Abstract
Recent curriculum policy changes in British Columbia (BC) require that educators in all subject areas—including music—embed local Indigenous knowledge, pedagogies, and worldviews in their classes. Yet facilitating such decolonizing cross-cultural music education activities requires knowledge that music educators may not currently possess. We use four models created by an Indigenous Arts scholar to examine the interface of Indigenous and Western art musics in performing arts settings: (a) integration, (b) nation-to-nation music trading and reciprocal presentation, (c) a combination of the first two models, and (d) non-integrative encounters that are in relationship but have irreconcilable elements. We consider the applicability of these models in music education settings, using them to analyze our findings from a study in which we explored the ways teachers have embedded local First Nations songs and drumming in classes in a single metropolitan school district in BC.
In 1996, my (A.P.) 1 secondary concert band was accepted to a music education festival in England for the following year. I carefully selected and studied repertoire that either reflected British musical traditions or represented my school’s geographical and cultural location within Canada. Wishing to honor the Indigenous nationhood of some of my students, I selected a piece entitled Mazama by non-Indigenous composer Jay Chattaway, one of only a handful of pieces at the time that seemingly referenced First Nations cultures in Western North America. The title of this piece refers to a currently dormant volcano in what is now known as the state of Oregon, approximately 1,000 km from the community where I lived and taught. This programmatic piece sonically charts the volcano’s historic eruption approximately 7,000 years ago, the ensuing decimation of the people who lived near it (part of the Klamath Nation), and the eventual formation of a lake within the crater that marks the remains of the once-formidable mountain. Our performance of this piece was well received in our community and in England.
Twenty-five years later, decolonizing activism and scholarship, and resurgence and sovereignty work by Indigenous peoples have exposed the problematic nature of this composition and others similar to it. Their work has resulted in greater public awareness among non-Indigenous people, including ours (A.P. and J.S.B.), of the ongoing systemic oppression of Indigenous peoples worldwide, and it has helped to shift related societal norms. Mazama evokes the stereotype of the Vanishing Indian (Francis, 2011) and constitutes a simulacrum of Indigeneity (Bracken, 1997; Graham, 2016), in part through the composer’s choice of instrumentation (e.g., an ocarina—an instrument not even local to Northwest Coast First Nations) and, more importantly, his decision to act independently—without consultation with the Klamath Tribe for whom this occurrence was historically significant—with regard to whether and how he should depict the event using the wind band medium. Mazama is representative of a corpus of Western art music repertoire for choir, band, orchestra, and opera in which non-Indigenous composers have either caricaturized Indigenous peoples or appropriated aspects of Indigenous cultures, in part, by acquiring songs from ethnomusicological sources and without permission from the Nations and families to whom the songs and corresponding teachings still belong.
Recent efforts to decolonize 2 Western art music practices have led to collaborations between Western art music composers and Indigenous partners, with varying degrees of success. Indigenous Arts scholar Dylan Robinson (2020) from the Stó:lō First Nation 3 has created a four-category taxonomy with which to analyze the interface of Indigenous and Western art music collaborations in performing arts settings. Because recent curriculum policy changes in British Columbia (BC) require that educators in all subject areas—including music—embed local Indigenous knowledge, pedagogies, and worldviews in their classes (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2015), we believe that this taxonomy might potentially be valuable as a tool in music education settings for music teachers wishing to engage with local Indigenous members to do this decolonizing work. Recognizing that music educators in BC do not yet have a framework with which they can meaningfully conceptualize their collaborations, and that using Indigenous theories is integral to conceptualizing and interpreting Indigenist research and practice in music education with Indigenous partners (Wilson, 2007), we were motivated to investigate whether one or more of the categories—or models—from Robinson’s taxonomy might be a useful way for teachers, in relation to Indigenous partners, to conceptualize their own efforts to decolonize and Indigenize 4 music education practices in music education settings.
We begin this article by describing Robinson’s (2020) resonant theory, his notion of hungry listening, and the four “models of encounter” that he developed and has used to analyze the interface of Indigenous and Western art music collaborations in performing arts settings. Next, we introduce the particulars of a metropolitan music education case study, our methodology, and the Indigenous knowledge that was shared with us in the research process. We consider the ways in which the cultural facilitator, Elders, teachers, and composers in that school district embedded local First Nations knowledge, pedagogies, and worldviews in classes through the lens of Robinson’s taxonomy. We describe how some of the models of encounter that Robinson created to theorize how culture has been shared in the music performance world align with the actions of the cultural facilitator, Elders, teachers, and composers in this music education setting. We offer our deepening understanding of Robinson’s words resulting from our realization of this alignment through observation and discussion.
In foregrounding Robinson’s (2020) theory and models, we hope to interrupt “perpetuating Western theoretical privilege (or worse, epistemic violence)” (p. 104) by introducing his scholarship to the wider music education community. Although several Indigenous scholars have proposed Indigenous frameworks to support education research, Robinson (2020) is the first to propose a theoretical model based on Stó:lō and other Indigenous perspectives specifically for the field of music. As two of us do not have lived experience as Indigenous peoples, we do this work as part of “educating ourselves and others about colonialism, racism, and White supremacy” as we strive “to create the society that . . . [we] want . . . [our] children to belong to” (Breen, 2019, pp. 58–59). We also take seriously Restoule’s (2011) challenge to non-Indigenous educators to overcome our fear and consider our responsibility to do this work, developing relationships, and taking “the time to do it right” (p. 18). We acknowledge the need to balance our responsibility to do this work well on one hand, and the need not to claim expertise on the other. We have consulted extensively with our research participants throughout the knowledge-sharing process to achieve that balance to the degree that it is possible in this particular research context.
Resonant Theory
In his book, Hungry Listening, Dylan Robinson posits that moving “beyond settler colonial structures of perception requires much more than a centering of Indigenous knowledge within music curricula, music program notes, and . . . everyday discussions” (Robinson, 2020, pp. 14–15). After explaining how “white privilege remains deeply entrenched in music disciplines” (p. 19), he introduces resonant theory—the notion that the ways we write and think are related to the way that we listen—to center and analyze the affective experience of listening to music, “including alienation, anger, and resentment” (p. 20), and then to counter usual scholarly forms of writing about Indigenous musics. He adopts “performative writing,” using specific writing strategies (e.g., obstructions, deliberate opacity) to parallel these listening affects to express and uphold what he calls sensate sovereignty. These strategies “share space or move alongside or move in relationship with another subjectivity” (p. 81) to enact “the life, agency, and subjectivity of sound within Indigenous frameworks of perception” (p. 15) and to show that the very act of listening is rooted in one’s ways of knowing and being.
For the Stó:lō and many other Indigenous peoples, all matter and sounds—including those sounds understood as music—are imbued with spirit and therefore are alive and have agency (Archibald, 2008; Atleo, 2004; Borrows, 2010; Ignace & Ignace, 2017; Styres, 2017). According to Robinson (2020), Western art musicians generally conceive listening to music as a one-sided activity done by a listener, whereas many Indigenous peoples conceptualize the act of listening as attending “to the relationship between listener and the listened to . . . the space of sonic encounter as a space of subject-subject relation” (p. 15). Moreover, some Western and Indigenous musics have strikingly different orientations and purposes (Bell et al., 2008). For these reasons, Indigenous musics must be understood using corresponding Indigenous conceptions and theories of relations (e.g., resonant theory), including relations with nonhumans (e.g., Land, 5 spirits of ancestors, and songs).
Moreover, Robinson (2020) argues that why we listen is as important as how we listen. Hungry listening refers to settlers’ disposition to consume and appropriate Indigenous knowledge in ways that prioritize settler needs, also privileging “a recognition of palatable narratives of difference” (p. 50). He writes, To be starving is to be overcome with hunger in such a way that one loses the sense of relationality and reflexivity in the drive to satisfy that hunger . . . Moving beyond hungry listening toward anticolonial listening practices requires that the “fevered” pace of consumption for knowledge resources be placed aside in favor of new temporalities of wonder disoriented from anti-relational and non-situated settler colonial positions of certainty. (p. 53)
Robinson (2020) proposed a taxonomy with four categories, each of which outlines a model of encounter, for examining the interface of Indigenous and Western art musics (referred to as Indigenous+art music). The categories are (a) integration, (b) nation-to-nation music trading and reciprocal presentation, (c) a combination of the first two models, and (d) a “coexistence of difference that refuses integration” (p. 122). These categories serve to distinguish between those collaborations that bring together Indigenous and Western art music to “serve the colonial palate and satiate hunger for content” (p. 69) and those that support sensate sovereignty.
First, encounters characterized by integration tend to be “relatively consonant” and to “elide and undermine the disruptive potential of the narrative to unsettle the received history of violence against Indigenous people and the strength of Indigenous resistance to this violence” (p. 126). In this approach, accessibility for a mostly non-Indigenous audience is prioritized over difficult and “dissonant political aspects” (p. 127). Furthermore, “music is treated as aesthetic material rather than as cultural practice that has more-than-aesthetic significance” (p. 131). In such sonic encounters, composers of Western art music treat Indigenous sounds and cultural practices as compositional resources that fit into Western musical compositions with no consideration for their significance according to an Indigenous epistemology.
Robinson’s second category, Nation-to-Nation music trading, comprises events in which Western and specific Indigenous art traditions alternate and collaborators “situate the ensembles as equal partners in a meeting that takes the sharing of traditions as its aim” (p. 134). Robinson (2020) explains that such encounters are “founded upon protocol for how Northwest coast nations affirm the sovereignty of nations whose lands we are guests upon” (p. 134). However, he notes that this approach may be problematic when both groups are visitors on the particular Land on which the “performances” take place, and that it is crucial to enact the protocols of the local First Nation in these situations.
Robinson’s third category is combinatory. It is similar to the nation-to-nation model, but adds an element of integration as the final, cumulative activity of the collaboration. Its premise is that “increased familiarity . . . leads to integration” (p. 136, italics in original). Robinson argues that inclusion and integration often take place, consciously or unconsciously, on the terms of the dominant group. In his view, sonic encounters that do not recognize and respect the ontological differences of the two cultural practices enact symbolic violence upon the cultural practice that is “included.” For example, in his description of a collaborative project in which Inuit throat singers participated in an interpretation of Vivaldi’s L’inverno, Robinson (2020) argued that “to expect Inuit throat singers to be ‘completely on and totally reliable and perfect every time’ is to overlook the very nature of throat singing as play and the flexibility of time in play” (p. 141).
Non-integration is Robinson’s (2020) fourth category. This model of encounter is best illustrated by the notion of the two-row wampum belt, symbolizing, through bead work, two autonomous vessels journeying together down a river, “parallel but never interfering with the other’s navigation” (p. 144). This model goes beyond nation-to-nation recognition to foreground “irreducible difference that enacts Indigenous sovereignty” (p. 144). It promotes “the necessity of spaces that allow for incommensurability and irreconcilability, spaces that refuse the epistemic violence [of] recognition in its appropriation of alterity” (p. 144). In this model, new listening habits must be developed to avoid aural, musical, and epistemic resolution.
Our Previous Study
Recent curriculum policy changes in BC require that educators in all subject areas—including music—embed local Indigenous knowledge, pedagogies, and worldviews in their classes. In 2017, we conducted a multiple case study influenced by Indigenist research principles (Wilson, 2007) in rural BC to investigate the following research question:
While we were traveling to different rural areas of the province to investigate music educators’ and local Indigenous community members’ collaborations, we learned that individuals working at one metropolitan school district in southwestern BC were also engaged in substantive cross-cultural work under the guidance of local First Nations culture bearers. In 2018, we extended our research to include this one school district for the purpose of learning whether and how the processes of engagement and collaboration might differ in a metropolitan area that included Indigenous peoples of different First and Métis Nations.
Method
As we did previously with our Indigenist 6 multiple case research in rural BC (Prest et al., 2021c), we obtained consent to conduct this extension of our original study—of a metropolitan school district—from the local First Nations 7 on whose territories the school district is located and from our institution’s human research ethics board. As with our previous research, we employed document analysis, interviews, participant observation, and focus groups to collect information. Our research participants included three teachers (Anna, a Mi’kmaw cultural facilitator; Cindy, a Nlaka’pamux middle school music educator; and Joan, a non-Indigenous secondary school music educator) plus seven students (all non-Indigenous). In accordance with the School District’s research policies, all participants were given pseudonyms. To maintain anonymity and confidentiality as required, we have also withheld all information that might identify the district (Johnson & Christensen, 2020). 8
We interviewed the two music educators separately, conducted a joint interview with the two music educators and the cultural facilitator, and held two focus group meetings with students, one at a middle school and the other at a secondary school. In addition, one of the authors participated in two classes in which secondary school music students sang and drummed in circle under the guidance of the cultural facilitator or the music teacher. As we did previously with our study in rural BC, we transcribed all conversations and consulted with participants to ensure that we had captured their thoughts accurately. Two authors and a research assistant independently coded each transcription, met to discuss the categories each found emerging, and, by consensus, determined the final categories (Creswell, 2014). After analyzing the information that was shared, we presented our findings to participants and senior school district administrators, including a newly hired Indigenous education district principal. As recommended by Wilson (2008), the adult participants reviewed two drafts of this article to ensure that we had respectfully represented Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and accurately summarized the information that they had provided.
Findings
In this section, we describe three projects in which the cultural facilitator, Anna, was the key liaison between music educators and local First Nations community members, enabling Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to engage actively with local First Nations ways of knowing. In the description, we provisionally use the term music making, which is familiar to music educators, with the hope that readers will keep in mind that, for the Knowledge Keepers from the many First Nations communities with whom we have spoken since we have started our research, music making cannot be understood in isolation, detached from other cultural components such as language, dance, stories, ceremony, and worldview as a whole (Prest & Goble, 2021a).
Drum Making
According to Anna, the Mi’kmaw cultural facilitator with whom we spoke, the relationship between the person and music making begins even before the first sound is produced by the instrument. Students actively engaged with local First Nations worldviews and protocols through the process of making a drum. They learned that the journey (the experience of making the drum) is as important as the outcome (the act of playing the drum): . . . You start from the very beginning with that level of respect for the elk and the cedar tree, and then . . . you go through the struggle of making the drum and bringing it to life. You start from that place. The ceremonies and the making . . . that’s where the respect comes from, and then [it] continues as you pick it up to use it. We do wake up the drums, and that is a ceremony, but really the ceremony begins the second that animal gives its life. From there, we move forward. (Anna)
Anna indicated that, for her, the act of music making means much more than the act of producing a sound as the drum is not just an artifact that is made to produce sound. In her view, it is a living being imbued with spirit, fashioned from other beings that gave up their lives for the drum to be alive.
Participants recalled times when schools had insufficient funds for students to make drums. On one of these occasions, Anna suggested making rattles instead.
She [Joan] said, “but we don’t have a lot of money, what could we do?” And I said, “Why don’t we make rattles, because we could do the same. It doesn’t cost as much, but we could share the same teachings, [be]cause we use the hide and the wood.” So, she started by making rattles with her class.
Anna prioritized the process through which students learned about the teachings and protocols (i.e., making a drum) over the “musical” activity (the actual activity of playing it). This prioritization of process shows the inappropriateness of applying Western outcomes-based educational assumptions and conceptions of music making in Indigenous cultural contexts. In a situation such as the one described above, the relationship with “music” begins before the very first sound emerges from the drum. The relationship between the person and the drum needs to be nurtured for the person to engage fully beyond the act of mere performance. Anna mentioned that approximately 10 people in the district had regularly consulted with her about drumming. Furthermore, she had provided professional development to more than 50 teachers—mostly drum-making workshops—by the time of our study. By 2018, a total of 450 drums had been created and were housed in schools across the district.
Songs
During our interview, Anna shared with us that songs have a particular purpose and a story linked to that purpose. Stories have, at their core, the purpose of transmitting cultural teachings, and the composer and/or bearer/owner of a song is always acknowledged when it is sung.
So, if it’s a Gratitude Song, I’m going to share the teachings behind the song, who the song belongs to, and why we are singing it. (Anna)
Anna had originally shared an array of social songs from various First Nations with her students in the school district. Through her ongoing discussions with a local Elder with whom she consulted regularly, Anna came to an awareness of the many shades of nuance required in communicating with students when teaching in a metropolitan environment. She taught students from many cultural heritages, including those from a range of First Nations. Yet the city was located on the territories of two First Nations. Cindy approached Anna about embedding Indigenous content as mandated by the new curriculum and asked whether there were local songs available for music educators to use in their classes. Anna and Cindy met with the school district Indigenous Department’s district administrator to discuss the situation. Anna then spoke with the respected local Elder with whom she often consulted, explaining to him that music teachers were looking for a First Nations song that they could sing with their students. During that conversation, Anna came to two realizations: she should follow local protocols and emphasize local Indigenous culture. On the West Coast of BC and in other places, First Nations’ many songs are “owned” by individuals, families, and Nations, so teachers may not readily access or use them for educational purposes. Given the complexity of the situation, the Elder guided the process from that day forward, working with the school district Indigenous Department’s district administrator to find a workable way to support this request. Through the district administrator’s ingenuity and leadership, they determined how to bring culture into the schools in a good way: the school district subsequently followed local protocol and “culturally purchased” six songs from composers of three nearby First Nations. In the cultural purchase of a new song, the school district pays an honorarium to the culture bearer/composer. The composer retains the “rights” and—by agreement—the song may be used only to teach students in that school district, or during events associated with the school district. Teachers who leave to take a position in another district may not teach the song in their new setting: . . . The proper protocol was there’s a contract that’s been signed and a payment . . . Culturally purchased [is the expression] . . . [for use] within the school district. Then the songs were all recorded, so Joan, Cindy, and I recorded them with the composers. Then, they also told the teachings behind the songs. . . . All of that is housed in the Google Drive for teachers. Eventually that’s where we got to. (Anna)
The cultural facilitator’s guidance provided a “safety net” that encouraged music educators to engage meaningfully in the process of recording and bringing the songs to their classes, along with all the teachings linked to them. We have previously reported on the effects of the teachings, drumming, singing, and associated pedagogies that the students described (Prest & Goble, 2021b). Here, we describe two of the classes that one of us observed and the processes that Anna and Joan, the secondary teacher, followed.
On two occasions, the first author observed and participated in drumming and singing a few of the songs during a secondary concert band class at one of the local high schools. Anna led one of the classes, and Joan led the other. The established practice at the time of our study was that 4 times each semester, students put away their concert band instruments, moved their chairs to sit in a circle, and together drummed and sang the songs the local First Nations provided to the school district, following the protocols that they had been taught previously. For example, each person in the circle introduced themselves (e.g., gave their name and their cultural heritage) to one another, explained on a scale of 1 to 10 how they felt on that day, and greeted the person new to the circle (i.e., the researcher) with a handshake and verbal welcome. Anna and Joan described the origin of each song, the culture bearer who had composed it, and the stories or teachings associated with it. Then they taught the song by rote; each song was sung straight through multiple times, and students joined in when they felt comfortable doing so. Some of the songs contained vocables, whereas others contained words in one or more local First Nations languages. Anna and Joan rarely referred to Western elements of music in their explanations and they made no comparisons between styles of singing. It appeared that they were making a concerted effort to treat each tradition separately. During our interviews with students who took part in the aforementioned drumming and singing activities, each student reflected on the steps taken by the music educator to keep Western and First Nations musics separate. One student reflected on the music educator’s teaching approach in this way: She really tries to keep them separate. So, when we’re first learning a song, she sometimes uses Western terms to understand what it is. So, tempo or key, but she really tries to keep them separate. I really like that. It’s hard to explain. She just (sic), I think that just gives me more appreciation of both types of music, keeping them separate.
The Play
During the joint interview, our three adult participants voiced a concern about the commercialization of Indigenous cultural practices. They acknowledged that people might use drums or songs in uninformed ways, which could compromise the level of respect that such cultural expressions entail in Indigenous communities. Participants identified two states of mind that they thought characterized teachers when engaging with local Indigenous ways of knowing: a lack of commitment to devoting time to learn and understand cultural protocols according to which each song is transmitted and an urgency to incorporate Indigenous content in the classroom without proper guidance and support from a cultural facilitator or an Indigenous community member.
Our participants stated that relationships (and the time required to build them) are key to avoiding the commercialization and misuse of songs and related cultural practices. Thus, in their view, taking the time necessary to develop trusting relationships with the people who are the bearers of the culture and knowledge is essential. One example of meaningful collaboration between First Nations culture bearers and music educators is a play they created and enacted.
Anna described the play as a project that originated from a conversation that she had had with a local Elder.
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The Elder showed Anna a piece of writing from a Chief of a nearby First Nation. Anna explained how the Elder’s idea developed into a play: “He [the Elder] said, ‘I’ve taken the characters from it, and put it into characters so that we could read it like that.’ I was like, that would be a cool play.” Anna recalled the way in which they started imagining the music for this play, and how one pivotal point occurred when Anna thought about Joan as a person who might be able to contribute to the music making part: He [The Elder] always wanted to transcribe a song into string music. So, then we started talking. He was like, “I really like these two songs.” That’s when we brought [in] Joan, because we wanted to do that.
This statement illustrates how non-Indigenous music educators can become allies in projects envisioned/led by Indigenous people. Joan recalls how she became involved in the play: I got invited to go to listen to the _______ Drummers. The . . . Elder asked them to sing _____________, the song that we were talking about this morning, as well [as the] ___________ Welcome Song. I had permission to record them, then I went home and transcribed them, which was an interesting experience . . . Throughout the whole process of transcription, we met weekly with Anna, the Elder, and a local Kwakwaka’wakw woman—trained in Western theatre while also rooted in her culture—who also played a role in the development of the play. It was important to consult to ensure that what we were doing was done in a good way. Eventually, through these conversations, I learned about how songs are shared, and was able to finish the transcriptions and share them with the string students. We rehearsed them and recorded them, and they’re part of the play now.
Anna noted that this play was an opportunity to go beyond merely playing instruments or acting; the project provided Indigenous and non-Indigenous students with an opportunity to learn about local First Nations perspectives in a holistic way. Hundreds of students collaborated on it, and whole classes were engaged in activities such as making a canoe, making masks, and making screens for the play. A local Elder was asked to weave cedar headbands for the play. Anna reflected on the contribution that she brings to the school district: “In my district position, I’m always trying to figure out—I don’t want to do one-offs in classrooms—but how can I effect change in the most effective way as one person in a school district.”
It is clear that Anna’s actions have had a meaningful impact on the school district’s aim to decolonize and Indigenize education, including music education. Her leadership has been key to fostering respectful and culturally significant collaborations among First Nations community members, school district administrators, and music educators, which have resulted in meaningful learning experiences for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Cindy’s reference to Anna’s contribution to the school district captures the importance of Anna’s work as a cultural facilitator: Having Anna come teach with me, that’s what helped. That’s how I felt that I was doing things in a good way . . . Even still, before a concert or if I’m trying a new song, I’m constantly emailing her, asking, “Am I doing this right?” “Is this the way?” We need five more Annas.
In the next section, we explore how Robinson’s (2020) categories/models of encounter “for examining the structures of inclusionary music and Indigenous+art music” (p. 122) in performing arts settings might be applied to understanding the cross-cultural encounters in this music education setting. For each model of encounter, we explain how activities (making drums and rattles, drumming and singing songs by local First Nation composers with permission, and performing a play with music) might be considered examples of those models. We explore the nuances of these activities, consider whether his models are generally applicable for theorizing cross-cultural collaborative efforts in music education settings (beyond the performing arts scenarios for which he originally developed his models), and discuss how they might support educators and local Indigenous community members when conceiving and designing collaborations in music education settings in BC.
Discussion
General
In his examination of the interface of Indigenous and Western art musics, Robinson asks, “To what extent are these musical encounters heard as symbolic expressions of reconciliation? Do they offer models of reconciliation through their structures, in both their limitations and potential?” (p. 116). Although the locations of engagement that Robinson describes in his book are established performative spaces, and most activities described in this article occurred in educational spaces, it is our view that the structure that was developed in this metropolitan school district for establishing an interface between Indigenous and Western conceptions of music making afforded comparable symbolic expressions of reconciliation. This structure ensured that the process was Indigenous-led and that at least one Elder from one of two local First Nations guided the process. One Mi’kmaw teacher, the cultural facilitator who operated from within the school district’s Indigenous Department, obtained ongoing guidance from the local Elder and received support from her school district’s Indigenous department’s administrator; the administrator enabled the school district to culturally purchase six songs for students to drum and sing, which had been previously composed by culture bearers in order that music teachers would avoid appropriation. From our perspective, the processes that facilitated these encounters reflect Robinson’s (2020) vision of “a compositional practice of political alliance where Indigenous peoples are partners in dialogue, creation, and production” (p. 183).
Robinson (2020) affirms that understanding “practices of Indigenous listening resurgence necessitates more than . . . awareness of the diverse cultural contexts and protocol of Indigenous communities . . . [It] requires developing relationships with Indigenous artists, singers, and knowledge keepers” (p. 68). In this school district, Indigenous and non-Indigenous music teachers and students alike developed relationships with the cultural facilitator, the Elder, and some of the composers from three First Nations. The school district also provided ongoing professional development opportunities for teachers to learn to make drums, a limited number of grants for which teachers could apply to purchase the materials needed to make drums, and ongoing mentorship by the cultural facilitator. However, as Cindy pointed out to us, these resources were not sufficient to provide consistent and widespread support for all who were interested.
Integrative
Integrative forms of encounter are those where Indigenous sounds and cultural practices are “fit” into Western musical compositions with no thought given to their epistemological origins. For example, the piece Mazama, referred to in our introduction, has “a ‘pleasing’ aesthetic [that] avoids alienating its audience, but in doing so allows hungry listening to ingest Indigenous trauma without prompting reflection upon what it means to aurally consume such violence” (Robinson, 2020, p. 126). 10 We found that the teachers with whom we spoke in this district did not consider, conceive, or engage in this form of collaboration.
Nation-to-Nation Music Trading
The premise of the “Nation-to-Nation” model of presentation and exchange “is not to merge music and cultural practice but to allow audience members to engage in comparison of ‘protocol’ and story for each group” (Robinson, 2020, p. 134). According to Robinson, this model often highlights commonality without necessarily upholding the importance of local sovereignty. Although Anna shared songs and teachings from other First Nations with her students, some of whom were from First Nations located elsewhere, her developing awareness and prioritization of local First Nations songs, protocols, and cultural practices that uphold local sovereignty revealed a nuanced, multilayered understanding of the primacy of the local that artists often overlook when engaging in Nation-to-Nation collaborations.
Combinatory
In this model, familiarity with one another’s traditions develops trust, potentially leading to a mutually valued combination. Robinson (2020) writes, “A question of primary significance in any intercultural work must be how the semiotics of inclusion function in the formal encounters between musical languages and epistemologies” (p. 140). Understanding how the “semiotics of inclusion” function is necessary because inclusion often implies the existence of a center to which the included are welcome, thus maintaining “the hierarchical dominance of art music as the genre to which other music must conform” (p. 137). However, the play created in this school district was conceived and constructed within a local First Nation epistemological framework by Anna, the local Kwakwaka’wakw woman, and the Elder with whom she worked. They included Western aspects in the Indigenous space when they deemed those aspects could contribute to that space (e.g., orchestral string players playing the melody of one of the songs). In this case, “the semiotics of inclusion” served to uphold Indigenous sovereignty. The play’s actors were Indigenous youth, and both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students were involved in set design, costuming, singing, drumming, and playing. This “decolonial staging” addressed “contemporary . . . [Indigenous] realities and histories, while providing a space for . . . [Indigenous] youth to advance resurgence” (Robinson, p. 189). Although some of the play’s elements suggest that it exemplifies Robinson’s third category, its verbal and nonverbal message of Welcome to settler populations from a nearby First Nations upholds sovereignty, illustrating aspects of Robinson’s non-integrative fourth model of encounter.
Non-Integrative
In Robinson’s (2020) view, non-integrative models of encounter resist the “perfect fit” (p. 143). The singing and drumming activities in which students engaged reflected this non-integrative model. First Nation composers within the region provided songs for teachers to teach under their and Anna’s guidance using local protocols. Not only did the protocols have “different ontological frameworks” with which the students became acquainted, but they also learned “the importance of protocol as a practice of affirming sovereignty” in a specific context within BC (Robinson, p. 135). As the cultural facilitator, Anna created an environment whereby students engaged in the activities with heart, mind, and body, attending to affect, thereby enabling them “to audiate otherwise” (Robinson, p. 38).
Drum and rattle making were also non-integrative activities, during which music educators were introduced to conceptions of instruments and songs as sentient, singers’ and drummers’ relational accountability to the drums and songs, and the roles of drumming and singing beyond Western art music’s emphasis on the aesthetic. These ideas were new to music teachers educated in Western art music in conservatory-type university undergraduate programs. During her workshops with teachers and classes with students, Anna upheld the “necessary primacy of Indigenous sovereignty and the necessity of spaces that allow for incommensurability and irreconcilability” (p. 144) that Robinson notes are essential for moving beyond his second model, which foregrounds only mutual recognition and equality of difference.
Implications
Cross-cultural “music” collaborations that respect and uphold the meanings and intentions of both cultural traditions require parties of the dominant culture to develop an awareness of the assumptions they bring to the project and a willingness to change their listening habits. Robinson (2020) cautions, [W]e need to remain attendant to the ways that our everyday listening habits might still seek to reconcile irreconcilable auralities . . . These listening habits, influenced and framed by Canadian discourses of multiculturalism, sanitize the sharp edges of difference unless we are aware of how such habits are oriented toward the certainty of resolution. (p. 145)
Anna, Joan, and Cindy’s ongoing exploration of collaborations at the interface between Western music and local First Nations cultural practices showed us the necessity of taking time to do the work properly as they consulted with one another at every step, aware of the dynamic and never-ending nature of this work.
In observing the cross-cultural collaborations in this one metropolitan school district through the theoretical lens of Robinson’s (2020) models of encounter, we gained an understanding of the way the models operate in practice in cross-cultural encounters in one school district’s music education setting, and we developed a deeper appreciation for his analysis of Indigenous+art music collaborations. We believe that it will be important for Indigenous and non-Indigenous music education researchers and their research participants to apply these theoretical models in other school districts to examine existing Indigenous+art music collaborations there to obtain a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of their applicability in school settings. Robinson’s (2020) models of encounter might also be useful for those who are in the process of conceiving similar partnerships as they reveal potential assumptions and missteps that might derail the overarching purpose and aims of such activities (e.g., decolonization, Indigenization, reconciliation, resurgence, and sovereignty). As Borrows and Tully (2018) remind us, “Reconciliation . . . is based on the premise that reconciling partners suspend power-over relations and engage in dialogue and negotiation as equals. These negotiations give rise to partnerships based on mutual consent” (p. 21). Robinson’s (2020) fourth non-integrative model provides music educators with a pathway using a specific form of collaboration to examine their conscious and unconscious biases, counter the “null” curriculum resulting from ongoing systemic racism existing in educational settings, and contribute to decolonization in their classes.
It seems possible that hungry listening can be kept at bay when collaborations are conceived and led by Indigenous partners, and when music education partners who have been educated in Western conservatory-type undergraduate programs are willing to suspend the belief that their conscious and unconscious conceptions of “music,” teaching, and learning are appropriate in all settings. Models of encounter deemed appropriate by Robinson and other Indigenous scholars rely on developing and maintaining relationships, and “allow for a politics of listening that encourages listeners to hear inclusionary music through a critical engagement with the histories, epistemologies, and cosmologies” of the peoples who create it (Robinson, 2020, p. 61). Robinson’s (2020) advice is relevant for music education researchers and practitioners. He acknowledges that “long-process iterational practices are challenging to implement” (p. 253). What we learned from reading Robinson’s (2020) text, conducting this case study, and reflecting on our research gives reason to hope that such long-term relationships and practices may be realizable.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant [no. 430-2016-00034].
