Offended by Offence

On Friday February 26, I spoke at the Greater Edmonton Teachers’ Convention Association (GETCA).  I was invited to speak by Hope Knudsen, the President of GETCA, after she heard me interviewed by Michael Enright on CBC radio on June 14, 2009 about Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry (the interview is available on the Video/Audio/Interviews page of this blog and the CBC’s website).  In the interview, I argued that funding for aboriginal education was being diverted to non-aboriginal lawyers, consultants, and comprador aboriginal elites, and this money should be spent on hiring specially trained teachers to improve native educational deficiencies.

Ms. Knudsen was honestly responding to the ideas that were being presented, and was unaware that they were controversial.  She was unprepared for the fact that there are a number of people in Canada who do not want critical viewpoints on aboriginal policy development to be expressed, either because of their vested interests or the fact that they are “humanitarian” opponents of free speech – an ideology that is discussed in “the kindly inquisitors” post on this blog.  ”Humanitarians” maintain that ideas should not be criticized if this ”causes hurt” or “gives offence” (especially if the ideas are being put forward by groups that have been the historical victims of oppression). 

The first I became aware of the opposition to my speech was on the arrogantly irrational website of Taiaiake Alfred, a romantic indigenous “warrior” employed in the University of Victoria’s Indigenous Governance advocacy program.  A posting from “Barry” on February 10, 2010 noted that “unbelievably, Ms. Widdowson is being allowed to speak at an upcoming Greater Edmonton Teachers’ Convention Association (GETCA) convention at the end of this month. Upon finding this out today I have contacted one of the Local presidents of the Alberta Teachers’ Association as well as the president of GETCA to find out how this has happened and to inquire if they know who it is they have invited. Ms. W. is not part of a panel (this I would have encouraged) but will, to my understanding, have a captive audience with her as the sole presenter. I am appalled! However, I promise that I will condense many of the arguments presented here and confront her when she appears in Edmonton.  I am expecting she will be as slippery as anything I have heretofore encountered” (http://www.taiaiake.com/42).

It was no surprise, therefore, when, upon returning from dinner the night before I was scheduled to speak, I found a message on my answering machine inviting me to come for a drink with the conference organizers.  Upon arrival, the organizers informed me that one professor and two graduate students from the University of Alberta had been lobbying to have me excluded from the program.  Fortunately, GETCA was standing firm but they were concerned about the reception that I might receive; I assured them that I was not worried, and hoped that the humanitarian censors from the University of Alberta would attend the session and engage me in a civil debate.  It was then decided that another session, presented by Patrick Loyer, “Addressing Aboriginal Learning Outcomes”, would be cancelled so that he could comment on my speech (presumably so that the convention could meet the demands of people like “Barry”, who were concerned that I would have a “captive audience”).  Loyer’s session was intending to show that ”it is becoming increasingly important for all teachers to know about aboriginal history and culture to address curriculum outcomes”.  He was also going to distribute a document entitled Education is Our Buffalo: A Teachers’ Resource for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Education in Alberta” (produced by the Alberta Teachers’ Association, and also available on the internet – http://www.ldaa.ca/assets/pdfs/freeResources/EducationIsOurBuffalo.pdf ).

Although I was pleased that Loyer would be providing comments, because bringing together opposing viewpoints is how we move closer to the truth, his response to my speech ”Speaking Frankly About Aboriginal Education” (the transcript/speaking notes is available on the Aboriginal Policy page of this blog), was very disappointing.  This was because Loyer appeared not to have read my work and did not provide any evidence for his criticisms, but instead relied upon the biased commentary of people like James Frideres and Peter Kulchyski.  Loyer began with the inane observation that my speech ”was only words”, and then went on to make the following points:

1. That I discussed technological development that had occurred in Europe but had not recognized the sophistication of aboriginal technology (when pressed, the example that he came up with was the canoe).

2. My presentation gave the appearance of being reasonable and offering conclusions, but it did not “meet the minimum of research” (the wording of the unsubstantiated argument was very familiar, and was likely plagiarized from a speech given by James Frideres in December 2008  that was subsequently posted on the internet).

3. That I had a “euroecentric” view of science and used methodology that was akin to ”logical positivism” (an argument that was not substantiated and appears to have been plagiarized from Sandra Tomsons). 

4. I was guilty of “intellectual dishonesty” (a claim that was not substantiated, and presumably plagiarized from Peter Kulchyski);

5. Aboriginal peoples also had made advancements in science, mathematics and logic; the substantiation for this claim was the example of the Mayan calendar. 

6. That I had dismissed aboriginal oral traditions, which have value because they have been around for a long time.

While these criticisms were superficial and largely unsubstantiated, there was some fruitful dialogue that took place in the question period.  One of the most important outcomes was that I was able to articulate how important science was for all people, and that assertions about “eurocentric science” discouraged non-Europeans from accessing this essential educational tool.  The fact that GETCA stood up to the political pressure and allowed the talk to go forward also was a victory for science and a blow to the “humanitarian” agenda of censoring ideas under the auspices of professed offence.  As Rauch points out, we have to realize that “humanitarianism” is contrary to critical thinking and scientific progress because it fails to understand that “knowledge does not come free to any of us; we have to suffer for it.  We have to stand naked before the court of critical checkers and watch our most cherished beliefs come under fire.  Sometimes we have to watch while our notion of evident truth gets tossed in the gutter.  Sometimes we feel we are treated rudely, even viciously.  As others prod and test and criticize our ideas, we feel angry, hurt, embarassed” (Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors, p. 125).

Stuart Soroka, the 2010 Programme Committee Chairperson for the CPSA, had a message posted on the Women’s Caucus listserve before it was moderated (see Email from Stuart Soroka – January 4 on the Ethics page of this blog).  In this message, Soroka assured members of the Women’s Caucus that my paper was transferred to a poster session because it “did not easily fit into a panel with other papers from the REIPP [Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics] section”.  He goes on to point out that the “the committee approved of the decision (as the committee must approve of all section heads’ decisions for CPSA conferences)” and that “the charge of any unprofessionalism on [Kiera Ladner’s] part is, to be frank, wholly unfounded”.

While “the charge of any unprofessionalism” could very well be without merit (it was merely noted that Ladner “seems to have left herself open to a charge of unprofessionalism”, and this suspicion was based on Ladner’s previous inability to be objective about my work on aboriginal policy), there are a few things that should be mentioned in response to the committee’s decision about my proposal’s lack of “fit” within the REIPP section.  I have been told that the CPSA, in the past, has been concerned about placing me on a panel with other scholars who study aboriginal politics out of fear that my ideas could create a hostile reaction (a circumstance that was realized at the 2008 conference).  The creation of the REIPP section has exacerbated this problem because it has tended to move presentations about aboriginal peoples and aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations out of more traditional academic sections (comparative politics, Canadian politics, etc.), and into a section that is influenced by an “identity politics” orientation.  Therefore, the idea of “fit” could have more to do with trying to avoid conflict than with academic considerations.

Second, it seems odd that the CPSA would not want to have a proposal concerning research ethics and aboriginal peoples, aboriginal epistemology, etc., discussed in a formal panel.  The CPSA devoted a section of its report on research ethics to “Research involving Aboriginal peoples”, and the second draft of the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans’ chapter concerning “Research Involving Aboriginal Peoples in Canada” has just been released for scholarly consideration.  Brock et al., in their letter “Racism, chilly climate, our responsibility and the discipline”, even suggested that a “major CPSA *Plenary on Responsibility Difference and the Discipline* might be productive” and “would attract a phenomenal attendance and would generate the kind of constructive professional debate we desire within the CPSA, and would be a mentoring opportunity for graduate students and junior faculty” (the people recommended for the plenary, however, did not come from a wide range of perspectives and were largely supportive of the existence of different “ways of knowing”). 

Past CPSA sessions also have sparked considerable interest in these topics.  The panel that Albert Howard and I participated in with Sandra Tomsons in 2009 was packed and led to a lively, but restrained, discussion.  Kiera Ladner’s proposal last year entitled “Decolonizing the Discipline: Respecting Indigenous Knowledge & Using Indigenist Methodologies” was also accepted.  The abstract for this presentation was as follows:

“Since Columbus was discovered, knowledge of the Americas and the peoples who lived there captured the minds and imaginations of some of Europe’s greatest political philosophers: More, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Spencer, and Engels, to name but a few. Despite the fact that Indians of the Americas have occupied the imaginations of the world since the time of ‘discovery’, Indians have not occupied the imaginations of modern political scientists. Political science has ignored Indigenous political traditions and studied contemporary Indigenous politics only from the vantage point of the western-eurocentric tradition. Simply put, most have been unable to escape their paradigm paralysis to understand the politics of the ‘other’ on its own terms or as separate from the western-eurocentric experience. In so doing, political science has perpetuated a western-eurocentric understanding that virtually denies ‘others’ a voice within the discipline. This paper draws on the theoretical undertaking of my dissertation and updates the uncirculated paper presented at UofA (the abstract of which led to a heated exchange at CPSA). It engages the discipline’s construction of the Indigenous and argues that it is necessary to understand the ‘other’ not from the vantage of the western-eurocentric intellectual tradition as this readily perpetuates misunderstanding but from the vantage of their own intellectual and political traditions. It argues that proceeding as such enables a trustworthy post-colonial/decolonizing understanding of Indigenous politics within political science and that the effect of such a paradigm shift has the potential to be of great benefit to the discipline as a whole not just the study of Indigenous politics”.

A number of assertions put forward by Ladner still need to be analyzed and debated (for some reason, Ladner did not produce a paper fleshing out this abstract).  What are the “Indigenous political traditions” to which Ladner refers?  How do we “understand the politics of the ‘other’ on its own terms”?  And what is a “trustworthy post-colonial/decolonizing understanding of Indigenous politics within political science” and how will this “be of great benefit to the discipline as a whole not just the study of Indigenous politics”?  Once again, we seem to have the contradiction of saying that there should be a “different” understanding that only the identity group can have (i.e. it cannot be evaluated with universally accessible social scientific methods), yet this “understanding” must be accepted by all as a benefit to political science.

Ladner’s proposal was included in a workshop on “‘Race’, Racism and Anti-racism as Political Science: Framing and Re-Framing Relationships”, which also included presentations on “Race, Empowerment and Crisis Management: Black Political Leadership and Hurricane Katrina” and “Beyond Racial Exceptionalism: Explaining the Convergence of Mixed-Race Census Categorizations in Canada, the US and Great Britain”.  Interestingly, the two latter presentations are very dissimilar from Ladner’s and do not really concern epistemological matters.  Ladner’s presentation, in fact, would have “fit” much better with the presentations of Tomsons, Howard and myself, but, for some reason, Ladner was not included on our panel, which largely concerned epistemological questions.  Therefore, “fit” appears to be a very subjective determination of the programme committee.

It should be noted that unscholarly responses to work critical of the prevailing “aboriginal orthodoxy” have been occurring for quite some time, and so it should not really be surprising if this is continuing in my case. Radha Jhappan, for example, stated publicly that “fundamental racism” formed the basis of Tom Flanagan’s book First Nations? Second Thoughts even though no evidence was provided to sustain this accusation. Similar problematic conduct occurred when Flanagan’s book was awarded the Donald Smiley Prize. The chair of the jury, Gurston Dacks, quit when he was outvoted, displaying contempt for a process that he had agreed to participate in (rejecting it only when he lost the vote).  Joyce Green has noted that the political science community was “fractured” because the jury’s decision “implicated us all in rewarding something that many of us felt was deeply wrong” (Marci McDonald, “The Man Behind Stephen Harper”, The Walrus, October 2004, www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/the-man-behind-stephen-harper-tom-flanagan/5/).

Green’s comments reflect the deep problems that exist in political science with respect to the study of aboriginal peoples and aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations.  What is meant by saying that someone’s scholarship is “deeply wrong”?   Shouldn’t political scientists be concerned about the quality of the arguments and the amount of evidence that is being put forward to support them?  Unfortunately, the characterization of Flanagan’s work in moral terms has prevented a comprehensive analysis of his arguments.  Postmodern political scientists feel justified in dismissing Flanagan’s arguments as reprehensible, when engaging with them would help us all to more fully understand aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations.  One does not have to agree with arguments to critically analyze them; avoiding opposing viewpoints because one dislikes their preconceived implications, however, is anti-intellectual and is harmful to the academic integrity of the discipline of political science.