Our society has many rules that protect an artist from having his work stolen. Copyright, trademark, public domain etcetera. But those statutes were created within our culture, to protect members of our group from each other. There have been no such rules created to deal with the art of a whole people.
In fact, our copyright laws don’t do so well when they try to cross national boundaries, as witnessed by musicians and filmmakers who have had their work stolen and sold on the black market by Chinese and other Asian pirates.
So the question appears. How much of their culture does a people actually own? It sounds like a silly question. I mean, if I want to go and live in a tepee or an igloo like one of our indigenous peoples, who’s going to worry about it?
It Turns Out Somebody Does
There was a great furor on social media last year, caused by a TV commercial where the character stated, “I discovered I’m a quarter Native American. Isn’t that great?”
To which certain Native Americans responded, “No it isn’t,” telling everyone loudly that a person like that couldn’t really lay claim to any Native Americanism (or whatever name they gave it) because she hadn’t had the Native American Experience (whatever that is). As such she would never be accepted as a member of their very exclusive club (or tribe, or clique, or whatever you want to call it).
The Other Side of the Coin
As teachers, we were always trying to help our non-native students to understand and empathize with First Nations cultures. And the best way to do that was to create similar experiences they could learn from.
My sister-in-law, for example, just finished a wonderful project at her Nanaimo high school, a huge mural on indigenous art themes, created partly by local First Nations artists and partly by the students of the school. Though this project was funded and run by Caucasians, the art work was created by the First Nations people, so no one would dream of complaining. It was a true work of cultural collaboration, with the artists teaching the students of all backgrounds. The result was pride in their culture for all the First Nations people involved, and a better understanding of that culture by everyone else.
A project I worked on twenty years ago was on much shakier ground. A local choir director (of Northern European descent) and I (British Isles heritage all the way) collaborated to write a musical theatre piece for her choir. The plot line stemmed from my knowledge of the historical conflict between the coastal native tribes and the interior peoples. But I kept the whole battle in the realm of the metaphoric by having the two main characters being the Raven, trickster of the coast, and the Coyote, trickster of the interior myths. I pitted these two scoundrels against each other, and we all watched the sparks that flew. The play was well received, and we considered it a successful project.
But now, in Vancouver twenty years later, my colleague is staging the musical again. And this time the first consideration has to be whether it will be accepted by the tribes who were the source of the myths. Heaven forbid that we should offend anyone by stealing his or her culture.
Why Is This So?
Well, I’m afraid it has to do with the effect of tribalism on human interaction. And I use that term very precisely. I’m not talking about the social units of Canada’s indigenous people. I’m discussing the general habit of human societies to group themselves into small parties of less than 150 people, and to see that group as “us,” and everyone else as, “them.” (See Dunbar’s Number if you want to know why.)
Those of us trying to perpetuate an inclusive, multicultural society think that exposing everyone to everyone else’s art forms and lifestyles leads to understanding and cooperation. Less confident peoples who have seen their culture denigrated and stripped from them see it differently. They are trying to regain their art forms and their ways of life, so they see any attempt to use those elements by anyone else as theft.
In the short term, that sort of tribalism may be good for their sense of self-worth. But it is a losing proposition in the long run. Exclusivity leads to loneliness.
A good example of the way to win this battle is the old Apple/IBM competition for computer supremacy in the eighties. Apple held its patents tightly to itself. IBM spread its seeds over the waters, allowing anyone and everyone to clone its computers. Apple’s share of the computer market right now? About 7%. The vast majority of other computers are “IBM Compatibles.” Interestingly enough, IBM does not make personal computers anymore. But their legacy lives on, dominating the culture of the PC world. And the Apple users are determinedly tribal about the superiority of their product. All 7% of them.
The Scottish are one of the greatest examples of how cultural free rein works. Just like the native tribes of North America, the Scots had their culture attacked and ridiculed as primitive by their English invaders. But if you look around the world, throughout the countries that once formed the British Empire, the effect of Scottish culture are widespread, and not practised only by Scottish people. Bagpipes and Scottish dancing are worldwide cultural icons, far out of proportion to the relative size of the Scottish population.
How Am I Doing?
For the picture of Coyote and Raven at the head of this post I have photoshopped a Haida rattle onto a picture from a book called “Indian Days of Long Ago,” by Curtis and Wilson, published in New York in 1915. Both of these pictures are in the public domain, so I have broken no laws. I leave it to you to judge whether I have done the Haida people any cultural damage by juxtaposing one of their original works with an anthropomorphic representation by a (probably Caucasian) American artist in a style typical of the era. Note that in the 1915 picture Coyote, an Interior legend, is paddling a West Coast-style canoe. Also typical of the era, the work has no interest in cultural accuracy. I think the original Haida piece comes off very well by comparison.
On the Other Side
What I get from those on the indigenous side is that they aren’t so upset at having their culture used, they’re upset when it is used badly: portraying stereotypes, cheapening religious items, etc. I’m wholly on their side in this. A baseball team called the Redskins with a comic stereotyped Indian brave as their mascot is 19th century bigotry at its worst.
However, trying to keep complete control of all use of their cultural elements has just as negative an effect on the smooth progress of our Canadian culture from becoming more inclusive. Which is what I think we all want.
So for those who wish to keep their culture traits to their own exclusive use, I have one more metaphor. A potluck dinner is an exercise in cultural diversity. If you think you should sit by yourself and eat only the food you brought, keeping it from anyone else, you’ve rather missed the point of the exercise.