Indigenous Writes

by Chelsea Vowel

  It can be very frustrating to have people access certain styles and be praised for their creativity or worldliness, while people from within cultures where those styles originated are made fun of, or even punished, for doing the same. With this sort of dynamic at play, it is still more reasonable to assume someone has little real understanding of the culture from where the symbol or style originates than to assume they have a meaningful connection to that culture. This can be very discouraging for people who have learned a lot about another culture and who are even integrated into it. However, until things change and thoughtless (and even mean-spirited) appropriation is a fringe behaviour, this is something you may have to live with if you do not come from the culture you so admire.

  Let me reiterate: feeling a deep appreciation for a culture not your own may require you to refrain from immersing yourself in the culture in the manner you wish. Remaining an outsider, in certain ways, might be the most respectful way you engage with another culture. If that is not enough for you, then you need to explore why that is. What access do you think you are owed? Why? How have you earned it? Who could appropriately give it to you? And, most important, what would further access do for the people you claim to admire so much?

  That there are examples of people with legitimate access to the cultures of others does not mean you personally are not engaged in cultural appropriation if you do the same as they do.

  If you admire a culture, learn about it.

  It does not take long to find out certain modes of so-called geisha dress are restricted in Japanese culture, for example. The aesthetic commonly known as geisha among non-Japanese attempts to imitate the maiko. A maiko is an apprentice geisha, and there are many subtleties of makeup, dress, and behaviour as a maiko trains to become a geisha, and many rules about who can become a maiko or geisha. This aesthetic symbolizes certain training and achievements, and is not open to just anyone.

  The bastardization of geisha culture is not a happy history, and these abuses do not mean the symbolism has lost meaning within Japanese culture even if some Japanese play into the stereotypes. To put it another way, just because many people before you have ignored the symbolism and importance of geisha styles of dress does not mean it is okay for you to do so. If people from within the culture do not respect the symbols, this does not give you licence to also disrespect them. We’re trying to become better people, aren’t we? There are many other beautiful, unrestricted Japanese styles you can access and integrate into your own personal style. Please do not claim you are honouring someone else’s tradition or culture when you fail to learn even this much about it.

  Combating misinformation

  For many Indigenous peoples, it is a disheartening experience to search for other people from our culture online, only to discover every conceivable search term related to indigeneity is full of non-Indigenous peoples in really awful costumes. If you go on Tumblr or Twitter and search #NativeAmerican, you will be exposed to non-Indigenous peoples in various stages of being clothed and sober, wearing headdresses, showing off their dream catchers, repeating that damn “two wolves” story, and spouting racist stereotypes of Native Americans and First Nations peoples. The tags that ought to belong to us, and that ought to help us find each other, are often being used by others and slapped insensitively onto images and ideas that actively demean us.

  The emergence of social media platforms has created amazing possibilities for Indigenous peoples to combat centuries-old stereotypes and misconceptions. However, we are up against the sheer volume of those stereotypes, and sometimes it can feel like a losing battle. Fighting cultural appropriation is not just a way of lashing out at people engaged in it. There is a real desire to get accurate information out there, for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples alike.

  Many Indigenous peoples have been disconnected from their own cultures because of residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and ongoing fostering-out into non-Indigenous families. When these people want to learn more about their own culture, they have to wade through so many inaccuracies that it can feel impossible at times to reconnect. Non-Indigenous peoples with a real interest in Indigenous cultures face this, as well.

  For example, when artwork is mistakenly represented as Dene, Ojibway, and Cree, the viewer does not have an opportunity to see how the styles are different, contributing to an inaccurate pan-Indigenous view of our cultures. All the misinformation out there is a serious impediment to having Canadians understand who we are. It is a serious impediment to understanding ourselves.

  Try celebration, instead of appropriation.

  It’s okay to love our stuff. You can even have a whole lot of it, legitimately and guilt-free! There are so many Indigenous-owned online boutiques now, full of gorgeous, high-quality, and unrestricted items. Notice that none of these places is going to sell you eagle feathers or war bonnets.

  Still, there are a lot of knockoffs out there, and regardless of your views on pirated anything, the fact is that buying cheap imitation “Native stuff” hurts our communities and quite often perpetuates stereotypes and cultural confusion.

  A lot of work and high-quality materials go into Indigenous stuff. Carvings, woven baskets, clothing: there are skills and training involved in producing these sorts of things that can be imitated but not matched. You can’t afford $200 for beaded and fur-trimmed moose-hide moccasins? Perhaps you should consider going without until you can. Can’t afford an original piece of Indigenous art? Buy a print. You can support Indigenous communities in a real, tangible way by supporting our artisans.

  A lot of fakes are being produced both here in Canada and overseas. Yes, that shite is offensive. If you like our stuff enough to want it, then please buy the authentic stuff. Find out what nation it comes from – Cree? Dene? Inuvialuit? – and who the artisan is. If you’re buying art, find out what it means. Does it represent a traditional story or a modern one? I mean, if you’re buying this stuff, don’t you want to know about it?

  Sigh. I know that’s expecting a little much when you’re looking at a dream-catcher-print T-shirt from H&M, but, hopefully, this will at least help people avoid buying stupid, ugly, fake headdresses from online and retail stores.12

  It’s okay to make mistakes. Maybe you had no idea about any of this stuff. The best thing you can do is admit you didn’t know, and maybe even apologize if you find you were doing something disrespectful. A simple acknowledgment of the situation is pure gold, in my opinion. It diffuses tension and makes people feel they have been heard, respected, and understood.

  If you make this kind of acknowledgment conditional upon people informing you of these things nicely, however, that is problematic. The fact is this issue does get people very upset. It’s okay to get heated about it, too, on your end, and maybe bad words fly back and forth. My hope is once you cool down, you will accept you are not being asked to do something unreasonable.

  NOTES

  1.For example, the blog Native Appropriations by Dr. Adrienne Keene is a great place to do some reading: http://nativeappropriations.com/ (accessed October 18, 2015). The post “But Why Can’t I Wear a Hipster Headdress?” is excellent, and Keene includes links to further readings as well: http://nativeappropriations.com/2010/04/but-why-cant-i-wear-a-hipster-headdress.html (accessed October 17, 2015). You should also check out: Bell Hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (New York: Routledge, 2014) – particularly chapter 2: “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” This, as well as a fantastic YouTube video by Amanda Sternberg, helps explain the way Black styles are appropriated, and the impact of that appropriation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1KJRRSB_XA&feature=youtu.be.

  2.The last few years have seen a near-viral proliferation of the Irish slavery myth, which essentially claims more Irish people were enslaved than Africans, and the Irish were treated even more horrifically. Liam Hogan is a librarian and historian based in Limerick. He has been following the growth of this myth on social media, and offers a number of resources to fight back. Y
ou can find his work here: https://medium.com/@Limerick1914. A great place to start would be his piece, “The Myth of ‘Irish Slaves’ in the Colonies,” https://www.academia.edu/9475964/The_Myth_of_Irish_Slaves_in_the_Colonies.

  3.The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration awarded for valour in battle among the Commonwealth nations.

  4.“Orders,” The Governor General of Canada: It’s an Honour, last modified January 24, 2014, http://www.gg.ca/document.aspx?id=72.

  5.The Scotiabank Giller Prize is an annual English-language literary award.

  6.This also applies to Indigenous peoples who are not from one of these nations. For example, the Cherokee do not wear Plains-style headdresses. Thus, if a Cherokee person wears a Plains-style headdress not gifted to him or her, this is still cultural appropriation.

  7.Of course, le ceinture fléchée is also a traditional French-Canadian symbol, so they get to wear it, too.

  8.For example, the Quebec Charter of Values, proposed in 2013 and defeated when the Partí Québécois lost to the Liberals in 2014, would have prohibited public-sector employees (everyone from public servants to bus drivers) from wearing “objects such as headgear, clothing, jewelry or other adornments which, by their conspicuous nature, overtly indicate a religious affiliation” – a ban that would have had the most impact on non-Christians. This debate was taken up again during the 2015 election when Stephen Harper made the niqab an election issue. Both public debates were surrounded by increased aggression against Muslim women in particular.

  9.“Creating Change: Baltej Singh Dhillon,” Asia-canada.ca, accessed October 24, 2015, http://asia-canada.ca/asia-pacific-reality/wisdom-diversity/creating-change-baltej-singh-dhillon.

  10.Rick Garrick, “Haircutting Incident Heading to Human Rights Tribunal,” wawataynews.ca, 2010, http://www.wawataynews.ca/wwt/story-archive/haircutting-incident-heading-human-rights-tribunal.

  11.Anne Leclair, “Young Black Montrealer Claims She’s Losing Work Over Her Hair,” Global News, modified March 19, 2015, http://globalnews.ca/news/1888024/young-black-montrealer-claims-shes-losing-work-over-her-hair/.

  12.Julia AKA Garconniere, “The Critical Fashion Lover’s (Basic) Guide to Cultural Appropriation,” À L’Allure Garçonnière, April 15, 2010, http://alagarconniere.blogspot.ca/2010/04/critical-fashion-lovers-basic-guide-to.html. This is a great article on approaching questions about fashion, by the way, if you’re worried about feathered earrings and so on.

  10

  Check the Tag on That “Indian” Story

  How to Find Authentic Indigenous Stories

  Stories and sayings attributed to Indigenous peoples have been floating around probably since settlers stopped spending all of their time and energy on not dying in their new environs. I am not entirely certain why stories that never originated in any Indigenous nation are passed around as “Native American Legends,” but listeners beware!

  You’ve probably heard this one at least once:

  An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

  “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

  The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

  The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

  Wow, I’m just shivering with all that good Indian wisdom flowing through me now. Give me a moment.

  Okay. I’m better now.

  The specific nation the old, wise Indian comes from is not really important. We have all seen some version of this story passed around on social media, and while the details vary somewhat, the basic message and symbolism does not.

  It was through the wonder of social media, Tumblr to be exact, that I saw someone had finally looked into the real origins of this particular story.1 This story seems to have begun in 1978 when an early form of it was written by the evangelical Christian minister Billy Graham in his book The Holy Spirit: Activating God’s Power in Your Life.2

  So, wait…this is actually a Christian-style parable? Let’s just quickly read the story as told by Minister Graham in a chapter called “The Christian’s Inner Struggle”:

  An Eskimo fisherman came to town every Saturday afternoon. He always brought his two dogs with him. One was white and the other was black. He had taught them to fight on command. Every Saturday afternoon in the town square the people would gather and these two dogs would fight and the fisherman would take bets. On one Saturday the black dog would win; another Saturday, the white dog would win – but the fisherman always won! His friends began to ask him how he did it. He said, “I starve one and feed the other. The one I feed always wins because he is stronger.”3

  Oh, oh, oh! I get it! Black is evil, and white is good! Traditional Indigenous wisdom galore! Well, okay, not really.

  Graham goes on to explain the meaning of this story in great detail, linking it explicitly to allowing the Holy Spirit to dominate our lives versus feeding our sinful nature. The story is meant to highlight the universal nature of original sin and the universal need for the love of a specific version of the Christian god. Surely there is little harm in appealing to what is universally true?

  Um…wait a second. Do Indigenous cultures also believe in black = evil, white = good? I mean, pre-Christianity? It’s quite possible that some might, but given the diversity of Indigenous cultures in the Americas, it’s safer to assume this is not universally true.

  This kind of thing is harmful.

  These misattributed stories aren’t going to pick us up and throw us down a flight of stairs, but they do perpetuate ignorance about our cultures. Cultures. Plural. The fact that this story, like so many others, can be attributed to multiple nations without causing eyebrows to be raised merely highlights the practice of collapsing the incredible diversity of Indigenous nations into a homogenous and simplified whole.

  Not only do these stories confuse non-Indigenous peoples about our beliefs and our actual oral traditions, they confuse some Indigenous peoples, too! There are many disconnected Indigenous peoples who, for a variety of reasons, have not been raised in their cultures.4 It is not an easy task to reconnect, and a lot of people start by trying to find as much information as they can about the nation they come from.

  It can be exciting and empowering at first to encounter a story like this, if it’s supposedly from your (generalized) nation. Nonetheless, I could analyze this story all day to point out how Christian and Western influences run all the way through it, and how these principles contradict and overshadow Indigenous ways of knowing. Encountering these fake “Native American” stories during the arduous and painful process of reconnection, or in the process of just trying to learn more about Indigenous peoples, makes things very confusing. And, please. It does not matter if this sort of thing is done to or by other cultures, too. The “they did it first” argument doesn’t get my kids anywhere, either.

  Let’s call the practice of fabricating “Native American” stories what it is: colonialism. This is one of the ways colonial governments acquire full political control over lands and people – by erasing pre-existing cultures and replacing them with the culture of settlers.

  The replacement of real Indigenous stories with Christian-influenced, Western moral tales is an aspect of colonialism, no matter how you dress it up in feathers and moccasins. It silences the real voices of Indigenous peoples by presenting listeners and readers with something safe and familiar. And because of the wider access non-Indigenous peoples have to sources of media, these kinds of fake stories are literally drowning us out.

  Start asking questions.
<
br />   If you are at all interested in real Indigenous cultures, there are some easy steps you can take to determine authenticity. I guarantee you that three short questions will help you weed out 99.9 percent of the stories that are made up and attributed to an Indigenous people. Ready?

  1.Which specific Indigenous nation is this story from? (Cherokee, Cree, Dene, Navajo?)

  2.Which community is this story from? (for example, Saddle Lake Cree Nation. If you get an answer like the Hopis of New Brunswick you can stop here. The story is fake. It needs to be a community that actually exists or existed at the specific time a version of the story was told.)

  3.Who from that community told this story?

  You see, our stories have provenance; a source, an origin. That means you should be able to track down where the story was told, when, and who told it.

  There are specific protocols (rules) involved in telling stories that lay this provenance out for those listening. The person telling the story describes how he or she came to know the story, often sharing the circumstances surrounding being gifted with this piece of entertainment and knowledge. This can be done orally, or in writing if the story is being printed. There are often protocols involved in what kinds of stories can be told to whom, and when. Every Indigenous nation is going to have its own rules about this, but all of them have ways of keeping track of which stories are theirs. These are the internal rules that apply.

  External rules also dictate that where the story comes from matters.

  There are all sorts of different citation styles out there developed to ensure people list their sources and acknowledge where they got their information from. Those citation methods can be easily adapted to ensure Indigenous stories are properly sourced and credited.