My Brother-In-Law, David Finkle, is a musician and traditional craftsperson here in Ottawa. He is also a part of Canada's First Nations communities. He sent me this bit of old-timey racism that is circulating from the guidebook of a Manitoba fishing lodge:
Chief Arlen Dumas, of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation (the "Indian guides" referenced) told the CBC, “The statements are so outrageous. Not only does he offend the very people that provide him his livelihood … he insults all indigenous people in North America.”
Chief Dumas wrote an open letter to the owners of the lodge, which operates on traditional Mathias Colomb Cree territory. They have yet to respond.
Meanwhile the lodge's Facebook page has become the target of a massive (and justified) airing of grievances:
"Unbelievable that in this day and age there exists such ignorance and overt racism. I grew up in the times of 'no dogs or Indians allowed' signs and thought it was at least fading, but this shows that sadly, it is not," wrote Robin Maracle.
"Bravo, you have completely alienated your workforce, your community and an entire nation," wrote Cynthia Mandeville.
"The best thing to do would be to turn this into an opportunity to educate yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. The right thing to do is to apologize and move toward making things better," wrote Karen SC.
Many cited a post by âpihtawikosisân, a Montreal Métis blogger who addressed the "drunken Indian" stereotype and myths with stats and references. It's worth a read.
The term was once common for indigenous North American women, entering English as a loan word from the Algonquian languages, but is now usually considered a derogatory (by some, even obscene) term.
The company also makes "adult" versions, but omits the "s" word:
The "Sassy Squaw" costume is also for sale at Amazon.com, Sears.com, ebay's Shopping.com and Buy.com (where it was renamed "Sassy Indian Maiden Costume") along with a number of other stereotyped native costumes for girls.
To my First Nations nieces, and all Aboriginal women: I am sorry this shit is still happening.
Sociological Images' Gwen Sharp just wrote an interesting post about Paul Frank's event for Fashion’s Night Out, which "reflects the widespread appropriation of Native American cultures in fashion over the last few years." She described the event as including a dress-up game with stereotyped Native American garb, and photo opportunities. It's important reading for marketers, as is the original post at the Native Appropriations blog by Cherokee writer Adrienne K.
She wrote (directly to Paul Frank), "The bottom line is this: your event stereotypes and demeans Native cultures, collapsing hundreds of distinct tribal and cultural groups into one 'tribal' mish-mash, thereby erasing our individual identities and contemporary existence."
Here's one of her screencaps:
Coincidentally, just yesterday I captured this campaign for an art exhibition at Ottawa's Gallery 101 by Joi T Arcand of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan, called oskinikiskwēwak ("young women"). It looks at the problem of pop culture appropriation of native culture from the other side:
"Look! More Neechies!"
"Nah, it's just hipsters in headdresses."
It's part of a series of works that mock stereotypes with wit and style.
This isn't the 1950s, my friends. (Especially those of you at Red Light PR.) Native Americans and Canada's First Nations people see what you did there. And they will call you on it.
Today, bloggers all over the world are speaking out about access to fresh water for Blog Action Day 2010.
You'll see stories about all the things we need to do to guarantee fresh water to people in the third world and poverty and conflict zones. But all far away from home, right?
Wrong.
For the past several months, we have been working with Amnesty International Canada on strategies to rally public support for the Lubicon Cree, a band of indigenous people who are living without land rights, stewardship of their traditional resources, or even drinkable water. In Canada.
You often hear about human rights horrors committed in the name of cheap oil. But once again, these stories tend to happen far away. This, however, is happening in Alberta.
The Lubicon, you see, have the misfortune of having their ancestral lands sitting on top of Canada's oil sands — a massive, if "dirty", reserve of petroleum.
"More than 2,600 oil and gas wells have been drilled on Lubicon Cree land in northern Alberta, Canada. This intensive development has taken place against the wishes of the Lubicon people and has led to tragic consequences for their society. Even more destructive forms of development – including oil sands extraction – are planned for the future.
International human rights bodies have long been critical of the poverty, widespread ill-health and culture loss that has resulted from the near total destruction of the Lubicon economy and way of life.."
And it's not just Amnesty who have given this issue, and Canada's human rights record, world attention on this issue. In 1990, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that Canada had failed to protect the Lubicon Cree's rights by allowing the development of logging, oil and gas on the community's traditional hunting and trapping lands. (not that Canada is showing the UN much respect these days...)
So why don't the Lubicon just move, you might ask? Would you leave your homeland to someone who was planning to rip it apart?
The Lubicon situation is further complicated by the fact that they never signed a treaty with the British Crown. The sad truth is that when Canadian government commissioners negotiated Treaty 8 with other northern Alberta "Indians" in 1899 they travelled down the the Athabasca and Peace rivers and missed the "isolated community" who were not on the route.
In the many years since, there have been some federal government attempts to reconcile this mistake, but no mutually satisfactory deal has been reached. In the meantime, the Province of Alberta, which manages its own oil and gas development, continues to grant licences to global oil companies to exploit these "Crown Lands".
And how does this all relate back to Blog Action Day? It's something in the water.
In 1992, Lubicon Cree Rose Ominayak read this statement to the Alberta Commission of Review:
"Our children are sick from drinking water that oil has spilled in. They are sick from breathing the poisoned and polluted air the pulp mill has made. We are sick from eating animals, animals that are sick from disease from poisoned plants and water. Our children have nothing–they can’t breathe–even that has been taken. Their culture, the bush life, has been destroyed by development. When we were young we lived in the bush–it was a good life. Now, we have no traplines, nothing to hunt. There are no jobs, no money to live a decent life. We see ourselves, our men and our children falling into despair, hopelessness, low self-esteem and drinking. Families are broken like never before. Drinking and violence rise as our spirits fall."
