By Katie Stobbart (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 11, 2015
Do you know what S’eliyemetaxwtexw means?
It is the name recently bestowed on UFV’s art gallery in Abbotsford. A fluorescent white sign spells it out in capital Roman letters at the junction of two hallways in B building.
One way diverse narratives are embraced is by integrating them with institutional practices informed by the dominant culture’s values. At UFV, this takes shape through the university’s efforts — at least on paper — to indigenize the academy. In a way, it seems like trying to grow a fruit tree in a blackberry thicket.
UFV’s efforts to acknowledge the aboriginal community include encouraging departments to incorporate indigenous knowledge and ways of learning into curricula; acknowledging our presence on unceded Stó:l? territory at the beginning of events and gatherings; and the renaming of the aforementioned S’eliyemetaxwtexw art gallery.
The basic idea of indigenization, as I understand it, is good. However, I have questions about how it works in practice. Recognition is not the same as integration; words do not equal actions.
Too often, institutional diversification is used as a marketing ploy rather than a genuine attempt to bridge cultural gaps. At a planning forum for UFV 2025, the director of teaching and learning Maureen Wideman referred in passing to aboriginal students as a good “market” for UFV. The art gallery usually contains the same art it always has, and there is a jarring difference between its form and its message.
It seems to be fashionable to scatter a few Halq’emeylem words around campus and claim that this is what a successfully “indigenized” university looks like. In other words, it’s great PR.
[pullquote]When does an attempt to make space in the thorny brambles become a marketing scheme for the guy with the machete?[/pullquote]
Certainly there are people on campus sharing indigenous knowledge and perspectives, and contributing to a more inclusive campus community, but their placement in an institution that sees every demographic of students — First Nations, international, domestic — as clientele is troubling.
When does an attempt to make space in the thorny brambles become a marketing scheme for the guy with the machete?
There is evidence to suggest cultural sharing and inclusive celebration can create community and combat ignorance in a peaceful way by using our perceived differences to bring us together.
Last week there were three big gatherings at UFV. One was a literature conference whose speakers predominantly represented indigenous culture, then Caucasian and South Asian. Another was the Lunar New Year celebration, a masquerade purportedly in light of Anti-Racism Week.
Finally, there was Holi, during which participants throw paint at one another until everyone is covered in rainbow hues. Ethnicity becomes ambiguous; for once, everyone in the community looks the same.
Is the mask effective? The fact that we have to hide our differences suggests we haven’t really progressed from the basic instinct of othering.
However, these multicultural celebrations are effective in introducing a new ideal: rather than the white, homogeneous, and singular being revered, there is holiness in the myriad, the community, and the colourful. Many fruits can grow in the same open space when it is made less thorny and invasive.
But the goal of building a multicultural community at UFV can’t be to attract clientele, and it can’t be isolated among a fragment of the campus community. It has to be deeper than a fresh coat of paint and a name plastered above a gallery that has nothing to do with indigenous culture. It has to go beyond words. It has to reach, if I may say, S’eliyemetaxwtexw: a place that holds dreams and visions.
