Voicing Identity in Popular Education: Difference and Distinction in the Practice of Indigenous Public Speaking

• In Event: 32.063 - Undertaking and Remaking Identity Politics in Educational Institutional Practice

Abstract

This presentation explores the expression of Indigenous voice in popular, non-formal education events in Montreal, Canada. Specifically, I examine podium presentations delivered by Indigenous speakers and organized for non-Indigenous audiences as forums for the production and definition of cultural difference. Embodied Indigenous public speaking events are frequent in urban centres across Canada; they are premised on a widely shared understanding that it is more valid and ethically prudent for Indigenous peoples to speak on their own behalf. Organized primarily by non-Indigenous civil society NGOs, Indigenous-delivered speaking events constitute a significant practice of linking non-Indigenous Canadians to the political struggles and social realities of Indigenous groups in contemporary Canada. This observation leads to a series of questions: First, what is being spoken about in Indigenous podium presentations? How are Indigenous ethnicities and Indigenous-non-Indigenous boundaries being made coherent and available for non-Indigenous recognition? Second, how does the practice of public podium speaking bear on and inform the presentation and performance of Indigenous life within the public sphere?

Drawing on a mini-corpus of public talks delivered by Indigenous speakers, supplemented by observation and interview data, in this talk I explore the reflexive relation between the presentation and performance of cultural identity and the pedagogical practice of podium talk. Inquiring into the “situations of ethnicity” follows a much longer tradition of ethnomethodologically-inspired research into the local occasioning and practical achievement of identity and difference (see Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Clifford, 1998; Stokoe & Attenborough, 2015). From an ethnomethodological perspective, how identities are made relevant in the here-and-now follows from the broader socio-political context, but also from the kinds of interactional practices wherein speakers and hearers engage one another about ethnic difference and sometimes as ethnically different kinds of people. In this presentation I focus in particular on how the merging of speaking authority with group belongingness–a constitutive aspect of this form of public awareness-raising–results in a set of binds Indigenous speakers must manage. These include being a member of a community and having a personal, unique voice, maintaining difference and establishing inter-ethnic solidarity, and accounting for social ills to group-outsiders.

Indigenous-non-Indigenous reconciliation has emerged as an important national project in Canada with a growing body of theoretical work focusing on how best it might be achieved (see Coulthard, 2007). This presentation offers a theoretically-grounded empirical examination of how reconciliation is being sought-after from the ground-up and the forces that shape it. In examining relationship between ethnic relevance making and pedagogical practices, this paper also offers a contribution to the growing body of research interested in the institutionalization of identity in multicultural societies (e.g., Ahmed, 2012; Povinelli, 2002).

Author

• Stephen Peters, McGill University