Re: Orange Voice in Washington -- Stormont Watch

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Date Posted: Sat, Jun 30 2007, 12:24:45 PDT
Author: Second report
Subject: Re: Orange Voice in Washington
In reply to: Irish Voice newspaper 's message, "Orange Voice in Washington" on Sat, Jun 30 2007, 11:45:45 PDT

Seeing Red Over Orange At the Folklife Festival
By Joshua Zumbrun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2007; Page C01

What's a cultural festival on Northern Ireland without some Troubles
bubbling up before it even begins?
When the Smithsonian committed to featuring Northern Ireland as part
of the 41st annual Folklife Festival -- which begins Wednesday -- it
may have gotten more in the way of authenticity than it planned.
Tensions boiled over when the Smithsonian extended invitations to
two historians from the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal group,
perhaps best known for controversial marches through Catholic
neighborhoods in which participants sometimes chant not very nice
things about the pope.
"They delight in their anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, loyalist, Unionist
viewpoint and they delight in their sectarian triumphal marches,"
says Jack Meehan, the national president of the Ancient Order of
Hibernians, a Catholic fraternal group based in Boston.
This "is not unlike inviting the KKK to appear at a Martin Luther
King Day celebration," writes John Shanahan, a local Hibernian
organizer, in a letter to The Washington Post.
So while there may be a month-old power-sharing government in the
Stormont Parliament building in Belfast, on this side of the pond
there's still a prickly anger from the 40 years of conflict in
Northern Ireland. No one from Northern Ireland has complained about
the Orange Order's presence at the festival, according to organizers.
The other cultures featured at the Smithsonian's 10-day event this
year are the fingers-crossed, so-far less controversial Mekong River
Basin of Southeast Asia, and Jamestown, Va. In 2002, the festival's
Silk Road theme drew controversy as it featured Afghanistan,
Pakistan and other countries just months after 9/11.
At the center of the current controversy are David Hume and Jonathan
Mattison, historians for the Orange Order. The two men will
participate in a series of panel discussions throughout the week
where they will talk about Ulster-Scots traditions, of which the
Orange Order is a part.
Hume, who has a PhD in modern Irish politics from the University of
Ulster, says on the phone from Northern Ireland: "There's a lot of
misapprehension and that's a lot of the reason why we're keen to
come out to the Smithsonian. We're coming with an open state of mind
and we just ask others to do the same."
A detour into historical context: The Orange Order was formed in
1795 to preserve Protestant traditions among the Irish, and it
traces its identity back to England's King William III of Orange,
who defeated former English king James II, a Catholic, in the Battle
of the Boyne in 1690. The group was still around, still staging
parades in the 1960s to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne, when
sectarian violence erupted between Protestant loyalists and Catholic
republicans (the cease-fire came in 1997). When the group marched
through Catholic neighborhoods, the parades often spiraled out of
control.
Meehan remembers being at one such parade in 1998 in Derry, Northern
Ireland: "I was standing on the side of the road and a bottle flew
over my shoulder. There was a young girl standing behind me and it
hit her in the eye. Split her wide open."
As recently as 2005, the police prohibited the Orange Order from
marching through Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast, setting off days
of rioting.
Still, the Smithsonian defends its choice.
"It's not a political program, it's a cultural program," says
Richard Kurin, the director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife
and Cultural Heritage, which oversees the festival. Kurin emphasizes
that only two of the 160 people in the Northern Ireland program
represent the Orange Order.
Still, opponents say the choice is bogus.
"They do not project any culture whatsoever," says Meehan. "But if
the Smithsonian's interpretation of what they do is culture, why
haven't they extended invitations to people from the other
communities? There are no credible representatives from the
nationalist or Catholic communities in Northern Ireland."
Nancy Groce, the curator of the festival's Northern Ireland program,
says the Smithsonian did not plan the event with a political mind-
set. "It's not Unionists versus nationalists. We didn't sit down and
quiz people about their politics."
Groce says the festival nevertheless contains a mix of people from
across the Irish political spectrum. "We have a banner painter who
mostly did banners for the Orange Order," Groce says. "We told
him, 'In your tent we're going to have some examples of nationalist
and trade-union banners.' I had the same conversation with David
Hume from the Orange Order. They both said that would be a fine
idea. They're welcoming it and I think they're looking at it as a
way to start dialogue here."
And the locale is key, as Kurin notes: "It's on the national Mall of
the United States. If you don't like what someone is saying you can
stand up and say something or ask them a question."

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