Category Archives: ANTH500

10/27/15

Truth, Reconciliation, and Anti-Colonialism

The following comment  is forthcoming in Re-Storying Indian Residential Schools in Times of Reconciliation in Canada, (Eds) Capitaine, B.; Vanthuyne, K., Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press.

“… colonialism is not simply content to impose its rule upon the present and the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today” Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963:210).

Fanon was writing about the critical relevance of a resurgent national culture in the context of revolutionary struggles for political independence from colonialism in Africa. Despite having been written more than 60 years ago these words speak with prescience and immediacy here today, in Canada. Indigenous peoples have been engaged in a permanent struggle for autonomy practically since the first settlers arrived on our shores. The struggle has waxed and waned. Over the course of the twentieth century the colonists appeared to take the upper hand. However, a renewed and resurgent Indigenism is reverberating throughout Canada. From the decentered politics of Idle No More to legal victories and government apologies history is being re-storied as Indigenous peoples compel settlers to take note.

Our history can no longer be ignored. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) findings were stark: Canada committed cultural genocide through the systemic support of Indian Residential Schools (IRS) over the course of more than one century. These schools took children from their homes, maltreated them, abused them, and did all of that under a cultural framework of white supremacy and a political framework of colonialism. As Fanon notes in regard to Africa, colonialism is an active process by which a people’s sense of self, of one’s sense of dignity, one’s very sense of self-worth is deliberately and directly diminished and attacked: “The effect consciously sought by colonialism was to drive into the natives’ heads the idea that if the settlers were to leave, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation, and bestiality” (1963:211). There is no other way to comprehend the objectives, processes, and outcomes of Canada’s IRS system.

The findings from the TRC provide the empirical evidence of the depravity of Canada’s colonialism: “For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide” (TRC 2015:1). Central to the displacement of Indigenous peoples from our lands was the programme of silencing us; and the attempt to take away our memory and knowledge of our land, of our history, and of our possibility to enact jurisdiction over these same things. The residential schools played their part in trying to reconstruct memories, histories, and stories that prioritized the assumed racial superiority of the colonizing elite. Fortunately the policy was not as successful as its architects may have hoped.

This volume resonates with Fanon’s call to pay attention to the role of culture, history, and Indigenous intellectuals. The editors deploy the idea of “re-storying,” a process that questions the imposition of colonial narratives. This notion places the emphasis upon the active work of confronting colonial narratives. While there are problems inherent to re-storying (if the practice remains locked in the arcane world of letters), the contributors to this volume offer up the possibilities of a future beyond re-storying. There is a call to act embedded at the heart of this volume. Here too we find an echo of Fanon’s description of the Indigenous intellectual’s path toward joining in the liberation struggle.

Fanon, in discussing the role of intellectuals in the struggle for political liberation outlines three phases through which the native intellectual must pass. I would suggest that the non-Indigenous fellow traveler intellectuals might well find themselves in a similar trajectory. Fanon’s phases are: (1) “the period of unqualified assimilation. . . . [Here] the native intellectual gives proof that he is assimilated to the culture of the occupying power” (1963:222); (2) the period during which the intellectual “decides to recognize what he is. … But since the native is not a part of his people, since he only has exterior relations with his people, he is content to recall their life only. Past happenings of the bygone days of childhood will be brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted in the light of borrowed estheticism and of a conception of the world which was discovered under other skies” (1963:222), and; (3) Finally, in “the fighting phase, the native, after having tried to lose himself in the people and with the people, will on the contrary shake the people. Instead of according the people’s lethargy an honoured place in his esteem, he turns himself into an awakener of the people” (1963: 222-23). Fanon cautions the Indigenous intellectual that “it is not enough to try and get back to the people in that past out of which they have already emerged; rather we must join them in that fluctuating movement which they are just giving a shape to, and which, as soon as it has started, will be the signal for everything to be called into question (1963:227).

This volume is located somewhere between Fanon’s phase two and phase three. There are aspects of the chapters that reveal a self-awareness of one’s place in the colonial moment (for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors). Some of the chapters are clearly placed in the fighting phase linking experience, history, and an articulation of a possibility to finally reconcile the colonial state to the Indigenous Nations (rather than the reverse). This constitutes a call to action that echoes Fanon but is rooted in our current Canadian context.

This call to action has a long history within anthropology as well. Kathleen Gough, then a professor at Simon Fraser University, exhorted her colleagues in the late 1960s to join with the liberation struggles of her day as allies in struggle (1968). For non-Indigenous intellectuals Gough’s call and Fanon’s analysis remain relevant and pressing. It is important to understand the intellectual currents of the contemporary struggle, to see the importance of re-storying and rejecting the colonial narrative. The papers in this volume all achieve this end. But that in and of itself is not enough. We must also take action.

“The colonized man who writes for his people ought to use the past with the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and a basis of hope” (Fanon 1963:232). This volume draws from the past and goes beyond the disempowering stories of victimhood. In the artful, poignant, and perceptive analysis presented there is a modicum of hope. To ensure we do not squander the possibility we must all transform the ivory tower and join with the Indigenous struggle for liberation and autonomy.

 

References Cited

Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth: The Handbook for the Black Revolution that is Changing the Shape of the World. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.

Gough, Katleen. 1968. “Anthropology and Imperialism.” Monthly Review. 19(11, April):12-27.

04/8/15

Grades: “in full honesty, my paper deserves a better grade.”

Late December brings the sound of jingle bells, carols, and grade appeals. It’s a seasonal thing that returns again just after the Easter Bunny has handed out chocolate eggs.

Let me first highlight the positive. Alongside of grade appeals, requests for clarifications or outright indignation, faculty also receive cards of thanks, emails of appreciation, and the occasional modest gift. There are students who make an effort to express their thanks for the opportunity to learn. These expressions are all very much appreciated. In fact, they go a long way to offset the worry we experience as faculty when the grade appeal season get started

Between the end of a course and the submission of final grades there is a brief moment of calm. There was a time when grades were posted on paper outside a faculty member’s office. The time involved in making one’s way back to campus to check the grade, separating the submission of a grade and a student’s awareness of it by days or weeks rather than minutes, allowed a period of reflection that forestalled rash responses. Email has created a more immediate reaction. I will often get queries mere moments after the grades are posted online.

In math, chemistry, or physics grades can be presented and determined with a more objective tone and complexion then seems to be the case in the social sciences. That said, most social science faculty members do use clear and transparent marking rubrics. Most of us make a serious effort to lay out evaluation criteria in our course outlines. But that doesn’t ever seem to stop the modest flood of critique and appeals that we receive around the end of term.

There are times when grading has been too severe (also too easy). In my large classes where I work with teaching assistants I make a point to ensure that from a meta level the grades produced by each marker are consistent across the entire class. I personally check low and high grades and a few in between from each individual marker’s portfolio. In classes that I mark myself I double check each grade assigned to ensure that I have been consistent. All this is to try to reduce any potential errors, omissions, or unfairness in marking. Just the same, there are almost always queries and occasional mistakes do slip in.

There are three basic approaches that students take toward grade appeals.

  • There must be something wrong
  • I am confused about how you arrived at my grade
  • Can you explain how I could do better next time

Each of these approaches telegraphs a specific message.

The first approach is essentially an outright challenge (except in the cases when there is indeed something wrong). Students should use the first form of complaint sparingly. Check and double check before you speak to a prof with this approach. We are human and, as humans, do make mistakes from time to time. But proceed with caution.

“I am confused” is often a very sincere response. Typically the student who professes confusion has handed in work that is of middling quality. This is the normal type of work they do and for some profs they get good grades and others they get worse grades. Students have a right to feel confused. I share your confusion with colleagues who took the easy path, gave you a B+ or an A in their course, and thereby avoided having to meet with you to explain why they “only” gave you a C+ or B- (which very likely is what you should have been given). Truth is, we don’t do you any favour by giving you a high grade when what you really deserved was a grade that said good job, you met the criteria: C+. But in today’s world everyone wants an A (even if folks have forgotten what is involved in getting one). This is part of a grade inflation trend that is hard to escape from.

“Can you explain what I can do next time” has two variants: the sincere and the passive aggressive. The passive aggressive variant is a modified version of “there must be something wrong.” This student is concerned about upsetting the prof so settles upon the neutral “can you tell me what I could do next time approach.” Yet, lurking beneath the surface is a feeling that the prof did it wrong and the student wants her/him to figure it out and correct it. Unlike the sincere variant, the passive aggressive variant of this trope typically won’t relent and sometimes will, in a moment of exasperation, shift into the “there must be something wrong with how this was marked” style. The key indicator here is that the student will repeat a stock set of questions that inevitably circle back onto their idea that their paper was not correctly evaluated.

The sincere student is trying to figure things out. They are less interested in the grade then they are in learning the material and how to be an effective student. They may simply not understand how to differentiate between a modest quality of output and a high quality of output. The sincere student may also confuse the quantity of labour invested into an assignment or studying with the quality of time (in fact many studnets make this mistake). There is a useful concept called “socially necessary labour time.” Defined as: “The labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society.” What does this have to do with grades? Simple: quantity of effort expended does not equal quality of output produced. That is, one doesn’t deserve a high grade simply because one spent the most time they ever had doing this assignment. The trick is to balance the amount of work required with the desired outcome in a way that conforms to the standard quantity of time a competent student spends completing a particular assignment.

Ultimately focusing on grades deflects a student from the fundamental idea of learning. It is a lot to ask of students (given our societies’ hyper-concern with evaluation, ranking, and grading) to focus on learning as opposed to grades. Why should a student be any different then other people – grades are unfortunately seen as measures of worth and as a kind of capital used to buy privileged positions in society? My answer is that learning is not always reflected in grades. Ideally I would remove scarcity based grading (which is what I call current models) and shift to a more qualitative form of assessment that measured a students learning in terms of how their understanding of a subject evolved, where did a student start? How has their understanding and knowledge expanded? What new process skills have they learned? Can they demonstrate these new skills and new understandings in novel settings?   Grades are one small measure and a decade or more after this class is over I doubt a student will remember the grade they got. They might recall a classmate, a discussion, a particular reading or lecture. That is ultimately what is most important.

12/6/14

A Statement on the US Police State

A version of the following statement was approved on Friday by the section assembly of the American Anthropological Association. As the President of one of the sections (Society for the Anthropology of Work) I participated in the discussions and urged the assembly to pass the statement. Personally, I found some issues with the wording of the statement, but was in full agreement with the intend, the importance, and the timeliness of the resolution. What follows is my personal revision of the statement. 

As a professional Canadian anthropologist I share the outrage expressed by my U.S. colleagues over the failure of the Ferguson and Staten Island grad juries to indict the police officers who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the dismissal of the case against the officer who killed 7 year old Aiyanna Jones.  In the hundred days since the killing of Michael Brown, U.S. police forces have also killed 12 year old Tamar Rice, Ezell Ford, Darien Hunt, Aura Rain Rosser, Tanisha Anderso, Roshad McIntosh, Akai Gurley, Vonderitt Myers, and Rumain Brisbon, among others. These incidents reflect a blatant disregard for the value and dignity of their lives and the communities in which they live.  These events are representative of a broader U.S. history of systematic anti-black violence, dating back to enslavement, lynch laws, and the prison-industrial complex that affects black Latino, and Indigenous children, men, women, and gender queer people.

As a member of an academic discipline that rose on the backs of research conducted on and about my people, Indigenous North Americans, I understand the roots of state violence.  While U.S.  ideologies hold that we are all equal under the law, this has never been the case, and in fact inequality has been structured into the justice system from the start and is currently escalating in the U.S. via the militarization of local police forces.

To this end the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association is called upon to:

  • make a formal statement condemning these activities and structural conditions.
  • create a task force on police brutality and extra-judicial violence; and
  • call on the U.S. Justice Department to review the use of force by police and to make a commitment to working for the eradication of racism and racialized state violence.

Charles R Menzies