend the book in general, and this story in particular.
Above: an image of the closing event at the Canadian TRC’s first national gathering.
Below: a list of some of the coverage of the Canadian Truth Commission’s first national gathering in Winnipeg. (Thanks to Viola, Leonard and Harmony for some these links!)
Truth and Reconciliation Walkers Headed for Winnipeg (Wawatay News Online)
Strahl Breaks Down at Hearings Into Residential Schools (Global Winnipeg)
Ottawa Makes Own Gesture of Healing at Truth and Reconciliation Event (Edmonton Journal)
Minister Strahl Delivers A Speech on the Truth and Reconciliation National Event (IsumaTV)
Residential Schools Will Be Nixed from Indian Act (The Vancouver Province)
Residential School Stories Move From Shadows (CBC.ca)
Ottawa Intends to Amend Indian Act (Financial Post)
Commission Will Hear Residential School Truths that Will ‘Heal Us All’ (Metro)
Residential Schools: Stories to Tell and Re-tell (The Globe and Mail)
Truth and Reconciliation (video clips covering the first national gathering – The National)
Harbinger of Truth Sees Hope for Future (Edmonton Journal)
Declaration Adoption is ‘a step on the journey of reconciliation’ (Indian Country Today)
Pupils to Study Residential Schools (Winnipeg Free Press)
Some Former Residential School Students Struggle with Church Presence at Reconciliation Event (The Globe and Mail)
Testimonies Online – IsumaTV and Where Are the Children
March 28, 2010
IsumaTV has over twenty testimonies from former residential school students available online. You can listen to their experiences here. Given that testimonies for the Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission will largely be taken in private, it will be interesting to see how the experiences from the schools will be shared. IsumaTV and Where Are the Children are two sites making testimonies (not taken specifically for or by the IRS TRC) available online.
Canada’s Colonialism – Article at TheMarkNews.com
January 21, 2010
A short piece on Canada’s colonial history, and Prime Minister Harper’s denial of it, is available at The Mark.
Alana Lajoie O’Malley writes:
“At the G20 Summit last September, our prime minister boasted that we “have no history of colonialism.” That the leader of our country can stand in front of dignitaries from around the world and speak these words is a testament to just how far we have to go in really understanding our national history.”
Read the full piece here.
Photo by axiepics available under a Creative Commons License
Berlin! (Part 1)
November 2, 2009
I recently returned from Berlin where I was participating in the Eleventh Berlin Roundtables on Transnationality. The event, generously supported by the Irmgard Coninx Foundation, was amazing. The Foundation sponsored about 50 young scholars from around the world to participate in discussions centered around three themes: Memorials and Museums, Transitional Justice and Political Discourse. I presented my research on the IRS TRC in Canada and had the pleasure of hearing others present their work related to issues from Ghana, Cambodia, Peru, Japan, Israel, Yemin, and Cypress among others.
The Foundation also arranged for three guest lecturers:
Karl Schlögel (Professor of Eastern European History, European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder): “Divided Horizons, Divided Memories: The Year 1989 and Europe”
Albie Sachs (Judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa): “From Prison to Constitutional Court: The Changing Face of Justice in South Africa”
Daniel Libeskind (Architect, New York): “Counterpoint: The Architecture of Memory”
The lectures were great. Albie Sachs’ talk was particularly inspiring. Sachs was a freedom fighter in South Africa and during his exile in Mozambique, he survived a car bomb attack. He lost his right arm and partial vision in his eyes, but, as he said in his talk, retained his sense of humour and his will to fight. After the fall of apartheid, he returned to South Africa where President Mandela appointed him a judge on the newly formed constitutional court. After his talk, I had the opportunity to speak with him briefly – a truly generous and special man.
The Foundation has recently announced its next Call for Papers. The theme is Cultural Pluralism Revisited: Religious and Linguistic Freedoms. I encourage everyone to apply!
Next on my list: Washington, DC. I head there on Friday for the annual American Studies Association (ASA) Conference. My last conference of the year!
Coverage of the New AFN Chief
August 11, 2009
The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) elected a new Chief at the end of July. Mr. Shawn Atleo, a hereditary chief of Ahousaht First Nation, is the new, and youngest (42), AFN Chief. He identified the importance of treaty rights, continued dialogue about the legacy of the residential schools, and Aboriginal youth and education issues as primary concerns. Check out the local and national coverage:
The Globe and Mail – Alteo Elected New AFN Chief
CBC – Aboriginal Issues (includes video)
Brantford Expositor – New AFN Chief Reason For Optimism
Montreal Gazette – New AFN Chief Must Reform Organization
Update: The New Commission
June 10, 2009
As mentioned in a previous post, rumors have been circulating about the new Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Just after the one-year anniversary of its establishment, and on the eve of the anniversary of the official apology by Prime Minister Harper, the TRC confirmed that the new commission will be comprised of Justice Murray Sinclair of Manitoba, Marie Wilson, a former journalist and CBC North regional director from Yellowknife, and Wilton Littlechild, Alberta regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations. The mandate has been extended by one-year in order to make up for the time lost due to the resignations of the former commission. To read more visit: cbc.ca or the TRC website.
Given the setbacks of the first year, it may be helpful to re-visit some of the complicated issues that face the commission. Ovide Mercredi’s lecture on TVO’s Big Ideas last year could provide a good start, as could the article entitled “A Just Society? Canada’s Adventure in Truth and Reconciliation” published in Dissent by Feisal G. Mohamed. Both Mercredi and Mohamed raise questions and concerns about what kind of justice is pursued through these national commissions. In the Canadian case, these issues include how testimonies will be collected, how the commission envisions the concepts of “truth” and “reconciliation,” and the ways in which the commission may obscure other issues facing Aboriginal communities. It will be interesting to watch the coming weeks and months as the commission regroups and begins this process with renewed focus.
Semester Wrap-Up: Part 2
May 18, 2009
More reading highlights from the semester:
1) Michael Taussig’s The Nervous System
Michael Taussig explores the ways in which the combination of state-sanctioned violence and a climate of silence engender a perpetual “state of emergency,” where the chaotic is the norm. His metaphor of the nervous system works well on several levels. In terms of memory work, it evokes the non-linear way in which an individual or community remembers. It also suggests an embodiment that, as we have seen in previous readings, is an important component when theorizing trauma. In addition, he explores the concept of “writing the nervous system” and explains that it “calls for an understanding of the representation as contiguous with that being represented and not as suspended above and distant from the represented” (10). He inserts himself into this text, realizing that his own representations cannot be distanced from the represented; he blends the subject and object of study. At times, he addresses the reader explicitly, asking, “But what about people like yourself caught up in such matters? What sort of talk have you got?” and then, “What about myself, for that matter?” (29). This rhetorical technique helps to illuminate the “nervousness” in both Taussig’s content and style.
In chapter 3, he raises some interesting questions about the academic process of contextualization, positing that it has become a sort of talisman, mystified in a way that suggests its knowledge translates into a guaranteed understanding of social relations and history. Instead, Taussig proposes that social relations and history themselves are “fragile intellectual constructs posing as robust realities” (45). And that our “contextualizing gaze” (45) creates a view that is too narrow, not allowing for creative blending within and between disparate spaces and times.
2) John Jackson’s Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity
By using a diverse range of examples in the New York area, including the gentrification of Harlem, Black Jewish identity in Brooklyn and the politics of naming in hip hop, Jackson challenges ideas of racial authenticity and explores the potentials of sincerity. Jackson’s book is a foray into “autoethnographic” work. He focuses on complications and intersections, practicing a “dark reading,” where he attempts to “feel, grope, invent, even pretend the real” (67). He is offering another way of meaning-making, an interpretive strategy that recognizes the role of the interpreter in relation to the messages that are received. Anthropology, in other words, can have a dual nature, representing a complicated interaction between observed and observer.
As much as his book is about the difficulties involved in theorizing race, Jackson’s project is also a “rumination on the ethnographic project, itself a response to challenges arising from the alleged crises in representation and analysis of the late 1980s, crises that still haunt the discipline to this day” (9-10). In response to this haunting, Jackson proposes the novel methodological technique of “channeling.” To deal with his own feelings of nervousness in asking subjects difficult or personal questions, Jackson channels the presence of more famous and accomplished ethnographers. He asks himself, WWZNHD? What would Zora Neal Hurston do? (24-25) Eventually, he finds that he needs to conjure up a whole new identity altogether, which leads to the rise of Anthroman.
The fears he believes accompanies ethnographic writing, what he refers to an “ethnographobia” are brought fully to the surface of his text (24). Anthroman is one of his coping strategies, an alter ego whose “Anthrosenses” won’t fail under pressure. In referring to himself in the third person, he disrupts the flow in his text, and highlights the constructed nature of his work. It is a methodological tool that illustrates his theoretical arguments. Jackson’s work recognizes the difficulty in reading his subjects, and explains that this is what sincerity demands: an acceptance of our “mutual impermeability” (87).
I found Jackson’ work particularly interesting in his recognition of the ways in with ethnography is implicgated in the production of knowledge. For Jackson, ethnographic knowledge is produced through an acknowledgement of this “mutual impermeability” while simultaneously engaging with it.
At times, his own presence in his work is a little overwhelming. Still, the book is definitely worth-reading, providing an interesting example of creative and engaging ethnography.
