Mohawk promoter John Kim Bell and the CBC came under fire for using Iroquoian Masks in the Aboriginal Achievements Awards show televised April 15th. The complaint was made to the CRTC by George Miller, a Mohawk from the Six Nations reserve in Ontario. He says that the masks used were False Masks that are religious objects and that Tina Keeper and Tom Jackson trivialized them and that is sacrilege to the Iroquois. He is asking that all parties apologize to the Iroquois people.
Bell, the founder of the Canadian Arts Foundation defended their use saying that the masks were crafts sold by the Iroquois themselves. He also said that they are sold by the hundreds and the real ones are never seen outside the longhouse.
It is ironic that the masks come from a Six Nations Reserve tourist shop. Bell said that he would never even consider using the real thing.
CBC said that they didn’t define them as masks and there was no intent to be disrespectful.
Miller didn’t buy that saying that if Christian or Jewish religious symbols were used in a similar manner there would be an outcry.
This years recipients were: Rose Auper, a Calgary healer; Marlene Brant-Castellano, a Trent University professor; Frank Calder, a B.C. Nisqa’a leader; Marla Cambell, a Saskatoon Author; Yvon Dumont, lieutenant-governor of Manitoba; Phil Fontaine, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs; Elijah Harper, Manitoba Member of Parliament; Tom Jackson, Winnipeg actor and singer; Robert E. Johnson, medical student at Dalhousie University; Alwyn Morris, Olympic Gold Medal winner from Quebec; Albert C. Rock, Inventor from B.C.; Mary May Simon, an Inuit who is Canada’s first circumpolar ambassador and Mary Two-Axe Early, a Quebec Native Women’s right activist.
