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Liz: Today we have with us Lou-ann Neel, and Lou-ann is the author of our document Indigenous Protocols and the project that is going around the Indigenous Protocols and developing that toolkit. So I'd like to introduce Lou-ann Neel, welcome. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Lou-ann: Sure, my name is Lou-ann Neel, one of my Kwak’wala names is Ika’wega. I come from Alert Bay, BC from the Kwagiulth and Mamalillikulla people of the Kwakwaka’wakw, and today I am very thankful to be sharing from the lands of the Lekwungen people, and thank them for was making me feel so welcome in their territories. I am a practicing visual artist, but I'm also a very active arts advocate for the rights of Indigenous artists.

Liz: Thank you. And so today we're talking about the CARFAC Indigenous Protocols document that is currently being created. And can you tell us a little bit about the first meetings that you had in Regina with the Advisory Committee.

Lou-ann: Sure, actually, the idea of being able to do something along the lines of the toolkit, something that would inform the public and would also support artists started well before our advisory meeting. Probably a year or two before, when the CARFAC president, April Britski, and I were brainstorming, probably at the CARFAC conference about the kinds of supports that would be possible for Indigenous artists. Particularly because the matter of appropriation kept surfacing over and over again, and seemed to be getting worse. Especially with all the new technologies available to everyone, including the artists.

And so, April worked on various proposals to get together an advisory committee that could speak to this issue, offer various perspectives and think through what might some of these solutions be, what are we looking at and get a bigger, I guess sort of an environmental scan, a little bit of a literature, literary review to make sure that we understood all the different possible discussion points on this, rather than jumping into immediate solutions because it's a very complex matter.

So, the advisory met by phone, we met by video conference and then in Regina. I think that was just over a year ago. And we talked for two and a half days about all of the different variables that that encompass this this very complex matter and started off talking about it through the lens of intellectual property rights and copyright, which these discussions tend to do. But what really emerged out of that discussion, which I was really excited about, was this clarification on the part of everyone in the room that we couldn't just say that this was intellectual property. That's too limiting, that's too narrow of focus but to broaden it, at least for now, by using the terms cultural and intellectual property rights, which then opens the door for discussions around the individual artists, the families that they come from, and the communities that they draw their inspiration from for their work and the communities, to which they also have hereditary rights to some of those crest designs and artwork.

Liz: And did this also include First Nations, Métis and Inuit?

Lou-ann: Yes, very much so it was. And we also not only to include, First Nations, Métis and Inuit, but we also talked about the very difficult time we find ourselves in as well with the discussions around the 60s scoop. And so many of our people that have been away from their home communities, some of their entire lives, not knowing their identity and wanting to return to that identity. What kinds of things could we do, could we map out to help those communities, welcome those individuals back and, hopefully, set out a path that will enable those individuals to have that sense of identity belonging and understand what their rights are in relation to their membership to those tribes.

Liz: So, the Advisory Committee, they all participated in the conversation and they provided details from their own experience, or from their own territory?

Lou-ann: Yes, they did that. And also, we were very fortunate to have members on the committee who worked in major urban centers and semi-remote communities as well as remote. So all of those kinds of considerations also factored into the discussion in terms of whatever we create needs to be accessible on all levels to all individuals. So, that was really great to have that, all that mix of perspectives.

Liz: So from all of these meetings in the gathering, you've accumulated all of the information, did you do like the literature review as well and provide examples of appropriation?

Lou-ann: Yes. The starting with a literature review - I keep stumbling on that word today - it was an initial review. The difficulty with finding literature that kind of speaks to what the community wanted it to speak to, is that we're actually really early on in these discussions, even though the discussions have been going on for a long time. Much of the material that is out there, the books, the writings may reflect some of the teachings from different communities, but they aren't all written by First Nations artists. For one, to share with other First Nations artists they're often art historians or ethnography or ethnologists, anthropologists etc. So, and often very academic.

So, but I captured what I could about that just to reflect on the direction they were going in terms of activating the current systems to make them work better. And this was a nice balance to what the committee members were saying, which was, we don't want to keep trying to fit into the Canadian system, which is obviously not complex enough to manage the complexity of our respective nations, and all of our laws and all of our traditions and customs. So, it ended up being really a comparison of what might be possible and this, I'll talk a little bit later about what that resulted in.

Liz: And from the document, people will be able to download it from the website, as well they can request it on a USB, so they can actually keep it on their USB. And part of that was the Australian protocol. One of the documents within there for support material was the Australians protocol document how, how do they compare with Canada's Indigenous peoples?

Lou-ann: Well, the Australian, it was a website that April located them, shared with me and it was actually a really good reference point. I started off taking a look at how they were building things out and it was still very much, and this again from the Advisory Committee wasn't about creating a checklist of Protocols to put it in simplest form, I guess it's not about that. This is about relationships, and it's about rights, and it's about rights that for Canada and for Indigenous People here, this is entrenched in the Constitution. It's embedded in, you know, numerous laws, and more recently, the UN Declaration honouring the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And in BC specifically, there is now a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples act, so this compels every government agency to update, review and update their laws and policies and practices that flow from that to align with the UN Declaration.

So it's, you know, to pare it down to a checklist would seem like we were not fulfilling what we have the opportunity to do. And so, what the Australian model offered was a glimpse at how they proposed to address matters of appropriation in their country. Some of the best practices and, and respectful relations kinds of tips that people could read about when talking with Indigenous artists there, and what I did was I took that idea, and took what the committee had to say, and instead mapped it out as a set of considerations.

So for example, considerations around Indigenous control, what does that mean, what could it mean, what are some key questions to ask about that considerations around communication consultation and the idea of consent and the meaning of consent, some questions that communities can ask themselves. So it's more of a reference piece that will allow every individual community to look at these questions, reflect on them and respond to them in a way that's meaningful to them and their particular art traditions.

Liz: So it's not just for the artists themselves, this also for a First Nation, Métis or Inuit community to be able to take that document, when they look at their own rights to their own images and their own stories, and how they can engage them with an artist.

Lou-ann: I'll back up a couple of steps to the whole direction of all of this. A lot of when I was talking about a lot of the discussions up till now have been, how do we fit Indigenous into existing systems. Part of that is that even with existing systems they eventually will default and ask the community to provide its mapping of how their laws work or how their customers work or traditions. So, under current intellectual property and copyright laws for instance all the discussions the whole discourse is built around this idea that communities will respond. But there's no information to help the communities to respond. And so that's where this toolkit starts to just shift the perspective, a little bit, and provide the tools that the community will need eventually once I get through this portion and I still have.

I'm working on the public portion that will help the public to understand how communities are still actually in the process of rebuilding. Many of these structures were made obsolete, over time, due to colonial intervention due to the Indian Act and other laws. So, a lot of those structures that used to be in place to support artists and traditional Knowledge Keepers, singers, performers, dancers, all of the whole arts world, those structures were broken apart, and we've, we've spent the last 50 to 70 years just slowly trying to piece it back together, holding it together in the first place. But piecing it back together.

So things like a question for example that I've heard from the public is, “Isn't this what band offices are for?” And the answer is no, a band office is an administrative office that takes care of the nation's funded programs, but there are no arts funded programs as part of that mandate. So it's this enabling our communities, artists and communities to reflect inward, start to surface those ideas and map them out so that they can rebuild or refresh any existing structures that they have to be prepared to deal with all of these questions around appropriation, etc.

Liz: Well I think it's really interesting that the communities, the First Nation communities, don't have policies around their arts and culture, considering it was one of the first things that was taken away and removed from the community and, you know, done in hiding. That idea of their art stories and their historic stories. And yet, there is not a collective between the Inuit, the First Nation and the Métis, because it's the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, that that isn't in place yet. This will be a really valuable document for them.

Lou-ann: Exactly. And in fact, in the 60s and 70s, through till about the mid 80s, there was the start of something that I thought had great potential. And that was the federal government, I think it was under a department of Indian Affairs, funded every province to have an Indian arts and crafts society. Those societies started to develop those policies, they started to deliver small grant programs. The one here in BC did an annual trade show at one of the major locations in downtown Vancouver. So there were really great things happening, but in the 80s, when we hit a recession and pretty much every non-profit in Canada was cut somehow, all of those Indian arts and crafts society's funding was cut. And there's never been that level of support offered again by federal or provincial governments to re-establish those entities.

And so part of the problem is, again, it's not up to the band office to do these kinds of things; they have very specific mandates, duties and a very limited number of employees. Friendship centers do their best. Some of them have created mandates that allow them to offer the kinds of support database support that artists might need. Often that couples up with social programs and economic development programs, but to have a long standing firm, you know, local, regional, provincial and national set of organizations.

There just hasn't been that level of support yet and it's very hard for artists to step forward and make all of that happen because they're busy trying to be artists, which is part of why I have my split personality with being an artist but also having experience in developing arts organizations and organizations in general. So I've put that knowledge to use with others who have the same skills, same kinds of skills, and we just all do our best with whatever free time we have.

Liz: So the Inuit Art Foundation is working with another Inuit art collective and they've developed the new authenticity tag. Will this process going through for Protocols and copyright help with Indigenous artists, like in craft and visual art, produced those, you know, made by authentic First Nation, Métis or Inuit tags? Is this one of the outcomes, I guess of the Protocols?

Lou-ann: I think it's an option for communities, I think the really important thing that's been important to balance on creating this whole toolkit is that, ultimately, it has to flow outward first. And then when we see how communities make use of it, what the priorities are for them and their respective regions. Some communities will want very much to get involved in authenticity labeling. Some communities are much more interested in being involved or beginning or continuing some commercial market activity or retail activity, and others want to ensure that there's also a traditional component where artists are still supported in creating the kinds of things they would have ordinarily created for traditional ceremonies.

So, there's a real range there; it's up to the communities to decide that. I think the advisory’s feeling was that it isn't up to a small group of artists. In a matter of two and a half days to determine what the ultimate outcome should be what our goal should be is first to flow the information out, and then hopefully return and receive people's feedback see what they think about it, how we can improve it, and how we can continue to improve it and serve as a hub, and just be that support that, that ongoing support that communities need. And so maybe things like the local regional provincial organizations can have sort of a common touch point to organize themselves around.

Liz: What I really like about the idea of the document is that it becomes a living document, unlike you know some research initiatives, produce something and it goes onto a shelf and it just stays there and, and is not shared or discussed or processed again after that, but it's really the team here really wants to keep this document alive, to be able to include additional information and comments and services that could actually support the artist and the community. How do you see it being a living document?

Lou-ann: Well, I would like to see, and I think this is part of our plan right now anyway, when we talked about how it would be available online as a PDF that one could download and print on a flash drive. But on the website, over time, being able to convert this into a dynamic HTML web space, where people can journey through and I think that this is really ideal because that gives us a chance to receive people's testimonials, tell us what's working for them.

Share examples that their communities have come up with, with other artists, maybe there's an artist, only zone. You know, I think there's great, there's a lot of great options. As long as we keep the discussion going, I feel like even though we've been at this a really long time or everyone who's been involved so far, we're really finally getting to the point where we can have this discussion that has such a wide range of topics. And we're aware how all those topics fit together and what we can do about them. So I think it'll be really dynamic.

Liz: I really liked that idea that it will be this living document and to be able to look outside of the community that we have right now within CARFAC and the members that CARFAC have brought into place, and how that can expand in a really natural way within the communities themselves. The artists community as well as the artist home community. Any recommendations you feel that are, you know, key points within the protocols document that that have been discovered so far.

Lou-ann: I think that, while that first clarification around cultural and intellectual properties, which expands the discussion, I think also that this idea that as we're building solutions in our own communities that circling it back to the UN Declaration. When we look at each of the articles that are applicable here in the UN Declaration, they actually also correspond and are reflected in this document.

So I think that one thing, one of the messages I would like to share with everybody is to always keep that UN Declaration, have a look at the UN Declaration and have a good read through, it's an easy read, it's really well written. I love just being able to point out each article and go, “Oh, I can see ten different things right off the top that this would relate to.”

And if people keep that in mind that this is, this is for the communities to build in their own right, rather than having somebody build something for them and say, “Here's your new program funded or not.” I think that really shifts the how the perspectives are going to turn out I think it's going to shift how our solutions are developed, and I think it's going to be a real game changer when it comes to discussions on on that provincial and national level, we haven't always had the opportunity as Indigenous artists to take part in larger discussions, because we lacked those organizational entities to put our voice forward. So I think this is going to help in that regard as well and maybe even affect the larger change some of us are looking for, which is the addition of legislation in Canada to protect Indigenous arts.

Liz: That would be wonderful. Well thank you Lou-ann, this has been really informative and I'm really excited for all of the viewers that will be coming online and being able to download that document, and use that as a tool, so thank you.

Lou-ann: Thank you.