Social movements expect to elicit both derision and sympathy in the course of their struggles. Paradoxically, it is often the sympathetic voices of concerned outsiders that are the most exasperating, especially when genuine concern takes the form of counsel that is inappropriate or ill-informed. Adam Goldenberg’s recent Op-Ed, “Idle No More needs to go over Harper’s head” offers a good illustration.
Goldenberg points out that the ‘Idle No More’ movement needs to make itself politically relevant if it is to be successful. Because First Nations are not high on the Prime Minister’s priority list, activists must carefully craft their messaging and direct it at those whom Harper identifies as legitimate stakeholders: the voters. Accordingly, activists must avoid “squandering public sympathy for Chief Spence and her cause,” which means they must abjure activities that threaten Canadians since these will be “unlikely to win friends or influence people.” That sounds reasonable.
There is no doubt that Goldenberg intends like so many others to be a sympathetic ally of this Indigenous rights movement, but his piece nevertheless exhibits the classic soft paternalism that drives social movements crazy. I say ‘classic’ because the piece rehearses the same misplaced pattern of unsolicited (and just plain bad) advice that has obstructed virtually all political struggles. It echoes, for instance, the counsel directed at Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders in 1963 by sympathetic white clergymen in Birmingham, Alabama. In a letter titled ‘A Call for Unity’, the clergymen cautioned against non-violent demonstrations, referring to them as “unwise and untimely” given their propensity to backfire and “incite hatred and violence” within their intended audience. They urged King and others to seek out “proper channels” for negotiation and resolution.
In response, King penned the now famous ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’, wherein he expressed his severe disappointment in those who supported civil rights for blacks while demanding that such rights be pursued in terms that were palatable to white society. One cannot help but cringe when members of dominant society tender their prudent instructions to the oppressed. I could not help but cringe when Goldenberg expresses anxiety that Idle No More may devolve into an unpalatable “dog’s breakfast of protest and pageantry” so distasteful that it “alienates the very Canadians who should be its audience.” The message to Indigenous peoples here is that their expressions of cultural resurgence and resistance may be a big turn-off for nervous Canadians, in much the same way I suppose as the genres of jazz, blues, and hip-hop in black cultures of urban resistance were so threatening to white society. I suppose that’s why they disappeared.
But the biggest fear among allies like Goldenberg seems to be that the movement will become politically ineffectual as it resorts to direct action, as activists “overplay their hand”. This is an empirical claim, and it is one that appears inaccurate given, for example, the context of direct action and confrontation that precipitated the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Moreover, it does not seem to reflect the realities of past struggles. It was King’s belief that seeking to educate white society through civil discussion – the program preferred by many of his white allies – had failed to move a society steeped in racism. He believed that a more fundamental unsettling of white perspectives through civil disobedience was required before dialogue could gain any traction. That unsettling would occur as black activists “preset our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community.” Many white allies continued to argue against direct action on the grounds that white audiences found it discomforting. To that end, King suggested that his self-appointed advisors, however well-intentioned, were some of the movement’s greatest obstacles: “the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate.”
I don’t wish to overdraw the parallels between the ‘Idle No More’ Indigenous rights movement and other movements. Naturally, there are important differences, not the least of which is that blacks and women sought meaningful equality under the law, whereas Indigenous activists seek meaningful self-determination. The one thing these movements agree on, however, is that our responsibility as members of the dominant society is to listen and learn, and that if we insist on offering prescriptions, to advance these within the privileged circles to which we belong. To be an ally means applying your acumen and expertise appropriately, to your own house, while others put their bodies on the line.
Tobold Rollo
I am guilty of this…today even. Upon the author’s urging in the above article I read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” tonight for the first time. I found it so incredibly moving, I felt man-tears beginning to well-up near the end. I also was shocked by it’s poingniency and relevence to modern social movements – be they Occupy, Idle No More, Critical Mass or myriad other expressions of anger and solidarity in our streets. There is a takeaway for every movement in there…
Thank you for the enlightenment!
B.
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I loved the “listen and learn” piece right at the end and really enjoyed getting to the end. Thank you for your wisdom and words. It baffles me that so few consider how well First Nation’s are launching this amazing turn of events. The coming together of so many First Nations from so many corners of Canada and indigenous peoples internationally has not been done before. I do understand the “opportunity” that many see to oust a political leader and party that really deserve to be put out without out further adieu. However, attending to the larger and deeply troubling issues of colonization and racism, that are coming to the foreground, could bring more real change in the long term. I hope that people will be in solidarity with open ears and hearts.
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I greatly appreciated the article. I think the same discussion needs to happen among those who support peace and justice in Palestine/Israel, or elsewhere where oppressed groups are seeking liberation. It is greatly paternalistic to turn my role as a member of the dominant group who supports the idea of liberation to make that support contingent on the oppressed using the tactics, strategies, and language that I deem best suited to make people like me appreciate the aspirations of the oppressed and side with them.
I think the takeaway message I get from this is that we settler colonials really need to weed our own garden, and stop telling others how to garden, how to plant stuff and which tools to avoid or use.
Blockading train tracks is the same as hip hop?
One does not simply walk into Calgdor PitchForks. Its very lands are rife with indifference… sorry I can’t help get into LoTRs at the sheer mention of Orc.
Keep up the blog good sir, you are already making many allies on the twitter through your vigorous troll slaying.
Clifford M. Testawich
Tobold
As I can see no other contact info could you email me?
One of the best articles on the movement so far. Bravo to Ms. Cuffe. I will leave you with Inspirational words from the late AIM Co-Leader Russell Means: “I don’t want to be remembered as an activist. I want to be remembered as an American Indian patriot.” http://fb.me/1HyZMx339
Interesting.
Thank you for this article. I will be printing it, and the comments, for a “Whites Confronting Racism” workshop I`m co-facilitating soon. The comments before mine are especially pertinent when thinking about where power is (or perceived) to be centered. Merci encore!
I enjoyed your take on outside influence and opinions on the “idle no more” movement. I often find myself concerned with saying that I understanding, when the reality is … I can’t. I was in Kenora one afternoon, very tanned, and couldn’t figure out why people were so cold/rude to me in the stores. I smiled, I was pleasant; nothing was working. I passed by my image in the window, and realized “ah!”. Outside of being a woman, that is the only time I have truly experienced racism. Who am I to say I can relate though? I hated how I felt that day before I understood I was being judged by my appearance. That was enough to make me say that this can’t be right.
I do know that as a Mother, I cannot fathom or understand the attitudes that allow and contribute to the sexual violence experienced by Aboriginal women. I see how my local community went on high alert when two young women went missing. I compare it to how our countries federal, provincial and municipal law enforcement, and media have responded to the disappearance of our Aboriginal young woman. How it could ever be okay for a police officer to ask a grieving mom if her thirteen year old daughter had been “working” at the time? How can that ever be acceptable? As a Non-Native mother, I could step up to a microphone and ask my society to help me find one of my daughters. To not be given the basic right to ask for and receive help is completely wrong, and why in its essence I support sovereignty for our First People’s. There is a long history of successful society before Canada was colonized. Who are we to decide who is worthy?
I am going to use this blog in my classes at school, to further discussion. It is time that Canadian society stop looking to blame a society that worked very well before they came along. It is time to start working together, but also first recognizing that yes, in Canada we are racist and indeed our government is racist. I read people who were appalled that Spence is being compared with Ghandi, Mandela or King. My only response is does one really think that the Brit’s, the Afrikaaners or the Southerners really believed that those people had legitimate reason to hunger strike? It’s not comfortable Canada, not at all. But it is the reality of the society that we live in.
Well i disagree with this Article .! Obviously this movement is about how the Conservative Govt has gone out of it’s way to create this movement by it’s political actions against Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
Please look at this list Bills, introduced last year.
What is Harper’s Agenda.? …well to eliminate the First Nations from Canada…this is genocide and uses the same mentality of another Famous man Hitler!!
More important information on the Conservative Government’s recent Bills, which supports my statement above.
Bill C-38: Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act. ( gutting environmental laws, violates the federal government’s obligation to consult with First Nations and accommodate First Nation Treaty and Aboriginal rights, officially withdraws Canada from the Kyoto Protocol reducing the federal government’s obligations to report on climate change policies.
Bill C-27: First Nations Financial Transparency Act
Bill C-45: Jobs and Growth Act, 2012 [Omnibus Bill includes Indian Act amendments regarding voting on-reserve lands surrenders/designations]
Bill S-2: Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act
Bill S-6: First Nations Elections Act
Bill S-8: Safe Drinking Water for First Nations
Bill C-428: Indian Act Amendment and Replacement Act
Bill S-207: An Act to amend the Interpretation Act
Bill S-212: First Nations Self-Government Recognition Bill
This is one white man that would love to see #idlenomore step up and target Conservative offices, Enbridge and the houses of Harper and his ghouls +orcs.
Take the demos from shopping centers to their front doors and neighbourhoods.
They could care less about anything until you take it to their front doors and make them very uncomfortable.