RWB’s Indigenous Advisory Committee collectively resigns

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This article was published 18/02/2025 (590 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Indigenous Advisory Committee (IAC) announced Friday that they are collectively resigning.

“There comes a point where you realize this is tokenizing,” lawyer Danielle Morrison, who co-founded the IAC in 2018, told the Free Press.

“It’s lot of labour on the part of the IAC to be offering insight and guidance as to what kind of programming, strategic direction or planning the RWB could undertake if it’s not actually going to be implemented.”

The advisory circle was composed of Morrison, two-spirit elder Albert McLeod and University of Winnipeg professor Kevin Lamoureux. RWB board member Tara Letwiniuk also announced her resignation on Friday in solidarity with the others.

Morrison says the IAC was largely reduced to a symbolic entity, participating in ceremonies and referenced in funding applications, with little meaningful impact on decision-making.

She highlights the ballet’s initiatives to hire a new executive director and artistic director and says the IAC was not engaged in either process.

McLeod told the CBC that the group learned through the news media last month that Christopher Stowell was assuming the RWB’s artistic directorship, replacing longtime AD André Lewis.

“I really appreciated the opportunities to see the ballet performances, to see the dancers, the artistry. (But) no one 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,” he said.

Morrison says that among her Indigenous peers there’s growing fatigue with participating in committees that are effectively toothless within non-profit and performing arts organizations.

“It’s been so many years since the Truth and Reconciliation recommendations and MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls) report came out. All the answers are out there, but you still have people asking these Indigenous committees, ‘What do we do?’” she says.

“But people are saying, like, man, I’m in these meetings, I sit on this committee. I feel like I’m bashing my head against the wall, like nobody’s actually listening to us.”

To prevent this from happening at the RWB, Morrison says the advisory circle asked the organization’s leadership for board representation in 2018 and again in 2023, but the requests were not granted.

Representatives from the RWB were unavailable for comment when approached by the Free Press, but the organization released a statement on Instagram Tuesday with a link to an open letter signed by Lewis, board chairman John Osler and executive director Elena Tupyseva.

“We are looking into the concerns … and want to assure you that we see and understand the need to make fundamental changes internally before we can resume the work of the Indigenous Advisory Circle, in any capacity,” the letter reads.

“We acknowledge that the processes of the advisory circle were not well articulated and led to misinterpretation and miscommunication between its members and our teams.”

The letter includes commitments to a review of the processes involved in the creation of the advisory circle and “to creating and sourcing opportunities to develop and learn, including mandatory and comprehensive training on Indigenous history, anti-racism, bias and inclusivity for our board and leadership at all levels.”

Morrison believes for this engagement to be meaningful it may be time for Canadian non-profits and performing arts groups, such as the RWB, to change their bylaws so cultural advisers’ recommendations have a greater binding effect.

She hopes that Indigenous artists wanting to work with such organizations aren’t discouraged from doing so, but she also calls for “creating, revitalizing and supporting existing Indigenous dance companies.”

“I can’t speak exactly to what the future looks like, but my best hope is that we would uplift Indigenous dancers and leaders to make decisions for themselves.”

The RWB’s upcoming season features one work by an Indigenous choreographer: Segatem by RWB School graduate Cameron Fraser-Monroe, a member of the Tla’amin First Nation in British Columbia.

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca