Maïka Sondarjee is a professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. His first essay is called lose the south (Écosociété Editions, 2020).
A week after inviting him to participate in its annual event, the Festival international de la chanson de Granby abruptly canceled the performance of Anishinabe artist Samian. The reason ? His performance was going to be done mostly in indigenous languages. He therefore did not meet the “quota” of songs in French to participate in the festival, which requires artists to perform at least 80% of their songs in the language of Jacques Cartier.
The rapper released his fifth album in 2021, after a 15-year career. With Nikamohe sings for the first time exclusively in his mother tongue, apart from the song in French Genocide, which focuses on the treatment of First Nations and Innu people in Canada. Unless they had invited him without ever having listened to him, the organizing committee could not ignore that even the previous records of Samian, “the child of the earth”, are a musical mixture of native languages and French. Inviting an artist knowing his repertoire, then uninvited him because he does not meet the selection criteria is worse than not having invited him. His latest album is also a gem with rap rhythms old school, performed in Micmac and Anishinabe. Developing a new musicality in the language of his ancestors is an important political act on the part of Samian.
The Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been recounting for several decades the methods of colonization of thought, which involve the imposition of a language on indigenous populations. Anglophone and Francophone universities in African countries were also built as methods of suppressing native languages, with the assumed objective of “civilizing” the colonized populations. Eliminating a language kills the culture little by little, and therefore participates in suppressing a social bond woven over a long period of time. Suppressing a language is also suppressing dissent.
Banning a language goes beyond censoring words. Thinking (and singing) in your mother tongue allows you to keep a symbolic link with your culture and ancestral ways of thinking. Boaventura De Sousa Santos used the term “epistemicide” to refer to this process of destruction not only of languages, but also of epistemes, ways of thinking.
The acceptance of languages that have historically been banned supports a broader goal than linguistic diversity: that of epistemic justice. The decolonization of knowledge, for Thiong’o, would mean considering other languages at their fair value, but also other visions of the world.
Accepting to hear and valuing other idioms will open us up to other ways of seeing the world and rethinking ourselves. For example, in some African languages, just like in Japanese and Mandarin, the word “I” can be declined in different ways depending on the subject of the conversation. Unlike the French “I” which is only individual (je, me, moi), “I” will not be written in the same way in these languages, and will depend on the subject of the conversation.
“I” is not the same whether I speak of my relationship with my mother or with my boss. It allows you to think and tell the world differently. But historically, as Edward Said argues, not everyone has had the same power to “narrate the world”.
As the Senegalese poet Felwine Sarr says, this process of accepting the Other and his multiple languages would allow us to fully “inhabit the world”, i.e. to navigate all the rivers of knowledge and the rivers of meaning that these cultures support. : “Inhabiting the cultures of the world as one walks through a rich wardrobe of different clothes for all seasons”. Epistemic justice involves acknowledging Indigenous languages, experiences, and epistemologies, and thereby reintegrating knowledges that have been invalidated, silenced, or marginalized by Western universities and institutions.
Speak white
The rapper, originally from the indigenous community of Pikogan in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, is an emissary for the promotion of indigenous languages here and in the rest of the world. It is ironic that the cancellation of her performance comes at the very start of UNESCO’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032).
Reaching such levels of popularity despite this type of pitfalls is exemplary. Although he refuses to speak a language that the majority can understand, to use themes that can be easily understood. Quebec rap and hip-hop often place us in front of our past and allow us to reflect more than necessary. By tackling themes such as the genocide of indigenous populations, the exploitation of the territory, systemic racism or the history of slaves at home, artists like Samian, Sarahmée or Webster allow us to face our history collectively, while strengthening the ties that unite us.
The director general of the Granby Festival, Jean François Lippé, mentioned in an interview with the Montreal Journal that he was “sad” about Samian’s exclusion from his programming. But faced with the popular discontent that has been mounting since the death of Joyce Echaquan and the discovery of numerous graves near former boarding schools for Aboriginal children, good feelings are no longer enough. Symbolically, for a francophone Quebec festival, accepting that an aboriginal artist sings in his language is not the same thing as giving platforms to anglophone artists. It is possible to bend the rules without the world collapsing.
Today more than ever, recognizing the link between language, knowledge and power is an essential exercise that we cannot do without.