CROWN ASKED FOR JAIL

Edmonton police officer will have criminal record but no jail time for assaulting Indigenous man

Emily Mertz 

© Wes Rosa, Global News The law courts in downtown Edmonton Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020.

Edmonton Police Service Const. Michael Partington, who was found guilty of a 2019 assault, was sentenced Thursday. He was fined $2,000 and will have a criminal record but serve no jail time.

Read more:
Crown seeks jail time for Edmonton police officer convicted of assaulting Indigenous man

Partington was found guilty of assault in August. The charge stemmed from an arrest that took place in the area of 115 Avenue and 95 Street on Aug. 27, 2019.

Another officer had stopped an Indigenous man for riding a bike on a sidewalk without a bell.

Video of the confrontation shows the victim on the ground in a prone position. He screams in pain as the officers both kneel down over him. The footage shows Partington drive his knee into the man’s back.

Video: Edmonton police officer charged with assault

Partington was joined in court for the sentencing Thursday by his wife, who is pregnant and due this month.

The judge acknowledged the positions of the Crown and defence "could not be further apart."

The judge, Hon. Peter Ayotte, said the prominent aggravating factor was breach of trust. Ayotte said altercation involves violence, the video shows it resulted in "immediate significant pain."

"The offender, in committing offence, abused a position of trust and authority," Ayotte said.

The judge said the fact that the victim is a racialized minority makes it an increasingly relevant matter.

The defence argued Partington did not know the man was Indigenous at the time.

The judge also said there is a strong argument for making this a matter of public record.

The judge said granting the discharge would be contrary to the public interest.

READ MORE: Video from 2018 shows Edmonton police officer using his knee on man’s neck during arrest

The incident was caught on camera and widely circulated, sparking a debate over the officer’s actions and potential consequences.

Crown prosecutor Carla MacPhail argued on Oct. 27 that Partington should serve jail time — 60-90 days — followed by 12-18 months probation.

MacPhail said the context of the assault was a man riding a bike with no bell — a “very non-urgent situation” that led to a “violent confrontation” with “extreme consequences for all involved.”

MacPhail pointed out that the victim is a member of a racialized minority, and while she was not alleging the assault was racially motivated, that fact “can’t be ignored.”

She argued the victim was in a position of vulnerability and said Partington’s knee could have resulted in worse injuries.

She said jail time would serve as a wider deterrent for other law enforcement officials and would denounce Partington’s actions.

READ MORE: Edmonton Police Service constable charged with assault in relation to 2019 arrest

The defence argued that message is already being sent loud and clear and jail time isn’t required.

Partington’s lawyer Mike Danyluik argued that news coverage of the incident serves as a big deterrent and pointed out the video will be online forever and the fear of job loss or the financial impact is a stronger deterrent than jail time would be.

The defence argued that it’s dangerous to bring race into the case since Partington saw the suspect for only for a few moments and his face was turned away.

The defence had sought a suspended sentence — 12 to 18 months probation, 120 to 180 hours of community service and instructional programming on police use of force.

Danyluik argued Partington has led an otherwise exemplary personal and professional life apart from this one moment.

-- With files from Morgan Black, Global News

Long Plain First Nation settles century-old land claim with feds

A Manitoba First Nation has finally settled a land dispute with the federal government that has gone on for more than a century.

Long Plain First Nation has announced that the federal government has agreed to pay them approximately $32 million in compensation, stemming from a deal agreed upon way back in 1916.

The agreement will also see the Ojibway and Dakota community that sits near the city of Portage la Prairie be given the option to acquire up to 708 hectares of land.

The community first submitted a claim in 1999 arguing the federal government had, in 1916, failed to administer land sales according to the terms of a surrender deal, but the claim was not accepted for negotiations until September of 2011, more than 10 years after it was filed.

The compensation agreement was recently both ratified and formally completed by Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller.

Long Plain First Nation Chief Dennis Meeches held the role of Chief in 1999 when the claim was first filed and said he has been fighting for the settlement ever since.

“It took us more than 20 years to finally get this settlement,” Meeches said while speaking to the Winnipeg Sun on Thursday. “So this is a long time coming, but we are happy and we are relieved to finally get this done.”

Meeches added he is happy to see compensation after what he said was decades of the federal government in Canada taking land from First Nations people.

“This was just another example of the treaties being signed and then the federal government just continuously coming after our lands,” he said.

Meeches said the compensation will have positive impacts on the community and its members.

“The settlement will ensure that our children will enjoy a bright and prosperous future.”

In a statement released by Minister Miller, he said he believes the agreement will work to right some of the wrongs the federal government has inflicted on Long Plain First Nation over many decades.

“This achievement marks a significant step toward addressing the wrongs done to the community and rebuilding Canada’s relationship with Long Plain First Nation,” Miller said.

“Through mutual collaboration and the community’s engagement, this agreement between Long Plain First Nation and Canada represents a mutual understanding to rectify the error in our history for the members of the community and for the generations to come.”

Miller also applauded Meeches for the work he has been doing for more than 20 years to seek compensation for the community.

“Congratulations to Chief Meeches and Long Plain First Nation on the successful completion of this historic settlement,” Miller said. “We recognize the harm caused to Long Plain First Nation by Canada’s failure to administer the land sales according to the terms of the surrender.”

According to the federal government Long Plain First Nation community members will now benefit from a trust annuity, something normally used in estate planning to minimize taxes on large financial transactions.

The feds said that individuals will also receive a share of annual distribution money.

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

Dave Baxter, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Winnipeg Sun

Ontario Academic Looks At History Of Forced Sterilization Of Indigenous Women

(ANNews) – An academic at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., has been researching the forced sterilization of Indigenous women for more than a decade.

Karen Stote, who teaches Gender and Women’s Studies, told Alberta Native News that her interest in the topic goes back to her undergraduate years in the early aughts, when her Indigenous peers and teachers told her about the eugenics practiced against Indigenous women in their communities.

“I went looking for something to read on the issue and there was nothing to tangibly read,” Stote said.

There have historically been more than 1,200 Indigenous people forced to lose their reproduction capabilities, with the vast majority of them women, at Indian Hospitals across Canada, including Camsell Hospital in Edmonton.

Stote released a book in 2015, entitled An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women, which was based on her PhD research.

“We already know that Alberta and British Columbia had eugenic legislation in place and that in Alberta, Indigenous people were disproportionately targeted,” said Stote.

Indigenous people made up three percent of Alberta’s population, but by the time the eugenics legislation was repealed in the 1970s, 25 percent of its victims were Indigenous, she said.

But sterilization continued after the eugenics program ended, with the justification shifting from one of racial inferiority, which had fallen into disrepute, to birth control, which became legalized in 1969.

“It made the issue something between the doctor and their patient,” said Stote. “For Indigenous people, interacting with western medicine has been used as a tool of colonialism. There’s a fundamentally coercive power dynamic going on there.”

Stote said research on the topic has found “consistent problems with informed consent” from the women being sterilized, who were pressured into doing so by health authorities, often in a language they didn’t speak.

She’s working on a new book based on the testimonies of 100 Indigenous women — 60 of them in Saskatchewan — who have come forward with their experiences of being forcibly sterilized from the ‘70s to as recently as 2018.

“When you look at those documents, there’s a consistent trend of viewing Indigenous women’s reproduction as problematic,” Stote said, outlining how many Indigenous people who left their reserves due to poverty found themselves living in the same conditions in cities.

“There’s a trend there of viewing Indigenous people and women in poverty as being a drain on provincial budgets.”

Sterilization is just one of many forms of violence used by settler society against Indigenous women, she added.

“There are connections between the violence that Indigenous women experience on their bodies and the violence that is being committed against Indigenous lands,” said Stote. “Non-Indigenous people have a responsibility to play in ending that violence.”

Jeremy Appel, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Alberta Native News

BC

Bills to uphold Indigenous rights given royal assent

Bills 18 and 29 celebrated receiving official royal assent on Thursday, Nov. 25. Previously introduced on Nov. 17, the bills added Indigenous identity as a protected ground under the B.C. Human Rights Code. This was the province’s next steps in advancing Indigenous human rights and reconciliation for the trauma they endured through residential school.

“Through Bill 29, we have also added a non-derogation clause to the Interpretation Act. This clause makes it clear that provincial laws uphold, and do not diminish, the rights of Indigenous Peoples as outlined under Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982,” says David Eby, Attorney General, and Murray Rankin, Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation in a provincial press release. “Bill 29 also requires that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples be used to assist in resolving disputes over the meaning of B.C.’s acts and regulations.”

Eby and Rankin also addressed the longstanding systemic racism that Indigenous peoples endure. Despite the recent advances in reconciling these past horrors, there is still a long way to go.

“In the Declaration Act – which passed unanimously in the B.C. legislature two years ago tomorrow – we outlined the importance of including Indigenous Peoples meaningfully in our work to ensure provincial laws are consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” they add. “That commitment was at the forefront as we developed these bills.”

Haley Grinder, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Columbia Valley Pioneer

There’s a story in every number as Indigenous people contribute to Alberta’s economy

A report released last month by MNP and ATB Financial draws a single conclusion: Indigenous people in Alberta are already valuable contributors to the economy, but with the right support, that contribution could increase.

Clayton Norris, vice president of Indigenous services for the national accounting, tax and business consulting firm of MNP, says he always knew that. But helping to author the report, Opening the Door to Opportunity: Reporting on the Economic Contribution of Indigenous Peoples in Alberta, put it all in perspective.

“I've been doing this for 20 years and I was surprised to find when we aggregated the data it just grew and grew and grew, and we based it in actual financials that were publicly available,” said Norris, who three years ago became a status member with the Cold Lake First Nation.

The data comes from 2019. Sources include the Alberta government, various federal departments, First Nation financial statements published through the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, the Métis Nation of Alberta, the Métis Settlements General Council, Alberta Assembly of First Nations and a number of Indigenous business associations.

Those figures show, among other factors, that the Indigenous economy in Alberta generated $6.74 billion of gross domestic product (GDP), equal to the GDP generated by the province’s agricultural sector.

The Indigenous economy’s GDP accounted for two per cent of the provincial GDP.

This is the first such report done specifically focusing on the Alberta economy.

While the dollar figures and percentages are impressive, Norris wants readers to understand that the report goes beyond the numbers.

“I think when we look at the findings of the report, the diversity of the businesses that are out there, in almost every single industry, there’s almost a story to be told in every single number. When you look at the distribution of income of businesses, it’s really high in one area and really low in another. Why is that? Is there an opportunity there?” said Norris.

He believes the report is “for many purposes… (and) for all Albertans.”

For governments at all levels, he says, it’s to understand the economic impact of Indigenous peoples in Alberta right now.

For industry, it’s to understand the demographics of growing communities and the opportunities this presents.

“For the nations themselves (it’s) knowing there's been some real successes out there,” said Norris.

But just as important, he says, are the gaps the report highlights.

The average income of an Indigenous person in Alberta is $44,232 compared to the $63,853 for the non-Indigenous population. The employment rate for Indigenous people sits at 55 per cent. With approximately 544,000 businesses in the province, fewer than 3,100 are Indigenous-owned.

According to the report, narrowing the gap in income by supporting between 11,500 and 14,000 jobs could generate between $2.5 billion and $3 billion, with more spending per Indigenous household and the majority of that spending done in non-Indigenous communities. This increase in Indigenous revenue would in turn generate annual tax revenues of between $500 million and $600 million.

While the report points out where gaps exist and the significance of those gaps in dollar figures, it doesn’t offer solutions.

“We focused on the economic impact, but I would definitely say additional investments in all those areas—

Because such a wide range of monetary and human resource investments are required, Norris sees narrowing that gap as the responsibility of a wide range of players, including federal, provincial and municipal governments, industry, and Indigenous governments.

“Everybody’s got something to contribute,” he said, including MNP.

According to the report, MNP has a dedicated team of 300 professionals who work with more than 250 Indigenous nations and over 800 clients.

ATB, which partnered on the report, has committed to providing access to capital. It has also created an Indigenous financial services team in meeting Calls to Action 92 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the legacy of residential schools.

“We look at it from what we do, accounting, tax, and consulting. Let’s support those things but what we do can’t be successful on its own. We need the educators, we need the health, we need the infrastructure in communities in terms of housing and opportunities for businesses to be created. We need the government programs to support it,” said Norris.

“We’re talking about all of the economic impacts, but none of that gets done without healthy, safe, vibrant communities. Until we get further into investments in all of those things … we’re not going to achieve any economic opportunities or any economic reconciliation until the bare needs are met.”

Support is needed even more now. The measures to control the coronavirus pandemic have had a big impact on Indigenous communities, says Norris. With schools going on-line and connectivity poor on many reserves, Indigenous students didn’t fare as well their non-Indigenous counterparts.

“There’s a big asterisk on the 2019 numbers as we wait to see what the true impacts COVID has had,” said Norris.

Read the report at https://www.indigenouseconomicimpact.ca/

Windspeaker.com

By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com, Windspeaker.com

Alberta Indigenous delegates to visit Pope in Vatican City this month hope for apology

Lauren Boothby 

POSTMEDIA

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Angelina (Angie) Crerar takes part in a news conference on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, where she was introduced as one of three Alberta Indigenous delegates who will travel to Vatican City this month to meet with Pope Francis.

Two Alberta Métis delegates slated to meet the Pope later this month say they are hoping for an apology and for acknowledgement of the harms caused by Canada’s residential school system.

Gary Gagnon and Angelina Crerar, both representing the Métis Nation, are set to visit Vatican City with more than two dozen Indigenous elders and leaders from across the country Dec. 17-20. Gagnon and Crerar, speaking at a Thursday news conference in Edmonton, said meeting with Pope Francis on behalf of their communities, and being able to share their stories, is significant to them.

Gagnon, from the St. Albert Métis settlement and a long-time Edmonton Catholic Schools cultural facilitator, said it will be like a “pilgrimage” and he hopes to be a “voice for the voiceless.”

“I can only hope that there will be movement from the words that we share from our hearts,” he said Thursday. “I think there is nothing better for us … to hear those two-and-a-half words ‘we’re sorry’ and then just move on.”

© David Bloom David Bloom Gary Gagnon takes part in a news conference on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, where he was introduced as one of three Alberta Indigenous delegates who will travel to Vatican City this month to meet with Pope Francis. David Bloom/Postmedia

Gagnon said he feels overwhelmed and wants to get the message right when sharing stories from his community in a short window of time.

Video: Member of Indigenous delegation looks ahead to meeting with Pope (cbc.ca)

Pope Francis has scheduled three one-hour meetings, one each with First Nations, Métis and Inuit representatives, as part of reconciliation efforts.

Crerar — a Métis knowledge-keeper, elder from Grande Prairie, and residential school survivor — said an apology coming from the Pope would be meaningful because of her high esteem for him, and it’s something others want.

“He’s the only one that should give us one,” she said after the news conference. “This is our Pope.”

The third Alberta delegate, Chief Wilton Littlechild chosen by the Assembly of First Nations, was unable to attend Thursday’s announcement. In a news release from the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton, Littlechild, who is a residential school survivor and advocated for Indigenous peoples with the United Nations for more that 40 years, said Indigenous communities have never given up the need to heal.

“We are going and that should be a message in itself. We are willing to work with this and with you,” he said. “We are putting our hand out, meet halfway and let’s shake hands. It’s really important to show good intent.”

Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith and Calgary Bishop William McGrattan are among the Canadian bishops set to accompany the delegates.

McGrattan said he hopes the Pope will stand in solidarity with Catholic Bishops of Canada who issued an apology this fall.

lboothby@postmedia.com
@laurby

Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith takes part in a news conference on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, where Angelina (Angie) Crerar and Gary Gagnon were introduced as Alberta Indigenous delegates who will travel to Vatican City this month to meet with Pope Francis. David Bloom/Postmedia

Calgary Bishop William McGrattan takes part in a news conference on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, where Angelina (Angie) Crerar and Gary Gagnon were introduced as Alberta Indigenous delegates who will travel to Vatican City this month to meet with Pope Francis. David Bloom/Postmedia

The labor shortage is permanent, survey suggests
insider@insider.com (Juliana Kaplan) 

© Provided by Business Insider Rachel Flores

Labor shortages have persisted for months, as employers scramble to hire and retain workers.

A new survey shows unemployed workers may not return anytime soon, if at all.

It suggests that workers might be driving a more permanent shift in the labor market.

For months, employers have been telling stories of a labor shortage, as they struggle to hire and fill understaffed workplaces.

They may be singing this tune for a long time.

The right-leaning US Chamber of Commerce polled 529 Americans who became unemployed during the pandemic, and haven't returned to work as of early November. Of the respondents, more than half (53%) said they're just somewhat active, or not "very active at all," in their job search. A whopping 65% said that they don't expect to return before 2022, and a third don't expect to return before the April of 2022.

Finally, 8% of respondents said they "never plan to return to work." Goldman Sachs researchers previously estimated that 3.4 million people left the labor force. About 1.5 million were early retirees, and 1 million were on-time retirements. The number of self-employed workers has also ticked up amidst labor shortages.

All of this adds up to one thing: Workers may not be coming back anytime soon. They're demanding higher pay, more safety measures, and better benefits. In many cases, they decided after surviving a pandemic that life was too short to work in a job they don't like.

Now, the Chamber's survey suggests that labor shortages may be more permanent amidst a "Great Realization," as a good chunk of the usual labor force remains on the sidelines — perhaps for forever.

It'll 'remain tough' to get workers in 2022

A note from S&P global economists led by Beth Ann Bovinos said that it will "likely remain tough" to find workers in 2022, and those workers will cost businesses more. Right now, according to S&P, 45% of the people who left the labor force are prime-age workers — people ages 25-54 — and "their return is key to stabilizing the job market." That's 1.4 million workers, 68% of whom are women.

Labor constraints are driven by people who left the labor force, according to S&P, meaning people who aren't actively working or job searching. That means those aren't opting to stay unemployed and receive benefits.

And, while S&P estimates that 58% of the 3 million exits are temporary, it's still unclear when they will return. For those 1.4 million workers, it probably won't be until "pandemic-related issues are resolved." As Omicron, a new coronavirus variant, starts to make its way through the US, it seems likely that "pandemic-related issues" will stick around.

At the same time, employed workers have been increasingly acting with their feet. In September, 4.4 million workers quit their jobs, marking the sixth month of near-record quits. In other words, for half of 2021, workers quit like never before, and showed no signs of slowing.

Anecdotally, businesses have had success retaining and hiring workers by keeping wages and benefits high. Much of this has been attributed to workers yielding more leverage, although some economists have noted that wage gains are still a drop in the bucket, and may not stick around without structural changes like a minimum wage hike.

But as workers begin to reenvision work and what it means to them — and thousands take to the picket line to demand better conditions — labor leaders are hoping to take advantage of a pivotal moment to build worker power and collective action.

“The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer: Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji and the Case of the Foreigner in the English Village” by Shrabani Basu


Injustice produces indignation at those responsible for it. Shrabani Basu’s The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer is filled with indignation as it tells the story of the investigation, prosecution, conviction, and partial pardon of George Edalji, a British lawyer of Indian descent who served three years in prison for crimes (mutilating animals and sending threatening letters) he did not commit. It is a tale of racial prejudice, an inept judge, a biased chief of police, and an obstinate criminal justice bureaucracy. But it is also the tale of men who saw injustice and worked persistently to right a terrible wrong. Included among those men was the creator of the fictional master detective Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Basu, a journalist for the Times of London and the author of Victoria & Abdul and other works of history, writes a vivid factual narrative that is tinged with emotion. The crimes occurred in 1903 in the village of Great Wyrley in Staffordshire, populated mostly by working-class miners and farmers. George Edalji was the son of the Indian vicar of St Mark’s Church, Shapurji Edalji by name, and his British wife, Charlotte. Basu notes that when the Edaljis arrived in Great Wyrley, they found “they were not entirely welcome.” As Conan Doyle would later explain, “The appearance of a coloured clergyman with a half-caste son in a rude, unrefined parish was bound to cause some regrettable situation.”

The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer: Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji and the Case of the Foreigner in the English Village, Shrabani Basu (Bloomsbury, March 2021)

The “regrettable situation” started in 1888, when the front of the Edaljis’ house was painted with “The Edaljis are wicked.” That incident was followed by a series of threatening letters that caused the Edaljis to contact the police. Others in the village received threatening letters that purported to be from Shapurji. On other occasions, someone left excrement inside an open window and on a door in the Edaljis’ house. The police at first only took what Basu characterizes as a “half-hearted interest” in the family’s troubles. Later, the police began to suspect that George Edalji wrote the letters and placed the excrement inside the house. Soon, Basu writes, the vicarage was under siege, with more threatening letters and a chief of police that seemed intent on proving that young George was the culprit.

Basu describes the police chief, George Anson, as “an imperialist to the core” who believed in the superiority of Western civilization and the British Empire. Anson, she writes, developed a “deep-seated dislike for the Edalji family, and particularly George.” George, meanwhile, had studied law and was working as a solicitor in Birmingham. He appeared to be on the path to success.

George Edalji’s fate took a turn for the worse in 1903 when Great Wyrley suffered a series of brutal animal slayings, including several horses. “Terror gripped the village,” Basu writes, “… as the killings continued in quick succession.

Villagers watched in horror as the bodies of the mutilated horses were put on carts and removed from the fields.

Letters accusing George Edalji of slaying the animals circulated in the village. George was subsequently arrested for killing one horse and sending threatening letters.

The evidence against George, Basu notes, was circumstantial at best; flimsy at worst. The police and prosecutors pointed to horse hairs on one of George’s coats, a footmark near the dead horse that appeared to match one of George’s boots, blood-stained razors found in George’s room, and a handwriting expert who testified that George wrote all of the threatening letters.

The trial was presided over by an inexperienced judge who, legal scholars later argued, allowed the jury to consider inadmissible evidence. The jury deliberated for 50 minutes before returning a guilty verdict. The judge sentenced George to penal servitude for seven years. The killing of animals in the village continued after George was sent to prison, but the police believed that George was a member of a gang that was committing the crimes, so in their minds this did not exonerate him.

Some eminent legal scholars and former jurists took a different view, and the Edalji family enlisted them in a public campaign to free George. Meanwhile, in prison George spent time reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels and he wrote the author to seek his assistance in righting the injustice of his conviction.

Conan Doyle readily agreed and spent much of 1907 investigating the case in the manner of his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. His detective work, Basu writes, “demolished” every argument and weakened every piece of evidence put forth by the prosecution, and he publicized his findings in British newspapers, which later appeared in American newspapers. Conan Doyle compared the Edalji case to France’s notorious Dreyfus case.

Conan Doyle’s logic and perseverance changed media and public opinion to George Edalji’s side. The Home Secretary appointed a committee of inquiry that recommended a “free pardon” for George, declaring that he was innocent of the horse slaying but guilty of writing the threatening letters. After serving three years of his prison sentence, George Edalji was a free man, but he would not be compensated for the injustice.

Conan Doyle now took it upon himself to discover who committed the animal slayings and who wrote the letters. He clashed repeatedly with police chief Anson, who had only disdain for the amateur detective. Conan Doyle provided the police with a few suspects, but nothing came of it. Unlike in his Sherlock Holmes novels, “The mystery of the Wyrley Ripper remained unsolved.”

Francis P Sempa 5 July 2021 Non-Fiction
Francis P Sempa is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century and America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics and War. His writings appear in The Diplomat, Joint Force Quarterly, the University Bookman and other publications. He is an attorney and an adjunct professor of political science at Wilkes University.

“The City as Anthology: Eroticism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan” by Kathryn Babayan
 

Reza Abbasi, detail Youth Reading, ca 1625 (Wikimedia Commons)

They gaze at you, the fashionably-attired youths of Esfahan, from a distance of 300 years. Swaying like cypress trees, their tresses floating in the air like clouds, their faces surrounded by peach fuzz, they smile like the Gioconda and with more mystery. Who are these young men and what do they say to the viewers? After the lucidity of the great 16th-century Persian and Mughal painters like Behzad and Sultan Mohammad, who painted kingly battles and hunts, the 17th century brings us the works of Reza Abbasi and Mohammad Qasem, and their ambivalent but sexually-charged portraits of young men and occasionally young women. These 17th-century masters painted not for royal masters and state gifts, but for middle-class collectors of scrap books for paintings, poetry, letters and didactic texts which they shared in more intimate settings. Kathryn Babayan takes us on a tour of 17th-century Esfahan (Isfahan in Babayan’s transcription), the city, its pastimes, its collectors and its memorialists. On this tour we try to understand what the cypress-like youths have to say.

17th-century Esfahanis led lives not too dissimilar from our own, hence the “early-modern” tag in the subtitle. They enjoyed majestic public spaces, coffee shops, wine-bars, shopping centers and outdoor spectacles. According to Babayan, the shahs of Iran lavished constructions on Esfahan not only to embody their secular power, but also to provide a foretaste of paradise, with all the pleasures and beauties that the faithful, newly-converted to Twelver Shiism, could expect in the afterlife.

The shahs also gathered in Esfahan, from around their empire, classes of people who could appreciate the finer things: artisans, scribes, theologists and merchants. In place of the courtiers, palace slaves or tribal khans who dominated the social scene under earlier dynasties, 17th-century Esfahan had middle class bons vivants who wrote poetry, collected paintings, and entertained one another with wit and cultivation. This larger, leisured class had access to ample quantities of paper and ink, and left voluminous records of their lives, their pastimes and their loves. As in Iran today, they lived in a society segregated by gender.

Consequently, their love lives give us the most difficulty. Babayan says thinking about sex with the early moderns “involves confronting those moments where the meaning of sexuality and eroticism are far from transparent.” She convincingly demonstrates, through a close examination that the pictural art of Shah Abbas’s age was suffused with eroticism, as in her reading of the great mural painting in the Palace of Forty Pillars, with its besotted pages and tribadic dancing girls. Certainly, the Esfahanis thought about sex.

More difficult is to know what they thought about it. In one case study, Babayan summarizes the rhymed, autobiographical account of a woman who undertakes the pilgrimage to Mecca upon the death of her husband. Along the way she goes to visit a female friend. The text makes it clear that the widow had once had an intimate relationship with this friend, but we don’t know if it was an improper relationship. We don’t really know whether a physical relationship between women provoked anything more than embarrassment in polite society.

The City as Anthology: Eroticism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan, Kathryn Babayan (Stanford University Press, April 2021)

Turning to relationships between males, the picture becomes even more complex. Intimate relations between males involving penetration, was considered by the religious authorities, then as now in Iran, as a capital crime. Although the cult of youthful male beauty is a hoary Iranian tradition, Domenico Ingenito demonstrated in his magistral study of Sa’di of Shiraz that the spectacle of male beauty provided ascetic mystics a better appreciation of the divine. In this sense, the album leaves by Reza Abbasi and Mohammad Qasem may have been no more than aids for mystical contemplation. On the other hand, there was an older, antinomian tradition of Sufi devotion involving physical consummation of forbidden love. Twelver Shiism rejected this tradition and began to persecute Sufi orders in Iran. Babayan reaches no definitive conclusions on the extent to which the authorities’ condemnation constituted mere lip service, or how the official position affected private behavior. It would have been helpful to look at legal cases and condemnations in Esfahan to form a firm opinion.

In the absence of data, we should probably not consider the 17th-century Iranians as any more given to same-sex, heterogenerational love than moderns. As Walther G Andrews and Mehmet Kalpakli point out in their Age of the Beloveds (2005) just because the Safavids and Ottomans wrote about love of boys, that doesn’t mean it was more prevalent than in other periods. Going beyond mere sexuality, we see that Iranian culture reveres asymmetrical relationships: slave/master, pupil/teacher, lover/beloved. Babayan’s analysis of Mohammad Qasem’s painting of the teacher punishing a student suggests that out of these asymmetrical, often abusive relationships, comes art, civility, craftmanship and even love.

Babayan’s dense, close reading of family albums and memorials brings to life an Esfahan as lively and as sensual as any Safavid page or cup bearer. Babayan might have left more room in her book to let the protagonists speak for themselves: a translation of some of these texts would be welcome. Meanwhile, while we continue to struggle to understand precisely how 17th-century Iranians saw themselves, the richness of these texts convince us that they were as confused and amused by life as we are.

David Chaffetz 2 July 2021 Non-Fiction

David Chaffetz is the author of Three Asian Divas: Women, Art and Culture in Shiraz, Delhi and Yangzhou (Abbreviated Press, November 2019). He is working on a new book about the horse in Asian history.

Podcast with Tonio Andrade, author of “The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China”
 

Tonio Andrade

On January 10th, 1795, a very tired caravan arrives in Beijing. The travelers have journeyed from Canton on an accelerated schedule through harsh terrain in order to make it to the capital in time for the Qianlong Emperor’s sixtieth anniversary of his reign. The group is led by two Dutchmen: Isaac Titsingh and Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest, who are there to represent the interests of the Dutch Republic at the imperial court. It’s a momentous occasion, especially after the disastrous British Embassy from George Macartney two years earlier.

The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China, Tonio Andrade (Princeton University Press, June 2021)

Little did they know that their embassy would be the last by Westerners in the traditional Chinese court. Their journey is the subject of Professor Tonio Andrade’s The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China (Princeton University Press), published earlier this year: a rich and readable volume that tells the story of an event long-neglected by history and historians.

In this interview, Tonio and I talk about the Dutch Embassy, its protagonists and the nature of the imperial court. We discuss the perilous and rushed journey the ambassadors made to Beijing, and what their experience tells us about the nature of diplomacy.

Tonio Andrade is professor of Chinese and global history at Emory University. His books include The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History (Princeton University Press), Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great Victory over the West (Princeton University Press, 2011), and How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century (Columbia University Press).