Writing about Other Cultures: In apology and gratitude
By Marilyn Sigman,
In response to comments I received on an earlier version of this article that it was not, in fact, in a form that was recognizable as an apology, I removed it. Here’s my next attempt at an apology and my expression of gratitude to those who educated me about the way my words came across in hurtful and offensive ways.
I am a newcomer to the traditional homelands and home waters of the Sugpiaq Alutiit and the Dena’ina Athabascans,a place where they have lived for millennia and gifted their stewardship of its beauty and sustained abundance. It’s with a heavy heart that I apologize for the hurt I have caused by a piece of my writing about a stone oil lamp on display at a local community museum that ignored and thus, disrespected these cultures and languages.
I was thoughtless and arrogant in my initial reactions to hearing from Indigenous people that what I had written was ignorant, offensive and hurtful. When one Indigenous person requested a public apology, I responded with a torrent of words to defend myself and my bona fides as a non-Indigenous writer who was respectful of Indigenous cultures and languages, citing my previous writings. I tried to defend my writing about the lamp as an object of archaeological and anthropological discovery alone as an error of omission due to the brevity of the requested article. I reacted to the justifiable anger expressed to me and the offer made by the person who had requested the apology to educate me about their Indigenous culture and language by portraying that person very unkindly and myself as the victim of an unfair attack on the type of person and writer I thought myself to be.
I thank that Indigenous person and the many writers who read what I presented as an apology and told me it wasn’t an apology at all but a defense presented in an indefensible and inexcusable way. I’m thankful for the labor and emotional resources so generously provided to me by everyone who clearly communicated the additional hurt and offense I had caused. One writer called my attention to how people are marginalized through inattention to what is said and done, especially in the doubling-down in defense, and to how the placement of myself at the center of the situation was an active process of pushing others to the margins.
I’m awed by the generosity and compassion of people who had every right to turn away from what has offended and hurt and marginalized them once again in a long history of similar, wearying rationalizations, but instead responded with belief that educating me was possible. I’m grateful that they generously took the time to guide me into listening to and beginning to feel how I had added to a depth of pain and trauma that has been compounded over many generations.
The words I failed to say are the essential ones in any apology: I’m sorry about the hurt I caused anyone. I say them now, from my heart.
I have been gifted with specific guidance on how to communicate in ways that don’t display the biases that were formerly not conscious to me but painfully obvious to others. My education by Indigenous people and my striving to apply this and additional guidance to my writing is definitely a work in progress that will continue for the rest of my life. I will continue to seek ways to listen to and respond with compassion to the ongoing pain and trauma of colonial and racist legacies and to do what I can to end them.
