May is Asian Heritage Month in Canada. In Manitoba, it is a time to honour the many Asian communities who have shaped this province through culture, labour, leadership, family, food, faith, art, advocacy and public service. Celebration matters. But so do the stories that give celebration its sweetness.

Asian Canadian history is made of many threads.

We remember Chinese labourers who helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway while later facing the Chinese Head Tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act.

We remember the South Asian passengers of the Komagata Maru, denied entry by immigration rules designed to exclude them.

I have been following with interest the media’s reporting of the ban in Manitoba’s Legislative Assembly on the use of the words racist, bigot, homophobe, misogynist and transphobe to call out hateful speech. The stated goal of the ban is “to improve House decorum.”

I’ve appreciated the fulsome coverage of this issue in the Free Press through the publishing of editorials, op-eds and letters to the editor. I was in particular struck by Premier Wab Kinew’s comments during his May 7 monthly interview with Marcy Markusa on CBC Radio.

Kinew’s strong opposition to the ban raises a critical question: How do we keep democratic civil society alive while silencing the calling out of discriminatory language and behaviour? Of course we can’t. By confusing decorum with silence we run the risk of contributing to a “head in the sand” mindset; to what American journalist and activist Barbara Ehrenreich referred to as a “Smile or Die” culture.

But then a followup question emerges: How do we effectively voice our legitimate dissent in ways that move us towards correcting discriminatory practices? A “no holds barred” approach to voicing our opposition may not be the answer. It’s all too easy to slip into shaming people by lobbing ad hominem/ad feminam attacks across partisan lines.

The overall shrinking of public space and degradation of the policy environment on use of public space is contributing to people experiencing homelessness being less safe — and contributing to interest in ideas like designated encampments. Unfortunately, this direction fails to centre the interests of people living unhoused. Further, we forget too easily that any consideration of land use on Treaty 1 land needs to start with historic claims and ancestral rights.

Among people experiencing homelessness, Indigenous people are overrepresented. Many people are living unsheltered on their own ancestral territories. Having endured intergenerational theft that started with land (transferred to settlers whose descendants now enjoy generational wealth), and continued with limits on movement, ability to make money, access to education and more, they are now actively surviving homelessness. Yet, the limits on their person continue.

Recent years have seen the closure and limits on use of public space throughout the downtown and broader city. These include Portage Place mall, the Millennium Library and Winnipeg Transit, and previously through the closure of downtown single-room occupancy hotels and their barrooms.

For some time, the city has been telegraphing an intention to limit access to outdoor public space according to housing status. At every opportunity, those cautioning against this move have raised the problem of limiting those with ancestral rights, and further limiting free movement of citizens on public land. The latter has been decided through B.C. legal process, and suggests the City of Winnipeg’s exposure to risk as it moves forward.

The oft-quoted saying, “it takes a village to raise a child,” resembles an African proverb. In the Yoruba language, the saying goes “two eyes birth a child, but 200 eyes raise it.”

Over the past several decades, that saying has come to mean something entirely different from what villagers meant, in Africa and in the small town where I grew up. The saying meant two, equally important things. It meant the community has a stake in ensuring that children are properly cared for, but the saying also meant that children must be taught and understand their obligations to the community at large.

The 200 eyes raising the child in the village did not look away when the parents or a child failed to observe community standards. When a child disrespected someone in the community, they were corrected. The village had a clear code of conduct that governed what was expected behaviour. These mores, or societal expectations, were understood and enforced by both parents and community members.

Everyone needs to understand their society’s written and unwritten rules. It is our obligation to teach our children the expectations we have of each other.