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The Current Transcript for November 18, 2016

Host: Duncan McCue

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

We have a chance to bring the America that our forefathers wanted us to have. So much freedom has been taken away from us, we’re like slaves here.

DUNCAN MCCUE: A Trump supporter before the big election day in the US, explaining the promise she saw in the Trump campaign, one that would make her country great again. It's a powerful message, one that powered him all the way to the presidency, and it's a message you can hear overseas as well in Britain, Western Europe and beyond. But what's really at play and at stake when voters latch on to that populist message? We're starting today with a conversation about identity, with someone whose own life and thought revolves around that question. And then, the day after the election it seems diplomats suddenly realized they'd need to resort to being diplomatic.

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The French ambassador to the United States tweeted around midnight last night, “After Brexit and this election, everything is now possible. A world is collapsing before our eyes. Dizziness.” That tweet appears to have been deleted.

DM: Yes, it may be hard to hold one's tongue after the surprise Trump victory, but that's exactly what diplomats are paid to do. We're wading into the confusing yet high stakes world of diplomacy in the age of a Trump presidency, in half an hour. Plus..

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You know, I’ve been smudged a few times and after I get smudged I feel really good. It's a cleansing of your aura.

DM: Smudging ceremonies may be cleansing but are they a religious ceremony, a cultural practice, or are those the wrong categories to use? After a BC parent petitioned the Supreme Court with her complaint about smudging ceremonies in schools, we're taking a closer look in about an hour. I'm Duncan McCue, and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

Trump, Brexit based on misconceptions about race and nationality, says renowned philosopher

Guests: Kwame Anthony Appiah

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DONALD TRUMP: The nation state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.

DUNCAN MCCUE: That was US President-elect Donald Trump speaking earlier this year and clearly many Americans agreed with his words. Just as we saw with the Brexit vote in Great Britain and in sentiments stirring up elsewhere across the world, citizens are increasingly putting their nations first at the polls. Race, ethnicity and nationality have become a defining electoral issues and the results, well, we're just starting to grapple with what this surge of populism may actually mean for the world. But one person who's already given it much thought is Kwame Anthony Appiah. He's a Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University and he's the author of the award-winning book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics In A World Of Strangers. You may have heard him speak as this year's BBC Reith lecturer, where his series of lectures is titled Mistaken Identities. Kwame Anthony Appiah is in our New York studio now. Hello.

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Hi Duncan, how are you?

DM: I'm doing very well. In today's world Anthony, how tied is our identity to our ethnicity and race?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: It turns a little bit, as you know, as a Canadian on where you are. [chuckles] But I think it's fair to say that everybody when they travel, travels nowadays with a racial identity because that's one of the things that has traveled around the world, is the idea of race that developed in Europe in the 18th century. So I think everybody has to travel with a racial identity now more or less whether they like it or not.

DM: How tied is our identity to our sense of nationality?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Well, once again that varies but I would say that most of the 190 odd countries in the world today have some degree of national identification in them. But as you mentioned in the intro, that is also broken up a little bit by some ethnic and racial divides. So there are plenty of countries where people have a sense of a national identity but they also feel very divided within the nation by tribe or race or religion.

DM: You say we hold some misconceptions about race and that race is something that's socially constructed. What do you mean by that?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Well, I think a lot of people think that what race you are is somehow fixed by your biological inheritance from your parents and ancestors. And that's basically just not right. The things that racial groups have in common, they have in common largely because of the social relations among groups. So take for example African-American or black, that's a category created in the history of the United States and it is shaped by the history of slavery, which includes the fact that children born to, say women, were themselves slaves and so you have this tradition of treating people as black as long as they have one black parent. And because of the way genetics works, that means that you can be African-American and essentially look white. Whereas in Brazil, say, their racial categories are more to do with what you Canadians call visible identities. So if you're negro in Brazil, that means your skin is black and that means again that somebody who's in Brazil, that means that somebody who is black can have a white brother or sister. So the categories are created socially, they don't really correspond very well to anything of any biological interest but people nevertheless think they do.

DM: So I mean, if it's unscientific then, this category of race and perhaps maybe even irrational, why have we continued to use race as a way to define ourselves and others?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: I think it's a deep feature of human nature that we tend, well, two things. One is that we tend to assign a meaning to the way people look that is way beyond the actual significance of the way people look. So we see people who are, say, a different colour from us and we think OK that must go with lots of other deep differences. And as I say, I think the other thing is we are disposed to divide the world into us and them, and colour and appearance provide easy ways of doing that. So when people are in the mood to divide the world, it's one of the obvious ways to do it. But you need a cultural notion to attach to that because of the ways in which appearance and behaviour are connected. And so I think that's, you know, it's just part of how we are and if we're going to stop doing it it's going to take a fair amount of effort.

DM: OK, so you talk about how race is used to divide the world in people's minds, let's bring it home to today. What role did those kinds of misconceptions play in the Brexit campaign and Trump’s win, in your perspective?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: I think there was a fair amount of hostility to strangers built into the Brexit vote. I don't think that's the total explanation obviously, but I think you heard a lot of very unpleasant things said, not just about foreigners, people of foreign origin who are now British from South Asia and Africa and the Caribbean, but also about people who come into Britain more recently through the EU from Eastern Europe, Poles for example, where people are saying terrible, stigmatizing things about Poles. So--

DM: [interposing] There's a great deal of racial tension in Britain, you know, over increased immigration for sure.

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Yes. Yes, yes, there is. And, you know, my own view is that what's going on in all of these cases, part of what's going on, is that there is a genuine underlying problem that people are responding to, which is the breakdown of the old economy which was generating most of the jobs for people, and they're sort of looking around for someone to blame. And so they blame immigrants, they blame people from their own country of other races, they blame companies for exporting jobs. What they don't blame is probably the thing that provides most of the real explanation, which is the changing nature of the economy, and the fact that with more and more robots and machines you can produce things if you're a company with fewer and fewer people you can produce the same amount of stuff. Donald Trump talked about the disappearance of American manufacturing but the United States is producing way more than it did, say, 10 years ago it’s just producing it with many fewer people. And that's because of the use of new information technology-based and machine-based modes of production. And that's a real challenge, and unfortunately people are distracted from thinking about that challenge because they're being invited to blame other people, other kinds of people who have almost nothing to do with it. There’s, you know--

DM: [interposing] Invited to blame, and again, based on race. And you've said that getting people to understand race as a social invention could save lives. How so?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Well, I think that, you know, if you recognize that this category that you're using to hold people responsible, to blame people, to treat people as strange and different and not like us, if you recognize that this category is artificial and you recognize, for example, just how American people of all colours are in the United States, then you have a basis for an argument that we should focus on our shared project. The shared project of governing the republic together, of being fellow citizens and avoid, I think, these ways of dividing ourselves. But as I say, it's such an easy and a natural way for people to divide the world, that you have to work very hard against it and one of the things that I think I hold against populist leaders like Farage, say, in Britain or Donald Trump here in the United States, is that they're loosing, they're letting loose this natural tendency of human beings. And in a way that I think is very hard to control once you've actually let it loose and that is in the end profoundly counterproductive because it stops the nation being able to act together, to work together.

DM: Let's take a step back for a second, Anthony. How do you define your own identity?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: [chuckles] Well, I'm a peripheral person in a lot of identities. [chuckles] So, my father was Ghanian and my mother was British, so I was a stranger, I suppose, in Ghana when I was growing up and I was a little bit of a stranger in England when I was growing up. And I'm an American citizen but I am, I have to say, that that's never troubled me very much. I'm very happy about my relationship to Ghana or my relation to England and I am extremely delighted to be living in the United States, though I am currently ashamed of our President-elect.

DM: So how do you move then, towards a post-racial society if, you know, especially in the United States, when there are really deep racial divides there?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: It's very difficult. I would say that I guess going back to the fundamental problem of the new economy, that as long as people are scared, as long as people are worried about the stability of their economic prospects, they're going to be anxious and as long as they're anxious you’re going to be able to get them to respond in these negative ways to people of other identities. So I mean, I can tell you what the answer I think is but it's not an easy one to figure out how to do. I'd say build a fair economy in which there are meaningful jobs for everybody and people will stop worrying about these things that divide us.

DM: If racial categories aren't meaningful categories in your view, then should we have, you know, colour blind policies?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Well, as long as it's the case that people are being discriminated against on the basis of racial identities, we need to have at the very least, significant anti-discrimination policies. And you can't have anti-discrimination policies if you are colour blind because you need to be able to recognize, in virtue, of what people are being discriminated. Whether you want more sort of affirmative action in relation to racial identities, well, again I think as long as it's the case that people are carry a burden associated with their racial identity, it seems only fair to try and compensate for that burden. Many Americans, many white Americans think that the age of discrimination is gone, that everybody in this country has a fair shot whatever their race. There's just overwhelming evidence that that isn't true, if you look at the social science evidence. And so I think as long as it is true that there's discrimination and that people are burdened by racial identities, it's not unreasonable for the government to keep track of them to try and do something to compensate for that.

DM: You also write quite a bit about nationalism. We saw a lot of people in the US election and around the Brexit vote talk about putting their country first. Is there anything wrong with that?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: No, there's nothing wrong with putting your country first, however the people who talked about putting their country first were often people who are in the midst of being extremely unpleasant to their fellow citizens [chuckles]. And so there's something of an irony in that. Now look, I'm a cosmopolitan, I believe that we should think of ourselves as citizens of the world but a citizen of the world isn't somebody who isn't a citizen of anything else. You can be both a patriotic American and have a sense that we Americans have shared obligations to the rest of humanity. I think that's the tradition of cosmopolitanism, after all we've never had a global state so there's never been a global state to be a citizen of. So whenever people spoke of global citizenship they were speaking metaphorically. They were saying that our relations to people in other parts of the world should be in some respects like our relations to fellow citizens. And they are like our relations to fellow citizens in the respect that we don't know most of our fellow citizens and yet we are able to think of them as people we can bond with and care about. And similarly, we don't know most people in the world but that doesn't mean we can care about them and think about them and give their interests a place in our thinking about everything including politics.

DM: Anthony, you speak about viewing yourself as cosmopolitan. I'd like to play a clip for you now of the British Prime Minister Theresa May speaking last month at a British Conservative Party conference.

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THERESA MAY: Today too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass on the street. But if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what the very word citizenship means.

DM: Kwame Anthony Appiah, what do you make of Miss. May's comments?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Well, I think she's profoundly wrong and also a little bit confused. Because as I said, nobody who speaks of global citizenship has ever thought that our relation to everybody in the world is the same as our relation to our fellow citizens because everybody who's used the metaphor of global citizenship knows perfectly well that there isn't a global state to be a member of. What she says about the question of whether there are British elites who have more in common with elites elsewhere, that may be true, but that isn't a reason to think that they aren't perfectly capable of being responsible citizens of the country. I don't have to be like my fellow citizens in order to be able to care about them. You Canadians are an incredibly diverse lot and there are people in your country who live lives that are very different from one another. But it doesn't mean that they can't care about Canada or about being Canadian. And I think it's just a confusion to think that you have to be culturally the same as somebody in order to think of them as a fellow citizen. I don't need to be culturally the same as somebody else. I may have more in common, I'm a philosopher, I have more in common with French and German and English and Ghanian philosophers than I do with many Americans, that doesn't mean that I don't care about my fellow Americans who are not interested in philosophy.

DM: She also talked about, you know, elites. And what's wrong with citizens pushing back against so-called elites by demanding a national agenda that's in tune with their needs?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Nothing at all. As I said, I think that it's right that the elites in the rich parts of the world have utterly failed to take seriously the problems of the new economy, utterly failed to take seriously the fact that we need to think, as a matter of policy, about how to create meaningful work for everybody, including people who haven't for example, been to college. And some countries do a better job than others. Germany, I think, does a much better job than for example than we do in the United States, in terms of preparing people for the labour force who are not going to go to college. And that's a really important public policy problem that has been almost entirely neglected. There was no discussion of it, no serious discussion of it in the long long process of the American presidential campaign and that is a failure of the elites, it's not just a failure of the political elites, it's a failure of the policy elites, it's a failure on the part of us academics to think seriously about what we're going to do as the world changes in these ways. And most of the populist response wasn't thinking about these things either. So I agree that there's a problem, I agree that people who should have been thinking about it and doing something about it haven't been doing something about it. Unfortunately, the populist response isn't going to help with that real problem.

DM: You called yourself cosmopolitan and a citizen of the world. What do you mean by that?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Well, I think that there are two basic elements to the cosmopolitan tradition. One is the thought that as I said, that we do have responsibilities to everybody in the world but that is an idea that is shared by almost all the moral traditions of the world. Catholics and Marxists can agree that we, I'm an atheist Marxist, can agree that we have shared obligations to humanity. But what's distinctive about the cosmopolitan tradition, and in fact this is why I think what Mrs. May said was completely wrong, what's distinctive about the cosmopolitan tradition is that it values our shared humanity while thinking that it's OK that we're not all the same, while thinking it's OK, in fact celebrating the fact that people are different from one another and that that’s fine. And of course, one of the ways in which we're different from one another is that we're living in different countries and it's perfectly proper for people to care more about their own country than other countries. What's wrong is to be indifferent, the cosmopolitan says, to the interests of people outside your own country.

DM: A last question for you. Are you hopeful for the future Anthony?

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: Yes, but that's just a matter of temperament. The evidence right now is not very good. I would say, Antonio Gramsci used to say that you should have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will, so I'm engaging in optimism of the will by well, currently being a little bit pessimistic on the intellectual side.

DM: Well, thank you so much for sharing some of your thoughts about this today.

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: It’s a great pleasure talking to you Duncan.

DM: Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University and author of the award winning book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics In A World Of Strangers. He was in New York City. The CBC News is next. And then, many world leaders weren’t shy in implying they thought Donald Trump would be a disaster as leader. Now that he is, the time has come to play nice. Diplomacy in the age of Trump in our next half hour I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Extro]

Diplomacy in the Trump era poses challenge to world leaders

Guests: Norman Spector, Michael Bell, Margaret MacMillan

DUNCAN MCCUE: Hello, I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

DM: Still to come, do Indigenous smudging ceremonies have a place in our schools? It's a hot topic right now, after some parents say it crosses the line into religious ceremony.

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You don't have to teach Catholicism by having children partake of the holy host, the wine. So I would be really offended if a teacher were to include my kids, without my consent, in what is to me is looking like a religious ceremony.

DM: That's a caller from a BC radio phone-in. We'll bring the whole story in half an hour. But first, the Donald détente.

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JUSTIN TRUDEAU: The relationship between Canada and United States is deep.

THERESA MAY: Britain and the United States are and will remain strong and close partners on trade, security.

ANGELA MERKEL: [crosstalk] Donald Trump, [German language]

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: President-elect Trump, you are a great friend of Israel.

PETRO POROSHENKO: We will remain a reliable partner in this our--

FRANCOIS HOLLANDE: [French language] [through interpreter] We congratulate President-elect Trump and we look forward to working closely as ever.

DM: The official line is warm and welcoming for US President-elect Donald Trump. You just heard leaders from Canada, Britain, Germany, Israel, Ukraine and France and there were many more too. Because when the US elects a new leader, countries big and small around the world know they're going to have to work with them and it's best to keep things, shall we say, diplomatic. Though there was at least one dissenting voice this week. Here is the Irish Senator Aodhán Ó Ríordáin.

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America has just elected a fascist. I'm embarrassed by the reaction of the Irish government to what's happened in America. And I don't use the word fascist lightly. What else would you call somebody who threatens to imprison his political opponents, what else would you call somebody who threatens to not allow people of a certain religious faith into their country? What would you say about somebody who says that the media is rigged, judiciary is rigged, the political system is rigged. When are we going to have the moral courage to speak in terms other than economy all the time. I am absolutely frightened for what's happening to this world and what’s happening to our inability to stand up against it.

DM: Meanwhile in New York City yesterday, President-elect Donald Trump held his first meeting with a foreign leader, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. And despite Trump's incendiary remarks about the Japan America alliance, the meeting was by all reports cordial. And so begins the Trump era of American diplomacy, an unprecedented, unpredictable and extremely high stakes one, as world leaders must decide when to speak out and when to keep quiet. We have three guests standing by who won't be shy about their opinions. Michael Bell is a former Canadian Ambassador who spent 16 years in posts in the Middle East. He's currently a Senior Fellow at the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. He joins me today from Ottawa. Norman Spector was the Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Canada's Ambassador to Israel in the early 1990s. Norman Spector is in our Victoria studio. And Margaret MacMillan is a Historian and Professor at Oxford University. She's in Toronto here with me. Hello to you all.

MANY VOICES: Morning, hello.

DM: Michael Bell, let me start with you. You heard the Irish senator there, what do you say to those like him who say that the international community should just speak up against Donald Trump?

MICHAEL BELL: Well I'm not sure that speaking up in that vein is going to serve any practical purposes. If anything, it's going to be counterproductive. While many of us may not welcome Mr. Trump's electoral victory, it seems to me that one has to be practical, one has to make judgments and one has to try and distinguish between campaign rhetoric and what is likely to be reflected in the policies of Mr. Trump once he's in office and has to confront the realities of the modern world. I think things will change considerably in that respect. On the other hand, he does have a distinct set of social values which cannot but affect his attitudes in the way he approaches issues.

DM: Norman Spector, Michael Bell feels that there's no practical purpose in speaking up against Mr. Trump. What do you think?

NORMAN SPECTOR: Well, I agree with Michael. I think the Irish senator, you know, is not in a position of national leadership. Let's not forget that Tom Mulcair reiterated his labeling of Donald Trump as a fascist this week, so we're not immune to this sort of thing. In fact, I think Mr. Trudeau has done an admirable job of, it seems to me, keeping his ministers and MPs quiet the past week. He himself perhaps went a tad too far during the election campaign, he and his staff, in terms of canoodling with the Clinton campaign and making sort of indirect references that made it clear that they were pulling for Hillary Clinton to win the election. The prime minister was under intense pressure from a lot of quarters to go further. He resisted those pressures but I think it's fair to say that the prime minister, like many world leaders, will start off on the back foot with Mr. Trump and we'll have to see, as Michael says, how Mr. Trump intends to govern the United States.

DM: Justin Trudeau has more or less resisted those kinds of pressures. Margaret MacMillan, you know, it's hard not to imagine, [chuckles] you know, it's, OK, we know what Justin Trudeau really thinks of Donald Trump but, you know, when he talks about Muslims or women. Why shouldn't Justin Trudeau speak his mind?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Because I don't think it would do much good at this stage. I think we have to see what Trump will do as president. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried and it doesn't mean that, and most Canadians are naturally Democrats I think, you know, if they were going to be voting in American elections they'd probably vote for a Democratic candidate, that's always been the pattern. But we have to deal with whoever is president of the United States. What Trump has said during his election campaign, and before, I think has been worrying. I also worry that he doesn't really have much interest or knowledge in foreign affairs. But I think we have to wait and see what he does as president. If he does things as president that heads of state or the rest of us disagree with, then I think we should be perfectly free to say so.

DM: And Norman Spector, you mentioned that Prime Minister Trudeau was getting advice before the election to be cautious and don't weigh in. Was that good advice?

NORMAN SPECTOR: Yes, I think that advice largely came from former Canadian diplomats, including three, as I recall, former Canadian Ambassadors to the United States. I think it's excellent advice because in politics, in a democracy, anything can happen. Look, no one was expecting Donald Trump to win the election and he won the election. And you have to be prepared for any sort of outcome. Now, the prime minister now has the responsibility to develop a working relationship with Donald Trump and hopefully Mr. Trump will not, as has been his wont, have a spirit of vengeance. Hopefully the prime minister will be able to resist the temptation, given what Margaret MacMillan has just said, Canadians being overwhelmingly democratic in their orientation, the prime minister will have to resist the temptation to play politics with the Canada-US relationship. Mr. Trump hopefully, will not look to intervene in the Canadian election. Mr. Trudeau has to go to the polls before the next American election. But look, politicians are very strange people and they have long memories and can be very vengeful in their actions. So the Prime Minister was right to resist the pressures to play to the crowd and condemn Mr. Trump throughout the election campaign when he was saying the most outrageous things.

DM: Michael Bell, you know, Donald Trump is so unknown in terms of his temperament. How well does traditional wisdom of diplomacy apply when you’re dealing with an administration of someone so unpredictable as Donald Trump?

MICHAEL BELL: Well, I think we do know a fair amount about his personality and his proclivities and his sensitivities, and I think that as much as we may not care for them or find them abhorrent, we have to take them into consideration in the way that Mr. Trudeau or other world leaders interact with him. It seems to me that the most important issue here is outcomes. What is going to be possible in Canada's national interests and what is the best means to achieve those goals? Recognizing that it’s a different world and we're not going to play to the same agenda on all issues that we had hoped to. So I think quiet, persistent, assertive diplomacy in the short to medium-term is what is called for. I agree with Margaret however, that there may be occasions where we have to speak out and I can conceive of any number of those in the Middle East. But I don't think we can at this stage judge exactly how Mr. Trump will play the issue of Syria or Iran or what have you. And I think we ought to utilize the diplomatic vehicles we have to the utmost. And that's why the job in Washington, incidentally, of a Canadian ambassador is so vital and I think we've got the right guy there.

DM: Margaret MacMillan, what can Justin Trudeau learn from his father's relationship with Richard Nixon when they were in power?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Well, I think his father was, again, a pragmatist. I don't think he had a natural affinity for the United States even though he'd gone to Harvard. I think he was much more comfortable in Europe or in Canada or in parts of the Third World. But I think he understood that the most important relationship for Canada is that with the United States and we have to get on with them. And I think Trudeau and Nixon were not at all sympathetic to each other. They came from very different backgrounds, very different--

DM: [interposing] Very different.

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Very different, very different outlooks and backgrounds. But I think Trudeau made it his job to get on as best he could with Nixon. And I think did, you know, I'm a very effective job. I mean, I think it is just as the other two speakers have said, I mean, it is a matter of practical politics. What is really incalculable here is, A, who is going to be the US secretary of state? We don't know yet, I think that's going to be important. But how much the president-elect will listen to his secretary of state is another matter. I mean, here is you have a man who we do know something about his temperament, he likes to make decisions, he likes to be in the centre of things. And of course, foreign affairs is wonderful if you want to be in the centre of things because it's a world stage. And so I would imagine, although again we're going to have to wait and see, that the new president is going to want to play a part in foreign affairs and that's where his temperament is going to come in.

DM: And here's where I want to draw in the years of political experience on this panel here. Michael Bell, what's it like to be a diplomat in a country that may have conflicting values?

MICHAEL BELL: Well, it demands a certain tolerance. On the one hand, there is no substitute for some kind of dialogue. And in my experience, it seems that a dialogue can often pay off and that doesn't have to be soft soaping it or going easy, it can be quite assertive. But picking a fight for the sake of picking a fight because we find it personally offensive and what have you, is not necessarily the way to any kind of success. In fact, one could argue the reverse that that kind of irritant merely brings about a result you don't want.

DM: Can you give us an example of a time that's worked for you as an ambassador?

MICHAEL BELL: Well, there are many of them. Although this is all water under the bridge now, we devoted a hell of a lot of attention when I was ambassador in Egypt to trying to develop civil society and pluralism. And rather than confronting the government, the Mubarak government, on many of its excesses and its crackdown and intolerance, we just went ahead, found a path, not exactly a middle way, of doing our own things without irritating. Trying to dialogue with the government in sometimes opaque terms, but we instituted a vast number of projects in Egypt that I don't think the government would have agreed to and if we'd gone to them and started tongue lashing them about their democracy or about their respect for human rights, I'm not sure we would have been able to.

DM: Norman Spector, what about you? I mean, you were an ambassador as well. Do you have any examples that apply in this situation where again, there are these very conflicting values?

NORMAN SPECTOR: I think the Canada-US relationship is so important as to dwarf any experience. I’d prefer to come back to the question of the prime minister's relationship with the president. I think the gap here is going to be greater than between Nixon and Pierre Trudeau. I think Nixon had experience in government, he had been vice president. Mr. Trudeau had thought long and hard about politics, had been a public servant in the fourties in the privy council office and an academic who had thought long and hard about problems of governance in Canada. I think now you have two fairly similar people in a certain way, Mr. Trump and Mr. Trudeau, both essentially celebrities, who've established a direct relationship with their people through social media and were able, in large measure, to bypass the media. Give short shrift to their own parties and essentially created a movement, rather personal movement, so I think there are similarities. And I think the key here is going to be for the prime minister to establish a working relationship with Mr. Trump. I think a couple of areas of convergence, one on infrastructure, where they both seem to be giving high priority to that. Maybe they could find some joint projects to build together, bridges or whatever. And secondly, the Keystone pipeline. Mr. Harper's no brainer has suddenly come back on the agenda and that is one of the few areas of convergence. On the other hand, I think the prime minister is going to have to, behind closed doors, make it clear to the president that there will be times that that he will have to speak out, that Canada will have to speak out and they're going to have to establish the ground rules for that. because the worst thing that can happen is playing to the crowd and surprises. and I think that Mr. Pure Trudeau's relationship with Nixon gives examples where Canada spoke out. And I think that was probably precooked in the back rooms, as to the degree to which Canadian public opinion had to be responded to and Canadian values had to be responded to as well.

DM: Margaret MacMillan, is there a point that Justin Trudeau should stand up? Is it appropriate for Justin Trudeau to stand up and take a stand against Mr. Trump?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Well there are bound to be. I mean, any country has to both worry about its foreign relations, it also has to worry about its domestic politics. And there will be times when the president or the prime minister or the British prime minister or the German chancellor will have social and domestic pressures on them from within, which they are going to have to deal with and I think any functioning politician knows that. And I think when they deal with each other, they understand that they are dealing not just with a single individual they are dealing with a complex of pressures and views and attitudes. And so yes, there is bound to be a time where Canada and the United States are going to adopt different stances in public, there may be what look like different approaches to problems. I think that has always happened and it always will happen. What those will be I don’t think we can predict yet because as I said, very very difficult to know what Donald Trump's foreign policy is going to be. He really hasn't given very clear signals on that and he's already beginning to backpedal from some of the things he said during his campaign, which I suppose is normal. So I think we're really going to have to wait and see. What I hope, I wish, perhaps, Norman Spector or Michael Bell could give them both a tutorial on how to get on and how to manage issues because I think the advice that they've both given is extremely good.

DM: Michael Bell, I'm curious. I mean, Angela Merkel, she was let's say, carefully critical of Donald Trump in her remarks after the election. Would that kind of talk ever be appropriate coming from Canada?

MICHAEL BELL: It may well be, depending on the issue. And it may well be, as has been said, that Canadian public mood is such that it almost dictates to the prime minister a certain critical attitude on some issues, and I'm all very supportive of that. But what worries me, quite frankly if I may move on a bit, is that with people like Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn in the White House, I find that a real cause for concern. And to the extent that the views of these people are reflected in foreign policy, it's going to tend, I think, to be more ideological and less pragmatic than we would like and we're going to have to cope with that. The chief objective or the minimal objective it seems to me in terms of Canadian interests, is to do nothing gratuitous that's going to put us in the middle of this storm, which undoubtedly is going to take place to a greater or lesser extent with some of the European countries and just see how things evolve. I mean, we're very worried about trade barriers and what have you, as are the Mexicans. But at the end of the day, there are a lot of American interests, American private interests in Mexico that don't want to see that relationship disrupted. I might also add here, simply because it hasn't been referred to, I ask myself if there's any point that people that know Donald Trump personally or could be said to be close to him personally, like Brian Mulroney, could play a role in these early days in setting forth Canadian values and Canadian attitudes in a way where it’s going to be well-received because of that personal friendship. I would have said the same of Conrad Black, except for his most recent article, and I don't know if that gives us very much hope that he for one will explain the realities of Canada in a way that would be conducive to a productive relationship.

DM: Margaret MacMillan, both Norman Spector and Michael Bell have talked about trade. And I'm curious, I mean, it looks like trade is going to be the contentious issue between Canada and the US. What's the best way for Canada to handle these negotiations behind the scenes?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: I think we have to try and open up channels, as we have always done in the past, to different groups in American society. I mean, as Michael Bell mentioned, there are groups in the United States which are in favour of trade, at least in some sectors, in which have worked very closely with both Canada and Mexico and I think there is going to be a natural constituency in the United States to promote that trade. But those very strong public concern and public opinion about the effects of free trade, and I think that's not just in the United States, I mean, that's across Europe and I think that's in Canada as well, and that's a public sentiment that's going to have to be dealt with. So I think we've got to make sure that we have really good negotiators. I think we've got to work with whichever groups in American society we think we can work with. I don't mean doing this in any underhand way, but I think just simply trying to find communities of interests. But there are going to be other issues. I mean, another very worrying issue, especially given the Steve Bannon presence, is the anti-Islamic language. Which so far has been coming out, a war on Islamic militancy, a tendency to see all Muslims as somehow part and parcel of some militant religion. When we know that Islam, just like Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism and Buddhism, has many different strands, some of which are militant, some of which aren't, many of which aren't. And I think that is going to be a problem because Canada, I think, really very clearly stands for a sort of tolerance of different faiths. And I think if we're going to get a tone coming out of Washington that somehow suggests that all peoples of a certain religions, in this case Islam, are enemies then that's going to be worrying and I think we're going to have to think about how we deal with that.

DM: Norman Spector, I mean, given the advisors that appear to be surrounding the president at this point, what do you think should be going on for Canada when it comes to these behind the scenes negotiations?

NORMAN SPECTOR: Well look, you know, Stephen Bannon and Gerald Butts, his equivalent to working for Justin Trudeau, probably view each other as the personification of evil. Let's be frank about that. And it's not just Stephen Bannon, it takes two to tango. And, you know, Canada would not have a free trade agreement with the United States had it not been for the role played by James Baker, who at the time was serving as Chief of Staff to Ronald Reagan. A 9:00 Saturday night phone calls three hours before the deadline. So these are extremely important relationships. The name of Angela Merkel came up. Let's be clear, Angela Merkel is a year away from an election. Justin Trudeau is still three years away from the election, so--

DM: [interposing] But how does, for example, the Trudeau government move ahead with, say, its climate change policies, given what the Trump administration has said about that during the campaign?

NORMAN SPECTOR: Well, in the short term, my prediction is we won't hear the phrase climate change denier out of the prime minister or any of his advisers or the minister. So there's going to have to be a certain sensitivity but it's going to be very very difficult to align the policies of the two governments on that file and on other files.

DM: Ok, well, I want to thank you all for joining and sharing us some of the challenges that’s going to lie ahead for Canada and other state leaders in this. Thank you so much to all of you.

MANY VOICES: Thank you.

DM: Michael Bell is a former Canadian Ambassador who spent 16 years in posts in the Middle East. He's currently a Senior Fellow at the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. He was in Ottawa. Norman Spector was the Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Canada's Ambassador to Israel in the early 1990s. He was in Victoria. And Margaret MacMillan is a Historian and Professor at Oxford University. She's here with me in Toronto. Coming up in our next half hour, some say smudging ceremonies blur the line between cultural practice and religious ceremony and that they shouldn't be done with students in public schools. I’m Duncan McCue and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Extro]

[Music: The Disruptors Theme]

DUNCAN MCCUE: As part of The Current’s season-long project The Disruptors we've been sharing some of your personal stories, moments of disruption, unexpected events that forever changed your life. Whether good or ill.

[Music: ominous electronic beat]

CARLA CICCONE: My name is Carla Ciccone and I'm a writer. And before I got a concussion in September of 2012, I was a television writer in Toronto working on a show for Country Music Television and just kind of going about my life and enjoying things. And then everything sort of changed for me. I was celebrating a friend's birthday at a very popular Toronto restaurant. We had finished dinner and we were all sort of chatting, waiting for dessert, and it was really really busy and all of a sudden.

[Sound: hard hitting sound]

CARLA CICCONE: Something hit my head and it felt like a brick. It felt like someone threw a brick through the restaurant and that it hit the back of my head. My head kind of went forward and back and there was a guy across the table from me and his eyes just went like super wide because I guess the sound had been so loud and I was in and out of, like, seeing stars actually, like a cartoon character sort of. And by the time I was, like, steady enough to turn around, then I realized that it had been a stack of plates and there was a bus boy standing there and he was apologizing profusely and I could barely see him because my vision was blurry and my head was throbbing but I felt really bad for him because I mean, it was an accident. The very next day I was in so much pain and so disoriented and wobbly and all that stuff and blurred vision and couldn't look at a computer, so couldn't write or do my work. So right away, that takes you out of your normal life. And I was, like, in a totally different state of mind. But it took a while for me to even seek treatment for it because I’d never been hit on the head before, never really experienced anything quite like it. So in the days that followed, I had a terrible headache, couldn't really see straight or walk straight or do anything really. And after seeing a doctor, I was diagnosed with a concussion and my symptoms kind of got worse and worse and developed from concussion symptoms into a clinical depression. So it was quite a difficult time and a number of things in my life changed dramatically. Mostly my brain, [chuckles] my brain being reliable was the number one thing that sort of changed for me.

[Music: soft electronic tunes]

CARLA CICCONE: What you're supposed to do when you get a concussion is just sort of rest and do nothing. Nothing means you don't read, you don't watch TV, you can't really go outside because the sun hurts your eyes. So it's basically like sitting in a dark room doing nothing and you're not supposed to sleep that much because that could be bad for you too. So I mean, I don't know, but I think for a lot of people that might be a recipe for disaster and for me it definitely was. And I woke up one morning with suicidal thoughts that really really frightened me and I ended up going to see my doctor and just kind of breaking down and telling her what was going on.

[Music: vibrant electronic tunes]

CARLA CICCONE: I'm better now. Mental health is something I actively work on every day. And so, ultimately the whole experience for me turned out to be a bit of a blessing to experience the post-concussion syndrome because it opened me up to learn a lot more about mental health and to keep on top of my own mental health.

[Sound: clicking sound]

CARLA CICCONE: I think looking back at that moment, the experience has really made me aware of how fragile our heads are, our brains are and how fragile our lives are and how important it is to appreciate what you have and to work on and making the best of what you have.

[Music: ominous electronic beat]

CARLA CICCONE: Concussions affect so many people, like, most people have, you know, more sport related incidents happen to them than, you know, getting hit in the head with a plate at a restaurant. But I think that it's wonderful that we're talking about it more and there seems to be more awareness around how tricky it can be to navigate a concussion because they’re different for everybody, they manifest in different ways. And if you are experiencing one, just be very patient with yourself, don't be hard on yourself, it's, you know, it's frustrating and it can take a really long time to heal fully, but it's worth it. And try to seek the help you need, if you're not getting the right answers from your doctors, get second opinions and third opinions and just don’t give up.

[Music: xylophone]

DM: That was Carla Ciccone’s moment of disruption. The story was produced by The Current’s Kristin Nelson. And we want to hear about your moment of disruption too, go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link and while you're there you can listen to more personal moments of disruption, just click on features. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Duncan McCue.

Lawsuit protesting Indigenous ceremony blurs line between cultural and religious values

Guests: John Carpay, Niigaan Sinclair

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[Sound: fire crackling]

So what we want to do first is we're going to light the smudge here and then we'll do our smudge if you want to line up here.

DUNCAN MCCUE: That's elder Marcel Gagnon, at the start of a traditional smudging ceremony. It's an Indigenous practice, a cleansing ritual using smoke. But this kind of practice is sparking controversy in British Columbia, after a mother in Port Alberni objected to her children participating in a smudging ceremony at their school. We'll get to more about the meaning and history of smudging in a few minutes. But first, more on that complaint, because Candice Servatius has filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the Alberni school board. John Carpay is President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which filed the case on her behalf. And he's in our Calgary studio. Hello.

JOHN CARPAY: Good morning.

DM: How did Candice Servatius first find out about the plans at the school, John?

JOHN CARPAY: She received a letter from the school saying that there would be an Aboriginal smudging ceremony, purpose of which was to cleanse the spirits of the children, of bad energy, cleanse the furniture of the classroom, the kids of bad energy by fanning smoke from sage grass over the children. So she received the letter and she went to the school to learn more. And she was shocked to find out that this religious ceremony had already been imposed on both of her children.

DM: So did the kids take part in the ceremony?

JOHN CARPAY: Yes. The kids had the smoke fanned over them and the ceremony took place in the school, the mom’s daughter felt very reluctant and apprehensive about it and the teacher told the daughter that if she did not participate that would be rude. And so, you know, understandably with the teachers as an authority figure, the daughter went along with it. But she felt profoundly uncomfortable.

DM: Why was it so upsetting to the family?

JOHN CARPAY: It's the imposition of religion. And I'm glad you asked the question in the sense that a lot of people are misinterpreting the court case as opposition to teaching about Aboriginal culture and teaching about Aboriginal spirituality in schools and that's not the case. The mom is fine with the kids learning about Aboriginal spirituality but it's the way that it's taught. It's analogous to, for example, it's good to teach the kids about Christianity, that's part of our culture and heritage, but it's quite different to teach them by forcing kids to recite the Lord's prayer.

DM: So the school has said that the ceremony was optional, although perhaps that could have been communicated more clearly. Would it have been better if the daughter had been allowed to opt out of the ceremony?

JOHN CARPAY: Not really. The Supreme Court of Canada in a case a number of years ago, the Mouvement laique quebecois v. city of Sanguinea, that involved a city council in Quebec which recited a non-denominational prayer at council meetings. And so, the court had an opportunity to address this whole idea of state neutrality and what the municipal council, one thing they did before it went to court, they tried to accommodate this by saying well, we're going to have a two minute break between the end of the prayer and the beginning of council meeting to enable, you know, atheists or Jews or anybody else who objects to it, they'll have time, they can just be excused from the prayer and then they can come back into the council meeting. And the Supreme Court of Canada rejected that and said no, if you create an opt out where people have to leave and have to excuse yourself, you're actually increasing the discrimination and the stigmatization. And I think that's very much applicable to a classroom, where if there's one or two kids who objects to something and then they get removed from the classroom, it really ostracizes those children, it draws negative attention to them and it puts them on the spot.

DM: In that example though, I mean, the point that the court was making was that it's the sponsoring or promoting of one particular religious tradition that breaches the neutrality and that amounts to discrimination. And my understanding from the school board is that this is an attempt to try to bring Indigenous cultural knowledge into the classroom.

JOHN CARPAY: Well, that's correct. And the mom who's filed the court action is not against that. The issue is that you can teach kids about Aboriginal spirituality without having them go through a ceremony where the belief of the ceremony is that every child has a spirit, everything has a spirit, the desks have a spirit, the classroom has a spirit, a religious belief that the spirit needs to be cleansed. You can agree or disagree with the belief.

DM: So the school is claiming that this ceremony isn't religious, that it's cultural practice and, you know, people who lead Indigenous spiritual ceremonies would say that those ceremonies are rooted in the land and that that's a way of life. How do you respond to that?

JOHN CARPAY: Those were the exact same arguments that were raised in defence of having the kids recite the Lord's Prayer, the Our Father at the beginning of class. That was the practice in Canada right on sixties, seventies, into the eighties. Every argument against this court action, it's the same argument that was used to say well, it doesn't violate religious freedom to be required to say the Lord's Prayer because you don't have to believe it. And this is part of our culture, it's part of our heritage, you know, Canada's culture and heritage, certainly in the past, nobody can dispute was very Christian, so this is merely cultural. What the Supreme Court of Canada said in the Sanguinea case is that even if something is also cultural, that's not an excuse to impose religion because the school is correct when they say that the ceremony is cultural, yes it is but it's also religious because it expressly--

DM: [interposing] Is there a difference between religion and spirituality?

JOHN CARPAY: Not legally.

DM: In your press release, you say the school district is more preoccupied with political correctness than the law. What do you mean by that?

JOHN CARPAY: Well, we're seeing a double standard. There are some people who would vehemently oppose having the Lord's prayer in a classroom. And those same people will say oh, but it's fine if the kids are required to go through a religious ceremony to cleanse their spirits. In both cases, it's not just learning about something, OK. You can have the Lord's Prayer in a textbook and say here is a significant Christian prayer, this is, you know, it's part of our culture, it's part of our heritage. But once you force the kids to recite the Lord's Prayer, it becomes a religious practice. And then the same way, you can teach about the smudging ceremony, but when you force the kids to go through it that's the imposition of religion.

DM: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission into Indian Residential Schools has said, you know, if there's going to be any hope for reconciliation in Canada, there needs to be a step towards bringing more Indigenous knowledge into the classroom. British Columbia is implementing a new curriculum that involves more education about Indigenous issues. How important do you think that kind of change is?

JOHN CARPAY: I think it's a very important change and it's not what the court action’s about. The court action’s not opposing an increase in the amount of Aboriginal content in the curriculum. If you force kids to actually take part in a religious ceremony or be required to take part in a prayer, that's what the court case is about, that that's not the only way to teach it. You can teach these things without forcing the kids to go through a religious ceremony.

DM: What kind of remedy are you seeking from the court?

JOHN CARPAY: Simply a court order. We're not suing for damages, you know, for financial compensation. It's simply a court order that the school district is going to comply with the BC Schools Act, which expressly prohibits the teaching of religious dogma and that that school not have these religious ceremonies in the classroom. That's what the court application is seeking.

DM: And John Carpay, why is this case so important to you?

JOHN CARPAY: It's about equality, the rule of law, what's sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Either you have religion in schools and it's OK or you don't, but you don't make an exception for one religion.

DM: John Carpay, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this.

JOHN CARPAY: Thanks for having me on your show.

DM: John Carpay is the President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. He was in our Calgary studio. We did request an interview with the Alberni school district, the superintendent of schools declined an interview, saying it's reviewing the case and will respond in court. The BC Ministry of Education also declined our interview request because of the ongoing legal case. But the argument that smudging should be viewed as a religious ritual has been met with some pushback from educators in British Columbia. Glen Hansman is the President of the BC Teachers Federation. On Wednesday he appeared on a provincial CBC Radio call-in program to make a case for students learning from rituals such as smudging in schools.

SOUNDCLIP

I think it's a bit of a stretch to sort of make analogous a smudging ceremony, which is a cultural practice that is used by some Aboriginal peoples, and to sort of compare it to say, forcing students to participate in the Lord's prayer. These are two very different things and at a time where both the federal and provincial governments across Canada have agreed to move ahead with implementing the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, of which, quite a bit of that has recommendations directly related to public education and making sure that we're inclusive of the realities of Aboriginal students and making sure that all Canadians are up to speed on both the true history of Canada and what the realities are for Aboriginal peoples in Canada, it's quite appropriate for these things to be occurring in school. So I'm not aware of any instances in a British Columbia public school where things have sort of tiptoed a bit too far into the domain of sort of imposing a religion on to somebody.

DM: Glen Hansman is the president of the BC Teachers Federation. Our next guest believes smudging ceremonies can have a place in Canadian schools and can play a role in reconciliation. Niigaan Sinclair is an Associate Professor and Acting Head of the Native Studies Department at the University of Manitoba. He's in our Winnipeg studio. And in the interest of disclosure, I have participated in a smudging ceremony led by Mr. Sinclair. Aaanii Niigaan.

NIIGAN SINCLAIR: Bonjour, hello.

DM: Can you explain what smudging is for those who might not know?

NIIGAAN SINCLAIR: So smudging is a practice, it's a spiritual practice and I think that we need to really differentiate the difference between religion and spirituality. It's a spiritual practice that is done on the everyday. It's part of a commitment that Indigenous peoples from all across both Canada and North America do to commit to the land. So it's the taking of medicines that are grown from the land and the water. It's the bringing of those things to the fore parts of you usually, not every Indigenous nation is the same, but it's usually the bringing of those four parts to you. The burning of those medicines and the bringing of them to your physical side, your mental side, your emotional side and then lastly, usually, your spiritual side. And so, those four parts of yourself, you bring that smoke to you and it's a way of committing to the Earth. It's like making a claim to say I am here, I have a relationship with the Earth and like all its Indigenous traditions, it's about relationship building.

DM: Mr. Carpay, you may have just heard, said that he doesn't see a difference between something being spiritual and religious. You said you do think there is a difference. Why?

NIIGAAN SINCLAIR: Well, I think one thing that he said in his interview was that the law doesn’t recognize the difference between spiritual traditions and religion and I think that it's a long history in this country of court systems and so-called the law that reduce Indigenous traditions down to a very finite and reductive ways of seeing it. The problem really, I think, is indicated in the law in that if religion and spirituality is the same, then it's a way to collapse Christianity and Islam traditions with Indigenous traditions as all being the same, all doing the same things, all proceeding in the same fashion, which of course is not true and not the ways that human beings actually operate in the world. And so, the difference between religion and spirituality, particularly for Indigenous spiritual traditions, is it lives in the everyday and it's not meant just for the non-human relatives of the world, it's also meant for you that you have a body and you have a mind and you have these emotions that connect you with the rest of the world and then, you know, lastly there is the spiritual side of you that connects with the world too. But smudging is very much about those other three parts as it is about the one part of your spiritual side.

DM: The argument from Mr. Carpay is that when schools teach about Islam, you know, they don't make students face Mecca and pray like Muslims do and instead teachers just tell kids about it. Why not just teach smudging instead of actually doing it?

NIIGAAN SINCLAIR: Well I think, it's also, I mean, one thing in this entire situation I think has been a failure to communicate. I think perhaps the school in British Columbia needs to prepare their teachers more adequately to be able to prepare students to say, you know, what is the difference between participating and then also witnessing because both of those are a part of Indigenous traditions. I can't think of anything less Indigenous than forcing anyone to do anything. You must do your own work, you have to stand up for yourself in order to live your life. That's a spiritual teaching for us.

DM: And the Nuu-chah-nulth tribal council has issued a press release saying that no one should be forced to participate in this ceremony. Mr. Carpay also said in their press release that the school district is more preoccupied with political correctness than the law. What's your response to that?

NIIGAAN SINCLAIR: Well, I think that we are in this age of reconciliation. The most important issue in the country is reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. And this epidemic of ignorance involving Indigeneity is frankly an intolerable and has created much of the mess that we're in for the past 150 years and the only way that we're able to do that is to have really frank and honest conversations. And part of that is bringing in traditions that perhaps had been ostracized in the past and really having frank conversations, not forcing anyone to do it, but to bring it in ways that are meaningful for all people within that classroom and inviting people to participate in the various ways. There's more than just one way to participate in these traditions. And I think what teachers are offering by both holding the ceremony and then also offering the opportunity to witness it, is the opportunity to have relationships with the land that is beyond just a simple way of saying it's a religious way but also to say there are many parts of you that connect with the land and there's no other more important issue in today's environmental crisis that we live in than committing to the land itself.

DM: Do you think teachers are being prepared well enough to do these kinds of things in the classroom?

NIIGAAN SINCLAIR: Well, you know, I'm off after this interview this morning to engage 60 teachers from rural communities here in Manitoba that are interested in that process and I think that school divisions are getting more on board. But of course, we have this lack of Indigenous educators in the divisions and a long history of 150 years of Canadians being taught to feel superior to Indigenous peoples and then Indigenous peoples taught that their ways are savage and inferior. We have this kind of legacy that we're in, we have a lot longer to go and I think this is indicative of another step in that journey.

DM: How does smudging in your view, I mean, you talk about that long history. How does smudging fit in with the Truth and Reconciliation call to action to update curriculum and to teach kids about residential schools and Indigenous history?

NIIGAAN SINCLAIR: I mean, there's many, of the 94 calls to action, many of them involve really becoming competent in this exploding population of Indigenous peoples who are entering the workforce and to make the most adequate workforces health and safe and comfortable workplaces. Canadians need to get used to the idea that Indigenous peoples are working beside them, paying taxes and so on. And so every call to action kind of calls for a broader understanding of Indigeneity. And there nothing that's more important than the everyday, the everyday. And, you know, whether it be beadwork or a part of languages or cultural traditions or the history of that we inherit involving child welfare, smudging is the epitome of how Indigenous peoples woke up in the morning and look to the world and said how do I commit to the earth? I take that tobacco or that cedar or that sweet grass and I bring it to myself and I engage with it in a meaningful way to say that I am a member of this community and the world is a very beautiful place that I want to be a part of.

DM: What other Indigenous cultural practices would you like to see in the schools, Niigaan Sinclair?

NIIGAAN SINCLAIR: Well, I think the most important thing that schools can do is acknowledge the history of the territory that they're on. And because Canada didn't start in 1867, Canada, the word Canada, of course an Iroquoian word which means the village. So what it means is that everyone is a part of this community. And Canada didn't start in 1867, it started with peoples who traveled, traded, engaged. We're not perfect by any means, but had relationships on territories and studied the land and the world around us for tens of thousands, millions of millennia. And when they did that, they became scientists and philosophers and storytellers and studiers of the world. And by studying the world, they brought those practices into what they did in the everyday and that practice encompassed every aspect of our life. And so I'd like to see every part of what we would think of as Indigeneity, which are not religious traditions but they are ways of walking in the world and to bring those things in that created healthy and positive relationships, both in the past and can definitely teach us today in a world of conflict and a world where we vote in leaders that want to divide us, we bring in those traditions that are able to unite us instead. And there's no better people than Indigenous people to do that.

DM: And in a sentence Niigaan Sinclair, in your view, what's lost if kids don't take part in ceremonies like smudging?

NIIGAAN SINCLAIR: I think what's lost is the knowledge of the history of the land that you stand on, as well as the people that were there and then also the non-human people, the Earth and the land and the water. Because if you don't bring these things in a classroom, then kids won't be able to look at the world around them and understand it.

DM: OK. Well, meegwetch Niigaan Sinclair for joining us and sharing your thoughts.

NIIGAAN SINCLAIR: Meegwetch, thank you very much.

DM: Niigaan Sinclair is an Associate Professor and Acting Head of the Native Studies Department at the University of Manitoba. We reached him in Winnipeg. And of course, we'd like to hear your thoughts on this topic. Are you for or against smudging ceremonies in public schools? And why? Send us an email by going to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. We're also on Facebook and Twitter @TheCurrentCBC. And that's our program for today. And remember, you can catch The Current, Q, Cross Country Checkup or any of your favourite CBC Radio shows anytime on the CBC Radio app. It's great for live radio too. The CBC Radio app is free from the App Store or Google Play. Finally today, the winner of this year's TD Canadian Children's Literature Award has been announced. Once again, this year CBC Books partnered with the award to bring TD kids book clubs to six cities across Canada. This year's winner of the $30,000 prize is Missing Nimâmâ by author Melanie Florence and illustrated by François Thisdale. We're going to go end things off today with a brief reading from the book, which tells the story of a little girl of a missing or murdered Indigenous woman. The girl nicknamed Kamamako is being raised by her grandmother Nōhkom. We'll also hear the voice of her mother, who's always there watching. This reading is by students at the Gordon Bell high school in Winnipeg. For more information about Missing Nimâmâ, the other shortlisted books and the prize itself, head to cbcbooks.ca. I'm Duncan McCue, gim meegwetch, thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

STUDENT 1: Nōhkom is teaching me how to make fry bread. I help to measure flour into her mixing bowl.

STUDENT 2: Your mother loved to cook with me when she was your age.

STUDENT 3: Did you tell her trickster stories like you tell me?

STUDENT 4: Of course Kamamako, she liked trickster stories best.

STUDENT 5: Just like me.

STUDENT 6: Did you teach her beadwork and shawl dance?

STUDENT 7: I did. Your mother is a beautiful dancer, just like you.

STUDENT 8: Can we look at your photo albums Nōhkom? She wipes her hands and takes one off the shelf. I climb off my chair and onto her lap and turn the pages, looking at my mother when she is little. She looked just like me.

STUDENT 9: Thank you Nimâmâ, thank you for taking on my child, though you were finished raising your own years ago. Thank you for cooking and cleaning and doing the laundry and buying birthday gifts and drying tears, for loving her unconditionally, for sharing stories about her mother with her, for not letting her forget me.

[Music: Extro]

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November 18, 2016 full episode transcript

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