Red-faced in Canada

On Saturday (February 28), A Tribe Called Red tweeted: Western Canada High School. Please stop using our music to perpetuate.

Wayne Scott

On Saturday (February 28), A Tribe Called Red tweeted: Western Canada High School. Please stop using our music to perpetuate harmful stereotypes against First Nations.

The tweet linked to Night of the Redmen Highlight Video 2014 set to A Tribe Call Reds track Electric pow wow drum.

The video was made by Quinn Campbell and Curtis Bietz in their graduating year at Calgarys Western Canada High School.

Over e-mail, Campbell writes that he saw A Tribe Called Red’s tweet and is “horrified that the video may be seen as offensive.” The video has since been taken down.

The Indian in a feathered-headdress image of the school mascot, is all over the sports-themed video. It gets superimposed over the screen 20 times and there are 14 distinct sequences where the logo or name is centered by a zoom, pan, or close-up. The footage also captures a student, nearly nude, his face and body painted in red.

Bietz explains in a separate email that The creation of the video was part of our Leadership Program… and reviewed by our teachers and peers. Bietz initially had second thoughts about using the song with our school’s situation at the time.

That “situation” was controversy over the Redmen name and logo, which had become a subject of debate. The decision was made in June 2014 to change the school’s name to Redhawks.

In a press conference on the schools front lawn, principal Kim Hackman told the CBC, that the change was made to move forward as opposed to continuing to have this issue come up over and over again.

Principal Hackman explained the new name to the Calgary Herald: The red-tailed hawk is a significant hawk in southern Alberta and has some significance in native communities

The process to change the school’s nickname was initiated by the Calgary Board of Education in 2013 as part of a review of school names, mascots and logos “to ensure they are fully respectful of all the cultures that make up the Calgary community.”

The Calgary board also picked up the $200,000 tab to paint-over the logos in the gym and replace team jerseys.

However, the Western Canada High School Athletics website hosted by the school board continues to fail to reflect the name change.

And you can still order Redmen merchandise and apparel on the web from Calgary-based Prepsportswear.

Until the most recent dust up, Campbell’s and Bietz’s video remained on Vimeo.

The group was on the road performing Saturday night in Montreal for the Nuit Blance arts festival and was not immediately available for comment.

But it’s not the first time it has taken issue with stereotyping of native imagery. The band’s Ian Campeau (aka DJ NDN) filed a human rights complaint against an Ottawa-area football team in 2013 over its use of the name Redskins. Tribe declined an invitation to play at the opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg last fall over what it called the museum’s failure to acknowledge Canada’s genocide of native people.

The wide and growing appeal of the group’s electric pow-wow remixes has opened a unique space for intercultural exchange on the dance floor.

A Tribe Called Red has long challenged racist appropriations that says naming a high school football team Redmen or hipsters wearing headdresses are okay. The band made a conscious decision, for example, not to enter themselves in the Aboriginal Album of the Year category at last year’s Junos because it wanted to be judged on its music.

As a Tribe’s Bear Witness told Benjamin Boles during a photo shoot for a NOW cover story in 2013: “We’re always being looked at through the lens of colonialism, and we’re never portraying ourselves. We’re starting to take control of that, but it’s really just beginning. Something as simple as being photographed laughing can start to change the way we’re perceived, and challenges the stereotype.”

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