{"id":646,"date":"2009-12-10T05:56:25","date_gmt":"2009-12-10T13:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/?p=646"},"modified":"2009-12-10T06:05:45","modified_gmt":"2009-12-10T14:05:45","slug":"northern-spirit-from-whitehorse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/2009\/12\/10\/northern-spirit-from-whitehorse\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Spirit (From Whitehorse)"},"content":{"rendered":"\"YouTube<\/a><\/span><\/span>\n

This documentary video starts with a young\u00a0woman’s\u00a0narration of a legend\u00a0through what looks like a shadow puppet show.\u00a0The video\u00a0goes on to\u00a0ask, “How has the spirituality of young women changed?”\u00a0It features women\u00a0sharing their thoughts and\u00a0experiences to do\u00a0with spirituality and their encounters with\u00a0traditional indigenous knowledge. The women\u00a0talk, among other things,\u00a0about the gap between traditional knowledge of spirituality and language, and their present day access to such\u00a0knowledge. The\u00a0video\u00a0was created by\u00a0a group of young women\u00a0who participated in a workshop\u00a0 through\u00a0the non-profit organization\u00a0I am concentrating on – Girls Action Foundation – Fondation filles d’action <\/a>(based out of Montreal, Quebec) with the organization’s\u00a0facilitation. According the Kickaction<\/a><\/a>* (part of Girls Action) website, “This inspiring video was created by a group of young women at the Make Some Noise North training that took place in Whitehorse [Yukon] in July” (n.d.)<\/p>\n

The\u00a0production is a representation from\u00a0the metaphorical ‘Global South’ – while it is located in the ‘Global North,’ it features the Yukon, an area\u00a0in Canada which has not been as great a focus in the country, and\u00a0where\u00a0it is\u00a0my\u00a0impression that resources are not always\u00a0as readily available. It also\u00a0films people from\u00a0‘groups’ which have\u00a0historically been oppressed – young women and members of indigenous communities. I feel cautious to\u00a0label the speakers\u00a0as ‘subaltern’ though – although they may\u00a0not\u00a0have not\u00a0been\u00a0allowed\u00a0enough of a voice, I do not want to portray them as\u00a0victims. (While I do not think\u00a0Sharp’s (2008)\u00a0article, “Can the Subaltern Speak” attempts to portray the subaltern purely as victims, the term still\u00a0carries the danger of the connotation.) Conversely, I like the fact that\u00a0the video showcases the women’s strengths (for example through their video production skills)\u00a0and the insights they have to offer on their upbringing and\u00a0community.<\/p>\n

The video also\u00a0addresses the problem of\u00a0“epistemic violence” discussed in Sharp’s article, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (Spivak, cited in Sharp, 2008, p. 111) Sharp writes, “the term ‘epistemic violence<\/strong>‘\u00a0… refers to violence done to the\u00a0ways of knowing and understanding of non-western, indigenous peoples” (Spivak, cited in Sharp,\u00a02008, p. 111).\u00a0In the video, one of the young women talks about the fact that\u00a0a lot of the spirituality has been lost for women\u00a0in today’s society due to intergenerational abuses\u00a0from the residential school era.\u00a0According to\u00a0my own understanding, the residential school system broke the link between indigenous people and various forms of traditional knowledge through a few means:\u00a0By removing children from their families, imposing a different language (English) and religion (Christianity)\u00a0on them, and perpetuating such cruelties – physical, sexual and emotional\u00a0abuse\u00a0– which created significant trauma\u00a0in\u00a0their communities, making it difficult for\u00a0them to connect\u00a0to their past.\u00a0The cited\u00a0woman\u00a0may also have been referring to the abuses within their community which resulted from the cruelties perpetuated\u00a0within the residential school era.\u00a0Her reference to the\u00a0point that knowledge has been lost\u00a0is also\u00a0illustrated by one of the other young\u00a0women\u00a0in the video, when she\u00a0says that\u00a0when an elder asks\u00a0a\u00a0student\u00a0in their indigenous\u00a0language to bring them\u00a0kleenex, they come back with a pen and a bowl instead of kleenex. As she says, “We are losing it nowadays.”<\/p>\n

Girls Action Foundation could be said to allow more than one\u00a0‘cross-section’\u00a0within\u00a0the subaltern to ‘speak.’\u00a0 They encourage girls and young women, who even in the ‘West’ (in this case Canada) have historically been disenfranchised,\u00a0to share their experiences and views.\u00a0They also\u00a0seek to\u00a0empower the voices of girls and young women who have\u00a0typically been marginalized, and have not seen themselves represented\u00a0through\u00a0role\u00a0models: for example girls and women\u00a0of colour,\u00a0of minority groups,\u00a0various sexual orientations and gender identities, socioeconomic backgrounds,\u00a0less enfranchised geographic regions of Canada, and so on. However, watching\u00a0this video brings to light the question of whether,\u00a0symbolically, the privileged are ’empowering’ the\u00a0less\u00a0powerful:\u00a0Koopman’s (2008) article, “Imperialism Within” raises\u00a0the\u00a0point that women in positions of power (white middle class women)\u00a0have often historically been in ‘helping’ roles (p. 1). Girls Action has a\u00a0lot of diversity within their workplace, however I still wonder whether this dynamic takes form: is it the ‘privileged’ people (with education and status)\u00a0showing others (who may or may not\u00a0have less privilege)\u00a0how to create video productions, and share their stories, thereby graciously ‘giving’ them opportunities to express their voice? Through volunteering, I\u00a0have had\u00a0the impression that Girls Action\u00a0is pretty sensitive about issues like this one, and\u00a0is constantly looking for\u00a0ways to be more\u00a0conscientious, however there are always more things to learn, and considerations\u00a0one is\u00a0not aware of. In contrast to these concerns, the sharing of the legend in the video seems to be a way for the women to work\u00a0to\u00a0reclaim some of their indigenous knowledge, and represent themselves in a way that communicates through the cultural knowledge of their community, rather than contemporary societal (‘Western’) discourse, as well as to\u00a0preface the topic of spirituality. As a closing note, I like the fact that the young women, as well as the older woman featured,\u00a0share\u00a0so many of their insights on their experiences and\u00a0community in the video.<\/p>\n

*Girls Action<\/a> has a\u00a0‘sister’\u00a0website called Kickaction<\/a><\/a>,\u00a0which is\u00a0a space for girls and young women to share their thoughts and experiences, connect with each other,\u00a0and share creativity\u00a0and activism (Kickaction, n.d.).\u00a0There are a few\u00a0videos produced by\/with girls and young women\u00a0who participated in\u00a0Girls Action programs which you can find on the Kickaction<\/a><\/a> website.
\nWebsites: http:\/\/www.kickaction.ca<\/a> \/ http:\/\/www.girlsactionfoundation.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This documentary video starts with a young\u00a0woman’s\u00a0narration of a legend\u00a0through what looks like a shadow puppet show.\u00a0The video\u00a0goes on to\u00a0ask, “How has the spirituality of young women changed?”\u00a0It features women\u00a0sharing their thoughts and\u00a0experiences to do\u00a0with spirituality and their encounters with\u00a0traditional indigenous knowledge. The women\u00a0talk, among other things,\u00a0about the gap between traditional knowledge of spirituality and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":704,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions\/704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/unevendevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}