Celebrating Indigenous cultures starts by listening to members of Indigenous communities.
Concordia has been taking steps to facilitate education for Indigenous students and spread knowledge of Indigenous cultures. Among these steps, the university hosts a yearly Rock Your Mocs event.
Rock Your Mocs is a week-long event that celebrates Indigenous cultures through photos of moccasins. Each year, the panel invites Indigenous guests to share their stories and talk about Indigenous cultures and the fabrication of moccasins.
“The purpose is really to highlight and celebrate Indigenous cultures through our clothing, our footwear, all different aspects of our physical identity and our connection to our history, and our ancestors,” said Aidan Tecumsah Condo, the events coordinator for the Office of Indigenous Directions (OID).
Condo also explained that this year, they decided to include more Indigenous voices by inviting Indigenous speakers from the Arctic, Polynesia, and the prairies of Canada.
“We wanted to expand our topic, and we wanted to talk about a broader scope of Indigenous regalia and clothing and how that impacts culture and identity,” Condo said.
Indigenous clothing and accessories have been at the centre of misconceptions and appropriation, especially around Halloween. This panel aimed to educate and share their cultures among Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants.
“Part of the Rock Your Mocs [is] to kind of educate, because a lot of people have misconceptions about clothing and stuff, and a lot of people still use the wrong terms like ‘costumes,’” Condo said.
Since educating and sharing are at the forefront of Rock Your Mocs, the structure of the panel was closer to a relaxed conversation rather than a presentation. The goal was to encourage people to share and ask questions.
On Nov. 18, panelists Glenn Cruz and Natasha MacDonald were invited to speak. Cruz shared insight into Māori culture as well as his own experience as a Māori and Hakka instructor.
Cruz shared his love of connecting by sharing his experience with people, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
“As long as there’s respect and you’re taught from a credible source, it’s appropriate for others who are not Māori,” he said.
MacDonald shared that she used to feel disconnected from her Inuit culture, having moved away from her community at a young age.
“I was having an identity crisis and I wasn’t sure how to express myself anymore,” MacDonald said.
At some point in her life, she tried to reconnect with her language because losing it felt like losing a part of herself, she explained. Making art has been a way for her to embrace her Indigenous identity.
Allan Vicaire, the senior advisor of the OID, explained that they always strive for new topics and speakers.
“For me, it’s a theme about how urban Indigenous people connect to their culture, whether or not they live in their communities,” said Vicaire.
For future events, the OID is hoping to widen perspectives further and invite Indigenous guests from different parts of the world.
“We’re hoping that next year, if we continue to do this, what other Indigenous cultures can we bring [to] talk about similarities, but also maybe distinctions in each community?” said Vicaire.
