What's an "expert" to do?

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What to do when, through no fault or intention of your own, practically everybody considers you an expert? And even if you aren't - which I'm not - they don't listen to you. If you decline this flattering but inaccurate assessment: 1) you're just being modest, which seems to make things even worse because it makes them want your opinion even more;

2) they conclude you're ducking the question, or favor, or work that requires your supposed expertise, thus pissing them off.

In truth, I am a 31-year-old Native Ojibway writer who knows a few things about how to write a play, a television script, some journalism, and how to lose at poker badly. If you throw in scads and scads of useless trivia about television and movies, and everyday Native life, you have about the extent of my knowledge. Not that impressive, is it?

But for some reason, there's a train of thought out there in the mainstream world we call society that says anybody who gets things published can answer practically any question about anything. Now make that writer a Native person, regardless of background, and he is supposed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of issues, customs, cultures and personal family names of every Native person from the Pacific to the Atlantic and up to the Arctic.

It is not uncommon for me to, for arguments sake, get asked if I know a Native person from Alberta that a non-Native person met at a conference. I ask if they could be a tad bit more specific and they respond with "Well, I think he was Cree." That certainly narrowed it down. "His last name might have been Cardinal." Well, in the Alberta Cree community that's like saying his first name is John. I ended up having to apologize for not knowing this individual immediately. There are still a few hundred thousand Native people in this country I haven't gotten around to meeting yet.

Another example of my presumed all-around proficiency is the amount of cassettes and C.D.s that have poured into my office from Native musicians. Evidently for some reason they think I can, in some capacity, review them. I can't, but they make great paper weights. Several weeks ago I received a special request from a Native magazine to review Don Ross' new C.D. Don is a phenomenal Micmac classical guitarist. But I had to point out that my knowledge of music is somewhat limited to anything I already know the words to. It also didn't help that I don't even own a C.D. player, which would have made the review all the more difficult.

Just recently I received a call from a producer interested in turning a short story with a tenuous Native connection in it, into a half-hour drama for television. As part of the process he wanted me to read the piece and come up with some comments about the correctness or authenticity of the spiritual elements of the story. There are many things in life I am - an Elder or Medicine person I am not. Like many people my age and my profession, I have a certain level of understanding concerning spiritual matters but I am by no means an expert.

But these people don't care! I'm Native, that's all that matters to them! It's all supposed to be in my blood (even though I'm only half Indian, evidently my Native corpuscles overcome the Caucasian part of my hemoglobin.) What's a guy to do?

sheer exposure, though, you do learn to expect a certain amount of inquisitiveness. I don't think there's been a week in the last three-and-a-half years that I haven't been asked, somewhere by somebody, my personal opinion (from an Aboriginal perspective of course) about either Oka or Dances With Wolves. For the record, I thought both had some high drama, a few tears, some laughs, people learned some things about Native people, and I especially liked the fact the Indians were the good guys and the army were the bad guys. I bet you the same guy wrote both scripts.

But perhaps the most telling area is the complex world of politics. During the wild and wacky months we called Meech Lake, every timeI went home I was always asked to explain in a manner as simple as possible, what the hell is going on? What was all the fuss about?

Unfortunately, my knowledge of politics is often limited to watching or sometimes participating in what goes on at family gatherings or bars. So in order to fake it, I end up making things up about the white government's need to make things more complicated than they need to be. But the twist was I actually think I was closer to the truth than I intended.

During the last election I was asked several times to write a political commentary (again from the Aboriginal perspective) on the issues and candidates for various areas of the media. It's amazing what you can fake when people wave a cheque in front of your face. I really must get around to finding out who won that election.

That's my dilemma. You 'fess up and tell these people you're not qualified and they tell you to just offer an opinion or write something anyway, they're sure it will be wonderful.

I have toyed with the idea of going back to school to give me some sort of academic base for these questions but I wouldn't know where to start due to the incredibly wide variety of subject matter I get asked about. I might end up in school for eons and eons and by the time I got out, I'd be a boring academic whose opinion nobody wanted.

So when all's said and done, I guess I'm left seeking comfort in the words of Vladimir Nabokov who once said, "I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing everything."

OK, so I know a few things.