Hunting Buffalo Under the Ground: Encounters in Heritage Management by © Claire Charlotte Poirier A Dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Memorial University of Newfoundland Graduation September 2018 St. John’s Newfoundland and Labrador Abstract This dissertation problematizes the notion that ‘heritage’ is a singular, agreed-upon concept within the context of central Alberta, Canada. Given this region’s particular history, geography, and policy-legal framework, the concept of heritage is embedded within networks of relations that take shape through archaeological, ceremonial, and bureaucratic practices, to name a few. By focusing on Plains Cree ceremonialism and the Government of Alberta’s strategies for heritage management, this research asks how or in what ways the state’s approach to the management of heritage infringes upon Plains Cree ancestral relations that are maintained through ceremony. For those leading a Plains Cree ceremonial way of life, heritage refers to living relations with land-based entities, which require constant care and nurturance. For the state, heritage applies to tangible sites and materials associated with the land’s past inhabitants, which are dispensable in the name of economic progress. As the state implements procedures for the management of heritage, the relations that form Plains Cree ancestral networks come up against the modernist intellectual lineage that informs the state’s notions of what heritage is. Even as the state recognizes that local Indigenous people continue to retain a connection to sites and materials defined as heritage, the management of those sites and materials remains under state control. As a result, the state’s tendency to commoditize land and resources often becomes prioritized over the ancestral relations maintained through Plains Cree ceremonialism. This dissertation aims to parse out the master narratives embedded in the state’s use of the concept of heritage from how it is used in reference to localized Plains Cree networks in which the landscape itself is an ancestor. Attending to the discord between divergent conceptions of what heritage is and what it does exposes the consequences that come as a result of assuming the concept has only one meaning and opens the way for the lively and active cultivation of Plains Cree ancestral landscapes. ii Acknowledgements The winds of this research blew me from the wild Atlantic shores of Newfoundland to the open Prairie skies of Alberta. A billowy undertow dragged me south to the humid valleys and fragrant ocean-side cliffs of California. The salty fog of Nova Scotia then swallowed me up for some reprieve in the belly of my homeland. Finally, the cloudscapes and poplars of Big Sky country called me back to Alberta, where new life is currently sprouting. There are countless persons encountered along the way that have inspired this work in one way or another. The laughter of Chelsee Arbor, the other half of my tiny cohort, helped get me through to PhD candidacy on the Rock. In the rhizomes of UC Davis I encountered so many intellectual kin with whom I will always share a common language. There are too many to name you all, but Whitney Larrett-Smith, Duskin Drum, and Jake Culbertson have provided the kind of inspiration, support, and friendship that infuse the pages that follow. In 2012-13, my supervisor Mario Blaser co-organized a seminar series with Marisol de la Cadena, a member of my dissertation committee, at University of California at Davis. Participation in this series provided the intellectual environment I was craving and allowed me the opportunity to bump shoulders with many of my academic idols: Beth Povinelli, Helen Verran, Marilyn Strathern, among many others. Adrian Tanner, my third committee member, has provided the kind of encouragement that prompts hard and diligent work. iii Funding for this research came from Memorial University’s Department of Archaeology and the School of Graduate Studies. A two-year Doctoral Fellowship came from IPinCH (Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage), a multidisciplinary project connecting a network of scholars working in the broad field of intellectual property, heritage protection, and Indigenous heritage. Close friends and family have provided sanity and stability as I bounced from one corner of the continent to the next. My parents, Mark and Martha Poirier, have always opened their long-empty nest for me to rest my weary wings. I’ve been welcomed into a Maskwacis home for over a decade, and being part of the family is an honour I will never take for granted. My time in Maskwacis ultimately led me to my husband, whom I first met in my second summer of fieldwork in 2013. We were wed only months before defending this dissertation, so in more ways than one it has been a labour of love. iv Table of Contents Chapter One - Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 A Strange Multiplicity .................................................................................................................... 4 Governance of the Prior and Science of Dwelling ......................................................................10 Methodology ...............................................................................................................................14 Buffalo Assemblages ..................................................................................................................24 Chapter Two - Theoretical Framework ..........................................................................................30 The ‘Ontological Turn’ ................................................................................................................33 The Politics of Recognition .........................................................................................................41 Critical Approaches to Heritage Studies .....................................................................................47 Chapter Three - Treaty and Territoriality: The Divergence Between Buffalo and Mostos .........54 Plains Cree and the Buffalo Hunt ................................................................................................56 Treaty as Territorial Kinship .......................................................................................................60 The Treaty Six Era .......................................................................................................................67 Treaty as Rights ..........................................................................................................................73 Translating Buffalo into ‘Heritage’ .............................................................................................78 Chapter Four - This is not Unstoried Land: Buffalo Child and the Category of Sacredness .........83 Problematizing Sacredness .........................................................................................................86 The Story of Buffalo Child ..........................................................................................................94 Ancestry as Rhizome .................................................................................................................100 Chapter Five - The Ones Who Speak the Loudest: A Plains Cree Ceremonial Way of Life .......109 A Question of Authority ............................................................................................................112 Establishing Relations ...............................................................................................................116 Relations Start with the Self ......................................................................................................122 Embodied Obligations ..............................................................................................................129 Chapter Six - Sites of Tension: The Resource Paradigm at Hardisty Buffalo Pound .................136 The Slippery Slope of Heritage Protection ................................................................................139 ‘Expert’ Knowledge and CRM at the Hardisty Buffalo Pound ...................................................147 The Resource Paradigm ............................................................................................................156 Clearing Obstacles ....................................................................................................................160 v Chapter Seven - Chief Poundmaker and “Buffalo that Walks Like a Man” Spirit: Museums, Repatriation, and the Governance of Good Relations ................................................................165 Museum Collections and Ownership ........................................................................................168 Poundmaker’s Stone .................................................................................................................176 Alberta’s Push for Repatriation ................................................................................................182 Chapter Eight - Conclusion ...........................................................................................................190 Cultivating Disconcertment .......................................................................................................194