The Human Condition: Cultural genocide

By DR. DANIEL SCHNEE on February 8, 2023.

Recently the Alberta government announced it will require colleges and universities to report annually on how effectively they uphold free speech on campus.

Though it is not clear what kind of reportage is required, or if there will be any negative consequences for failing to report, incidents such as the University of Lethbridge’s recent cancellation of a speech by Frances Widdowson will certainly be of interest.

Widdowson, a former Mount Royal professor fired for her comments on residential schools, has questioned whether or not the various abuses that occurred amount to cultural genocide.

As she states in an older Youtube interview, “I never did agree with the words cultural genocide, because genocide, as far as I’m concerned, is the intentional extermination of a group, of a gene pool. It’s talking about genes, not about prohibiting people from speaking their language… but what they did with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is they used this as a stealth maneuver to get the word ‘genocide’ in public discourse.”

She goes on to say that the idea of cultural genocide never made “any sense,” and “rational” commentators are pushing back against this concept.

As a fierce defender of free speech, I think Frances Widdowson should be allowed to speak her mind about such issues, freely, on a university campus. Free speech does not imply any or all speech is intelligent, and thus a statement such as Widdowson’s should be allowed into the arena of rational debate, the place where all can see how blatantly obtuse and insulting it is.

First of all, Widdowson is suggesting that adjectives are irrelevant; that a person, place, or thing cannot have more than one attribute or description. Thus, Widdowson must willfully pretend she does not understand basic grammar in order to make her illogical case against Indigenous claims.

Second, she implies there is some group (“they”) who are making a “stealth” move to insert talk of genocide into our discourse. Someone is trying to implant genocide into our thoughts through manipulation of the language used by the Commission. But by that very fact, Widdowson herself is trying to manipulate language by ignoring how adjectives modify and further define the nouns they precede.

As for the veracity of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s claims, the facts speak for themselves. Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes (where culture is learned), banned from speaking their first language (intellectual culture), worshipping their gods (spiritual culture), wearing the traditional clothing of their people (tangible culture), and so on. They could not partake in any cultural activity, both mentally and physically, that would give them any sense of who they were before they entered school. Kill the idea of ‘being’ Cree and no identifiably Cree people will exist, though their genes remain. It is the sociocultural murder of a people, also known as cultural genocide.

I imagine Widdowson would very quickly come to understand that cultural genocide exists… if I forced her to speak only Japanese, solely worship the sun goddess Amaterasu, change her name to Miyuki Tanaka, and wear a kimono. She would think I was a dangerous lunatic, and rightfully so. Imagine how the Indigenous children felt.

So let her speak freely on campus… and the rest of us shall freely speak about how vacuous her words are.

Dr. Daniel Schnee is an anthropologist and jazz/rock drummer

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