‘We’ve been tokenized’: Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s entire Indigenous advisory circle resigns
Members of an Indigenous advisory committee at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet say they’re cutting ties with the organization after seven years.
The Indigenous advisory circle — comprising lawyer Danielle Morrison, two-spirit elder Albert McLeod and University of Winnipeg professor Kevin Lamoureaux — resigned en masse along with a board member via letter on Friday afternoon.
The advisory circle, formed in 2018, was intended to make Canada’s oldest ballet company “a more equitable, diverse and inclusive organization,” the ballet’s website says.
But that goal was at odds with the advisory circle’s experience with the ballet’s management and board of directors, said Morrison, the advisory circle’s co-founder.
“Essentially, what it boils down to is that we’ve had this Indigenous advisory circle since 2018, and we have never been invited to have board representation,” she told CBC News.
“It’s really hard to provide any recommendations about the direction of where the organization is going if we’re not part of the strategic planning.”
Morrison said the advisory circle told the ballet’s leadership that they should have board representation in 2018 and again in 2023, but that didn’t happen.
She described the advisory circle’s communication with the ballet’s management and board as subpar.
“Leadership and your board is a reflection of your organization, and I’m really sorry to say that the relationship simply was not there,” she said.
The group was typically called on to make appearances at the opening and closing ceremonies of the ballet’s season, according to Morrison.
“We’re not seen as equal partners. We’re seen as people that need to be consulted with,” she said. “We’re only called upon when we’re needed. It’s usually when something bad is happening in the organization, or their reputation might be at risk.”
Ballet ‘will listen and learn’
Morrison says she wants the ballet company to offer the group a formal apology.
John Osler, chair of the ballet’s board, said in a statement to CBC News that the company respects the advisory circle’s decision and offers its gratitude for their guidance.
“We will continue to seek meaningful relationships within the Indigenous community, we will listen and learn from what has been respectfully shared on where we must do better, and we will work with Indigenous advisers and communities on finding new pathways to reconciliation,” he said.
Albert McLeod, who joined the advisory circle about a few years ago, says the group wanted to be involved in the hiring of the ballet’s new artistic director, but no one engaged with them during that process. They learned Christopher Stowell was taking the job through the news last month.
“It’s come to this because we’ve been tokenized and people don’t really care what we think,” he said.
Indigenous people have been dancing in North America for millennia, and the advisory circle was a chance for the ballet company to understand how Indigenous people wanted to see themselves represented in the company’s productions, McLeod said.
It was also an opportunity for the ballet to incorporate the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ 231 Calls to Justice into its operations.
However, McLeod says, the ballet is stuck in its own bubble.
“This is the time for change, and you have to have confidence and ability to do that, and certainly ballet has done that for centuries, but it’s not evident here.”
The end of the advisory circle is also a loss for McLeod.
“I really appreciated the opportunities to see the ballet performances, to see the dancers, the artistry,” he said.
“No one [at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet] was interested in my perspective of what I had seen on that stage for two years, on my interpretation or perspective of what I had witnessed.”
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