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So, we kind of get caught. If we deviate from these characteristics,
we're not really Indian. And that's where the symbolic kind of
annihilation happens. And I want to talk about a couple of
stereotypes that don't fit nicely into either of these categories, but sort of
circumscribe them, okay? And one of these is the notion of
vanishing race, and this kind of fits with that linear idea of development, that
everyone has, everyone progresses in this same way.
And you know, when I was married to an idea of Social Darwinism, in the 1800s and
early 1900s, there was this notion that the fittest would survive and those who
were not fit would die off. And there was a notion then that because
Indian populations were declining at that time it must be the natural state they're,
they're destined to die off so that the superior civilizations could continue on.
So, this notion that the race is vanishing leads to a number of kind of assumptions.
One is, that's just nature's way, we should enable and allow it to just
continue and happen. So, so that kind of lead to certain
inertia around solving certain social problems and issues.
It also led to some people thinking that since it's natural and it's progress, we
should hasten their demise. And so, that led to some of the erosion of
reservation and reserve land basis. Because they're dying off anyway, it
doesn't really matter. We can put them out of sight so they can
die off conveniently over there. And if you look at some of the writings of
or our favorite some of the media of today you could certainly see that there are
people proposing that in editorials and so forth that it was a good thing.
Ironically, a lot of these remote reserves actually become, become then ways of
preserving and enabling culture to survive longer because it became under less threat
from assimilation by being out of the way of certain cultural pressures to
assimilate and adapt, and so forth. Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent.
But the other thing that happens with the vanishing race idea going to, back to that
notion of coming in and saving and preserving, is that it enables certain
disciplines like anthropology and, and some others like it to become the experts
on Indian culture and knowledge. And they would swoop in to describe
practices and characteristics and traits for the preservation of man's knowledge,
right, right, humankind's knowledge. They became the ones who were best
positioned to do this work before they die off and then we don't have access to that
notion anymore. So, this kind of idea of vanishing race,
the, the notion of inevitability that comes with it is what makes it kind of so
intriguing and dangerous and scary. And it still kind of goes on today and I
would say, it's complicated because even you know, even indigenous people, and this
is the thing about stereotypes, anyone can kind of enable and enact those stereotypes
to their own purposes, for, for good or not.
And a lot of indigenous people will talk about picking up something before it's
lost, so they're also using that vanishing race idea, too as a justification for
certain actions that they do. The other stereotype that doesn't kind of
neatly fit but I think we need to talk about is this notion of being trapped in a
certain time. So, like the living fossil idea, that in
order to be an authentic Indian what is authentic, has to kind of be preserved in
a certain moment in time, and that time is always shifting.
It's interesting because people will talk about pre-contact as being what is really
Indian and traditional, as though it can't change and adapt with time.
Like shouldn't culture change and adapt over time?
Or some people will set up certain, kind of arbitrary dates and times like for, for
a lot of movies, they created this notion of what is an authentic Indian.
It's the long dark hair, riding a horse, probably doing a war dance or something
like that. And it's an encoding of the Sioux wars and
then applying that to kind of all Indian groups.
So, if you've seen one Indian, you've seen them all.
This kind of notion, like, well, I didn't think you were going to look like that.
So, well, why, where did you get that notion of what they look like?
And I think it's kind of the, the rise in newspaper coverage of those wars.
And the depiction with the new medium of photography of certain Sioux warriors and,
and that becomes standing in for all Indians and gets especially popular and
encoded in Wild West shows, which were quite popular, and then movies.
I think a lot of us have seen the impact of Westerns and, on that notion of what is
an authentic Indian. So, so, going along with this living
fossil stereotype is this notion that if they adapt, Indians that is, if they adapt
any kind of technology that wasn't there prior to contact with European peoples,
that's somehow not authentic. And it may seem kind of absurd when you
really think about it, that, well, surely, the technology that I'm using right now is
not the same that Mm ancestors used 20 years ago or, or so forth.
But when it comes to Indians, it's like you're not allowed to change.
You have to stay and to be authentic at this one point on that line of progress.
Because if you adapt these other things, you're chipping away at your real
identity. And so, where does that become especially
damaging is in tink of some of the court cases that have in the 1990s, in Canada,
that have defined Aboriginal rights through the constitution.
There was one which came to be known as the Delgamuukw Decision, where the
Gitksan, Wet'suwet'en peoples in the initial BC judgement, it was overturned by
the Supreme Court of Canada. But in the initial BC judgement, because
the Wet'suwet'en peoples used microwave pizza and drove cars, that they were
considered to have given up their Indianness, okay?
So, this is, you know when, when people who have that kind of power like a federal
court judge or a provincial court judge, and they take the stereotypes and they use
them in their basis and reasons for judgement, it really impacts the people,
right? As educators, and teachers, and learners
you know, we, we have a certain power as well.
When we look at these sources and we try and find the stereotypes that are in them,
the biases that are in them when we work with our, with our students and with their
learners on addressing their attitude and their prejudice, because we all have our
prejudices and when we work on those to understand how we're looking at Indian
people and life and issue, we have a profound impact, too.
So, this is one of the reasons that stereotypes are, are, they really do
matter.
Jean-Paul RestouleAssociate Professor
