Elements of Indigenous Style and The Conscious Style Guide

 I recently took an introduction to editing course. My goal in taking the course is to improve my writing an also to be more helpful when someone gives me a draft and asks, "can you take a look at this?" 

One of the books that they recommended in the course that I took was the late Gregory Younging's Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples. I do have that book on my shelf and I have used it as a reference many times. One of the features that I especially like about the book is an essay in the back on conflicts between Indigenous customary laws and colonial laws around copyright/intellectual property. With UNDRIP legislation in place at both the provincial and federal level, I think that the ideas in his essay remain important today. 

Another book recommended in the course was The Conscious Style Guide: A Flexible Approach to Language that Includes, Respects, Empowers. I am sometimes self-conscious about my word use. One time I went to an event as a panelist, and the organizers asked that I use one term. So during my panel presentation, I used the preferred term. And then another panelist told me it was the wrong term, and told me to use the term that the organizers had told me not to use. Neither term was wrong. But apparently there was a debate at play about which word was more correct. It was one of those moments that reminded me that language is dynamic and as a society we are constantly negotiating language. What this means is that even if someone were to write a book saying "here are all of the most progressive words to use," it would be out of date shortly after publication. So, the approach taken by Karen Yin is to create an approach which allows us to express ourselves and connect with others (p. xxii) with the goal of being kind, inclusive, and bias free (p.xv), and while also recognizing that language is ever changing and there will always be exceptions (p.20). This approach suggests that we use compassion as a compass (p.23).

She suggests that the goal of conscious language use is to avoid unintentionally promoting prejudice and discrimination (p.30) and to use language in such a way that it has the potential to liberate (p.36). She differentiates this from the goal of politically correctness, which is driven by fear of being criticized (p.32). 

She has a lot of great examples, and uses them to demonstrate how to use the conscious language approach to guide decision making. For example, is the term "Greek chorus" offensive? Why or why not? As another example, she examines research where people with vision impairments indicate that they do not think that the term "blind spot" is always inappropriate, and then she discusses how to differentiate between offensive and non-offensive use. One of the strategies she suggests when making decisions about whether or not to use a phrase which involves a metaphor involving some kind of demographic detail is to ask yourself "what do I really mean by that?" Once you have clarity about what you mean, then "if the metaphor replaced a thought that was insulting, disapproving, or denigrating, then consider avoiding it." (p.120). 

The one item in the book which I felt concerned about was her suggestion to "take back" a slur against Indigenous women (p.111). I do not think that I can "take back" slurs for demographics which I am not. For example, if there were a slur against gay people, I could not "take back" that slur because I am not gay. Or if there were a a slur against a specific nationality that I am not part of, I could not "take back" a slur against that nationality. Having been on the receiving end of slurs, what I can say is that in almost every context, the use of certain slurs hurts because of the ways it has been used in the past. When I hear the specific slur she suggests taking back, it actually brings to mind some very unsafe moments, and if someone were to casually drop it into conversation I would definitely question their character. As she is not an Indigenous woman, I do not think that she can "take back" the slur that she is discussing.  I suggest ignoring her advice to take back slurs if you are not the group that the slur is directed towards. Aside from that one item which I strongly disagree with, I thought overall this was an excellent book. If you would like to hear a podcast interview where she discusses the book, The Editor's Half Hour has an episode which I enjoyed listening to. 

John Borrows Books

In the past, I have not read a lot of John Borrows books because he's a lawyer and so I assumed that they would be too dry. But over the last few years I've read some of his work and he's actually a really interesting writer. I mentioned Drawing Out Law in a previous post.  Two other books of his are worth checking out as well. 

They are both the product of events, where scholars gathered to present papers and discuss a specific topic, and then followed up to create books. The first one is Braiding Legal Orders: Implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, edited by John Borrows, Larry Chartrand, Oonagh E. Fitzgerald, and Rita Schwartz. It's available online for free, but I got a hardcopy because I love books. It was published in 2019 and I read it shortly after it came out. But it's only become more interesting since then because the implementation of UNDRIP has progressed since then. A lot of it was definitely over my head, so some chapters I started to read and abandoned. The writer whose work I enjoyed the most was Sarah Morales, who wrote two chapters including one specifically on Indigenous women. I also really enjoyed the chapter on inherent dignity. 

The other book is Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous - Settler Relations and Earth Teachings, edited by Michael Asch, John Borrows, and James Tully. This one is actually kind of mind blowing. It's in response to a specific vein of thought which promotes resurgence and pits resurgence and reconciliation against each other. And so some degree, I suspect that this book is an attempt to try to ensure that reconciliation as defined by the TRC had a fighting chance to get off the ground. The introduction specifically names the work of Glen Coulthard and Audra Simpson as scholars who are "resurgence contra reconciliation." (p.23). To be fair though, those two scholars did not come up with this line of thinking on their own, rather, in my opinion their work is representative of  a larger conversation that was taking place, as evidenced by social media discourse at the time and signage in protests. The authors kindly didn't single them out in the body of the text, but did specifically mention them in the footnotes. 

The book is also in response to some veins of decolonization discourses which pit decolonization against reconciliation. To the casual reader, this may seem unexciting. But within Indigenous education, decolonization is mentioned in basically every book, so it's super unusual to pick up this book and see concerns raised about  decolonization. For example, they state that "some of the claims made in its name were over-broad and were applied in inappropriate ways. Dichotomies and binaries were advanced in a manner that did not always distinguish between contemporary North America and those of colonial Africa, Asia and Latin America in the 1960s. Differences in temporal, spatial, and socioeconomic circumstances were flattened and universalized. Ideas were essentialized, and deficiencies in Third World decolonization were overlooked. Thus, positions rejecting all forms of reconciliation entered the field. This flowed from a binary framing that insisted the decolonizing resurgence of the colonized had to take place in separation from the colonizer. Some followers of this field argued that no good relationship or dialogue with the colonizer was possible, because such encounters were simply thinly disguised struggled over power between hegemons and subalterns. Those who thought otherwise were dismissed as being misguided, even colonized by 'the system.' This criticism spread to critiquing the majority of Indigenous people as being co-opted." (p.6). I don't think that they are saying that we should reject all decolonizing discourse, rather, that we should be careful about letting decolonizing discourse lead us down a path where we pit decolonization against reconciliation. 

The book is truly an effort at peace making and building solidarity, as it openly speaks of some philosophical fractures within contemporary Indigenous discourse, and seeks to find a way forward by imagining how resurgence and reconciliation can work together. They acknowledge some of the legitimate concerns that the resurgence contra reconciliation discourses raises specifically, that if reconciliation is just an expectation that we accept the status quo, then it will not do. The editors of this book propose that we consider "transformative reconciliation" - which is reconciliation which addresses injustices, and would in fact be compatible with the aims of resurgence, and then move forward by treating reconciliation and resurgence as complementary. I think if we can get to a place where resurgence and reconciliation efforts are complementary, that would be nice.