Hal Niedzviecki has resigned as editor of the Writers’ Union of Canada magazine after sparking outrage with an opinion piece titled “Winning the Appropriation Prize” in an issue devoted to indigenous writing.

In it, he states that he doesn’t believe in “cultural appropriation.” “In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities.” Niedzviecki, who has been the editor of Write for about five years, later wrote: “Set your sights on the big goal: Win the Appropriation Prize.”

In the same editorial, Niedzviecki goes on to note that most Canadian literature is written by people who are “white and middle-class,” and exhorts those same white, middle-class writers to look outside of their own community and write about “what you don’t know” in an effort to “explore the lives of people who aren’t like you.”

The storm erupted quickly. When the issue started dropping into members’ mailboxes on Tuesday, writers immediately took to social media to declare themselves “disgusted” about the “clueless and thoughtless” article.

Writer Jennifer Love Grove pointed out on Facebook what she saw as a contradiction. “Hal N. writes in Write magazine that canlit is too white and middle-class, and the solution is that white, middle class writers should appropriate marginalized cultures more?”

Niedzviecki, who is also the founder and editor of Broken Pencil magazine, went on to reference the indigenous creators whose work fills this issue of the magazine: “Indigenous writers, buffeted by history and circumstance, so often must write from what they don’t know . . . They are on the vanguard, taking risks, bravely forging ahead into the unknown.”

Helen Knott, a contributor to the issue, wrote on Facebook: “I am seriously disgusted that someone would use the Indigenous issue of Write as a jump point for a case for cultural appropriation on the backs, words, and reputations of the Indigenous writers featured in it. It’s not enough that we are finding our voices, reclaiming our ability to tell stories, and having to heal to tell these stories. But people want to tell them for us.”

Write magazine editorial board member Nikki Reimer posted on Twitter a link to a statement in which she resigns from Write’s editorial board, calling the column “clueless and thoughtless.” It “marks Write magazine as a space that is not safe for indigenous and racialized writers,” Reimer said.

She goes on to say that, “Canada is ‘exhaustingly white and middle class’ not because white writers are afraid to write stories they don’t ‘know,’ but because white writers don’t get out of the way and make space for the multitude of stories to be told by those who aren’t white and middle class.”

Reimer was sent a copy of the issue which she didn’t get a chance to read, although there was no other opportunity, according to the Union, for other editorial board members to provide input. In fact, Reimer noted in a statement on her website that “not having reviewed the issue prior to putting my name to the Chair’s Report is a serious lapse in judgment and ethics, and I believe that I cannot in good conscience continue with the board.”

In an email exchange with the Star, TWUC executive director John Degen said “Our process failed in this instance, and for that we take full responsibility.”

He also pointed to the council’s equity and diversity process, noting that “fair cultural diversity” is a “priority” and that there is a “definite focus on indigenous Councillors . . . we have a motion in place to devote at least one National Council position to an indigenous writer.”

Waubgeshig Rice is on the national council, and told the Star “I was very excited about the issue, which is why I was so disappointed to see that editorial.” The intention was to devote a full issue to indigenous writing, which Niedzviecki described in his piece as “the most vital and compelling force in writing and publishing in Canada today.”

He was also one of the signatories to a statement put out by the Union’s Equity Task Force criticizing Niedzviecki’s editorial

“We are angry and appalled by the publication . . . . In the context of working to recruit writers historically marginalized in the union, this essay contradicts and dismisses the racist systemic barriers faced by Indigenous writers and other racialized writers. This is especially insulting given that this issue features the work of many Indigenous writers.”

The task force statement concludes with a set of demands, which include a retraction of the essay, an apology from TWUC to be posted on its website, and anti-racist education for all staff and editorial committee members:

Recent controversies have opened up the conversation about who can and should tell indigenous stories — the case of Through Black Spruce author Joseph Boyden, who has come under fire for telling First Nations stories and claiming indigenous heritage, being one example.

Knott told the Star that “Even to be able to tell those stories, we have had to fight — our culture was oppressed. Our voices were silenced . . . By saying it’s OK for non-indigenous people to appropriate culture, to tell the stories, is stealing our voices all over again now that the stories are seen as having value.

“I was upset because my voice and my name being attached to something that preaches for cultural appropriation is very upsetting,” she said. “It felt like they created a platform with indigenous voices and indigenous writers, and then undermined it.”

This is not what Niedzviecki, 46, says he intended: “The writers that I worked with in the issue were discovering their voices or had discovered voices after years of cultural repression and it was very exciting.” The issue contains articles entitled “Writing Wounded Histories: Respect, Reconciliation, and Reluctance” and “Indigenous Literatures Break and Beckon to Tradition.”

So what was he thinking?

“I started out kind of flippantly and I think that I failed to recognize how charged (the term cultural appropriation) is and how deeply painful acts of cultural appropriation have been to indigenous peoples,” he told the Star in an interview. He hoped that, in the future, the writers he worked with “would be willing to talk to me and dialogue with me about why it happened.”

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“I’m certainly going to be thinking about this incident in the future when I write. At the same time I think it is important that we engage with each other, that we speak respectfully to each other about our differences of opinion. I don’t think we want to have a chill on expressing ideas,” he said.

On Wednesday morning, the Writers’ Union quickly issued a statement, apologizing “unequivocally” and noting that “the editor of Write magazine has resigned from his position.”

The statement added that the Union was contacting each of the contributors individually and promised to “offer the magazine itself as a space to examine the pain this article has caused, and to take this conversation forward with honesty and respect.”

“Devoting the next issue is a start on this, not the solution,” Degen told the Star later in an email interview. “We are trying very hard to address diversity and equity head on. This is a frustrating and sad setback.”