"How you tell the stories of Africans is much more important that what the story is; because if you are showing me as voiceless, as hopeless [then] you have no space telling my story. You shouldn’t be telling my story if you don’t believe that I also have the power to change what is going on." -Rosebell Kagumire on Kony 2010 via Racialicious
The same is true for Inuit and the recent Tragadie Inuite articles in La Presse.. i know its old news and its done and done, but the fact remains that a lot of people still think that those who spoke out were wrong to speak out, that we were just being over sensitive and defensive.
I'm a very strong believer in stories, and the rights and responsibilities of people to *tell their own stories*. It comes with breaking free of oppression, the ability to tell your story from your perspective, the ability to have a voice and not be spoken for.
My fellow Inuit, we have a voice, we have a story, a history, a her-story, we have OUR story. The injustice in La Presse was not that the truth or some variation of it was told, the injustice was in the delivery, the wording, the injustice was in the fact that the outside had the gall to come into our lives, into our story and bend the perception, to influence others and speak on our behalf with all the authority in the world and tell our story for us.
It's our culture to be story tellers. I know for a fact that each and every single one of us Inuit has the ability to tell our own story, to tell our version of our collective story and that's legitimate. it cannot be disputed. As long as we have integrity and respect for all those involved, as long as we can speak as honestly as we should, than nobody in the world can come and tell our story on behalf of us and get away with it.
Not only do we have the god given right to tell our story, but we also have the responsibility, and if we do not take that responsibility, do we really deserve the right? let's stop waiting for our story to be told for us, let's speak out and tell it, write it, film it, paint it.... let's work to change it. lets work to protect it.
That's all.... good morning folks :)
I just read the story for the first time. The way it is told is not all that bad. But the picture? It's worth way more than a thousand words. How can anyone look at that picture and not go in to the story without predetermined assumptions?
ReplyDeleteI think the author of the story deserves some sympathy. She actually spoke to the woman who got killed. Thus, it is partly her story too. That editor, however, should be fired and made to answer for his mistake in front of a council of elders. Completely unacceptable.