Arrogant national chief distorts history of indigenous headdresses
the untold story about a sacred war bonnet
By
In a CBC interview on Friday, April 26, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse-Nepinak claimed attempts by Air Canada staff to seize her “sacred headdress on Wednesday April 24 created "a pivotal learning moment in history," a perversion of both the term “learning” and “history,” if there ever was one, as shown below.
In a story that is also about undeserved indigenous privilege lazily reported across the country by the mainstream media, Woodhouse-Nepinak said she boarded a plane in Montreal on a Wednesday evening flight to Fredericton, N.B., her headdress housed in a special carrying case she usually places in the overhead compartment. This time she had carry-on luggage that she put overhead, so she stowed the case under the seat in front of her.
Flight staff told Woodhouse-Nepinak the case – not the headdress which she was allowed to carry in her lap – had to go into the cargo hold, a simple requirement based on airline stowage and safety regulations.
"Some of our teachings teach us" a headdress is "like your child, like your baby. It's with you. It's part of you" and should be handled with the respect people might give a Bible, holy oil, or hijab, she said.
That this narcissistic indigenous activist chose to apply these notions to the headgear’s container, not just the headdress, beggars belief.
Woodhouse-Nepinak is not some sanctified priestess; she’s just the chief lobbyist for Canada’s largest indigenous lobby group. Presumably, she received the headgear to encourage her to lobby for even more money, not for performing indigenous miracles.
Woodhouse-Nepinak also shared the incident in a Facebook post. “I won’t be letting anyone take away my headdress or case again,” she wrote. “Air Canada needs a protocol for First Peoples so that we are not harassed for our sacred items. Our headdresses don’t belong in garbage bags by airlines,” distorting the fact that it is normal practice to store bulkhead items like such containers in special purpose plastic bags.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a master of much ado about nothing, the same leader who called the burning of dozens of Christians churches following the May 27, 2021 Kamloops Indian Band fallacious announcement of the discovery of the remains of 215 Indian Residential School Students in unmarked graves “understandable,” termed the Woodhouse-Nepinak incident “unacceptable” and a “mistake” on the part of Air Canada. Translation: burning down churches, no problem; following airline protocol, big problem.
Woodhouse-Nepinak, who is from the tiny Pinaymootang “First Nation” in northern Manitoba, was elected the Assembly of First Nations national chief in December 2023. She received the headdress in a transfer ceremony by the Blackfoot Confederacy of the Piikani Nation in Alberta a few short weeks later.
The Assembly of First Nations called the headdress transfer “one of the highest honours among First Nations ceremonies for leadership. It validates and celebrates Chiefs’ achievements, as the eagle feathers that make up the headdress are sacred and have been blessed to help support leadership in their travels and challenges,” the Assembly noted in a news release.
None of these assertions have much validity, at least in terms of traditional pre-contact and early post-contact indigenous culture.
Headdresses, also called war bonnets are feathered headgear that were traditionally worn by male leaders of the American Plains Indian tribes and chiefdoms who earned a place of great respect for their brave feats on the battlefield, particularly as members of highly organized military societies competing with each for military honour and glory. Whether these headdresses were also considered sacred during pre-colonial times is unclear.
Today, the use of headdresses is confined in both America and Canada to political leaders, many of them inherited leaders who did nothing other than surviving birth to earn wearing them. Such leaders nevertheless flaunt them in various ceremonies as ostentatious symbols of their exalted rank, regardless of whether they were part of their cultures prior to the modern colonial and early post-colonial era or not.
As for elected indigenous leaders like Woodhouse-Nepinak, she is a member of the Pinaymootang Indian Band, traditionally a highly egalitarian Ojibway people whose ancestors had no recognized or otherwise powerful leaders occupying any “chiefly” role, a position imposed on them by the signing of the treaties and the Indian Act.
As for the “sacredness” issue, it’s hard these days to identify anything indigenous that is not considered sacred, in this case even the container housing a war bonnet.
Equally troubling, even if eagle feather sacredness was unproblematic hundreds of years ago when it was gaining from killing enemies in battle, claiming such sacredness today should be denounced as the glorification of violence.
What also needs acknowledging is that women lacked organized leadership roles in these unstratified societies during the pre-contact period and none ever wore these war bonnets until very recently. Nor is there any evidence that different indigenous ethnic groups ever exchanged headdresses with each other.
For these reasons, no credibility should be given to expressions of indignity from an Indigenous woman coming from of a classless cultural background feigning indignation about a physical object, a war bonnet, supernaturally granting them differential privileges and other trappings of hierarchy, including demanding special treatment by Air Canada denied ordinary people.
As for the perennial issue of needing “to respect” indigenous culture, it’s a difficult issue indeed for both indigenous and non-indigenous people, especially when true respect needs to be earned by exhibiting respectable behaviour, impetuous grandstanding for being treated like all other people not being a good example of this.
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report and a retired professor of anthropology, the University of Manitoba.
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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Residential School Recrimination, Repentance, and Reconciliation
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Years ago I had to check my cat as cargo and she was all alone in her cage in the cargo car of a Via Rail train from Montreal to Drummondville. So....no, sorry, no sympathy for this lady having to put a container in cargo. A CONTAINER!!!!
It's not even an Indigenous rights issue. If you hit turbulence, you don't want items flying around the cabin injuring passengers. That's it, that's all there is to it. There are no special exceptions to gravitational forces.