| The Politics of Recognition
Robert
Houle. November 7, 2008
Good morning everyone. It is an
honour to have this opportunity to speak to you today.
Let us begin by recognizing that we are in historical
Coast Salish/Musqueam territory. Thank you to Daina
for asking me to address this colloquium and to Ryan
for believing that this Vancouver colloquium would take
place.
The world changed this week. The politics
of recognition reached the top of the empire, the United
States of America. Senator Obama of Illinois became
the first African-American President-elect catapulted
there by a democratic machine driven by new technology.
Change and hope have returned to a very troubled country.
Our recognition in the Constitution
Act of 1982 reads: The existing aboriginal and treaty
rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby
recognized and affirmed.
We know that this national document
was imposed upon us; at least, I certainly saw it that
way in the symbolism of the Queen as a direct connection
to the treaties.
The recognition of our visual culture
and its symbols can lead to imposed or superimposed
representation. Current cultural discourse provides
a language and a politic in which the Aboriginal Curatorial
Collective can lead our communities in understanding
the implications of having our identity annexed to another
that may, in the process, obliterate ours. Our collective
must question the optics and the consequences of appropriation.
The cultural and spiritual symbols of power left to
us can and have been used and misused, for example,
the VANOC inukshuk and the smudge ceremony, respectively.
Creating a national identity is an
on-going project for any state. Recognition of our art
in such public institutions as Rideau Hall, the Bank
of Canada, The National Arts Centre and the Canadian
Embassy in Washington, is hopefully a promising sign.
Before getting into any detail I would like to cite
a passage from a book by Charles Taylor, a philosophy
professor at McGill University that helps to frame my
topic, the politics of recognition:
“The thesis is that our identity
is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often
by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or
group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion,
if the people or society around them mirror back to
them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture
of themselves. Nonrecognition or misrecognition can
inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning
someone in a false, distorted and reduced mode of being.”
Indigenous to this continent, we are
shaped by an archeology dating back at least 10,000
years, a history etched in memory, a culture centred
on the earth, and spirituality witnessed through personal
ritual.
Our creation stories are numerous.
One tells of a turtle giving its life to become an island
in order to save the ancient ancestors from a flood.
Another tells of how raven liberated the first inhabitants
from a clamshell. Still another tells of the balance
between the conflicting forces of the upper and lower
worlds, the thunderbird, Animike and the underwater
serpent, Mishipishu.
Turtle Island as North America is
a transformational place, a continent shaped like a
turtle, a transformed place, mythical and allegorical.
The people living here today come from every corner
of the earth sharing with us its splendor.
Our gathering today in this area of
British Columbia continues a long tradition. For millennia
people have gather here in the spirit of reciprocity,
trading ideas, materials and other goods. This longhouse
is a symbol of friendship and family, a place of knowledge
and culture, protection and celebration.
A recent newspaper photograph of the
new minority government inspired me to address the issues
of superimposing national and native symbols. It was
published by the Globe and Mail, the self-proclaimed
national paper on Halloween.
The image of the Governor-General
Michaelle Jean surrounded by Stephen Harper and his
cabinet in front of a painting [Androgyny] by the late
Ojibwa artist, Norval Morrisseau has several narratives.
The work was just recently installed at Rideau Hall.
The Governor-General borrowed it from the Indian Art
Centre at Indian and Northern Affairs. Androgyny is
brilliant and dwarfs the group sitting in front of it.
Symbolically, we have the first Inuk woman, Leona Aglukkaq
to be appointed a Minister of the Crown, standing third
from the left in the back row, note that she is standing
beside the painting rather than in front of it.
It is natural for a state to use works
of art in constructing a national psyche. After all,
art throughout human history has always played an important
role in defining ourselves. But as a prop for a photo
opportunity, it can mysteriously reveal fallacies and
ironies in the building of a national identity. Because
art plays an important role in defining a nation, it
is our privilege to note the implicit rhetoric inherent
in state functions. This is significant as the Morrisseau
painting will become one of the most photographed in
the country as it is being displayed in such a prestigious
venue, Rideau Hall.
The image can be read at different
levels. Please note that I’ve attached to the
left of the headline image, an installation view of
the room where the painting has been installed at Rideau
Hall. Out of respect for the art I’ve removed
the characters so that the lower part could be seen.
The Canadian Press photo by Adrian
Wyld is compelling. Isn’t it ironic to see the
harmony of creation depicted on the painting and the
divisive trademark of a government who killed the Kelowna
Accord, a move that left more aboriginal people exposed
to the vitriolic culture of poverty, homelessness, landlessness,
hopelessness and just plain misery. I was in the public
galleries of the parliament buildings last June on the
day Stephen Harper apologized for the state policy of
forced assimilation through residential schools. Here
is a partial quote by him: “…to remove and
isolate children from the influence of their homes,
families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate
them into the dominant culture.”
Participation in any state construction
of identity must be built on positive images which reinforce
our spiritual and cultural values, confirm our traditional
and historical territorial rights, and secure our future
with the assertion that we have a right to the same
material and cultural well-being as others.
Another example of art or images becoming
part of an effort by the state to create an identity
through its institutions is the Bank of Canada issuing
the 20 dollar note with two works by the late Haida
artist, Bill Reid in 2004.
A quote by Gabrielle Roy: “Could
we ever know each other in the slightest without the
arts.” is beautifully placed between Reid’s
“Raven and the First Man” (1980) and “The
Spirit of Haida Gwaii” (1991). It became the rallying
cry against the government’s cuts to arts funding
during the last election. It was used to point out that
the role of art in society is both cultural and economic
and that grants are not forms of welfare but investments
in a major industry, indeed, in a healthy nation, where
autochthone and immigrant together, respect and recognize
differences.
It is not so much about prohibiting
the use of culture and art in defining ourselves or
sharing the power of art. Art does have magic, delirium
and ecstasy and such are the emotions these two sculptures
will evoke when seen where they have been installed.
Reid’s bronze was originally
commissioned for the entrance of the Canadian Embassy
in Washington, D.C., by the firm R.J. Reynolds at the
request of the building’s architect, Arthur Erickson.
With the only weapon he possessed, he stopped working
on the plaster cast for it in protest after the Premier
of British Columbia refused to settle Haida land claims.
He told a reporter “he was not comfortable selling
symbols of the Haida people to a government that refuses
to deal with Haida land claims and act to prevent logging
on Lyell Island.”
Reid’s earlier piece “Raven
and the First Man” beautifully installed at the
Museum of Anthropology, UBC, is a transition between
function and form, a celebration of creation and a symbol
of a museum’s desire to have a place specifically
designed for a work of art. It is time to acknowledge
the progress made by museums in displaying both traditional
and contemporary indigenous art. Much has happened over
my thirty years in this business, even the language
has changed, making room for a more inclusive perspective.
Imagine a time when our skulls and
bones were collected, measured and catalogued. A memory
of a frightening narrative that we were a dying race,
a memory of the frustration in the absence of recognition,
knowing that the withholding of it is a form of oppression.
Have you ever felt that the moment you speak, someone
else has already spoken for you? Or that when you hear
others speaking, you are only going to be the object
of their speech? Imagine living in a world of others,
a world that exists for others, a world made real only
because you have been spoken to.
Both Bill Reid and Norval Morrisseau
are now supernovas, but the visual heritage they have
left is now part of the national identity. The prominent
and public venues in which their work can now be seen
has placed them in the pantheon of cultural immortality.
Each of the three works of art cited transcend specificity.
The universality of the creation stories depicted has
given the public an opportunity to see them as being
relative to things they care about.
I would like to continue by showing
this installation view of “The Indian in Transition”
by the Odawa artist, Daphne Odjig. It was first introduced
to the public on Canada Day, 1978 at the National Arts
Centre in Ottawa, where it hung for several years in
the lobby and was seen by countless people passing through
on their way into the theatre.
It was commissioned by the late Dr.
W.E. Taylor, the Director of the National Museum of
Man, now the Canadian Museum of Civilization. It is
a single canvas of approximately 28 x 9 feet, and comparable
in size to the painting Androgyny shown earlier. Odjig
had constructed a positive self-image. She had taken
the exceedingly difficult task of fixing the public
perception of native people. Her personification of
Mother Earth watching from above as history unfolds
from destruction through to celebration is optimistic.
Confounding fallacies of stereotyping
and discrimination is central to creating a national
identity and influencing others in how they look at
us. We just have to be aware of how the state can misappropriate
and misrepresent. And as aboriginal curators it is central
to our work. Defining ourselves within this country
involves the realities of urban and rural life.
However, our traditional practices
of ritual and ceremony and hereditary ownership of symbols,
songs and dance are our exclusive property. Even though
national identities can be homogenizing and monolithic,
the mediation of inclusion and the accommodation of
difference can remove the walls of distinctions dividing
people by race, creed, colour and sexuality. But the
unpredictable mutation of the evolving canon of modernity
is not a formless multiplicity, rather a manifestation
of multiple modernities.
Challenge the current sophistry on
hybridity and multiculturalism. Its circular arguments
only provide false premises of inclusion through mixing
and mingling. The liberal ideal of a multicultural bilingual
society was a policy of accommodation for new immigrants
but became an insult when the government began including
us in its promotion.
Art is healthy for any nation, society, city or community;
it gives us a sense of who we are; it gives us a quality
of life that includes being surrounded by beauty. Art
can change the way we see others, and to paraphrase
an earlier quote, how we can know each other.
Indigenous specificity is a heritage,
its representation a responsibility, its patrimony pride
and celebration. The works I’ve shown are specific
to that identity, and are shared with the rest of the
country. Their placement in prime locations of national
significance have acquired a new texture to the issues
rising from the polities of identity, but that discussion
we will leave for another time.
We have to help in the articulation
of our visual culture into the national domain, as we
face a world smaller yet more populated, an economy
deconstructed by shifting cultural and fiscal alignments,
and a personal space globalized and democratized by
Facebook, iPhone and Youtube.
Today, aboriginal artists across this
land, old and young, traditional and contemporary, urban
and country, male and female, gay and straight, short
and tall, robust and slim, angry and happy, in their
uniqueness are sharing their histories and cultures.
Some will remain resolute in living
by the federal fiduciary agreements made with the colonial
government of early settlers by our forefathers. This
approach has had incremental results with costly judicial
decisions by federal courts as traditional hunting and
fishing rights shrink.
Others, the new generation, are moving
forward with different goals and methods, new ideas
and concepts. They comprise over half of our current
demographics. They live in towns and cities away from
the reserve and the bush. Their urbanity is influenced
by the increase in migration, immigration and globalization.
Let me declare my sincere conviction that this demographic
will change the face of the nation. They have made themselves
into transformational and transgenerational figures.
Their new ideas of identity have been constructed from
and out of the perceptual effects of cyber and virtual
space, and their art forms have been created from new
materials and techniques influenced by technology clearly
rooted in the future.
The site-specific project at the Vancouver Art Gallery
by the Kwakwaka’wakw artist, Marianne Nicolson
is inspired by history and tradition. Her installation,
“The House of the Ghosts”, transforms the
Georgia Street façade of the gallery into a Northwest
Coast ceremonial house by projecting the vision of a
house front and totem poles every night. By altering
the public image of the gallery in this way, Nicolson’s
intervention becomes a site of cultural exchange and
interrogation. People seeing it from the street will
recognize its importance as a transformative space while
wryly commenting on its historic role as a courthouse
and jail where, decades ago, First Nations were punished
for defying the government’s Potlatch ban.
That old adage of a long 700-year
winter may be about to thaw. On the plane here yesterday,
I saw Shane Belcourt’s film “Tkaronto”
and the opening line of the movie from Lorne Cardinal’s
character was:
“Who are you and I? Are we what
people think? What do they see when they see us?”
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