When we launched our Vancouver Is Awesome coat of arms back in December of 2009 the idea was simple: take the existing City of Vancouver coat of arms and make it our own. An example of it is below, to the right of the City's, and both are in use today. I probably don't have to tell you that we aren't run by the city and we are our own thing, not connected to them at all. We're a lifestyle publication, incorporated, and owned wholly by me. When there's an issue with our organization it lies on me to address it.
Left: City of Vancouver coat of arms. Right: Vancouver Is Awesome coat of arms.
Celebrating things that are awesome in this city is entirely what we do, so we originally wanted to salute those things and make an updated graphic representation of modern day Vancouver in the form of a crest (the City's was designed in 1969). We replaced the logger on the left with a guitar-wielding raccoon, the fisherman on the right with a skunk holding a camera. We added a quill and a pencil as a nod that we write about the city and we put some mountains in the background as getting into nature is a very-Vancouver thing. We love those mountains. Lastly we included the top of a totem looking over it all, as a salute to the First Nations whose presence here stands above all else, and we think they're awesome. The sunglasses were a last minute addition, and while I didn't produce the design myself to me they said that we think the First Nations heritage of this area we live in is cool. But not everyone saw it that way.
We'd been using our coat of arms for almost 6 years when, in September, a few tweets were brought to my attention, calling on us to change what was perceived by some as a "goofy caricature" of a totem. It was called inappropriate, BS and ignorant. Someone went as far to say it was racist. At the time I helped craft a response saying that our coat of arms was a take on the City's, implying that if they think it's ok to use a totem (theirs is from the Kwakiutl community of Port Hardy), then so did we. But I don't feel that way anymore. I have no idea how their totem came to be on their coat of arms, but ours was created by white people with no consultation with the people who it was meant to represent. That's not right.
Over the holidays I read Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian, a book that every Canadian should spend time with. Described by the publisher as "a sometimes inconvenient but nonetheless indispensable account for all of us, Indian and non-Indian alike, seeking to understand how we might tell a new story for the future" its realness about treaties, residential schools and the relationship between white people and those who were here before us is one of the most important things I have ever read. After I put it down I started to think about our coat of arms, and I concluded that it is BS, and it needs to change.
I've reached out to some First Nations leaders in our community with the following questions, and after I receive their feedback I'll post an update on what we plan to do. If you'd like to answer these as well please send me an email with your thoughts to bobk@vancouverisawesome.com:
1. Do you think that our coat of arms is culturally inappropriate and/or offensive? If you answer yes please explain why you feel that way so that we can see it from your perspective and relay that to our team and to our readers.
2. What can we do to fix this? We don't want to exclude First Nations from our coat of arms, or from the conversation about Vancouver. The reason why we have them on there is specifically to celebrate them.
