The first time I heard Dr. Robin Gray speak at an academic engagement at the University of Toronto, she was saying something profoundly smart and deeply important about the repatriation of Ts’msyen songs from archives. Robin’s research touches on the relationship between the ethics of return, Indigenous conceptions of ownership, and the assertion of Indigenous sovereignty through reclamation — all through an Indigenous feminist framework. Her appointment as the University of Toronto Mississauga’s first ever Special Advisor on Indigenous Rematriation involves working directly and reciprocally with Indigenous communities to build a plan for the protection of excavated items from the Antrex Village site. Our items, our songs, and our place names — long held captive in institutions, archives, and collections — need to be under Indigenous control, which is another way of saying “care.” Robin’s work will move this forward. What follows is our conversation about the politics of restitution, return, and repair.
—Susan Blight
Susan Blight
Thank you, Robin, for this time. I wanted to give you the opportunity to introduce yourself first to the readers of The Capilano Review in any way that you feel good about.
Robin Gray
My Ts’msyen name is T’uu’tk, and my English name is Dr. Robin Gray. On my mother’s side, I am Ts’msyen from unceded territories in Lax Kw’alaams, BC, which is home to the Nine Allied Tribes of the Ts’msyen Nation. We are Black Fish/Killer Whale Clan, from the House of Liyaa’mlaxha, in the Gitaxangiik Tribe. On my father’s side, I am Mikisew Cree from Treaty 8 territory in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. I was born and raised, and have lived and worked, in Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories in East Vancouver, BC most of my life. I am a socio-cultural anthropologist and an Indigenous Studies scholar. In my current position, I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, and the Special Advisor on Rematriation to the Vice-President & Principal at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
SB
Thank you. This is my first question for you. I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time and wanted to talk to you, so I have some pretty big questions — please just bear with me.
You write in your article, “Repatriation and Decolonization: Thoughts on Ownership, Access, and Control” that the politics of repatriation require it to be restorative for the community.1 This restorative aspect is deeply important because it places the emphasis on the good for the community, on their satisfaction with the process. So, if we think about the return of Indigenous place names as righting a historical wrong, how might that be restorative for the people belonging to that Indigenous nation whose place name is being returned?
RG
That’s a great question. Immediately, I’m thinking of a couple of historical examples from my region on the northwest coast. I mentioned that I’m from Lax Kw’alaams, BC, but it wasn’t always named that on the colonial maps. Since first contact, it was named Fort Simpson, then Port Simpson, after the Hudson Bay Company set up a trading post there, and it wasn’t until 1986 that our Band successfully lobbied for an official name change. In Sm’algyax (Ts’msyen language), Ts’msyen have referred to that location as laxlgu’alaams, which roughly translates to “the place where wild roses grow.” Perhaps not surprisingly, that name also became anglicized phonetically in the official name change, but at least now our community is identified as Lax Kw’alaams on all the maps because of our activism. I believe we were the first Indigenous community in BC to have our government name officially changed. Then in April of this year, the Lax Kw’alaams Band, with support and consent from the hereditary leadership, launched a signage project in lax’yuubm Ts’msyen (Ts’msyen territory), which saw nine signs stood up at rest stops along the lower Skeena watershed, across Highway 16, between the cities of Prince Rupert and Terrace, BC. The signage educates readers about the Adaawx (oral histories) and jurisdiction of the Nine Allied Tribes, and promotes Sm’algyax in the identification of place names, plants, and animals. This is an important project that combats Ts’msyen invisibility in the region.
The other example I’m thinking of comes from our neighbours, the Haida Nation. In 2009, they were also successful in having their territory’s government name (Queen Charlotte Islands) changed to Haida Gwaii, which, in their language, roughly translates to “islands of the people.” So, this decolonial movement to restore Indigenous place names has already been happening in that unique part of the world, and it began decades ago.
In my view, this type of move is both a political project and a mode of restorative justice for Indigenous peoples. It is a political project first and foremost because it reflects our unrelenting assertions of sovereignty and jurisdiction regardless of the colonial condition. In this form of linguistic jurisdiction, Indigenous nations get to set the terms of understanding, relationality, and responsibility to places in their territories. It is also a mode of restorative justice because for the first time in colonial history, Indigenous peoples have the right to legal self-identification. I mean, historically and legally we are known by the names the colonizers impose on us, and so are our lands and waterways and other forms of heritage.
I think it’s a powerful outcome for Indigenous nations, and contributes to larger efforts to decolonize and to promote respect for Indigenous sovereignty. I also think about it in terms of urban landscapes, like the project that you’ve been a part of. I don’t know if I’m saying it properly — Ogimaa Mikana? How do you say it properly?
SB
I say, Ogimaa Miikana.
RG
Okay, see, it’s all about the rhythms of the language, and that’s why I asked. Because I can read it, but knowing how to say it properly in Anishinaabemowin is important, too. And I recognize how important it is for Indigenous peoples to not only see their language translated from orality to the written word, but also to hear it and feel it with full integrity.
That project is another great example of the power of renaming, especially in urban settings, in places that are treated as “urbs nullius,” in the language of Glen Coulthard, or “places devoid of Indigenous presence and sovereignty.” To have Anishinaabe people walk through this urban space in their territories and to see their language in the landscape and be able to interpret it is more important than any other person being able to interpret it, in my opinion, because it activates that sense of belonging, visibility, and pride that has been attacked using numerous tactics, like colonizing place names or otherwise erasing all indicators of Indigeneity as part of the settler colonial project. I think all of these examples (Lax Kw’alaams, Haida Gwaii, Ogimaa Mikana) and others like them help to remedy epistemic violence and harm inflicted on the Indigenous psyche. That means something.
SB
You mentioned that your community was one of the first to put that work forward: to change the place name back to the original or Indigenous name. It seems to me that this has existed on the West Coast for a while in terms of those nations doing that work. But I’ve seen a shift in the last ten years in Toronto — a momentum towards renaming or returning place names back to their Indigenous place names in an official sense, primarily through municipal processes. You’ve written previously about the need to interrogate the frameworks that are used for restitution and repatriation, and to ask the question of whether these are the right ways to go about it. Do you think that municipal frameworks for renaming are sufficient for restoration?
RG
I read The Capilano Review interview with Larry Grant where he was talking about all the bureaucracy and red tape they had to go through just to get a few street names in hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ approved for the UBC campus in Vancouver.2 If we think of UBC as just a microcosm of the potential for doing this work across the city, it doesn’t paint the most welcoming picture. The fact that it takes such a long time, that it’s an arduous process, and that we often have to do so much convincing of the merits of a municipal renaming project is quite telling. Indigenous peoples have to be persistent and do a lot of educating just to get politicians and administrators on board. Essentially, we are tasked with becoming ad hoc cultural competency trainers, educating settlers about how powerful it is for local Indigenous peoples to have their languages and place names recognized officially, and how important this move is in this reconciliation era. All these institutions and municipalities say they want to contribute to reconciliation. But if they really want to, then why does it often feel like pulling teeth, or herding cats, so to speak? The attitudes of gatekeepers can overextend the length of time that these processes take, which can get frustrating. Sometimes it feels as if a process like this is long and drawn out on purpose, as if it were an extralegal tactic to wear us down just so we give up. At least that’s the way I hear it when Indigenous peoples involved in this work talk about their experiences, as a bit of a forewarning to other nations attempting to do this type of lobbying, which signals to me that frameworks for restitution, return, or repair are still highly colonial in terms of structure and praxis. Yet we persist. And that should indicate to others how vital it is for us.
A big part of the resistance to the restoration of place names or the renaming of places in Indigenous languages is owed to the fact that most settlers are uncomfortable — or rather, unsettled — when they have to utter Indigenous sounds, that is, the sounds one needs to make to speak our languages correctly and with respect and integrity. Even the “Indigenous” words or names they encounter on maps or in the archive, for example, are highly anglicized to appease the white tongue and the white psyche. Take for example, my mother’s nation. In the archive, in the earliest texts and metadata, you’ll still see us referred to as “Tsimshian” or some other bastardized form, because it rolled off the English tongue easier. So, when I began writing about research with, by, and for my people, I insisted on writing us as “Ts’msyen” in my work because that aligns phonetically with the sounds in our language. The more we insist on that change — that return to the original sounds in phonetic form — the more normalized it becomes, and new standards can be set. This is critical, because we are setting the standards based on our unique ways of knowing, being, and doing for once.
So, we have to persist against the resistance. At the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) where I work, they renamed a new building on campus in Anishinaabemowin as an act of reconciliation. Advisement from the only two Indigenous faculty at the time led to a collaboration between UTM and the host nation, Mississaugas of the Credit, who chose the name Maanjiwe nendamowinan, which roughly translates to “gathering of minds.” Of course, this is a fitting and beautiful name, and a positive change, but the way the student body and even non-Indigenous faculty and staff have responded to the change is concerning. Most students simply refer to the building as “MN” now, as a way to skirt the discomfort of trying to pronounce Indigenous sounds. They don’t even try to learn how to pronounce the name correctly unless compelled to by a professor — like me — who practices the pronunciation with them in class. Shortly after the name change, there was an op-ed published in the student newspaper in which the student author argued that it was unfair and impractical to force people to pronounce something that was too difficult for them to sound out.
Obviously, that’s not representative of the entire student body, but the fact that I still hear folks consistently referring to the building as “MN” rather than Maanjiwe nendamowinan five years later is disappointing. And really, it just shows how discomforting such a thing is for settlers who have been conditioned to negate Indigenous languages, the existence of our languages, and the integrity of our languages for so long. I try to lead by example to show that I, too, am learning how to pronounce Anishinabemowin words for the first time in my life. I don’t have a natural ability because I’m Indigenous. I have to practice and get comfortable, too. The only difference is I’m willing to try because I know it matters. Why can’t we just try, and keep trying, rather than take the easy route and just reject? Like, when Chinese students introduce themselves, they often say their chosen English name because they, too, know that most people will not attempt to say their Chinese name correctly, simply because the sounds are unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce. That’s sad to me; that one might feel compelled to mask one’s real name because Canadians in general don’t respect the sounds in another’s language. I try to make it a habit to ask my students their real names and to say them aloud a few times to make sure I’m saying them correctly, and then to keep practicing, and to try using them. That’s the least I can do to show respect and honour for the names their people gave to them.
SB
You mentioned the sort of hostility towards our sounds, and the lack of will to even try to pronounce Indigenous words. I saw this meme that I thought was really funny. It was a high school teacher kind of looking down at a piece of paper with a confused grimace. Underneath, it said, “The look white people make trying to pronounce Anishinaabe words.” [Laughs]
RG
Yeah, there’s a fear in their eyes. [Laughs]
SB
Exactly. What you’re describing, in terms of what a more generous and restorative process might entail, is not only the leaning into the discomfort of the sounds and a commitment to pronouncing things correctly, but also a letting go of colonial time, or the sense that these processes should be over in two weeks or three months or whatever. The process of relationship building to do this work is going to take as long as it takes.
I’m thinking about place names as Indigenous cultural heritage. Place names containing within them nation- or tribally-specific knowledge. Do you think that there is a risk — I’m leaning into some of the articles that you’ve written around this subject — is there a risk of the state appropriating this knowledge for their own purposes? Do you see this as something that we might need to be conscious of?
RG
I think cultural appropriation should always be on our radar because it happens so often and typically without penalty. The appropriation of Indigenous cultural heritage is so normalized in Canada that it’s hard for most people to see the harms. Northwest coast totem poles, or more recently inukshuks, for example, are often appropriated as signifiers of Canadian-ness in the state’s cultural branding strategy, even though the foundational philosophy of Canada was/is to “kill the Indian.” Similarly, the museum industry was built on the appropriation of Indigenous ancestors, belongings, and knowledges to offer settlers and international visitors a peek into Canada’s past. This colonial gazing serves the purpose of relegating Indigenous peoples to static time/space backdrops, socializing folks to remember how far modernity has taken them, and how civilized they are supposed to be compared to us. In both cases, Indigeneity is only really given value if there is a financial or psychological benefit to the state, its subjects, and institutions. So, it wouldn’t surprise me if a municipality, a province, or the federal government used Indigenous place names, knowledge of/from Indigenous places, or Indigenous land-based experiences to try to market and promote the Canadian tourism industry, even in this era of reconciliation. The more signifiers of Indigeneity are present, the more the state will try to market itself as a welcoming place for all cultures, and one that takes its relationship with Indigenous peoples seriously, when the fact is they are still dispossessing us of land, or resisting the upholding of whatever treaty rights the local nation has, or refusing to negotiate self-government agreements in good faith, or still over-incarcerating our people in the child welfare and criminal justice systems, or allowing missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls to continue to be a huge issue in the country. That’s why the saying “nothing about us, without us” is critical to try to minimize the risks of appropriation and harm. The existence of the Indigenous Tourism sector, and the increasing presence of Indigenous-run museums and cultural centres, for example, helps to combat those colonial legacies and brings financial and psychological benefits directly to Indigenous peoples, communities, and nations for once.
SB
You mentioned symbolic gestures, and there’s something I’ve been thinking about that has similarly been missing from conversations around place names, which is the idea of Indigenous jurisdiction or ownership. Perhaps the idea of Indigenous land or title might be implied, but the overall idea of ownership tends to be non-existent in conversation. There’s an emphasis on symbolic gestures. We know that ownership is something that is understood differently depending on the Indigenous nation that you are referring to, and it’s definitely understood differently than it is by the colonial state. How might we bring the significant question about ownership, jurisdiction, and sovereignty into the conversation about place names?
RG
That’s a great question, Susan, and such an important one. Returning a place name is essentially a symbolic gesture if it’s not accompanied by the return of land and jurisdiction. A name change can certainly increase Indigenous visibility, but it doesn’t really change our socio-political reality. And the socio-political reality is that we still have accountability, responsibility, and relationality to places in our territories, which is why we officially lobby for a new mode of understanding and engagement, even if the colonial laws say that we can’t have jurisdiction because the state doesn’t recognize or respect our sovereignty. So, yes, unfortunately, name changes will remain mostly symbolic until they start treating the return of place names as part and parcel of the return of land. If the state is willing to return a place name, then it should also be willing to return ownership, access, and control over that place so that Indigenous jurisdiction is restored.
SB
You have written previously about the difference between “access to” and “control over” the repatriation of cultural materials. Do you feel that this important distinction is something related to Indigenous place names as well?
RG
Absolutely. I usually think about access versus control in the cultural heritage space because the repatriation, or rematriation, of captured Indigenous ancestors, belongings, and knowledges is a priority for Indigenous peoples worldwide. When we seek redress and reparation from museums, for example, they tend to figure out ways to maintain possession rather than relinquish control. So, return isn’t usually their immediate reaction. Rather, they seem to prefer simply increasing access to collections and catalogues for Indigenous peoples. Increasing access certainly helps to build new relationships between museums and Indigenous peoples, because they actually have to engage us and listen to us this time around, but the colonial power dynamic tends to remain intact. Like, we still have to ask permission from the so-called “owners” to access our own heritage. What else can that be called other than paternalism and possessiveness? They will claim that it’s “stewardship” which is supposed to make it sound better, like they’re taking care, but can they admit that they are also claiming the power to control what happens to our ancestors and belongings?
Similarly, in terms of returning place names, we have to remember that a name change doesn’t provide Indigenous peoples with more control or decision-making power. It should. But it doesn’t. A name change does not equate to increased jurisdiction over what happens to that place. For example, we’d still have to ask permission from the “owners” and apply for permits to fish, hunt, plant, harvest, conduct ceremony, start a business, or erect structures on our territory. And we wouldn’t have the legal capacity to prevent the sale of the land, or to prevent invasive industries from proceeding business as usual on the land. That’s why there should be a “land back” or “jurisdiction back” component associated with Indigenous place naming. There are interesting and creative ways that Indigenous peoples are trying to make that a reality on their own without state sanctioning. I’m thinking about the Sogorea Te Land Trust in the California Bay Area where they created the Shuumi Land Tax so non-Indigenous peoples who have benefited from living on stolen Lisjan Ohlone lands can make monetary contributions to support local rematriation projects and land back initiatives. It’s like a moral tax in a sense that it is not mandated, but encouraged. It’s encouraged in a way that reconfigures settlers’ relationality to Ohlone lands, and it creates material pathways and possibilities for the local Indigenous peoples to regain control of their territories.
Importantly, non-Indigenous peoples must understand that we don’t think about control over a place in the same way as settler society expects us to think about control over a place. Restoring control to a place doesn’t mean that Indigenous nations just want to make money off a new property. I mean, it could mean that, too, and that’s the prerogative of a nation, right? But when Indigenous peoples seek to regain control over a place in their territory, it typically means they are trying to restore the intimate relationship between Indigenous lands, bodies, and heritage. In essence, Indigenous peoples’ quest to regain control is a call for a renewed relationship with lands, waterways, and other-than-human relatives. So, restoring control would mean that we could more effectively reject an LNG project or any other invasive infrastructure or extractive industry to protect our lands, waterways, human, and other-than-human relatives from environmental harm and violence. We’ve been sounding the alarm about the risks of extractive industries for so long, and for good reason: violence on the land is violence on our bodies. The fact that we continue to sound that alarm shows that we have a different relationship to the land and different values around what’s at stake and why we fight for control.
SB
You mentioned Sogorea Te and the Shummi Land Tax. I just think it’s such an important project because it teaches us something about principled solidarity. Meaningful solidarity should cost you something. It’s not just about “allowing” an Indigenous language to exist in public space, but rather that redress and restoration should actually cost you something if you actually stand in solidarity with Indigenous people.
RG
And it’s not going to cost what most people fear it’s going to cost, which is their own dispossession. Indigenous rematriation does not equate to settler dispossession. Period.
SB
Yes!
RG
That’s the problem with the settler psyche. We clearly have different values and different ways of knowing, being, and doing, which means we have different worldviews and instincts. So, don’t paint us with your brush stroke. When Indigenous peoples call for something like “land back,” the first thing that often pops into a settler’s mind is They’re going to kick us all out of here when they get their land back. It’s completely unrealistic to fear that; I’ve never heard any Indigenous person talk about “going back to where you came from” in the Indigenous rights movement. But you know who I do hear saying that, and often with hate in their soul? Mainly white settlers. They’ve socialized themselves to think, We dispossessed you, so your answer is to dispossess us, or, We have power over you, now you want power over us. That’s not what the Indigenous rights movement and the land back movement is about. It’s about a different relationality to place. It’s about recognizing who you are in this place and what your role is. And that everyone has a role to play.
I just think it’s insulting for settlers to assume that if Indigenous peoples regain jurisdiction over our territories, we’re going to take their land holdings, their heritage, their children, and screw them over the way they screwed us over. But, hey, maybe that fear is warranted, because now their subconscious is setting in and they’re remembering, Oh yeah, that’s how we play, and they might do the same thing to us. So, the way I see it, it’s not actually that they are afraid of us. Their fear is actually reflective of their own fear of themselves. It’s the fear that we are going to treat them the way they treated us — and no human would ever want that type of paternalism and violence imposed on them. So, once they come to terms with that, refuse that settler-induced psychological trap, and lead with humanity and humility — then they can be true allies in principled solidarity in the way that you are describing.
Ultimately, I think what folks like us are trying to get people to do is to imagine otherwise, right? And we use that terminology so that people can advance their understanding of what decolonization actually is, from an Indigenous perspective. Our friend and colleague Eve Tuck didn’t write that piece “Decolonization is not a metaphor” for us, per se, but rather for a settler society that needs to understand what we actually mean when we’re using this term.3 Decolonization is not just aspirational rhetoric — like the way Canada tries to categorize the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Decolonization is a different ontological framework. Rather than an inversion of the same power dynamic, it’s a movement dedicated to generating new possibilities, renewed relationships, and more egalitarian configurations of power. We need settlers to get out of the tit-for-tat mindset, the crabs-in-a-bucket mindset, the colonial relationship mindset, so they can see that Indigenous decolonization benefits everyone and not just Indigenous peoples. True allies and co-conspirators understand and accept this fact.
- Robin R. R. Gray, “Repatriation and Decolonization: Thoughts on Ownership, Access, and Control,” The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation, eds. Frank Gunderson, Rob Lancefield, and Bret Woods (Oxford University Press, 2018). ↩︎
- Fenn Stewart, “We preserve the sounds of our language”: In Conversation with Larry Grant and Sarah Ling,” The Capilano Review 3, no. 35, Spring 2018. Published online at https://thecapilanoreview.com/we-preserve-the-sounds-in-our-language-in-conversation-with-larry-grant-and-sarah-ling/. ↩︎
- Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1-40. ↩︎
