In 1972, Chief Jimmy Bruneau of the Tłı̨chǫ First Nation attended the opening of the school that would bear his name. As part of the ceremony, many dignitaries got up to the microphone before him and gave long-winded speeches. Bruneau was an old man and very ill (he would die three years later), so when his turn came, he told the crowd he would only be able to speak for a short time.
In this short speech he laid out the plan for a new educational system that would see native youth become “strong like two people” – with confidence both in the wage economy and in traditional skills. His vision was so clear and powerful that it formed the basis of much of the Tłı̨chǫ territory’s direction for the next 40 years.
In the local language, this speech is known as Įłàà Katı̀, or “few words with much meaning”. When I began to work with a team organizing a conference on traditional knowledge and its place in the modern world, we realized that Chief Bruneau’s address on the topic was akin to the present-day TED talk. We decided to invite anthropologists from around the world to speak about traditional knowledge – heretofore a fairly inaccessible, complex and long-winded field – in 17-minutes or less.
Quickly, we found the idea had legs. The venue sold out weeks ahead of the appointed September date. At the conference, a topic normally discussed through circular storytelling was instead conveyed through punchy, accessible bullet points. For example, Paul Nadasdy argued succinctly that territory and citizenship are concepts that have been externally imposed on First Nations through the process of land claim negotiations.
Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox spoke eloquently about so-called dysfunctional aboriginal communities. They are actually just showing natural psychological responses to social suffering, she said. That suffering, in turn, is caused by government policies designed to sever their connection with the land, lure them out of the way of resource exploitation that kills that land, and in so doing become complicit in killing themselves. In the lunch-time keynote, Wade Davis reminded us through his National Geographic photography that the rest of the world’s societies are not failed attempts at being Western.
In the last few months of conference organizing, I’ve discovered I don’t really have the skill set to be an events coordinator, nor does the work fit my personality. But if I were to organize just one large event in my life, I’m glad it was this one. As the weekend drew to a close, I knew it was a success when all 250 attendees stacked their chairs against the walls and hopped around the room in a drum dance.
The drumming group itself was a union of groups from two territories that have a long history of armed conflict. It was akin to the unlikely marriage that weekend between the proponents of traditional knowledge and the traditional adherents of TED-style talks.The dance lasted at least half an hour. Which is a lot of hopping.
Image: Wikimedia Commons