Disturbing. This is an advertisement for a party that was held by my University's student government. It makes me proud to be apart of this fine institution.
I wrote an article for the Lance which, incidentally, was never published because the editor was concerned about "business."
This was my article, and my first attempt at taking a stand (in a noticeable way). Too bad it failed, next time though.
This is the article,
Racism, Sexism and the UWSA
Social faux pas and conversational taboos are one thing, but the UWSA is on a steep slope to infamy. Has our Student Alliance learned anything from the dress code debacle in 2006? Apparently not.
On October 8th, 2009, in the midst of “all night giveaways,” discounted VIA rail tickets, and cheap drinks, was an event at the Basement pub which strongly encouraged racial stereotypes of Indigenous women. “Cowboys and Indians” was the theme for the Basement’s party, which used abominable images of white women masquerading as hyper-sexualized Aboriginal stereotypes, as tools for promotion. However heinous the advertisements are, the theme itself is what disturbs me most: Cowboys and Indians? The language itself is controversial. The theme generates notions that the university pub, and its affiliates including the UWSA, consider issues of racialization and sexualization of Aboriginal women to be a farce.
In a recent article in the Globe and Mail (Sept. 3, 2009), Andre Picard points out that over 500 Aboriginal women have gone missing in Canada over the past 30 years, half since 2000. This nauseating statistic is compounded by the fact that, according to the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Aboriginal women are three times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to experience violence in their lives and are five times more likely to die from violence than non-Aboriginal women. For many of us in Canada, these statements are simply statistics. For others, however, this is reality.
The UWSA’s campus pub’s party theme not only downplayed Aboriginal Women’s experiences of sexualized racism but encouraged it. Alliance implies a bond, an understanding of acceptance – at the very least, tolerance. Nothing about declaring an ethnicity as a costume or joke, promotes these things.
