A University of Saskatchewan student group abandoned plans for an Hawaiian-themed fundraiser after complaints that it insensitively appropriated indigenous Hawaiian culture.
What was intended as a benign escape from winter ignited a small controversy on campus when organizers central to the Idle No More movement complained about the “Hawaiian Night” poster this week..
Apparently the students who were hoping to blow off a little steam and have some fun didn’t have enough idle time to reflect:
“It’s basically an outsider selling an outsider culture to other outsiders without really reflecting on that process,” said Adam Gaudry, an assistant professor of native studies at the university.
A simple “F. O.” to anyone who objected to the poster would’ve been sufficient.
I thought the link would take me to “The Onion” — but it appears you just can’t make up this sh#t.
“It’s basically an outsider selling an outsider culture to other outsiders without really reflecting on that process,” said Adam Gaudry, an assistant professor of native studies at the university.
So when we see natives wearing hip-hop gear with their ball caps sideways that means they are being culturally insensitive to urban blacks? Yeah, sure. So if this native studies assistant professor wants to set a cultural example he should show up to work in buckskins and fur. Wearing clothes of the white man to work is racist and he reallyshould have reflected on that process. (sarcasm off)
I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the Canadian Army will be pressured to abandon the beret because it’s culturally insensitive to the Basque people.
Intellectual cowardice isn’t a value of Western Civilization.
I bet he’s a real stickler for observing drug patent laws and not letting generic pharmaceuticals be produced/distributed in third world countries.
What gets me is if I try to execute a proper party, drinking mead from the skulls of my former enemies by the light of the fire, reciting horrid long winded poetry discussing my own greatness, playing with sharp weapons and planning a little rape, pillage and burning of the neighbors,the same donkeys are going to to be complaining about how that’s white, hetero-normative privilege.
These people just do not know how to have fun.
(I’m reminded about the controversy about the team names like the “Redskins” etc… which I understand that actual native americans to a high percentasge either do not care, or think it a compliment. And yet…)
So now its an outsider, criticizing a different outsider for selling an outsider culture to other outsiders? Oh wait, now we’re outsiders condemning an outsider for criticizing a different outsider for selling an outsider culture to other outsiders…..
We’re moving closer and closer to the ultra-PC world of TV’s Greendale Community College. Their mascot is a person in a neutral grey “human being” suit, so as not to offend any possible race, gender, culture, orientation, etc.
http://community-sitcom.wikia.com/wiki/Greendale_Human_Being
I suppose even that mascot could offend those who will cry “speciesism!” – the mascot excludes non-human animals…
This is university, right? Why wouldn’t the students tell little Adam there to go pound salt? In my day we would have been all over a confrontation like this.
This younger generation, what a bunch of wusses.
I’m sure the prof would have blessed the party ,if
they had only the good sense to consult with him
first..
prior censorship/permission by his group is what counts..
I would like to thank the Canadian academic community for providing me with such amusement over the years. They taken cultural stupidity to levels only they and politicians could achieve. Bravo.
the terminally stupid are now reinforcing their ranks.
This is the same university where, not so long ago, vocags would catch and “crucify” engineers and the engineering students had an annual Lady Godiva ride…without anyone protesting. Young people are so uptight these days.
As to the latest controversy – to prevent insensitivity to others I guess all future dances will have to be western themed. Just good old boy/girl country music performed by North American musicians. Ag Bag Drags for every occasion. It’s the only way to be sure.
I think the group I lose the most respect for in this issue is the student group. They folded like a cheap Canadian Tire tent. Amazing, what cowardice.
a 12 pack and a bucket of KFC would be interpreted as Native culture,
black baseball hats and Nike shoes, sunglasses and well rounded faces.
Then he went down to the faculty lounge and yucked it up over Italian coffees with the usual Keffiyeh wearing self loathing metro-sexuals, and bull dykes in rolled up jeans, work boots and their smokes folded into their sleeves.
Why didn’t they change it to Jackpine Hawaiian Night?
Then everybody would’ve been happy.
So every tin-pot African dictator who wears a Brooks Brothers suit is actually appropriating my culture? I’m outraged. Where do I file my Human Rights complaint?
The sad story is… the pussies caved. Good lesson?
This faux outrage by natives is all about asserting power….always was, ever will be.
You give any group that has intellectually joined the “we are the downtrodden” mindset the ability to assert their will over others, they will take it. This is not about “hurt feelings”, it’s strictly an opportunity to exert some power and extract a little revenge against the white man. IMO, it’s the exact same story with team mascots.
As per the students and their support of “leftardism”, I have long been amazed at the disconnect some show in their logic. We constantly whine about the immense depth of liberalism undermining our schools, media, government, society as a whole, yet we then ridicule the young for believing what most everyone has taught them during their short lives. How can they have ANY hope of learning ANY balance when none is offered to them?
Maybe it is well past time some of the more judgmental and hardcore conservatives got off their fat, pimply asses and actually did something constructive about the problem. You know, ’cause constant whining and mewling accomplishes so much.
To those that put their money where their yapper is in chatting up young people and talking conservatism in a positive way and in a real world sense, I thank you.
I knew someone who grew up in Hawaii who said it is a shi**y place if you’re white. Hawaii is actually proud of their culture. Lets have a round of Tiny Bubbles.
tiny bubbles ? methinks Don Ho misappropriated some French champagne culture.
not allowed
For Adam Gaudry to say a group “insensitively appropriated indigenous culture” makes me think he has little knowledge of ‘first contact’ between European and indigenous people. Appropriating each others culture has been the norm since the start. In North America the Indians came to the European and mixed race trader with their furs to acquire the things they wanted and desired to help make their lives easier. Not just guns and better traps but cooking pots and knives. The proof of their wish to be closer to the European is the present location of so many Indian reservations. Trading posts like Cumberland House or Norway House are situated within Indian Reservations. In return the European appropriated the native’s ways to stay alive in a harsh environment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_vTY67Wd9I
But they could have played ‘Let’s talk dirty in Hawaiian’ !!!
This kind of crap will continue and will only become more commonplace so long as groups make a habit of capitulating to hyper-sensitive, self-important idiots like Mr. Gaudry.
Gaudry should have been told thank you for your opinion, now please F.O. and mind your own business. However this type of response requires a degree of intestinal fortitude and courage. Attributes definitely lacking in this circumstance.
My head just exploded.
“..A simple “F. O.” to anyone who objected to the poster would’ve been sufficient…”
Amen.
But, like I’ve said before, this cringing, forgive-me-for-offending-you trait is so ingrained in the Canadian Psyche that it functions exactly like an instinct.
I think that not showing up to kick pinko progressive asses on campus is a failed conservative policy.
This is a product of the Federal Indian Industry and is nothing more than the Stockholm Syndrome masquerading as curricula. Canadians need to end all this BS with a one time granting of cash and or land to each individual “FN” on a basis proportionate to their racial purity to expose the racism inherent in the status quo apartheid. Sorry for the delay, welcome to Canada – you really didn’t think you weren’t conquered did you? Sorry for the confusion.
Why anyone would go to university is beyond me. If you do you’re part of the problem.
The biggest issue is that we have too many profesors, assistant professors, and students taking ‘native studies’, and ‘insert random topic studies’. $ funding universities need to be more intelligently spent. This goof inserted himself into this because his position exists, that can’t be stopped so long as this type of position exists.
You nailed it, Greg. Look at the Captain’s post a couple of notches up, right here. This is all a part of the Left’s “march through the institutions”.
Isn’t it presumptuous for one culture to presume to speak on behalf of another? Here’s what Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoole Osorio, a professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii, had to say: “there are always concerns about the appropriation of cultural icons, but he said the images were not terribly offensive.”
“What the students were actually appropriating was not so much native as it was tourist,” he said.
“As far as this particular image is concerned, I doubt that many Kanaka Maoli [native Hawaiian] voices would be raised in protest for a bunch of students in a very cold place who are trying to imagine being in a warmer place.’’ (Shamelessly borrowed from the article on National Post.)
I bet even the Idle no More folks were flummoxed when their protest got any traction at all. So what next? When something so inoffensive can be successfully objected to, is there anything sufficiently trivial to escape the notice of the Idlers?
“is there anything sufficiently trivial to escape the notice of the Idlers?”
The job postings?
Our students are treated to an endless round of PC clap-trap in their courses, such that a few brave souls celebrated their final year with custom-designed “Reflect This!” t-shirts. I was amused, however, that there has yet to be any reaction to a photographic display from Nunavut showing an Inuit fellow dressed up at a party in “Mexican” garb, with an airport sombrero over half his size.
(*rimshot*)
So, could someone ask this professor if it would be okay for one FN band to play lacrosse against another FN band, and a massacre occurred?
Because that would be in keeping of one’s cultural purity and respecting the heritage. /sarc off
Jellyfish have survived for 650 million years without a brain, proving there is hope for the stupid.
Don’t tell the professor about all the white people who engage in hula activities at Luau shows in Hawaii
If these students had the wontons, they would just have a Hawaiian/sand and surf night anyway. That they are not shows the power leftist indoctrination has over them. They will now proceed with the prescribed self-flagellation and denunciation.
They could probably accept a massacre, but if a mascot occurred, there’d be heap big trouble.
There is a lesbian poetry slam in London tonight. I hope there is an open mic. I want to write up and perform a little rant that will send the feminist lesbians into seizures.
Does the “person” mascot have a head and 4 limbs? If so, it’s discriminatory against those who are “extremity challenged”. And, how is it referred to – he, she, it, they? Each of these contains a bias.
Shame on them for such insensitivity!
Strange, when I landed up at the hotel in Maui, the native Hawaiian woman in the lobby asked me with a smile and a wink, “Have you gotten lei’d in Hawaii yet?” and when I said, “No” she promptly put a lei over my neck. Was the fact that this howlie was standing there in pants and long-sleeved shirt culturally insensitive? Apparently not.
Political correctos are just wound way too tight.
this dork prof ever read Kafka?
There are two indisputable facts:
1) I enjoy Hawaiian pizza
2) I’m white
Therefore, I must be a racist.
I escaped my keepers today and saw the National Post at the store, they put the poster for this shindig right in the middle of the front page. Awesome.
I’d say Adam Gaudry, assistant professor of native studies at University of Saskatchewan, bit off more than he bargained for this time. He’s now famous for being a prude and a killjoy.
Here’s his web site: http://adamgaudry.wordpress.com/
There’s contact info.
a) Adam Gaudry is taking himself far too seriously and is not Hawaiian so STFU
b) Hawaiian culture is not sensitive, so the people who wanted to have a fundraiser cannot have been ‘insensitive to Hawaiian culture’
c) It was a theme, artistic licence, eh?!
Good thing these students didn’t try throwing a toga party as a fundraiser or Gaudry would be calling it a Klan meeting.
BOO!
HEEE, Heee, heeee.
Went to dickhead’s website hoping to find a “contact” button. I was going to suggest that he’d benefit from a real job instead of his current situation: playing make-believe in a pretend field of study.