African Colours Interview with Hama Goro

This is Hama Goro, the cultural manager of Soleil d’Afrique speaking with David Kaiza in an interview that was published by African Colours. He talks about his impression of the role of visual arts in his home country Mali – especially as compared to the success of African musicians in and outside Africa. And, I was wondering whether some of this also applied to Nigeria. From my limited experience I thought there were some parallels. Anyway, here some excerpts, only the bits that resonated with me in one way or the other. You can find the whole interview here.

Hama Goro is the Cultural Manager of Soleil d’Afrique, based in Mali. He is a painter as well. He attended the 4th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Johannesburg, South Africa and spoke to AfricanColours in this interview with David Kaiza. He discussed the disparity between the success of his country’s performance art – particular the world famous Malian music - and the struggling visual arts. (image courtesy of African Colours ... aright, didn't actually ask them but hope they don't mind and here's the link)

Kaiza: What is the artistic scene in Mali like?

Goro: In Mali and Africa in general, culture has a very important developmental role. If you take music in Mali – there are so many Malian musicians inside and outside the country – with big names and big performances. Culture brings a lot of money to Mali. It is a factor in the country’s development.

Art occupies a very important part in the Malian economy – music, fine art, sculpture – all these are the arts practiced in the country. Many people make a living doing art.

Let me give you the example of Oumou Sangare. She has her own hotel. She sells cars and she got all of this from her music alone. Many musicians from Mali are invited worldwide and this brings Mali up. Of course, for every successful musician, there are many who struggle and have problems making a breakthrough.

Kaiza: What is the place of the visual arts?

Goro: If you take the visual arts, you see that it is hard to make an impact in the country with it. We don’t have a local market for this. Only a few visual artists are able to make a living. Some try and give up. Some continue. Some go to do other things. For many artists, it is very difficult to make enough money to even buy materials.

Kaiza: Why the disparity; why is the music performing so well and the visual arts so badly?

Goro: I think it has to do with our traditional heritage. Take Griot. It is a tradition of singing, music about history and this has power in society. If the Griot musician comes to your house and he sings about your history, you give him some money. Even if you are poor, you still find some money to give him.

This concept developed over time and now anyone who can sing is given the opportunity to sing. In the past, to become a Griot, you had to come from a family of Griots. Because of this folklore tradition, people understand the music instantly.

You take visual arts. Before, we were doing visual arts but it was not done as art for art’s sake. It was done for symbolic, social reasons. But then the Arts School arrived, brought by Europeans who defined in their own terms what art was, how it was supposed to be done. This was not reflective of popular opinion. There was a divergence of interpretation. People were not in. There were out. It became a matter of doing what the European wanted.

In contrast, music was locally defined. There is no divergence between the interpretation of music and the popular opinion. With music, there was historical and cultural continuity.

Kaiza: In your opinion then, how can the Visual Arts connect with the people?

Goro: We are still thinking about how we visual artists can connect with the people. I am an artist. I have managed a cultural centre for 10 years. I have organized workshops and exhibitions. All along, I have been constantly thinking about the problem, how to connect with the people. I have not had a very good response so far. Of course, people are beginning to come awake to the Visual Arts, beginning to see that it can define them and the way they are living.

Kaiza: How can Art Schools, Artists and Galleries address this problem? This is after all, a problem that is felt in all of Africa?

Goro: […] I think Art Schools should play a different role to the one they are playing at the moment. I think they have to continue teaching students the basics of how to draw and mix colour. This is fine. But they have to invite the public to participate in what they are doing. They should see their role differently. They must communicate the meaning of art to the public. They have to communicate that the artist’s job is not just technical.

Thirdly the artist […] Discuss your art. Art is not just about drawing and painting. Art is also conceptual. Be more aggressive. Take your art out to the public. Create interaction between your art and the public. Today, the idea of the artist confined to the studio does not apply. We should go out and have a discourse with the public. If the public does not listen to you today, they will listen tomorrow.

Kaiza: How can the visual arts learn a lesson from music?

Goro: Where I live [sic], I think about this situation and what happens elsewhere. In Mali, the public thinks Visual Art is only for Western people. The challenge is how to disprove this idea. As I have said, music in Mali has to do with our traditions. For the visual art, we should induce the public. We have to find ways to make them see that the art is for them as well. We as artists should visit schools and introduce art when people are still young.

Kaiza: Are summits like this one useful for Africa?

Goro: Look at the list of sponsors for this summit. Are there any African sponsors? No. This is the problem. Our governments and communities don’t support art. The ministries of culture don’t get enough allocation in the budget to support art because we in Africa don’t believe in art. Our governments, our politicians, all don’t believe in art.

[…]

Mr. Goro’s work and cultural centre can be visited on www.soleildafrique.org

I thought the music – visual arts parallel he was drawing was quite interesting. Here some of my thoughts:

His thesis is that: Contemporary music is rooted in local musical traditions. In contrast contemporary visual arts, and I suspect he limits the term to ‘fine arts’ more or less (in Nigeria at least popular forms of painting are rather common, I perceive), are rooted in Westerntraditions of fine arts and, as a result, are not connected to the cultural experience of most people. I’m not an ethnomusicologist. But he’s certainly right in so far that we’re hardly speaking about classical music, the musical equivalent to fine arts I assume, in the African context. (Though this might as well be the result of my limited insight or a bias in the research and anthropological conducted.) Still I’m not sure whether that holds at close inspection. Or rather whether it holds for all or even most forms of contemporary music.

Spontaneously I only have to think of rap which, arguments of the ultimate African roots of this Afro-American form of music aside, has been imported but subsequently creatively adapted to suit local African tastes and address local African concerns. It has been imported but still connected to the cultural experience of sufficient people to make it commercially viable. So what’s the difference then?

It is that time has passed since the establishment of the first art schools and the new import could draw upon a, to an extent, globalised (and at the same time localised) shared (youth) culture?

(Lorry Art, 21^st Century, Maiduguri, my photo)

Or is it that rap music was not introduced via an institution only accessible to a selected few (with a background in Western education) like Western forms of visual art and, thus unconfined by institutional constraints, was more selectively introduced and more quickly adapted to suit local tastes and express local concerns? I say more quickly because I do identify in popular painting an adaptation of originally Western visual practices to (contemporary, urban?) local tastes and concerns? I certainly haven’t read enough to make any statement about the role of institutionalised Western style art forms in the popularisation of popular painting. My hunch, however, would rather point towards the impact of cinema, film posters, news magazines and the like. (And of course, you're certainly right there have been local traditions of wall painting, though, to my best knowledge less naturalistic in style.) Or think of the Kalabari Ancestral Screens which, according to the interpretations I have read, might have been inspired by the artists exposure to the angular, two-dimensional visual arts owned by the Kalabari's European trade partners. However, what I’m trying to point to is the voluntary and selective adaptation of popular art forms, be it music or visual arts, on the one hand and institutionalised introduction of so-called fine art forms to an originally restricted (may I say: elite?) group.

(Kalabari Ancestral Screen, late 19^th CenturyMinneapolis Institute of Arts, Source)

Or might it have something to do with the price of in particular cassettes, later CDs as compared to that of pieces of visual arts, I mean, works by academically trained artists in particular. Just wondering. I mean for a relatively small amount cassettes and CDs offer the opportunity to entertain small crowds of family, friends and acquaintances and, btw, show off once acquaintance with the latest musical trends or suggest affiliation with a particular (youth) subculture. And, even though I’m not sure about that I assume that, especially compared to pirate copies of music cassettes and CDs, a painting is expensive. Unlike a cassette, CD or mp3 file that can be played using various portable devices a painting can reasonably be displayed in one place only (alright, you can occasionally hang it elsewhere but you wouldn’t actually carry it around, wouldn’t you). Might that not also have played a role in the greater popularity of contemporary African music as opposed to contemporary African visual arts with local African audiences?

Just a few spontaneous ideas. Am I making sense? I’m kind of lacking the ethno-musical background to make a more substantive argument but I hope to hint the direction of my thoughts here.

Any kind of feedback? Any thoughts on Goro’s or my own argumentation?

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I've finally finally managed to finish a short introduction to myself for Nii and after all that work and just in case you ever wonderered who I was and didn't know how to check my complete blogger profile [at that point you’re required to imagine a big fat slightly embarrassed grin] I just got to post that here … you know, showing off that I'm still able to to complete any kind of writing, however small it might be ...

Hailing from one of Berlin’s most beautiful suburbs I literally stumbled into African Studies: I was looking for an interims option to bridge a year while I was waiting for admission to study my subject of choice. Choosing between different options of regional studies at Humboldt University (Berlin, Germany) I light-heartedly opted for the one subject school and leisure readings had taught me the least about: Africa. If I had to bridge a year why not use it to reduce one of those gaps in my knowledge? However, as I discovered exciting authors such as Syl Cheney-Coker, Wole Soyinka, Abourahman Waberi, Yvonne Vera and Tayeb Saleh (to name just a few) a year became two, I passed my intermediate examinations, participated in a student group organising readings of African literature in German translation, attended a DAAD Hausa language course in Azare (Bauchi State, Nigeria) and went on an Erasmus exchange year at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London, UK).

For the first time SOAS offered me the opportunity to combine my newly acquired passion for the products of African cultures with my childhood passion for visual arts. I returned to Berlin intend to write my Magister dissertation about African arts. Inspired by John Picton’s (then still teaching at SOAS) enthusiasm for Nigerian arts and my previous experience in Azare I was hoping to conduct fieldwork in Nigeria and consider in my dissertation one Nigerian art world. However, for a variety of reasons my fieldwork trip was cancelled on short notice and in its stead I opted to return to SOAS for my MA. During the course of the year the idea for the PhD I’m currently undertaking emerged. I started reading broadly about the history and culture of the geographical region north of Abuja and effectively turned my MA dissertation into a literature review on Hausa arts and material culture. After another year of reading and convincing myself that a PhD was indeed desirable I returned to SOAS as a PhD candidate in September 2006.

Thanks to the financial assistance of the UK’s AHRC I was able to undertake a year’s fieldwork in Maiduguri, Kano and Zaria from which I returned in October 2008 with notebooks full of information I’m still struggling to organise and condense into a thesis.

And, just in case you wondered: yes, I’m actually still struggling. In fact, for the last few weeks, been struggling not to loose faith in my ability to ever pull that off … And I’m missing Naija, hating the fact that I won’t make it back as planned. Not even now … But for now, it’s all about getting started into another academic year … Oh, and did I mention I was grateful for any feedback on how to improve on that, the intro to myself I mean, I mean, stuff for which I don't need to change my past or lie about it ...

Update on why I don't use 'primitive' or 'tribe'/'tribal' when writing about African Arts

Aright, just I case you needed another gross example of (Western, again: how ever you want to define that) mainstream ideas of ‘the tribal’, especially with regard to Africa[1] I'll link you to this rather bad piece of music: Kumbaya by Peaceman (aka Sir Ivan aka Ivan Wilzig).

I’m not going to analyse it for you in any depth but I’ve written a comment elsewhere. And there’s some background and discussion on Stuff White People Do, which btw does quite a good job in a critical analysis of a lot of stuff that could be described as ‘white (popular) culture,’ though I suspect as to yet nobody has yet made a serious effort to define this. But, in a quite cynical kind of way, I’m quite impressed with how the director actually managed to combine two major stereotypes about the continent – primitive, though sexy people engaged in everlasting tribal warfare and it’s oh so stunning wildlife – and the white man to the rescue trope in a music video of only 4:30 mins length. He even managed to squeeze in the stereotype of Africans as overtly sexualised beings. And, all this as background for, as my friend put it, the self-staging of some mediocre (judging by this song) techno singer as do-gooder.

See, and its against this background that I feel uneasy with the use of terms such as ‘primitive’ and ‘tribe/tribal’ in writing about Africa. Conceptualisations in Africa, by scholars, politicians and members of the wider public, might of course not carry such derogative connotations but over here they usually do ...

I'm sure there are more of them out there, but I'll leave it at that. They don't deserve the honour, don't you think? …

P.S. And, before you ask, yes I have since figured how to embed a Youtube video but I can’t be asked to bestow the honour (again, after all I posted it on Facebook to get my friends opinion and wrote a comment elsewhere) on this piece of mediocre music with its racist-sexist visual background.

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[1] Yeah, nobody makes the effort to distinguish different countries on that level of argument. Remember, Binyavanga Wainaina’s How to Write about Africa? That comment about writing about Africa as if it was a country, that was no joke. Its not that uncommon. And even those generally not unfamiliar with moving in the international arena might not always be able to distinguish between Switzterland, Austria, Lichtenstein and Burkina Faso, right Mr. Steinbrück?

On the Blogs: Orientalism, Culture and Appropriation

Been around the blogosphere again and, following a completely different thread I stumbled across this … Okay, this might not be completely hitting the nail on the top topic-wise but I think this might provide some interesting introductory reading with regard to representations and appropriations of the ethnic and cultural Other (Africa, Middle East etc.) in Western art and culture (and I guess, similar studies could be undertaken vice versa?). It’s online; it’s free; considers the re-appropriation of the stereotype back at the place of origin and covers examples from colonial into contemporary (popular) culture. It’s a blog post of course and no academic compendium. Consider it an introduction and make amble use of the links and, if you have access, the literature references.

So, for a start and quick introduction check out Farah’s three part series of blog posts on Orientalism, Culture and Appropriation at Nuseiba. [this links you through to part I, here you find part II, The Translation of Orientalism into the Vernacular, and part III on Re-Constituting the Orient: Punks, Muslims and Harem Pants]

Soyinka on Conversations with HIstory

I've finally figured how to embed a video (yeah, no comments pls. on me taking THAT long to figure it … pls.!!!) ... so here you go, just for the sake of doing it ... and, well, Soyinka's certainly worth the while anyway ...

P.S. More Conversations with History videos can be found at the UCTV’s page here and in case you encounter any problems with the embedded video here’s the link.

Nigerian Art(ists) on Youtube Edu

Been shopping around Youtube Edu and found this, a year old, but never mind …

[again having problems with embedding a video but here you go for the link: El Anatsui: My Work]

Alright, and that might be of interest to anybody interested in fashion:

Wrapping the Rapping: Cloth and Politics in Post-World War II Nigeria

by Professor Judith Byfield

Still watching myself. Enjoy!

Bisi Silva: The New Face of Contemporary Nigerian Painting

Bisi Silva writing in Next Magazine:

The ‘new' face of Contemporary Nigerian Painting

In 2000, British curator, Eddie Chambers, was a guest speaker in Lagos at a programme on contemporary visual art and culture organised under the auspices of IVAC which has now metamorphosed into the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Lagos.

Chambers also had the opportunity to visit local galleries and interact with some artists. While he found the level of activity within the art sector considerably dynamic, he was nonetheless dismayed by the stasis of artistic output, considering it ‘apolitical’ and ‘ahistorical’, existing largely in a contextual and temporal vacuum.

In the same vein, Princeton University-based academic, artist and curator Chika Okeke-Agulu, on a curatorial and research visit to Nigeria about 3 years ago, remarked that contemporary art in Nigeria seemed more in tune with late 19th century art trends than it did with cutting edge 21st century forms.

These damning criticisms have, unfortunately, been echoed by visiting curators and art critics. However, the situation has been steadily and visibly changing over the last ten years, especially among a handful of extremely active, established, and mid-career artists; and a growing number of emerging artists.

In a world that has become increasingly interconnected, Nigerian artists, like their counterparts around the world, are taking full advantage of information and communication channels such as the internet, email and mobile technology as well increased mobility.

Engaging subject matters and experimental modes of artistic articulation are gradually becoming de rigeur as artists partake in activities ranging from solo and group exhibitions to biennials, art fairs and art festivals on the continent and around the world.

Pushing the boundaries

Within this context, the current exhibition of new work in mixed media and the painterly installations by acclaimed Lagos-based artist, Kainebi Osahenye, at the CCA (full disclosure; the writer is a director of the centre, which has a programming policy of presenting experimental artistic practices), highlights huge strides within the local circle.

No longer satisfied or challenged by the focus on two dimensional, traditional painting, this current incarnation with Trash-ing builds on the continuous process of experimentation which has pushed the boundaries of Osahenye’s painting.

Trash-ing signals a new departure from his well-known large-scale neo-expressionist paintings towards the incorporation of more conceptual concerns through a format that increasingly borrows from an installation orientated process.

Losing none of his gestural signature strokes, nor the luminosity of his colours or the edginess of his subject matter, he highlights some of the issues that have pervaded his work for nearly twenty years of artistic production.

In the recent works, existential, political, religious and everyday themes which habitually manifest with a degree of playfulness are presented less implicitly in favour of a suggestiveness, which attests to the state of maturity he has attained in his career.

Appropriation as a tool

Osahenye moves seamlessly from the metaphysical to the physical, from the unreal to the real, foregrounding issues for which he is well-known and expanding on others such as globalisation, consumerism, man’s inhumanity and the environment, forming the nodal focus of this new body of work.

In so doing, the exhibition’s title succeeds in playing on the multiple connotations of the word ‘trash’ to signify destruction, abuse, rejection and waste. It also serves as an explicit reminder on the one hand, of man’s disregard for man and on the other, his neglect of the environment.

Using appropriation as a tool, Osahenye’s most ambitious work to date is the ceiling to wall installation titled ‘Casualty’ (2009).

On sighting the burnt cans near a garbage dump of a hotel in Auchi, Osahenye states that he ‘was instantly confronted with thoughts of war, cruelty, melancholy, pain, displacement, anguish and deformity and I started conceiving ways to instal this large scale work to express the force and the power that I felt.’

Empty containers of bottled water, Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Star beer, Malta Guinness, Heineken, Power Horse and other global brands of carbonated drinks representing the ‘detritus of urban existence’ are cut, coloured, sliced, squashed, squeezed, burnt - resulting in a large scale poetic installation.

Osahenye employs this materiality to comment on the predatory nature of globalisation and the hegemony of consumerist behaviour at the expense of and to the detriment of the environment. The result becomes a beautiful yet scathing attack on the culture of Trash-ing.

Not just a fad

The symbol of the cruciform is never far away in his works and the juxtaposition of Crossing with Emissaries results in an arresting dialogic. Crossing is made out of several square slabs in which empty oil paint tubes have been flattened and pasted and in some cases painted over and arranged in the form of a cross.

On the other hand, Emissaries takes the form of three large sized mixed media triptych paintings referencing the symbol of the holy trinity.

Osahenye’s recent works are less about the ‘trendy’ fad in recycling, currently being used to contextualise the work of some contemporary artists from Africa using found objects, than in acknowledging the limitation of the traditional mode of painting whilst simultaneously recognising the abilities and the possibilities of pushing boundaries without losing the essence of the painterly.

The death of painting?

This new direction throws up and provides an apt time to ask, could these works signal the death of painting in Nigeria? Or more appropriately, could it signal the beginning of the ‘new’ face of contemporary Nigerian painting?

The time worn cliché ‘Painting is dead, Long live painting’ finds resonance and pertinence within our locality where little or no in-depth discourse around painting - overwhelmingly the medium of choice - is discussed.

The death of painting has been much heralded as in the 19th century with the advent of photography, and in the late 20th century with the bombardment of new technology driven media in which photography, video and net art were the culprits/enemies.

However, like many older painters such as American John Currin, German Gerhard Richter, and his British contemporaries Jenny Saville, Glenn Brown or Chris Ofili, Kainebi’s work highlights the elasticity and the durability of this quintessential medium.

If this is not the ‘new’ face of painting, it certainly does indicate that the ‘old’ face is no longer acceptable. Trash-ing presages a transition that is sorely needed within the local contemporary art scene to rupture the interminable stasis and the conservative hegemony that could finally trigger the actual death of painting within the country.

Bisi Silva, an independent curator and writer, is the artistic director of the CCA.

This is why I don't use 'primitive' or, indeed, 'tribe'/'tribal' when writing about African Arts

I suspect I could write pages over pages of well argued academic reasoning of why I don’t think terms such as ‘primitive’ or, indeed, ‘tribal’ make for good qualifiers in discussions of African or, in fact, other non-Western arts and cultures. I could never make as clear a point as this … well, I suspect it was meant to be a caricature? So, for lack of a better word, let’s call it caricature. This, er, caricature of Barack Obama probably makes a clearer point of the connotations and mental images that terms such as ‘primitive’ and ‘tribal’ carry in Western (by which I mean northern American and European) mainstream public discourse than academic argument could ever achieve.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think this is vile. And, not even particularly original. In the same way that the Danish cartoons were vile and unoriginal. And, in the same way this caricature should better maybe better be ignored rather than providing the caricature (and the ideology that inspires their producers) free extra publicity by public outrage. In fact, I believe that is, in both cases, what’s been the intention behind the publication of these images. Nevertheless, I can’t resist a quick analysis here to, once and for all, get my point across regarding the inappropriateness of terms such as ‘primitive’ and ‘tribal.’ Now, this is what spontaneously came to my mind when I stumbled across this image:

Let’s start with a quick description as the basis of any further reading of the image:

As you can see, the US president’s portrait photograph has been copied and pasted into the original image of a man who wears what, from my uninformed perspective, looks like an indigenous Papua New Guinean costume. It consists of an elaborate headdress decorated with colourful bird feathers, a nose ornament made from (I guess) bone, a set of (leather) necklaces and an apron made from some kind of (fish or snake) skin. The latter is decorated by three pieces of red cloth to which hear hair and some other kind of embellishment has been applied like sequins. He wears bands of leather around his legs just below the knee and on his forearms. The man sits on a simple wooden bench in or in front of what appears like a simple wooden shelter. In front of him he holds what looks like a simple, self-made wooden axe with a short metal blaze.

Underneath the altered photograph, Obama Care has been written. Now, I don’t happen to follow the health care debate in the United States - this certainly is the context in which the image needs to be seen if further interpreted – and cannot make any further sense of the symbol that constitutes the o in Obama. The symbol constituting the c in Care, however, very much reminds me of the hammer and sickle symbol I happen to be familiar with from my East German upbringing. Hence, I assume it’s a reference to socialism.

Getting back to the upper image of Barack Obama in what I suggested might be an indigenous Papua New Guinean context (I’d be grateful for any corrections here or, if possible, any reference/link to the original photograph): In any case, dominant currents of Western discourse identify the depicted man and, by extension the current US president, as a ‘tribal man’ and do so mainly on the basis of his costume. I doubt I can make a good argument of why this particular type of dress is identified as ‘tribal’ in dominant Western discourses. But you might want to type ‘tribe’ or better still ‘tribal man’ into Google’s picture search engine and will find pictures of sparsely clad people in costumes somehow reminiscent of this man’s dress or otherwise looking extremely obscure to somebody familiar with Western costumes or body images only. Visually, that’s what informs mainstream Western discourses of ‘tribe’ and ‘tribal.’ In any case, more important than this is the question of, why pasting Obama’s portrait into this image? What’s the point of displaying president Obama’s portrait this way?

Well, in 19^th century discourses of men’s social evolution, more concretely the evolution of social groups from mere kinship groups towards nation states, tribes were believed to be situated somewhere between bands and (European style) nation states. Let me just refer you to Chris Low’s (free access) article on the topic again. Here it is sufficient to recall that according to this model then, tribal people are inferior to those living in nation states. An idea that fed into arguments legitimating the colonisation of the rest of the world by European nation states: They would bring civilisation to the culturally and, contemporaries believed, intellectually inferior tribes. And, lest you forgot that, the here discussed picture of president Obama reminds you: a simple wooden bench, a simple shelter, and a simple axe, no sophisticated technology here.

Here then is the reason that the opponents of Obama’s health care reform chose to depict the president like this.

For simple just read ‘primitive.’ And remember that, according to the above mentioned models of social evolution, rather than historical coincident (you might want to read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel in that regard) an innate lack of intellectual ability is to blame for this ‘tribal’ man’s lack of sophisticated technology.

Is that the men you want to entrust your health to?

Now, the very fact that those behind this caricature consider this an effective means of undermining the president’s authority and question his (intellectual) ability, I believe, can be taken as indicative of how deep such derogative ideas are still rooted in major strands of Western public discourse. At least among those behind this poster and their target audiences. And how closely they are still aligned with terms such as ‘primitive’ or, indeed, ‘tribe.’

With this at the back of your mind, don’t you think that qualifiers such as ‘primitive’ and ‘tribal’ are inherently racist? At least, when applied to non-Western cultures? At least, when applied used by Western commentators.

Or, does anybody think they would have employed a similar image if Obama wasn't Afro-American. Or would somehow, the connotations have been different? (Think of Farewell to the King with Nick Nolte among others.) - Oh, lest I forget, there have been some interesting analyses of the role of race/racism in the current health care debates in the United States, more concretely their escalation. This is the one that made me stumble upon the here discussed image. [It’s on the main page.]

P.S. Of course, there are different uses of the term tribe. For reasons not at all clear to me, tribe appears to be an acceptable terminology when talking about Native Americans: Sidney Kasfir mentioned this on the Duke UP Roundtable. Now, in that particular context, does it carry derogative meanings as well? … … … In any case, it is certainly no coincidence that the here discussed poster does not reference any indigenous North American culture.