Indigenous Celebrity

Entanglements with Fame

Jennifer Adese, Robert Alexander Innes, Jennifer Adese, Robert Alexander Innes

• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780887559235
• eBook ISBN: 9780887559211
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Indigenous Celebrity speaks to the possibilities, challenges, and consequences of popular forms of recognition, critically recasting the lens through which we understand Indigenous people's entanglements with celebrity. It presents a wide range of essays that explore the theoretical, material, social, cultural, and political impacts of celebrity on and for Indigenous people.

It questions and critiques the whitestream concept of celebrity and the very juxtaposition of "Indigenous" and "celebrity" and casts a critical lens on celebrity culture's impact on Indigenous people. Indigenous people who willingly engage with celebrity culture, or are drawn up into it, enter into a complex terrain of social relations informed by layered dimensions of colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia/transphobia, and classism. Yet this reductive framing of celebrity does not account for the ways that Indigenous people's own worldviews inform Indigenous engagement with celebrity culture––or rather, popular social and cultural forms of recognition.

Indigenous Celebrity reorients conversations on Indigenous celebrity towards understanding how Indigenous people draw from nation-specific processes of respect and recognition while at the same time navigating external assumptions and expectations. This collection examines the relationship of Indigenous people to the concept of celebrity in past, present, and ongoing contexts, identifying commonalities, tensions, and possibilities.

Chapter 1

Mino-Waawiindaganeziwin: What Does Indigenous Celebrity Mean within Anishinaabeg Contexts?

Renée E. Mazinegiizhigoo-kwe Bédard

As I understand it, as an Anishinaabe-kwe (Anishinaabe woman), mewenzhaa (in the long ago), Gizhew-Manidoo (the Creator, the Great Spirit, the Great Mystery, the One Who Loves Us Unconditionally) created everything in the cosmos, and last to be created were human beings. Anishinaabeg scholar Darren Courchene (Sagkeeng First Nation) offers that the first human being was described as “Ani niisayi’ii naabe owe akiing (a human was lowered onto the earth)” or Anishinaabe.1 The Anishinaabeg are Indigenous to Mishi-mikinaak-o-minis (Turtle Island), or North America, specifically present-day Canada and the United States of America. Our Anishinaabeg culture, spirituality, governance system, and dialects are connected to our relationships with Anishinaabe-akiing (Anishinaabeg Territory), which surrounds the Great Lakes of Turtle Island (including Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and Lake Michigan). Our ancestors have dwelled on these lands for thousands of years and countless generations.

Also, as I understand it, Anishinaabemowin (Anishinaabeg language) was first bestowed on the Anishinaabeg2 peoples by Gizhew-Manidoo. We refer to Anishinaabemowin as Gizhew-Manidoo-omiigiwewinan (the Creator’s original gifts). Gizhew-Manidoo gave each of these original human beings izhinikaazowin (a name), odoodemiwin (a clan), odi-nawemaaginiwin (a family), and Anishinaabemowin (language) before placing them on the earth. With Anishinaabemowin, these original human beings were able to communicate with each other in a way that is gichitawaa (sacred, spiritual) and in keeping with the Gizhew-Manidoo-omiigiwewinan, along with the Ogichi-inaakonigewin (the Great Binding Law) that governs how all things in the universe should exist in harmony and balance. But Anishinaabemowin also carries much more than simple communication. Anishinaabemowin words contain a paradigm connected by memory to identity, space, time, and place. In this way, words guide our miikana bimaadiziwin (life path) as human beings, as Anishinaabeg.

Within these contexts, the word mino-waawiindaganeziwin3 offers a glimpse of the Anishinaabeg paradigm. Mino-waawiindaganeziwin describes the character of a person of worth, esteem, respect, fame, or renown. In Anishinaabeg cultural contexts, it is not a word used by people to describe themselves. Instead, such a description is bestowed on an individual only by someone else in the community. An individual who is mino-waawiindaganeziwin is recognized for leadership, talents, expertise, or gifts that contribute to the vitality of Anishinaabeg culture, community, and nationhood; conversely, the person might be recognized for the lack of those qualities. The word has a double meaning for either the best or the worst qualities of character that a person can exhibit within the community. In this word, we find a concept full of nuanced meanings combining ideas of identity and culture. When the word mino-waawiindaganeziwin is used, it echoes the traditions of our Anishinaabeg ancestors, merging what we now call history, spirituality, geography, and governance to talk about a nation’s relationship with Anishinaabe-akiing. From an Anishinaabeg perspective, mino-waawiindaganeziwin is that trace of our relationships with people and places and evidence of a nation connected by memory to a distinctive cultural worldview. Indigenous peoples’ languages on Mishi-mikinaak-o-minis are the oldest sets of records and teachers for how to live as human beings on this continent. Among Anishinaabeg, language records our collective presence and memories as shaped by the place in which it originates. Replacing Anishinaabemowin words with English words colonizes the Anishinaabeg paradigm, erasing its primacy and rendering culture invisible.

In this chapter, I contrast the Anishinaabeg word mino-waawiindaganeziwin with the terms “Indigenous celebrity,” “celebrity,” and Western notions of “celebrity status.” My purpose here is to assert that the use of Anishinaabeg words instead of English words is about the survival of our unique Anishinaabeg cultural identity and our system of knowledge. The use of Anishinaabeg words is a fundamental part of this chapter and includes inserting Anishinaabeg words into the text to fulfill my responsibility as an Anishinaabe-kwe. In the Anishinaabeg way, I also include these words to acknowledge Anishinaabemowin as an original gift from Gizhew-Manidoo.

Anishinaabemowin is prioritized throughout this chapter because the colonizers’ languages—specifically English and French—are void of the necessary Anishinaabeg contexts required to interpret, orient, and navigate the world as Anishinaabeg. Using an English word such as celebrity, even if attached to the word Indigenous, can inadvertently or intentionally make invisible the Anishinaabeg worldview. Furthermore, the term “Indigenous” becomes a way to group specific nations and cultures together as if they are all the same, for the sake of convenience or out of ignorance. My intention in this chapter is to assert that the use of the term “mino-waawiindaganeziwin” speaks to an Anishinaabeg paradigm that must be prioritized and not replaced by terms such as “Indigenous celebrity” or “celebrity” because they erode Anishinaabeg sovereignty, identity, and traditional knowledge.

The English words Indigenous celebrity, celebrity, and celebrity status have replaced traditional Anishinaabemowin words such as mino-waawiindaganeziwin once used regularly. However, the language of the colonizers saturates our lives and often works to control the public narratives regarding the construction of our identities as Indigenous peoples. Today the dominant non-Indigenous society idolizes celebrity culture and celebrity status. Indigenous celebrities become an invention of a Euro–North American obsession with controlling and marketing Indigenous imagery through the lens of colonization.

Scholar Elvin Lim warns that celebrity culture has saturated Euro–North American society at all points, not just in the arts and entertainment industries, but also in areas of government, faith, academics, and sport, to name a few. Lim notes that celebrity status is a dangerous trend rooted in the fact that

celebrities have name recognition. They are easy on the eyes. And they pretend really well. . . . It is no wonder that good actors make great politicians. Like actors, politicians use image consultants to change how they look; their words are crafted by somebody else; they have publicists for image (or damage) control. And so mimesis occurs alike in art and in politics. Because both the actor and the politician revel in the attention that comes with being on stage, Plato did not think it wise that actors should have a political role in the republic. . . . Our politicians and our citizens today worship at the altar of make-believe (politicians make, and citizens believe) images.4

Similarly, writer Tim Willard recognizes that the rise of celebrity status in Western society has resulted in a level of moral deficiency that he says threatens to destabilize North American society. He challenges the dangers to a society that glorifies celebrity and “envision[s] celebrity as a means to influence people. Even though influence exists as an inherent by-product of leadership, it is not something to be pursued and possessed as a kind of currency. Leaders must be wary of falling into the trap of thinking that in order to possess and ‘leverage’ influence you must build your personal celebrity. This is the great lie.”5 Both Lim and Willard recognize that Euro–North American culture has elevated celebrities to roles of leadership and influencers of culture and society at large. The musician Bono says that “being a celebrity is a currency that should be used to bring change.”6 He speaks a truism of Euro–North American culture. He voices a dictum in which culture has become a servant to celebrity and opportunistic individuals who pursue and leverage status...

Table of contents

• Introduction: Indigeneity, Celebrity, and Fame: Accounting for Colonialism
• Chapter 1: Mino-Waawiindaganeziwin: What Does Indigenous Celebrity Mean within Anishinaabeg Contexts?
• Chapter 2: Empowering Voices from the Past: The Playing Experiences of Retired Pasifika Rugby League Athletes in Australia
• Chapter 3: My Mom, the “Military Mohawk Princess”: kahntinetha1 Horn through the Lens of Indigenous Female Celebrity
• Chapter 4: Indigenous Activism and Celebrity: Negotiating Access, Inclusion, and the Politics of Humility
• Chapter 5: Rags-to-Riches and Other Fairytales: Indigenous Celebrity in Australia 1950–80
• Chapter 6: “Pretty Boy” Trudeau Versus the “Algonquin Agitator”: Hitting the Ropes of Canadian Colonialist Masculinities
• Chapter 7: Famous “Last” Speakers: Celebrity and Erasure in Media Coverage of Indigenous Language Endangerment
• Chapter 8: Celebrity in Absentia: Situating the Indigenous People of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Social Imaginary
• Chapter 9: Marvin Rainwater and “The Pale Faced Indian”: How Cover Songs Appropriated a Story of Cultural Appropriation
• Chapter 10: Collectivity as Indigenous Anti-Celebrity: Global Indigeneity and the Indigenous Rights Movement
• Chapter 11: Makings, Meanings, and Recognitions: The Stuff of Anishinaabe Stars
• Acknowledgements
• Selected Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index