Handing Down of Culture | Chapter 19 | Tomke Lask

Chapter 19 | Tomke Lask

(continued)

1.1 canada is a large country and a very great country

All this seems obvious to people from outside. Canadians themselves assert something different: “We are a small society,” I was told unceasingly by Canadians on both sides of the linguistic barrier. I read about it in more than one of this colloquium’s papers — John Meisel’s, for example. My reference points did not accord with this assertion. It took me a certain amount of time to catch up with the reality behind that statement.

1.2 canadians are bilingual

This assertion is far from being true, as I found out for myself when visiting Toronto, Montréal and Québec City. In fact, the phobia about the English language among Francophone Europeans is reproduced in Canada in exactly the same way. Moreover, the apathetic recognition of the linguistic ignorance of Anglophones, always accompanied with a grimace, is also repeated throughout the world, allowing for Anglophones to be more lazy than those from other places when it comes to the learning of other languages. The possibility of speaking different languages without travelling outside of one’s own country is a present dream of many people. In Europe, there are very few countries where multilingualism is on the agenda, which is a way of misconstruing what European identity is partly about, the mastering of several languages. On the other hand, Belgium, the country where I live, although I wasn’t not born there, has a poor language policy.

1.3 canada is a country like the usa

Obviously not: life in Canada is more similar to the one in Europe than to the North American lifestyle. Of course, there are regions of the USA where a certain cultural assimilation has done its work, among others, because of religion such as in the Bible Belt, for example. But the values favoured by Canadians seem more in accord with the European quality of life than with the economic values of the Americans. This is the impression this brief visit has left me with. One way Canadians want to remain different from the Americans is that Canadians contest changes to their social policies. Canadian intellectuals — be they Anglophones or Francophones — are not happy to see the introduction of American logic to those policies.

My short experience of Canadian reality has quickly begun a process of reviewing my Eurocentric point of view.

2. the construction and handing down of identity: inventory and perspectives

The key words found in many of the papers at this colloquium were: the State, language, identity, tradition and modernity. Each time those terms were looked at in a particular Canadian¹ context, it took us back to the handing down of culture and its defence when facing another culture, which appears stronger and supposedly has intentions of hegemony.

It is interesting to note that, in this era of neoliberalism, the belief in more intervention by the State in the field of culture, globally speaking, is unanimous. The expectation of the State is clear: it has to establish conditions that revive culture from its local roots. Proxy cultural policy is on the agenda; the State must get off its pedestal and, instead of sustaining national programmes, should reorganize its politics based on the cultural habits of its citizens. In a way, people are looking for a reversal of hierarchy in the way the state develops policies; instead of a handing down to the people, the rule should be the other way around, as it is the only way in which citizens become conscious of their own responsibility for the handing down of culture (Diane Saint-Pierre, Michel de la Durantaye). The integration in school programmes of visits to museums and art galleries (Léon Bernier) is an important step in the process of making the younger generation conscious of art, and of their local, regional, national and international heritage.²

In that sense, equality between culture and the lifestyle of ethnic minorities in Canada, notably the Inuit, is also a necessity (Joy Cohnstaedt). Why look at Inuit art as an ethnic art, a minor one? This attitude arises from the typical reproduction of colonial relations between a dominated people and its dominator. Evaluating contemporary Inuit art the same way as that of the majority culture would diminish the statutory heterogeneity of competitors in the marketplace of the arts and accord full citizenship to a minority people. Whose art is going to represent a given society abroad is an important question for the politico-cultural institutions of Canada (Robin Higham). Is the art of First Nations as valuable as that of other citizens, or is the tourism that results from the aboriginals and their material culture going to be more important? The traditional knowledge First Nations possess about their environment should be considered complementary knowledge, and not inferior because it is different from scientific knowledge (Carole Lévesque).³

Chapter 19, continued >

________________

1. I am conscious that most of the participants at this colloquium will be displeased with my not very differentiated use of the word “Canadian” in the present essay. But as the presentation of Joseph Yvon Thériault has shown, a proper use of the words Canada, French, English, Francophone and Anglophone is nearly impossible, as every grouping refers to an historical or a political meaning. For an outsider, it is almost impossible not to be at fault. For that reason, I say here that in my essay the term “Canadian” refers only to the nationality of all the citizens of Canada. I differentiate Canadians with the adjectives “Francophone” and “Anglophone” according to their linguistic groups, without meaning anything else. I hope I shall be allowed not to be more precise, given my status as a foreigner!

2. In the Musée d’art moderne de Montréal, which I visited, there was an exhibition of “works” by pupils in the schools of that city, inspired by First Nations pieces of art exhibited in that museum. This was a very good example of that effort. Acknowledging the value of the First Nations pieces of art through an exhibition in a legitimized locale by the dominating class (Bourdieu, 1984) can contribute to the education of youth. They learn to respect and to appraise the cultural patrimony of their society and they can draw inspiration from it for their own art. Perhaps this was what Fernand Dumont meant when he stated that “to be an adult is to be a good partner” (1995), Raisons communes, Montréal, Les Éditions du Boréal: 72).

3. Perhaps should we include in this discussion the congealed association between the Indigenous and its environment. All the other citizens of a given country can choose their occupation. Why should we systematically restrict Indigenous people to the knowledge of nature?