“We are not seen as equal partners. We are not seen as a stakeholder to be engaged with.”
This is the message that Danielle Morrison is being vocal about with members of the Indigenous communities of Winnipeg and with the city at large after she and the rest of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Indigenous Advisory Circle resigned en masse last week, citing a culture of toxicity and tokenization at the organization.
A member of Treaty 3 of the Anishinaabeg of Naongashiing and an associate with Cochrane Sinclair LLP, Morrison was one of the founding members of the circle back in 2018, after participating in the national tour of Going Home Star, the acclaimed ballet created by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in collaboration with Cree elder and activist Mary Richard and featuring music by the Northern Cree Singers and Tanya Tagaq in a score by Christos Hatzis. Morrison was brought on board to assist in connecting with local communities and to work as support for those dealing with the ballet’s subject matter, which centred around residential schools.
Although the circle was initially able to do work advising the RWB in matters of cultural safety and acknowledgement, it quickly grew apparent to Morrison, who specializes in corporate governance in her work as a lawyer, that the circle did not have a lot of power within the RWB’s organizational structure. “I worked very closely with their staff, their management and their directors, and the relationship was very good,” said Morrison in a conversation on Morning Light. “The relationship was strong, but I really got the sense that there was only so much they could do at the management level. There was a real disconnect in terms of operations versus governance and what’s happening at the board level in terms of strategic decision making.”
Listen to Danielle Morrison's full interview on Morning Light here.
The Indigenous Advisory Circle requested representation on the RWB’s Board of Directors on multiple occasions, but those requests were ultimately denied. This, along with a lack of consultation around strategic decisions including the selection of the RWB’s executive director Elena Tupyseva and incoming artistic director Christopher Stowell, was one of the moments that Morrison says made the circle start to feel tokenized.
“This seemed like it would have been a good opportunity to engage with the Indigenous Advisory Circle,” says Morrison of the leadership position hiring processes, citing that the candidates were asked questions about reconciliation. “We saw that as a missed opportunity.”
Morrison adds that when the circle brought up this missed opportunity to the RWB, the answer came back that the Indigenous Advisory Council was not seen as a stakeholder in these conversations. “[That] says a lot about the relationship with Indigenous people and settler society,” she says. “To me, it demonstrates that there is a long way to go and a lot of work to be done if you do not see the value in engaging with Indigenous people.”
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet has responded to the resignation of the Indigenous Advisory Circle with an open letter. The letter, signed by Tupyseva, outgoing artistic director André Lewis, and RWB board chair John Osler, reads in part that, “We are looking into the concerns [the IAC] raised in their letter to the board and want to assure you that 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. 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.”
“We regret that the trusting relationships that had been established came to such an end,” the letter continues. “Their experiences do not reflect the values we aspire to embody.”
Read the RWB's full open letter here.
For Morrison, this wording does not address the main reasons for the resignation in the first place. “I think chalking it up to a misinterpretation and miscommunication is really minimizing the core issue here, which is that we’re not seen as equal partners,” she says. “I don’t think it’s an accurate reflection of how they’ve handled the situation.”
The RWB’s open letter also outlines a series of actions that the board is committing to in response to the resignation of the Indigenous Advisory Circle. They include “mandatory and comprehensive training on Indigenous history, anti-racism, bias and inclusivity for our board and leadership at all levels”, and “an immediate review of the processes that were associated with the creation of this advisory circle, learning from the findings and identifying recommendations to make the process better.”
While Morrison says this is certainly a start on the way to improving relationships between Indigenous communities and the RWB, she is still making a point to be clear with her community that some serious work still has to completed before they are to be engaged with again.
“Truth and reconciliation, the starting point is truth,” Morrison says. “There are a lot of people who are hesitant to talk about the truth because no one wants to put themselves at risk of being blamed or held liable, which is a very Western perspective of looking at conflict resolution.”
“We’re not here to point the fingers and then leave. We were really focused as a circle on repairing the relationship, addressing the harm caused, and when you are unable to name it and you’re unable to acknowledge that you participated in that and that you perpetuated it, and you’re not taking accountability for that, we can’t even begin to have that conversation.”
Classic 107 reached out to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet to address Morrison’s specific concerns. They are referring all inquiries on this matter to their written statements, and their open letter states that they will “continue to share our plans in the coming weeks and months as we work together to ensure we remain true to our mission, vision and values.”