Tomorrow was supposed to be my first in-person interview as part of this blog, but he’s had to reschedule due to scheduling conflicts. But in talking with my interviewee yesterday, he mentioned and interesting issue – the issue of who would own the copyright of the information he told me. Copyright is a challenging subject because many people can believe that they hold rights over the same information as someone else. It’s important to note that copyright applies not to ideas but to the exact wording of how the ideas are explained. As a journalist, I understand his concern because my work raises a few issues in that I am using his direct quotes in with my own original content. I would argue that the interviewee has the rights to what he or she has said but that I hold the copyright to the piece in entirety. It was interesting to hear my interviewee raise these concerns. I found out through conversation that the reason for this concern stemmed from a past experiences where a band member was interviewed by an anthropologist as a source and then the anthropologist took that information, formalized it into research and then owned the copyright over the research. This left the band wondering if it still owned the stories that it had been telling for generation and had been shared with the anthropologist.
This raises an interesting issue of who holds the power in First Nations and non-First Nations’ relations. Because First Nations people are working within the framework of the European settlers who took over Canada during colonization, First Nations are always working with the challenge of having two sets of rules and cultural practices that affect the way they function in society. The issue of copyright is just one example of where ideas have been shared only in some cases to be misappropriated. It is not my goal to take anything from people but rather to gain experience and context into the First Nations experience.
It’s challenging as a non-First Nations person to just think about going into First Nations communities and asking them to share personal experiences like the cultural genocide of the residential schools and to talk about the poverty, abuse and addiction that some First Nations people live with constantly. The issue is how do I build trust with communities who have repetitively had trust broken with other non-Native people and groups who have come before me. I feel that it would have been some much easier to look into an issue that is situated within my own cultural terms because I would not have to risk being another non-First Nations person to come in with my own desires and needs and be seen as exploiting the First Nations people who I speak with. That is, of course, not my goal but it is a fear of mine. I am trying to wrap my head around the cultural context and history of what’s happened to First Nations in British Columbia but at the same time not do more damage in my exploration.
I’m not sure what this process will look like as I ask First Nation people from around Kamloops to give me their time and their stories, but I hope that it will go well and I will have the context and compassion to start to build some small statement of reconciliation with the First Nations people I talk to. As I start to realize the potential implications of my actions on the individuals that I interview, I am realizing that this process might be emotionally and mentally challenging. It should be a powerful learning experience for me, but I hope that in my learning, I don’t continue a legacy of power imbalance and best intentions gone wrong.
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