City accused of cultural appropriation over name
In a “you can’t win” scenario, the city administration is being accused of cultural appropriation by an Inuit group because it decided the cultural centre in the complex rising on the old Children’s Hospital site should be named Sanaaq, from the title of a 1950s novel by Inuit writer Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk. They’re probably wishing they’d stuck to the original plan of naming it for Montreal’s second mayor, Peter McGill (no relation to the disgraced James of the university).
Reading between the lines here – and it’s not hard – there is not one single Inuit voice or authority, and someone who thinks they ought to have been consulted is annoyed that they were not. See below.
Update: See even further below. The issue has been resolved.
EmilyG 10:28 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Cultural appropriation is one of those concepts that many white people just never seem to understand.
I suggest that white people who don’t get the concept should listen to non-white people who understand it first-hand.
Bill Binns 10:28 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Lol. You think? Sort of like when a tribal government agrees to something but then some unelected “tribal elders” decide to setup some lawn chairs on the railroad tracks all summer anyway.
EmilyG 10:31 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Perhaps worth noting that I’ve heard the “Inuit are not a monolith” argument before from someone who thought that cultural appropriation wasn’t a problem.
Kate 10:42 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Thank you, EmilyG. I must be in error. I will cross out the offending concept.
walkerp 12:38 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Bill Binns you should educate yourself on the history of elected leaders and hereditary elders in the indigenous communities in Canada. Here is a very simplistic article that should get you started. The important point is that the elections were forced onto their political structures by the Indian Act and have never been considered legitimate.
Your condescension is hurtful to people for whom these conflicts are very real in their day to day lives. And basically racist and ignorant.
Chris 12:44 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
>Cultural appropriation is one of those concepts that many white people just never seem to understand.
Why would someone’s melanin levels prevent them from understanding a concept or not? Is cognition a function of skin colour?
>I suggest that white people who don’t get the concept should listen to non-white people who understand it first-hand.
I’m curious: in your view, is cultural appropriation something that can only be perpetrated by white people?
Kate 13:17 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Chris, lived experience is bound to be different than a grasp of theory. One of the key facets of lived experience is that the dominant culture often disbelieves you until it’s absolutely impossible not to credit the evidence. Even then, often they try to minimize perceptions of the effects the experiences have had on the individual. This is why we now try to have people with some lived experience take the lead in matters to do with the particular group.
White culture has been dominant for centuries and has steamrollered over other cultures, often taking attractive bits and pieces – music, food, artifacts – to add to its cultural grab bag. Yes, cultures cross-fertilize and always have, but when one culture has an overwhelming portion of the world’s wealth and pretty gizmos, they’re the only ones that can appropriate in quite that way.
DeWolf 13:11 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Here’s what I get from the article: this wasn’t a unilateral decision by the city and the name was suggested by an Inuit cultural organization. The mayor also suggests that there was some informal consultation of Inuit people in the neighbourhood. But the claims of cultural appropriation are coming from Nunavik, which suggests that may be a disconnect between Inuit groups in Montreal and those back home.
So there was a process but maybe it wasn’t comprehensive enough. I’m curious, though, what’s best practice in cases like this? How many people and organizations need to be consulted in order to avoid the perception of appropriation?
Personally, my biggest concern isn’t with the name but whether the cultural centre will have any Inuit management (or programming). But I’m not Inuk so maybe that’s just me.
EmilyG 13:29 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Yes. It’s about colonization, as well as taking things without permission and out of context.
George 13:31 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
DeWolf, you can never know how many need to be consulted because you can never please everyone. And that’s precisely because, EmilyG, groups of people who are identified by a given characteristic are not monoliths and one of the most harmful and reductive things we can do is to essentialize people. Ironically, it’s the reductive and essentializing tendencies which are the most insidiously colonial. Moreover, the notion of “cultural appropriation” is self-reflexive and unfalsifiable.I think that Kate was right in the first place and she should not have struck out the latter part her comment.
Michael Black 13:49 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
“Cultural appropriation” is in part like being in high school and nobody likes you. Until they find out you can help them with that test, or hook up a VCR to their tv set.
But they still don’t like you.
So here it sounds like “but we thought you’d like being included”. One group thinks “inclusion” is inviting someone, the other thinks it’s about a bigger place at the table.
All the native words we know , were taken, no say in use, maybe not even in meaning.
When this thing was announced, I thiught because of the name it was to be an Inuit cultural space. Only later did I realize it was only an Inuit name.
As for Chris’s comment, my great, great grandmother’s picture is at the Museum of History, well the website at least. She’s wearing European clothing, “it must be cultural arpropriation”. No, it’s assimilation.
Most people haven’t moved up enough to create balance with Native people. Just in recent months I’ve had to correct one columnist about why someone wasn’t Native after all, and then why someone who is Cree isn’t described as having “Cree roots”. She hasn’t grasped that while she thinks it’s good that she’s devoting space to these matters, the only? reason she “needs” to do it is because someone directly affected doesn’t have that space.
Jack 14:03 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
This is the President of Makivik having a hissy, nothing more. He is also up for election soon.
Mark 19:46 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Seems as if the issue is resolved. https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/2021-01-21/centre-sanaaq/makivik-se-range-derriere-le-projet.php
Kate 20:01 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Thank you, Mark.
MarcG 21:12 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
DeWolf, who it seems I have a lot in common with, makes a good point about tokenism vs. actual representation. These symbolic gestures are so meaningless and distracting.