Cultural Appropriation and Protocol
Context
Among the pieces included in the final policy, one of our action points entails the development of resources on Indigenous cultural appropriation, including information about protocols used in Indigenous-authored plays, how to honour these protocols, and considerations for production. Accordingly, Simone Atenea Medina Polo (Marketing and Communications Coordinator) and Jesse Del Fierro (Outreach & Partnerships Coordinator) continued this research and consultation to provide this current piece on the question of cultural appropriation and protocols.
The central questions that informed our research are:
- Who is the audience for this piece?
- What is the goal of this in the context of the broader policy?
- What is process and accountability in this context?
- What kind of educational framework informs best practices around the care going into Indigenous knowledge and relations?
- What can we learn from people engaged in this work?
These questions are more of a prompt than a precise formulation in order to allow some openness for the nuance and the complexity of what we’ve learned along the way.
Who is the audience for this? What is the point?
Above all, the policy at large is intended to support Indigenous users of the library.
Beyond this, the aim is more broadly about engaging both Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers in a process of creating context and sharing the intricate web of relations that we are embedded in. From there, we can understand how to use the library.
Therefore, this policy is about enabling capacity in using the library. It is about potentials and access, not about norm-setting. It is positive rather than negative in its framing.
Contextualizing the conversation around this policy
When questions about cultural appropriation and Indigenous protocol come up in public discourse, oftentimes they are framed from a perspective of negative prescriptions and abstention from engagement — it is often more about outlining what not to do as well as about setting norms about who can and who cannot engage in these cultural interactions.
This rests in concerns around power and its institutionalized dynamics that have historically deferred to colonial processes of extraction, commodification, and sterilizing Indigenous culture and lived experience into conformity and compliance with a settler state. As Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson notes in a 2013 interview by Naomi Klein for Yes Magazine:
Extraction and assimilation go together. Colonialism and capitalism are based on extracting and assimilating. My land is seen as a resource. My relatives in the plant and animal worlds are seen as resources. My culture and knowledge is a resource. My body is a resource and my children are a resource because they are the potential to grow, maintain, and uphold the extraction-assimilation system.
Following the work of Dene scholar and associate professor of political sciences at UBC Glen S. Coulthard in his book Red Skin, White Masks (2014), he outlines two historical trends of these colonial processes in Canada: a process of assimilation by means of explicit state violence prior to the White Paper of 1969, the Calder decision of 1973, and the Statement on Claims of Indian and Inuit People of 1973 as opposed to the politics of reconciliation by means of state recognition that followed since (p. 25).
The historical context and intergenerational violence that compiled on Indigenous culture and lived experiences is succinctly assessed by Coulthard. His analysis of the dispossession, expropriation, and commodification of land as a key site of struggle between the colonial processes of the settler state and resurgent Indigenous resistance shouldn’t be taken lightly. The inclination towards stating what not to do and the cautionary warning to tread carefully around cultural interactions makes sense given the deeply entrenched nature of this historical and political situation described so far. And these kinds of insights are deeply significant for the project of Indigenous resurgence and liberation.
Our approach
The state of affairs that we just described situates the personal and collective tensions that become manifest in the arts daily.
While we understand telling settlers what not to do and advising non-engagement in cultural interactions, our approach ultimately stands at odds with this. For one, we heed the cautionary words of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson in her book As We Have Always Done (2017):
Canada has become very good at responding to our pain by deploying the politics of grief: a set of tools the state uses to avoid structural changes and accountability by focusing on individual trauma rather than collective, community, or nation-based loses… by turning to ‘lifestyle choices’ and victim blaming to further position the state as benevolent and caring.
There is a privatization of suffering and pain at work, and the inclination we have discussed so far risks further isolating and siloing Indigenous peoples in all their relations.
For this reason, the point for us is more so the building of connections and relationships premised in solidarity and based on what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Glen S. Coulthard (2016) call “grounded normativity” and “place-based solidarity.” As they write:
Our relationship to the land itself generates the processes, practices, and knowledges that inform our political systems, and through which we practice solidarity.
What does it mean to build relationships?
In our conversations with Caleigh Crow (at the time Board President of Theatre Alberta) and Reneltta Arluk (Member of the Advisor Council for the ITLC), we grappled with the broader implications of what this policy means.
Reneltta’s piece “Protocol and Play” intimates what engaging in cultural interactions means in the context of Indigeneity — specifically in interactions between members of different Indigenous nations for the creation of Pawâkan, a Plains Cree reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth through Cree history, legend, and cosmology. The point of “Protocol and Play” is transparency and documentation of cultural learning and sharing.
This interaction is a process, a relation, and a lived embeddedness tied to the use and function of these knowledges — and this is precisely how this stands at odds with settler colonial views of knowledge, where a vast majority of philosophical and scientific theories of knowledge hinges on abstract, deadened knowledge taken in a vacuum.
At their most mundane, these Western traditions are implicated in cultural exchanges of knowledge such as exhibits at museums where cultural artifacts are extracted from the life-world to which they belong. Today, this is exacerbated by the dispersive dissemination of information through the internet which severs knowledge from the processes as well as the time and space to which it belongs, opting instead for the immediate availability of information at our fingertips.
Indigenous knowledge cannot be abstracted or demanded with immediacy without distorting and deforming it. This would be akin to claiming to have a rapport with someone that you simply don’t know, or like demanding someone to be your friend the moment that you met them with the expectation that they will be there anytime you demand them to be there. This is a very one-sided way to regard our relationship to knowledge, which implies a way of having power over the thing known. As Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2013) notes:
The act of extraction removes all of the relationships that give whatever is being extracted meaning... the extractivist mindset isn’t about having a conversation and having a dialogue.... What’s missing is the responsibility.
The alternative is deep reciprocity. It’s respect, it’s relationship, it’s responsibility, and it’s local.
To illustrate this difference, we can refer to a phrase often attributed to 17th century philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon about how the scientific method is akin to torturing the secrets out of nature. Although it is worth noting that his actual wording in “The Advancement of Learning” (1605) retains a colonial and extractive implication when he advocates for “the inquisition of nature” and “the disclosing of nature as for the use of man’s life.” As this kind of theory of knowledge became a mundane perspective, this is now a commonplace settler outlook on how land is seen merely as a resource for domination and extraction.
Instead, we see protocol as the building of relationships through the establishment, care, and recognition of bonds. A relationship is not a given and your impact in it might extend far beyond your grasp!
What is process and accountability?
In our conversation with Caleigh and Reneltta, we unpacked this process and accountability as a work of documentation and story-sharing akin to the care, nurturing, and growth that goes into a sustainable relationship. If there is something we can call a living agreement, it is exactly the commitment to that relational process rather than some checkbox.
Knowledge is seen here as a relational engagement that can only be measured in its own terms rather than from some decontextualized extrinsic guideline or rulebook. You can’t just assume all relationships will look the same and you can’t just methodically replicate a relationship. What defines one relationship might not define another. As Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2017) writes:
This to me points to the relational nature of our knowledge — the journey changes with a companion, the methodology is relational… One’s experience of the world, of knowledge, of learning is profoundly contextual, and the body of knowledge generated the second time is different from the first.
Accordingly, this is not an individual responsibility, but a collective responsibility. This kind of responsibility will likely challenge and problematize colonial forms of management and organizational arrangements to arrive at the genuine relationship building it demands. In the context of her artistic practice as a musician, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2021) elaborates in an interview with musician Cassia Hardy for Talkhouse:
Whether it’s talent shows or whether it’s karaoke, whether it’s traditional drumming, or any of the other kinds of manifestations, this idea that art, song, and music serves a greater sort of collective purpose, where it’s not just about who has the best singing voice or who can craft the best song. It’s about how you find your own voice, and how you can connect using sound and meaning to others in a collective sense in order to sort of uplift, to enlighten, or to nurture this broader community.
It’s so difficult in the contemporary music scene because of capitalism, and that focus on individuality and becoming the best artist that you can become. Success is so strained in the music industry, so I thought, Wow. I really want to sort of be able to reclaim that collective nature of music...
There is a creative responsibility to sharing knowledge. In our conversation with Caleigh and Reneltta, an example was given of the dramaturgical process for a production of Yvette Nolan’s The Birds where Reneltta (later developed with Selena Couture and Kenneth Williams as well) put background resources and context together to prepare actors for rehearsal. Putting themselves in the point of view of a director, they saw the work of direction as something that needs the insights of knowledge to figure out how or what to look for. This work takes time, it cannot be rushed. It requires the space to foster care around the wise insights that we can develop in our relationships around this knowledge.
What does learning look like then?
People are scared of doing wrong and even being wrong that they shy away from what is proposed here — given the stakes, it makes sense.
However, we see the work of what we are describing here as an invitation. We are not giving answers, or checkboxes, or even a guide to not being wrong. Instead, we are giving the tools and insights necessary to know how to ask questions and understand the risks that need to be embraced in being in a relationship.
Part of our invitation is to recognize how often we rely on unconscious shorthands of how we establish professional networks as a poor substitute for relationships. Caleigh gave an example how abstract concepts like time or space are used to disavow the call to build relationships when things like “save it for the debrief” or “we don’t have time for that” can be said to dismiss these opportunities when they arise.
These are often ways in which we try to control or contain conflict. Instead we need to recognize how conflict through mutual trust is productive, and to establish that trust is ultimately at the heart of relationship building as commitment to each other.
On top of the historical and political issues at heart, there is a discomforting anxiety we are faced with. We should not shy away from this anxiety, but lean on it as an invitation to our own vulnerable and precarious core since this is the basis for the possibility of any relationship. This is why trust matters, because it is a way of holding each other in that human condition.
Within trust and commitment, we can learn to fail and do wrong gracefully and caringly — it won’t be the first or the last time, and that’s okay.
How do people do this in their practice?
After chatting with Caleigh and Reneltta, we were pointed in a couple of directions. We were recommended to talk to Azimuth Theatre and Jenna Rodgers since their respective work illustrates what we are trying to describe here.
For Azimuth Theatre, we chatted with our colleague Andrés Moreno, who is also one of the artistic producers at Azimuth Theatre along with Morgan Yamada and Sue Goberdhan. Andrés noted to us that prior to their current role at Azimuth Theatre, Sue and Morgan worked with Naheyawin, an Indigenous consultancy social enterprise led by siblings Jacquelyn and Hunter Cardinal. In its current incarnation, Azimuth Theatre operates on the basis of keeping the door open and treating people as the first priority.
At the heart of the matter, Andrés stressed that conversation and reciprocity guides everything Azimuth Theatre does. The point is to help and support each other — both Performance Lab and The Expanse Festival are programs that aim to achieve this. Especially, in the Expanse Festival, it is a matter of creating materials that the artists themselves are able to adopt as their own. The work is about bolstering the work of artists rather than simply centering the organization itself.
We also chatted with our colleague Jenna Rodgers, who is the founding artistic director of Chromatic Theatre and the current artistic director at Concrete Theatre on top of being the director for Artstrek. When we were chatting with Caleigh and Reneltta, it was noted that Jenna had a “document” and “presentation” about living agreements that we were encouraged to look into. Jenna was quick to clarify and contextualize the work that we had been hearing about.
Jenna shared with us two different pieces. One which is a documentation of what values her processes are guided by when setting out any collective working agreement; the other which is an early version of Inside Out’s Healthy Process document that aims at fostering an environment that looks after the well-being of everyone involved in this technical and creative work. With respect to this latter document, Jenna advised us that this should be taken as a snapshot from that point in time. We thank Col Cseke from Inside Out Theatre for providing us with the updated questionnaire that came about as a result of this document alongside the most recent version of Inside Out Theatre’s Reconciliation Action Plan.
Ultimately, all of these documents that we received from Jenna and Col amount to what Jenna expressed as “a principled way to enter relationships.” Jenna was mindful of the dated nature of some of these documents as she elaborated on recent challenges to these kinds of documentations. Jenna noted concerns around tendencies that rigidify these relationships into mere procedures of due diligence, which in turn builds a lack of confidence and distrust around the very notion of living agreements. Processification is then viewed as a risk of living relationships and ties getting lost in the motions of bureaucratic procedures — it turns a living agreement into a deadened procedure.
What can we learn from all of this?
To start out simple: libraries are intended to be a place for curiosity and for asking questions. In principle, this is a basic guide for how to use and approach the ITLC. And we can expand from this to the broader implications of the concrete topic at hand.
For us, curiosity is a principle for how one takes time with things — the time is suited to the thing rather than the thing being shaped by time constraints. This is easier said than done. We can contextualize our curiosity by asking questions like: Why are you driven to ask about this? What do you want to do with what you learn? And how do you do that well?
When we question the unquestionable givens, especially when we are intimately tied to what is in question, we might have to deconstruct our questioning further: What are the fears and anxieties that come to the surface? How do we take care of them? Those unconscious tensions and norms can have consequences regardless of whether or not they are explicitly spoken out. This makes all the difference over how we can be mindful of that shared space and relationships as well as ourselves.
To this extent, an initial skepticism is important because it helps us know ourselves enough to be able to build trust by way of open transparency and mutual vulnerability. As long as they are uncompromising, living agreements can be a statement of that work in a way that can clear the air for trust to set in. In his book Wasáse, Mohawk scholar and activist Taiaiake Alfred (2005) compares this deconstructive work in decolonial healing to the Ancient Greek philosophical practice of parrhesia: an ethical commitment and practice of speaking truth freely and directly even in the face of threatening authorities (p. 280). We may stretch this enough to question our own pretexts and intentions in order to better bring the truth out of ourselves and to approach our relationships truthfully. The work at hand is the care of truth.
But truth, as anything we’ve tried to describe so far, is not a static thing. Truth is a living and dynamic thing, and this invites a problem to consider what a library can actually do for us in all modesty. Truth proper cannot be something that we can just extract from a book, an unchanging document set in stone. For this reason, there have been historical metaphors that refer to writing as a kind of killing, a way of turning something living into something dead — a notable early reference in Ancient Greek philosophy goes back to Plato’s Phaedrus (370 B.C.~), as Socrates says in the dialogue:
...you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
This is not to say that books are useless, but only to suggest that books alone are not enough. Books are at best a prop, a companion in our relationships — but not our relationships themselves. As Taiaiake Alfred (2009) succinctly puts it in his book Peace, Power, Righteousness:
Colonization is a process of disconnecting us from our responsibilities to one another and our respect for another, our responsibilities and our respect for the land, and our responsibilities and respects for the culture.
When we look at the question of cultural appropriation and protocol, our approach is that we see cultural appropriation as the failure to assume responsibility and respect for the care of truth, the culture, the land, and each other. Then protocol is precisely that open-ended work of care, the cultivation of those relationships, and tending after them when we assume this responsibility and respect. A library is meant for access, but knowledge needs to be cared for. And rather than offering a clear cut answer to a problem, we are actually offering an invitation into knowing how to ask questions in a way that is informed by this kind of care — curiosity must stem from care, otherwise it is just divested voyeurism.
In our work, we should strive to build ways to communicate as a form of care since this helps us build the sustainable cohesion to face these broader challenges together. Part of this entails speaking on our loves and our fears, as this helps us figure out how to make space for each other. Accordingly, writing this piece is a bit of a contradiction because this is simply not a manual. This piece of writing is just trying to be an example of what it tries to explain, a documentation of that work of care and relationship building as well as the trust that even made it possible.
