Amelia Schonbek
BA English Literature 2009
Former coordinating Culture editor

The post Where the women at? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

It’s probably easy to pick up a copy of The Daily, scan its pages, and come away without really understanding why the paper is the way it is. It’s true that The Daily doesn’t look like most other publications. The stories in our paper regularly shine a light on inequality, marginalization, and skewed power relations. When we do cover issues that appear in the mainstream media, we try to take a critical perspective, not merely rehashing what others have already said, but looking at issues analytically.

This approach stems from The Daily’s Statement of Principles (SoP), a document that sets out the paper’s goals and guides our coverage. The SoP (available in full at mcgilldaily.com/sop) mandates that the paper be a “critical and constructive forum for the exchange of ideas and information.” It asks us to recognize that “all events and issues are inherently political, involving relations of social and economic power,” and that “power is unevenly distributed.” It further requires that the paper aim to “depict and analyze power relations accurately in its coverage.” It also notes that “The Daily can best serve its purposes by examining issues and events most media ignore,” and asks us to be critical of “the role postsecondary education plays in constructing and maintaining the current order.”

Many say that The Daily blindly follows the SoP, pitching stories that are needlessly out of touch with students, in some sort of frenzied effort to be as politically correct as possible. But that’s not the case. The Daily’s news section reports on the issues affecting Canada’s native population, for instance, because we believe that it’s time for years of neglect and mistreatment of aboriginal people to end. And when we cover an exhibit in the culture section by an artist you’ve never heard of, it’s because we believe in the importance of the work they’re doing and we think they deserve support, not because we want to look cool. Walk into The Daily office (it’s Shatner B-24), and you’ll find an assortment of people who are really passionate about things. There will probably be a lot of big ideas flying around, and people arguing about them. That’s one of the most exciting things about the paper.

But in spite of this, there are some who say that what we do at The Daily is, at the end of the day, irrelevant to students. Issues surrounding the faculty strike at Université de Montréal, the work of an up-and-coming Canadian choreographer, or the discourse about banning the niqab in Quebec don’t affect students, because they aren’t happening within the University gates – or so the argument goes. What bullshit. That students are not affected by each of these issues is an absurd notion and a falsehood. You may not wear the niqab, but the woman sitting next to you in class may have an aunt who does – or may choose to wear one in the future (which would bar her from campus if Bill 94 were passed).

Make no mistake – our time at McGill will have been useless if we learn that the only issues that matter are the ones taking place on our doorstep. We live in an ultra-connected age where it’s no longer possible to insulate ourselves from the issues and debates taking place across Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the world. Daily writers and editors believe that the best service we can do students is to provide them with a critical look at the issues in their campus paper – no matter where they’re happening. And the SoP facilitates these kinds of discussions. Moreover, it actually reminds us to remain relevant to the student body, which is why we often try to connect larger issues back to our campus, through reporting on a professor’s research, perhaps, or the discussion of a McGill student band in a wider conversation about Montreal music.  
One last thing: please don’t forget that the “we” here refers to students. It is, after all, students who write, edit, design, and govern this newspaper. Students elect the editorial board, write letters, and pitch every single story that appears in The Daily’s pages. We think that means that the paper is actually very relevant to students. Those who disagree say that the Tribune is the newspaper that students can identify with. Well, in the last few weeks, the Tribune published, among other things, a column entitled “Know thyself: How hot are you really?” (Opinion, March 16), a full-page colour “photo essay” featuring images of green-clad revellers downing beers on St. Patrick’s Day (March 23), and a review of the latest Miley Cyrus flick (“Newest Sparks adaptation fails to ignite,” Arts & Entertainment, March 30). Perhaps some think that’s what the students want to read, but at The Daily, we disagree. We think there’s something deeper than that, and I’m exceptionally proud of the paper that results from this belief.

Amelia Schonbek (BA English ’09) is a special student and The Daily’s coordinating Culture editor, but the views expressed here are her own. Write her at amelia.schonbek@mail.mcgill.ca.

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The protest was organized to express solidarity with the AHF, which funds the work of 134 community-based aboriginal support services that aid survivors of Canada’s residential school system. The organization began in 1998 with a $350-million grant from the federal government. However, the 2010 federal budget did not renew funding.

According to protester Maya Rolbin-Ghanie, once the police arrived, the women were given 30 seconds to either leave or be arrested.

“I asked them if we could have 60 seconds, if we could have a minute to discuss this, and they said, ‘No – 30 seconds,’” she said.

“What was surprising was how quickly it escalated. Normally, at least as far as I know, the police have protocols where they escalate fairly slowly, and it usually lasts several hours,” Rolbin-Ghanie continued.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) spokesperson Margot Geduld said that the women were arrested because of a “security consideration.”

But Marc Menard, spokesperson for the national capital division of the RCMP, would not comment on whether or not security had been a concern. He said, however, that the women were ticketed for trespassing.

The decision to cut AHF’s funding has been met with widespread “disbelief and shock,” according to AHF communications director Wayne Spear.

“We had no guarantee that we’d get additional funding beyond March, but since there aren’t many services available in aboriginal communities people were quite upset that these services would be disappearing,” he added.

Funding was not renewed despite an INAC-commissioned evaluation of the organization that was overwhelmingly positive. The evaluation found that “the healing is gaining momentum, but that in relation to the existing and growing need the healing ‘has just begun;’ project reports and interview results indicate a high level of continued need for healing according to an array of negative social indicators attributed to [residential school] trauma.”

The evaluation went on to say that “that there are few if any viable alternatives to achieve the positive healing outcomes the AHF has been able to achieve with such a degree of success.”

According to Geduld, the 2010 allocated budget $199 million over two years “to ensure that survivors [of residential schools] continue their important path to healing.”

“Certainly Health Canada will continue to work closely with the aboriginal communities,” she continued.

Health Canada will receive $65.9 million over two years for the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support program, an existing Health Canada program, according to Paul Duchesne, director of Health Canada’s Media Monitoring Unit.

The remaining $133.2 million will go toward the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) and the Common Experience Payment (CEP). Both the IAP and CEP programs award money to residential school survivors as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

But critics worry that operating programs through government agencies rather than community-based groups will have detrimental effects on residential school survivors. “There’s been a history in Canada of aboriginal people having solutions brought in from outside, depending on government, being dependent on these resources,” said Spear. “[With the AHF] we had examples of people being self-sufficient and taking control of their own well-being. It was successful, all the research said it was doing good work, but [the government] is not going to encourage that any longer. It should be clear to anyone who’s looked into it that this is a step backward,” he continued.

The loss of AHF funding is just one in a recent series of federal funding cuts to aboriginal organizations. Federal funding of $7.2 million was withdrawn from First Nations University of Canada earlier this year. Sisters in Spirit, a national project that addressed violence against indigenous women and raised awareness about the issue, also lost its funding in the 2010 budget.

“It seems to me that there’s a broader phenomenon going on here,” said Rolbin-Ghanie. “The people who are actually doing the on-the-ground work are no longer being funded.”

Geduld, however, refused to draw a connection between the recent funding cuts.

“[These are issues] that have been in the media recently, but there’s really not a link between them at all. I don’t even see how you can link them,” she said.

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It also established a rule mandating that periodicals must have paid subscription rates of at least 5,000 copies per year in order to qualify for the Aid to Publishers program, which funds editorial content. As most Canadian arts and literary magazines have subscription rates of 300 to 4,500 paid copies, this will render the vast majority of them ineligible for content-focused CPF funding. It’s a reality that will threaten the existence of a number of Canadian lit mags, negatively impacting the country’s literary landscape.  
“It’s like taking a small but very essential element out of an ecosystem,” says Jon Paul Fiorentino, editor-in-chief of Matrix, about the loss of CMF/PAP funding. “Small literary journals really do allow literary practitioners to cut their teeth, to start the lifelong project of improving their writing in public. There may be some literary periodical that won’t get funding and that needed funding in order to survive. Obviously it means that there [will be] less venues for writers to start their careers.” 
Without a doubt, small literary magazines are unique in their ability to foster the work of Canadian writers and to offer opportunities to young artists. “Where else are writers supposed to start?” asks Mike Thompson, business administrator at Grain. “Writers need opportunities, they need somebody at some point to give them a paycheque, and [literary magazines] offer that. We give them chances to work with editors before they launch into larger projects, and it builds up a [writer’s] fan base as well.” 
Amid this reality, the new CPF guidelines demonstrate not only Canadian Heritage’s disregard for small literary and arts magazines, but also its deep lack of understanding of the purposes and goals of these publications. “In every way that I can think of, the government has tried to graft the corporate model on to the literary magazine,” Fiorentino says. This is certainly evident in the circulation requirements, which Fiorentino guesses may have been set at a level “[the government] thought was a fair number because they wanted us to be more competitive in the marketplace. It’s an attainable number for many magazines,” he continues, “but it changes the way these magazines operate, in terms of turning more into businesses and less into artist-driven projects.”  
Indeed, the only CPF funding that most small magazines will be eligible for will come from the business development component, which is meant to finance managerial projects – not editorial ones. “Everyone always talks about, ‘are you a circulation-driven magazine, are you an ad-driven magazine,’ they always talk about the ways to generate revenue,” Fiorentino explains. “No one ever talks about the content-driven magazine, the idea-driven magazine. [Literary magazines] are about poetry; we’re about short stories; we’re about ideas. I don’t think it’s fair or necessarily healthy to graft the corporate model onto everything. I don’t think that’s the solution for the arts.”  
Gerald Trites, co-editor of The Antigonish Review, agrees. “[The government] is really treating literary journals as commercial enterprises,” he says. “They’re not. They’re not that at all. None of us are in it for profit; we don’t make any money; we never will make any. The government should not be applying profit-oriented metrics to this kind of journal. It just doesn’t fit.”

Most of the magazines that do fit the government-sanctioned profile are large, corporate-owned glossies that have the circulation numbers necessary to benefit from CPF money. But as Melissa Krone, circulation manager at The New Quarterly, wrote on the magazine’s blog, “do the magazines of large publishing companies that contain a huge ratio of advertising really deserve Canadian Heritage support?” After all, the DHC says that one of their goals is “increased Canadian content in periodicals.” 
What’s more, “If you look at the guidelines for the periodical fund, there’s absolutely no mention of qualitative criteria,” says John Barton, editor of the Malahat Review. “The only criteria there besides circulation is Canadian ownership and Canadian content. And both are quantifiable. You can count the number of pages of Canadian content. There’s no recognition of contribution [to culture]. There’s no recognition that literary magazines, all arts magazines, are incubators for the culture of tomorrow.” 
This leaves many wondering why Canadian Heritage is not fighting for literary and arts magazines, rather than against them. “This [funding] comes through Canadian Heritage,” Thompson says. “Small print run magazines, that’s what safeguards culture. It seems really funny that Canadian Heritage is not wanting to continue that investment, to [support] Canadian culture, in magazine form, anyway.” 
Fiorentino is less surprised. “I think it’s quite clear that this particular government and this particular heritage minister are really not all that interested in supporting arts and heritage,” he states.

The consequence will be that small magazines will have to revert to what Trites calls “survival mode.” The Antigonish Review may adjust the honorariums they pay writers, small sums to begin with. At Grain, which lost nearly 10 per cent of its annual budget with the new CPF regulations, the change will mean “less pages, which means less [writing], which means less pay for writers,” according to Thompson. “We really don’t have any fat to trim,” he acknowledges, “but we’ll keep doing it somehow.” 
And though the risk of magazine closures is real, comments like Thompson’s indicate that those involved are digging in their heels to prevent a worst-case scenario. “I think the literary community, and literary magazines in particular are like cockroaches – we’ll survive nuclear attack,” Barton says. “Grassroots culture is like that.”

The post We’re losing our lit mags appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Combined with the $ 5.2-million loss in funding from the Saskatchewan government that was announced in February, this decision could mean that the university is headed for insolvency.

The government made the announcement in spite of the recent decision of the FNUC and its owner, the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), to address the government’s concerns by transferring control of the university to the University of Regina and establishing a new board of governors.

“The [federal] government claims that the university has not managed its funds appropriately and has not taken the action recommended to address the issue,” said Jean Crowder, the NDP’s critic for aboriginal affairs.

“However, what I know from meeting with both the Canadian Association of University Teachers, with somebody from the Board of Governors, with the grand chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, with someone from the student union, from the faculty association, is that they have presented a plan to the government to address the issues, and the government really has had no conversation with them about this,” said Crowder.

FNUC’s finances have long been under scrutiny, and in a press release Indian affairs minister Chuck Strahl attributed the federal funding cuts to “long-standing, systemic problems related to governance and financial management.”

Critics of the university have alleged that it is not independent enough from the FSIN, and in both 2007 and 2008 it ran deficits of over $1 million. Rumours of unnecessary business trips to Hawaii and Las Vegas have been circulating, and most recently, Saskatchewan’s ministry of justice launched an investigation into whether $390,000 of a scholarship fund was mishandled.

Randy Lundy, who heads FNUC’s faculty council, compared the funding cuts to the residential school system.

“After having issued an apology for [the residential school] legacy, minister Strahl is enacting yet another policy of enforced assimilation by refusing to restore the $7.2 million in funding to the First Nations University of Canada,” Lundy said at a press conference on March 11.

The funding cuts precede a financial audit of the university, which is expected to be finished by the end of this month.

“The federal government has announced that they need to save money, and they are looking at all kinds of opportunities to cut programs or services. This would fall in line with that,” said Crowder.

“The provincial government has signaled that they would be prepared to come to the table if the federal government would,” said Crowder on March 15.

However, a meeting between Saskatchewan advanced education minister Rob Norris and Strahl the following day did not yield any sort of deal, and both governments’ previous promises to end funding by April 1 remained.

FNUC is the only university of its kind in Canada, and it offers an opportunity for First Nations students to study in a culturally supportive environment.

“First Nations have had such a terrible experience through residential schools,” Crowder explained. “What the First Nations University does is provide an avenue for students to get culturally appropriate education. There’s a lot more support around tradition and language… that makes it easier for students to return, to come to school.”

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In this way, the first half of The Sentimentalists meanders along, details revealed in between musings, memories, and beautifully-crafted images. This type of writing is enjoyable to read – it allows the reader to move slowly through a text, to soak up the imagery and think through the metaphors, not having to rush to keep up with the pace. The reader learns that the narrator’s father, Napoleon, is a veteran of the Vietnam War, and that Henry is the father of Napoleon’s friend Owen, who was killed in action in Vietnam. Events in the narrator’s life lead her to retreat to the government-built house Napoleon and Henry share – a house that sits on the edge of a lake that covers the remnants of an old town, flooded in the ‘50s by a hydro-electric dam. It is here that the narrator begins to sift through her father’s past and her own, and to struggle with their implications.

Further blurring the line between fact and fabrication is the author’s addition of an autobiographical element: Skibsrud’s own father fought in Vietnam and his true testimony about Operation Liberty II, in which he witnessed a higher-ranking soldier murder a civilian woman, was incorporated into the book. But Skibsrud has said that the work is “not my father’s story, but my own. And it is not a true story. At its root, though, are two true things. One is my father’s testimony following Operation Liberty II in 1967…. The other is the feeling I got floating over the buried towns of Flagstaff Lake: a feeling of the way that everything exists in layers, that nothing disappears; it just gets hidden sometimes.”

This theory of memory and being that Skibsrud continues to develop in her novel is one of the book’s greatest strengths. Every so often she will unwrap another small strand of thought – about “the false presumption that a thing could, quite simply, be forgot,” or that there is “a ghost for every moment of a life.” And though these reflections are necessarily introspective and pondering in nature, they never feel heavy-handed, and they never keep the book from looking outward as well as inward.

In fact, the dissection of memory allows the novel to engage in a critique of war and the way we remember war. Napoleon wonders, for example, while he watches his captain hit a woman with the butt of his gun, whether the captain’s name was, like the other platoon members’, affixed to the gun with red tape. Or, alternately, “Might that be a privilege of rank? An anonymous gun?”

Skibsrud relates the events of Operation Liberty II twice in the book. The first account, Napoleon’s chaotic experience of the operation, Skibsrud narrates in hazy, detached real time. But the second is in fact an epilogue containing the transcript of the hearing at which Skibsrud’s father testified about civilian deaths during the operation, and the narrator’s reaction to this testimony. Reading through the transcript, the events become much clearer; our understanding is deepened. Ultimately, though, we learn that all charges in relation to the operation were dropped by the army, “for lack of real evidence.” So this incident, too, has been covered over and obscured by the layers of time, though it hasn’t fully disappeared.

The post Moving through memories appeared first on The McGill Daily.

This system has nothing in common with Israel, a democratic nation which has no laws in place limiting freedom of speech, religion, or education, and which grants full civil rights to its Arab citizens as well as to its Jewish ones. This is in stark contrast to nations like Jordan or Saudi Arabia, which have laws in place that, respectively, prevent Jews from becoming citizens or freely discriminate against them on the basis of religion.

It is true that the checkpoint system in place in Israel impedes movement in the Palestinian Territories, and that supporters of such measures use security as an argument in their favour. Why this argument is not considered valid by some is difficult to understand. Nearly 4,000 Israeli civilians were wounded in terror attacks between 2001-2002, a figure that has fallen steadily with the increased implementation of checkpoints since then. Though checkpoints are problematic in nature, they are a temporary measure in place to protect the lives of Israelis.

For those who argue that the aforementioned terrorism is to be expected given Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, it should be noted that anti-Jewish violence in the region has been common throughout the 20th century, first in Palestine, and later in the State of Israel. It should also not be forgotten that leaders of the Arab Liberation Army vowed to “drive all Jews into the sea,” during the 1948 war, a statement that is genocidal in nature and that evidences an established anti-Israel conviction that predates the current situation in the Palestinian Territories. Though at times both sides in this conflict have used violence against each other, violence cannot justify violence, period.

Nevertheless, the above arguments are not meant to absolve Israel from responsibility for the human rights of those living within its borders and within the Territories. Rather, they are made to point out an entrenched double standard (one that many feel stems from even deeper-seated anti-Semitism) that allows the accusations of apartheid and injustice to be levelled at Israel from the likes of the United Nations, while countries like China escape UN condemnation while engaging in practices that are outright abhorrent in Tibet as well as in the northwest of the country.

Inequality exists in Israel as it does in Tibet, and in Canada, and everywhere. One way to work against it is by recognizing the multi-dimensionality of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, by holding Israel accountable to the same standards that are applied to the rest of the world, and by looking on both Israelis and Palestinians with a common measure of respect and human dignity.

—Amelia Schonbek

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that nearly 4,000 Israeli civilians were killed in terror attacks in 2001-2002. It should have read that nearly 4,000 Israeli civilians were wounded in such attacks.

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The reason for the paint job? Though the city called it “maintenance in the area,” the section of Beatty Street in question will be used as an entertainment site during the Olympics. It’s not hard to connect the dots.

A few weeks later, in early January, a piece of graffiti appeared on the wall. Under a depiction of the Olympic rings were seven words: “With glowing hearts we kill the arts.”

It’s ironic that although culture has been hailed as the “second pillar” of the Olympic Games since Vancouver’s original bid, bringing the Olympics to B.C. has been accompanied by unprecedented cuts in funding for the arts in the province, as well as accusations that Olympic organizers have engaged in censorship.

In the run-up to the Games, Tourism, Culture, and Arts Minister Kevin Krueger has said that they’re “going to feed hungry children before [they’re going to] provide grants to organizations.” Although provincial officials have said that they’ve decided to slash arts funding in order to have money to “feed hungry children,” the fact is that by the time the Olympics are over, B.C. funding for the arts will have been cut more than 80 per cent, from $47 million per year to $3.7 million. By 2011, 92 per cent of funding will have been lost.

These numbers are nothing short of absurd. No other item on the provincial budget comes close to this level of funding decrease, which leaves one wondering what the Liberal government was thinking. All talk of the social value of art aside, economically, the cultural sector employs 80,000 people in B.C. and gives back $5.2 billion in taxes to the province each year – a huge return on a relatively small investment.

It would perhaps be easier to stomach these funding cuts if the money lost were being spent wisely. But when, in advance of the Olympics, $486 million is going toward a retractable stadium roof, another $1 million toward tickets to the Games for politicians, and $2.86 million to fund parties – yes, parties – in various towns that the Olympic torch will pass through, it’s difficult to see how the decision to cut arts funding is being set up as one that pits money for the arts against the aforementioned hungry children.

Let’s be honest – redirecting money toward alleviating B.C.’s child poverty problem is not the root cause here. It’s the Games. Recently, the Vancouver Sun reported that the total cost of the Olympics would reach $6 billion (“Olympics bill tops $6 billion – so far,” January 23), all so that a bunch of people can line up at the top of a mountain and see who can ski to the bottom first. Forgive me if I don’t see the point.

Of course, some will argue that the point is the feeling of pride and love for one’s country that comes from watching homegrown athletes succeed at the Games. But I, for one, feel a sense of pride in being Canadian when I see a new work by a Canadian dancemaker, or when I take in an innovative art installation put together by an up-and-coming Canadian artist. These are things that we, as a nation, ought to be proud of as well – before, during, and after the two weeks of Olympic competition. What’s shameful is that arts institutions in B.C. are closing their doors for lack of funding. When the Games are over and done with, it will be B.C.’s cultural landscape, not just Vancouver’s urban one, that will have changed.

———-
Amelia Schonbek has a B.A. (’09 in English and is The Daily’s coordinating Culture editor. Write her at amelia.schonbek@mail.mcgill.ca.

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The McGill Daily: Why do cases of violence against indigenous women go unsolved?
Rachel-Alouki Labbé: Because the Gendarmerie royale du Canada [GRC or RCMP] just don’t care. They’re so used to seeing us in a violent way, so they think we don’t care, and they don’t care. They don’t follow up. They don’t take it as if it were important, like it were someone from their community.

I have friends in Winnipeg that were involved in a domestic problem – a couple. She told the police, and they didn’t think it was true. They thought she was a liar. She almost died. There are a lot of cases like that, and unfortunately [the authorities] don’t pay attention.

MD: Could you talk about what is being done to empower women in indigenous communities?
RAL: We have maisons d’hébergement [safe houses] outside the communities – close to 11 or 12 here in Quebec. Women know now that they can go out of the community to be safe, with their children. If they stay in the community, the problem is nobody will talk, and also often it’s the uncle or the husband [who is committing the violence]. Now they are going out of the community, and the women who take care of them are indigenous too.

But also, there are a lot of circles of women that meet now once a week so they can talk. We show films now, and when they see that, they realize that [what is depicted] is the same story [they experienced], so they start to talk.

MD: Could you talk about your work in film, and how you came to see film as a tool for problem solving and change?
RAL: We began with N’a qu’un oeil, a film that aims to educate about domestic violence. It [went] around to the communities, and to conferences. It works. It’s not very fast, and we still have violence. But you have women who didn’t know [something] was violence, and [after seeing the film] they know.

MD: You’ve made a film about the femicide issue in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. What connections did you see between missing and murdered indigenous women in Mexico and in Canada?
RAL: We are sisters. When I talk to people here, they don’t know what’s going on there. They only know that we can go to Mexico and lay on the beach and have a good time. When you start to talk about femicide, the gangs, the drug cartels, what happens to these women, [people] don’t know.

I decided to go there to show [the situation], that these women are almost all aboriginal women from the south – poor women.

The problem [in Mexico] is the same as here – they just don’t care, they don’t want to resolve the problems because [they say], “These are just aboriginal women. Why should we spend money to find out who killed these women?” It began to be very easy to kill women there.

MD: What do you think is needed from the Canadian government in order to stop violence against indigenous women?
RAL: First, they have to listen. They have to be involved in the problem. They don’t listen and they don’t look and they don’t want to know because it’s not good for Canada. In Canada everywhere you go, people think they are taking good care of aboriginal people, and this is not true at all. If we could show everyone around the world about [violence against indigenous women], Canada wouldn’t be the best place in the world to live. I think [the government] wants to keep their rank. They have to listen to us. If we decide to make a film, they have to show it. Sometimes they don’t, because it’s not good for the image. So I think things have to change, of course, but it’s not only aboriginal women who have to change it, it’s [everyone] together.

MD: Have you seen changes to the condition of indigenous women in recent years? In what ways?
RAL: I see improvements. When I was younger, it was worse, because women weren’t talking about [violence]. Now, we have social workers, and [many of them] are aboriginal. Since 20 years ago, we have made a lot of [progress]. But the violence is so extreme. Sometimes you go to a community and it’s more than 87 per cent [who have experienced] violence against women and children, and sexual abuse. We have a lot of work to do. We are still dying of it. We all have someone we know who went to the hospital [because of violence]. This is not normal.

If we could all come back to our traditional thinking, sometimes…Of course we are in 2010, but just think about our soul, how we were before. Because we are forgetting that we are aboriginal, and we are part of the earth. I wish we could think about what and who we were, all the peace we had. [Violence] is not the way of thinking of the aboriginal people.

— compiled by Amelia Schonbek

The post Violence exposed appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The dance world has come a long way since that moment in history. We’ve seen the rise of modern, contemporary, and avant-garde choreography; we’ve seen dances performed to silence instead of music, and dancers dancing without clothing or wearing jeans and sneakers and taking an abandoned lot or empty warehouse as their stage. But for whatever reason, when a new work is choreographed that is just about movement – that is really invested in celebrating and questioning movement – it still seems just a little bit revolutionary.

Such is the case with Danièle Desnoyers’s newest work, Dévorer le ciel. The established Montreal choreographer was given carte blanche by presenters Danse Danse to create a new work for their season. The result is a meditation both on movement and what motivates it. Desnoyers has always been a choreographer who really understands the way the body moves. The dancers in Dévorer le ciel make the most of this knowledge, allowing the audience to see the geography of each individual movement they make, from its root to its fulfillment. It’s a new way of watching dance, and, combined with the performers’ energy and sense of play, it makes for a uniquely entertaining experience.

Dévorer le ciel runs January 14 – 17 at Centre Pierre-Péladeau (300 De Maisonneuve E.). For more information visit dansedanse.net.

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NF: Oh, do you study dance at McGill too?
Me: No, I can’t. McGill has no fine arts.

That last statement isn’t entirely true; McGill does teach fine art in the Schulich School of Music. But by and large the University does not fund art, and that’s a problem.

There are two ways that this non-support for the arts manifests itself at McGill. To begin with, the University does not offer degree programs in most fine arts disciplines. It’s true that not every subject can be studied at every university. But fine art always seems to get the short end of the stick, being overlooked in favour of more “serious” subjects. This is unfortunate for a couple of reasons: it means that the artistically-inclined must look outside of the academic structure at McGill to practice their art, and it also means that McGill is doing its part in maintaining a dominant order, all too pervasive in Canada these days, that says art is not worth funding.

That the University consistently underfunds the arts and humanities programs that it does offer, in favour of disciplines that are traditionally seen as more practical or career-oriented, only adds to the problem. For instance, a scant five per cent of McGill’s Faculty Expense Budget is allotted to the Schulich School of Music, in comparison to 27 per cent for the Faculty of Medicine. Despite the fact that 30 per cent of McGill’s student population is enrolled in the Faculty of Arts, the largest academic unit at the university, it is only given 16 per cent of the Faculty Expense Budget. To put this in context, you should know that although McGill Med only enrols 12 per cent of McGill’s student population – less than half the number of students studying arts – it is granted nearly twice as much funding.

I don’t mean to suggest that medical research isn’t a commendable pursuit – it is. What I take issue with is the idea, upheld by McGill’s funding structure, that studying medicine or science or engineering is more worthwhile than studying or making art. By refusing to pay for arts programs, the University is telling students from all faculties that art is not worth investing in, and that a career in art is a subpar aspiration. Instead of fostering and supporting the innovation and creativity that flows out of the arts, the University is stifling it.

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Simply reading the title of Ducharme and Dales’s multi-disciplinary piece might shock some – it’s called Celui qui aime est à Dachau, or “The one who loves is in Dachau.” As its title implies, the work is focused on the connection between love and destruction, drawing inspiration from Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments – a book that Portland bookseller Powell’s describes as “best read immediately after the end of an intimate relationship.” But don’t make the mistake of assuming that the piece is merely about hating on those in love – it’s bigger than that. Ducharme and Dales see love as problematic, yes, but the questions they raise are anything but one-dimensional. Their work cuts to the heart of society’s obsession with love, and pushes the audience to wonder why, and how, we’ve become “junkies for love.”

The artists go about this project by putting their audience in an uncomfortable situation. Ducharme and Dales become lab rats, and spectators are given a window into a domestic setting to observe the duo’s moments of intimacy as well as their cataclysmic disasters. The audience is meant to feel as though they are present at a scene where they’re not meant to be, but it’s hard to turn away. Though the work might be difficult, it’s also important. After all, as Morton Mendelson recently reminded us, stepping out of your comfort zone every once in a while is a good thing.

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The participants have complete creative license over the dances they produce for the workshop. The resulting sense of freedom is evident in the works produced—fun but still serious, they consistently push the boundaries of the art form. Like the dancers who created them, each piece is sure to have a unique perspective, and the juxtaposition of many choreographic voices over the course of an evening will make the workshop an interesting show to watch.

The Dancers’ Choreographic Workshop runs September 10-12 at the Cinquième Salle of Place des Arts. For more information, visit grandsballets.qc.ca.

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