"Accomplished Aboriginal Broadcaster" Wab Kinew Replaces Jian Ghomeshi as Moderater of Ceeb Radio's Annual "Let's All Read the Same Book, Dammit" Event

A.k.a. "Canada Reads." Last year's competition (it consists of four Canadians making a case for a novel near and dear to their hearts, the book they think every Canadian should be reading at the same time--simultaneous reading, what a uniquely Canadian concept!) was dominated by Mr. Kinew. He championed Joseph Boyden's The Orenda, a novel which fellow Canada Reader Stephen Lewis, for one, found somewhat problematic. Here's how I described the mild contretemps last spring:

Anyway, I was lying in bed, channel-hopping late last evening, and I happened upon the TV broadcast of Canada Reads, Day 2. Suddenly, I found myself riveted by a discussion between Stephen Lewis, Canadian socialist/UN icon, and Wab Kinew, "an award-winning journalist, aboriginal activist and hip-hop artist [who is] currently the first director of indigenous inclusion at the University of Winnipeg" (his Ceeb billing). The book Lewis had been touting, Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood (a, yes, unreadable novel forecasting the grim, dystopian future that's in store because we're ignoring global climate change) had been eliminated on the first day of competition. Lewis was making a case to eliminate The Orenda, the book by Joseph Boyden that Kinew was defending. Lewis's problem with it: it contained scenes depicting aboriginals engaged in torture and scalping that were so graphic, so "extreme" (Lewis's word), that they amounted to what he called "torture as pornography."

Wab countered that, well, Lewis would look at it that way, being that he's non-indingenous. That's how Europeans looked at it 400 years ago, too, when the "savagery" unnerved and sickened them. But that's not how indigenous peoples view it--and neither, he says, does Boyden, who uses the word "caress" to describe a torturing. To indigenous tribes it was purely a matter of "honour." Indeed, "warriors of one nation would be upset if one nation did not torture and scalp their brethren." It afforded them "a chance to prove their honour and dignity before passing on to spirit world."

Kinew proceeded to lambaste non-Natives who only want to align themselves with indigenous peoples when their values--like being anti-pipeline and pro-environment--meshed, but who expressed Lewis's type of uninformed distaste for the ennobling ceremonial torture.

So you see, non-indigenous Canadians (and this is me speaking, albeit sarcastically), if you can't view inter-tribal torture and scalping through indigenous eyes; if you can't discard your prissy "Western assumptions" (Kinew's phrase); you're just not seeing it in the proper context. You know, in the same way that we judgmental ones can't see, say, suttee, female genital mutilation, "honour" crimes in the Islamic world (and a smaller number among Hindus), and even jihadi terrorism, through the eyes of its perpetrators.

In light of all that, Kinew--a guy who insists that scalping isn't savage, it's "spiritual" (and you're a racist, colonialist lout if you beg to differ with that claim) is the perfect choice to helm "Canada Reads"--and the  perfect replacement for disgraced Ceeb host Jian Ghomeshi.

Update: How I wish Conrad Black and not the too-easily-cowed Stephen Lewis had been the one to take on Mr. Kinew's pro-scalping thesis.