Once upon a time, storytellers felt free to use whatever elements of other cultural traditions struck their fancy, and to reshape those elements to serve whatever narrative purpose they had in mind, without respect for the impact their words might have upon members of the originating culture. In recent years, however, concerns about such appropriation of cultural materials have been raised, sometimes to such an extent that some writers feel unable to tell the stories that they might wish or even need to tell, fearing that to do so means the continuing exploitation of those who have already been exploited and oppressed, to steal their stories as past colonizers stole their lands and sometimes their children. Charles de Lint, a Canadian fantasist with dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories to his credit, is one of those storytellers who has continued to make use of both Native American and Celtic elements in his work. His belief that Art, all art but particularly storytelling, has the power to reshape its audience and through them the world has kept him writing, ladling morsels from Tolkien's Cauldron of Story, into which bits of history and myth and legend are constantly being added to the soup (Tolkien 27). In a brief afterword to his early novel Mulengro, which made much use of Romany culture and folklore, de Lint spoke of his own concern about the appropriation of other cultures' stories and traditions, his desire to continue to "tell a good story" but still "approach cultural and sexual differences with respect" and honesty to avoid spreading stereotypes ("Afterword" n.p.). Rather than surrendering to the impossibility of speaking as Other, of setting limits to the creative force, de Lint attempts to use that power to change the way that people think about difference, to provoke readers to contemplate how the world could be and how their own community might be transformed. Concerns about appropriation of another culture's narratives and traditions must be raised and considered, but it is difficult to see how it would be always possible to determine exactly who is and is not an appropriate speaker, particularly in such a multicultural country as Canada. The indigenous inhabitants who predate the moment of colonial encounter were not one people, but many, each with their own culture. The colonizing process was complex and continuous, from the brief tenure of the Vikings who settled in Newfoundland in 1000 CE, to Basque fishermen in the fifteenth century, to French fur traders in the early seventeenth century and the English settlers from coast to coast over the following couple of centuries. And immigration from all around the world has never ceased in Canada, with multiculturalism being an official federal policy for several decades. Even if it were possible to limit storytelling to those who could be identified as appropriate speakers in each instance, it does not seem desirable to limit different viewpoints in such a way; sometimes those who stand outside of a particular moment or place have insights that are worth listening to. The power of art and literature to transform the community would be constrained if the use of particular cultural materials were limited only to those who can demonstrate the best ancestral claim.
