Thursday, April 16, 2015

Performative Historical Indians

I am listening in on my office's aboriginal employee network and we just spent half and hour talking about how to enact historical stereotypes of Indians which I discussed as problematic here in a recent post.  I think this performativity appeases settler guilt and lets our organization ignore the modern realities of Indians and metis in the workplace. Planning drumming and dancing events for aboriginal week does not make the employer a good one for indian and metis employees.  I have tried to get a survey going to ask indian/metis employees what they think is needed.  I tried to bring up mentoring of indian and metis employees (who are under-represented in policy and management) .   It feels like these suggestions would allow us to focus on our needs and not only on the needs of our employer to feel "good".  But no one is interested.  I hung up.

No comments:

Post a Comment