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Anyway, in the current edition, otherwise devoted to indigenous writers and writing, Niedzviecki wrote an editorial entitled Winning the Appropriation Prize, in which he began by saying: “I don’t believe in cultural appropriation” and suggested that writers should be able to imagine and write about, well, anything and anyone — “other peoples, other cultures, other identities,” as he put it.

“I’d go so far as to say that there should be an award for doing so — the Appropriation Prize for best book by an author who writes about people who aren’t even remotely like her or him,” Niedzviecki said.

Naturally, he joined the growing list of people who have committed sins against the modern orthodoxy and who for their troubles have been silenced or bullied and in some cases forced into abject apology.

(This is by no means a complete list, but includes Andrew Potter, the director of McGill University’s Institute for the Study of Canada, who in a Maclean’s column observed an extraordinary traffic jam in Montreal caused by a blizzard and wrote that it revealed Quebec as “an almost pathologically alienated and low-trust society” and who subsequently resigned or was voluntold to resign as director; the Toronto artist Amanda PL, a non-indigenous woman whose gallery show was cancelled last month after she was accused of appropriating aboriginal culture by painting in the style of Anishinabe artist Norval Morrisseau; Candis McLean, author of a book that critically examines the 1990 freezing death of an aboriginal youth and whose speaking and signing events were cancelled in the face of protests organized by a University of Regina associate professor named Dr. Michelle Stewart; University of Toronto psychology prof Dr. Jordan Peterson, who had his knuckles rapped by his own university when he vowed not to use genderless pronouns.)

Niedzviecki was immediately denounced on Twitter — after self-promotion and various branding exercises, this seems its prime purpose — with TWUC quickly issuing an unequivocal apology for “the pain and offence” caused by the column, a pledge to do better and an offer of “the magazine itself as a space to examine the pain this article has caused.”

Niedzviecki in his resignation regretted “that my words failed to acknowledge the profound and lasting adverse impact of cultural appropriation on indigenous peoples” and said he was sorry for being glib (shades of Andrew Potter, who apologized for his “sloppy use of anecdotes” and for his column’s tone).

Nikki Reimer, a member of the magazine’s editorial board, also resigned, saying she “would have strongly objected to this piece had I seen it prior to publication,” but, alas, she hadn’t.