Srimoyee Mitra - Speaking My Truth

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Indigenous, and immigrant communities and reinforce the disconnectionsand nonchalant attitudes of the general public.Back at the Alternator Gallery, the mood was dramatically different. Adiverse community of artists, practitioners, scholars, and organizationshad all gathered there for a four-day national conference and festival of theIndependent Media Arts Alliance. Entitled “On Common Ground,”5 theconference paid tribute to the history of Indigenous media art practices inCanada. The conference showcased the range, diversity, and complexitywithin contemporary Indigenous media art practices and highlightedthe importance of these contributions to contemporary Canadian mediaand visual art. The panel discussions and social events surrounding thesymposium facilitated formal and informal opportunities to learn, discuss,and exchange ideas, strategies, and conversations on issues relevant to mediaart practice in Canada from an Indigenous framework. The mobilization ofcross-cultural perspectives on media art practices fostered mutual respectand empathy. What the government had failed to facilitate institutionally washappening on a small-scale and grassroots level. It reinforced my belief in thepotential of contemporary art to bypass the complacency of bureaucracy andestablished structures of discrimination. The potential of cultural productionto innovate, heal, and develop alternate sites of agency and collectivitychanged my understanding of its necessity irrevocably. It led me to a profoundrealization of my intergenerational responsibility as a young artist, writer, andcurator. “On Common Ground” imagined a different Canadian society, onein which the fraught and unequal distribution of systemic advantages anddisadvantages among the settler, immigrant, and Indigenous communitieswas examined critically and its implications were reckoned with by a broadaudience. As a recent migrant from India, this conference opened my eyesto the complexities and differences of the experiences of colonialism andmarginalization experienced between a person of Indigenous backgroundsand myself, even though we shared the same name—“Indian.” It forced meto re-evaluate my role in Canadian society located between dominant Euro-American and Indigenous cultures. Do immigrants perpetuate the brutallegacy of colonialism established by European settlers when we migrateto Canada? Can Indigenous communities and immigrants work towards aframework of decolonization that transforms the social, political, and culturallandscape and empowers us to coexist peacefully along with the dominantcultures with dignity and mutual respect?South Asians and First Peoples epitomize the complexities of coexistencebetween Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Canada. As twocommunities that share the same name, their histories and experiences of278 | <strong>Srimoyee</strong> <strong>Mitra</strong>
“Indianness” differ widely. “Indian” isa loaded term in Canada, as it is linkedinextricably to the harmful crimescommitted by the colonial regimeto assimilate and alienate the FirstNations, Métis, and Inuit peoples inCanada with the establishment ofthe Ministry of Indian Affairs, IndianResidential Schools in 1860, andfinally the Indian Act in 1876. Thesystemic socio-economic barriers andintergenerational loss and displacementof cultures, communities, and identitiesare still pervasive within contemporaryCanadian society today. South Asiansmigrated to Canada since the earlytwentieth century as British colonialsubjects before India, Pakistan, andBangladesh had emerged as sovereignstates. They also bore the consequencesof cultural and intergenerational loss,fragmentation, and marginalizationin a fundamentally colonial and racistsociety. Over the years, the immigrationpolicy in Canada has expandeddramatically and is reflected in themulticultural reality of urban centres.According to Statistics Canada, SouthAsians constitute the largest immigrantgroup. While the presence of the SouthAsian demographic has been largelyaccepted in the mainstream popularculture, in our post-9/11 world of tightborder security and suspicion, and ofeconomic, war, and environmentalrefugees, poor immigrants continueto face discrimination on racial andsocio-economic grounds if they getin. There are parallels as well asdifferences then that exist between theideas and experiences of displacementTop, middle, and bottom installations:Afshin Matlabi, Natives (2009) (frontview); Ali Kazimi, Shooting Indians: AJourney with Jeff Thomas (rear view);and Bonnie Devine, New Earth Braid(2009). All shown in the exhibitionCrossing Lines: An InterculturalDialogue (2009–10).Cultivating Canada | 279
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Srimoyee Mitra - Speaking My Truth

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